Quote from: jhkim on April 10, 2023, 09:13:01 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 10, 2023, 06:20:18 PM

Quote from: jhkim on April 10, 2023, 05:48:10 PM
I don't think the Jewish people are any more greedy than any other ethnicity. There are lots of Jewish-run charities, and Jewish people have a tradition of hospitality and caring for the poor. Human beings are greedy, so Jewish people can be too. However, portraying Jewish people as inherently greedy is feeding into a false stereotype that comes from historical circumstance. Jewish people were barred from many professions, but given exclusive purview over money-lending. Since they couldn't advance otherwise, they had to advance that way. That doesn't mean that they are innately greedy or innately suited to money. It means they advanced the only way they were allowed to.

So yeah, I have a problem with portrayals of Jewish people as innately greedy. It's not that Jewish people are flawless, but that particular accusation feeds a false stereotype.

Good thing that Tolkien NEVER portrayed Jewish people as greedy then. He portrayed Dwarves as greedy, but Dwarves AREN'T Jews, not even in his writings, sure he took inspiration of some aspects he admired from the Jewish people, doesn't mean ALL aspects of his Dwarves were taken from there.

Can you provide proof to the contrary that doesn't involve reading the mind of a dead man?

I can't read his mind, but what he said in a 1965 BBC interview was this:

Quote from: JRR TolkienThe dwarves, of course, are quite obviously, couldn't you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic. There's a tremendous love of the artifact, and of course the immense warlike capacity of the Jews, which we tend to forget nowadays.

Source: https://tolkienbystump.quora.com/Tolkien-s-1965-Interview

He is saying that both dwarves and Jews have a "tremendous love of the artifact" - so love of material items, which is clearly connected to the themes of dwarvish greed. That doesn't mean that he hated Jewish people. He seemed to genuinely have a great admiration for them, and made them the heroes of a sort to his book.

In political debate, there's a push to have people be either saints or demons - but that's not how real people work. I think Tolkien's portrayal of Jewish-coded dwarves is great progress over the Jewish-coded dwarves in Wagner's Ring cycle, but that doesn't mean that it's perfect.

It would work in your favor to know the definition of words:

artifact

noun: artefact; plural noun: artefacts; noun: artifact; plural noun: artifacts

    1.    an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest.
    "gold and silver artifacts"
    2.    something observed in a scientific investigation or experiment that is not naturally present but occurs as a result of the preparative or investigative procedure.
    "widespread tissue infection may be a technical artifact"

So a love of man made things, doesn't mean greed, an anthropologist has a "tremendous love of the artifact" too, would you say that's greed?

The man was a linguist, he knew how to use words, why wouldn't he say greed when he could have?

You keep claiming he was an antisemite without knowing it, which is reading the mind of a dead man.

Care to try again without pretending you can read his mind?

Humans ARE very complicated, but not having a "Native American" friend doesn't prove racism. Especially for a man who as you stated ADMIRED them and their culture.

You can't think Jews inferior (like antisemites do) while admiring them for their ingenuity and hard work, like Tolkien did.

> "You hate brown people!"
> How can I hate them when I married one?
> "It's not a binary thing!"

Yes, Jhkim, it is a binary thing, you're either a racist or you're not, and Tolkien wasn't until you can provide proof to the contrary.

Same with D&D, can you prove your claim that there must have been some racism in it because of what you went thru as a child?

Take your time, I'll wait (not holding my breath tho)

Greetings!

GeekyBugle, can you imagine getting together with Tolkien for dinner, and smoking a pipe, and doing some kind of hours-long Q&A over philosophy, writing, language, and his books?

I'm always in joyful, academic awe of Tolkien. Professor Tolkien was an expert in Medieval studies, Anglo-Saxon culture, Norse culture, and Baltic studies! Just mind blowing the depth of his expertise and academic knowledge. As I recall, he was also fluent in Old Saxon, and Finnish languages, besides having extensive knowledge of Germanic languages and of course, Latin, too. Languages, mythology, history, religion, cultural studies, his academic mastery was vast. Furthermore, to top that off, he was also skilled in more archaic literature, songs, and poetry, too!

Absolutely brilliant! A world-class scholar, a man of honour and integrity, a Christian, and gentleman of kindness, generosity, and amazing creativity. What an outstanding occasion that would be!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on April 10, 2023, 10:07:53 PM
Greetings!

GeekyBugle, can you imagine getting together with Tolkien for dinner, and smoking a pipe, and doing some kind of hours-long Q&A over philosophy, writing, language, and his books?

