One Angry Gamer is furious that Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop will feature slightly less skimpy clothes for Faye

@Dalillama and varalys the dark: You both make good points, but I would argue that the Ferengi still draw on the “greedy Jew” archetype whether the creators intended them to or not. However, your comments also show that the stereotype is (or should be) outdated because greed is part of the human condition, so no particular group should be singled out.

One more thing about Jar Jar Binks. The Phantom Menace was such a cultural event that 60 Minutes did a special on the film before it premiered. I remember seeing Jar Jar for the first time on that special and immediately realizing that the character would be trouble because of his Stepin Fetchit mannerisms. I assume that the only reason Jar Jar didn’t undergo major changes was that back then, no one dared to say no to George Lucas.

Ohlmann wrote on
June 7, 2020 at 5:18 am:

https://nitter.net/deeeeewarrick/status/1269396283195658240#m

That tweet summarize how pathetic is Rowling pretty well.

… WTF is nitter… OMG! THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED! It can even make RSS feeds from the twitter pages… PERFECT!

Are we forgetting the stereotypical “oriental” aliens as well in The Phantom Menace as well?

@Varalys
I thought about them but couldn’t remember their name. They’re problematic as well, I just couldn’t recall what they were called and didn’t mention them as a result.

If we’re looking at Star Trek as well, I’ve heard criticism that the Vulcans are stereotyped as Asian.

@Naglfar

I always figured the Vulcans were a bit inspired by Tolkien’s Elves.

Well the original Klingons were based on the damn Ruskies, then after Glasnost metamorphosed into a race of Genghis Khans. I think though that Star Trek has had the longevity to really explore all these cultures enough that they have outgrown the stereotypes that might have unconsciously (or consciously) fed into their creation and initial appearances.

@Cyborgette
At least a few episodes seem to allude to that, as Spock is referred to as an “elf” derogatorily in at least two.

As well, a google search suggests that a lot of other people have speculated on whether elves and Vulcans are connected.

@Ohlmann

While I don’t find the anime Faye particulary skimpy, her attire also isn’t important to the show. Who care about changing minors details ?

Agreed. As long as they nail Faye’s attitude then Her attire doesn’t matter.That goes for all the characters .

@Fabe: I personally have no problem with Spike, Jet Black and Radical Edward retaining their animation outfits, although with Edward it might depend on the actress’ willingness to run around barefoot all the time.

Using ethnic stereotype to create a fantasy race is good in term of universe-building, because it mean less explanation to the audience and an easier characterization. It’s also really, really easy to create unfortunate implication.

Star Wars have pretty shallows and caricaturals races even by sci-fi standards, and Phantom Menace dropped the ball extra hard, because the races are just as shallow but are the one driving the plot. Which mean racial caricatures waging wars because they are too stupid to see the manipulation.

If you can see the commerce federation as the big corpos of america, the whole plot make more sense and feel more like an accusation of capitalism. But the aliens very obviously look more like asians and jews and whatnot than Apple and Google.

@personalpest

I’ll Agree with that,in fact I would prefer that they did but I also understand why the might be changing Faye’s out fit. But no matter what Ein must be a Corgi .

Yeah if they mess up Ein I will destroy the world.

a certain kind of formula … which almost always undermines the original work to push some kind of subversive, Left-wing oriented message

So, what, a physical formula?

And the subversive message? “Bounty-hunting in space had a dress code (for reasons of pragmatism, if naught else)?”

Jessie gender has a great video on the rasist history klingons and lots of other star trek social issue videos they are really worth checking out

sorru I cant provide links because I am baf at tech

With TV, movies, and video games requiring so many people to create, it is quite likely there would be both less feminist creators who want women to be eye candy and more feminist creators who want women to be fully realized characters on the same team. I think in many cases these people came to a compromise where in the script, what they say and do, they would be a fully 3D realistic character, but in character design, what you see in screen shots, they would be unrealistic and sexy. This might make for some ironic moments, but it keeps the peace for the creators. This may have become an industry standard in Japanese Anime. Perhaps off topic, but a thought I wanted to share since Faye seems like the #1 example.

