MUers in the news?

[Ganymede]

@Derp said in MUers in the news?:

Seriously? Are we going to do this dance again? Can you maybe, I dunno. Just fucking stop with the insistence on people having the "proper" skin color in 2022? Because that is SUCH a big "oof."

You know, it may very well be that the material itself is inherently racist. We had a big discussion about this in the context of Werewolf: The Apocalypse's tribes a while back, along with the ill-conceived Gypsies supplement. If the material used is inherently racist, then I'm not comfortable labeling a person using the material as "racist."

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@Bellecourt

Mods are as susceptible as anyone of being wrong, but Derp is wrong whenever I'm arguing with him.

[Bellecourt]

That's an interesting take, @Ganymede although in that case it should probably at least be taken into account in all that outrage on the authors behalf that he was considering making Valyrians (both Targaryens and Velayrons) black at one point: https://www.google.com/amp/s/winteriscoming.net/2019/10/16/george-r-r-martin-considered-making-targaryens-black/amp/ so while yes there's definitely some lacking diversity and maybe some racism in the source material, the author himself was on board for darker Valyrians and more or less just felt like the thought came to him a little late to implement it practically if the quote here is to be believed. So at least some of it is from beyond the source material and author.

[Nymeria]

@Bellecourt said in MUers in the news?:

That's an interesting take, @Ganymede although in that case it should probably at least be taken into account in all that outrage on the authors behalf that he was considering making Valyrians (both Targaryens and Velayrons) black at one point:

What GRRM said was this:

https://grrm.livejournal.com/326474.html?thread=17888842#t17888842

"But in recent years, it has occured to me from time to time that it might have made for an interesting twist if instead I had made the dragonlords of Valyria... and therefore the Targaryens... black. Maybe I could have kept the silver hair too, though... no, that comes too close to 'dark elf' territory, but still... if I'd had dark-skinned dragonlords invade and conquer and dominate a largely white Westeros... though that choice would have brought its own perils. The Targaryens have not all been heroic, after all... some of them have been monsters, madmen, so...

Well, it's all moot. The idea came to me about twenty years too late."

As he says, its a moot point. Yes, now the showrunner for HotD decided to take inspiration from that statement and make specifically the Velaryons black, but as Condal himself has noted in interviews, it is a change for the show. Aka, it is show canon.

So sure, someone could start a show canon MU* with black Velaryons and they'd be correct. But we're book canon and we've had Velaryons on the game since 2006.

[reimesu]

Look. I loved that stupid supplement, back in the days before I realized how very racist it was. And even if "everyone's a little bit racist", that's no excuse for people not to work on it.

GRRM got his start in fantasy during a time period where people weren't taught how many ethnicities were roaming around Europe. The place was never as white as people were taught it was. Thus, the sheer whiteness of fantasy. Do I think he's racist? No, I think he never thought about it.

However, that doesn't apply on a current day game. Claiming one is staying true to "the source material" when the author has said "Hey, that's actually a good idea" is still something to be called out. Out and out saying that people of color will not be included because the game runner doesn't want to is fucking racist. It's 2022 and there's no goddamned excuse for it.

[Nymeria]

@reimesu said in MUers in the news?:

GRRM got his start in fantasy during a time period where people weren't taught how many ethnicities were roaming around Europe. The place was never as white as people were taught it was. Thus, the sheer whiteness of fantasy. Do I think he's racist? No, I think he never thought about it.

What he did was make a Europe where there was never any import of slaves and where there was no Roman empire that expanded beyond the borders of Westeros to bring immigration from other areas. What else contributed significantly to other ethnicities in Europe? Especially when one considers that Essos considers Westeros a backwards place.

Out and out saying that people of color will not be included because the game runner doesn't want to is fucking racist. It's 2022 and there's no goddamned excuse for it.

And we haven't said that. We've said you'd need to find a way of fitting in a character from outside of Westeros.

[faraday]

@Ganymede said in MUers in the news?:

@Derp said in MUers in the news?:

Seriously? Are we going to do this dance again? Can you maybe, I dunno. Just fucking stop with the insistence on people having the "proper" skin color in 2022? Because that is SUCH a big "oof."

You know, it may very well be that the material itself is inherently racist.

"Racist" isn't necessarily the word I'd use, but I do think there's a lot of implicit bias in world design, and a degree of ignorance (in some cases willful) among those who cling to "book purity" as an argument against diversity.

