If I were a writer, and I said I was interested in writing a race who had some (not all, only some)roots in Native American culture, but allowed myself the artistic freedom to deviate significantly on some points (because I don’t want to write Natives, I just want to be inspired by certain things), would the other person really be entitled to criticize that, if I never intended to do a reflection of the Natives in the first place?
I take it Baal and others’ premise is that art like this does real world harm by creating or reinforcing harmful stereotypes (or something along those lines). If that’s true, then yeah, that’s worth criticizing.
4 Likes
i have never seen european people critizcizing about this term, and its exist plenty of races build on european fantasy… i would say, more as any other race in the classical fantasy mix.
Maybe its me…but…if i´m not intendend to build a reflection on the native, but like some of their legends and try to…retell this story with an twist, then its my freedom to do so as a artist.
I mean, its exist plenty of Sterotypes about european…Imperalism, Facism, snobbysm, diktaktorship, militarism…thats all classical european trops…i never saw someone complain about this in terms of culture reflection.
my point remain: Some people also act like they are being skewered. like it’s a personal insult…
You’re not looking far enough back. You’re thinking of Ed Greenwood’s Forgotten Realms Drow. But Drow have a much older pedigree than the Forgotten Realms themselves. They first appeared in the AD+D module series Descent to the Depths of the Earth in at the end of a series which would lead into two other series.
Their origin however goes back to TSR UK. Back in the day the Brit magazine called White Dwarf had a monster of the month competition in which the best of the reader submissions would be featured in a column called “Fiend Folio”. one of those winners was the underground dwelling Drow.
TSR UK colllated a collection of those winners and published them as the Fiend Folio monster book. The Drow were not only blinded by th e light, but they used “adamantite” (as opposed to adamantium) armor and weapons which were fantastic but would immediately lose their powers and start to disintegrate once exposed to the daylight sky. And they were black… and I mean black hole black skin with titanium white hair and red eyes. Those would be the Drow that Gygax would use in his Gord the Rogue novels.
The Drow of the Forgotten Realms would be a race that had been massively reworked just as the Klingons were between TOS and TNG and the Trill between TNG and DS9. They’re being reworked again as R. A. Salvatore seeks to undo the harm from their contribution to racist tropes that people such as Travis Williams have been calling out for decades.
On the Pathfinder side, Paizo has revealed that a good elf was recently reincarnated as a Drow which is a complete reversal of their presentation of Drow as inherently evil in Second Darkness.
We’ve already established you have the legal freedom. You’re not telling the government to leave people alone; you’re telling Baal to stop criticizing people. You’re not defending your freedom; you’re telling other people to shut up.
Yeah, I know a lot of people who are real proud of being Irish, or English, or German, or Russian, or French and who get real upset if you portray them in a way they don’t like. Like, talk to your average Irish person about Irish accents in Hollywood and watch them rage.
Now if an English artist portrayed the Irish as lazy or criminal? Then there’d be a firestorm. And deservedly so–because the context there is one of historic oppression. This happens from time to time. It’s not just a “non-European” (whatever that’s code for) problem.
Nah, they’re acting like you’re hurting people. Which is their premise.
Not sure I agree re the details of the Tauren in WoW in particular (I genuinely don’t have an opinion because I don’t know beans about Tauren lore), but it seems like the two of you are talking past each other on way more fundamental terms.
2 Likes
I tell Baal to stop acting like every writer who has ever worked at Blizzard has a latent racism, clearly, yes!
Because that’s what he’s doing, to him everyone there is apparently racist who doesn’t feel the need to look at anything with “dignity.” (I mean, he don´t even know …if an native wrote the first tauren storys…)
I know enough of them too, and have no problem per se, but I know enough fantasies that have adapted even the worst of the worst about European cultures and are loved by the same European proud people, and hell, right so, if they like it, let them like it, no matter how it is written.
But don’t go accusing people of being racists just because they don’t like it!!!
Yes, that’s cultural appropriation.
Cherry picking native elements without respect to native culture is cultural appropriation.
2 Likes
Hard to speak for Baal, but I feel like his beef is more with the art than the artist, i.e. it’s more about the art being racist than the person being racist.
More relevant imo, you seem unwilling to engage the premise that what Baal calls “colonialist” art hurts people irl. Which, like, I sympathize with because that premise is difficult to defend or attack because culture is so complicated and intangible. I have no idea if Tauren lore has ever actually done anyone any harm.
