Simian_Prime posted:Maybe, like me, he's just bored with Tolkien races in general? Night10194 posted:Is he American? Americans have this weird blindspot on anti Romani prejudice because we never actually encounter it much.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 09:04 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 13:42 |
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Are we talking about some other "G-word" or did "gypsy" somehow become offensive rather than just a bit archaic in use?
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 10:19 |
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PurpleXVI posted:Are we talking about some other "G-word" or did "gypsy" somehow become offensive rather than just a bit archaic in use? It's pretty much a racial slur, dude. Roma descended folks have been pushing back on this for literally decades now. It's just in America they use it for styles of clothing and music and have white women who talk about being one in their soul.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 11:04 |
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PurpleXVI posted:Are we talking about some other "G-word" or did "gypsy" somehow become offensive rather than just a bit archaic in use? it's both archaic and offensive, the same way "negro" and "oriental" are
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 12:16 |
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I guess I need to hang out with more lovely racist people to really experience it used as a slur.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 13:14 |
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It's short for "Egyptian", so that 16th-century prejudice is baked into the term.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 13:44 |
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I only recently made the connection between "gypsy" and "gyp", which I always thought was spelled "jip". Nobody I've spoken to about it has ever realized this either. But then again, most people I've asked have thought that "gypsies" aren't even real and exist only in movies.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 13:55 |
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One of my friends is of Romani decent, so the fact that Swedracula wants to give the Gypsy's book another go has filled my gaming circle with a sense of dread.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 14:00 |
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Tasoth posted:I know it goes with Victorian prejudice and the fight for Irish independence, but why couldn't it be an Irish adventurer taking on a British villain that the world doesn't see any problems with? This would be the best way to actually play a "steampunk" game, you play people from everywhere but Not England but living under that flag. Irish rebels, German orchid hunters, African-American freemen, Chinese boxers, etc. everything except the British.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 14:09 |
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Young Freud posted:This would be the best way to actually play a "steampunk" game, you play people from everywhere but Not England but living under that flag. Irish rebels, German orchid hunters, African-American freemen, Chinese boxers, etc. everything except the British. Socialist/Anti-Imperialist Steam Punk would be good. Especially as it would get at the actual anxiety the threat of communism brought to owners; the very real fear that if nothing was done it could turn to communist rebellion drove some of the gains of the labor movement because better to negotiate with strikers (after trying to kill them repeatedly first, natch) than risk actual open strife.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 14:13 |
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I've said it before but India under the British East India Company is basically 19th century Cyberpunk anyway so making it steampunk is just taking it a step further. It's literally an extra-territorial corporation with a private army oppressing local governments and hiring mercenaries for shady work. Plus you can play a former Sepoy with a clockwork prosthetic arm who punches corporate stooges with it.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 14:30 |
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Hostile V posted:Not a fan of the whole Elves vs. Dwarves dynamic or is there something else to it? Simian_Prime posted:Maybe, like me, he's just bored with Tolkien races in general? There are exceptions: Earthdawn is great, and the art direction of D&D 4e was reinvigorating. But the latter is the exception that proves the rule; it's official D&D, so lacks that lame implied promise to do D&D but totally unique and original and different this time we swear. The D20 bandwagon era produced a number of games that seemed to want to bring together the White Wolf crowd and the D&D crowd. Urban Arcana was surprisingly good, but most were the mediocrity you'd expect from a setting designed around the lowest common denominator. I guess the heart of it is that including the Tolkien races--in a game that doesn't hew closer to Tolkien's actual work than D&D does--is a sign that you're very concerned that your game might make baby cry if you don't serve up the bland pap he's used to. And I've reached the point where I have nothing but contempt for RPG design based around not upsetting baby.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 14:32 |
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unseenlibrarian posted:I've said it before but India under the British East India Company is basically 19th century Cyberpunk anyway so making it steampunk is just taking it a step further. It's literally an extra-territorial corporation with a private army oppressing local governments and hiring mercenaries for shady work. Recall that the British Empire waged war on a sovereign nation to force them to buy drugs from it. The British Empire was kinda hosed up.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 14:43 |
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Young Freud posted:This would be the best way to actually play a "steampunk" game, you play people from everywhere but Not England but living under that flag. Irish rebels, German orchid hunters, African-American freemen, Chinese boxers, etc. everything except the British.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 14:50 |
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Halloween Jack posted:There were poor people in Not England too y'know. Besides, I want to play George Orwell. A Fantasy Spanish Civil War Clusterfuck would also be good.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 14:51 |
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If you took "Things the British empire actually did" and used them with the serial #s filed off as "Things a Shadowy cyberpunk megacorp did" you'd get complaints about painting them as two-dimensional villains and no one would really act like that.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 14:55 |
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Halloween Jack posted:There were poor people in Not England too y'know. Besides, I want to play George Orwell. True, there's a reason "Dickensian" has a lot of meannigs, but do you want majority of your players running around with Cockney accents in your game?