An interesting facet of sociology is that cultural notions can exist independently of their origin. With most “tropes” in media they appear so often because the creators saw something in previous works and then put something similar in their own work. This true of most of the examples others mentioned previously in the comments, though obviously if you follow the chain back in time you would quickly run into a harmful stereotype. I think these media tropes can only promote antisemitism if a person is exposed to the original antisemitic stereotype, but they can increase the effect of that antisemitic stereotype. As I see it the chain of subconscious associations can exist either across multiple people and works, or within a single person’s mind, though only when inside a single brain does it create that emotional reaction that leads to lifelong hate. Of course the more common the chain of associations, the higher the chance that somebody somewhere will make all of the connections. Still I would give the benefit of the doubt to fiction creators. The fact that they are replicating a trope with antisemitic origins is not proof they are unconsciously antisemitic. Though the fact that antisemitism exists throughout the culture both increases the power of the tropes as narrative tools, and increases the chance that the trope will promote antisemitism.

@Ohlmann

Note that black orcs as you say are more intelligent and disciplined than the regular one, but also more brutal and savage, and they are meant to be bad.

They are no more bad or brutal than the regular orcs, and the Warhammer Black Orcs are emphatically not as savage. They were the only orcs that never had a risk of being too busy fighting each other to attack their enemies.

<

For World of Warcraft,

I wrote a very lengthy response, but thought better of it. Because whenever I do engage in this debate, the Horde’s defenders never engage in good faith – and right here you included things that the Alliance did not do in your argument, so I have no reason to expect good faith here, either.

1. I said the Horde were the Bad Guys. I did not say that the Alliance are the Good Guys. They actually are shades of grey (mostly very light grey).

3. I have been playing since BC, with mains in both factions. There have been several Horde storylines that made me feel sick to play, and that I have deliberately avoided ever playing again despite my swarms of alts. That never happened with Alliance storylines.

Just found this.

OMG.

https://evonomics.com/how-to-disguise-racism-and-oligarchy-use-the-language-of-economics/

@Surplus

Thank you for the link.

francis, is this the Jessie Gender you were thinking off?

I’ve never heard of OneAngryGamer until this weekend, and suddenly I’ve seen multiple references. He’s notable I guess? (he’s a he i guess?)

I note that Epic and Autodesk are on the list, but not Unity. Hmmm… pretty sure OAG would hate on Rigoletto if he knew anything about games making.

@numerobis
He’s somewhat notable for his over the top takes and conspiratorial thinking, as well as his namesake rage. The site appears to be run by one guy named Billy, so yes, he is a he.

He’s been featured on this site a few times before, most notably for various opinions he has on LGBT representation in media and his thoughts Nazi hunter TV programs (he isn’t a fan of either).

Totally OT to the OP, but tangentially related to the comments thread, I’d like to ask the commentariat here a question:

My wife and I were talking about the whole JK Rowling TERFiness thing, and she expressed that she agrees with the following aspect of the TERF argument: that the majority of transwomen don’t share the experience of growing up as a girl within society, and consequently, there are aspects of the experience of being a woman that most transwomen cannot claim as a part of their femaleness. She noted that it’s similar to the fact that women who weren’t raised in a repressive culture (of whatever stripe, but she used the fundamentalist LDS sects as her example) can’t claim that sort of struggle as their own.

Now, my wife is very anti-TERF in general – and indeed, anti-bigotry of all stripes. But she also strives to be very precise in pretty much all aspects of her life, and this is kind of throwing her for a bit of a loop. I honestly don’t know what to say to help her reconcile this. She absolutely doesn’t deny that transwomen are women, nor does she think that they should be treated differently than other women, but she feels some sort of distinction is needed; however, she recognizes that any distinction is an opening for discrimination. Hence the three-hour inconclusive conversation we just had.

I guess my question would be, does anyone have any ideas how I can help her work through this?

@Gaebolga
I’ll do my best to respond to your wife’s argument:

the majority of transwomen don’t share the experience of growing up as a girl within society, and consequently, there are aspects of the experience of being a woman that most transwomen cannot claim as a part of their femaleness.

It is true that most trans* women had a different experience growing up than most cis women. But for any given cis woman, chances are many other cis women had a different experience due to race, class, cultural background, etc; so I feel like categorizing who is and isn’t a woman based on how they grew up is fallacious.

