Jump to content

Becca Scott


Recommended Posts

5 minutes ago, muggins said:

TBH, this smacks of concern trolling. 'Forced diversity' as ranted about previously in the thread is just diversity. Fans are still losing their minds over Warhammer Adventures, black female stormcast in the comics, and the ever-present specter of female space marines. GW might know that their fanbase is more easily upset about modern day representation but praising them for taking it slow to not upset the snowflakes seems... off.

When people blast their diapers about Marvel or Star Wars or Ghostbusters or Oceans 11 or any of the other outrage building machines (Warhammer Adventures) they absolutely are doing it because of race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual affiliation. Giving them cover and excusing their behavior only serves to empower them.

Quite the opposite, I'm not out to troll anybody. I'm not praising them for taking things slowly, I'm praising them for not making a huge deal out of it, just making it appear totally normal - which it totally is. Of course there are people that are losing their minds about stories aimed at children featuring a black Stormcast female. Those people need to go and take themselves for a serious think about what their issues really are, and they'd certainly best not start trying to proclaim it's unacceptable to have a black child in a fantasy children's book whilst in my presence, because I will be the first to have a chronic sense of humour failure.

On the flipside, it is absolutely possible to go about forcing an issue, either liberal or conservative. Films go about imparting a political idea all the time, and the most successful ones do it in such a way that you don't notice it's happened. Das Boot, the German submarine film, is tremendously anti-war without having to tell you that. It made you sympathise with the U-Boat crew, and despise the futility of war. Brokeback Mountain did a fantastic job at portraying homosexuality in a pretty tragic storyline that made you question people's attitudes to it, including my own. The Last Jedi, however, proved how utterly wrong you can get things if you try and design a story around a political issue using people's childhood heroes in one of the most popular settings that has ever been created. My wife was the first to point out how unbelievably wrong the whole film felt. 

I hope by this point it is abundantly clear how much of a proponent I am of diversifying entertainment, especially wargames, and yet I cannot express how much I detest the Last Jedi for the way it went about things.

A majority of us want to see more diversity in the hobby, because it gives a wider audience of people something or someone to identify with. Females want to see female models, not because they hate blokes and want to destroy the world, but because they are a female and can relate to those characters. A black kid noticing a new character that matches their identity in a new book series will have someone to relate to, and that's nothing but good. 

Now, imagine you've spent your whole life relating to one particular character, you've invested in their story, their background. Someone comes a long and totally changes their ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender. That's a real character shift, and it's going to hit some people in the feels, and they're going to be a bit resentful. Turning this into hatred and vitriol is unacceptable, but so is dismissing any negative reaction to such a change with claims 'trolling' or claiming some kind of racism/sexism.

FYI, I couldn't care less what size, shape, colour or gender the next [insert superhero here] is. But some people do. Despite not caring myself, using a bit of empathy, you can at least understand why people are unhappy about their characters being messed with. Seeing things from other people's points of view is becoming an increasingly rare skill nowadays, and if people did it a bit more we'd have infinitely less arguments from both sides.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 245
  • Created
  • Last Reply

@Caladancid I don't think you have read my posts if you think I want mathematically precise race proportions or transsexual Fyreslayers. I want more of what GW is doing now- evening out the imbalances, making changes, adding diversity- and I have stated as much. Problematic elements like Wych Aelves become less of a problem when they are one aspect of depiction of women in Warhammz, as opposed to one of the only depictions of women in Warhammz. 

Edit: what I am really, really tired of, though, is this strawman reductio ad absurdum argument that, because people want more women, or people of colour, or whatever, represented in something, that we ought to be awaiting (as claimed, breathlessly) blonde lady-Orruks or some other silliness.

The Idoneth release is great. Some of the sculpts are women. No fuss, no bother- they're just there. Like they are in real life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, AlphaKennyThing said:

Now, imagine you've spent your whole life relating to one particular character, you've invested in their story, their background. Someone comes a long and totally changes their ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender. That's a real character shift, and it's going to hit some people in the feels, and they're going to be a bit resentful. Turning this into hatred and vitriol is unacceptable, but so is dismissing any negative reaction to such a change with claims 'trolling' or claiming some kind of racism/sexism.

