Mana, Shamans, and the Cultural Misappropriation behind Fantasy Terms

[Bedrockgames]

So, you say, "enough of that." But, is the strategy to avoid "enough of that" really - accept none of it, so that we can never possibly go over the line into "chilled"?

If you (generic you, not Bedrockgames, in particular) reject each and every attempt to discuss the language used, you are pushing the entire burden of avoiding offense on the audience. Which you can do, but it comes around to being a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it to - the creative wants all the accolades for making a good product, but if they cheese folks off, the fault of that is entirely on someone else?

That... sounds like a dodge. Sorry, but it does.

I will reply in a bit but just to be clear I said “enough of that,”, not “enough of that.”. I didn’t mean it as an imperative, but just as “when this happens enough, X follows”

 

[Bedrockgames]

So, you say, "enough of that." But, is the strategy to avoid "enough of that" really - accept none of it, so that we can never possibly go over the line into "chilled"?

If you (generic you, not Bedrockgames, in particular) reject each and every attempt to discuss the language used, you are pushing the entire burden of avoiding offense on the audience. Which you can do, but it comes around to being a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it to - the creative wants all the accolades for making a good product, but if they cheese folks off, the fault of that is entirely on someone else?

That... sounds like a dodge. Sorry, but it does.

Appreciate the clarification about ‘you’. i think people can talk all they want about language, but I also think when you reach a point of being hyper critical about everything, it is stifling (and it genuinely becomes difficult to listen to anyone as it just all starts sounding like white noise). And I think rebutting people who make language critiques you disagree with is healthy. Ideally there is a balance where creative people weigh criticisms they hear and accept ones they think are valid. But the problem I have about the approach being advocated it places no responsibility on media consumers and audience (especially when intent isn’t considered). It is all about protecting the audience at any cost. I don’t want to be protected from problematic content. I can digest it and assess it where it arises. It just seems the bar here is getting lower and lower

 

[Umbran]

I think what people are reacting to is the constancy and intensity of it these days.

Yes, well, with respect, not a single one of these criticisms are new - these things have been coming up for years. But when criticism was less constant and less intense... it was largely ignored*. Because hey, it was less constant and intense, so clearly it wasn't a BIG issue, right?

And now, when it is louder... we use that as a reason to not accept it again?

That looks like goalpost moving. What kind of criticism won't be overlooked or rejected out of hand? Goldilocks needs their criticism just right to accept it, but won't elucidate what just right is. That starts to look like making excuses to not accept criticism at all, doesn't it?








*There's a strong argument that WotC has actually slowly and steadily been moving in the direction of greater care for such matters for two decades now, since the release of 3e. Slow and imperfect, but at least an attempt.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Your style is more the latter to me, and I have learned not engage people who display that posting style when they press for more information, or specifics.

To me, this is strongly suggestive that you don't have good evidence or specifics. I mean you are saying "I have learned...", well so have I. I've been arguing on the internet literally since I was a child (look they've done to me!), and my very long experience is that when people roll out excuses not to provide evidence after repeatedly making an argument that relies on it, one of two things is true:

A) The evidence is really complicated and requires research and is annoying to provide. This is a fair enough reason in a lot of ways.

or

B) They ain't got no evidence, or their evidence is incredibly flimsy, or just obviously subjective in the extreme.

If people have strong evidence, even if they think I'm a jerk, they tend to just drop it in the thread and go "how about THAT eh?!". And there have actually been a number of times where I've had to go "Oh, ok, damn, alright...". People always act like it's the first time in human history I've ever admitted I'm wrong when I've actually done it an awful lot of times!

I'm sure there are Cs or Ds, but like you, I have experiences that lead me to believe it's A or B and here it seems like B. I could be wrong.

Let me just say one thing you might like - I do believe that with sufficient restrictions, you can eventually reach a situation where pablum is very likely, or if not pablum, then extremely same-y material. So we may not be as far apart as you think.

