SSCReader
1yr ago
In many parts of America, right now. Gay kids still get disowned by their parents and so on. Don't confuse the fact that Blue Tribe has dominant media control with the idea, that all of the older more traditional mores, especially in rural more religious areas have suddenly vanished. I don't tell my neighbors I am an atheist for example. The social stigma for being gay or non-religious is still very much existent in many places in the US (and indeed the UK, one side of my family back home would definitely be considered rednecks in the US, one uncle has disowned his gay son, the other is very clear he wouldn't hire "a poofter" in his business).
SSCReader
1yr ago
Absolutely, the British government made some terrible mistakes that permanently set the country backwards. They wrecked the Midlands with planning systems.
I moved from the Midlands in the UK, to the Rust Belt in the US (via London in the middle) and both ended up in the same way. I think capitalism and the cheap manufacturing from abroad is a much bigger factor in both than any government policies. Both industrial, steel and coal mining areas in very differently run countries when it came to regulations ended up becoming half-empty rotten shells of themselves. The common factor being the ability to get cheap coal and steel and manufactured goods for much cheaper global competitors.
Planning regulations might have been part of the mechanism, but they weren't the cause. Which doesn't mean that the regulations were not themselves an issue mind you.
Then one day I woke up and half of my fellow countrymen were pro-censorship. I am still confused by this.
They were always pro-censorship. Even your teachers were. After all they probably would have stopped you swearing in class, or engaging in blasphemy or calling for violence (depending on location and timing). You just weren't saying the kind of things they wanted to censor.
It's one of the thing I find surprising where people are surprised that majorities of the population support authoritarian things like lockdowns or vaccine mandates or censorship. And think this shows some kind of overnight sea change. This is the the default. Liberalism is a deal in the absence of one side (in whichever scenario) having more power, they agree not to censor pragmatically. Once one side has more power, and you try to say something they dislike then they will favor that censorship.
Standard caveat for the three principled Libertarians in the corner, trying to start seasteading to escape the whole thing. I know you are there.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Be serious. If that's not grooming, nothing is.
It isn't. Grooming in the context of CSE means to try to position a child so that you can have sexual contact of one sort or another with them. If you convince a child to wear a thong via drugs or alcohol or love bombing or manipulation so that you can have sex with them, or derive sexual enjoyment from watching them, this would be grooming. If you did so for any other reason it really shouldn't be called grooming. It's probably a terrible idea and might open your child up to positions where OTHER people can take advantage or derive the sexual pleasure talked about earlier, but it isn't grooming in this context.
Just like having your child take part in beauty pageants (as you mentioned) where they dress up as adults, might wear swimwear etc, wear make up, is not grooming unless it is with the intention of taking advantage of them sexually. In both cases you may well find such activities attract predators and this is a real risk, but the mothers of these sexualized girls are not groomers either. Living out some strange projected idea of success and acceptance through their own kids? Sure. Depriving them of a healthy childhood? Almost certainly. Guilty of some kind of emotional abuse? There is a good chance. But those things aren't grooming as used in the context of CSE which is the link that the rhetoric is trying to make.
It's a rhetorical weapon, building off of visceral dislike for these behaviors. Just like calling right wingers Nazis. The vast majority of right wingers, voters, politicians et all are not Nazis. The vast majority of parents and organizers of Drag events or child beauty pageants are not groomers.
I used to work with social workers and dealt with and wrote reports on some CSE cases, including Rotherham et al, the people grooming kids in those situations were doing so, to literally rape them and then often prostitute them. So no, neither child beauty pageants or drag kids stuff are in and of themselves grooming, without that intent. Stupid and possibly psychologically damaging yes. Grooming no. There is a gap in between. Just like there is a gap in between "I don't like illegal immigration" and "I hate the Jews".
It's entirely understandable for it to be used in the normal context, it is an effective weapon. I'd certainly if I were still a political advisor be advocating for Republicans to use it as an attack strategy. I am a little disappointed it seems to be getting traction here. The behaviors can be bad without being actual child grooming. A mother who has her child wear make up, takes bikini pictures of her in suggestive poses and the like in order to offer her to her new boyfriend (a real case) is a groomer. A mother who does all the same things because she things it's progressive or because it will let her child experience new things or because she wants to live out her glory days vicariously is not. It is still probably a terrible idea regardless.