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 14:56 |
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That's a ridiculous question. Do your players speak Sindari or Klingon at the table? Just pretend everyone's speaking English, same as if you set a game in Tekumel, or Boston.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 14:59 |
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PurpleXVI posted:Are we talking about some other "G-word" or did "gypsy" somehow become offensive rather than just a bit archaic in use?
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 15:07 |
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unseenlibrarian posted:If you took "Things the British empire actually did" and used them with the serial #s filed off as "Things a Shadowy cyberpunk megacorp did" you'd get complaints about painting them as two-dimensional villains and no one would really act like that. Yeah, you'd run into the Leverage Problem real quickly.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 16:45 |
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unseenlibrarian posted:It's pretty much a racial slur, dude. Roma descended folks have been pushing back on this for literally decades now. I think we Germans are still allowed to call our traditional "gypsy sauce" that way. I'm not entirely sure why we collectively decided to name a tomato-based sauce after a minority most people still can't stand today. Then again we also had "negro kisses" until a decade or so ago. At least the Austrians have Mozart balls. Night10194 posted:Socialist/Anti-Imperialist Steam Punk would be good. Especially as it would get at the actual anxiety the threat of communism brought to owners; the very real fear that if nothing was done it could turn to communist rebellion drove some of the gains of the labor movement because better to negotiate with strikers (after trying to kill them repeatedly first, natch) than risk actual open strife. I just want a game where a badass dirt farmer with a wrench dukes it out with a steam robot piloted by a British gentleman. Shadow of the Steam Colossus. Halloween Jack posted:It is that, but I lack the words to express what I feel when I leaf through a promising game and the character creation chapter begins with a list of Fantasy Heartbreaker races (elf, dwarf, halfling, and some "original" races that are anything but). It's not that it's boring; lots of things are boring, but I'm talking about a physical sensation of having excitement sucked out of your body. The main reason why lizardmen and [totally not a furry race] don't have an "official" name is so that heartbreakers can make one up to be totally original (do not steal). Doresh fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Oct 11, 2016 |
# ? Oct 11, 2016 17:21 |
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As an American, I had a relative that used to threaten to "sell me to the gypsies" and would recount an experience with pickpockets as their Real Encounter with Real Gypsies for Real, Really. There isn't nearly as much targeted racism towards Romani in the US but there's still a lot of casual, harmful stereotyping out there.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 17:29 |
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Halloween Jack posted:It is that, but I lack the words to express what I feel when I leaf through a promising game and the character creation chapter begins with a list of Fantasy Heartbreaker races (elf, dwarf, halfling, and some "original" races that are anything but). It's not that it's boring; lots of things are boring, but I'm talking about a physical sensation of having excitement sucked out of your body. Again, the worst thing (short of being absolutely hateful and awful) to me in a game is to be boring or unoriginal in a derivative way.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 17:37 |
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Alien Rope Burn posted:As an American, I had a relative that used to threaten to "sell me to the gypsies" and would recount an experience with pickpockets as their Real Encounter with Real Gypsies for Real, Really. There isn't nearly as much targeted racism towards Romani in the US but there's still a lot of casual, harmful stereotyping out there. The only Roma I know of (though only from hearsay) rents space in my grandparents' now unused barn to store his luxury car. A somewhat odd deal considering they are the less tolerant branch of our family. Then again money is srs bsns for them. Doresh fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Oct 11, 2016 |
# ? Oct 11, 2016 17:38 |
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Alien Rope Burn posted:As an American, I had a relative that used to threaten to "sell me to the gypsies" and would recount an experience with pickpockets as their Real Encounter with Real Gypsies for Real, Really. There isn't nearly as much targeted racism towards Romani in the US but there's still a lot of casual, harmful stereotyping out there. Yeah, there's some anti-roma sentiments here, and it's not just from the Eastern-European immigrants, to the point where the staggering incompetence in the city's infrastructure planning and construction is blamed on a "Gypsy Curse" on City Hall (which is... kind of true? A self-proclaimed Gypsy King did a public "Cursing" ritual after getting busted for pimping, this city's kind of crazy), and had teachers very casually tell stories about how the "Gypsies" totally had these elaborate shoplifting schemes and scams you have to watch for. I was also one of those who thought Gypped was Jipped and never made the connection until recently.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 17:42 |
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Earthdawn barely gets away with having elves and dwarves by making the elves primitive, regressed tree dwellers (who happen to be from the BLOOD FOREST) and the dwarves the Italian renaissance who are the rulers of the world in the place of the humans who are warmongers.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 17:44 |