As for biological differences and experiences like menarche, it is true that trans* women have not experienced menstrual bleeding, but many cis women also haven’t due to infertility or lack of uterus. So defining womanhood based on something like having experienced menarche or female puberty as an adolescent excludes those cis women and is also fallacious.

As well, I haven’t heard any trans* women trying to claim that their childhoods were the same as cis women. We have unique stories and usually aren’t trying to claim to have grown up exactly the same as cis women. I know that as a kid I had a different experience than most cis women would have because I was perceived as a boy, and I wouldn’t claim otherwise. I would argue that it was not the same as most cis male childhoods because I had dysphoria and was a very GNC child, but that’s not the same as trying to paint my background as just like that of a cis woman.

women who weren’t raised in a repressive culture (of whatever stripe, but she used the fundamentalist LDS sects as her example) can’t claim that sort of struggle as their own.

I haven’t heard trans* women trying to claim those struggles as our own, so I’m not sure where this argument is from. As well, although we did not experience the same childhood as a cis woman, that doesn’t mean that we don’t experience misogyny much like that towards cis women in the present.

she feels some sort of distinction is needed

What kind of distinction does she mean? I’m not sure why there would need to be a distinction in most aspects of day to day life, beyond medical stuff it seems unnecessary.

TL;DR is that the argument of defining women based on some sort of universal female experience is flawed because there isn’t really a single experience all women have had, and that type of argument excludes many cis women as well.

@varalys the dark and @Naglfar: Are you talking about the Neimoidians? https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Neimoidian

With regards to Tolkien and the orcs; I can’t remember where I first came across this*, but there was some very problematic thinking when he came up with them. This article describes it really well:
https://tolkienland.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/tolkiens-squinteyed-orc-men/

* It was YouTube video talking about LoTR, but cannot remember exactly who so cannot give the correct credit. I think it was either Maggie Mae Fish or Lindsay Ellis, but could have been someone else…

@Gaebolga

Sorry if I put words in your wife’s mouth, but I get the feeling that your wife may be pondering on whether or not transwoman received some amount or sort of male privilege while they were growing up? I’m not going to be able to answer this question as I’m not qualified to, but maybe framing her thoughts in this manner could help her clarify her questions and reach answers?

Or maybe I’m way off base and I’m putting words in her mouth. Apologies if I am.

@personalpest
Yes, that’s what I was talking about.

@numerobis:

I note that Epic and Autodesk are on the list, but not Unity.

Well, everyone hates Autodesk. Even more since they tightened the terms of their educational license for Maya.

@Allandrel : you seem biased too, and should check that. I cited things the alliance did in particular, and denying it is probably what make you look the most biased. And the fact I noted that the leadership of the horde is shown as evil don’t mean everyone else is exonerated ; it just mean the fact the evil leaders are alway horde is quite repetitve and annoying.

Note the important part : the horde storytelling is made to make the alliance look like a bunch of fascist. I don’t know if it’s the same for alliance, but it’s likely. Conversely, the worst excess of both side is seen mostly when they are opponents. If you play the Horde, you see the horde as light grey and the alliance as a very dark grey, I expect the opposite on alliance. And once again, if you don’t believe that, you probably should take a long, hard, look to your bias.

John Cho is playing Spike in cowboy bebop so i’m looking forward to it. They shut down production for 8 months when he hurt his knee on set and then the pandemic hit.

I liked The Middleman (too short a series!) so that’s another plus for me that Javier Grillo-Marxuach is a co writer. They also have Shinichirō Watanabe of the animated series as consultant so hopefully its as good as a live action series can get.

But sure lets avoid it because of what Faye is or isn’t wearing. I mean the rumor that Ein was a husky was ok with him.. (don’t worry Ein is apparently a corgi. The production has mentioned it in interviews.)

@Naglfar
The other Jewish coded character in hp is Snape. The long black hair his nose all common english code for Jewish. Rowlings has long had problems with BAME characters (turned the last asian female character into a snake!) and has not shown a willingness to change despite people pointing out the racism. I am not surprised she’s made the slide into a full card carrying Terf. Just angry she could have listened and chose not to.