For those who deal with CSE, and hopefully for us here, that is a distinction worth making.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Sure as I said: "A mother who has her child wear make up, takes bikini pictures of her in suggestive poses and the like in order to offer her to her new boyfriend (a real case) is a groomer."
Replace the you or someone else can have sexual contact in the first sentence. If your goal is not for someone to derive sexual pleasure (yourself or another person) then it isn't grooming. otherwise people putting pictures of kids in the bath on Facebook, that someone then masturbates over is a groomer. They may be unwise, but that isn't the same thing.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Okay, take it another step back. The mother does all that same stuff, but doesn't have a specific boyfriend to offer her to. Instead, she does all the same things, because her social group praises her for doing it. Grooming or not?
Nope. If she doesn't have the intent of sexual contact from her child to someone else it is not grooming. She isn't preparing them for predators, she is behaving in ways that incidentally some predators like. Those are very different things. Like teaching your 12 yo daughter to wax her legs is in some way preparing them for adult grooming (in the other sense) norms but that doesn't mean you are doing it so that your daughter will attract predators who like underage girls. Will some sexual predators prefer her hairless? Most likely. But that isn't the goal. She isn't doing it FOR the community of predators, she is doing it for her own reasons AND the community of predators might like it. The fact that might increase risks should be a consideration IMHO but it shouldn't be called grooming (in the CSE sense). If I polish my expensive watch so it shines beautifully, then walk down a dark alley and get mugged for it, I may be stupid, but unless I intended for the watch to be stolen I am not grooming my watch for theft.
Otherwise grooming becomes so wide that its meaning is essentially lost. Which isn't normally an issue, except in that it might muddy the waters for agencies and people who want to prevent "real" CSE. Child grooming is a real and serious problem, that results in the abuse of many children in ways that will often impact them for life. If one wants to oppose Drag Kids or child beauty pageants because they do expose kids unnecessarily to risks because of people who do target those communities, I think that is fair and reasonable. But using groomer for the organizers and parents is a rhetorical smear. Which is fine in the proper context, as a politician it would be a weapon that would be hard to ignore. But I do think here we should be more nuanced.
Because if we can't be more nuanced than bloody politicians what are we even for?
SSCReader
1yr ago
Yes, both people who groom and those who do not will deny they are. Most people who deny it will not be, some who do will.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Not unless you think the mothers are getting sexual pleasure from it, which does not appear to be the case in my experience. They focus on the pretty almost doll part I think.
SSCReader
1yr ago
The book notes on page 85 that "Our research clearly shows that women do as well as men in general elections. It also shows that the reason there aren't more women in public office is that not many women have run. Women have made up a very small percentage of candidates in general elections, particularly at higher levels of office."
I kind of like xir, it sounds like I am in some kind of vaguely Star Trekian utopia. I've never been asked to use any pronouns in real life, let alone xir though.
SSCReader
1yr ago
But Tolkien was very clear that Middle-earth was not an invented world, it was meant to be our own world as we have it right now, just that the tales were set in a very distant, mythological past.
Doesn't that mean that, the interpretations today, absolutely should have black dwarves et al? Our world is very different from his, from a skin tone perspective. An American interpretation should cast more black people and so on. That from your explanation seems very much in keeping to his perspective. Todays stories told in the mythological past. Like it or not America's story is intertwined with it's relationship with slavery and the fall out thereof.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Same with The Little Mermaid, I've seen the original and I'm used to white Ariel, when she turns up as black I'm suddenly made aware that I'm not watching Ariel, I'm just watching some actress pretend to be a mermaid by saying the lines she's told to.
This seems a bit of an issue, we know Tom Cruise isn't a fighter pilot or a spy or a 6 foot 2 bruiser, so any famous actor should also pull you out. Or James Bond, played by different actors, with different accents and different hair colours and of different ages.
The original Little Mermaid was a cartoon, but the fact she is animated didn't wreck your immersion? Or the fact that she is a mythical sea creature with a talking singing crab et al? Why particularly is skin color the thing that breaks your immersion? This isn't a gotcha, I find it legitimately perplexing.
As an aside, I do have an amusing vision of a marine biologist complaining about how the Little Mermaid breaks his immersion because crabs don't sing like that, or a Greek classicist complaining about the fact that mermaids should really be bird women not fish women.
SSCReader
1yr ago
According to the BBC review that is at least addressed in the movie:
"These woman are warriors, not saints. Historically, Dahomey flourished by taking captives and selling them, and the film doesn't ignore that complicity. Instead, it enhances Nanisca's role as heroine by making her the king's conscience, telling him more than once that slavery is unnecessary and immoral, even if he is not trading his own people. "
SSCReader
1yr ago
Things have to be internally consistent.
