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Captain Invictus posted:
but it should have been Squee 
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Sep 15, 2020 14:38
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Mox Hombre posted:rich does have a point though. when western corporations do things like this, their main goal is almost always to not be perceived as racist instead of actually doing something that helps oppressed groups. that's because that protects their bottom line and avoids bad press. so ironically, their attempts at representation are actually just placating their mostly white audience. Ya, corporations haven’t pivoted to being “progressive” over the past few years because they developed a conscience, they just realized that there’s more people who are fine seeing two gay guys kiss in a Home Depot commercial than aren’t, and positioning themselves as woke gets them a ton of cache with moms and nurses on Facebook. Regardless of if they deserved to get banned or weren’t actually racist or whatever, banning the cards was the bare minimum they could do to get people off their back without having to address any of the issues being brought up, and it worked for the most part.
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Sep 15, 2020 14:42
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fadam posted:Regardless of if they deserved to get banned or weren’t actually racist or whatever, banning the cards was the bare minimum they could do to get people off their back without having to address any of the issues being brought up, and it worked for the most part.
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Sep 15, 2020 14:49
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Smallpox should be banned though, how loving callous do you have to be to use a real-world disease that killed more than 300 million people and was used as an agent of genocide.
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Sep 15, 2020 14:54
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fadam posted:Ya, corporations haven’t pivoted to being “progressive” over the past few years because they developed a conscience, they just realized that there’s more people who are fine seeing two gay guys kiss in a Home Depot commercial than aren’t, and positioning themselves as woke gets them a ton of cache with moms and nurses on Facebook. This is absolutely the correct take. When these cards were banned, it wasn't because WOTC were suddenly stricken with a conscience about the moral weight of their cards from 20 years ago. People had been side-eyeing those cards--especially the unfortunate 1488 multiverse id--for years. The only thing that spurred them into action was the post that went viral and made a new crop of people pay attention to Invoke Prejudice. But that was literally a postscript tacked on to the main piece. Several pages of accounts of systemic bias at WOTC headquarters with a little stinger of "and to top it all off, look at this card!" The fact that they rushed to do damage control on the stinger but were silent on the rest says everything we need to know.
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Sep 15, 2020 15:00
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I studied Islamic law in undergrad under a major Shia scholar, probably as prestigious as exists in America, and for a while afterwards I got really annoying about misuse of the term Jihad (“it just means struggle! It’s not violent most of the time!”) eventually I just gave up. People’s perceptions matter more than the truth and those aren’t changing most of the time
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Sep 15, 2020 15:01
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Just do another Persian / Islamic Mythology set. Rocs, djinn, island-sized whales, wandering wise men, Zoroastrian dragons, nefarious bandits, what-have-you. Set it in or around a fantasy Silk Road, the One Safe Point Of Passage between great cities in a world where everything is big and scary. It's not hard to do representation, WotC. You've done it before.
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Sep 15, 2020 15:08
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What's the middle east of Dominaria like anyway
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Sep 15, 2020 15:17
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Froghammer posted:Just do another Persian / Islamic Mythology set. Rocs, djinn, island-sized whales, wandering wise men, Zoroastrian dragons, nefarious bandits, what-have-you. Set it in or around a fantasy Silk Road, the One Safe Point Of Passage between great cities in a world where everything is big and scary.
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Sep 15, 2020 15:20
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Tibalt posted:Reprint cards with flanking in Standard you cowards.
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Sep 15, 2020 15:21
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A cool thing about Daretti is that canonically he rides around in his weird little spider ball that he built for himself because his legs got blown off and differently-abled magic players have sort of attached themselves to him as the differently-abled mascot for MtG and folks in wheelchairs cosplay him. It’s awesome.