@Gaebolga

that she agrees with the following aspect of the TERF argument: that the majority of transwomen don’t share the experience of growing up as a girl within society, and consequently, there are aspects of the experience of being a woman that most transwomen cannot claim as a part of their femaleness

Argumentum ad alligatorum: if you haven’t been chased by alligators, how can you really understand women’s struggles anyway?

I’ve always thought of Vulcans as British coded: an ancient, emotionally-repressed society compared to the American coded humans.

Hello.

I can not say a lot about the anime stuff, being far far more a manga reader than an anime viewer (may have voluntarily seen about ten, mainly from manga i like), and i have not seen CBB. But in any case, if this person is not able to make the difference between reality and fiction, too bad for him.

> Naglfar
> Warhammer
May i say the interpretation may vary depending the viewer ? When i began to play it at the beginning of the 90′, the young me had seen the descriptions this way :

– a big island with one race considered by a lot of player as very (sometimes too much) powerful, closed to an island called Albion (where there were Fimirs, an old reminiscence of Heroquest), in a game made by english people ? Ah ! Who high elves can represent ?

– a feud with other elfs, seen as “dark” elves (mainly by clothes and “morality”, rather than skin), mainly due to a religious matter ?

– as a matter of fact, the last most famous elf faction is the Sylvan one, whose celtisism is so obvious it may not need more specification.

– a close continent with : an human empire called Reik and an emperor called Karl Franz, neighbour to a decadent kingdom called Bretonnia with cities like Lyonnesse and Bordeleaux, and an Arthurean flair ? Na, can not put real nation names on that… No more than i can not put spaggethi on the Tilea and other border princedoms.

– Nordic barbarians with drakkars ? Never existed in reality. A border kingdom between the “old continent” and those norsemen, lead by a Tzar ? The originality bears no limit.

– a bit to the east of the humans are the dwarves, serious workers, love to drink (at least, this is a common, it seems, in fantasy worlds). Just add them some solidarnosc, a reputation to keep grudge for long, and you can easily track their roots in reality (to note, i do not know if communism was seen in England as bad as it has been seen in USA at this time. Which may explain why the standard dwarves are seen as a “good race”).

– their “dark” counterpart, who have zigguraths, a cult linked to a kind of bull god (and not a bulldog), and whose beards are so freezy you may want to yell “THIS IS (not funny) NOT PERSIA !”. Oh, and they have Hobgobelin “Assassins”. Not as a special unit of one man, like dark elves ones, but as units constituted of them only.

– there are halflings, because the term “hobbit” was already branded, but at least, they do not seem to represent any nation(s) in particular.

– vampire stuff had been a more developped lore after my first impression, so i do not count them here. At first, vampires were just an option in undead armies.

– speaking of the deads, if we take appart local necromancers in the “old continent”, they mainly come from the big continent to the south of the old one, which happen to have a big desert, a big country called Araby (so original) with brown to black population (not considered as “evil”, though). If we do not count for the standard skeleton, you had mummies, ghouls and zombies (and we know from where this folklore come from). And this was before they had the Tomb Kings flair in their lore.

– now, this is probably where your mileage may vary. If they had made the orks like Tolkien (with brown to black skin colors, if i remember right), this would has been obvious. And i think they would not wanted to look racist to some potential customers (even if i doubt that 12 years olds have this kind of considerations). However, habits died hard, and so, in a time when the “yellow peril” was very present and vivid in minds (at least in western europe), here was the “green(skin) peril” (often named like that in the lore, to note), coming from the East, full with cheap weapons, armors and equipments. Add to that the Mongolian look of the more recent Ogre faction, from Cathay (even if there are humans kingdoms/empires there, they were never really developped as a full army list). So, that may have to do with a bias from me as a half asian person, but i am quite not sure that “black orcs” were a hint to “black persons”.

That being say, i was quite young at this time, so this interpretation was done with my knowledge and mind at this period. I may (and surely is) wrong on many points that true fans of Warhammer lore could point and correct at their leisure.

Gaebolga says:

that the majority of transwomen don’t share the experience of growing up as a girl within society, and consequently, there are aspects of the experience of being a woman that most transwomen cannot claim as a part of their femaleness. […] she feels some sort of distinction is needed

As Naglfar notes, there is no “the” experience of growing up as a girl within society. So many things can affect how one experiences girlhood: race, class, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, mental or physical health, speed of development, etc.

