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Hi-Pan's dialog in the West Side missions
pawsplay36
Posts: 7 Arc User
I've been thinking about Hi-Pan's dialog in the low-level mission where he is conducting a meeting of the West Side gangs. There is a cringe-y bit of dialog that mocks his inability to say Millennium. I think this reflects poorly on stereotypes about Asian-Americans. Can this be altered?
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Of course Hi-Pan is just a punning ripoff of the villain Lo-Pan from the movie, Big Trouble in Little China, so he's already full of cheese.
Such things were simply made at a time when it was sadly "normal" and "ok", I would concentrate on movies and games that do it still to this day tho, not something made like almost 12 years ago. Not saying such should be ignored of course again, just saying something that old people will rarely care for sadly.
Villain wise, no, not think we actually have, NPC wise, Mayor Biselle and his Sister, Fulani Otonko? Forgot how her last name was written now. Lt. Patil, Kinetic, etc.
Outside MC also rare, only ones that come to my mind are Baron Cimetiere and his Sovereign Sons.
BTW the ethnic demographic of MC breaks down as 44% White, 41% Black, 10% Asian, 5% Other.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Well, as someone with six decades under his belt, twelve years certainly doesn't seem old to me.
Problem here is that it is based on the movie as a joke mostly, so the movie is to blame, so you would need to change the movie as well which is impossible since that is even older, what I meant with old things, I not mean to overlook the problems with it of course.
Sorry if I worded this wrong, my English isn't always the best.
I still want a female gang. In my old PnP game I had S.H.E. = the SisterHood of Evil; all females, from the mooks up to the boss.
I dunno. Feminism has moved beyond that aggressive, hostile stage. Most contemporary feminists, female and male, find that attitude rather embarrassing.
I'm just leaving a comment here in 2022 saying that, once I noticed the dialogue thing, I'm on your side that it's problematic.
Best to you and your loved ones
It was an unfortunate choice in my opinion, and I think limited the game's appeal.
I mean, the Champions official PnP universe may have a robot cowboy theme park, but that is much more at home in Batman '66 than it is in anything the top comics and superhero movies are showing.
Anyway, as a result of this you end up with silly "Big Trouble in Little China" knock-offs that include all the dialog issues.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed "Big Trouble in Little China", but here they turned the silliness up to 11 and brought it in as a giant joke. Only I can't ever remember laughing.
They already completely reworked the introduction to the game, including all of the West Side stuff with the gangs.
I doubt that they would do it again. The first time was probably an attempt to see if making the start of the game more "player-friendly" could boost the player base. If someone feels that this is a big enough problem, I wouldn't bet that a rework was more likely than them just killing the game.
I think it's both.
Someone will have something to complain about either way, and everyone may have some valid points.
Same with the all-female villain team. I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't bet against the PnP game not having such a team in some form in its history.
Such teams are comic tropes. There is nothing wrong with them.
But I guarantee that there are some people out there that would claim that putting such a team in the game somehow promotes violence against women or some such if they were to be made aware of it.
Feminists these days welcome male allies, yea. The stereotypical feminazi is a relic of a bygone age.
All the Westworld-analogue stuff you can lay firmly at the feet of Cryptic Studios. In PnP, Snake Gulch -- introduced in the multi-part adventure, Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth -- appears to be an Old West ghost town refurbished as a standard Wild West tourist theme park, as a cover for the VIPER Nest beneath it. No robots, sapient or otherwise. Most of the cheesy and over-the-top stuff you see in CO comes from Cryptic rather than old-school Champions. Well, except for Foxbat, but that's the point of the character.
Groups of female super villains from Champions
The example of an extreme anti-male feminist villain group I mention on that thread comes from the 1980s. As I say there, rare all-women teams and organizations have certainly existed in this game and its offshoots in the past (and in comics), but the feminist movement today has mostly moved on from the aggressive misandrist phase, so there isn't the same perceived "need" for such a group, any more than for an all-black team.
As for the "We need an all Black Gang/Female Gang!" Do we? Is that really necessary? A lot of the current gangs are a nice blend of representation. Not every gang needs to be "All Inclusive" because in reality, not every gang is. These are the bad guys we're talking about, if they're not representing a certain race, gender, religion, culture, or idea that you feel they should, wouldn't that make putting a stop them them even more of a priority for you? And honestly, we're not supposed to care what they're "representing" to begin with because they're the Bad Guys, and what they "represent" is supposed to be wrong anyway.
For my own games, I put together a group of existing official Champions solo villains, all transformed into superhumans with an elemental/nature motif, and a common psychopathic misanthropy, into a team I called "Gaia's Wrath." They're extreme eco-terrorists who believe the Earth is in a war for survival with the human race, and who plan to cull the human population until they're no longer a threat (at least 90%).
The attached image is composited from artwork in Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains. From left to right: Sunspot, Galeforce, Geothermal, Thorn, Hornet.
Also worth noting that kidnapped scientists or whatever are also usually male and so there's rarely a damsel in distress in CO. Again, don't know if that's a good or bad thing.
