Samurai: A Warrior's Path -In Progress-

ScarletGeisha · 2012-02-03T20:14:47.000Z

And @Pladio, I doubt I can commit a whole RPG to pure text. Well, it is possible in MUD games but…

Rogar · 2012-02-03T20:38:09.000Z

It would nice you have follower later on on life.

Havenstone · 2012-02-04T18:59:49.000Z

@ScarletGeisha: “The image of Mongolians as a bunch of savages is just a myth, propagated by who I don’t know” - Hmmm. Possibly the two-thirds of Eurasia they conquered? I’d be particularly suspicious of all those well-established cultures who already had a solidly developed, exclusionary self-image as the most advanced civilisations on the block.

On the other hand, as you say, Chinggis had a hand in propagating it himself – while he wasn’t as mountain-of-skulls-happy as his descendant Timur, his military tactics were designed to terrify and appal people. I’ve hiked around cities he toppled, in valleys where everyone today is descended from Chinggis, because he killed all the original inhabitants. Maybe it’s not surprising that the humiliated target civilisations chose to remember the military savagery more than the advances of commerce, science, and cultural exchange they owed to Mongol rule?

Anyway. Just been catching up on the forums and wanted to belatedly offer another note of encouragement – your game and your “walls of text” are highlights of the CoG community. As another CoG author prone to perennially missing my own internal deadlines, don’t let it get you down. And thanks for your consistently gracious but firm challenge to take seriously the ways that our escapism can either reinforce or critique the nastiest power dynamics of our own culture(s) – I’ll be trying to keep that in mind consistently as I write my own fiction.

Havenstone · 2012-02-04T19:06:13.000Z

Also, while I’m in text-wall mode myself… a while back you asked about Christian feminists. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza is a prominent theologian who’s done a lot to revive and build on anti-patriarchal voices in the early Christian tradition. (Actually, you might have heard of her as the person who coined the term “kyriarchy” back in the early 1990s; outside the Greek-speaking world, “kyrios,” Lord, was used only in a theological context until her broader use caught on). Her writing is often dense and prone to specialist jargon, so I don’t know that recommending you read In Memory of Her would be particularly helpful.

But in a nutshell, she emphasises that Christian theism is not inherently patriarchal; that the Christian God and Jesus refer to themselves and their work using both male and female gendered language, not exclusively in terms like “Father” and “Lord”; that Jesus’ teaching and movement involved direct challenge to patriarchal authority and family structures; that the “model disciples” in the earliest account of Jesus’ life we have (Mark’s gospel) are the women, not the men; that from the outset there have been clashing visions of “the radical discipleship of equals” versus “the patriarchal male pyramid of subordination” when it comes to power dynamics in the church; that it took a long time for the “Fathers of the Early Church” to come out on top in the struggle to repress women’s role in church leadership and teaching, which nonetheless persisted in various forms of resistance; and so on and so forth.

So if you’re still looking for reassurance that a non-kyriarchal version of Christianity doesn’t do violence to the essence of Christian faith/culture – don’t worry. There is a plausible alternate history where Paul’s “In Christ there is no male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free” (Galatians 3:28) was taken as the key text, rather than the various other writings that echoed the sexism and slavery practised in the dominant culture. It’s especially plausible in an alternate-history world where the broader turn to patriarchy didn’t happen.

Of course, many contemporary Christians object to Schussler Fiorenza’s feminist reading of Scripture. I first heard of her in the early 1990s when some conservative friends were insisting she was a Wiccan or Gnostic because, like Jesus, she used feminine-gendered nouns for God (particularly Sophia, wisdom – as Jesus said, referring to followers of God, “Sophia is known by all her children”). But I assume Yamato’s version of Christianity doesn’t need to make all Christians happy, it just needs to be in keeping with the least kyriarchal version on offer?

ScarletGeisha · 2012-02-05T03:28:49.000Z

Yes, another poster of text walls!

You have no idea how happy it makes me to know that I am able to help aspiring writers here (you are an aspiring writer, right?) be a bit more critical about social dynamics in entertainment. I admit my posts aren’t very well-constructed, but it is nice to know that someone found it helpful, even if it were only one person. I will be looking forward to what you make. I honestly think one’s work would be better for it if the authour is aware of kyriarchal poison, and I would definitely want to support the work.

Also, thanks for mentioning Schussler Fiorenza’s work. I never knew who she was even though I use the word “kyriarchy” a lot.

