Mana, Shamans, and the Cultural Misappropriation behind Fantasy Terms

[Doug McCrae]

I think I've found the source for lizard men/lizardfolk, in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan at the Earth's Core. Was planning a post connecting it with the treatment of cannibalism elsewhere in Burroughs. It could go in its own thread, as it is only weakly related to mana and shamans.

 

[Cadence]

I'd be curious to see how many people posting in this thread actually know not just where the work shaman comes from, but how it entered our general lexicon, and how it came to apply to cultural examples well beyond the initial source. Without looking it up on Google first.

The Tungusic peoples and their culture. You admit as much when you fished for this question.

Thank you both for making me go read more on it! It's probably outdated in parts, but was interesting reading the view from 1917 - https://www.jstor.org/stable/660223 .

 

[aramis erak]

I find it odd, in this thread especially, that a moment of non-judgement on the part of WotC should be met with such resistance. There's nothing inherently evil about cannibalism. It's certainly taboo, but not evil. At the very least I would think it appropriate to address the issue with some nuance. Endocannibalism? Exocannibalism? Context? That sort of thing.

Most real world human cannibalism is funerary praxis.

On the other hand, a significant risk to chimps, gorillas, and bonobos is human predation upon them; these are beings with a sense of self, the ability to learn languages, the ability to communicate at a basic level non-linguistically across species...

And many people consider the eating of fellow apes (noting that taxonomically, humans are also apes) to be evil.

It's a fine line.

The extent at which cultural appropriation is a bad thing is very much a live debate. We aren’t talking about the Benin Bronzes here. We are talking about the usage of words. More so, the use of words for fiction. The issue is not resolved and to expect a derivative game like this to be ahead of the curve is an unreasonable expectation.

Even what qualifies is debatable.

We all know that Lovecraft was a horrible bigot. Boycotting living people for their obnoxious views makes perfect sense. Boycotting people who have been dead for ages for similar reasons makes zero sense.

Not when people are making money off of continuing to sell said bigotry.
When a reprint of one of HPL's books is made, someone is benefitting financially from the reprint, and the reprints are continuing to advance HPL's own xenophobia and racism.
Boycotting HPLs work, even in reprint, or works derived from his works (such as CoC), makes perfect sense in that those opposed to the views of HPL don't want his works reprinted, but forgotten.
Boycotting the derivatives, even when sanitized, helps reduce the incentives to produce non-sanitized derivatives and to reduce interest in reading the originals.

 

[Hussar]

@Hussar - We're going to disagree about Lovecraft. I don't see any value in not facing and being honest about the seminal works that inform the genre. You cant take Lovecraft out of the horror and fantasy genres even if you wanted to. I'd prefer to identify the racism for what it is so that identifying when it rears its head, either through a lack of examination, or worse through agreement is possible.

As a Shakespeare fan, I totally understand what you mean.

But, to put it in a personal context, I'm in a mixed marriage and my children are of mixed heritage. According to Lovecraft, I'm a race traitor and my children should have been strangled at birth. So, how exactly am I supposed to introduce Call of Cthulhu to my kids? "Oh, hey, honey, here's this really cool game with really cool monsters and horror elements. Let's play, but, you have to promise me that you won't read the source material for this game because then you'll realize that those fish people we met at Innsmouth are actually supposed to be you."

Basically, you're saying that because he had cool ideas, we're supposed to just ignore the context of those ideas. Ignore the fact that people still make considerable amounts of money from that context.

Or, as an alternative, we could let him fade into history like so many other genre authors of the time.

See, I'm not sure that "finding merit in their art" is really worth the price. There are all sorts of brilliant writers out there. There have been more original fantasy works printed since 2000 than in the previous century. I'm pretty sure we can find some pretty cool ideas there. Let the past go. Consign it to the dustbin of history along with the other trash and instead celebrate works by authors who weren't horrible people.

Is that really too much to ask? Is your pretend eldritch horror really that important?

 

[Raunalyn]

But, to put it in a personal context, I'm in a mixed marriage and my children are of mixed heritage. According to Lovecraft, I'm a race traitor and my children should have been strangled at birth. So, how exactly am I supposed to introduce Call of Cthulhu to my kids? "Oh, hey, honey, here's this really cool game with really cool monsters and horror elements. Let's play, but, you have to promise me that you won't read the source material for this game because then you'll realize that those fish people we met at Innsmouth are actually supposed to be you."

Or (and this is a crazy idea here, I know), you can simply not introduce it. If you feel that strongly about it, then don't read it...don't play it. You have that right.

You know who else has the right to read it and enjoy the game and who often like to play it? A good majority of people who enjoy their eldritch horror.

 

[Umbran]

Not when people are making money off of continuing to sell said bigotry.
When a reprint of one of HPL's books is made, someone is benefitting financially from the reprint, and the reprints are continuing to advance HPL's own xenophobia and racism.

So, I think this is oversimplified. And it ignores the possibility of constructive derivatives.

