Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1122996Remember the Nibovian wife controversy?

Nope. This is the first I've heard of it.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1122996Before you start attacking me as an evil SJW trying to destroy your fun, I'm not saying that we should ban all the monsters whose shtick amounts to "present as female and predate on men using seduction." I do think we have an over-saturation of such monsters in gaming bestiaries and a surprisingly lack of monsters that do the same thing with the genders inverted, even though both kinds of monsters exist in world mythology and for many of the same reasons. E.g. the incubus, the satyr, the kishi, the shape-shifting alligator man of the Ozarks, etc.

Coincidentally my party had to kill a Kishi last week.  The poor bastard did not want to give up the Angel that he was going to eat for dinner.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1123035The Twitter clowns would cry about a monster that preyed on female PCs too. It would be total muhsoggyknees to have such a monster in any game because it would "penalize" players who chose female PCs. There is no end to the dumb.

Yup. This bears repeating: you cannot appease the social justice mob. If you don't write about 'peoples of color', you're whitewashing; if you DO write about them, you're appropriating.

The only winning move is not to play against them, and focus on generating quality.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1123035The Twitter clowns would cry about a monster that preyed on female PCs too. It would be total muhsoggyknees to have such a monster in any game because it would "penalize" players who chose female PCs. There is no end to the dumb.

It gets worse. Paizo claims to be really progressive, yet they're the ones who are pushing creepy sexual predators, objectification of women, and repurposed racist rhetoric in their bestiaries. The ogres literally rape people to death (wtf?) and even one drop of ogre blood pollutes your bloodline forever (which sounds exactly like slaveowner rhetoric btw), sirens are all-female woman-headed birds who have to seduce humanoid men to reproduce (realistically this would kill her), the thriae are all-female bee women who seduce humanoid men to reproduce and put on strip shows for them too (wtf?), satyrs are only born from rapes (wtf?), the jorogumo seduces men and after sex lays her eggs inside them (this doesn't occur in the original myths, where jorogumo are not actually female but ordinary spiders who leveled up), and dear god please make it stop.

I had no problem with that creepy fetish bullshit when it was in Monster Girl Encyclopedia, but that was explicitly porn. I'm not interested in having the writers' creepy fetishes shoehorned into tabletop games. I got more than a lifetime of that bullshit by reading Chris Fields.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1123036Nope. This is the first I've heard of it.

It didn't blow up, then. Either not a lot of people cared, or they were already used to it after reading Paizo's creepy fetish monsters.

Quote from: Shasarak;1123044Coincidentally my party had to kill a Kishi last week.  The poor bastard did not want to give up the Angel that he was going to eat for dinner.

I thought Kishi preyed on mortals? Where'd it capture an angel?

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1123082Yup. This bears repeating: you cannot appease the social justice mob. If you don't write about 'peoples of color', you're whitewashing; if you DO write about them, you're appropriating.

The only winning move is not to play against them, and focus on generating quality.

You can generate quality and still write about "diversity" at the same time. All too often I see writers using the outrage mob as an excuse to never write about any kind of diversity, even going out of their way to avoid including any.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1123131I thought Kishi preyed on mortals? Where'd it capture an angel?

The Angel was summoned to find some medicinal herbs in the Mwangi Jungle and unfortunately encountered the Kishi.

Fortunately for the Angel, the Kishi encountered the party who took a dim view of trying to eat Angels.

Shasarak, I can't believe allowed your players to wallow in their narrow minded view of Kishi-Angel relations. And their only solution was violence! I'm sure Evil Hat has a re-education PDF to help them evolve from this teaching moment.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1123131Paizo claims to be really progressive, yet they're the ones who are pushing creepy sexual predators, objectification of women, and repurposed racist rhetoric in their bestiaries.

How.not.surprising. The creepiest fucks are always the self-appointed "moral guardians."

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1123131All too often I see writers using the outrage mob as an excuse to never write about any kind of diversity, even going out of their way to avoid including any.