I'm always in joyful, academic awe of Tolkien. Professor Tolkien was an expert in Medieval studies, Anglo-Saxon culture, Norse culture, and Baltic studies! Just mind blowing the depth of his expertise and academic knowledge. As I recall, he was also fluent in Old Saxon, and Finnish languages, besides having extensive knowledge of Germanic languages and of course, Latin, too. Languages, mythology, history, religion, cultural studies, his academic mastery was vast. Furthermore, to top that off, he was also skilled in more archaic literature, songs, and poetry, too!

Absolutely brilliant! A world-class scholar, a man of honour and integrity, a Christian, and gentleman of kindness, generosity, and amazing creativity. What an outstanding occasion that would be!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I'm not sure I would be able to break out of fanboy mode long enough to ask him anything.

But DUDE! That would be an evening to remember! Life changing I bet.

I am still wondering why Wizards is listening to the vocal minority and why alienating the people who actually buy their products is a good idea.

Will it take them losing a lot of money for them to get it that they went down the wrong road.  Or even if that happens will they ever figure it out.

I don't know why they went the stupidity route.

Now that I am more familiar with the OSR I don't have to give WOTC a dime anymore.  And that makes e happy.

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 11, 2023, 02:01:29 PM
I am still wondering why Wizards is listening to the vocal minority and why alienating the people who actually buy their products is a good idea.

I haven't even seen any complaints about half-elves even from a vocal minority. I have seen a vocal minority complaining about orcs and half-orcs as the "savage primitive" trope -- and about PC ability adjustments as linking race to what job one is good at. So I agree there is a vocal minority like this, but I haven't seen them complaining about half-elves or stout halflings.

So this seems like pro-active reframing at most, though now it seems like they are walking back on Crawford's statement. Last week, they had this brief statement:

QuoteOptions for creating characters descended from more than one species are not being removed from Dungeons & Dragons.

Proposed adjustments to character origins have been open to the community since August 2022 and will be revised further: http://spr.ly/6019OyEdH

Source: https://mobile.twitter.com/DnDBeyond/status/1644119263286812672

That links to the D&DOne documents from last year, which has this sidebar:

QuoteCHILDREN OF DIFFERENT HUMANOID KINDS

Thanks to the magical workings of the multiverse, Humanoids of different kinds sometimes have children together. For example, folk who have a human parent and an orc or an elf parent are particularly common. Many other combinations are possible.

If you'd like to play the child of such a wondrous pairing, choose two Race options that are Humanoid to represent your parents. Then determine which of those Race options provides your game traits: Size, Speed, and special traits. You can then mix and match visual characteristics—color, ear shape, and the like—of the two options. For example, if your character has a halfling and a gnome parent, you might choose Halfling for your game traits and then decide that your character has the pointed ears that are characteristic of a gnome.

Finally, determine the average of the two options' Life Span traits to figure out how long your character might live. For example, a child of a halfling and a gnome has an average life span of 288 years.

Source: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/one-dnd/character-origins

I don't understand the need to get one's panties in a twist over racial overtones in older works, whether it's Tolkien or REH. But I also don't understand the desire to mythologize authors as completely free of the prevailing prejudices of their times.

Some of Tolkien's borrowings or similarities to Hebrew prayer are cringeworthy.
Baruk khazad! Khazad ai-menu! - Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!
Baruch atah Adonai, Eilohenu - We praise you, Eternal God

Did Tolkien mean that as racist? Of course not. Is that - at the very least - awkwardly close to cultural appropriation by 21st century standards. You bet your sweet bippy. Does it matter? NO. Because the fucking text was written over 80 years ago, not yesterday.

No need to be offended by it. Also no need to defend Tolkien's honor. He was a man of his time, and supremely talented. That is all.

Quote from: Festus on April 11, 2023, 05:41:54 PM
I don't understand the need to get one's panties in a twist over racial overtones in older works, whether it's Tolkien or REH. But I also don't understand the desire to mythologize authors as completely free of the prevailing prejudices of their times.

Some of Tolkien's borrowings or similarities to Hebrew prayer are cringeworthy.
Baruk khazad! Khazad ai-menu! - Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!
Baruch atah Adonai, Eilohenu - We praise you, Eternal God

Did Tolkien mean that as racist? Of course not. Is that - at the very least - awkwardly close to cultural appropriation by 21st century standards. You bet your sweet bippy. Does it matter? NO. Because the fucking text was written over 80 years ago, not yesterday.