That is fair, but if in the new rebooted universe there are black mermaids then that can be internally consistent. It doesn't need to be internally consistent with the previous version necessarily. Like 616 Nick Fury was white and Ultimates Universe Nick Fury was black. If Ultimates Fury was shown having white parents then if it wasn't explained that would be strange, but he doesn't have to be consistent with 616 Fury's white ancestry.
In our example, it wouldn't be white Jim becoming Asian Jim, it would be a rebooted version of the Office where (in that new universe) Jim was always asian. Internal consistency is internal to the reboot, not to the previous version. Otherwise actors would have to be the same as well.
SSCReader
1yr ago
And this is where all the race-swapping in pre-built fantasy worlds gets me. These are worlds that already have established phenotypes for it's inhabitants. Already have, and frequently center in the oral history told to the character, the movements of those peoples.
Except they are not the same version as the original. As mentioned above Ultimates Nick Fury is different than 616 Fury (originally at least). In this version of the LoTR history there are black dwarves. They can change the background so in that universe it is not regarded as "cucking their population" or whatever. Now the Doylist reason for that is increasing diversity representation or etc., and that is a reasonable position to oppose. But from a Watsonian perspective your pre-knowledge about how there would only be black characters because of post-racial globalization no longer holds. You can dislike the change, but you seem to be saying that it HAS to have the same background as our world. That black dwarves came from some Africa equivalent, rather than being a magical mutation, or any other reason under the sun. Perhaps when Aule created the seven fathers of the dwarfs, they were different shades and Valar magic means one seventh of the population will always be black. Your assumption seems to be that there can only be black characters in this version if they come from some far off place, and in Tolkien's original that may be the case. But this is not that. It is an adaption.
Tolkiens novel's may have had established phenotypes, but the adaptions may or may not. The black dwarf can be a native, so can a white dwarf (Grombrindal aside perhaps). Plausible world building does not require that it matches our own world's history. To me, Tolkien's histories don't even make internal sense in the first place, so adding some extra features that also don't make sense is barely an issue. I might raise an eyebrow if they revealed Middle-Earth was on the back of a turtle, but I would at least be looking forward to seeing the Patrician in action.
The fact there are magical god-Wizards and the earth was flat until it became round and there wasn't a sun but the world was lit by trees, already shows that the history can depart radically from our own. In this version, it is altered more such that there are black dwarves or hobbits or whatever. To me the latter seems a much smaller departure than the former. Since I accept the former as part of the world, I can also accept the latter.
Now if you don't suspend your belief for either, then that is a different and quite reasonable objection. If you're like the aforementioned biologist complaining that dragons that big could never fly with those wings, or that clearly the elven stories about the world having once been flat and lit by trees are clear nonsense, then complaining about phenotypes also makes sense, you're grounding the world in our reality and finding it lacking. But that isn't the objection I mostly seem to see.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Well you said he was telling tales of our world now, just SET in the distant past no? If Tolkien was an author today he would be writing stories about the places, peoples and situations of today but mythologized into the past. If he were writing today, I suspect some of the issues around today would have been in his work, just set in his created mythology. That's what an adaption is, it takes a product, re-envisages it as if it were written today (with varying degrees of success). Alternate universe Tolkien writing today where Birmingham has significant Pakistani and Caribbean populations would plausibly have written a very different book.
SSCReader
1yr ago
No that's fair, I didn't really explain myself properly there. What I mean is that, no matter what the adaptor's plan, it will be filtered through their own lense. Even if they set out to make an authentic adaption it will be filtered through their own viewpoint and biases.
It's impossible to adapt something as Tolkien would have done if he were a television writer now. And if Tolkien had been writing LoTR today it would have been a different book, because he would have been a different person with different upbringing and set of experiences.
Does that make more sense?
SSCReader
1yr ago
Let me paste my reply above, because I didn't do a good job before:
"No that's fair, I didn't really explain myself properly there. What I mean is that, no matter what the adaptor's plan, it will be filtered through their own lense. Even if they set out to make an authentic adaption it will be filtered through their own viewpoint and biases.
It's impossible to adapt something as Tolkien would have done if he were a television writer now. And if Tolkien had been writing LoTR today it would have been a different book, because he would have been a different person with different upbringing and set of experiences.
