I know the tune, I sure as shit am not going to dance to it, but its existence doesn't have to ruin my fun. As with any religion in a story, it's fine being in there as long as it doesn't ruin the story or take over the story. You don't need to be a Catholic, or even particularly tolerant of Catholicism to read & enjoy Tolkien or Evelyn Waugh or Flannery O'Connor. I don't need to be woke to enjoy The Expanse, or a feminist to get behind Martin's themes with Cersei, Catelyn, Asha & Arianne in A Song of Ice and Fire. Or Jordan's work, for that matter. If I can't compartmentalize my political views, that will DRASTICALLY reduce the available media I can enjoy.

But just as I noted on this site when I watched a number of overtly Christian movies, when your Message and your service to your belief system takes precedence over your story, when the story is just a vehicle for proselytizing, rather than informed and inspired by your beliefs (as is the case with GRRM, JRRT, R A Corey, et al), it inevitably ruins the story. I highlight or make jokes about the racial casting (e.g. Ismael Cordoba Cruz's Elf character Arondir, whom I refer to as Mori, in a Tolkien-lore in-joke), it is not to complain about the wokeness per se, but to point out how the producers are doing the former, rather than the latter. As I stated back when the casting for Wheel of Time was announced (here or somewhere online), the problem I had was not that Perrin & Nynaeve were black, and Egwene brown, but that Mat was white. I pointed out that the darkness of the actors' skin was inversely proportionate to the degree by which their characters manifested the Old Blood of Manetheren. I note the propensity of the show for shoving male characters into domestic roles and the women carrying weapons and engaging in violence-adjacent activities not because I disapprove of the role swap or the change from the books, but because it shows they don't UNDERSTAND the way female power is illustrated in the books. There are reasons why martial skills are male-coded and household activities female-coded in a pre-industrial setting, but in WoT, female-coded activities are not denigrated, and male-coded activities are not glorified. There are no knights or tournaments to raise the social status of warriors, rather they are treated like workers at a necessary but distasteful job. I have noted how bitch and bastard are pejoratively used on the show, where they are not in Jordan's books, not least because this is a world where there is no distinction in status deriving from the marital condition of one's parents. WoT characters should not call each other bastard, because they don't have any understanding of the concept, forget it being an insult. And yet, fans are arounding around the internet, and the producers are almost certainly thinking, that the show is "fixing" elements of the story they consider "sexist". Like GoT before it, they are writing a MORE sexist story, in a vastly more sexist setting (unless that's inconvenient to a plot line, or event or even a throwaway gag, then the sexism or equality goes out the window) because they don't understand the source material, and because they don't understand how the very tenets of their belief system interact with human thought and activities.

And when you don't understand those things, you can't write a good story.

I'm not saying that wokeness is ruining any of these shows. I am not saying that wokeness is a symptom of what is ruining these shows. I am saying these are bad writers, who happen to be woke, and they prioritize something in their writing above telling a coherent story or servicing the fan base they are appealing to. It just so happens that that priority happens to be wokeness. I am not pointing out the wokeness to demand its eradication from the medium, but to show how it is in there at the expense of the elements that make a good story or that reward the pre-existing fans of the IP, how the writers' failure is exposing their mindset and priorities.

GK Chesterton said that a good book tells you something about the hero, but a bad book tells you something about the author. These shows are not telling us anything significant or worthwhile about the heroes, but they are telling us a lot about the authors. And demonstrating that is my goal when I note the producers' wokeness oozing through the cracks in their work.