Ye Olde Inn

Sorry if this starts anything, but I gotta say this to somebody who might actually care.
(My wife cares little for my writing and fantasy talk)

I have seen numerous posts on facebook and twitter over the last few months...a lot of them
in fantasy campaign setting pages or from writers themselves. These posts get into how writers
and publishers need to stop "appropriating cultures" and how they need to be more sensitive to
all the various groups who now feel slighted these days.

And it is driving me nuts.

AND HERE IS MY REASON FOR SAYING THIS!!!
It's bad enough to see this sort of thing going on in society as a whole, but if this continues to spiral
down the way it seems to be, I really feel as if society is going to lose a lot of great writing and reading
because: 1 - writers are afraid to write what they want to write...and when they do, there will be
online campaigns to slander and destroy them, and 2 - publishers will be afraid to publish anything they
feel might offend people and will simply refuse to publish anything of real quality anymore.

Political correctness has it's place. When i see how some people are treated on work just because they belong to certain groups, and other people are strongly advantaged just because they come from a certain school then it is driving me nuts.
Cutting away chances from people who deserve them is one of the worst things you can do in the long run...

however there are certain activists who always take it one step further. They react without proof, on things that are not more as a rumor that could well be set into this world by an adversary of the rumor's target, and there are certain media who just copy and paste that to their front page. That's the other extreme.

Somewhere in the middle it is good, i am sure! You can't write a book playing 1700 something in the US without having slaves cleaning the rich man's house, indians being slaughtered and women staying at home to do the cooking, it is just not possible. And not everybody wants to press on the tear duct because of that, some maybe just want to write a western story.

I guess it is difficult to find the right balance. It's an author's task. I am more on the technical side.

I was just this year going thoroughly through the titanic data set on kaggle, to find factors that helped people survive on that boat. Well, it was connected to being a woman, sleeping on the right side of the boat or being rich. The richest first class passengers all survived. The medium and low first class men not so much, only their women survived. Second and third class was like a death sentence for most men, from the woman at least some survived. Also it helped not to be irish, whrereas i absolutely don't know why being irish was a factor.

That's what the factors were. Now how to talk about it? I don't know. You find a lot of correctness and gentleman behavior in the data. But you also find factors like being poor or being super-rich or being irish, which are the opposite of correctness and gentleman behavior. How to communicate that without looking too correct or too incorrect? I have no clue.

I was also going through some recent (this decade) USA census data checking for salary. You know what? With a recession analysis you can isolate and remove influence factors. So i removed education, place of living, skin color, age, years of experience on work, everything. Until only one factor remained: Being a man or a woman. In the original data, women earn in average 1.2$ less than men per hour. After removing all the noise factors, cleaned up from other influence, they earn 2$ less than men. The only reason why that doesn't shine through so heavily in the original census data is because usually women reach a much higher education than men, which helps covering up some of the difference.

That's political correctness as lived today. In the USA of today.
I can understand that some of the people at the wrong end on that scale get upset. But again, how to communicate that?

I be quiet now. We shall not talk politics here. Slap myself.

Anderas - that was great....exactly the kind of discourse I am looking for. And you bring up one of the main points
I was trying to run around in my brain. You have all of these factors and thoughts and ideas, and it is up to the author
to find the balance...if they want to. I'm sure we all have seen those authors who do not want to use a filter.

The problem I am seeing, with the way people are talking about cultural appropriation, they do not want to give the
author the chance to find that balance. What I see is that, as you put it, certain activists want to simply say, "No,
that history (using your example of slaves and Native Americans) was wrong for society and we will not put up with
anyone talking about it. We do not want to remember it.".

As you said...not trying to be political. I am strictly speaking on this on the creative side of things...even from a personal
nature. The fantasy world I have put together uses what could maybe be called stereo-types. I study what I can from
the cultures I want to use, make up some names that sound like they should be there, and there you have it. As long as
I am not denigrating those cultures, making them all evil, or in some other way doing bad by them, I really do not see the
problem with it.

Of course, I am about as non-PC as one can get. Am I wrong here?

I really don't like censorship in reading. I don't agree with schools banning Catcher in the Rye, or Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. I believe censorship of any kind closes minds and is a way of pretending things didn't happen. Pretending things didn't/don't happen is not the adult way to deal with issues. I believe PC has it's place, although I generally don't have a use for it. Personally, I'd rather brutal truth.

I came in here thinking you had technical problems with your computer...

Anyways... Cultural "appropriation" being political incorrect is a bunch of bullshit.
If you don't want "your" "culture" being adopted, assimilated or copied you damn well better find some deep caverns to live in.
Everybody want to feel special and unique. It's nice to have something exclusive. But that's simply not how the world works.
You can't just separate every culture. We steal and borrow from all over the world.
Demanding others to refrain from appropriating culture is to demand censorship; something I strongly oppose in any shape or size.
And honestly the only reason I can see for claiming "cultural appropriation" is to get attention - or some misguided thinking that others are making money of something YOU should be making money of. Learn to profit from it yourselves instead of shaming others.
Why don't these offended people just feel proud that people want to mimic them? I always feel a sense of pride when I see vikings - even if they are misrepresented with horned helmets.

I just don't get why this is suddenly becoming a thing

Sorry to bait-and-switch you Goblin King.

By the way - you're an admin or moderator, right? Can someone move this thread to the Pub? I swear I
clicked on the Pub, and somehow this ended up in the Lobby.
Thanks

P.S. Vikings don't wear horned helmets?

The hardcore PC brigade are doing themselves no favour. In actuality if you want to weaken the PC efforts, instill it with hardcore pushers. Neutral brains like myself, who often find themselves debating from both sides in their own minds (what a nightmare that is, the arguments I've had with myself are beyond insane) are pushed more towards the other side when we see the levels of stupidity that they reach and their total lack of ability to reason with themselves.

And please watch this video, every body needs to see this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc&t

All the way to the end. Don't become the totem!

Oh and i will add... I've made 2 brand new HQ related threads and no ones commented on it yet. But, we can have a little PC discussion instead. Come on people are We HQ fans or not?

I appropriate PC culture to fascism. There you go.
This topic ties sixteen kinds of knots in my guts and it took me these two days to try to put it into as few words as possible.
Where it comes from? Group think, victim culture, generation snowflake.

mitchiemasha wrote:Oh and i will add... I've made 2 brand new HQ related threads and no ones commented on it yet. But, we can have a little PC discussion instead. Come on people are We HQ fans or not?

This discussion is every bit as HQ related as a Berserker and a Healer. HQ has a story component and if stories cannot be written without offending people then this has an impact on everyone writing custom content.

I'm not aware of what exactly the PC police are saying is bad about cultural appropriation. But I will say that appropriating a culture "whole sale" from the popular public perception by another culture (your own) for use in your fantasy universe is foolish and lazy. This is your FANTASY universe and that is the best you can do? On the otherhand, if you do the research and dispell stereotypes then it can be quite engaging.

I can understand why the PC police would say this is NEVER okay and jump on anybody wherever they see it. But I would have to disagree.

I was disappointed recently by modern critiques of Dr. Seuss. No "the Cat in the Hat" is not disparaging any ethnic group!!! We are over analyzing things, and librarians have WAY too much time on their hands.