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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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You should read The Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing. It has a trans character in it who only reveals she's trans like 30 issues after she first appears. It's in a way that kind of makes you think they might have just come up with it that issue, but if you go back through the previous books you see some hints have been there the whole time, for those looking.

After that it's mentioned a couple of times, but it felt reasonably organic to me, and I am pretty tightly wound about CW shit - I can't play remnant 2 because you start off with that annoying black chick "saving" you and audibly rolling her eyes at the founder being a white guy. I know she doesn't matter after the opening, I've played it for a couple of hours, but when the monsters attack they all surrounded her while I stood off to the side picking them off in safety, and then it cuts to a cut scene where she's saving me, and it instantly shattered the illusion. My suspension of disbelief fell apart and from that moment on I wasn't exploring the Remnant 2 universe, I was operating a computer program in which various systems interact and can be exploited.

Every time I tried to let go of that and get back into it, I'd think about her scoffing at the old white guy and lose it again immediately. That line destroys the illusion worse than being "saved", because I assume the "saving" issue was a glitch, or me playing on a lower difficulty than I should have - and in most people's games they would be too busy dodging monsters and trying to save their own ass to notice her getting overwhelmed, and so the cutscene would actually be saving you and we could transfer those feelings to the character.

But that droll line about the founder being an old white guy was meant, from the get go, to be understood outside of the game. It was gasfire games pandering to the woke, saying "uh we know the first game (which was full of diversity by the way) had the temerity to have a heroic old white man in it, but we started this game off with a black woman! And we made the player her sidekick to start! Please don't eat our faces!"

In universe it doesn't make a single jot of sense. In universe you are one of the last humans alive travelling through a terrifying universe that wants you and every other human dead. In universe it doesn't matter at all who actually saved the last dregs of humanity, it only matters that someone did, and anyone petty enough to be concerned with the configuration of their dangly bits or the colour of their skin is closer to a monster than a fellow survivor. So every time I'd think about that line I'd be pulled from the game again, unable to see it as anything other than a big skinner box with rng elements.

Also it's (The Immortal Hulk) got some great body horror set pieces if you like that kind of thing and can ignore the zoomer eco-pandering.

when the monsters attack they all surrounded her while I stood off to the side picking them off in safety, and then it cuts to a cut scene where she's saving me

You might appreciate this sketch, so 😁