Also, what ocelot said.
By the way, what’s a “riff”? Not a musical phrase in this case, I guess O_o
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[color=#009900]The historical explanation is - I’ve been told - that the Vietnam war highlighted problems of racism and perception around East Asia, so the term became a sore spot in the US in a way it didn’t in the UK / EU.[/color]
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[color=#009900]But the actual explanation is, because it’s so. There is no fundamental reason why ‘a Chinese man’ is completely neutral and ‘a Chinaman’ is offensive (in the UK, too). There is no etymological reason why ‘an Asiatic’ sounds racist but ‘an Asian’ doesn’t: and that said, there are Asian people in the UK who dislike the term and would rather be called any of a number of other things (like their nationality or their religion). And there is of course no reason but history why Asian means ‘South Asian’ in the UK but ‘East Asian’ in the US.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Come to that, pace Orwell, I don’t mind being called a Limey, and I’d think it was hysterical if someone called me a Britisher. Things change.[/color]
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[color=#009900]The bottom line is that if a good number of people say in good faith, sorry, we find that term offensive, then if avoiding it isn’t a big deal, it’s courteous to avoid it. It’s rarely that simple, of course. Hence all these epic posts. :)[/color]
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edited by Alexis on 11/20/2013
[color=#009900]You know, part of the reason Connected: Orient lasted so long was that it took me a little while, having spent so much of my adolescence wanting to be mysterious and unknown, to get my head round that. But, like, totally.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Tigers, fortunately, are more flexible.[/color]
It’s a bit of an analogy; a musical riff is a bit of flourishing and personal take on the melody, putting a twist on it. Similarly, a narrative riff takes a concept or known character and puts a unique spin on it.[li]
[color=#009900]Tigers, fortunately, are more flexible.[/color][/quote]
Are you being racially supremacist about breeds of cats? You may play innocent, but the Labyrinth of Tigers shows your true colors; the Master Race of tigers lording over the lesser cats and the leopards!
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Put like that I can see the problem.
The main reason I didn’t see the for you obvious problems is probably that there is hardly any cultural baggage about it in the past of my home, since it was uninvolved with the Opium Wars and colonization in generall. If it were something antisemitic, then I would probably have felt the same way as you about the Orient.
And that settles it for me. The feelings of a multitude of other players grounded in an actual demonizing of their homeland in the past is more important than my lingual-aesthetic preferences. What little it matters, I now approve of this change.
[quote=Alexis Kennedy][quote=an_ocelot]
And I am 100% over people looking at me and thinking about "Mystery" and "the Unknown." Gasp! I’m just a person like everyone else!
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[color=#009900]You know, part of the reason Connected: Orient lasted so long was that it took me a little while, having spent so much of my adolescence wanting to be mysterious and unknown, to get my head round that. But, like, totally.[/color]
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Tigers, fortunately, are more flexible.[/color][/quote]
I’m thinking we should all transfer our wish-fulfilment fantasies onto cats. If only we could all be Corresponding Ocelots and Tiger Keepers and Parabolan Panthers!
It is of course impossible to reproduce the -real- Victorian period in such a game, considering how many categories of people would be offended by the Victorian state of mind, from the rampant antisemitism to the white man’s burden, the exaltation of the noble art of war and Fu Manchu.
[color=#cc9933]This is an entirely trivial side-effect of this change, but I think that when we used ‘orient’ to lightly mock Victorian prejudice or purloin a sense of authenticity by repeating it, we occasionally did so at the cost of more imaginative language. There are some cases where using ‘Oriental’ meant we missed a chance to use a more evocative image and give a sense of the wider world.[/color]
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[color=#cc9933]In addition to being offensive, ‘the Orient’ is a cliche and - like all cliches - toxic to vivid writing.[/color]
Alexis: heh. Totally.
Curious Foreigner: thank you for listening. It is much appreciated.
Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook: excuse me, but I am the original ocelot in Fallen London, if anything the Corresponding Ocelot wishes he were me!