FYI, I couldn't care less what size, shape, colour or gender the next [insert superhero here] is. But some people do. Despite not caring myself, using a bit of empathy, you can at least understand why people are unhappy about their characters being messed with. Seeing things from other people's points of view is becoming an increasingly rare skill nowadays, and if people did it a bit more we'd have infinitely less arguments from both sides.

 

I can empathize with a lot of things but I don't empathize with people throwing tantrums because the Ghostbusters are female or they made a female Jedi who is the main character. Not gonna do it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Aryann said:

Please, at least spare AoS from political correctness’ evil. It’s already all over the place and it would be nice to have at least one bastion of normality. Do we really, I mean REALLY want AoS to be influenced by politics ? It’s just a hobby. Very exclusive hobby in terms of who plays it. Will it make our hobby any better if from now on every single army had to contain a representative of every race, sex, orientation and religion? Do we need Ironjawz minis with long blond hair? Do we want transsexual Fyreslayers? How about every 1/3 of Idoneth Deepkin to be asian, every 1/3 to be black and every 1/3 to be white? Will it make the game better? How is that? For whom?

I’m ok (really) with making thematic armies that represent people from many backgrounds but when I hear that EVERY army should be opened to diversity I’m just sad. After all, it’s a fantasy miniatures game. Not a contest for which game has the most whites, asian, blacks, metro & homosexuals, man & women and so on.

Nobody in this thread said that we want this. We all agreed that we don't want forced diversity as others already pointed out. Add diversity and difference where it makes sense and don't add it so things that doesn't make sense, while there might also be areas, where it would make sense to think about adding diversity.

Also everyone in this thread seems to agree that they don't want something to be removed. Adding diversity doesn't have to mean that you have to take it to the extreme. And I also don't think any person that is a person who is pro-diversity will ever force something on others if they don't want to. 

I often have the feeling that people fight against invisible walls at this moment. And I think most of the people in this thread also acknowledge what GW is doing at the moment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Infeston said:

I often have the feeling that people fight against invisible walls at this moment. And I think most of the people in this thread also acknowledge what GW is doing at the moment.

People are just afraid, is all. They see what is going on in other popular media and fear that GW will take the same route. Thankfully, we have no reason to believe that this is going to be the case anytime soon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, Aryann said:

Please, at least spare AoS from political correctness’ evil. It’s already all over the place and it would be nice to have at least one bastion of normality. Do we really, I mean REALLY want AoS to be influenced by politics ? It’s just a hobby. Very exclusive hobby in terms of who plays it. Will it make our hobby any better if from now on every single army had to contain a representative of every race, sex, orientation and religion? Do we need Ironjawz minis with long blond hair? Do we want transsexual Fyreslayers? How about every 1/3 of Idoneth Deepkin to be asian, every 1/3 to be black and every 1/3 to be white? Will it make the game better? How is that? For whom?

Why is political correctness evil? Political correctness is just an informal and somewhat clumsy social concept whereby we try and consider our language and actions in order that we don't offend or exclude other people. While I'm sure we can find examples where things have gone awry it has ultimately been a huge force for good in the world.

As has been stated multiple times in this thread, everything is political whether you like it or not. To take a stand one way or the other, or even to just ignore it is to make a political choice. We live in a time where people are rightly questioning how they are represented in media, and the long term impacts that representation has on how groups are perceived. Almost all moves towards making AoS a more diverse place can only be a good thing for the hobby and warhammer universe. If you really can't see any benefit, then ask yourself does it make it worse, and why does it make it worse? So what if they decided to add transgender dwarfs? Would that really ruin dwarfs? would it ruin any future head canon you tried to make for your army? Would it limit the ways in which you could play or model or paint?

Not that anybody has even come close to suggesting some of the things you are worried about. GW are moving towards a more inclusive universe at a nice pace and I look forward to seeing what they do in the future.

P.S. I really don't get why comic book fans complain when a character they've supposedly grown up with and loved is radically re-imagined. If you have never seen a comic book character radically re-imagined then do you actually read many comics? How many alternate universe, bizarro-versions, animal-versions or zombie-takes do you have to ignore before going on to be angered about a change in skin colour?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, CaptainNippon said:

People are just afraid, is all. They see what is going on in other popular media and fear that GW will take the same route. Thankfully, we have no reason to believe that this is going to be the case anytime soon.