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Robindaybird posted:Yeah, there's some anti-roma sentiments here, and it's not just from the Eastern-European immigrants, to the point where the staggering incompetence in the city's infrastructure planning and construction is blamed on a "Gypsy Curse" on City Hall (which is... kind of true? A self-proclaimed Gypsy King did a public "Cursing" ritual after getting busted for pimping, this city's kind of crazy), and had teachers very casually tell stories about how the "Gypsies" totally had these elaborate shoplifting schemes and scams you have to watch for. Dude must've known that the tabloid press loves curses.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 17:45 |
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Doresh posted:Dude must've known that the tabloid press loves curses. It's a local legend pretty much, and you might be able to figure out which city it is based on it. But yeah, Roma and other Traveling people get poo poo on a lot by people, there was a case not too long ago where they tried to take a couple's kid away because they just assumed they kidnapped her. Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Oct 11, 2016 |
# ? Oct 11, 2016 17:52 |
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Alright, it's been months, but you know what? It's time to get back to the Dark Secrets of the Pigmen in Ironclaw So, the pigs are in a bad spot. The Doloreaux are an insular people with a religion that doesn't easily jive with the rest of the world, they're landlocked, weird goat tribes harass their attempts to make a safe overland to their only subsidiary sea-port, everyone around them is thinking about taking their land, and preachers who are willing to use syncretic doctrines (one of which is an official heterodoxy of the church, sanctioned and allowed, stating that other faiths have that of S'Allumer to them and as long as someone works towards the All-Giving Light it doesn't actually matter much if they also make offerings to a local spirit because that thing is just a subsidiary of S'Allumer) are making inroads with their population. They're internally stable but facing a host of external pressures and problems, and responding to the issue by beginning to grudgingly innovate in magic and technology because the survival of their culture and way of life is more important to them than their conservative mindset. But the book also hints over and over that there's a great secret hidden at the heart of the Doloreaux demesne, one that could turn all of Calabria against them. It's given to the reader in several layers. Firstly, and most obviously, the Doloreaux are matriarchal. They don't make very much hay of this, but there is a strong glass ceiling among the cult of Lutara; men cannot reach the highest tiers of worship as priests, even though they are still permitted into the priesthood and there is no formal doctrine against this. No man has ever become a Myste, the highest tier of Lutaran worship; this is partly because they think that women better represent the Goddess herself, partly a matter of culture, and partly a matter of cult doctrine. Those who have served as soldiers cannot rise high in the ranks of the cult, as Lutara demands the highest priests not shed blood or engage in war, and male military service is compulsory. This leads most men to be disqualified right out by cult doctrine. Men are, however, permitted to join the guardians of the Mystes, the Vidames, who are terrifyingly powerful pagan paladins (Several of the Big Potential Enemy Types of the game get special weapons that can hit multiple foes in close combat and do immense damage to mark their elite status; the axes of the Vidames are one of those superweapons), but have no real decision making power within the cult. The matriarchal nature of the Doloreaux is not really a problem, more a curiosity; this isn't the secret, merely something they don't make clear to outsiders. More subtle is the fact that the Mystes are the rulers of the Doloreaux, not the secular lords. They are an inherently theocratic power, and this is because the Mystes have tremendous power to curse or bless the fortunes of nobles who follow their prophecies (or refuse to fall in line). More than one line has ended because suddenly, all its members were barren. More than one house has been lost to famine and sickness running through their livestock, curiously just after they spoke out about the power of the Mystes. Those who serve faithfully and well are blessed with many and healthy children, good harvests, and mild weather. And even aside from this magical influence on the fortunes of the families, the Great Mother, leader of the Lutaran religion, has the personal ear of the Duke of Doloreaux and tremendous cultural and social influence (as any prime religious figure would, this isn't unusual). While Lutaran beliefs in pantheons and multiple gods and the general openness of S'Allumerites to incorporating local gods without issue SHOULD make the Penitents relatively compatible with Doloreaux lands, the Mystes will have none of it and eagerly work behind the scenes to stamp out any spread of foreign religions of any kind. But that isn't the real secret. The real secret has much more frightening implications, depending on where an individual GM decides to take it (or could just be the equivalent of the Blue Rose Magic Royal Deer, it's open to interpretation and I appreciate that). The Great Mother, manifestation of Lutara on Earth and voice of the cult, is always chosen from the eldest of the Mystes. When a Great Mother perishes, she is entombed in the same tomb as all others before her, and the official High Priestess goes to pray by her body. The next Great Mother is chosen in this time, supposedly by the Goddess herself, and named. But she is hidden from any but the highest of the Cult. The Great Mother is not the public high priestess, but she is the one who wields the full power of the cult and thus of the Doloreaux domain. The current Great Mother is the wife of the current Duke. You can go a lot of places with this, which as I've said before is something I appreciate about the open mysteries of IC's setting. There, I'm finally back into it. What's next? The Celt-Wolves, the Scots-Wolves, or the Italian Foxes?