Overall I have to say that I agree with the OP, Hi-Pan is problematic, and because everyone new to the game likely plays though these early missions it's likely that new players will assume that the racial stereotypes present in the early game continue throughout. You got to wonder how many people get to that point and just quit?
Some people are truly bored to go looking to get offended on behalf of others, or the possibility of someone else getting offended. The reality is most people are aware of stereotypes about their own race/religion/sex/nationality and are used to it, its others (obvious demographic) who look to be some sort of savior.
"The reality is most people are aware of stereotypes about their own race/religion/sex/nationality and are used to it." That statement tells me you haven't had the stereotyping directed at you, or been close to someone who's had it directed at them (or at least had an honest conversation with them about it). You don't get used to it. You learn to hold your tongue and let it slide, because you get it so frequently that trying to correct and enlighten everyone who does it would be exhausting, and most of them won't get it anyway. But you never get used to it.
It's not up to the people being stereotyped to change that behavior. It's up to the people doing the stereotyping.
Absolutely false. I am a minority and have faced much stereotyping IRL where it actually matters. What a failure of jumping to conclusions and in a poor attempt to discredit my argument.
Why should I bother trying to correct others over things in fictional media? If a person thinks all Austrians speak like arnold schwarzenegger, that's on the person viewing his movies, not on the writers/filmmakers for making use of the stereotypical accent. Do you think Australians are offended whenever they hear a poor Steve Irwin imitation? Does Red Winter need to be changed too because the dialogue might be offensive to Russians? Should Baron Cimetiere's dialogue be changed because it might be offensive to blacks? At some point we gotta step back and realize it is fictional, that is pretend, and we shouldn't try to apply IRL moralizing to it.
Let's say you do want to apply IRL moralizing. Accents are kind of a strange choice for that over other issues such as the rampant violence. Violence to solve problems. Violence to sustain oneself ingame. Violence to proceed. Is a civilian dying on the floor? Let's not do anything, wait for them to become a zombie, and kill them! But we know the violence is pretend so its okay right? How come we don't apply that same logic to dialogues? It too is pretend.
Theres plenty of discussion by smarter people over the circular relationship between popular culture and mass media, and a large push for "representation" as a backlash to the whitewashed older media, but that is ultimately only relevant for things with a wide audience. In other words, not relevant to a video game with maybe a thousand players. Leave the virtue signaling to social media where people find snippets of dialogue from books written a long time ago, and try to use it to fuel outrage.
I always find these kind of statements online troublesome since there is no way of verifying it one way or the other. It could well be true, but there's no way to know for sure. Wish we could move beyond it.
By his PnP stats Zerstoiten speaks thirteen languages with great fluency, including his native German, but his stats say he should have a German accent, yes.
His word choices for describing himself are unusual, which adds to the impression I had; but as you say, we can't tell for certain. But I'm ready to move beyond it -- we both expressed our points.
I've always questioned the popularity of such games as Grand Theft Auto and all other games that, in my view, promote negative behavior.
However, I'm not obtuse and know it can be fun to be a little "bad" in "just a game".
And then there are the morally grey areas. Such as killing by giving you the moral high ground. Hopefully. I certainly prefer to think that I have DEFEATED my enemies in Champions rather than KILLED them.
Much of this is indeed subjective. I dislike hunting/killing animals for sport. However, if the video game is done in a wacky way, for instance, I can have fun doing that. In this example, you can condone or condemn either. It is up to you.
-=-=-=-=-=-(CO in-game handle: @WarCan )-=-=-=-=-=-
"Okay, you're DEAD, what do you do NEXT?"
Would make the heroes fight Hi-Pan to find out it was just Holo projection. I feel like earlier in the game it's important to establish the reality of this fictional universe that these fictional characters may be in danger. When Hi-Pan runs away it takes from immersion.
Just curious. What languages does he speak, and does it say what languages he reads but does not speak (probably his Sumerian would sound barbaric, at least to an inhabitant of Uruk around 3,000 BCE
Champions PnP makes the default assumption that a character in modern day is literate in any language he speaks fluently. Illiteracy would be a Complication, i.e. something that makes the character's life more difficult and ... interesting... in some way, and which they can get Character Points for taking which can be spent to buy other things. OTOH one can choose to use earned Experience Points to "buy off" some Complications. In games set in past eras when literacy was uncommon, it wouldn't be the default.
Destroyer speaks English, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Sanskrit, and Spanish. No Sumerian, but you can't have everything.
As a contrast, the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca, who acts in the modern world as a "supervillain," is Literate in pre-Columbian Aztec and Mayan, but not other languages. (Both Dr. Destroyer and Tezcatlipoca are detailed in Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains.)
Anyone speaking a language that is not their native one will naturally be a bit quirky. I doubt an American would speak Cantonese or Mandarin perfectly like someone born and raised in China would.
Ah, okay. I stopped buying Champions stuff somewhere around 3E. Most of my character knowledge comes from 1st and probably 2nd edition, with just a smattering of 3E splashed in.