Religion is a very powerful social structure, and it simply doesn’t make a lot of sense to use the patriarchal and homophobic interpretation in a setting where these two things never took root. I would talk more about how it relates to the narrative in Samurai, but I don’t want to take the chance of influencing anyone’s thoughts before it is even finished. In the most favourable future where I live up to expectations and people here are interested in talking about it, then we shall have that discussion.

Havenstone · 2012-02-05T11:44:08.000Z

Yes, I’m an aspiring fiction writer – I’ve managed to complete some narrative nonfiction in the past, but my CoG contribution will be the first fiction I actually finish. In the year 2025, at current pace!

My day job is in international development, which I could use as a great excuse for the slow pace of my writing (“sorry guys, had to run off to Congo on short notice”), but actually it’s all down to the Elder Scrolls and Civ. Now that my wife has kindly hidden the discs, I’m hoping my productivity will improve markedly…

Both for my day job and in what I read, I’m interested in the themes of power, its abuses, and oppressor-oppressed relationships. Writing on those themes without lapsing into exploitation – especially in a genre with as many exploitative tropes as fantasy, especially for a white American evangelical male who’s still part-deaf to how a story sounds from the margins – takes a lot of attention and outside help.

It’s easy and safer to write oppressors as simple monsters – that’s less likely to glorify oppression or gratify tacit oppressor-fantasies. But it has its own dangers (Tolkien’s demonic hordes who can be killed without the least moral qualm is one of the worst tropes he bequeathed to fantasy). To make readers uneasy about their own role in structures of oppression, you have to find a finer balance – helping the readers see something of themselves in the kyriarchy without implicitly justifying it; describing the consequences for the oppressed using enough detail to shock, but not the exploitation that’s become the norm for our pop culture.

A decade and a half ago, I ran a fantasy RPG which included one of the CoG founders and his then-girlfriend, now-wife. It was a story in which most of the characters start as uneasy oppressors, become slaves, and eventually join (not lead – this wasn’t intended as Avatar or Last Samurai) a rebellion that topples the oppressive empire and has to grapple with building a new order. But the story also went way, way too far down the “gritty” rabbit hole on its way to the redemption. Looking back at it with a more critical eye, I’m not happy or proud of the way I dealt with several aspects.

So my CoG project (wt: The Karagond Rebellion) is in part a do-over. I’m trying to tell a similar story with more critical attention, in a way that communicates both the horrors of oppression and the ease with which the rebel can become a new oppressor, while not getting lost in the grimness or using language that tacitly justifies/glorifies it. And hopefully fewer cliches. I won’t be posting a beta for some time yet, but anyone interested in reading the first quarter of our flawed old campaign in story form will get some sense of the themes. You’ll also be unsurprised to know that the CoGster played the queer berserker paladin.

/textwall

Shoelip · 2012-02-05T17:49:30.000Z

I was just thinking that (not that this helps with the game much) I really don’t know all that much about Pre-Roman Christianity. I mean, I know it was probably less violent and self contradictory but other than that… Well like I said, I suppose it wouldn’t help with the game much if I did, since whatever your Christians are they’re Post-Roman.

ScarletGeisha · 2012-02-05T20:28:09.000Z

@Havenstone This too will be the first project I actually publish.

Anyway, I am quite intrigued by your project. You appear to have a great understanding of oppression and the rebellion against these elements are something I would like very much to read. Part of the reason why I think you are doing it right is because you know that potraying oppresors as monsters is ultimately harmful to oppression awareness. After all, most people know that killing someone for the colour of their skin is wrong. What most people don’t know is how many groups continue to be marginalised by a culture of discrimination constantly reinforcing each other. Also, having your former oppressors support but not lead a rebellion makes me want to go “YES! THIS! THIS SO MUCH!” We don’t even have to look at Avatar or Last Samurai either. We just have to look around us to see the same thing. Privileged people telling marginalised groups what we should and should not do, and they would love to claim the credit for our victories. Let’s not forget intersectionality either. You know, those people who are marginalised in one way but still have power in all the others.

Shoelip · 2012-02-06T03:04:24.000Z

I’m not sure that Last Samurai and Avatar can really be thrown together so easily. Avatar is a sci fi story about blue alien cat Native American analogues being oppressed by militaristic humans and winning their freedom through combat. The Last Samurai is a totally historically inaccurate historical fiction about the former oppressors, becoming the oppressed and then launching a doomed rebellion and failing miserably, but they leave out the part about them being the former oppressors.

