A couple of questions to the CB staff about fluff direction and the Infinity fandom

@Interruptor @Bostria @Koni

Sometimes a band I enjoy puts out a bad album and I don't enjoy it, and then the next one comes out and it's top-quality again. Maybe they were experimenting with a new sound, perhaps they made a bad call, perhaps they just didn't want to get stuck in a rut.

Other times it means a band has gone in a direction that I'm no longer interested in following, or the quality has dropped.

From my perspective, and the perspective of some others here, Uprising looks like a "bad album." I'm sure there are people who really enjoyed it, however, and that's great for them. The question is if it's part of a new direction (or possibly an old direction that I failed to apprehend), or merely an experiment that may or may not be returned to.

In games structured like Infinity, where there are multiple factions that players can play as, with various levels of exclusivity between them and an extensive narrative backdrop, players can identify pretty strongly with various factions, especially when you have sociopolitical or ethnic identifiers along with with them. I've encountered women who participate in the hobby who really dig the riot grrls, for example. Combined Army was the faction I picked up first, and you can't really identify with the races that make it up in the same way, but I would peg it as "my" faction in this game. Other players I know picked up Yu Jing, some of them focusing on the Chinese/Imperial Service side of things, others being drawn to the JSA aesthetic, others enjoying a mix. From the way the setting was described, nobody's nose was clean, every faction was involved in their share of dirty dealings, but they were all at least justifiably self-interested. Combined Army stood out, as perhaps the one out-and-out "villain" faction in the game, at least the EI itself, perhaps with some room for individual members of its component species to be heroic or laudable. So some people have bought into these factions and the characters within them (which is a good thing, I think, getting people engaged), with full awareness that the factions have dark sides - oftentimes played for laughs, as wargamers tend to have morbid senses of humor, in my experience.

It can feel like the rug's been pulled out from under you, however, when something that you've bought into changes into something unrecognizable. The way Yu Jing's been portrayed in the Uprising fluff has been unremittingly villainous, and, as per the narrative event fluff, it isn't a matter of in-universe propagandizing by the other factions, but rather a matter of objective truth. The Imperial Service is engaged in ethnic cleansing and mass killing of Japanese, and the only person on the YJ side who's protesting is a nonhuman cyborg (and even he goes along with it after raising complaints). That's not a protagonist faction; that's a villain. I'll set aside the idea of how competent YJ was, or was meant to be (that's a discussion for another thread), and focus on the fact that they're presented as morally bankrupt (with every other faction being morally laudable to oppose them).

It's no secret that the creative minds behind Infinity are big fans of anime, so there's a heavy influence of Japanese science fiction on the whole setting. You've got examples of ethnically Japanese characters outside of the Japanese state, even (The detained mother-superior who's either Kusanagi or Kusaragi, forget which). What you don't have, though, is examples of characters who ethnically hail from non-Japanese nations that are part of the Yu Jing collective that aren't represented, in-game, by the genocidal actions of the State-Empire. Those of you who know me, online or off, know I'm generally not particularly concerned with "politically correct" thought or art, but it seems very off-putting to present the entirety of East Asian (sans Japanese) characters in your setting as enthusiastic participants in ethnic cleansing, with the only voice of dissent being a nonhuman AI in a cyborg body (who's promptly ignored). I have friends in the Infinity community who are ethnically Chinese; I'm not going to say that your depiction demeans them (or is racist on any level), as that's a decision for those affected to make. But from someone who appreciates science fiction, who's not a member of the ethnicity in question, it still seems very lazy to peg an entire nation/group of ethnicities as totalitarian and murderously racist. There aren't any counterexamples in the fluff of ethnically Chinese characters who aren't onboard with this, even outside of Yu Jing itself. From my perception, that speaks to a lack of sophistication in the setting; even Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia had their dissenters (who were obviously treated incredibly harshly, but w/e).

If I were to introduce Infinity to someone who happened to be Chinese, and were to talk about the setting (It's anime-influenced and cyberpunk, with a bit of space opera in it, plus Hyperion etc etc), and they were like "What's this Yu Jing faction? They look neat!" and had to explain that they're, well, engaged in ethnic cleansing of the Japanese and generally considered villainous, it might be off-putting. It might not be, sure. But I can't imagine telling someone that everyone of their ethnicity in the setting is portrayed as evil would be a selling point; if Americans (a nationality, but you get the idea) were portrayed the same way I'd probably write the whole thing off.

So it comes down to a few questions: Is Yu Jing meant to be a morally black faction? If that's the case, was it always intended to be this way or is this a recent change? If it's not, why is the fluff so one-sided in the current round of releases? Is this fluff meant to portray Yu Jing in a morally ambiguous manner and you believe we are misinterpreting it?

 

Thanks for taking the time to read it. You seemed to have grasped what I was trying to say pretty well.

 

I'm not asking what the ending is, per se. A response of "Yu Jing is intended to be a villain within the setting" wouldn't be giving away anything. And my comments about how the Chinese themselves are depicted in the setting go beyond that idea.

It's asking a question about their style of storytelling, fundamentally. In the end, I'm not asking for justification, I'm asking for a sign that the story has more to it in terms of sophistication than what's been depicted in Uprising and the little bits we got in the Treason narrative pack. If it doesn't... then, in my opinion, Infinity doesn't have a setting and plot worth getting invested in.

If the plot thread of "How/why did Yu Jing become so evil?" isn't really explained, then that's a black mark on the integrity of the story.

 

This thread isn't meant to be about that. Go talk about it in another one.