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Sep 15, 2020 15:37
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BioThermo posted:Smallpox should be banned though, how loving callous do you have to be to use a real-world disease that killed more than 300 million people and was used as an agent of genocide. This comes off as really sanctimonious; guns, swords and spears have been used as tools to facilitate plenty of genocide, should any those or any fantasy equivalent be removed too? Smallpox was a play on words for the original card Pox, the name of which is a word that can both refer to the disease and a devastating curse you put on someone you don’t like. There are a few reasons they don’t do those kinds of real world connections anymore (one was moving from a lot of the old occasional medieval stylings into a more techno-sorcery blend) but Smallpox as a whole is a pretty harmless riff on an old card. TheKingofSprings fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Sep 15, 2020 |
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Sep 15, 2020 15:38
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the original arabian nights included a ton of extremely obscure references to the actual Arabian Nights story, like Magnetic Mountain. let's see that again. except the actual Arabian Nights is cartoonishly racist, so please no Monstrous Blackamoor cards
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Sep 15, 2020 16:50
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Bake Into A Pie referencing the obscure but excellent Grimm Fairy Tale “The Juniper Tree” made me happy and I hope we get to see more stuff like that at some point, like a Magic take on the one with the half-human, half-hedgehog boy who plays the bagpipes and owns a successful pig farm
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Sep 15, 2020 17:12
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Captain Invictus posted:Ah, the Nico Robin approach. just change her skin color and hope nobody notices she's not supposed to be white. Slobad was one briefly at the end of 5th dawn, but gave up the spark that got transferred into him.
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Sep 15, 2020 17:37
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vegetables posted:Bake Into A Pie referencing the obscure but excellent Grimm Fairy Tale “The Juniper Tree” made me happy and I hope we get to see more stuff like that at some point, like a Magic take on the one with the half-human, half-hedgehog boy who plays the bagpipes and owns a successful pig farm Yeah I'm down with more Hans my Hedgehog content. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iK7bY-ROWY
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Sep 15, 2020 17:41
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TheKingofSprings posted:Jihad and Crusade were overreaches with only the barest, most surface level thought put into them and both should be reversed. The card Jihad depicts a genocidal mission of military domination. It is in fact exactly the worst way of presenting the concept of Jihad and is extremely hosed up. Some of what Rich says is absolutely true wrt this all being an advertising ploy but he doesn't speak for Muslims and the card Jihad is not okay.
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Sep 15, 2020 18:08
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I think if Crusade had never been printed with art of literal knights hospitaler on it it would be fine, but referencing an actual holy war that happened to real people is a bad idea in a game. It's like when White Wolf printed that vampires are in charge of the mass killing of gay men in Chechnya, you can't just use the actual suffering of humans like that in your game. Make something up.
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Sep 15, 2020 18:17
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Chamale posted:Invoke Prejudice and Pradesh Gypsies absolutely deserve to be banned. Imprison and Cleanse are reasonable to ban. Crusade, Jihad, and Stone-Throwing Devils seem like odd choices, and I wonder if they actually had a focus group they consulted to determine if these cards were harmful or if they just had some staffer flip through old cards looking for problems. Stone throwing devils is an actual insult for middle eastern ppl, a ref to them stoning ppl to death bc barbarian pearl clutching like white ppl didn't quarter anyone etc Also now is a kick rear end time to talk about how minorities aren't monoliths and that one Romani bro on reddit doesn't get to speak for every Romani alive! I mean I'm happy he gets spared the pain and stress of a microagression but it doesn't mean its cool to call him a gypsy now
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Sep 15, 2020 18:41
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:I studied Islamic law in undergrad under a major Shia scholar, probably as prestigious as exists in America, and for a while afterwards I got really annoying about misuse of the term Jihad (“it just means struggle! It’s not violent most of the time!”) eventually I just gave up. People’s perceptions matter more than the truth and those aren’t changing most of the time yeah exactly, perceptions are key here. events can become symbolic and then carry a negative connotation to a large majority -- as in, offensive. That's that.
