Writing my design document, I'm trying to decide what the proper order of things should be in one specifically made for a MU. I'm thinking I'll make the explanation of theme very brief in the beginning, and quickly get into the meat of things (with theme sprinkled throughout, obviously).
Also gonna work on Photoshop and Word markups for various aspects of the game that I will put into the final PDF.
Still waiting for the DICE guy to say if I can use/modify his system at all. (or her)
I'm gonna wash my hands of it because it's dumb as shit.
@ThatGuyThere Uhhh no, the language is not being misused, you just legitimately have no clue how language actually works. You're setting an arbitrary standard for what is proper English based on what is essentially an entirely subjective opinion of how it should work. You're using broken ass American English like everyone else, you're not even using British English, and British English isn't even properly standardized.
Like, you do realize that we aren't French, correct? Because French is a language with government set standards, with banned words or banned usages of words, and crazy shit like that (correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been told this about French multiple times). So how exactly is someone who's speaking broken as hell modern English going to single out one minor thing that irks them about the modern form of the language that they themselves are speaking, to decide that's their hill to die on?
You're making an entirely irrational argument. We've all evolved with the language, you didn't learn proper English anymore than anyone else has. You just chose one aspect of English to decide "You know what, my language is being misused". Literally using colloquial language in every single post you're writing about people misusing the language.
Like, damn, dude. At least think about these things a little bit before you start debating people about them. Or at least stop using filthy low-born slang in every single post about people misusing English.
edit: Saying you're factually correct is also a misuse of the language, because you're not actually factually correct, due to pretty much wholesale ignoring the science of languages.
edit 2: You must really fucking hate Shakespeare.
@ThatGuyThere Except that you're entirely marrying yourself to the technicalities of how the words should work rather than how the words are actually used, which is pretty much a gross misunderstanding of language.
I no doubt agree that "America" is not technically the name of the country, and yet I'm going to continue to refer to the US as "America", because it's a commonly accepted way to refer to the country, to the point that "America" is a commonly accepted word for the US in multiple languages. Getting bogged down by such a technicality to the point that it "irks" you would be like me being irked by the fact that you're colloquially using the word "hell" in a way that technically makes no sense, which would be a real argument I could make if I decided to entirely ignore how language works too.
You know what does irk me?
When people who have no clue how language works talk about technicalities that don't actually apply to everyday dialogue all the time, as if suddenly having complete and utter cultural blindness to their own language, for reasons that could only be described as "no goddamned reason", or "I like to think I'm a really smart dude, surely no one can deconstruct what's wrong with my argument, it's not like languages are a science or anything".
You know damned well how the term African-American is commonly used, just like you know damned well how the terms "America" and "American" are commonly used. You can be irked all you want, and I'll just be irked by the fact that you don't seem to understand the fundamentals of what I assume is your native language.
@ThatGuyThere Alright, then you go call a Jamaican "African-American".
Have fun.
edit: The only reason I'm not actually explaining is because I literally just explained this in an earlier post.
@ThatGuyThere They're still not African-American 0_o. So I'm not sure how that contradicts literally anything I said.
edit: Also yes, you are being "that guy", in a nitpicky way that entirely misses the point.
WORA and WORA's wiki were also sorta terrifying to me very early on, when I was only maybe five years into MUing or so. Being so new, you think, "Oh man I hope I don't fuck up and end up here forever".
I don't know much about it, but I've always wanted to try Beast.
I've played white for most of my MUing career, mostly because it just felt like the default thing to do. I think that's the sort of mindset one gets in American culture. I recently changed that a few years ago, since I've been exploring who I am as a person and getting in touch with my "roots".
It used to just feel easier. Playing my own race frequently felt weighty, or like maybe I didn't want to be judged in my fictional fantasy roleplaying? I'm kind of over that now, but that's how I used to feel.
Tonight I was out with a white friend of mine, he treated me to Pho. But like, he kept walking up to people's houses in the middle of the night, picking plants and shit. I was like, "Dude are you nuts we shouldn't be walking up to someone's house in the middle of the night?" and he was like "Nah it's fine".
It took me a moment to remember that he has an entirely different perspective on something like that. I'm mostly thinking I don't wanna get shot by someone who thinks I'm trying to break into their house by being too close to their property >_>. Even being in that neighborhood makes me uncomfortable, so I definitely don't wanna be up too close to people's plants and shit. And he's like totally carefree about it. I can't even remotely wrap my head around what that feels like, but I can certainly pretend to for the sake of RP.