I wanted to avoid this topic and essentially this is what it comes down to. I think Alpha kenny is on the ball GW are doing it the right way in my opinion, other media? Not so much. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Couple things:

1. "Don't come in here bringing your politics" is a political stance.  I (and others) have said it before in this thread, I'll (and we'll) probably have to say it again.  It is a political stance in favour of the status quo.

2. While interesting, all discussion of army-man backpack loads is moot when your (human) models are armed with wildly disproportionately large weapons that even a circus strongman wouldn't be able to wield (because properly scaled weapons don't look right at 1/72 scale).  Whether real world men and women have different average carrying capacities, and how those averages compare to any average real world military equipment requirements is an odd hill to die on when no real world humans would be able to handle the gear our models are given anyway.  A sword that is 240% too heavy for an average man soldier to carry is not any better than a sword that is 250% too heavy for an average woman soldier to carry.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

37 minutes ago, Kirjava13 said:

@Caladancid I don't think you have read my posts if you think I want mathematically precise race proportions or transsexual Fyreslayers. I want more of what GW is doing now- evening out the imbalances, making changes, adding diversity- and I have stated as much. Problematic elements like Wych Aelves become less of a problem when they are one aspect of depiction of women in Warhammz, as opposed to one of the only depictions of women in Warhammz. 

Edit: what I am really, really tired of, though, is this strawman reductio ad absurdum argument that, because people want more women, or people of colour, or whatever, represented in something, that we ought to be awaiting (as claimed, breathlessly) blonde lady-Orruks or some other silliness.

The Idoneth release is great. Some of the sculpts are women. No fuss, no bother- they're just there. Like they are in real life.

Just to make it clear, I said the language about blond haired orks or whatever was probably hyperbole. So I don’t read your posts to be saying anything about a mathematically even quantity of anything. 

What I am asking is what limits you personally want to see. I think that’s a fair question and it’s based on your posts in this thread that started off pretty heated and have continued to be opinionated (and that’s not a bad thing by itself).  I think it’s also fair for people to read a discussion nominally about female representation and see various posters then move to LGBTQ representation (and see your support of those posts) and then wonder what limits you would set and what benefits you see there.  You can’t scoff about people asking about your opinion on transsexual fireslayers (or any other LGBTQ combo) when you yourself liked a post asking for that exact type of representation.

What’s the point in being passive about what you think? It’s impossible to have an actual discussion if you won’t say what you actually want. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, muggins said:

I can empathize with a lot of things but I don't empathize with people throwing tantrums because the Ghostbusters are female or they made a female Jedi who is the main character. Not gonna do it.

Well, I do not think anybody asked that you empathize the angry, harassing, tantrum throwing crowd. However, I do feel that those that are more on the edge on these issues should be treated with a certain courtesy. I would be a hypocryte if I did not think so, there are quite a few more critical and aprehensive posts in this thread that could have come from me a few years back.

Obviously, from my little intro you can tell I have changed my stance. That was not due to some kind of enlightenment, but due to good arguments, new experiences and some very good first hand introductions. It most certainly did not change due to an attitude that signals "anyone who does not 100% get it is beyond reason and to be treated with no empathy whatsoever".

 

That being said, I actually do not think GW is moving at the pace that they are because of any caution (first because I think then they would be much slower moving and second because GW has often proven rather heedless of the concept of caution), I think this is the pace people at GW want it to be done by themselves. I really think many of us underestimate how important the designers are for what GW can and can not do and needlessly discount the possibility that the current direction could be from a push as much on the inside as well as the outside (or the often cited "executive decission").

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, muggins said:

I can empathize with a lot of things but I don't empathize with people throwing tantrums because the Ghostbusters are female or they made a female Jedi who is the main character. Not gonna do it.

Ah, see that's where we agree for sure. There is no good explanation someone can give for not wanting a female Jedi main character. None at all. Well there is, but it's not particularly pleasant.

There is, however, justification for being unhappy that they changed your favourite Marvel character in any way at all, for the reasons I posted before. If you suddenly can't relate to your character, you're going to be kinda sad about it. It is possible to be annoyed that they changed your character without hating what they changed it to.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, AlphaKennyThing said:

Ah, see that's where we agree for sure. There is no good explanation someone can give for not wanting a female Jedi main character. None at all. Well there is, but it's not particularly pleasant.