What kind of sick monster are you!! Don't you know that including diversity is cultural appropriation! Plus you're not allowed to write about that culture or ethnicity or gender or sexual preference or whatever unless YOU are a member of that group.

Don't force the good people to cancel you!!!

Quote from: Spinachcat;1123161Shasarak, I can't believe allowed your players to wallow in their narrow minded view of Kishi-Angel relations. And their only solution was violence! I'm sure Evil Hat has a re-education PDF to help them evolve from this teaching moment.




How.not.surprising. The creepiest fucks are always the self-appointed "moral guardians."




What kind of sick monster are you!! Don't you know that including diversity is cultural appropriation! Plus you're not allowed to write about that culture or ethnicity or gender or sexual preference or whatever unless YOU are a member of that group.

Don't force the good people to cancel you!!!

The moderate left recognizes that the far left gets out of hand. Here's an article criticizing how people mistreat ownvoices to the detriment of authors: https://foreverandeverly.wordpress.com/2018/05/27/ownvoices-pressure-discussion/

OMG, you linked to an article saying it's ok to write about people different from yourself!! Where do you find such Neo-Nazi propaganda???

What has this forum become???

Quote from: Spinachcat;1123207OMG, you linked to an article saying it's ok to write about people different from yourself!! Where do you find such Neo-Nazi propaganda???

What has this forum become???

Here's another article saying that:

QuoteYou should be writing your characters as if each one is a fully fleshed out human being. Never include a character in a piece to fill some sort of quota, act as a token for a larger group, or act as a mouthpiece for large sections of the population. Diverse characters don't need a "reason" to exist in the story at all, as diverse people don't need a reason to exist in real life.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1123283'Diverse characters don't need a "reason" to exist in the story at all, as diverse people don't need a reason to exist in real life.'

Except that's not true. A story is a constructed work of art. Every character in the story is there for a reason; that's what separates art from real life. Even if the reason is only to make the story resemble a certain kind of real life, that's still a conscious, deliberate, aesthetic reason.

It's when the reason is anything other than "I wanted to write about/from the POV of this character because I thought it would be interesting/amusing/entertaining/moving" that you get into the browbeating.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1123290Except that's not true. A story is a constructed work of art. Every character in the story is there for a reason; that's what separates art from real life. Even if the reason is only to make the story resemble a certain kind of real life, that's still a conscious, deliberate, aesthetic reason.

It's when the reason is anything other than "I wanted to write about/from the POV of this character because I thought it would be interesting/amusing/entertaining/moving" that you get into the browbeating.

If we're being pedantic, then yes. Fiction is by definition the product of the writer's intent. That's the basis of the Thermian argument.

I assume Mo Black's intent was to rebut the surprisingly common attitude of being arbitrarily anti-diversity. I myself can't recall meeting these kinds of people.

In any case, I would argue cynically and pragmatically that adding diversity is a useful marketing tool and that it can have psychological effects on minority audiences that make them happier and more productive.

But yes, the primary reason I personally like diversity in fantasy is for the cool fantasy counterpart culture factor. When you just throw black characters into generic faux Europe, it feels to me like erasing African culture. That's why I'm fascinated by the Sword & Soul genre.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1123295hat's why I'm fascinated by the Sword & Soul genre.

I didn't know there was a name for it now. What works would you recommend as good introductory examples?

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1123296I didn't know there was a name for it now. What works would you recommend as good introductory examples?

The anthology "Griots" is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Griots-Anthology-Milton-J-Davis/dp/0980084288

EDIT: Also, this article lists some prominent examples: https://afrofantasy.net/2015/04/15/in-defense-of-sword-and-soul/

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1123296I didn't know there was a name for it now. What works would you recommend as good introductory examples?

Imaro's definitely worth reading.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1123283Here's another article saying that:

That entire article - and all like them - are completely negated by the American Dirt controversy. The American Dirt author thought she was being a good little liberal, but thanks to the newest purity tests, she and her book (and probably career) got pureed in the blender by the same people demanding "diversity".

Now the mob has tasted blood, why would they stop?