Yeah, Foxbat was a goofball villain. It was his whole schtick.
Ehhh... I think that it's okay.
It's not something that the game "needs". I am just saying that if the MMO adds more characters from the PNP then don't shy away from anyone for that reason.
I don't know if Bulldozer exists anymore, but he was a raging male chauvinist. He wasn't a major threat, but he was what he was, and it was almost daring any female hero to take him as a hunted just so they could cut him down to size.
Same with any misandrist group. They aren't vital to the game, it shouldn't be some deep study of social issues. It should just be a group of women villains that hate men and so they want to remove Calvin Bisselle (another "comedic" yet unfunny character) from power and take over MC for themselves.
Simple, comic-booky, and carry on, right?
Again, not saying that things need to be created that do not exist to fill this hole. Just saying if they are out there that the game shouldn't be afraid to use them.
If they want to put them closer to the bottom of the list than the top I won't complain.
I have been waiting for Dark Seraph since the first mention of the Crowns of Krim I discovered in the game.
I have been waiting for Black Paladin since, I guess, I saw that he had a cape design named after him.
I have been waiting for the Ultimates since the game was announced.
But this gets off-topic.
Hi-Pan? Yes, terrible idea like I said before. A lot of the jokes in this game miss. A lot of the pop-culture references aren't really pop-culture any more because they picked things that have aged out and/or were pretty niche to begin with.
I would like to see a lot of stuff re-worked, I just know that it is unrealistic given the state of the game.
But you are a Champions PnP lore genius, let me ask you... was Thok (from Enemies) a Qularr? Or I guess was he made a Qularr later? Just curious.
My main issue with Hi-Pan's speech pattern in the Westside arc is that it's inconsistent with his speech pattern in alerts. But since he's the only Asian NPC in the game with that speech pattern and it only occurs in the Westside arc, I'm not upset about it.
Yep, he still exists, he's still a raging male chauvinist (along with other, equally endearing, qualities), and his purpose is as comic relief and to get his overconfident bragging butt handed to him, often by female supers (he's actually shocked the first time one of them hits him). Witchcraft of the Champions once turned him into a frog and kept him in a terrarium for several weeks.
You and me both, brother.
Genius? Sweet of you to say, but hardly. I'm just a guy with a hobby and a copious memory for generally-useless information.
Thok as a character, and his race, didn't make it into the current official setting, although there are several official insectoid races. Your suggestion of making the character a Qularr is pretty clever, considering their species is highly collectivized and not far from a "hive mind," and adding a rebel faction who want more individuality would make for an interesting additional dimension. It would probably make more sense for him to be one of the rebels, though, since normal Qularr don't have individual names, and with the Qularr presence on Earth they're less likely to feel they're stranded and unable to return home. OTOH a refugee from the dominant culture would have a lot of character potential.
(I'm very happy to answer questions about Champions lore, but as this thread is wandering far from its original topic, I would recommend posting such questions on the "Champions Pen and Paper RPG" sub-forum, as those books are the main source for setting info. I promise I'll see and respond to them there.)
Thanks for the answer.
That said, I can see both the appropriateness of being offended by this, and the wisdom in not being offended. As you say, compared to a lot of other things it's relatively minor. But in circumstances like these where a whole group is being slurred, and someone could take offense, I don't think it's on the person being slurred to not be offended. I believe it's on the person slurring to learn to not be offensive.
> I still don't understand how Hi Pan's voice is considered a "negative stereotype on Asian Americans." The character is a parody of David Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China. David Lo Pan was played by actor James Hong. The voice he uses for the character is his normal voice. The voice actor for Hi Pan is merely doing an impersonation of James Hong, due to the connection between the two characters. It's no different than if there was an NPC named Mechanocop, that was a parody of Robocop. Getting a voice actor to do an impersonation of Peter Weller would be appropriate. It would be all wrong to have the character introduced with some generic voice like "Hi guys. My name is Hi Pan. I'm a parody of a pop culture character and a villain." And to say "doing an impersonation of a James Hong is promoting racial stereotypes against Asian Americans" would be like saying "doing an impersonation of Arnold Swartzenegger is promoting racial stereotypes against Austrians." In fact, doing any impersonation of any celebrity would automatically be considered promoting racial stereotypes against that actor's race, under that logic. It just seems like an insignificant thing to be offended by, especially when there are much worse things to worry about than celebrity impersonations. That's just my two cents on the matter, in the end, it won't change anyone's mind. But the harsh reality is, being offended by something is solely on the person who is offended, because they are the one making the choice to let it effect them. The day that finally sunk in for me, is the day my life changed. Negative comments and insults towards me have never had an effect on me since, and my life has been better for it.
Well said. As an Asian American I can see the humor in it. It obviously wasn't meant to demean, but to amuse through a knock-off. Context is everything.
Hi Pan is meant to be a comedy villain that gives players a smile.
It wouldn't be right to change or remove them because they are a tribute to said times and in fact might even invite us to reflect about the world today and how we easily get offended and forgot how to have fun.