[PintScotch]

You are misstating the complaint.

If you have a fictional series/universe it is important it is internally consistent. Most people use fantasy/science fiction as a form of escapism. They don't want to be reminded about stuff in the real world while trying to escape it.

What frequently is perceived (rightly or wrongly) by fans of a particular franchise is that Female/LGBTQ characters are inserted into places where it doesn't make sense to fill quotas. People generally don't have problems with the characters being female or LGBTQ if the character is charismatic and it doesn't break the internal consistency of the Universe.

The reason why people are vocal is because they've heavily invest their time into something and when it fundamentally changes they feel like they've had the proverbial rug pulled from under them.

[api]

> Female/LGBTQ characters are inserted into places where it doesn't make sense to fill quotas

Every case of "ruined by woke" I have seen ultimately just boils down to bad writing, with people blaming "woke" for it when, well, it's just shitty writing. If you ignore the woke stuff and look more broadly usually the whole thing is at best mediocre.

Also sci-fi, fantasy, and horror have always been "woke." Star Trek was one of the first popular shows to prominently feature black characters in important roles and has always lampooned racism and other kinds of bigotry. Night of The Living Dead is pretty easy to see as a racism allegory, or at least it contains one as a sub-plot. Star Wars had an evil empire that was transparently a mix of Nazis and arrogant condescending colonialists. Alien was one of the first huge films I can recall to have a super competent female action hero with skills like engineering who didn't need any help from a man. The Expanse depicts a society that's so post-gender-mattering you don't even notice it, it's just the way it is (probably a good example of good writing in this regard). Etc.

[PintScotch]

> Every case of "ruined by woke" I have seen ultimately just boils down to bad writing, with people blaming "woke" for it when, well, it's just shitty writing. If you ignore the woke stuff and look more broadly usually the whole thing is at best mediocre.

No not really. Claiming this is a hand waving away legit criticism. Fans/Superfans have legitimate criticism of how it breaks the in franchise universes. Constructive Criticism has been claimed to be racism/sexist/homophobia.

> Also sci-fi, fantasy, and horror have always been "woke." Star Trek was one of the first popular shows to prominently feature black characters in important roles and has always lampooned racism and other kinds of bigotry. Night of The Living Dead is pretty easy to see as a racism allegory, or at least it contains one as a sub-plot. Star Wars had an evil empire that was transparently a mix of Nazis and arrogant condescending colonialists. Alien was one of the first huge films I can recall to have a super competent female action hero with skills like engineering who didn't need any help from a man. The Expanse depicts a society that's so post-gender-mattering you don't even notice it, it's just the way it is (probably a good example of good writing in this regard). Etc.

No they haven't. It so annoying when people point to some ideas that were slightly progressive at the time being an example of it always being "woke". It is quite honestly tiresome.

None of the examples you have given are what people refer to as "woke" today anyway.

Star Trek was certainly progressive, no argument there. But progressive != woke. When people use "woke" as a pejorative they mean extreme left-wing politics that is bordering on insane. Star Trek TNG was progressive, but none of the politics were seen as extreme even at the time of release.

Alien (like Terminator) were very well done horror movies. They worked because women are seen as traditionally vulnerable. It a well known trope in horror movies.

Also there have been femme fatales and heroines in movies well before Alien. I've seen it in a silent Japanese Martial Arts movie from the 1930s where the Heroine avengers her friend who was raped after going to Samurai master (can't remember the name of the film though).

Heroines didn't just pop into existence sometime after 1960.

> The Expanse depicts a society that's so post-gender-mattering you don't even notice it, it's just the way it is (probably a good example of good writing in this regard). Etc.

Never seen it, probably won't now. If a piece of media is going to pretend that someone's sex isn't important to at least some aspect of their character, than it is bad writing. The fact that the show had to be saved by a Billionaire, tells me that it probably wasn't any good in the first place.

[api]

Yeah, I think a lot of that's just bad writing. Changing things for TV/film is common, but if you do it badly or ham-fistedly it's bad writing.

The Expanse is great. The show has uneven production quality if you look closely but the acting and writing are good and that matters more than VFX or sets. Definitely a fun watch. The books are better, but a lot of the detail in the books would be way more expensive to film properly (like more realistic space sequences or the Belters with their altered physiology).

[skyyler]

>Star Trek TNG was progressive, but none of the politics were seen as extreme even at the time of release.

Season 5, Episode 17 features a genderless species that enforces a type of conversion therapy on any member of the species that believes they do have a gender. It's very thinly veiled, if you could consider it veiled at all.

I think I would agree that TNG's politics weren't considered extreme at the time. However, it's easy to believe that some themes the show touches on would be considered "woke" today.

[api]

> I think I would agree that TNG's politics weren't considered extreme at the time.

They would be considered more extreme by today's right than they were in the 1990s. If that came out today it would be woke gender ideology propaganda or something. But today's right is trying to low key rehabilitate Hitler.