Does that make more sense?"
My view is that whether you set out to update an adaption or not, by the very nature that the people adapting it will be from a very different society and viewpoint, that it will be filtered through their lense no matter what. Jackson's adaptions bumped up the importance of battles and romance because that is what his viewpoint of a big budget action movie was (mixed with what the financiers thought of course).
SSCReader
1yr ago
Ahh, well, that is where we differ I think. The books, the 80's movie, the Jackson Trilogies, and the new series have fundamental incompatibilities. Jackson replaces Glorfindel with Arwen. for example. That doesn't stop his trilogy being Lord of the Rings. It isn't the original version. But it also isn't something entirely new.
It's a bastardized cash grab ** -agreed-** pushed out by cultural vandals who hate and disdain everything the original represented. - I disagree here, they may have a different view of things, but reading some interviews with the writers it certainly does not appear that they "hate and disdain" everything. They have different views than they do, of course but that isn't the same thing.
SSCReader
1yr ago
From where I’m standing it’s the right’s failure to “censor in a much more strict and comprehensive way” that has landed us where we are today.
Well wokeness itself, emerged from basically a coalition of those who were outsiders to the right (or at least to a particular ascendant variety of the right). Do we need to recap over gay people hiding in the closet et al? Women being denied work opportunities? Redlining and Jim Crow? 1950's gender roles?
You're not going back far enough if you are asking about Iraq. The seeds of wokeness were sown decades before that. The 90's and early 2000's were roughly where both sides were in balance, shifting from one cultural hegemon to another if you will. The right did not quickly lose control (to the extent they have, see below), it was a slow decades long process.
But if it helps, even today in my small Red rural town, I do not admit to being an atheist. It was only 10 years ago that:
"Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to."
And in many places that still holds. As I said a week or two ago, don't confuse the national media dominance of the blue tribe to think that red tribe conservative values are not dominant in many local places.
SSCReader
1yr ago
Reds failed at this responsibility when last we had a workable amount of social control.
An alternate explanation is that when you repress and control speech and behaviour (which both sides do), you create groups of outcasts. The genesis of the woke movement is when various groups were able to band together and discover there were enough of them, that they could begin to build their own narrative coalition. The tighter you close your fist the more people will be pushed into the other camp. You have to balance the level of social control, with the number of people you are pushing into the rebel side.
This isn't exclusive to conservatives of course, exactly the same will happen (and arguably is already happening) with progressive social control. Whether it is inevitable, or whether it is possible to have some form of social control which allows some kind of wiggle room, enough to put in place the social boundaries civilization requires, without creating big enough groups of outcasts who feel they have no choice but to push back and have the numbers to start the cycle again.
SSCReader
1yr ago
That's not the case here. If you could argue convincingly that Middle-earth is in a multiverse situation, then fine, black Dwarves and Chinese hobbits and whatever else you like. But Middle-earth, although a fictional creation, is not meant to be some imaginary world out there in the vast universe, it is supposed to be our world in the very, very remote past.
In the books Glorfindel drives back the Nazgul. In the movies it is Arwen. Two different versions of the same story. Each is a separate contained universe. One is the original and the other is an altered adaption. You don't need an (internal to the story) multiverse for that. It's an issue that already exists. The 80's animation, the books, the movies, the extended version of the movies.
And if they pay the licensing fee to Tolkiens estate they absolutely can claim that. They bought it fair and square. With caveats of what they could and could not do. Art can be bought and sold.
SSCReader
1yr ago
The mental stats in DnD have always been in this weird place. How does your 100IQ player or GM portray an INT 25 Psychic super genius? The answer is badly in my experience. All it usually comes down to is a stat that impacts your skill rolls, spells modifiers and so on most often. Do your spells key off Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma? What are you adding to your skill checks? It very rarely comes down to anything beyond that. Dumping INT as a Half-Orc Barbarian and then playing it with your own level of intelligence outside of stat modifiers is pretty common. And having an Int 20 Wizard played by someone who doesn't even themselves know what their spells do, or how many they get.
Should the player whose bard has 22 Charisma have to roleplay making a speech to convince the king to spare you or is their nigh supernatural charisma and a single die role the way to go?
SSCReader
1yr ago
They replaced Glorfindel with Arwen, and while I hate this choice, I understand it.
