This argument is so weird to me, because no one ever explains what the SJW themes of the game are, it's always "bigot sandwiches", "Abby buff" and "lesbians". That bigotry is tackled early in the game, in an off-hand manner and is just laughed off even by Ellie with her dumb joke makes it kinda weird to complain about, had the overarching themes been about bigotry I might get it... but they're not. The story isn't SJW people are just upset about who the major players in the story are, which is what identity politics IS, it's caring more about a person's appearance or sexuality or whatever else than what they have to say. The truth is both sides engage in identity politics and it's always annoying.
I didn't really think that there was any overt '' SJW:ism '' about it, moreso the audience that sorta injected it into it on both sides.
When I say '' no overt '' I mean that it wasn't obnoxious.
On the other hand, it is a little bit absurd when like almost every character is '' nonconventional ''.
I don't have an actual problem with it, but I honestly doubt that it was some kind of a natural occurrence.
I remember Neil talking about Nathan's daughter I think or something and he said something along the lines of '' why couldn't she be a girl? ''.
But in that same vein, why couldn't she have been a son?
It's just such a strange question imo lol, just write the damn character.
I think that writing a character as female '' just because '' is just as bad as writing a character as male '' just because '', and I think that's probably the most '' SJW '' thing about TLOU2.
It's not awful, but there definitely is a lot of '' oh look a trans character, oh look everyone's gay or bi, oh look a big muscular female character who's nicknamed '' Abs '' and is the only muscular character except for some throw away guy towards the end for some reason '' etc etc ( seriously why is no one else muscular then if it makes so much sense? ).
I mean ffs even Mel being pregnant in the field, it's so fucking stupid for so many countless reasons and does come across a bit as a '' stronk female character won't let no pregnancy hold her down '' thing.
Like if you actually think about it the number of non-conventional characters for the setting and just in general is pretty bizarre and I don't think that it's a coincidence.
Again I don't have an actual problem with this, I think that artists should just create whatever they want to create.
It just irritates me a bit how for example if you make all of your characters nonconventional it's applauded and not treated as a big deal at all but if you even just have one conventional character it can cause controversy.
It's like if you have a conventionally attractive female character people lose their minds, but then those same people will just fill the whole screen up with nonconventional characters and/ or applaud it.
This is obviously not the case in TLOU2, but if all of your female characters look like Abby for example I really see it as no different than if every female character looks like Ivy from Soul Calibur.
You're kinda just filling up the roster of characters with your own personal fetish lol ( Abby was absolutely fetishized in the game and by the audience, the devs knew exactly what they were doing ).
But yeah, I do agree that both sides engage in identity politics.
It's just irritating how everyone with actual power in the industry support one while demonizing the other.
Just let artists create ffs...
