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Yeah, I admit it's all very abritrary and there's not a very good way to decide which ones work and which ones sound off. It pretty much comes down to personal like/dislike for how it's done.
Granted, I can think of like a million examples of games/shows/movies doing stuff like that and most of the time it only matters if you really try to think about it too much.
Off the top of my head:
-There's a crashed F-14 tomcat in FF7(the original). It's never remarked upon, it's just part of the scenery in the bone village. Presumably left over from the Wutai war.
-There's was a very brief mention to "Abraham Lincoln" as part of a stored broadcast(of a trivia show) in Secret of Mana, somewhere in the Mana Fortress(I believe). I remember it for just how out of place it sounded in the game.
-Disco being a musical genre in Disco Elysium...though that surprisingly doesn't bother me. Even if a lot of other things are close substitutes for things int he real world(Communards instead of Communists, for example).
None of these are bad, they just can sound a bit off if you try to dig into them.
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I hate to use the old argument "It gets Better" but this is one of those examples where the first season or two weren't particularly great and it does pick up a lot as it goes on.
Just in case you did want to give it another shot.
Aren't the Parshmen black though, and the Alethi kind of jackasses?
Only read Part 1 of Book 1, but from what I recall, the Alethi are kind of tricked into war against the Parshmen/Pardeshi, but all of their commanders are in this for personal glory. Even with the lighteyed/darkeyed stuff, Stormlight does contain shades of racism that's pretty analagous.
That said, I think Mistborn arguably did it better, where the Skaa are treated as an underclass, and have been for so long that one of the characters questions whether they are biologically inferior...and the twisted truth is that they are biologically distinct, because Razak (sp?) made them so. It's kind of a twisted logic where in-universe, the treatment of the Skaa has a biological basis of sorts, but only because a man made them that way, yet that man is revealed to be a tragic hero by the original trilogy's end.
Strangereal
Strangereal is the name of the alternate universe within which most Ace Combat games take place. Strangereal is almost identical to our real universe, but its version of Earth features entirely different landmasses and historical events. Strangereal, as it exists today, was created by Namco...
acecombat.fandom.com
If Strangereal has an entire continent named after an Earth one, could they have an equivalent country?
Yeah, probably not, but just spitballing. But on the other hand, this is a setting where not!Russians (a.k.a. Belkans or Estovakians) are the villains most of the time, so...yay for parallels?
I'm not gonna read the article, because you know, Polygon, but is it not saying that a black man's purpose in a story is to be discriminated against? What a mess.
But on the topic of discrimination in the Star Wars universe...
I've always found it weird that ever since Disney took over, they've been slowly retconning the Emperor's huMAN policy. Yes, that was a real thing, and yes, it is dumb. So in a way, Disney made their bad guys less, well, bad. I mean I guess they still kind of keep the anti-alien sentiment, but there's women all over the command structure of the Empire.
But on the topic of discrimination in the Star Wars universe...
I've always found it weird that ever since Disney took over, they've been slowly retconning the Emperor's huMAN policy. Yes, that was a real thing, and yes, it is dumb. So in a way, Disney made their bad guys less, well, bad. I mean I guess they still kind of keep the anti-alien sentiment, but there's women all over the command structure of the Empire.
Because they want to sell you Imperial/First Order merch for your kids, and want to maybe paint them less Space Nazi than previously depicted? Or at least...equal opportunity Space Nazi? *shrugs* I find the merching of villains in things incredibly weird, but, there is a LARGE number of people who think the bad guys are their favorite part of Star Wars. Which I find....troubling? I mean, they are terrible people, so I don't really see the appeal of playing a fascist, homicidal regime. But, some people enjoy it, so other people will sell them the stuff to let them indulge it. And if that means retconning them to be less genocidal, well, I guess they will do that.
I mean liking the bad guys is hardly something unique to Star Wars. It is a odd concept to think of though, no one is exactly clamoring to play as a Nazi in CoD.
But the Empire is hardly being retconned to be less genocidal. And that's the weird thing. The Empire can be all about human supremacy and slavery and authoritarianism, but nope they can't be sexist.
Well how else can they sell Space Nazi Youth merch to your son or daughter if they don't establish the Empire/FO as being equal opportunity? I mean come on man! Pssh, that's just obvious!
And yeah I know liking the bad guys isn't unique to Star Wars, but the level of merchandising of the bad guys in Star Wars does make it a little disturbing to me. I mean, their SW themed parks, have literal fascist stormtrooper squads, patrolling around the place, interacting with people and children, and it's just....ok. They even make them look cool, and if you want your own Space Nazi Youth helmet and blaster, just step right over here to the merch store and get out your credit card! They're even sized for kids if you want! And I just....I mean, it really weirds me out.
I do understand the human desire to indulge darker fantasies, I don't "get it" though, as in why that's enjoyable. I don't personally do that, as I just don't enjoy being an asshole like that, even in fiction/games. But I do think that, I dunno, some types of "bad guys" that have such terrifyingly real parallels, maaaaybe shouldn't be considered as ok to glamorize? *shrugs*
The actual missed opportunity with Finn was having the B plot in The Last Jedi not be about liberating kids from the First Order's stormtrooper indoctrination camps. Disney probably wouldn't have signed off on something that dark though.
Everything in Disco Elysium is just a little bit different from our world, so you can kind of get it but you're also lost at the same time. Also, fun fact, the Communards were a real group, being the socialist revolutionaries who established the Paris Commune in 1871.
