D&D General (Anecdotal) conversations with Asian gamers on some problems they currently face in the D&D world of RPG gaming

[Mercurius]

they're still weren't under any legal obligation to close down, don't distort the fact that it was their own conscious decision to close down.

Of course it was, but this is a highly selective reading of the situation. The allegations were absurd, and they were pressured and threatened. Not cool, and a clear example of the type of things that can and do happen when outrage is misapplied.

 

[Bedrockgames]

they're still weren't under any legal obligation to close down, don't distort the fact that it was their own conscious decision to close down.

I don't now this story well enough, as it happened on the other side of the country, but if there were indeed death threats and harassment, that is coercion and intimidation. It is a very different thing if they decided to close because they heard what people had to say about their cuisine and appropriation, and felt closing was the ethical thing to due, versus if they were fearful for their safety or their lives and closed because there was a risk someone was act on one of those threats.

 

[Panda-s1]

Of course it was, but this is a highly selective reading of the situation. The allegations were absurd, and they were pressured and threatened. Not cool, and a clear example of the type of things that can and do happen when outrage is misapplied.

the allegations were absurd? I read up on this, the women who own the cart themselves talked about how while on a trip to Mexico they badgered local women into talking about their tortilla making technique and basically invaded their privacy. "they didn't say they badgered them!" of course they didn't, most people will use softer language if they feel their actions might be perceived as bad, that's just human nature.

I'm not saying only Mexicans can make tortillas (and I say this as a Mexican), that's not the issue. there are plenty of recipes and videos on the internet about how to make them, and if these women took a class or had some sort of apprenticeship with or even friendly neighbors with one of these tortilla making women it'd be a very different story. but that's not what happened here, they tried to take someone else's recipe and profit off of it. if they stole a recipe from a local restaurant we'd be talking about things like "trade secrets" but that's not even what happened from a legal standpoint.

 

[Panda-s1]

I don't now this story well enough, as it happened on the other side of the country, but if there were indeed death threats and harassment, that is coercion and intimidation. It is a very different thing if they decided to close because they heard what people had to say about their cuisine and appropriation, and felt closing was the ethical thing to due, versus if they were fearful for their safety or their lives and closed because there was a risk someone was act on one of those threats.

it doesn't matter, they made the decision to close down, and they're not under any legal order to not open up a new restaurant. why not try opening a restaurant with their own original ideas?

 

[Catolias]

It all boils down to ...

Be intimate with the identity and know what you are talking about,

before you try appropriate someone elses identity.



The culture itself is the "guidance". Understand the culture.

Great, but how do you do that? How do you translate a culture into a fantasy setting? And which culture? The dominant culture or a subculture? Which time period?

And how do you translate 15th century Rajasthani culture or 18th Century Hyderabad when you are a 15 year old kid in 21st Century Detroit or Belgrade? How do you translate a culture that is now extinct and be mindful (Incan or Aztec, for instance) when the only frame of references that remains are an invader’s voice.

Culture adapts and changes all the time. Our understanding of historic culture changes too. The only fixed culture is a dead culture.

 

[Mercurius]

the allegations were absurd? I read up on this, the women who own the cart themselves talked about how while on a trip to Mexico they badgered local women into talking about their tortilla making technique and basically invaded their privacy. "they didn't say they badgered them!" of course they didn't, most people will use softer language if they feel their actions might be perceived as bad, that's just human nature.

I'm not saying only Mexicans can make tortillas (and I say this as a Mexican), that's not the issue. there are plenty of recipes and videos on the internet about how to make them, and if these women took a class or had some sort of apprenticeship with or even friendly neighbors with one of these tortilla making women it'd be a very different story. but that's not what happened here, they tried to take someone else's recipe and profit off of it. if they stole a recipe from a local restaurant we'd be talking about things like "trade secrets" but that's not even what happened from a legal standpoint.

Yes, absurd, even moreso when you add in descriptive terms and phrases like "badgered" and "invaded their privacy."

 

[Mirtek]

To take a sacred concept of a reallife identity, and misrepresent it as something that it is not, is inflammatory.

That is how human cultures evolved and change more or less since the first two different tribes met.

People see something of a different culture they like and start adding a litte of a misinterpreted mess of the original concept (which they often even only liked to begin with because they misinterpreted what they saw) to their culture.

The whole US culture was welded together that way and that was once called "melting pot" and seen as a beacon for the free world to take as a paragon example,

Today's USA would most likely not exist if "that's cultural appropriation" would have been a thing back then. Without appropriating the misreprensted #### out of each each other the USA would have long since collapsed into a bunch of different nations because it would have lacked the common amalgan of a culture to bind all of this together

 

[Bagpuss]

they're still weren't under any legal obligation to close down, don't distort the fact that it was their own conscious decision to close down.

Oh so bullying, harassment and death threats are fine then, just so we are all clear. How do you stand on SWATting?

 

[Panda-s1]

And how do you translate 15th century Rajasthani culture or 18th Century Hyderabad when you are a 15 year old kid in 21st Century Detroit or Belgrade? How do you translate a culture that is now extinct and be mindful (Incan or Aztec, for instance) when the only frame of references that remains are an invader’s voice.

you don't need someone from that culture to tell you that invasion and genocide are bad.

 

[Bedrockgames]

it doesn't matter, they made the decision to close down, and they're not under any legal order to not open up a new restaurant. why not try opening a restaurant with their own original ideas?

Because if they were threatened with violence, and that is why they chose to close, there is a serious moral issue with the closure. Do you think people should have threatened their lives over this?