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Sep 15, 2020 18:53
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People are gonna point out that we also have the whitewashed (sorry for that word) fun version of pirates when in fact real pirates were a bunch of murderous rapist thieves; similarly, vikings, etc. The difference is that there are still victims and entire populations suffering from the lingering effects of the crusades, w/r/t the permanent crisis of christian/muslim conflict in the middle east. I don't think the right approach for WotC - or any other corporation - to try to internally analyze the degree to which a real-world historical or religious or cultural reference may be offensive an to whom, just based on designers reading wikipedia or something. It's much better to just ask experts and the people who might be affected and listen to your audience and if there's serious concerns, avoid the area regardless. There's an infinite design space, you don't need to put the word "crusade" on a card or reference the crusades, and the game is not irreparably harmed by removing that card or its name. And it's also important to understand that people within a specific ethnic or religious or disability category etc. aren't always going to mutually agree about what is or isn't offensive. Not every Muslim person is going to be offended by Crusade. Pointing to someone who says "I'm in <x group> and I don't find this offensive" is not sufficient to establish that what you've got is a-OK. Case in point: the Washington Football Team has finally dropped the offensive Redskins monicker, but for the last decade they've pointed to the statements made by a tiny number of people of native american heritage saying "We're OK with this name" as cover for keeping the name. That was always bullshit. Does this make things difficult for you as a design team to know where the gray areas are? Absolutely. That's why you as a company hire or consult with one or more experts, and don't treat that consultant as just a job you announce on twitter that you have in order to earn kudos from your customers before sidelining and effectively shutting out of your processes, you have to actually listen to their recommendations and incorporate them into your design process at every level and maintain that position indefinitely. And you're still going to sometimes make the wrong decision so you need to be ready to listen when voices are raised saying "hey we find this offensive and here's why" and be responsive to that. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Sep 15, 2020 |
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Sep 15, 2020 18:57
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Yeah but they're not gonna do that so enjoy the needless banning of old cards I guess. That dude's post was very well written and not a perspective that I had considered before but it makes perfect sense. Unfortunately nuance is not in the budget at WOTC or Hasbro, so better luck next time I guess.
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Sep 15, 2020 19:00
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That dude's post was well written, I agree. Wizards definitely was wrong to ban Jihad on the grounds that it was "racist." The right approach is to foster a conversation about what's controversial with the card, and ensure that what Wizards and the Magic game is doing is representing real-world religious concepts in a unbiased, non-bigoted way. I don't know if it's possible to do that with a card called Jihad. It's absolutely correct to point out that, within Islam, the word Jihad doesn't necessarily refer to violence and definitely does not refer to terrorism. That's a nuanced conversation though, and a playing card with a name and an image and maybe a few words of flavor text isn't always capable of conveying nuanced, historically and culturally accurate and sensitive meaning about a controversial subject that is highly sensitive and important to millions of people. Wizards for drat sure could have made the attempt, though, given the card already exists.
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Sep 15, 2020 19:08
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is now a good time to mention that rich shay got hellsau banned for playing gleemox i doesnt have anything to do with this, just a really funny modo moment
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Sep 15, 2020 19:21
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It's worth noting that WotC banned the group of cards not just for racism, but also for cultural insensitivity. https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?name=Jihad Rich Shay is mis-characterizing WotC when he says they banned all these cards for being "racist."
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Sep 15, 2020 19:55
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"No guys really, my black friend said I have the N word pass so I can say it, promise"
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Sep 15, 2020 20:00
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No he isn't? He explicitly points out that their rationale for banning it was a blanket assumption of "cultural insensitivity" with pretty much zero understanding or even consideration of the culture that was supposedly offended. It's corporate empty speak. They could've hired consultants or even just more minorities on staff and actually thought about why those cards are problematic. The problem isn't the word "Jihad", it is how it is used in western cultures, but the US specifically, to demonize Middle Eastern people and perpetuate Islamophobia. The kneejerk reaction is the problem and emblematic of why it's so hard to deal with this stuff in a lasting, tangible way - people (and companies) are more concerned about being called racist than doing anything to address the systemic racism within the actions they take or decisions they make every day. Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Sep 15, 2020 |
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Sep 15, 2020 20:00
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His article says they initially just said "racism" and then later changed the term and explanation as "racism or cultural sensitivity" and explained more, but he says their initial "racism" line is still a problem for him and explains why. Here's the article linked by that tweet, for posterity: https://medium.com/@rich_87400/hasbros-crusade-against-representation-f20b21f65d64
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Sep 15, 2020 20:04
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Mat Cauthon posted:No he isn't? He explicitly points out that their rationale for banning it was a blanket assumption of "cultural insensitivity" with pretty much zero understanding or even consideration of the culture that was supposedly offended. The usage of the word in the card in question is like exactly the worst loving idea of Jihad you could possibly have. The card literally is about a genocidal military mission.