ScarletGeisha · 2012-02-06T03:28:29.000Z

Both of them are just variations of the White Guilt narrative, where a white person goes native and succeeds at native stuff and is worshipped for fighting for the natives’ rights. Also, they are the leaders and they tell the natives exactly what to do and they listen because they’re all waiting for a Great White Messiah.

Shoelip · 2012-02-06T05:25:36.000Z

Hm… That seems like a rather twisted way of looking at it. To me it seemed more like they were both about an American guy who was kind of a failure where he came from coming to a new land and learning to become a native, and only then once he sheds his American crassness does he find what he’s good at… While in Avatar I guess he was pretty much the leader, in The Last Samurai Tom Cruise really becomes more like a general under the main leader. The reason for that is of course because the movies are made for American audiences so they want to make sure the audience can somewhat relate to the character. The color of the main character’s skin seems to be white only because white people are allowed to be wrong. If for instance you had a black person learning the error of his ways from some other culture people would most likely consider it racist against black people.

ScarletGeisha · 2012-02-06T07:40:35.000Z

So just because you’re making a movie for White America means you get to shit all over the history of other cultures to put yourself in the forefront? Seriously, the “white people can’t relate to others” is a stupid excuse. The whole world watches Hollywood movies, and the number of white people is very small compared to the rest of us. Yet, we seem to have no trouble identifying with a white-skinned protagonist. Also, white people should feel insulted that Hollywood thinks they can’t watch anything which doesn’t have a white person as the hero.

The White Guilt narrative is a reaction white people have when confronted with their colonial history. White people know the atrocities they or their ancestors have committed, because if you don’t think stealing the lands of others and exploiting their people and resources is an atrocity then you’re probably evil. At the same time, white people have promoted themselves as the paragons of humanity. The ones who carry the burden to uplift all those unfortunate yellow/brown/black folk from their barbaric traditions. Put these two in a pot and you get narratives where white people protect yellow/brown/black/brown-disguised-as-blue folk against their own people, and doing it the only way the kyriarchy has taught everyone how: taking control.

Of course I’m not explaining this very well, partly because this issue makes me angry what with my people having bore the brunt of white colonialism. The key thing to remember is power dynamics. White people have all the power. Even in Asia and Africa. Don’t laugh, it’s true. White people get to cherry pick what they like about other cultures and absorb it into their conciousness, whilst stripping away the cultural connotations behind such elements and then redefining it as they see fit. Who made the term “geisha” an euphemism for “Japanese call girls in kimono and face paint”? Who decided that Chinese people were first a race of subhumans, then friends during WWII, and finally a race of mindless drones? Who dictated that Bangkok is a drug and prostitution paradise? Who perverted the image of Mother Kali from a kind-hearted supreme being into a bloodthirsty goddess demanding human sacrifices? Who marvelled at the beauty of ancient Egyptian artifacts and ignored the fact that the Egyptians are peoples of African descent?

There’s a lot more. We’re not perfect saints ourselves, but the white media has taught us that these things are true. The white media taught us that whiteness is the default and that everyone else are a treasure trove of exoticism. To white people, their culture is the true way so of course us non-whites would want to enter this most enlightened way of life. But do we get to be leaders of the white world? Why of course not! How apalling! A freak of nature it is! No, our place in white culture is to do as we are told by those of paler pigmentation. Because whiteness is always right. Even when White is not in a place which is “oh so exotic”, it is still right.

Yes, good things have come from the West and we aren’t purveyors of sainthood ourselves, but we’re not stupid. We know what atrocities we are capable of and we want to change that by our own hands. White friends are welcome, but they must remember that they cannot possibly engage with our culture and that circumstance has made them prone to impose their ways on us. Do you know that China, Japan, Malaya, India, pre-colonial North America, and many more were totally okay with homosexuality and even third genders until white people interfered?

Shoelip · 2012-02-06T11:31:49.000Z

Why does it matter so much to you what white people think? It’s not like they’re forcing you to feel that way anymore are they? You just come across as horribly hateful and racist to me. You rage against colonialism, while at the same time seeming to insist that so called “white culture” conform to your personal ideals because it made whatever your culture is do so in the past. Hollywood is a money making industry. It’s there to appeal to the American market, not any other market. They make what sells, and the only thing that matters to them is whether they’re making money.

I dunno, maybe this whole “white guilt” narrative is a well known trope, but to me it just sounds like a very contrived way of twisting mindless entertainment with something more, and in an extremely racist way. Like I said, the whole reason white people are always the protagonists of those films is because white people are allowed to be wrong. If they had a protagonist of some other skin color the film would be considered racist against the ethnicity of that character.