I wrote a fantasy novel when I was a teenager. In my mind, it was modeled after medieval Europe, so in my mind all of the denizens of the main kingdom (and thus all the main characters) were white. This is not because it was somehow essential to the world or story for them to be so. It was just the implicit bias of an '80s Euro-American white kid who didn't understand the value or importance of diversity.

In the (laughably unlikely) event that someone were to make a show/movie today set in that world, it would be asinine to argue that all the main chars should be white just because that's how the book describes them. We can be better than that.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in MUers in the news?:

In the (laughably unlikely) event that someone were to make a show/movie today set in that world, it would be asinine to argue that all the main chars should be white just because that's how the book describes them. We can be better than that.

We probably should, and this is more or less where I come down.

To be fair, GRRM is probably one of the more open authors when it comes to suggestions of improving his creation. I don't mind him one bit. He's far more fair-minded than, oh, Alan Moore (that guy is fucking crazy). That doesn't mean his creation isn't implicitly racist or, said another way, race-blind. It certainly does not mean that he should be free from criticism either, and to his credit I think he has faced that criticism well.

Executing on that world vision is a matter of the moment. I am fine with the way HotD has been portrayed, along with Amazon's Rings of Power. I like injecting more diversity into source material because it makes that material richer and takes nothing away from the value of the material itself. People toss the word "woke" like it's an epithet, I find it incredibly laughable.

@Nymeria said in MUers in the news?:

And we haven't said that. We've said you'd need to find a way of fitting in a character from outside of Westeros.

Or you could offer explanations for potential players that make sense for your world. The choice is yours, but you could help applicants instead of asking them to be mind-readers.

[Nymeria]

@Ganymede said in MUers in the news?:

Or you could offer explanations for potential players that make sense for your world. The choice is yours, but you could help applicants instead of asking them to be mind-readers.

I haven't said that we don't? If someone wants an unusual concept, we work with them. But yes, we do ask that they know the material and have MUSHed before in those instances, because it is harder to play as an outsider.

[Derp]

@Nymeria said in MUers in the news?:

@Ganymede said in MUers in the news?:

Or you could offer explanations for potential players that make sense for your world. The choice is yours, but you could help applicants instead of asking them to be mind-readers.

I haven't said that we don't? If someone wants an unusual concept, we work with them. But yes, we do ask that they know the material and have MUSHed before in those instances, because it is harder to play as an outsider.

Why must they be outsiders? Why not descendants of a previous political intermarriage? Why not any of the ten thousand other ways people of color can and do exist? People move. Spread. It’s what we’re best at. And we know they do in this world. So why not just embrace that instead of the consistent doubling down on this idea that skin color somehow matters to the setting when we know it doesn’t?

This is the part that I don’t get. You have been handed opportunity after opportunity to be diverse and inclusive and avoid all the pitfalls of systemic or overt racism and you consistently say “no.”

What else are we supposed to make of that?

[hobos]

To be honest, I kind of like the approach of "Well, the history of this country is white, and you have to think about how a black character would have gotten here if you want to play one here." more than I like the approach of "Yeah play whatever characters you want! Black or white! A black person applying into a family of all white people? All great! Skin color doesn't matter in genetics at all!"

Why? One is just the thematic recognition of race as a thing that exists and is limited by genetics but somewhat excluded due to the limited geography of the game, and the other is color blindness.

We're past the time that colorblindness is considered socially forward, aren't we?

Diversity is powerful because everyone is different, people with different colored skin might come from different places, have different experiences, and have different cultures that lend them different strengths and weaknesses. This is what makes the vast range of humanity to be as beautiful as it is. Speaking as a POC I am always more irritated by seeing race as a factor completely ignored in some dumb nonsensical way than I am to seeing people be sticklers about what race is supposed to inhabit what geographic location in some fantasy world. The absolute worst thing though is villifying a race from a location (ex: Southrons in LOTR).

I did play in a game once where the staff was very dramatic about how you weren't allowed to have red hair or blue eyes (or anything but brown hair and brown eyes) if you were applying as a certain race, and the constant harping about all this did annoy a lot of people. Nobody called it racist, but that's because the power dynamic doesn't exist.