@Auspice I like African-American for specifically referring to my own culture separately from other black cultures. But I like black as a casual term. So I think there's a place for both. I don't really necessarily lump myself in with British black people, or Jamaicans, or Nigerians. We're all distinctly different cultures who have our own shit going on.
But yeah, there are black people who will 100% take offense if you don't use African-American. I mean, I somewhat understand? But eh, it's whatever to me.
@Auspice said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:
I remember seeing a tweet once from a black guy in Britain. It went 'I am sick of being called African American. I'm British. #FML.'
Belatedly, I think it's dumb as shit when people try to be so overly PC that they call British people and Jamaicans and shit, "African-American". I use African-American when I don't want there to be any mistake about which culture of black people I mean, I use black when being so specific isn't as important. But that's just my particular way that I use the words.
I'm kind of curious about why other options were open if they wanted to do it as a spy focused rebel game? Like, I remember when X-Men Movieverse became X-Factor, so they shifted focus of the game onto a single organization. I think it worked very well. That's probably all they have to do if they wanted to start again.
@Arkandel I get you, I at least understand this in ways that aren't anywhere near as extreme (Like people who hear of and talk about gentrification on TV and the internet vs. me literally experiencing it right now).
I mean, I know Europe isn't perfect, mostly because my best friend is European and I know a lot of people in different countries. And I also don't necessarily lump all of Europe together. Some countries are better than others about certain things, same with Asian countries, from what I read and what people tell me. My friend who lives in Sweden right now paints it as some sort of racial dystopia where people think American alt-right culture is cool and hip >_>.
@Sparks Is it alright to take this system and edit it to suit our particular needs, and put it into a PDF if we're not selling it or anything? I'd like to use this for my design document for the game I'm making.
I've heard interesting stories of African-Americans going to foreign countries and suddenly experiencing being seen as an American before being seen as a black person. It sounds like an absolutely fucking mindblowing experience, which is a part of why I want to travel soon.
@Derp Oh no I certainly agree with you about tropes. But I think there's a difference between tropes and stereotypes, much like there's a difference between tropes and cliches.
No fictional character is necessarily a 100% 1:1 copy of a real human being, but much like playing an FC, having the overall essence is important. And even then, it's like, just because you're playing a black person or any other race, doesn't mean you have to be like "Alright I'm going to do this grand philosophical expression of culture".
Samuel L. Jackson's character in Pulp Fiction, or his portrayal of Nick Fury, mostly by virtue of Samuel L. Jackson's personality, are essentially tropes that wouldn't come off the same if he wasn't black. Basically tough black badass action dude. It's fun and you don't really think about it, and while some could possibly argue that these are stereotypes, I think the overall positive intent is where the line is drawn.
It's much like a joke. The difference between a joke about race and a racist joke, something that people really bad at understanding comedy don't know the difference between.
A joke about race is when you make a joke on the topic of race, which may just have the punchline of being a funny anecdote about your culture or something, or maybe the punchline is about something racist but the thing you're laughing at is how stupid the racism is, or the person doing it, or just the overall wrongness of the situation. The point of the joke overall doesn't have negative intent, you're laughing -with- the race rather than necessarily at it.
A racist joke is where the punchline has negative intent, and yes the line can be thin, because shockingly comedy is goddamned hard. But like, let's take an Adam Sandler movie for example. There's one movie, I forget which, where Adam Sandler is just walking through a building. There's a Mexican guy sleeping, and like, the entire scene and how it's setup is that the entire punchline of the joke is that this character is a lazy Mexican. I don't think there's any dialogue or anything, you're just supposed to think this lazy Mexican is hilarious, because that's how it's set up.
If your racial tropes have positive intent, I think that more often than not you'll be on the right track. Most tropes that are just obviously offensive would be known enough to avoid anyway. And one thing to remember is that there is literally nothing you can do that won't offend someone. I'm sure my Fear and Loathing character somehow would offend someone. You can't make everyone 100% happy, but you can certainly make most reasonable people happy. I can probably look at every black character in fiction and find a way to deconstruct some sort of problem with them.
The reason for that is because there's a certain point where you forget that not every single person is going to be the same, not everyone is going to be a perfect representation of your race, even other people in your race, because a "perfect" representation of your race is extremely subjective. A lot of modern internet discourse seems to hinge on the belief that there is a perfect way to be black, or a perfect way to be a woman, or a perfect way to be this or that. But that's simply not the case. There's no perfect way to be anything, which is why there are a wide variety of ways to portray someone.