ScarletGeisha · 2012-02-06T12:11:30.000Z

The White Guilt narrative is a well known trope. Also, it is a myth that Hollywood movies are only important in the American market. Hollywood is all about money, they want to get the widest audience possible. You can’t get any wider than the world. Just take a look here: http://www.boxofficeguru.com/intl.htm Of course there are some exceptions, but International Gross usually beats Domestic Gross.

And why does it matter to me what white people think? Well, why does it matter to me that white people really love shitting on my people? Why does it matter to me when white tourists come over here and behave as if they still own the place and expect me to grovel after them?

I have said it before. The element here is power dynamics. When white people are wrong, they are still right. Go ahead and watch all these movies again. Add Dances With Wolves and District 9 to that list too. It’s always about how white people become the leader of natives and save them all from other white people. No, just because Tom Cruise wasn’t the biggest chief in Last Samurai doesn’t count. Ken Watanabe died in it didn’t he, and leaving Tom Cruise to wander around as the last samurai.

There are perfectly possible ways to have a story about a non-white person being wrong. You don’t even have to make something up if you’re lazy. Just make an adaptation of Malcolm X admitting that he was wrong to have followed Elijah Mohammad. Or do you mean wrong in the “something is wrong with my culture” way? Can be done too. No white saviours needed. When you want to make a story about the struggles of a specific group, make it about them. Don’t make it about how awesome that white guy is.

Now, I’ve been thinking about this issue alot. Specifically, whether the definition of racism should include the presence of institutional power. Perhaps we should make a difference between xenophobia and racism. Xenophobia is the fear of outsiders for any reason, including race. Whereas racism is the deliberate (whether subtle or overt) oppression of certain races by the institution and the masses. Are you a white person, Shoelip? If you are, you do know that it gives you power over me right? Unless I’m super rich, but I’m not so that’s moot. I suggest you educate yourself about white privilege before continuing this discussion. In fact, anyone who wishes to talk about this should read up on white privilege regardless of whether you are white or not. We don’t need more nastiness.

noogai · 2012-02-06T12:54:19.000Z

You seem to not appreciate white people that much.
That really offends me and i hope you can one day gtfo off your high horse and realize that not everyone is a big bad American pig who only cares about consumer goods bought at wall-mart and ‘‘shitting over your people.’’

How is your rant above me not racist against me? Even if it is historically true that white colonists where a bunch of, excuse the expression huge dicks against pretty much every race on other continents. That does not mean you get the right to insult white people.

And why do you watch Hollywood movies if you don’t like them? It isn’t as if they force it down your throat.

jasonstevanhill · 2012-02-06T13:21:45.000Z

This thread is starting to get a little testy. I’d suggest getting back on topic.

Rogar · 2012-02-06T13:30:57.000Z

William Adam or know as Miura Anjin the name give to him by Tokugawa Ieyasu one first white samurai, even was made hatamoto and lord of Hemi for icome if not mistake as well.

Rogar · 2012-02-06T13:31:32.000Z

@jasonstevanhill your such gentle peackeeper.

Havenstone · 2012-02-06T15:42:18.000Z

Hey Scarlet, hang in there. Privilege sucks in both its “arrogant tourist” and more invisible forms. But in most cases, its built-in defense mechanisms are more vulnerable to erosion than explosion – however justified the latter might be.

And um, if you were ever so inclined, don’t blow off steam by reading those old D&D campaign notes I linked to – which I’ve tried to write up because of fond memories of the characters and much of the story, but whose world nonetheless dates back to a time when I blindly echoed orientalist tropes even more than I still do. Like I said, my CoG story is intended as a do-over, and I’ll appreciate your unsparing review of that when it really gets somewhere.

Maybe offline we could chat about District 9 – I’d actually thought of that as the anti-“Dances With Aliens”. Partly because it was braver in using aliens that were genuinely inhuman-looking – by what quirk of evolution did Pandora end up with svelte bipedal cat-people among its hexapodal monsters? But also because I initially saw it as a story where the oppressor doesn’t turn into the heroic leader of the oppressed (either Sam Worthington-style Messiah or Tom Cruise/Kevin Costner-style general), just a rank-and-file alien who ends up in a position to help out the real leader.

Is the help he gives too significant? I hadn’t felt it elevated him to anything resembling “special savior” status among the aliens – that he either claimed or was offered any unique credit for their collective success.

