Delivering Justice on Heaven's Behalf

Just because there seems to be a roll of these, I guess it's time to point them out.

Into the Far West attempts to take the Wild West and add wuxia. But they decided they didn't want to include any Indians at all, because they were "afraid they couldn't do them justice". But apparently they can do Chinese folks justice, or something. Oh, and add white people doing kung fu with steampunk stuff.

Um. Ok. It makes me think of the all too repeated argument against showing black folks as thugs, pimps and hookers on tv- "But then we wouldn't be able to put ANY black folks on tv at all!". Oh, I see.

Steampunk Musha: Victoriental Adventures

Well, if the name wasn't enough, by the description alone, apparently Japanese and Chinese are interchangable languages and so are the cultures.

I mean, oh god asking Steampunk, where people will research how clothing was dyed and stiches were done by hand, to have to look up the fact that China and Japan are... like... not the same.

And of course, Wolsung's art can speak for itself:






So, anyway. It's one thing to want to have an idealized alternate history of your culture where you're not, like, a major cause of suffering that lasts centuries and has effects to people to this day. But it IS a whole other thing when your idealized fantasy history also means that POC are non-existent or fulfill the EXACT SAME RACIST STEREOTYPES of the 1800s. See, that's where you go from escapism fantasy to racism.

But hey, the your imagination is the only limit!

And what does it say about your imagination that it's stuck in the centuries old tropes?