Nymeria should realize that if she doesn't expand the geographical borders of her game world, then people are totally within reason to call her racist for thematically excluding a color of skin that is oppressed in the world. At the very least, Nymeria should realize that she is creating a haven for actual racists to not have to encounter black characters in, or to always be in a position of power over black characters.

Authors and game runners in general should wake up as society wakes up to injustices, and allow developments to occur in their fantasy worlds that makes things less racist. It'd be actually great if something could happen like an embassy of black people come to King's Landing, get trashed for their skin color, and then you make a whole plot conflict over it where the racist bad guys lose in humiliating ways and then a great trade empire is established with people of many races and cultures. That way you acnowledge disparity, let people play out righteous fights against injustice, validate what's right and fair, and now have a world that isn't racist at all while still recognizing diversity in the best ways.

[Macha]

@hobos In response to this, there was in many, many, fantasy w/ nobility settings, fostering and adoption of non-family. It's kind of easy to explain why my character looks different from the rest of their siblings, if they were adopted. Yes, adopted children can be considered as much a sire or dam's child as one by blood. Especially in a country/world where there are battles and all sorts of things, where people would die - families wiped out, villages raided - I would think this would be an easy way to expand beyond one stereotype.

I have never read this particular source material, nor seen any of the adaptations barring clips here and there that crop up in my internet wanderings. (Please put down the torches and pitchforks).

[faraday]

@hobos said in MUers in the news?:

I kind of like the approach of "Well, the history of this country is white, and you have to think about how a black character would have gotten here if you want to play one here." more than I like the approach of "Yeah play whatever characters you want! Black or white! A black person applying into a family of all white people? All great! Skin color doesn't matter in genetics at all!"

I think you're missing the part where the history of this country is white is kinda a crappy core assumption for a fantasy setting.

In the real world, sure, we're limited by the established demographics of a particular region/history setting, but there's no need to extend that into a fantasy world. You can establish that a place has a diversity of skin tones without saying "skin color doesn't matter in genetics".

[Misadventure]

@Bellecourt So with the Velayrons also being dark skinned, that would have provided some cover for a story like Jon Snow being a hidden Targaryen. I don't know if Jon is one in the books, but as long as there is some consistency of phenotypes (that being important to the seed is strong storyline as far as I know), it wouldn't matter what those phenotypes were. I'd be satisfied with people being a color associated with the elements their people harken to (though again, that messes with Jon).

Also that link just shows font families to me, am I doing something wrong?

[Bellecourt]

@Misadventure it should have been a link to this story with a 2013 grrm quote about making all the valyrian families essentially poc but with silver hair and then him worrying about similarities to drow and how the problems with some elements of their surviving blood might play with the Targs also having a tendency for a lot of them to be twisted and monstrous as well. Rather than the original link to the site, here is a link to the livejournal of grrms about it that the article is quoting. It starts with someone else's question which he then goes on to answer: https://grrm.livejournal.com/326474.html?thread=17886026#t17886026 see if that works any better?

[hobos]

@faraday

It's one thing if a black person's backstory is that they were adopted into a white family, or a white person was adopted into a black family, or if there is a black family or a white family or a mixed family. That's a perfectly nice way to establish diversity of skin tones.

What I was talking about regarding "play whatever you want, it doesn't matter" was if the game's policy is literally to play whatever you want in some weird shallow mockery of diversity, and gives zero respect to all the real weight that comes with differences between people. It might be some people's jam, but I think it's disrespectful and weird. It's like... stealing someone's appearance for pure aesthetics, with none of the burden of that appearance, and not even trying to respect its roots.

Anyway, I have the sense that too many of my own feelings are invested here, so I'm not going to engage past this point.

[Ghost]

Yanno, I'm in the court that feels that when you're dealing with a product that is based on pure, factual Earth history (as in: Intended to be based on facts not fiction), it's best not to cast anyone of a skin color other than that of the historical figure.

However, when it comes to fiction, these days it just seems awkward that an entire universe could be envisioned where everyone except Lando Calrissian is white. I know there's a lot of news these days about people offended by black Valyrians or black dwarves, and many of them (looking at you, @Nymeria) like to cite stuff like "it's not canon!" and fail to understand that the greater questions by the populace are:

1. Why was this world envisioned to be so monochromatic to begin with?
2. Why so much resistance to expanding casting to nonwhite actors?