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Sep 15, 2020 20:10
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Sampatrick posted:The usage of the word in the card in question is like exactly the worst loving idea of Jihad you could possibly have. The card literally is about a genocidal military mission. He directly addresses this. posted:The Problems with Banning Jihad It's an extremely well made argument and even considers that the framing of the concept as it exists on the card (which is problematic) in the context of larger issues.
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Sep 15, 2020 20:22
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Time posted:is now a good time to mention that rich shay got hellsau banned for playing gleemox Hellsau knew what he was doing. It was really funny that it was Rich of all people who called him out.
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Sep 15, 2020 20:23
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Sickening posted:Hellsau knew what he was doing. It was really funny that it was Rich of all people who called him out. For sure
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Sep 15, 2020 20:29
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Leperflesh posted:His article says they initially just said "racism" and then later changed the term and explanation as "racism or cultural sensitivity" and explained more, but he says their initial "racism" line is still a problem for him and explains why. I mean, WotC updated their ban article on Depictions of Racism in Magic to expand from "racist" to "racist or culturally offensive" in the same day. I'm not going to hold it against WotC for having the correct instinct but using clumsy language initially (the title of the ban article of course remains imprecise). Rich Shay is free to do as he wishes.
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Sep 15, 2020 20:46
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Mat Cauthon posted:He directly addresses this. He absolutely does not address the specifics of why the card Jihad is so horrible. The meaning used by the card and the way it is framed on the card is exactly the incredibly militaristic version that he himself says is wrong. The card literally refers to Jihad as a military endeavor that does not end until there are no more of a specific color of creature. Once again, Rich Shay is not a Muslim and he does not really have any place saying it's not actually bad.
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Sep 15, 2020 21:12
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Yeah he has his own perspective as a person of middle eastern heritage and what I said earlier applies: you listen to many voices, not just one, and don't expect they'll all agree. His opinion is valid, whether or not it's representative, or determinative of the "right approach", or points out the direction that Wizards ultimately should take. The problem is that Wizards didn't, and still doesn't really, have the credibility to convince everyone that they're capable of that nuance. It's going to take years of doing better than this, to establish that credibility. For the record I think it's fine that Jihad got banned.
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Sep 15, 2020 21:23
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The whole banning thing is stupid for one simple reason: all the cards banned are terribad. No one in the history of Magic has ever, ever considered putting Pradesh Gypsies or Imprison in their deck. The only cards that were ever borderline playable are Crusade and Jihad, with emphasis on 'were'. Six months from now, little Hubie will be scrolling through the list of formats and see Vintage/Legacy, look at the banlists, and click the links, and see Invoke Prejudice for the first time, and think "Hey wow that's offensive! What were they thinking?"
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Sep 15, 2020 21:50
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I don't remember Pradesh Gypsies being on the list the first time, did I not notice compared to Crusade and Invoke Prejudice, mechanically unique game pieces, being excised, or is it Mandela Effect and my previous universal stream was not as generous? Either way, same response as back when this dropped: "the least you could do" is not a goal wotc. Now kill Lavinia off.
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Sep 15, 2020 22:13
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Sampatrick posted:He absolutely does not address the specifics of why the card Jihad is so horrible. The meaning used by the card and the way it is framed on the card is exactly the incredibly militaristic version that he himself says is wrong. The card literally refers to Jihad as a military endeavor that does not end until there are no more of a specific color of creature. Once again, Rich Shay is not a Muslim and he does not really have any place saying it's not actually bad. Maybe you should read the article. Rich's main problem is that calling Jihad racist is itself racist since there are people like him that are the same race that aren't Muslim, often at great personal expense.
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Sep 15, 2020 22:54
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Rich Shay’s open letter to WotC on the stack... response... https://twitter.com/bass_wakil/status/1305860302093905926?s=21 https://twitter.com/bass_wakil/status/1305982284466708481?s=21
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Sep 15, 2020 23:00
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Some Goon posted:Maybe you should read the article. Rich's main problem is that calling Jihad racist is itself racist since there are people like him that are the same race that aren't Muslim, often at great personal expense. and then they changed it to instead say racist or culturally insensitive because it was a typo and not reflective of what they actually meant.
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Sep 15, 2020 23:02
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