There is, however, justification for being unhappy that they changed your favourite Marvel character in any way at all, for the reasons I posted before. If you suddenly can't relate to your character, you're going to be kinda sad about it. It is possible to be annoyed that they changed your character without hating what they changed it to.

 

If you read the main proponents of the Marvel stuff you'll realize that people are hating what they changed things into. That's all it is. 

Comic books are most famous for retcons and new storylines etc. All of a sudden that is a major sticking point for a vocal minority in our current climate? I wonder why.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, BenOutTheDen said:

No. But the fact that all these highly strategic decisions you implied eventually came down to a pair of juicy bo-obies amuses me quite a lot. Great thread though :) .

Come on man. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yea, you're right, it was a little inappropriate and I will delete the comment.

I still think this thread is absolutely hipocritical, superficial and stinks :).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't believe someone could take seriously blonde orks or trans dwarfs suggestion. It's a joke and a way to avoid being banned by giving more "real" examples. Of course nobody would want a blonde orruk. Why? Because it’s not a prestigious roll to be an orruk. What if I suggested Sigmar to be replaced with a lady or Tyrion to be suddenly presented as a black person? Oooh now we are talking. That’s not a silly diversification right?

For me it is. If somebody is ok with replacing old Marvel heroes with their new political correct successors probably won’t agree with anything I have to say. I’m sure there are thousands talented black writers that can create their own super heroes the way they want it. Adjusting long existing characters to political correctness is in my opinion wrong. Same as wrong is a new tv series from Netflix and BBC where Achilles is played by a black person? Is it natural? Isn’t it forced? For me that’s a lie to call it gently. I would love to see black people’s reaction if there was a Holywood movie announced where Martin Luther King or Muhammad Ali was played by Brad Pitt. We live in a world of double standards and I’m sure that movie would have been criticized by all possible media even before the first shot.

But then again those all great media aren’t that fair themselves. How often do you see an Asian actor in a Holywood movie to be the main character? And if that happens by chance that person is martial arts fighter (not stereotypical at all). There are close to 13% of black USA citizens and close to 5% of Asian USA citizens so I would expect that every 1 in 20 Holywood movies should hire a person of Asian heritage for the main lead. I can’t recall any blockbuster movie from recent years that had Asians as the main character but quite a few where a black person was. How about people of Araby roots?  Seems Holywood is racist and uses political correctness just when it suits them.

Again I repeat so that somebody doesn’t call me a racist, sexist and so on: I have nothing against people of color or women. To be more direct and clear this time: I don’t think that GW should introduce more minorities in their games just for the sake of  PC. Really – if they make an army of Cathay or Araby with their own theme then great. Bravo to them. But making multi cultural, multi-something armies all the way isn’t something that will help to create a more coherent and rich universe. Quite the opposite actually. I think that now they found a grat balance in their products.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, muggins said:

If you read the main proponents of the Marvel stuff you'll realize that people are hating what they changed things into. That's all it is. 

Comic books are most famous for retcons and new storylines etc. All of a sudden that is a major sticking point for a vocal minority in our current climate? I wonder why.

What do you imply with this?

I dislike new Marvel because of the way most of their new retcons are(complete lack of respect for the old characters, calling old fans hateful bigots(in comic), turning usually deep and rich storylines into cartoonnetwork type sitcoms and just making them generally shallow).

I am not really vocal about that but yes I hate their new comic books because of these reasons. 

If GW were to turn into something similar to Marvel anytime soon we should be very very worried. Thankfully I think they care too much about the profit to go down the "hating their own customers" route.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, muggins said:

If you read the main proponents of the Marvel stuff you'll realize that people are hating what they changed things into. That's all it is. 

Comic books are most famous for retcons and new storylines etc. All of a sudden that is a major sticking point for a vocal minority in our current climate? I wonder why.

Well the most controversial (read: idiots) often shout the loudest. Don't get me wrong, there'll be some of them in the GW sphere too, there's idiots everywhere. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, xking said:

With what happened to the boy scouts and comics etc. It seems that there are a lot of people are paranoid about about what they perceive as "sjw" stuff.  A lot of males also seem to feel like something is being taken from them, from what I see.

