D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Greggy C]

I think you can construct reasons, but like, if it were to happen tomorrow... would you? Again, I'm not really resentful towards Disney for restricting Song of the South. Are you? I just don't care and don't find it affects my life.

I just think the idea of resentment to be weird for that. Mild irritation, maybe. But I've always seen resentment as something deeper.

I've never read any Lovecraft, but I would feel resentment if some kids decided that I would be racist if I read it, and so banned me from ever reading it.

 

[Voadam]

I think you can construct reasons, but like, if it were to happen tomorrow... would you? Again, I'm not really resentful towards Disney for restricting Song of the South. Are you? I just don't care and don't find it affects my life.

I just think the idea of resentment to be weird for that. Mild irritation, maybe. But I've always seen resentment as something deeper.

I deeply resented WotC when they pulled access to their catalog of D&D PDFs.

I had a large collection of hardcopy D&D books and a large collection of D&D PDFs at the time. More than I would ever read through. I also had plenty of options to spend my monthly gaming budget on OGL and Non-D&D stuff, but nevertheless I deeply resented WotC for their actions.

I resented that WotC was intentionally acting as much as they could to restrict my access to old D&D stuff and it was intentionally acting to similarly restrict access as much as they could for all gamers.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Evidently you're guilty of not expressing the proper amount of outrage! This is kind of the rub. It seems that some feel that there's a proper amount of outrage one must express, and if you don't express that amount, you're not doing things right. So that seems to be one form of action people take: Analyzing the outrage level of others, and if it isn't sufficiently outraged, feeling outraged about their lack of the proper amount of outrage.

The only people outraged in this discussions are the people trying to invalidate the discussion itself, accuse people who want to talk about how racist a work is of "moral panic", and demand that every poster who has a criticism for the works in questions have some tangible solution in mind.

Noting that "Big Chief Sitting Drool" is incredibly, blatantly, disgustingly, racist, does not require outrage.

A homeless person crapped by my mailbox last night. I noticed it when my dog tried to go investigate it on our morning walk. I was disgusted by it, but any outrage I feel about is directly entirely at my city and county and their total failure to help the homeless in spite of having the resources to increase police budgets and start public works projects that only do any good for the people living in the high rent parts of town.

The two responses are not the same, and don't require eachother.

What can we do about the work of an author who has been dead for 85 years?

Ensure that anyone who picks it up at the bookstore or library knows that the author was an especially xenophobic scumbag, and that his scumbag views about the value of different peoples heavily inform his works.

And rename any accolade or other monument that bears their name.

So we take note, we experience whatever outrage we feel--which depends upon our own mentality and can vary widely--and then we learn and move on, and we do better going forward. Hey, that's what we've been doing for decades, for the most part.

And we discuss it with eachother. The obnoxious thing about certain posters' suggestions in this thread is that they imply that the discussion isn't worth having, or else isn't worth having unless some distinct "correct" consensus can be come to about it, both of which are egregiously absurd.

I'd also like awards to be not named after excremental people.

yes, this.

And I think I'd like it to be influential/recommended books instead of influential/recommended authors in the appendix. This later one is for three reasons: many authors (even those I love) have some books I wouldn't recommend based on quality, because there are some books where I think the content is just inappropriate to recommend (later Fafhrd and Mouser?), and because it avoids holding up authors who were excremental people.

In the case of Lovecraft, they could even reference the Mythos without ever naming him or any of his direct works. Why promote a man who genuinely equated mixed race human beings with fish-people abominations, and argued that the unification of Germany was worth the disenfranchisement of Germany's marginalized people under Hitler and the Nazis?

So, the disclaimer is a great step in presenting legacy content; but the problem is no one seems to be willing to admit that there is nuance in how far other steps should be taken. I would make the argument that there is no "one-size-fits-all" easy solution that one or both sides wish for/demand. Judiciousness is required. I would argue that there is some content that deserves to be remanded to the dustbin of history. Works of literature with incidental racism/sexism/homophobia/etc. doesn't clear that high bar, but if we're talking about works where the raison d'etre is to promote hatred and/or bigotry? I would consider it unethical to release such to the public for entertainment purposes.

This of course leads to cries regarding who does or does not get to be the judge. There are sensitivity readers, which have worked well for modern works; why not sensitivity distributors? Such folx would be best positioned not just to determine the worthiness of each work, but also to more carefully craft personalized disclaimers with specific warnings, rather than a simple generic boilerplate disclaimer for everything.

Just wanna remind everyone that Gradine didn't call for sensitivity distributors banning books, but rather that they would give recommendations and specified disclaimers, rather than generic ones.

This is a different conversation, mind you, from platforming/profiting living bigots and/or sex criminals; which is a whole other issue that actually does have an easy, one-size-fits-all solution: don't

Damn right.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

I think you can construct reasons, but like, if it were to happen tomorrow... would you? Again, I'm not really resentful towards Disney for restricting Song of the South. Are you? I just don't care and don't find it affects my life.

