Again, as I said, that something is political one way or the other doesn’t make it bad. I enjoy, uh… mindless fun from my childhood, let’s see… the original Spyro the Dragon series?
Also a piece of art being political doesn’t mean the author intended it as such. Think of it like this, using trans people as an example since that worked so well last time:
- if your game has transgender characters who aren’t exclusively villains, it’s promoting transgender people as normalised
- if it has them exclusively as villains, it’s demonising them
- if it hasn’t got them at all, it indirectly contributes to their erasure
I don’t play Spyro the Dragon and go “hmph, it’s got no trans characters, this is erasure!” However, it is still, intention or not, making a statement on many things. The statements are subconscious things like “girls have long(er) hair and tiny waists and kiss boys” (Elora and the fairies), “boys do sports” (every minigame in the series ever with Hunter and Spyro), and uh, …“arabian clothing is for thieves”. Hm.
The authors don’t intend to make political statements, but art reflects the subconscious AND conscious thoughts of the artist or artists. Nothing exists in a vacuum. We wonder how AI turns up racist, but the AI didn’t just pop into existence, it had to be programmed, and art is the same.
Every single thing you do and create is influenced by your values, even if you know it or not, even if you intend it or not. That’s the point I was making. Every piece of art doesn’t “have to” make a statement on government or society, every piece of art does, with or without intention, without your consent or approval. That’s what it means to create, because you live in a world with other human beings who will interpret your art and what it says and what it doesn’t in their own way. Nobody studied death of the author in school here? C’mon.
This is the last I’ll say on the subject, because I don’t want to derail Ruben’s thread by talking about the sociopolitical impact of everything ever. If you don’t see the Hag in White or any other game or fangame as unintentionally political, good. It means you’re not overthinking the world. Doesn’t stop it from being so.
…And, for me, that was a positive. I saw myself in the chatacters and felt the genuine humanity represented in them in a time where my existence is increasingly politicised and my life threatened and it all resonated with me and I’m glad. I genuinely am grateful, thankful, joyful-- and both annoyed at being misinterpreted as well as devastated to derail the thread from everyone’s enjoyment of the hack. Anyone can hit me up with a PM if they want to continue arguing.