Andromeda and SJW influence: Delusional Rage or Unfortunate Reality? (Discussion)

I'm a little late to the whole discussion, but I'm glad this didn't degenerate into a handful of people losing civility and ganging up on someone and causing the thread to grind to a halt to make them happy, unlike another one in recent weeks.

Being topical, relevant or showing a world in which demographics looking for respect in society isn't a bad thing. As some posters have mentioned, however, doing so with the seeming intent to avoid even the most innocuous possible slight (not to be confused with avoiding obvious and blatant stereotyping, etc.) ends up producing a work that falls flat in many areas. I think sometimes this has happened with andromeda and, ironically in this discussion, not because of any subplots involving alternative sexualities, political points of view or anything else like that. Bad writing is bad writing regardless of any SJW pandering. The only direct effect was that stories can become very bland if a creative work's top priority is not to offend anyone.

We need a better term for anti-SJWs, don't we?

And this whole topic is an example why labels in general are stupid.  They are used to label and categorize a broad range of people in order to delegitimize their views.  We are all guilty of using labels myself included.  But if person A agrees with something with person B on something that does not mean they are just like person B or they agree with them on everything.  This is one reason why this identity politics war is probably one of the dumbest things to hit western society.

I'm not labeling. I'm not categorizing them. If I was, I would say all of them are white nationalist. What I'm labeling are actually the white nationalists (all of them are anti-SJWs, or do you disagree?) What I'm doing is showing that both of them have core aspects in common (an "obsession", for the lack of a better word, with privileges and the anger against "the invaders"). 

But yes, I delegitimize their views because their core aspect is the same: "Gaming is only for us, not for gays, women and other minorities". Of course they don't put it exactly like that, but that's the goal: for gaming to be like "the old times" when it was only for white straight males. Does that really not ring a bell? AGAIN, to emphasize, I'm not saying they are "white nationalists", but the "core" ideas are pretty much the same. Even Trump says he's against "white nationalism", but his very election and actions lead to it. 

I think we have some common ground here.

Sara's look could be considered fairly 'ordinary/girl next door' in line with the narrative of a person thrust into a position of authority.
From a role play perspective I like the way she starts the game as an underdog.
The look works fine from my perspective, I find the 'dolly bird' look rather fake...

And no, the character creator did not allow me to find a satisfactory customised look, as I was able to achieve with DAI.

Some people take video games especially seriously, sometimes to the point where it becomes like a political opinion. I can probably be like this, but very rarely, the only instance I can think of is how I feel about Peebee vs. Liara. (I think Peebee was miles better than Liara in regards to character development, I consider Liara a trainwreck in this regard, one that could've easily been avoided)

My argument is, from Bioware's point of view, they have already done that very thing, e.g., Suvi, Cora and Peebee. There's no accounting for taste, so if Cora's hair is a turn-off, shrug, but from the neck down, you can't say that Cora doesn't have a conventionally attractive body. And Suvi is the whole package, hair and all. She's just not bangable by a Bro Ryder.

So it's not just conventional attractiveness, it's also bangability that's at issue, right?

Should Bioware play to the least common denominator? You claim average hetero males are the majority of the audience -- and you might be right about that. Certainly the demographics polls posted on Reddit show ME's audience as overwhelmingly male (79/20). Even if a quarter of that 79% are above average , that's still a sizable chunk of the audience that may be "average hetero males." Seems to be good business sense to give that segment some eye candy, right?

BUT. But, maybe it's exactly that heavily skewed 79/20 ratio that Bioware is trying to address. Maybe their business stats lead them to believe that the average hetero male segment of the 79% wasn't going anywhere -- for this issue, anyway; serious problems with game stability, facial animations, and overall disappointment with the whole Andromeda concept notwithstanding, because those issues apply to all segments of the audience -- and Bioware could afford to do something to grow the 20%. Again, not in a zero sum sense, but rather making the whole pie bigger, as well as that slice. That's what I meant earlier that maybe the character style decisions Bioware made didn't have anything to do with average hetero males at all, because they thought they had checked that box with Suvi, Cora and Peebee.

Hmmm
There do seem to be small groups of unstable, malicious and/or stupid people at both extremes of the SJW debate, that the internet allows to communicate.
Larger numbers of people around the middle seem to be either welcoming of the diversity, or see it as 'artificial'.

What doesn't help is when the more nutty folk at the extremes brand everyone on the 'other side' with the same SJW/Anti-SJW label.
The labels only serve to obscure the variety of opinions.

I remember when a little Social Justice would be considered a good thing...

That's what I always thought about Social Justice, guys like MLK and the like. I think as someone has said earlier in this thread, we need a new word for anti-SJW's, but we also need a new word for SJW's. (And by SJW I mean the hypocritical one's that don't actually believe in social justice.)

Problem is, in a society where the normality is being a white straight male (and I say that as being a white straight male), being anything different from that can and most of the time will affect your personality. Being gay in a society that don't generally like them is something that may form your personality. I don't see any character "solely" defined by their sexuality or race, but surely their race (here we're not even talking about color, but literally about what "race" means on the game: elf or dwarf in DA:I or krogan or asari in ME) or their sexuality. You can see ME characters speak of homosexuality or bisexuality very naturally. Dorian, on the other hand, lives in a medieval society where homossexuality is mostly viewed as wrong, so his sexuality has a much stronger impact on his personality. That doesn't mean Dorian is entirely defined by this. And I don't think Bioware should ignore that living in a society where you are seem as "the not normal" can form your personality. I doubt you can state a single character that is defined by his/her sexuality in a Bioware game, because I didn't hear none of the ME:A characters talk about it, not even once. 

The biggest complain on this thread, as showed already, is that ME:A doesn't have "hot women". And this is pretty much pathetic and entirely related to what I said on my previous posts.  

I agree, and with your post previous to this as well. The working definition I use for anti-SJW is one with privilege (acknowledged or otherwise) who wishes to maintain the status quo. By definition, anyone with a contrary agenda is an outsider.

Which is why "anti-SJW" is so confusing to me as a term. It's a double negative! If anti-SJW's maintain the status quo, it means that SJW's are against the status quo. So SJW = anti-establishment! And that makes anti-SJW's anti-anti-establishment, or, establishment.

White nationalists are certainly on the extreme end of the spectrum, but it's the same spectrum, at least from the point of view of anti-establishment activists. That said, I'm glad to see those sympathetic to anti-SJW's on this thread disavowing the white nationalists. As someone said earlier (I'm paraphrasing), there's a danger of tarring with the same brush. It's an overreach to say that people wanting more conventionally attractive eye candy in their Bioware games support white nationalism, to any extent.