They did not replace Glorfindel with a single mother brown Human healer from an invented village in the far South populated by the descendants of the Men who fought in Morgoth's armies, and had Jackson even tried doing that, the first movie would have sunk like a stone that looks down into the darkness which is why it does not float like a ship that looks up at the light.
Right but your original point was that you needed a multiverse to have different versions. But that isn't the case (which you seem to accept), which is fine, now we are back to objecting to the SPECIFIC changes made, which is also fine I think. Let me rephrase. If you dislike the race swapping because:
-
No changes should be made at all, Arwen replacing Glorfindel is also wrong (and what happened to Tom Bombadil, Jackson you monster!)- entirely reasonable in my view (maybe a minority opinion across the population, but when has that ever stopped us here?)
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The changes they made were not explained appropriately within the setting - entirely reasonable in my view.
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The changes they made were explained within the setting, but I don't accept that change because black people can't be natives of this area of Middle Earth, no matter how well it is explained in universe. - this seems like it may be an issue (again in my opinion) - see below.
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I don't care about the Watsonian reasons, I object because of the Doylist reasons for the change (i.e. creators pushing diversity in casting) are ones I dislike for x reason - entirely reasonable in my view (I may disagree with it, but it is I think it is a reasonable position to hold).
Going back to your example, if the makers of RoP had a flashback to Aule creating dwarfs and revealed he made them in different skin colors, I think you said, that you would be ok with this. (Please correct me if I am wrong!) but the OP I was responding to seemed to be of the opinion that if you included anyone black they would HAVE to be explained as a foreigner within the concept space of this version of the show and also import our own race dynamics such that it should also be regarded as racial "cucking" et al. That's the part that I think is a little unreasonable.
None of that should be taken to say that the writers have indeed explained it, or even agree with me that they should. More discussing the hypothetical.
Imagine a future version of America, where Yellowstone detonates and the remnants of the US invade Australia after the rest of the world decides the US hegemony being broken is a pretty good deal actually. The refugee US population enacting their manifest destiny may well escalate being American descended (white, black or asian) above being rest of the world descended (white. black or asian), given the struggle was America (or Valyria) vs everyone else. With our current language we might not call that a bloodline per se, but that's basically what they are saying. being Valyrian (of any color) is better than being non-Valyrian (of any color.) It's actually an interesting look at a place where nationalism blended with aristocracy to create a group who eliminated ethnic difference in their own Empire (to an extent at least), then reinvented them (us vs them) in a time of great stress.
If black and white Americans had to fight together for survival after a cataclysmic destruction of their homeland, it's not too far fetched to imagine that "American" becomes the new bloodline to preserve. The myth of their shared history blending with the refusal to accept that others are equal to them. It's not skin color that makes you superior or pure, it's whether you can trace your ancestry to America/Valyria directly.
Sure the Doylist explanation is that it was for cast diversity. But the Watsonian explanation isn't that crazy for a an Empire that spread across a good chunk of the world. We know they enslaved people from the Summer Isles and perhaps one was able to achieve freedom and power. They're not dragon riders, so they weren't at the top of the heap, they seem to have been part of the navy of Valyria, freed for some long lost act of service and given dominion over the seas? Adopting the incest ideal of Valyria, those families could maintain their features, largely. Some marry out perhaps for alliance purposes, hence the hair. Though we don't even know if the silver hair and violet eyes is a natural trait of Valyrians or caused by exposure to the dark magics they were rumored to use. Overtime the family identifies more strongly with Valyria than any past ancestry they ever had. Or the Valyrians has local regents in some places and eventually one of those rose to become part of the Valyrian freehold. Or a Valyrian took a local dark skinned wife and that plus the incest angle, takes over from there.
Given Valyria is a loose proxy for Rome, we also have the Romanized Africans who spoke Latin and the like:
"The willing acceptance of Roman citizenship by members of the ruling class in African cities produced such Roman Africans as the comic poet Terence, the rhetorician Fronto of Cirta, the jurist Salvius Julianus of Hadrumetum, the novelist Apuleius of Madauros, the emperor Septimius Severus of Lepcis Magna, the Christians Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage, and Arnobius of Sicca and his pupil Lactantius; the angelic doctor Augustine of Thagaste, the epigrammatist Luxorius of Vandal Carthage, and perhaps the biographer Suetonius, and the poet Dracontius."
In our world they were largely Punic and Berbers, but in Valyria? Who knows? Note that the black family are not Targaryens, they are House Velaryon who are allies of the Targaryens, so while they aren't a rival house, they are a separate house as per your request.
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