Specifically, I once read a blog (I forget what, it's still going though, I saw it linked a few weeks ago), which is about fantasy and SF, both literary, TV and RPGs. They had this article, about what you should and shouldn't do if you write a fantasy novel. And it was extremely prescriptive. Not all of it was about social consciousness or the like, indeed most of it wasn't, but all the prescriptions (and they were presented as such, like actively saying "You're a bad person if you don't do this", rather than the mild suggestion here that it's useful to consider this, and one should endeavour to be aware of origins) pushed one the writer the idea that they should write something utterly MoR and bland, and that deviating from this made you a bad person (IIRC, the article was just as extreme in suggesting not coming up with an alternative calender as they were in saying "you shouldn't have homophobia in your books, even when the homophobes are purely negative!". Which is very different from saying "Have a think about why you're including homophobia in your books". It's easy to think about something and go "Okay, I have a valid reason!", but without thinking, it's easy to say "I'll just do this because it makes sense, without considering that maybe the reason you think it makes sense is a cheap trope, or an unfortunate tradition or the like.

If all authors had followed the prescriptions in that article, we'd have very bland fantasy, and that would suck. But in fact few have - now some have (presumably accidentally) followed some/most of the prescriptions, and still produced vivid works, but I do see how if everyone follows really prescriptive standards about what they must output, rather than just thinking about their choices a bit more, then that could be bland.

The reason I ask for evidence though, is that I don't believe TT RPGs have begun to approach the "pablum point" re: restrictions due to social consciousness. I do think a lot of pablum RPG material has come into existence trying to target a very broad audience in terms of age/complexity/etc., but much of that does contain problematic stuff that shows a lack of what you call social consciousness! I know you think I'm a Bad Man (TM) who will do Bad Things (C) to your posts, and okay, fair enough, but that is why I want evidence, because I think this could happen, but I can't think of any examples yet, nor do I think current suggestions make it at all likely.

Are you aware that you can compare argument forms without comparing the details of the argument? If your argument is A + B = C and another argument also follows that form, I can say that the forms are equivalent without saying the details are equivalent. That's what I did. I compared the argument forms, not the details. Those are my words.

As I said, you engaged in false equivalence.

A punch is objective. The harm you're describing is extremely subjective, and indeed, hard to quantise. But your argument literally doesn't work unless the harm is objective, hence you had to use that kind of argument. You weren't punched. If you want analogy (why? It only makes things less clear), then you were not saying "Don't punch me", you were saying "Stop insulting me!", and the other person does not perceive what they're saying as an insult and there's no objective measurement which suggests it is.

 

[Bedrockgames]

not engaging you like I said before

 

[Ruin Explorer]

not engaging you like I said before

Sure and as a result you're probably going to miss the bit where I agree with your premise, because you responded faster than someone could read that You may want to put me on ignore, I think you'll find it helpful.

 

[Umbran]

I will reply in a bit but just to be clear I said “enough of that,”, not “enough of that.”. I didn’t mean it as an imperative, but just as “when this happens enough, X follows”

Yes, I know. Unfortunately that's the grammatical contstruction for ending a sentence, which is what I was doing.

 

[Umbran]

Sure and as a result you're probably going to miss the bit where I agree with your premise, because you responded faster than someone could read that You may want to put me on ignore, I think you'll find it helpful.

Hey, RE. Maybe just let it go? He's said he doesn't really want to engage with you. There's not a shred of anything constructive coming out of you pressing on this.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Hey, RE. Maybe just let it go? He's said he doesn't really want to engage with you. There's not a shred of anything constructive coming out of you pressing on this.

I mean, given I'm suggesting he ignores me, I feel like I have, but yeah, will do.

 

[Maxperson]

A punch is objective. The harm you're describing is extremely subjective, and indeed, hard to quantise. But your argument literally doesn't work unless the harm is objective, hence you had to use that kind of argument. You weren't punched. If you want analogy (why? It only makes things less clear), then you were not saying "Don't punch me", you were saying "Stop insulting me!", and the other person does not perceive what they're saying as an insult and there's no objective measurement which suggests it is.

If you don't understand, you can just say so. You don't have to keep demonstrating your lack of understanding.