My white wealthy cis girlhood probably shares more in common with any given white wealthy trans woman’s girlhood than it does most black poor cis women’s girlhood. And I sure as hell can’t claim aspects of a poor black woman’s experience as part of my femaleness, but what does that even matter? Why place so much importance on the cis/trans distinction and not all these other just-as-relevant factors?

Apparently your wife can see that growing up FLDS is a unique experience. She should use that to question how FLDS girls experiences of girlhood compare to those of other girls.

Can non-FLDS ever really grasp what it’s like to grow up as a girl within a FLDS society? If anything, that’s more of a divide than the one between cis and trans. Most non-FLDS girls, whether cis or trans, are exposed to all sorts of representations of girlhood whereas FLDS girls are prescribed a very particular and often traumatic one. Does that have implications for the femaleness of either FLDS-raised women or non-FLDS-raised women?

It’s very weird to assume solidarity on the basis of the genitals one was born. Once you look at things closer, you see how diverse girlhood is in reality. Trans girlhood is just another element of that diversity.

@snowolf100

The long black hair his nose all common english code for Jewish.

Interesting, I didn’t notice that. Where I live in America, Jews are usually stereotyped as having curly brown hair, rather than black hair like Snape. Looking back I can see how Snape is a problematic depiction as well.

Rowlings has long had problems with BAME characters

Definitely. She named one Asian character “Cho Chang,” and one of the only Black characters is a sports commentator with little depth.

There’s also an issue with anti-Irish stuff, seeing as one of the only Irish characters blows things up (this was written right around the tail end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland).

@ victorious parasol
yes thank you for providing the link

Myself:

It’s very weird to assume solidarity on the basis of the genitals one was born.

This should have a “with” at the end.

OT: TERFs are now speculating on whether BLM is a secret trans* plot.

she agrees with the following aspect of the TERF argument: that the majority of transwomen don’t share the experience of growing up as a girl within society, and consequently, there are aspects of the experience of being a woman that most transwomen cannot claim as a part of their femaleness.

Can your wife pin down what specific immutable elements make up “growing up as a girl”? Because I guarantee you that there are some cis women out there who have not experienced some common aspects of “growing up as a girl”, and that doesn’t seem to invalidate their womanhood in the eyes of TERFs.

For example, in our culture, many AFAB people are, from a very young age, discouraged from being as physically active as their AMAB counterparts. And this is a shitty, systemic thing, and something we should try to change. But there are cis women out there who did not experience that, or who have grown up in cultures that do not practice this. Does this make them somehow less woman-y than the people who have?

Many cis women menstruate. But there are people who through accidents or illness or genetic aspects who never experience menstruation. Does this make them somehow less woman-y than the people who have?

What about feral children? Children who grew up outside of human society entirely? They haven’t experienced “growing up as a girl”. Do we need a special category of women for cis women who grew up among animals? Are they less woman-y than the people who grew up in society, somehow? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

And leaving that aside, a lot of the experiences of “growing up as a girl” also apply to trans women, as a fair amount of the experiences involve witnessing violence and dehumanization against other women and realizing that society views us in a similar fashion. And trans girls, surprise surprise, also identify with the women that they witness going through this. (Hell, they may be exposed to even more of it than cis girls, since a lot of misogynistic men are a lot more willing to let that flag fly when they perceive that they are only among other men.)

Yes, there are certain experiences that, statistically, a demographic of people are very likely to have gone through. However, there are always exceptions, and being exclusionary about this either means that the exclusionists don’t give a shit about splash damage, or are only using the argument as a dogwhistle to avoid saying the less socially acceptable reasons they have for wanting the exclusion. Usually it’s both.

@Gaebolga

The big thing here looks to be the TERFy denial of intersectionality. There is One True Axis of Oppression, and it is all that matters.

@Ohlmann

The thing that you specifically accused the Alliance of was religious persecution of the Mag’har. That was not the Alliance, that was the Lightbound, a faction made up of former allies of both the Alliance (Draenei) and Horde (Frostwolf) that formed after both factions had left alt-Draenor. There’s no indication that the Alliance even knows about this.