Would you find someone's apathy towards the availability of SotS acceptable?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I've never read any Lovecraft, but I would feel resentment if some kids decided that I would be racist if I read it, and so banned me from ever reading it.

Please quote the post wherein someone suggests anything like "kids" banning you "from ever reading" anything.

I deeply resented WotC when they pulled access to their catalog of D&D PDFs.

I had a large collection of hardcopy D&D books and a large collection of D&D PDFs at the time. More than I would ever read through. I also had plenty of options to spend my monthly gaming budget on OGL and Non-D&D stuff, but nevertheless I deeply resented WotC for their actions.

I resented that WotC was intentionally acting as much as they could to restrict my access to old D&D stuff and it was intentionally acting to similarly restrict access as much as they could for all gamers.

Why? I genuinely cannot imagine why you would resent a company for deciding that they don't want to promote and specifically host access to things that don't fit their own ideals and those of the bulk of their customers and contributors. Why on Earth would you feel like they owe you the act of specifically hosting access to those materials for your benefit?

 

[Gradine]

People get upset at all sorts if things. Most countries that are vaguely free have some sort of legal guideline. In the US that's the constitution. Here bull if rights act, human rights act and the Treaty if Waitangi being the mist relevant.

These laws exist because once upon a time when people got upset at others bad things happened.

People getting upset and offended is perfectly fine if not to be needed. It's what they do after that. You're never gonna get everyone on the same page.

HP Lovecraft came up earlier. Want to take a guess what was probably the most liberal city in the world in the 1920's?

So here's the thing... I don't know what you're on about, because none of it has anything to do with what I'm talking about. Legal guidelines have no role in this conversation, only insomuch as that I, as a hypothetical storefront owner in any one of the vast majority of democratic countries, cannot be legally punished for what I do or do not decide to sell or not sell. That's where the many myriad bills of rights begin and end within this discussion.

Actually, hang on a second, this is relevant.

People getting upset and offended is perfectly fine if not to be needed. It's what they do after that. You're never gonna get everyone on the same page.

This is exact thing I said that you objected to. You cannot please everybody; no matter what you choose there will be upset people, therefore you must make a choice. Doing nothing is still a deliberate choice, and whatever you do your actions and choices will reflect what it is you value.

 

[Mercurius]

I mean, just because I'm not offended doesn't mean it's not problematic, it just doesn't hit the same notes with me as it may with others. I typically give people who find something problematic the benefit of the doubt when they are explaining things, though a bad explanation might change my mind.

Right, but some other things are also true: Just because I'm not offended doesn't mean I don't think it is problematic, and just because I think it is problematic, doesn't mean I think it needs to be de-platformed, or what have you.

And further, just because I'm offended, doesn't meant what I want should dictate what is done about it. Otherwise we'll get rid of...everything?

Changes going forward would be doing things like putting disclaimers, so I think it definitely qualifies.

Or they could simply be doing things more consciously.

I don't think anything close to that has come up in this thread, and I definitely haven't seen it on my half of the arguments here at Enworld. I don't even know what "with us or against us" would be in this case. Would I be calling them racists? I don't think I've actually seen that deployed here yet.

I think there's a lot of "If you're not sufficiently offended and signaling as such, you're enabling the X-ists" (insert whatever you want for "X").

Again, I find the emotional side typically is more adamant about this sort of thing because they are viewing it emotionally. But that's just me. I don't find the sides equal precisely because of that.

So one side is rational and the other emotional? Gotcha. What is taking offense but an emotional response?

 

[bennet]

Please quote the post wherein someone suggests anything like "kids" banning you "from ever reading" anything.

Isn't that exactly what is being talked about, forcing publishers to remove books based on how people perceive old authors thought? Regardless if true or not, as long as it has enough tweets, remove it.

" Judicious access to a privately owned (if public-facing) platform/marketplace is both practical and good."

 

[Cadence]

Why? I genuinely cannot imagine why you would resent a company for deciding that they don't want to promote and specifically host access to things that don't fit their own ideals and those of the bulk of their customers and contributors. Why on Earth would you feel like they owe you the act of specifically hosting access to those materials for your benefit?

That's my view too, but others have felt differently (that at least the product should be available somehow).

I've been wondering about how the views of people on:
(A) companies should always have to make all products perpetually available for purchase
and
(B) the right to be forgotten (like in web searches in the EU)
look in a Venn diagram.

 

[Gradine]

Just wanna remind everyone that Gradine didn't call for sensitivity distributors banning books, but rather that they would give recommendations and specified disclaimers, rather than generic ones.

This. The idea that any individual storefront has the ability to ban anything is absurd; a straw argument that they often rightly point out is DOA given the the laws that presumably govern most of us.

Putting Mein Kampf in a library is perfectly sensible. But if I'm running my own bookstore, I can guarantee you there's no way in hell I'm stocking it.