Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Phantom_Miria" data-source="post: 9743388" data-attributes="member: 7053811">Yes and no."Woke" is one of those internet buzzwords that mean everything and nothing depending on whoever is using it, and thus it's borderline useless in a conversation except sending different meanings to people who understand what that word means differently.So, Dark Sun was obviously always "woke", because it always had rather blatant, progressive-leaning political themes based on environmentalism, climate change, unchecked greed by the elites, and so and on. Dark Sun always framed its setting as the result of greedy elites destroying their own world for the sake of greed and their own personal interests, the terrible consequences of genocide and supremacism, and implicitly led the players as being the heroes who had to try and fix this broken world somewhat. Dark Sun, in that sense, is very "woke".*At the same time, Dark Sun was never "woke", exactly because it treated a lot of thorny and potentially controversial topics directly and without dancing around them, which I think is only a good thing. Dark Sun is the antithesis of "woke" because, instead of going for a safe corporate product made for thoughtless consumption, it took a risk at treating controversial topics and maybe offend someone. Also, it got a distinct edgy, punk vibe, which is very cool, instead of being squeaky clean. Dark Sun, in that other sense, isn't "woke" at all.Both of the descriptions fit in my opinion, it's just the definition of the word "woke" that changes widely depending on what different people mean with it. If your first guttural reaction to the word is to understand "progressive ideas and diversity in media" you likely have a good impression of the term and you'll align to the first reading; if instead your reaction is to understand "corporate imitation of progressive ideas for the sake of appearances, usually leading to sanitized art" then you'll likely won't have a good impression of that word and will align with the second reading.So, the moral is... Don't use internet buzzwords, they don't mean anything and they're deliberately ambiguous for the sake of inciting the very culture wars they feed upon.I think that's mostly technically true, but I would also be careful with taking that philosophy too literally or too far with its implications.All art is shaped by the circumstances it's made, thus it can never escape having at least some implicit political connotations somewhere, even when the authors actively tries to avoid that. Nevertheless, it's just foolish to try to extract the politics out of every piece of art in existence, because when you try to apply that logic to everything things get stupid quick.Super Mario is just about a cartoon Italian plumber jumping on turtles to save a princess in cutesy cartoony fantasy land, you can extract some politics if you try really hard but I don't think it's a good or worthwhile idea. Many fantasy settings are just excuses to make cool setpieces and dragons without much, if any at all, thought given to the political implications. And then you have the various Dark Sun and more blatantly politically charged settings where a political analysis makes more sense and comes more natural given the narratives and themes that are explored in them.[HR][/HR]*(And, because of that, I'm only further confused as to why anyone would agree with screwing with the themes of Dark Sun by sanitizing them. Chattel slavery and eugenic programs to make slave races are part of the awful system you're supposed to fight against, the themes get weaker when you start making the system less awful!)</blockquote>

Verification