Creative integrity and the woke culture

More like a blog post, I know. I would be interested in your opinion and thoughts on this.

When you walk into a bookstore, the books are not simply organised alphabetically, but by genre. Readers have preferences and expectations when it comes to stories or entertainment media. People are free to decide whether they want to read a thriller or a romance.

Over the centuries, archetypal narrative styles have been established that have proven to be particularly successful. Although these are not set in stone, they provide a good starting point for authors to follow an existing structure. When someone chooses a horror novel, they expect suspense, fear and horror. They don’t expect a bank robbery that has been carefully planned for half the book’s content. In a Heroes Journey, readers don’t expect the teasing wordiness used in romantic novels.

Every archetypal narrative has a certain division of important information about characters, setting and events. For a plot to work, every piece of information must be handpicked according to the genre. Too much relationship drama in a thriller? Too little swordplay in a medieval epic? The immersion is gone. The percentage split between action, emotion, dialogue, eroticism, etc. is a fine line that represents the preference of both authors and their readers within a genre.

One of the most important points when writing (consuming entertainment media) is not to waste the readers’ (consumers’) time with superfluous information. Character traits such as disabilities, sexual orientation, past events must serve a plot point, otherwise they are just empty words or fillers. The classic infodump. Readers perceive this unconsciously. If the main investigator of a crime novel has lost a leg due to a past accident, this must lead to problems in the plot that he has to solve. The investigator follows up a clue on his own in a remote wooded area and startles someone hiding in a bush. The suspect flees. He has to go after him. How does he solve the problem? Another aspect could be that his limitation leads to social problems or unacceptance that he has to deal with during his investigation. Creating conflict in a story in order to resolve it through the actions of the characters is one of the main reasons for an exciting, readable story. Limitations make a character human and identifiable, but have a duty to move the plot forward.

Just as information must have an impact on the plot, subplots must be integrated into the main plot at some point in the story. A side story that ends abruptly and has no connection to the main story leaves a feeling of wasted time. Readers have invested their time to learn more about a character. In a well-written story, they are rewarded by seeing that this knowledge has real value in the plot and is utilised. Each character is always the main character of their own story. And yet there is a main plot that must be linked to it. The finely tuned content of a story, the setting, the narrative style and many other aspects attract a certain group of interested consumers. If their expectations are met or exceeded, they become fans of a series or the author. Building a fanbase is easier said than done. It requires technical expertise in constructing a story and a lot of time revising and fine-tuning.

The author now has the task of delivering what their established fan base expects. If they fail to fulfil expectations, they risk losing fans. On the other hand, authors themselves want to grow in their creative process and explore new things. The author wants to take the life of a main character in a series in order to experience the course of the plot as a reaction to this drastic decision. From the point of view of artistic freedom, there is nothing wrong with this, but what do the fans say? In these moments, sensitivity is required. Because the author is playing with the trust placed in him by the readers. Such an immense decision must reward the readers in a different way. Developing the author’s creativity in such a drastic way is only possible if he is a master of his craft. In creative pursuits, it is important to play by the established rules until you understand so many nuances that rules can be broken for the better. This can result in wonderful new works. Such people are celebrated as virtuosos. However, if someone is not a master of their craft and breaks the rules anyway, incoherent works are created. These people are labelled incompetent because they are wasting people’s time. Nobody wants to be labelled incompetent for their efforts, which is something that more and more series and games are struggling with these days.

There seems to have been an agreement in the consumer world about the culprit. The woke culture. While it has many different aspects, some of them are noticeably finding their way into the mainstream media. One of the cornerstones is to provide a safe space for marginalised groups from different walks of life. This safespace also includes people with characteristics that make it difficult to live in today’s society due to anxiety disorders, borderline, depression or sexual orientation. Safespaces, which are known from therapies, serve to exclude certain triggers, for example in the case of experienced traumas, as far as possible so that methods can be developed to lead a normal life outside the safespace. The aim is therefore to leave this safespace again. In the woke culture, people within these self-created safespaces are given special attention, which seems positive at first glance. The question now is, when will they leave it again? Another question could be: why would they want to leave it again? People who live in an environment where others pay very close attention to their choice of words and behaviour so as not to set off triggers develop a tendency towards narcissism outside of a professional therapeutic setting. The goal is no longer to leave the safespace, but to expand it. Instead of promoting the idea of diversity (marginalised groups) to naturally integrate into other groups, the demand is made that other groups in society accept and apply the established safespaces. There is no need to discuss the fact that any kind of demand that disrupts the integrity of a group will be met with resistance. So what does this mean for series and games that make this kind of demand? At this point, a parasitic behaviour can be observed in which existing and successful IP are used as hosts to force an expansion of safespaces. The Witcher series, Rings of Power, …
Based on the above text, here are a few questions that need to be answered when using established source material from series or games:

•  Do changes in characters (skin colour, etc.) have any relevance in the plot?
• Is new information (mention of sexual orientation, etc.) relevant to the plot?
• Do new side stories (homosexual couple, etc.) flow meaningfully into the main plot?
• Are the expectations of existing fans met?

If even one of the questions is answered with ‘no’, the creators are already taking a risk of producing an incoherent work and outing themselves as incompetent because they are wasting consumers’ time.

People judge themselves by their intentions, but others by their actions.

Instead of labelling the creators of incoherent works as incompetent, descriptions such as ‘courageous’ are used in the inner circles of the woke. Their intention is a good one. Namely, the inclusion of marginalised groups in successful franchises. What their actions have ultimately produced is therefore less relevant. At this point, consumers are not looking at their laudable intention, but the result of the inconsistent string of storylines. The situation now arises where viewers intuitively reject the incoherent works, a group of like-minded woke people encourage the incompetent and the incompetent see themselves confirmed in their actions, which further promotes the narcissism described above. Instead of drawing conclusions from the decisions made and learning from them, methods are used to maintain the safespaces. Gaslighting, concealment of facts, threats, online harassment are just some of the actions.

The debates that erupt on social media as a result are anything but constructive. Part of the reason for this is the internet itself. Because it is particularly good at two things.

• Grouping people with the same ideas together
• Presenting content that makes you particularly angry

The basic principle is to bind consumers to their devices for as long as possible. As long as a person is consuming media, someone in the world is making money from it. The interest in binding people to their devices for a particularly long time is therefore very high. This can be achieved by exposing people to content that provokes some kind of action. Either to support like-minded people or to fight against an enemy. Hate is one of the best bonding agents. When someone deeply hates another person, it stays with them all day in their mind. If people with the same mindset come together and expose themselves to content that makes them particularly angry as a collective, what effect does this have within the group? Radicalisation.

Although radicalisation is a hard word, the way it works is clear. This applies not only to woke groups, but also to any other. Over time, any group that exists long enough will develop its share of extremists. It is the job of any group to keep order internally. At the end of the day, in a society that is characterised and sustained by a wide variety of groups, people have to ensure that their own group participates in life together with others. One approach would be to exclude these extremists from their own circles. Of course, new, smaller groups will then form, consisting only of these extremists. It is then the task of the authorities to keep an eye on them in order to prevent worse things from happening. In the case of the woke culture, however, this is a problem of its own. Because what happens when these extremists are inside a safespace? Exclusion from the safespace would set a precedent that ensures that anyone who steps out of line can simply be excluded. This would render a safespace as such obsolete and destroy one of its cornerstones.

Another aspect of the woke culture is the special emphasis placed on sexuality as a feature of identity. People are complex beings. Sexuality is just one of many characteristics. In terms of entertainment media, the romance genre in particular lends itself to exploring sexuality as a primary plot point in a story. People who go into a bookshop and want exactly that are looking for the romance category, they don’t go to the sci-fi thriller shelf. Why is that? The expectation of the plot of a romantic comedy is different compared to a sci-fi thriller. So if the aspect of sexuality as a character’s identity is particularly important to the plot, then the correct choice and marketing of genre is essential. If an epic adventure is marketed and fifty per cent of the content deals with the discovery of the protagonist’s sexuality, then this causes confusion and resentment. After all, as mentioned at the beginning, archetypal storytelling has become established. In contrast, when a love story is marketed and fifty per cent of the content is about the slaughter of orc warriors, it also creates a bad atmosphere. The principle of invasive expansion of the safespace of woke extremists also applies here. It is not the violation of the expected content according to the established genre that leads to controversy, but the supposed unacceptance of sexual diversity. Viewers judge the actions of the creators and see a discrepancy between marketing and expected content. Their intention is to experience meaningfully coherent stories. Woke people judge their intention as noble and see the actions of the viewers, i.e. the unacceptance, as a rejection of diversity.