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 17:53 |
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Scots-Wolves
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 17:56 |
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Terrible Opinions posted:It's mostly a European thing. Ask any otherwise liberal European a question about Roma settlement rights and a depressing portion of the ti9me they will devolve before your eyes into card carrying KKK member but with one slur replaced with another. Probably depends on where in Europe you are, here in Denmark, gypsies are basically a non-existent thing in the popular mind except for the one time every two years there's some minor hubbub in the media because some got discriminated against or because of minor assimilation problems like a few years ago when the authorities had problems keeping their kids in school. I get the impression that the farther south in Europe you get, the harder they get shat on.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 17:56 |
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mcclay posted:Scots-Wolves You are in for kilts, the terrible socioeconomic effects of deregulation, heavy mercenary presence, pigeon bombs, and critical masses of gently caress You Dad and religious conflict if it goes this way. I love the Bisclavret.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 18:00 |
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PurpleXVI posted:Probably depends on where in Europe you are, here in Denmark, gypsies are basically a non-existent thing in the popular mind except for the one time every two years there's some minor hubbub in the media because some got discriminated against or because of minor assimilation problems like a few years ago when the authorities had problems keeping their kids in school. I get the impression that the farther south in Europe you get, the harder they get shat on. or more Eastern, Greece and Italy are especially bad for Roma, but there's problems everywhere of Roma children getting taken away for very questionable reasons.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 18:01 |
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wiegieman posted:Earthdawn barely gets away with having elves and dwarves by making the elves primitive, regressed tree dwellers (who happen to be from the BLOOD FOREST) and the dwarves the Italian renaissance who are the rulers of the world in the place of the humans who are warmongers. At this point there have been so many variations on the "our elves are *different*" that it's almost as cliche as having them he's by the usual stereotypes. Your game doesn't automatically get better when you say "is this world DWARVES live in forests and ELVES live underground, did I just BLOW your MIND?!?"
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 18:05 |
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Then there's that episode of Criminal Minds with the nationwide chain of Romani thieves who kidnap little girls after murdering their parents because they need wives for their sons. Though I'm pretty sure they at least exclusively call them Romani rather than Gypsies at least!
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 18:06 |
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Robindaybird posted:Yeah, there's some anti-roma sentiments here, and it's not just from the Eastern-European immigrants, to the point where the staggering incompetence in the city's infrastructure planning and construction is blamed on a "Gypsy Curse" on City Hall (which is... kind of true? A self-proclaimed Gypsy King did a public "Cursing" ritual after getting busted for pimping, this city's kind of crazy), and had teachers very casually tell stories about how the "Gypsies" totally had these elaborate shoplifting schemes and scams you have to watch for. On another forum I'm on a US-based person who I believed was firmly against all kinds of racism (owing to her staunch opposition to everything anti-black and general support of everything pro-diversity), in all seriousness straight-up said that children should be taken from their Roma parents, put in an orphanage, and adopted away, because it was impossible for their parents to care for them and and they'd probably be sent out to beg and steal anyway.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 18:08 |
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LatwPIAT posted:On another forum I'm on a US-based person who I believed was firmly against all kinds of racism (owing to her staunch opposition to everything anti-black and general support of everything pro-diversity), in all seriousness straight-up said that children should be taken from their Roma parents, put in an orphanage, and adopted away, because it was impossible for their parents to care for them and and they'd probably be sent out to beg and steal anyway. This is pretty much what happened with Peter David this weekend that I referenced in the thing that started this tangent. He got asked at an NYCC panel about better representation for Roma characters instead of being fortune tellers and thieves and circus folk and he went off on a rant about how they'd break children's legs to make them better beggars and he'd heard it from a tour guide in Romania so don't talk to him about better roma representation.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 18:14 |
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^^^^ wiegieman posted:Earthdawn barely gets away with having elves and dwarves by making the elves primitive, regressed tree dwellers (who happen to be from the BLOOD FOREST) and the dwarves the Italian renaissance who are the rulers of the world in the place of the humans who are warmongers. I'd also cut it a little slack because it originally came out in '93.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 18:17 |
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wiegieman posted:Earthdawn barely gets away with having elves and dwarves by making the elves primitive, regressed tree dwellers (who happen to be from the BLOOD FOREST) and the dwarves the Italian renaissance who are the rulers of the world in the place of the humans who are warmongers. And yeah, I've seen collections of oh-so-liberal Euros suddenly break into Kristallnacht 2 Nacht Harder as soon as someone mentions gypsies/travellers/pikeys.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 18:18 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 13:42 |
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Kurieg posted:Then there's that episode of Criminal Minds with the nationwide chain of Romani thieves who kidnap little girls after murdering their parents because they need wives for their sons. That episode was so weird, given how Criminal Minds was actually good about Islam not that long before.
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# ? Oct 11, 2016 18:25 |