What's interesting to me is that the argument provided kind of parallels some of the issue BIPOC people face in America. That a person involved in producing fictional content is openly opposed to the casting of black actors, then is resistant to the existence of non-white characters on their MU because "that's how it was written, they're the majority, so sorry I can't make an exception!"

@Nymeria here is something you should consider. Many minorities have had to deal with exclusive behavior based on their minority status for a long while. They have a desire to see their inclusion in these exciting projects and see people who look like them fighting orcs and doing cool fantasy stuff. The reason why you are under the heat lamp of cancelation (which I feel is justified) is because your bigger concern seems to be clinging to this artistic accuracy (which, by canon means it's a whites-only club) and have very little empathy towards understanding why this makes people uncomfortable. There's no "let's see what we can do" or "I support this, let's try to find a way to make this work" but instead the stance is to openly decry the television show and double down on your stance that because the guy that wrote the content didn't say so...your hands are (airquotes) tied and cannot make exceptions.

Your MUSH is a fraction of a fraction of online roleplay related to Westeros, and in a dying medium, no less. I'm pretty sure the existence of GRRM's work isn't going to fall into absolute disarray because a damn brown person plays a knight. The whole world isn't going to gasp and say "OH MY GOD DO I EVEN KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WESTEROS ANYMORE!?!?"

That's why the cancelation is a thing. It's not the "but this is canon!" it's the outcry and empathy-lacking response that smells suspiciously like bias.

[Macha]

Could it just have been that Martin grew up on fantasy settings, etc, that were portrayed by...well, white people? A huge amount of fantasy stories I recall, have a huge amount of white people.

Because the writers were usually white, so a lot of what was written back in the day in fantasy seems white. (I am not saying I am a huge expert. I am not. I read a ton of fantasy in my younger days, older stuff from my much older cousins/etc that got left around my gran's/aunt's house. But I don't remember a lot of people being not described as white)

(Interestingly enough, one of my favorite fantasy series involves travel, discussing the 'otherness' of cultures and looks of people the main character is not used to, I just realized. The man character says he's dark skinned, and brown haired, but is a little bit 'other' because of the color of his eyes. But a woman from the nearest region (they said North and South, not explicitly different countries) comes into his life, she's fair and blonde, etc etc. But then /she/ as the white, blond, blue eyes woman, is the 'other'. And I'm pretty certain that was written by a white woman. And that series came out.. a long time ago. 1986. I checked. )

If Martin can admit that having a less than lily white cast on House of Dragon is a good and welcome thing, and HoD is based on the prequel history.. Why can't you, Nymeria ?

[Ghost]

I kind of "set-and-forget" this post I made and came back to all of this. I wrote a long, dumb post trying to explain something.

But there's really no explaining this to someone with a history of "lol'ing" using the term negerboll and posts stuff like this:

Tweet

This article pretty much spells out the futility in trying to convince someone to act appropriately.

Don't racelock your games, people. It's uncouth.

[hobos]

@Ghost said in MUers in the news?:

I kind of "set-and-forget" this post I made and came back to all of this. I wrote a long, dumb post trying to explain something.

But there's really no explaining this to someone with a history of "lol'ing" using the term negerboll and posts stuff like this:

Tweet

This article pretty much spells out the futility in trying to convince someone to act appropriately.

Don't racelock your games, people. It's uncouth.

Ugh after reading more about this now I feel disgusted that I came to their defense.

[faraday]

@hobos said in MUers in the news?:

It's like... stealing someone's appearance for pure aesthetics, with none of the burden of that appearance, and not even trying to respect its roots.

In a modern/real-world context I can understand that. But we're talking about fantasy settings here. The only "roots" are what you define within the context of the fantasy world.

It's just as easy to snap your fingers and say "denizens of Fantasyland have a variety of skin tones due to the mixing of various ethnic groups umpteen thousand years ago" as it is to say "Fantasyland is majority white and the only darker-skinned people here are foreigners or slaves".

If you're making your own personal novel/story/etc. and want to do some kind of discrimination allegory - I can respect that. But more often the white-washing of Fantasyland is completely unnecessary and brings nothing of value to the story. It's just implicit biases and assumptions at work.

What it does cause is that people who want to play non-white characters are forced to jump through hoops to justify their presence, made to play "the other" or face IC discrimination, limited in their opportunities to join the story, etc.

So like Ghost said...

@Ghost said in MUers in the news?:

Don't racelock your games, people. It's uncouth.