(Not really, I have it on good authority, but I couldn’t resist.)
[quote=Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook][quote=Alexis Kennedy][quote=an_ocelot]
And I am 100% over people looking at me and thinking about "Mystery" and "the Unknown." Gasp! I’m just a person like everyone else!
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[color=#009900]You know, part of the reason Connected: Orient lasted so long was that it took me a little while, having spent so much of my adolescence wanting to be mysterious and unknown, to get my head round that. But, like, totally.[/color]
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Tigers, fortunately, are more flexible.[/color][/quote]
I’m thinking we should all transfer our wish-fulfilment fantasies onto cats. If only we could all be Corresponding Ocelots and Tiger Keepers and Parabolan Panthers![/quote]
…SO agreeing, my nickname isn’t entirely casual ^^ Also, dibs on the jaguar. Jaguars are cool 
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[color=#009900]It’s the Stripy Man’s Burden.[/color]
The Victorian era is proper weird. As in, it very much holds the seeds of the world as it is today - not just for someone like me living in a British colony developed during that time, but pretty much for everyone in a world defined by industrial production and trade - but, at the same time, it sometimes seems impossibly distant and strange. I am a firm believer that, given the facts, we can understand others’ motivations and beliefs and lives, however removed by time and space - but sometimes the Victorian mindset is a real puzzle.
ocelot: I did recall you predated our friend in the Labyrinth/Flute Street, but you mentioned dictation and I couldn’t resist!
sfb: In everyday life, I’m more of a dog person, but I can’t deny that big cats are pretty damn awe-inspiring. And small cats are quick to remind us that they’re just the travel model of big cats.
I need an emoticon or abbreviation to convey "actual, literal, groaning/laughing out loud."
[color=#009900]My final points on the subject (possibly)[/color]
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color=#009900 a toast to Chris, who did the heavy lifting on this one while I was busy pontificating over here[li][/color]
color=#009900 this is, I believe, the last storylet in Fallen London that contains the word ‘Oriental’. http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/alexisthetest?fromEchoId=2789992[/color]
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[color=#009900](Note: the ‘test’ popup will be gone tomorrow after a certain engineer has expiated his shame by dying in battle.)[/color]
Bless you, Miriam Plenty - because if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing half-arsed while shouting at clowns.
This statement resonates with me on a deeply personal level for reasons too complex and boring to describe.
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/alexisthetest?fromEchoId=2789992[/quote]
I don’t know why Mrs Plenty has set up a pleasure garden in the Forgotten Quarter but I’m sure her reasons are as good and valid as any.
edited by Spacemarine9 on 11/20/2013
This is definitely a good change - as an American, seeing “The Orient” as a faction definitely skeezed me out from the beginning, but they were never emphasized (there were no related professions, very few opportunities to get your connected stat up with them) so it didn’t really put me off too much.
That said, it’s always difficult to deal with this sort of thing in a historical but also fantastical setting like Fallen London’s. I think you either have to stick 100% to the historical attitudes - in which case female characters would be encouraged to stay at home and worry about getting good husbands, and open homosexuality would land you in New Newgate - or you overwrite those with more modern and inclusive attitudes that allow people of all sorts to equitably participate in a time where in real life that probably wouldn’t have been possible.
With all the concessions Fallen London has made so far to inclusiveness, I think it only makes sense that “the Orient” has gone out the door.
Well, it makes sense to me, the faction in question was strange not only in it’s exclusion from the initial line-up of joinable factions but also in what exactly they were. The points we raised through the faction were almost always through criminal or at least ambiguous means, but the label also covered people living in Spite who just wanted to go about their business and others throughout London. Differentiating between normal Asian groups and the underworld operations setup by the Widow will require some adjustments to a number of storylets. But it opens the door to a clear and precise standing with the actual groups in the area, especially the Khanate across the Zee.
edited by Owen Wulf on 11/20/2013