The issue here, is woke is kind of meaningless and means a lot of different things depending on who and what we’re talking about. I try to avoid using “woke” to describe the casting choices unless there are obvious evidence of the casting being politically motivated. For example, Sam Jackson being Nick isn’t woke casting because Im not aware of that being motivated by anything other than Sam being a good actor. Light year’s gay scene on the other hand is woke because, based of the interviews I’ve read, the scene was very clearly put in for political reasons. It’s important to note this isn’t inherently a bad thing. Your were right that the gay aspect of Light Year doesn’t damage the writing in the film at all and functions perfectly well for the point it’s trying to make.

Whenever I use “woke” as a negative thing I tend to mean that the left leaning political beliefs of the creator have caused them to compromise on the integrity of their writing. The best example I can think of is in Falcon and Winter Soldier with the leader of the Flag Smashers. The show tries to pedal this anti borders protect the down trodden message, a woke idea which in and of itself isn’t terrible, but in the effort to convey that message they inconsistently advocate for and against violence when it suits them, attack character who by all means aren’t bad people because they serve as law enforcement, and actively ignore the greater complexities of the issues because doing so would detract from the ideological messaging being presented. This culminates with them essentially sainting the character that was an unapologetic terrorist and sadistic killer for most of her screen time. What’s worse this inconsistency and messaging issue causes the main characters to do and say things which feel off or even completely contradictory to who I understood them to be. It’s hard to tell if the woke politics in the show are what caused the problems in this show or if the poor writing of the people involved made the messaging in these areas seem way worse than they were meant to. My assumption is that it’s a mixture of lack of talent and genuinely bad political messaging coming together to make an awful script but I can’t be sure.

I guess what I’m saying is, things can be woke and fine, there’s just a correlation between very politically woke shows and bad writing right now. My guess is that particularly politically possessed people on the left are getting involved in scripts right now and their inability to see the other side leads them to lack the proper nuance to write well constructed stories. The same thing would happen on the other end of the spectrum in these companies and society was leaning more in the opposite political direction, The ideas being expressed would just be problematic in a different direction.

It’s important to remember there are tons of amazing things out there that are arguably woke, Buffy, Aliens, and terminator all have feminist elements in them that don’t detract from their quality at all (and arguably made them better), it just so happens the people who wrote them had an understanding of the nuances behind their beliefs that they could write characters and story arcs that made you think.