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

[Mordhau]

Specific dislaimers is opening a huge can of worms. Really.

If you start putting disclaimers on specific books, you make yourself a target. What about X? It doesn't have a disclaimer. It's hella problematic, and you WotC, you are saying this is perfectly ok? Here's why it's problematic right now!

Really. If you have a Youtube channel and know a little bit about critical theory (You don't need to know a lot, as the sheer quantity of political criticism of media for problematic content has ballooned, the quality of that criticism has completely nosedived). Free publicity for your Youtube channel and free bad publicity for WotC.

And of course you can't just assume that sensitivty readers will catch things that genuinely are problematic either. So the youtube or blog makers may actually be correct.

The disclaimer was somewhat cynical, but it was obviously the most sensible move in the current climate. It basically defanged a lot of the brouhaha over Oriental Adventures.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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."

Not remotely. Your reading of the quoted text is hyperbolic and overwrought, at best.

No one is suggesting forcing publishers to do anything. Your sentence about tweets is purely invented nonsense with absolutely no basis in any facet of reality outside of the most prosiac fact of the existence of tweets.

 

[Mercurius]

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.

From where I sit, those aren't the only people who are outraged. I see a lot of outrage that others aren't properly or sufficiently offended.

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

Sure, but there isn't one, true response to have to it - in terms of how bad it is, how we should view the author, what sort of measures to take about the product, etc.

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.

Well I agree on this.

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.

That's one way to go, and I'm not opposed to something similar (though would probably excise the "scumbag" part). My personal preference would be putting more energy elsewhere, through better education and understanding of history. I don't feel like people need to be told how to respond to a given work, how to think about it.

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.

Yes, I agree with both. I think the discussion is worth having and trying to push everyone to consensus are both absurd.

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

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.

Sometimes doing nothing is the correct play. Generally.

1. Someone is busy shooting themselves in the foot.

2. Escalating the situation and the backlash causes more problems than it solves.

It also sets precedent. What happens if things don't go your way and in a few years the other side yses the precedents you set to do the same to stuff you care about?

That's essentially what I mean about mist countries having various lines about what you can and can't do. Someone's behavior is gonna offend someone else somewhere. Yet you still have to live beside then so to speak.

Some things are deliberately offensive. Blazing Saddles Vs Married with Children for example.

Things can change in a very short amount of time. Sometimes that change is good sometimes it's bad. I'll ask you again and clarify it a bit more.

What city in the "western" world was probably the most progressive in the 1920's during HP Lovecraft's lifetime?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

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."

Maybe read the thread if you want to know what it's about. It's not about removing/"burning" books. No one in this thread (as far as I'm aware) has advocated for that.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Specific dislaimers is opening a huge can of worms. Really.

Not really.

To see why, one need merely to understand the difference between being criticised and perhaps expected to change an ongoing behavior, and whatever hyperbolic nonsense underpins this perception.

WoTC was criticised, widely, and for good reason. They responded by listening and making changes (arguably not enough, but that will always be a matter of opinion), acknowledging their missteps, and oh hey, they lost pretty much nothing in the process.

Meanwhile, when companies or individuals double down, attack their critics, etc, they do lose, though even then they often lose vanishingly little.

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

You shouldn't be forced to stock it. But other people might want to have access to it. Not that one can really stop it these days anyway.

 

[Gradine]

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."

Hey, you're quoting me! Sorry to disappoint, but I'm also not suggesting to ban you from reading anything ever. I'm saying exactly what I'm saying... I'm not sure how to say it more clearly and succinctly than what you've already quoted. Our society, as a whole, has a pretty strongly vested interest in making it very very difficult to spread hate. People have a guaranteed right to free speech, but no democratic nation I'm aware of guarantees the right of access to any platform of their desire. My decision in what I will or will not sell in my own shop is protected by my own freedom of speech.

There is nothing stopping anyone from self-publishing. There is no actual ban and no actual censorship. A bigot can spread whatever horrible garbage you want; but they don't have any right at all to demand others make it easier for them.

 

[Mordhau]

Not really.

Yes Really. I even wrote a whole post explaining why.

 

[Gradine]

Sometimes doing nothing is the correct play. Generally.

Rarely, actually. The question is, what's my play here? Popper's Paradox? Archbishop Desmond Tutu's thoughts on neutrality? Both? I mean, it's not like you haven't heard it all before already.

You shouldn't be forced to stock it. But other people might want to have access to it. Not that one can really stop it these days anyway.

So we agree then? Because I once again have no idea why you're making the arguments you are in your previous responses to me, because none of them are at all relevant to what I'm saying.