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

And ill bet mine that I had to order from the US to canada (the one exclusive to the targets) that it will indeed turn ugly very soon.

But yeah in this day and age, the sjw accusation is thrown at nearly every game that does not show a sexy woman on the front page or a white man, it was not the case before. I don't remember in ME 2 days that jack with her shaved head and tatoo look of being accused of SJWism by the writers. But nowadays after the gamergate scandal, the paranoia of the gaming community has reach an impressive level. I can't take the term "SJW" seriously anymore.

Well, this "discussion" doesn't seem to be headed anywhere nice.

Probably somewhere in the middle for me. While clearly it's delusional to blame any perceived flaws of MEA on so called SJW influence, i do worry Bioware's extreme sensitivity isn't always going to be conducive to good storytelling.

Count me in the middle as well. Of all the problems of the game, "politics I don't agree with" is at the bottom of the list. If you play MEA for 80-100 hours, running into an LGBT character shouldn't be the deciding factor in whether you like it, overpowering the other 99.9% of the time spent. Of course, I thought the uproar over the ME3 ending was wildly overblown for the same reason. The OT gave me hundreds of hours of happiness, so 5 bad minutes, even though they were admittedly 5 fairly crucial minutes, didn't ruin the rest for me. I wanted them to change the ending, they did, and all was well.

OTOH, I do think it's fair to note that it seemed like they were pretty ham-handed about it, though. Especially the H. Abrams encounter. It really seemed like they threw her in just to tick a box. You never see her again, and she plays no real role in the game.

Unless SJWs ran Andromeda's project management they didn't ruin the game, no.

That said, I think we all know that a bit of ham-fisted diversity box-checking is par for the course in BioWare's games and no one should be surprised by it anymore. The pronoun concerned asari was a bit silly, but that was a few seconds of content in a game that can well last over a hundred hours for one playthrough, so certainly nothing to get worked up over.

Put me somewhere in the middle, I guess. No, individual devs being prone to virtue signaling probably didn't ruin the game, but for how much they care about representation, they actually don't strike me as being very good at it. They do stumble into inserting token characters that serve no story purpose (Abrams), and being somewhat preachy (Asari pronouns speech just screams "ask people about their pronouns). And finally, I don't know if it's just because I was paying extra attention to it after the initial "SJW ruined everything" videos, but take a walk around the settlements and listen to the background chatter. For a group trying to colonize a new galaxy, there are a lot of couples in not traditionally breedable configurations. Some left up to interpretation, some not so much.It's not really an issue, like I said, I only noticed because I went looking. It creates a weird division of these characters being there, but being insignificant in every way except as a "did we put a lesbian couple of Eos?" checkbox.

The only thing I actually take issue with is (and this will probably reinforce why I don't visit the character and romance forums) is making Jaal bi. I actually agree that it would have made sense for him to be bi in the first place. But he wasn't, and changing him after the fact because of user complaints is just something I don't agree with. I'd disagree with making Suvi bi as well. That BioWare hadn't thought that people of all orientations with a represenation on the crew might want to take their LI along on missions just reinforces my initial thought of "they want to show diversity, they're just not very good at it".

I've recently been playing Horizon Zero Dawn, which imo did a way better job at presenting diversity than anything BioWare has ever done. Granted, because it doesn't have romance arcs, they do have a slightly easier job, but it seemed so effortlessly diverse, basically just making it feel like a living world with a bunch of different people, rather than a set of boxes to be checked.

Shepard had a conversation with Aethyta about this in ME3.  He said something like "if you were human, you'd both be called mother".  She then called Shepard an "anthropomorphic bag of dicks". Asari have only ever used a male pronoun when it came to noting which parent did not give birth to a child.  It's a sudden, weird change.  Don't know that it's SJW, but it's different.

I guess you could always have your outliers who decide they want to be different from the norm and use a different pronoun.  Hardly inconceivable in a galactic race.  However, it's not consistent with our previous understanding of asari.

SJW has become just another buzzword used by the alt-tards to describe anything they don't like. Scenes like the extremely hamfisted outing of Hainley Abrams certainly didn't help the game, but it hardly ruined it. What ruined the game was a combination of technological shortcomings, subpar writing and a mismanagement of time and resources. None of those can be blamed on SJWs.

I'm pretty positive at this point that my views on this subject are board taboo, but I've never been one to back away from controversy, so here goes.

First, I feel the need to define terms. To me and based on my previous experiences on the 'net, SJWism can be broadly defined in 2 ways. 1. A mindset that puts equality of outcome above equality of opportunity 2. A mindset the puts diversity above all else. These definitions are obviously very concise and broad, but I intended to define them that way as "SJW" is a broad and nebulous term.

Now with the definition in my head "put to paper" so to speak, on to the meat and potatoes.
I would argue that in this context, ME:A has a noticeable SJW influence in 2 instances.

1. Hanley Abrams 

2. The asari/angara pronouns dialogue

Hanley Abrams was a textbook example of SJW forced diversity as she isn't a well developed or good character and her only purpose seems to be to exclaim: "HEY GUISE! DO YOU KNOW I'M TRANS? DO YA?!" as well as dish out some meaningless side quests.
The asari/angara pronouns dialogue is a more nebulous SJW instance as it pretty much spits in the face of pre-established cannon for social justice relevance and brownie points. We have a race the is previously established as a monogendered race and suddenly they are using male pronous? Yeah... sorry, but no. Not buying it.

Furthermore, The SJW vs anti-sjw debate is growing tiresome as it has already been done countless times in regards to ME:A and is just so incredibly toxic on both sides and if you ask me, neither side on the extremes is right. A middle ground exists and for the most part, ME:A rides that fine line for the duration of a playthrough, the two examples I listed not withstanding.

 *flameshield engaged* 

i was about to reply something along those lines, so i'll just borrow your post .

Still i vote choice #1 , although rage is a bit extreme and i'll call it delusional frustration. 

After 1600 years of contact with the turians -- who seem to be human-congruent in such matters -- finding such concepts in asari language is about as shocking as finding French words in English.

"Monogendered" or not. They are female. That's Bioware's botch that they don't look androgynous like I've been suggesting from the start. Then they'd be monogendered. But as they are, they have tits, a snatch, and female voices with slender bodies. FEMALE. The only race who can even claim that based on looks are Salarians cause their males and females can't be discerned without hearing them.