I liked the whole thing where you find out one of the compnaies in the doomed industrial area was making an MMORPG using their version of the internet that keys off of....what was it, short wave radio stations? And of course, it crashed due to massive scope creep, among other things.
As for the Paris Commune thing....I totally didn't know that. I caught that Revachol was kinda like Paris but with shades of Divided/occupied post-war berlin as well, but I figured Communards was just a their version of communist.
It feels like they are setting up that B plot as it's own show, given how things ended with Rise, and that one woman who was talking to Billy D. Calrissian (or is Lando D. Williams better? Hmm). It feels very much like a Disney+ angle.
But yes that would've been a really excellent plot to have in the films, but like the original trilogy, they are more focused on the Jedi stuff, and only tangentially mention the big galactic stuff, and it's ramifications.
True, I can't think of any "evil" faction that's been as commercialized as the Empire. Now you do have me wondering how they've managed that hahaWell how else can they sell Space Nazi Youth merch to your son or daughter if they don't establish the Empire/FO as being equal opportunity? I mean come on man! Pssh, that's just obvious!
And yeah I know liking the bad guys isn't unique to Star Wars, but the level of merchandising of the bad guys in Star Wars does make it a little disturbing to me. I mean, their SW themed parks, have literal fascist stormtrooper squads, patrolling around the place, interacting with people and children, and it's just....ok. They even make them look cool, and if you want your own Space Nazi Youth helmet and blaster, just step right over here to the merch store and get out your credit card! They're even sized for kids if you want! And I just....I mean, it really weirds me out.
I do understand the human desire to indulge darker fantasies, I don't "get it" though, as in why that's enjoyable. I don't personally do that, as I just don't enjoy being an asshole like that, even in fiction/games. But I do think that, I dunno, some types of "bad guys" that have such terrifyingly real parallels, maaaaybe shouldn't be considered as ok to glamorize? *shrugs*
Parshmen have Black or White skin with red tones, and the color patterns thereof vary, and of course, have carpaces as part of their bodies, making them kinda crustationish. Apparently the Alethi are rather darkskinned themselves, but yeah, they're kinda of jerkasses. They do have a wierd form of sexism, where men and women have very specific roles, but in their society it more of "Men are meant to do all the outdoors/physical jobs" and "Women do the inside/mental jobs". As in, Only men can be soldiers and warriors because it's manly, but only women can be scribes and scholars because it's feminine. Both sexes can be priests and handle horses though, because those jobs were never specified to be the domain of either gender.
I mean, it's complex. They're proud warrior race guys, but their entire society is based off competition to boot, so all the highprinces(who run the various provinces) fight battles for the glory and spoils, but also to show off how much better then they then the other highprinces.
And while this works to a degree, it's ground the war to a halt, which is why 5 years into it they've barely made any progress. Daliner tries to get them to cooperate in battles and they all treat him like he's insane. Granted, it's revealed that part of that is a result of their ultra-competive culture and part of it because of Daliners past. The man earned quite a reputation as a warlord so his change of heart towards chivlary and cooperation seem very out of character for him to everyone else.
And interestingly enough, the Alethi weren't actually tricked into the war.....the Parshendi admitted they sent the assasin. However, there seems to be more to it that keeps getting revealed, such as King Galiver told the Parshendi emissaries that he wanted to start another war to unite the kingdom and that he wanted to bring back the Parshendis old gods(which they very much do not want)
There is some justification for the Lighteyed/Darkeyed thing too. So it turnes out that using stormlight for their magic systerm, something the radiants and heralds were known for, causes the eyes to turn bright and glow. And since both are/were considered holy at one point....you can see how the eye thing kinda carried over in their culture.
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they tapped into the emo/edgey "they look sexy in black leather, and look badass with those blood colored laser swords" market?
More seriously, I think it's fairly simple. Since the whole setup for SW franchise is the conflict/war between the good/bad guys, you have to have merch for the bad guys so kids can have action figures to fight against when they play as the heroes. At least that's the "foot in the door" I think. And then they just expanded on that.
I do think it mostly just boils down to "Because they look cool", and the people's brains just sort of stop thinking about it beyond that point. How when they dress up like Vader, they just don't think "You know, I'm sort of pretending to be a genocidal maniac, who killed his own wife, destroyed a republic, murdered dozens of CHILDREN, and nearly single handedly, kept a galactic nation under the rule of fear for 20 years.....maaaybe I'm not ok with that? Naaah, it's ok, he's a FICTIONAL genocidal maniac, wife killing, child killing tyrant, so it's fine! And that disconnect is where my brain just sort of swerves like "wut?"
Most of what I've taken away from that series is an heroic attempt to outdo Robert Jordan at spending hundreds of thousands of words accomplishing almost nothing. I think the first two in the series most authors could have done in just one book half the size. I don't think I can bring myself to read any more.
I thought the opposite, honestly. I felt the length was well ultiized, so even though each book was 1000+ pages, Sanderson was spending the time on detailing something important and setting up future events as much as he was showing current ones.
If you didn't like them, best to drop it now. There's 7 more books to go before he's done, so there's a LONG ways to go yet.
You can think people look cool and still know they're bad guys. Take Chaos Marines. They look cool, but most people aren't about to sacrifice a planets worth of people to evil space gods.
At least not until October
Kind of with Agema here. Stormlight has very solid worldbuilding, but I'd struggle to tell you what actually happens in the first book plotwise.