Boycotting HPLs work, even in reprint, or works derived from his works (such as CoC), makes perfect sense in that those opposed to the views of HPL don't want his works reprinted, but forgotten.

So, perhaps you should go read Lovecraft Country, by Matt Ruff (and about to be a series on HBO), and also The Ballad of Black Tom, a novella by Victor LaValle. Both recent works that take Lovecraft's mythos and his racism, and tell the stories from the point of view of African American characters to explore those issues.

Such works cannot exist if the original works are forgotten.

In general, rather than erase problematic works, it is better to use them to teach about the problems. If you forget the problematic work, you cannot properly remember the harm it did, either.

 

[Raunalyn]

So, perhaps you should go read Lovecraft Country, by Matt Ruff (and about to be a series on HBO), and also The Ballad of Black Tom, a novella by Victor LaValle. Both recent works that take Lovecraft's mythos and his racism, and tell the stories from the point of view of African American characters to explore those issues.

Lovecraft Country is amazing, by the way. Can't wait until the HBO series comes out.

 

[Hussar]

Or (and this is a crazy idea here, I know), you can simply not introduce it. If you feel that strongly about it, then don't read it...don't play it. You have that right.

You know who else has the right to read it and enjoy the game and who often like to play it? A good majority of people who enjoy their eldritch horror.

But, I was just told that I could simply ignore the problematic elements of the work and introduce it to anyone and it wouldn't be a problem. But, now you're telling me that I shouldn't introduce it to just anyone, but, only to certain people apparently who hold certain points of view - ie. we can ignore the bigotry so long as the other ideas are cool enough. You don't see any problem with that? You don't see the issue when someone walks into an FLGS and sees that great big honking Cthulhu statue in the corner, or posters on the wall, or the games prominently displayed. Oh, yeah, that's welcoming. "Hello! Welcome to our hobby. Don't mind the racism."

I mean, you've mentioned Dr Seuss a few times now. But, you're ignoring context.
1. Schools ARE adjusting reading lists and syllabi to lessen the reliance on Seuss and to introduce more works from other authors, and,
2. Suess' problematic works are a very, very small amount of the total works that he produced and, are probably some of his least known and least taught works.

So, your example doesn't really say what you think it says. We already ARE stopping reading Dr. Seuss. Because it's recognized that there are other authors out there that are better examples of works that should be taught to children. AFAIK, Orson Scott Card isn't on scholastic reading lists (although I could be wrong). And, frankly, do you WANT him to be? Given that we have thousands of authors to choose from, many of which aren't raging bigots and homophobes, perhaps if you were designing a reading list for schools, you might skip that one.

I guess that's my basic point. There are literally thousands of authors, tens of thousands of works in the genre to choose from. Do we really need to enshrine THIS author in the game? Would removing the word Cthulhu from the description of Warlocks completely change how we understand GOO Warlocks? Heck, even if we removed GOO warlocks (which I'm NOT advocating), would the game radically change?

I'm not saying we should never look at Lovecraft. But, there's a difference between excising Lovecraft entirely and enshrining his works front and center in our hobby. AFAIK, Cthulhu is the only non-D&D setting reference in all of the 5e books. No other work gets mentioned at all. Umm, maybe not taking the sole example of a non-D&D bit of lore from someone whose writing makes Klansmen blush?

 

[Raunalyn]

But, I was just told that I could simply ignore the problematic elements of the work and introduce it to anyone and it wouldn't be a problem. But, now you're telling me that I shouldn't introduce it to just anyone, but, only to certain people apparently who hold certain points of view - ie. we can ignore the bigotry so long as the other ideas are cool enough. You don't see any problem with that? You don't see the issue when someone walks into an FLGS and sees that great big honking Cthulhu statue in the corner, or posters on the wall, or the games prominently displayed. Oh, yeah, that's welcoming. "Hello! Welcome to our hobby. Don't mind the racism."

I knew that was coming...that's a mighty big strawman there. I said if you don't like it, don't read it. You are the one who chose to completely misinterpret my comment.

I think Umbran said it best earlier; since it is clear that you aren't discussing in good faith, there's no further reason to engage you.

@Umbran made a very well stated point about using it to teach about the problem rather than erase it. I think that is good advice

 

[Campbell]

There are some really great socially conscious takes on Mythos fiction including both Lovecraft Country and Harlem Unbound that use the framework Lovecraft put in place to explore class and race boundaries in a very fruitful way. Some other latter day Mythos authors have managed to excise most of the racist and colonialist tropes while still providing tense tales of cosmic horror. I think they are worthwhile.

I think the same can be done in our hobby. I favor an approach that seeks to bring nuance and a critical eye towards these tropes - just the sort of work Paizo (Pathfinder), Fantasy Flight Games (Legend of the 5 Rings) and Chaosium (Call of Cthullhu) are doing right now. The same sort of approach Tanith Lee, Gene Wolf, and Michael Moorcock took to Swords and Sorcery.

Let's also be crystal clear here. Lovecraft was not an author who happened to be racist. He authored fiction embedded with his own racist fears. Robert E. Howard called him out for doing so.