It's not just SJW stuff, but the rapid decline in quality accompanied by concessions to SJW culture.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, muggins said:

When people blast their diapers about Marvel or Star Wars or Ghostbusters or Oceans 11 or any of the other outrage building machines (Warhammer Adventures) they absolutely are doing it because of race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual affiliation.

I'm sure that is true for some, but not all. Not "absolutely."

Take, for instance, the female Thor in the comics. My problem with that is not because I dislike women (I rather like them, in fact), it's because it was both unnecessary and forced, not to mention grinding away at the myth upon which the character is based.

(FWIW, I didn't like Beta Ray Bill either, and I don't have anything against alien insect dragon things.)

Thor is the son of Odin. He's a hot headed, testosterone oozing, he-god who eats demons and poohs thunder. He is not a woman or an insect dragon alien. Fictional or not, there is an established character.

Want to introduce a powerful, strong, inspirational female Norse fighter? Yes, please! By all means, do! May I suggest Sif? Or someone new? Trading on the name Thor is weak, timid, and displays a lack of respect for the reader (they don't think we can accept some new character, so they take the easy path).

Black Iron Man? Why not, instead, create a new character who fulfills a similar role and give him a new name? Something like, oh, I dunno, War Machine maybe?

Same thing for James Bond. As amazing as Idris would be as a sexy, intelligent, international man of mystery and intrigue who saves the world with gadgets and charm, he should not be Bond. I would totally go see a film where he is even another agent from the same agency, but not a film where he's James Bond. (I really do like him, as does my gf. We thought he was cool in Pacific Rim, for example.)

I also would not see a new Aladdin film where the title character is a Norwegian man or an Irish woman - not because I dislike either, but because that's not the character. As non-PC as this is to say, the ethnicity of a character is part of the character, and there's nothing wrong with that! 

The point is, you don't need to keep the name, and all the history of a character, and then swap the gender, age, nationality, color, etc. You can keep the idea behind the character (the morals, the job, the societal inspiration, and so on) and make a new character with a new name. See Stormcast vs. Space Marines. Not identical, I know, but come on.

Heck, we've been doing it as a people since we were people, as Joseph Campbell points out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, xking said:

With what happened to the boy scouts and comics etc. It seems that there are a lot of people are paranoid about about what they perceive as "sjw" stuff.  A lot of males also seem to feel like something is being taken from them, from what I see.

 

People can resist change that is not of their own making and control because it means moving from a known state into an unknown state. Extreme examples can include people released from prisons or who get a terminal diagnoses which is later found to be incorrect (ergo they are going to live). 

So some part of it is a fear of the unknown, that they don't know what's going to happen and thus people put up barriers against that change.

 

Another is that the visual side of the game drew many people in. They got drawn in by a certain element and they worry that a major change could result in that element being diminished or changed or even removed from the game that they enjoy. Ergo that whilst they can accept that socially it is improving things; it is still taking away something that they still enjoy. 

Another is that gaming to them might well be their time away from home, a time to be "with the guys" as opposed to, say, going to the pub or sports or such. 

 

 

In all this I don't think any of those groups hate women or don't want women to play warhammer. I think many of them are simply fearing the change. It's understandable. Plus sometimes people express themselves very poorly (esp in typed form) so their viewpoint comes across wrong and gets garbled up. So sometimes the online arguments are simply more miscommunication than anything else. Or they go into the extreme situations and guesswork with "worst case scenarios". It doesn't help that there are these kind of people pushing at the extreme, on all sides in the debate. 

 

 

In the end GW has so far shown what I consider to be a very good hand. They've not pushed out factions like Slannesh and even released Daughters of Khaine recently. Alongside that we've got a much more less sexualised female Stormcast on the front cover of the new edition book; we've got a female presenter etc... I think GW wants to encourage change but isn't willing to throw away what they've got. And in truth women do play GW games already; its about attracting more. 

 

I also think GW learned from the Middle Earth event; a slow lesson and a harsh one but I think they learned that you can't chase the popular casual consumer market like crazy as they did then. It works for a while, but fast ends. I think they learned that their st rength is in their core target market; so for them its about reaching out and attracting that market in all genders. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

+++ Mod Hat On +++

Whilst there has been some interesting discussion in this thread, I think we are now starting to go round in circles and off topic. Because of this, I'm now going to lock this thread as I don't think there is much more to add as it continues going off course.

Just want to say thanks for every body being fairly well behaved

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...