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Old 05-24-2022, 06:08 PM   #11
jason taylor
 
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Default Re: justifying cultural imitations

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Originally Posted by Lovewyrm View Post
As long as it's not mockery, I don't care if someone goes Germanic in any flavor for anything.
Likewise, I reserve myself the same ability for anything I want to do, even if some unrelated party doesn't like it, or even a first party.

Way too much artificial media racebaiting (cultural appropriation is part of that buzzword set) as well as local Abrahamic 'missionary' branches that have skewed such things for me to buckle under that.
In other words: 'real people' don't tend to mind any of such things.

Edit:
To clarify it a bit more.
The internet and media being so prevalent and steerable by a comparatively few individuals compared to the people affected, it can seem like the world is in a pretty bad state (to the extent that some might think that African people are really concerned if someone is wearing cornrows)
But it's really not.

It's the friend computer/skynet situation. In those settings, a single computer mind, even if it's spread over a network, has the information highway locked down.

But that's not how the realworld is, yet.
Just imagine a fictitious social media network that has a billion users (ficitious, but believable), 2000 moderators all working together with an agenda, and their powers are augmented with an AI that also falls in line.
If they work diligently, they can make a good chunk of that billion userbase, seeing how the average person takes things in good faith, think whatever is on the agenda is a bigger sensation than it is.

But it rarely is, even if it snowballs into follow up 'self moderation' of people going 'but that's how it is!" but that's usually done if they feel like going against it could endanger them, aka, not the private setting under friends.

And while things like cultural appropriation are now well entrenched, it's still just a comparatively few who push it. It's a recent term, and would never have been a thing without the internet. Not on this scale.

Thus:
If I want to play a direct copy of a Maasai Warrior, I'm gonna do it.
No Maasai will mind, the entire tribe of them could sit around and be okay with it, until some wormtongue memester comes in and spins the whole meme around them (he's appropriating you, back at home they kept you as slaves and now he's mocking you! totally!), then they might see it that way too. But not naturally.

That's my personal justification.

That is not what I was talking about. By "justify" I meant "find a plausible backstory for". The ethics of the matter are not the main point as much as doing it while retaining willing suspension of disbelief. It is difficult to belief a society with Massai warriors would evolve by chance unless related to the original Massai.
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Old 05-24-2022, 06:31 PM   #12
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Default Re: justifying cultural imitations

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Originally Posted by jason taylor View Post
That is not what I was talking about. By "justify" I meant "find a plausible backstory for". The ethics of the matter are not the main point as much as doing it while retaining willing suspension of disbelief. It is difficult to belief a society with Massai warriors would evolve by chance unless related to the original Massai.
Yes, that's my take too. "Justify" here means justify aesthetically, not justify ethically.
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Old 05-24-2022, 08:11 PM   #13
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Default Re: justifying cultural imitations

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But what are some ways anyone else can think of to pull this off?
To paraphrase Dr. Notestein: "“If you copy from one culture, that’s appropriation; if you copy from many cultures, that’s research.”

No two settings or periods are ever exactly equivalent (unless that's the point, which requires a different approach). It's also rare that there is only one obvious analogue. So, mix and match: Your steppe nomads are organized in a hierarchy of affine groups (guilds or krewes) rather than arbitrarily divided into military units based factors of ten, and they cover their faces when in public. Your palace intrigue owes as much to the Borgias and the Tokugawas as it does to the Plantagenets. Maybe your buccaneers are rightly feared because they embrace a "death before dishonor" code of conduct and are contemptuous of anyone (friend or foe) that lives to be captured.
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Old 05-24-2022, 10:01 PM   #14
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Default Re: justifying cultural imitations

In Jerry Pournelle's future history (which contains the famous novel The Mote in God's Eye), the strongest human state 1000 years from now is an empire which is copied in many ways from the British and French empires of the 19C, including a hereditary constitutional monarchy and a hereditary aristocracy (but it is not feudal!).

To justify this, Pournelle shaped the star flight tech to create travel times and other conditions paralleling (but not identical to) the era of the Crimean War. The Empire uses the traditional European titles (Duke, Marquis, etc.) because the founders of the empire consciously copied them.

But the setting is also shaped by it origins in a mid 20C alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union that was in control of the Earth when star flight started, and that left a deep mark. So it's not a pure copy of 19C politics.

I used a different approach in my own world: the most powerful state on the 22nd Earth has a hereditary ruling class, 30 families that use the title of 'Prince'. They use some of the old symbols and regalia of the old European aristocrats, the but the title is actually a double play on words, because their origins of power are less in warfare than money, 'merchant princes'. The coronets and other symbolic regalia start out as an affectation.
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Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 05-24-2022 at 10:11 PM.
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Old 05-25-2022, 02:14 AM   #15
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Default Re: justifying cultural imitations

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Originally Posted by jason taylor View Post
That is not what I was talking about. By "justify" I meant "find a plausible backstory for". The ethics of the matter are not the main point as much as doing it while retaining willing suspension of disbelief. It is difficult to belief a society with Massai warriors would evolve by chance unless related to the original Massai.
Ah, well, I'd say: Do it anyway.
Culture is pretty specific anyway.
If you make some thing that isn't Massai then it's not Massai and doesn't need justification. Just do your thing.

Or is this about preventing "Orcs are an allegory to some reallife people" kind of thing?
I'd say that falls under the same thing as "cultural appropriation" and should be fine with most people.

I might not be getting some nuance here, though.
If it's not the same thing then it's not the same thing, why worry?
And if it's the same thing then why worry, too, as long as it's respectful it should be good.

Last edited by Lovewyrm; 05-25-2022 at 02:21 AM.
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