As for Jaina’s “warmongering,” was that because she kept saying “we cannot trust the Horde, they will break any peaceb by attacking us” to the other Alliance leaders? Because she was right. The Horde started the Fourth War with an unprovoked attack where they deliberately targeted civilians and burned down Teldrassil to “kill hope.”

The fact that, as you point out, the evil leaders are always Horde and never Alliance is exactly my point. Blizzard keeps saying “neither faction is the Bad Guys” but only one faction had Orc Hitler and the Lich Queen.

But finally, your denial of my experience playing through every Horde storyline as “bias” shows exactly the bad faith that I expected. I’ve played through Silverpine, and Southshore, and TELDRASSIL. And in BFA especially the Horde war campaign, the Horde are consistently presented, in their own quests, as trying to wipe the Alliance out in a war of conquest, and the negative portrayal of the Alliance there consists mainly of contempt for “thinking they can stand against us” (invading their homes) and “they called us monsters, therefore they all deserve to die horribly.” And that’s not even getting into the plot with Jaina’s brother.

That’s not the Alliance storylines. Those are Horde questgivers.

So no, the one lying here has been you. There’s no point in continuing this.

OT to share some good news.

Guess who thinks she absolutely CRUSHED IT at her job interview this morning?

@Victorious Parasol
That’s great!

@ all:

Thank you for your responses; I appreciate all of your insights.

I suspect I may not have presented my wife’s position accurately, in that her issues are primarily philosophical and related to her work on the social construction of meaning, identity, and self-reflective activities (usually in the context of online learning), not some sort of defense of “true womanhood” or “league of genital homogeneity.”

I think.

…and that right there is the problem I’m having, because frankly, while I agree that one’s background, the society one is raised in, and the social role one is assigned within that society have huge, long-lasting effects on one’s conception of self, I don’t really understand why that should matter in terms of transfolk and gender, beyond the individual variations that everyone has. But my wife is also one of the smartest and most community- and justice-oriented people I’ve ever known, and her positon here doesn’t fit with literally everything I’ve seen, known, and experienced with her over the last 30 years, so I’m pretty sure I’m missing something fundamental about her argument…but I have no idea what it is.

For context, our daughter’s best friend came out as a transboy (given that he’s 10, I’m not sure I can call him a man yet) about 4 months ago, and my wife has spent the time since helping his mother come to terms with his coming out and was the one who finally convinced her to stop using his dead name. In similar fashion, one of the members of our church transitioned to female two years ago, and my wife was one of the most outspoken defenders of her right to have the congregation treat her as a woman. Which is why this is so damn weird to me.

I offer my general apologies for dragging the personal into this thread and thank you all for your input.

@VP

That is wonderful news!!!

@Gaebolga

FWIW, I wasn’t offended. Even if you think you may’ve fallen short of accurately explaining your wife’s position, I appreciated the conversation that followed. You gave other people here the opportunity to address talking points that we see elsewhere, from well-meaning allies (like myself) who are still educating themselves to people who’ve never had to think about trans rights before. So thank you for that, and thank you to the other regulars who shared their thoughts.

@Gaebolga
I’m not sure I understand the issue. It sounds like she’s supporting trans* people in your community, so her heart is in the right place. As for her philosophical position, I don’t think I understand entirely. If she thinks trans* folx should be treated as their gender identity, I’m not sure how that’s compatible with believing that people need to have a certain experience. Or maybe I’m just misunderstanding all of this. Apologies if I’m missing the point.

@VP:

That’s great!

@Gaebolga

Hmm, I think my post may have been a bit strongly worded. I didn’t intend to imply that your wife is a TERF. (I don’t know her, I can’t make that call one way or the other.) I was just addressing talking points that I’ve seen before regarding the “well, they didn’t grow up as a ______!” argument.

I can see how well-meaning progressive folks can fall into this trap. We do stress the importance of listening to people’s lived experience. However, just because someone has a different lived experience then the “norm” (whatever that norm is perceived to be), that doesn’t invalidate their identity. I, as a cis white woman, will never experience misogynoir or transmisogyny that other women sadly have to contend with. This doesn’t make my experience of womanhood any more or less valid than that of a black woman or a trans woman, it’s only different.