No need to be offended by it. Also no need to defend Tolkien's honor. He was a man of his time, and supremely talented. That is all.

That doesn't exist, what's more, we used to call it Cultural Appreciation, as in appreciating a culture not your own. Can't be allowed anymore, the enlightened SJWs have decreed that Culture = Race and each race should stick to their own, except Whites, those have no culture.

Taking good stuff from other cultures is a good thing.

Quote from: SHARK on April 10, 2023, 03:32:33 PM
Every race of people have generalized traits and values and flaws.

What are they for your race?

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 11, 2023, 02:01:29 PM
I am still wondering why Wizards is listening to the vocal minority and why alienating the people who actually buy their products is a good idea.

They're not listening to them, they're listening to the same investment firms (Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street, etc.) who require ESG compliance to receive the working capital Hasbro needs to remain solvent. The same ESG that caused a 70% revenue drop at Budweiser over their Tranny Fluid marketing decision... yet they aren't backing down because ESG funds will cover the loss.

Someone leakes some of the evaluation criteria and corps get half their scoring under that criteria (50 of 100 points) for marketing to the "marginalized" and LGBT+ communities (and corps can be docked up to 25 points on a 100 point scale for offering any support to anyone opposed to the woke agenda, with support for or marketing to Christian organizations given as an example of what could dock you points).

Fail to comply and the big boys pull their money and initiate a run on your corporation's stocks (basically crashing its value because that's what happens when people see 15-25% of a corporation's stock getting sold off en masse).

On the other hand if you comply, the big boys will continue throwing other people's money (all the people whose pensions and investments are tied up in those big investment corps without their even knowing it) into your company to keep you afloat despite your losing money from paying customers.

In short, Hasbro/WotC doesn't need it's traditional customers. It just needs to keep the big boys happy. That means going hard woke so the ESG money will flow in to keep them from going broke.

It's absolutely as stupid as it sounds and it relies mostly on these megabanks being "too big to fail" (read as 'own enough politicians to get them to pass legislation to make the taxpayers pay for their failures') so they'll probably keep getting away with it until the bottom falls out (at which point they think they'll be able to escape to their private islands ahead of the screaming masses).

So that's why WotKKK expects to get away with all the Woke garbage they're shoveling into D&D.

Quote from: Anselyn on April 11, 2023, 07:21:44 PM

Quote from: SHARK on April 10, 2023, 03:32:33 PM
Every race of people have generalized traits and values and flaws.

What are they for your race?

Greetings!

Oh, well, I would say organized, industrious, independent, and individualistic.

Read some books on history, every people has generalized traits, values, flaws, and so forth.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Festus on April 11, 2023, 05:41:54 PM
I don't understand the need to get one's panties in a twist over racial overtones in older works, whether it's Tolkien or REH. But I also don't understand the desire to mythologize authors as completely free of the prevailing prejudices of their times.

Some of Tolkien's borrowings or similarities to Hebrew prayer are cringeworthy.
Baruk khazad! Khazad ai-menu! - Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!
Baruch atah Adonai, Eilohenu - We praise you, Eternal God

Did Tolkien mean that as racist? Of course not. Is that - at the very least - awkwardly close to cultural appropriation by 21st century standards. You bet your sweet bippy. Does it matter? NO. Because the fucking text was written over 80 years ago, not yesterday.

No need to be offended by it. Also no need to defend Tolkien's honor. He was a man of his time, and supremely talented. That is all.

I agree. To be clear - I greatly admire Tolkien as a writer and a person. I'm not offended by anything he said. As I said, I think he was quite progressive for his time. I thought the 1965 interview I linked earlier had a lot of fascinating stuff. I admire Robert E. Howard as well, and I'd love to talk with him.

But they were still just human people, not flawless angels. There could be things I disagree with them about.

Quote from: SHARK on April 10, 2023, 07:29:13 PM
Of course, if a person didn't read special notes that Tolkien wrote or discussed, you would never likely recognize anything much about Jews with the Dwarves of Tolkien's books. People need to be brainwashed and "Trained" to see any of this as racism or "probematic". It is all part of the Libtard's indoctrination. Amazing, I was reading and talking about Tolkien for *decades* and never heard anyone mention anything to do with racism or anti-semitism. Until recent years. Now, everything and everyone white is racist, of course.

