- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
And his story actually has an explanation for how he ended up in Britain, so this may not be the example you're looking for.
SV has an Imaginary Number problem
- Thread starter Fivemarks
- Start date
- Discussion
the atom
Anarcho-Kemalist Thought Leader
- Location
- Comfortably numb
Uh, I dunno about you but the Squishy thread on racism makes me think a surprising amount would.
It's pretty clear that a large segment of registered users are pretty racist, yeah, and angry that there exists places that prevent them from acting on their racism. They've just been, and I thank God for this, silently resentful up until now. Hopefully most of the problem ones stay silent.
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
Well, yeah? All the knights of the round table had backstories explaining who they were and why they were part of the round table.
Having the same degree of attention paid to your background as literally any other character in the same setting isn't unusual.
- Location
- Australia
I know this is something I can be guilty as hell about. I have been trying though, in terms of shaking this up - unfortunately, To Boldly Go takes a pretty arm's length view of the characters because of the scope. Even so, I have made effort to at least give some diversity in cultures represented by the name, so in addition to European names, there's African, South Asian, East Asian, MENA, South American names, etc. It does entail a certain forcing-your-brain-out-of-autopilot which can be surprisingly tricky...
- Location
- The Intellectual, Moral, and Literal High Ground
I'm still waiting for your evidence. And you've just changed your claim from "most SV users would complain if there were no major white characters in a story" to "they're there, they're just hiding. And not saying anything. And not giving any indication of their existence."
On this thread I've seen a few complaints about how hard it is to write from a perspective not your own (and responses to that), assumptions that white is the default (and people pointing out that's not true), and stuff like that. Nothing like what you've said, though. So let's see some evidence proving your original claim.
The Bigotry thread is my evidence. I'm not going to go through that cesspool again and pick out every person bitching about freeze peech and censorship and SJWs. I'm not gonna debate you on this. I'm not gonna go and make a bunch of cites. If you want to see what I'm talking about, you go dig through that thread yourself. And if you don't wanna bother, fine, but that's where a lot of pretty awful shit gets said.
- Location
- The Intellectual, Moral, and Literal High Ground
You're trying to shift the burden of proof. You claimed the majority of users are racists. Prove it. Throwing a thread in my face and demanding I pick through it is dishonest and not how it works.
And you're moving the goalposts yet again. Before it was you claiming the majority of users were outright racists, then you changed it to there being a silent majority of outright racists, and now you're trying to shift it yet again. Provide evidence for your original claim.
It's on you to provide evidence statistically proving your claims. That's how claims like yours work in debates. And by making your inflammatory and incredibly insulting claims about the users of SV, you agreed to a debate. So show me your evidence statistically proving your claims.
You don't just get to come in, insult everyone, then leave the moment you're called on to answer for what you said.
- Location
- Hell
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No, she's not, you're just framing it that way. She's given you the proof, that is, the content of that thread. You are now saying, 'well, what part of that thread?' And she's responded by telling you to go and read the source instead of asking which pieces of the source you should read. I would't agree that it's a majority of SV's users, but it is not an insignificant portion, and you can interpret what she's said ('large segment of sv') as either meaning 'a significant number of people on SV' or, as you are, 'a majority of people on SV.' Your response is both based on your refusal to read a source and you not clarifying what you assume the other person to be saying.
- Location
- The Intellectual, Moral, and Literal High Ground
I asked for evidence of a majority as she claimed. Therefore statistics are necessary. It's not my fault she keeps changing what her claim is.
Look at her original comment compared to what she's saying now. It's completely different. She is moving the goalposts.
I made it clear what was said.
- Location
- Australia
Don't drag this out into a multi-page bit of legalistic wrangling, guys, it's just going to clog the thread.
- Location
- The Intellectual, Moral, and Literal High Ground
From what I have seen racism in science fiction tends to be more paternalistic in terms of racism (white savior for example) while fantasy has a tendency towards 'genetic' racism (orcs and other 'evil races'). Any theories on what causes that split?
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Probably because fantasy and science fiction have pretty fundamentally different approaches to non-humans in their stories. However as space fantasy becomes more popular as an aesthetic, the fantasy approach has become more predominant.
Last edited:
- Location
- The Intellectual, Moral, and Literal High Ground
Please elaborate. It might be better having a new thread for it, but this is worth hearing.
Orcs and elves serve the same function as aliens and robots. They can be parallels for real world races but they've also been around long enough that they don't have to be.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
In essence, fantasy has a box of archetypical races; Elves, Dwarfs, Orcs, Goblins, Lizardmen, Kobolds, Dragons, Fish People, Giants, Trolls, Beastmen etc that most authors will work with and alter for the purposes of their setting; using some and discarding others. All the tropes are already there and most variations on those archetypes are done in reaction to those tropes.
Science fiction has very broad hats for races, but no archetypical races distinct to the genre. So people instead make a race to fill a role rather than playing around with an already largely prebuilt idea.
- Location
- BaWü
There seems to not have been a difference between fantasy or sci-fi as I know enough adventures that were written in the 80s or 70s where they mixed them and even older stuff has also fantasy and sci-fi mixed.
Kokurokoki
"IDW DA NYA!"
- Location
- Area S09
Some people want that little bit of explanation. So its more of a courtesy to other players.
- Location
- Hell
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Why are there these racial minoities in his D&D campaign? Local SV poster demands explanation.
Hyacinthium
Writing about sad cannibals as we speak.
- Location
- Bedroom
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Game Master's face when a player demands a 20 page essay on why black people exist;
But it is; "race" is a temporary thing. Both culturally and in terms of appearance. A thousand years from now there aren't going to be "black people" or "white" people in the sense we mean today, especially the cultural one. Cultural change is a human inevitability, and barring people being restricted to islands so is the interbreeding of populations.
If anything the implausible thing are all those far-future or fantasy-world societies that still have recognizable cultures and modern "racial" attitudes.
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
The issue is not "blacks/browns/whites" will be fading away in the future mind. The issue is that people use The Future (TM) as an excuse to not include people of color. Idk about you, but I distinctly remember ramen still being a thing in the far future of Mass Effect and how Grunt was complaining it looked a lot like worms. And I'm pretty sure Japanese folks still exist in the future as well.
Being black today is not the same as being black 1000 years ago, but considering the audience of today is that of the 21st century where ethnicity are still important elements of identities to a lot of people, it should absolutely be encouraged to write about a black worker in South Africa, a teenager from Brazil or a mother from the Maldives.
So yeah, black/brown/(insert ethnicity) people are gonna be around the next thousand years or so. Writers should then consider writing more PoC in their work so as to be inclusive and diverse because diversity itself should absolutely be a goal.
Except none of those make sense in a fantasy setting. And in a sci-fi setting that comes across like claiming non-white people have some genetic compulsion to act a certain way.
Kokurokoki
"IDW DA NYA!"
- Location
- Area S09
I believe it was a hypothetical situation, as the video was part of his video series in which he gave DMs tips on how to DM. Matthew Colville is his name. He's worked as a lead writing in game development, and also is an author as well as a veteran DM who started a D&D channel to give advice to new players and DMs.
This particular scenario was on how to recruit players and how to make everyone feel included in the setting if I remember right. He proposed a scenario in which players of different ethnicities wanted to play non-white characters, and talked about how traditionally Tolkien-esque fantasy settings largely dominated by white people my put off new players who want to play as a different ethnicity and not feel super out of place. If I can find the video I'll post it here, but I think it was only a brief subtopic of the main topic of the video which I can't remember the title of.