And leaving that aside, I personally feel that tying the validity of one’s identity to the level of oppression that you do or do not face is… Troubling, at the very least. Don’t get me wrong, we are right to focus our attentions on righting the injustice and oppression that has been leveled against marginalized groups. But to say that someone “doesn’t really count” as part of the community because they haven’t experienced a certain kind of oppression is messed up. For one thing, because there are lots of different struggles and the oppression olympics is crappy. And for another, what does this say about progress? If we succeed, if future generations of girls no longer experience the misogyny that we had to deal with, are those girls somehow lesser than ourselves? Why would they be? Isn’t the protection of those who come after us part of why we strive to make things better?

@personalpest

I think Nemodians are a different stereotype; greedy Japanese/Chinese businessmen. Which is far, far worse, because there’s less of a cultural basis that’s become somewhat divorced from its own racial caricature stereotype – that’s a very modern one, so there’s less of an excuse.

On the subject of Warhammer Orcs; I think they were building on some dark things initially, but part of the issue is that they were meant to be a faction in a wargame. They can never stop fighting in the game’s universe, otherwise it loses purpose. Orcs/Orks/Orruks are meant to be a species perfectly adapted to that; one could call them “savages”, but there’s an underlying question is wondering if it’s really the right term, given how their world rewards being the biggest and meanest already; it’s hardly “primitive” if it’s the best possible solution.

I think they’ve made a work-around by making it clear that Greenskins are not actually that human; they’re pretty alien no matter the setting. As in, they reproduce through sporulation, especially that caused by violent death (so war is literally a part of their lifecycle). Then it goes from there to explore how that fundamental change in their basic biology changes their entire culture; to the mind of a Greenskin, violence is a basic physiological need to continue the species. So, everything they are revolves around violence or the pursuit thereof. Thus, they dissociate from any actual culture (except the very white one of football hooligans) ironically because they’re treated with cultural empathy.

It’s not perfect, and there’s area where it doesn’t work (Norsca at their worst is a parade of poor assumptions about Scandinavian culture), but there’s a reason the faction that is closest to being the “barbaric forest people” stereotype, Beastmen, is made of literal inhuman monsters who lack any kind of cultural marks at all – who have an ideology that explicitly resembles fascism and genocidal racism than any actual oppressed people. I think GW knew what they were doing when they said “in Age of Sigmar, the people who thought that Beastmen were a product of miscegenation ended up being so horrible that the elites promptly mutated into Beastmen when the going got rough and they turned to cannibalism.” And when they made the Skaven Nazi-coded.

@occasional reader

The Warhammer World is an analogue to Earth, but that’s hardly “unoriginal.” It’s part of the basic concept.

Also, the Elven continent Ulthuan is nowhere near Albion, and there is nothing English about the High Elves. Their Earthly analogue is the mythical empire of Atlantis, and visually they have a strong Bronze Age look.

Not seeing the “Dwarfs are Polish,” either. They’re based on the dqarfs of Norse mythology, and show it. Their culture is all about honor and grudges, they are fine craftsmen who put knotwork and magic runes on everything… very Norse. They just happen to live east of the (Not-Holy-Roman) Empire. The Skaven are centered under Not-Italy, but there’s nothing Italian about them.

I also really don’t think the take on Warhammer’s greenskins as Yellow Peril stand-ins works. There’s nothing Asian about them, their equipment is a mish-mash of cultures. But most of all is that behaviorally, Orcs, Orks, and Urruks are quite explicitly based on English soccer hooligans, complete with exaggerated Cockney accents.

Also, there’s not really anything Mongolian about the Ogre Kingdoms. They are from the Mountains of Mourn, equivalent to west-central Asia, but culturally their theme is a combination of “eating everything” (one of the near-universal elements of folklore ogres) and “prehistoria” with their assortment of creatures. They’re basically very large cave men with an eternal hunger.

Beastment could easily have incorporated lots of tropes for “savage” humans, but they really don’t. They’re decidedly inhuman.

Now all of this is not to say that the Warhammers don’t have plenty of problematic aspects, but it is really not that bad, and GW has improved things over the years (consider how they moved the Chaos Dwarfs away from “cartoon Mesopotamia”).