But it also seems like going endlessly back and forth ignoring each other’s core beliefs here isn’t getting anywhere.
6 Likes
I refuse to discuss on this level because otherwise it would ruin the idea of a _FANTASY_UNIVERSUM, it’s not about…any RL sensitivities ,it’s meant to have fun, to write interesting stories, do you think Tolkien, Martin and all the other great writers went and said “well, I’ll write as many stereotypes as possible to make the other cultures bad”???
if i don´t like an universum, i don´t go further with it…its very easy for myself…
If a work of an writer is not in my interest,then i´ll not buy it.
Ok but like “this would ruin my fun” isn’t a good reason to conclude “this therefore isn’t true.”
3 Likes
My argument is not, “It would ruin my fun,” but that argument goes against the foundation of the entire genre, fantasy, because it’s not about writing RL cultures, it’s about using certain elements to eventually write an interesting and compelling story of your own.
Mankind has been doing this for over 10,000 years.
we call it earlier …religion, legends, myths, but in the core, they are the same thing.
Is it so wrong to have different races in a fantasy world who may or may not be aesthetically similar to certain cultures and have certain stereotypes?
You could have your high elves with their superiority complex, the democratic gnomes, the capitalist goblins, the racist imperialistic humans vs republican humans. You got marauding orc tribes or marauding northmen clans.
You got a reprehensible society revolving around an evil god and got a idealistic good society revolving around a good god… and you can make these more complex with the idealistic god’s church being corrupt but the evil god’s church being lawful but evil.
Isn’t the fun of fantasy reading and experiencing these different societies and their extremes? Why would anyone ever want to eliminate all this for the sake of everyone being equally good and bad and exhibit the same morals we as the viewer view as acceptable? What I described above is so cliche it hurts but at least each group is unique in their own way and it isn’t just “these guys look like native americans and these guys look like the french”.
That’s just on it’s face false, though? People have been executed regularly for those 10,000 years for contravening religion. Myth has had political power for ages. In the modern day, authors talk explicitly about how they use RL cultures in inspiring their fantasy and the political dimensions of that. Fantasy by and large has never just been pure escapism.
3 Likes
Repeating myself a fourth time because writing racist tropes and reproducing IRL racist logics into a fantasy universe is crap writing unless the end of the plot is an interrogation and criticism of those realities.
And the same applies to using IRL religious basis of in-game religions.
Strongly recommend everyone read “Dogma Line Racism”. It’s a short essay.
4 Likes
This is hilarious to mention because Tolkien recognized he had internalized racism later and wrote racist tropes into his world that he came to regret and wished he could rewrite because it went against the universal accessibility of Catholic salvation.
Aka he robbed various in-universe races he was aware he wrote based on various IRL peoples of dignity and respect
He’s almost the poster boy for what I’ve been saying lmao
1 Like
if you would quote everything…yeah, he did this, but his goal was not “how can i make other cultures bad”
Because he lacked self awareness he obtained later in life.
And I am saying people in the 21st century, in the wake of globalization and the internet, cannot reasonably lack self awareness when invoking tropes and themes and basing their races off of real life peoples.
All fictional races, if you’re heavily borrowing from real life peoples and cultures and religions, especially if they’re playable races in a game, must be written with equity and dignity and respect to those peoples.
In short. Boring homogenized fictional races that all behave the same way because any depiction that may be viewed negatively by current day polite standards its disrespectful and must be eliminated.
all peoples in real life have respect and dignity and are diverse, complex, and different
if you fail to capture that in your fantasy, and only seek to reproduce racist/imperialist tropes when invoking specific ethnicities/cultures/religions in-game, then you suck as a writer
The fact you think “respect and dignity towards a culture” = “homogenization” is itself Huge Yikes.
4 Likes
Because they are human beings.
Not orcs, drow, halflings, goblins, dragons and etc…
why should different species have the same standards we do as humans?
Considering you see racism in every shade I doubt you would find anything acceptable unless they are identical in every aspect.
So you would be fine with two fantasy races, say one at a cursory glance looks like an eastern culture while the other is western, you would be totally ok with one culture being shown racist, or sexist or even morally reprehensible by our modern standards? How would an author showcase this without offending your sensibilities?
1 Like