He does literally become one of the oppressed, which is a tricky story to tell well. It’s a bad analogy if you think about race or gender; there’s no alien goop equivalent that can ever strip me of the privilege I was born with as a white straight cis male. But there are other forms of power that can be suddenly, breathtakingly reversed – or deliberately laid aside. And some of the most important aspects of kyriarchy can be laid aside too: the need to control, and the masks power uses to hide itself.

I’d have thought the privileged need to hear the stories that say: “lose the justifications, lose the illusions, relinquish your ‘right’ of control, come listen, and eventually, once you understand, you’ll be able to help. Not save, not lead – that just heads right back into your kyriarchal comfort zone – but lend a hand.” And to me, District 9 felt like it was trying to be one of those stories.

I’d be interested to hear more about how it looked to you. Perhaps in a context where you can give a negative review without reigniting flames? Ditto for the idea that allies from an outside culture (especially a more privileged one) “cannot possibly engage with our culture,” which would have major, saddening consequences for all of us who are trying to tell stories across historical and cultural boundaries.

Havenstone · 2012-02-06T17:50:23.000Z

And guys, let’s all calm down a bit, ok? Let’s dial down the angry race-talk and take a deep breath – but let’s not just drop the issue that kicked this off, because I think it goes to an important part of what makes the CoG community distinctive.

CoG writers take more seriously than most the question of whether their stories include or exclude people – whether the choices in those stories lock the reader/character into traditional roles or give you freedom to break out of them.

And writers or not, we’re all here because we love stories – especially the kind of story that catches you up and makes you identify with the main character. We grew up with those kinds of stories and we’re still reading them today.

So let’s not make stories less important than they are. It’s not just entertainment sold for profit, like so much popcorn. In every culture, stories are the main thing that teach us roles and boundaries – especially as kids, but continuing as adults. They open up other people’s worlds to us. They can also tell us lies and blind us to truths. Powerful people and groups in society tend to produce lots of stories that reinforce and justify their power. Even if you aren’t forced to read/hear/watch them, stories are “part of the atmosphere” that shapes what we expect and how we react.

Some of the most popular stories are those that simplify other people to objects of the main character’s choices. Like stories that treat women as objects to be screwed or rescued by men; or poor people as victims who need to be saved by kindly rich people; or our enemies as inhuman monsters who hate us without cause and must be killed if we are to survive. If we put ourselves in the shoes of the active, powerful character in those stories, they’re quite satisfying.

It’s easy for us not to realize how those stories can be heard by people from the objectified group. (What the orcs think of Tolkien is admittedly hard to tell). When someone tries to tell you what the story says to them, it can sound or feel like a personal attack. (With the orcs, presumably involving a nasty-looking bladed weapon). Or it can just sound like a bizarre or “twisted” way of seeing things – especially if it involves a metaphorical interpretation of the story that wouldn’t have occurred to us. (Wait – the orcs are actually Turks, echoing Europe’s longstanding fear and enmity toward the Muslims along its eastern border?) But we need to listen and try to understand – especially those of us who do naturally associate ourselves with the protagonists, because we’re the same color or sex or class or culture.

So yep, on one level, Avatar’s a story about a soldier who realizes that he’s fighting for the wrong side, that his enemy aren’t monsters but beautiful people on the verge of extinction. All that is fine – in fact, I think it’s a nice inversion of the “hordes of inhuman monsters” shtick for the guy who made his name with Aliens. It’s just a shame that the story not only has its hero join the right side, but swiftly become its messianic leader.

That implies that the “natives” couldn’t have won without the outsider leading them; that native skills can be mastered much more quickly by the outsider; that their religion and culture find fulfilment in an outsider. And all those ideas are part of a familiar story that we’ve told a lot in the West. We used to tell it much more offensively, back when Kipling could in full seriousness ask his readers to “take up the White Man’s Burden” and feel good about saving non-whites from themselves. In this well-meaning, uneasily guilty age, a lot more Westerners have forgotten those stories – but the formerly colonized nations haven’t, and they hear our current stories in the light of the ones we used to tell ourselves and them to justify our rule.

We can’t pretend those stories never happened. Yes, we need to be careful not to replace them with stories in which every bad thing ever is the fault of the colonizer. Those aren’t true, and don’t do anyone any good. But in light of the oppressive old stories, we who love stories and take them seriously should proactively look for ways to include what the old stories excluded; respect what the old stories treated with contempt; show what the old stories swept under the rug; and understand what the old stories distorted.

That’s the spirit CoG writers tend to show when it comes to sex/gender; let’s see if we can’t manage it in the similar minefield of race and culture.