This makes no sense. You claim that it requires brainwashing to see parallels between Jews and Dwarves in Tolkien's books. But it is Tolkien himself who in his own words made it clear, and he said that he intentionally made the dwarven language based on Hebrew, and that there were many other similarities. Do you think Tolkien was brainwashed by wokists?

I think one thing that makes the parallel less clear is that Tolkien started writing in the 1930s, prior to the revelations about the Nazis and the Holocaust. For those of us who grew up after WWII, our picture of Jewish people was radically changed by that. So it's sometimes hard to recognize attitudes about Jewish people from earlier times. I was the same way. I didn't pick up on the Jewish parallels among dwarves until I read about the letters and interviews I think in the early 2000s.

I think it is instructive to look at Wagner's Ring of the Niebelung and its dwarves Alberich and Mime -- who were often coded as Jewish in early 1900s productions. Tolkien's dwarves were heroic and positive compared to the villainous dwarves of Wagner. There are many points of similarity with Wagner, but I think Tolkien was trying to reinvent and readapt the same source material as Wagner. As part of that, along with many other differences, he created a more positive picture of Jewish-like figures.

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 11, 2023, 07:26:50 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 11, 2023, 02:01:29 PM
I am still wondering why Wizards is listening to the vocal minority and why alienating the people who actually buy their products is a good idea.

They're not listening to them, they're listening to the same investment firms (Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street, etc.) who require ESG compliance to receive the working capital Hasbro needs to remain solvent. The same ESG that caused a 70% revenue drop at Budweiser over their Tranny Fluid marketing decision... yet they aren't backing down because ESG funds will cover the loss.

Someone leakes some of the evaluation criteria and corps get half their scoring under that criteria (50 of 100 points) for marketing to the "marginalized" and LGBT+ communities (and corps can be docked up to 25 points on a 100 point scale for offering any support to anyone opposed to the woke agenda, with support for or marketing to Christian organizations given as an example of what could dock you points).

Fail to comply and the big boys pull their money and initiate a run on your corporation's stocks (basically crashing its value because that's what happens when people see 15-25% of a corporation's stock getting sold off en masse).

On the other hand if you comply, the big boys will continue throwing other people's money (all the people whose pensions and investments are tied up in those big investment corps without their even knowing it) into your company to keep you afloat despite your losing money from paying customers.

In short, Hasbro/WotC doesn't need it's traditional customers. It just needs to keep the big boys happy. That means going hard woke so the ESG money will flow in to keep them from going broke.

It's absolutely as stupid as it sounds and it relies mostly on these megabanks being "too big to fail" (read as 'own enough politicians to get them to pass legislation to make the taxpayers pay for their failures') so they'll probably keep getting away with it until the bottom falls out (at which point they think they'll be able to escape to their private islands ahead of the screaming masses).

So that's why WotKKK expects to get away with all the Woke garbage they're shoveling into D&D.

Greetings!

Yep, Chris. WOTC doesn't need their traditional fans. WOTC clearly wants to cultivate a new kind of audience. Oh well. WOTC can drown in napalm. My campaigns will still have all kinds of mixed race characters,--including HALF ELVES and HALF ORCS whether WOTC or their new Woke fanbase likes it or not.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jhkim on April 11, 2023, 08:15:30 PM
I didn't pick up on the Jewish parallels among dwarves until I read about the letters and interviews I think in the early 2000s.

I didn't pick up on the Jewish parallels when I first read Tolkien in junior high, or a second, third, fourth time in high school and college. But I've been married to a Jewish woman for 36 years and after learning a bit of Hebrew and a fair number of the prayers, the linguistic parallels became obvious. And there's nothing wrong with being inspired by Hebrew sounds and syntax, especially given Tolkien was a scholarly linguist himself. But lifting prayers is iffy IMO. Doesn't keep me from loving his work.

I haven't read the letters you're referring to but they sound interesting.

Howard and Lovecraft were straight up racists. From what I've read, Wagner was as well. Not unusual for men of their time. Again, doesn't keep me from loving their work.

Quote from: SHARK on April 11, 2023, 07:52:18 PM

Quote from: Anselyn on April 11, 2023, 07:21:44 PM

Quote from: SHARK on April 10, 2023, 03:32:33 PM
Every race of people have generalized traits and values and flaws.

What are they for your race?

Oh, well, I would say organized, industrious, independent, and individualistic.

That sounds like a list of positive traits. At least, I think that you would think that all of those are positive.
So what are the flaws of your race?  Is it hard for one to be self-critical to see the flaws of your race?

Try reading historiography _and_ history?