But when it comes to portraying someone in another culture, ultimately what you want isn't perfection, what you want is respect. If you respect what you're portraying, I think you'll avoid 99% of issues. Tarantino isn't perfect and sometimes he can be a hilariously uncomfortable man when it comes to race, but he's respectful and respects what he's trying to portray, and that goes a veeeery long way.
@Ganymede Oh yeah, no doubt about that. I once wrote a long ass article on this topic because people kept being just absolute fucking garbage to my Asian-American friends about their opinions re: Ghost in the Shell and Iron Fist. But I removed it because it was just kind of a really mean-spirited tone and I didn't think it would be educational (though people who agreed with it, liked it).
As a part of research for doing the article, I found that there have only been 27 shows in American history with Asian leads, and I'm willing to guess that not all of them were something we should be proud of as a country >_>.
I will say that it's a valid concern to not know if you can play a POC properly. There's the equally valid concern that people will accuse you of playing one improperly for the most minor of reasons (this is why these days I make a point of stating that I am, indeed, a black person, so that people will stfu and not say I'm playing my race "wrong").
On the one hand, I would rather someone just straight up not play one if they're just gonna pile on a bunch of stereotypes and play a gross caricature. I've seen this shit in Shang's square, back when I used to play Shang. You'd see a black dude walk in and then start dropping all sorts of N words and basically straight up doing some crazy ass text blackface. I didn't even know it was possible to do text blackface, but goddamn that player sure as hell did it.
I do know plenty of white people who play black characters and are respectful and even acknowledge the culture, because they take time to understand it and such. I don't think it's necessarily difficult. Hell, binge watch The Get Down, Luke Cage, and if you really wanna go for extra credit, every season of A Different World starting at season 2 (Entirely ignore season 1 and Bill Cosby's bullshit).
Things to stay away from: Tyler Perry movies, most things by the Wayans Brothers made after like 1995, The Cosby Show (This is not a 100% bad show re: black culture, but it has a tendency to uh, well it's a complicated topic but basically it's not a good reference for authenticity), pro wrestling (it's better now, but let's just play it safe).
Things you may have seen that are a good reference of depth: Fresh Prince, Family Matters, Attack the Block (it's a movie, go watch it, it's important, it has aliens), Living Single, Blackish, Doctor Who (Doctor Who is fantastic with their black characters), Creed (that Rocky movie).
But overall, the reason I suggested The Get Down and Luke Cage is because these shows combined kind of illustrate the overall heart and soul of black culture, in my opinion. They both illustrate positives, problems faced, and negatives in the culture in a way that isn't hamfisted, because there's still a very interesting narrative beyond these things. And also because they're both on Netflix.
Not every black person is going to agree on what is "proper" black culture, because lots of black people come from different backgrounds, but I do believe that there is an essence of the culture that the majority of people would agree is the culture. You don't have to grow up in a neighborhood like Luke Cage's to understand that it's places like this where the essence of the culture comes from (Though I certainly grew up in multiple places like Luke Cage's setting, which is why it hit me as authentic).
Doctor Who, particularly the Martha Jones seasons, are a great example of the fact that you can still pretty authentically write a black person even if you aren't necessarily touching on their culture. While the current season is doing a good job of touching on culture (even if it's British culture), but not making the character secondary to her culture (IE: They treat her like a person rather than just a bag of cultural traits).
The ultimate thing to remember is that every character is, at their core, a person, and we all generally like and do a lot of the same shit. Culture is more something like seasoning that paints our unique experience and perspective. A white woman might cite Sex in the City as her super feminist adult awakening show, a black woman might cite Living Single or Girlfriends. (I've never watched Sex in the City but people always say these are basically the same shows but culture/race swapped)
One last note is, like, while I don't police people's language, because I am very much an advocate of freedom of speech, I do get uncomfortable when people use the N word in RP, regardless of the context. I don't even use the N word irl. But, that's just my two-cents on that.
Have fun! I hope everyone learned something! I hope this was more helpful than the average Cirno post about race.
@Sparks I'd love to have a fully fleshed out version of this in a PDF, I'm even willing to help make it more clear and concise. How can we bullet point each section of this?
Dude hell yeah I totally want to do this in my DBZ game.
"You were hit with a DEVASTATING Diplomatic Suggestion"
"Well, I guess we can get pepperoni."