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Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

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Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#241

Post by AniseAbyss »

himinlomax wrote: post #23
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #4

There’s lots of evidence of trade with African and MiddleEastern merchants in Viking-age Scandinavia; it’s totally plausible that some of these merchants ended up there

There was trade, there is however not "a lot", not even some evidence of African or Middle-Eastern merchants settling in any kind of notable numbers. When confronted, the people who claim otherwise simply point out that it was possible to make the trip (well, duh), which is not at all the same thing as having a lot of people actually doing it.

Just because you find some Chinese pottery somewhere doesn't mean that a Chinese merchant went all the way from China to trade it.

A lot of expensive and exotic stuff was literally handed down from caravan to caravan over years before it found itself in a European market stall.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#242

Post by AsyncAwait »

trollybaz wrote: post #197
AsyncAwait wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if the game has an "anti-christian" tone, but I think in a secular society that should not be a problem, even if true.

The article notes that if the same portrayal was done to any other religion besides Christianity, then there would probably be an uproar. In today's society, with emphases on unconscious bias, race theory and egalitarianism, we are generally not okay with this kind of tone.

> The article notes that if the same portrayal was done to any other religion besides Christianity, then there would probably be an uproar.

You mean like every single Call Of Duty game? Because it is in fact regularly being done.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#243

Post by gamblor956 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #171
chungus_khan wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These days you can't have a woman who wants to be a housewife on your show unless that's being portrayed negatively or being poked fun at. Is that really true though? If you mean that you can't have a houswife as a character on your show that very obviously isn't true. If you mean you can't make a show where a character aspires to be a housewife, I'm not sure I understand what the narrative purpose of such a story…

Housewife characters are uncommon, and they tend to be portrayed as vapid, boring, incompetent or else otherwise their occupation is the butt of the joke (e.g., “Claire” in Modern Family who is as intelligent as any of the characters but is a low key alcoholic and eventually breaks free of her housewife occupation to become an executive at her father’s company).

Housewives as main characters are featured in most of ABC's shows, including at one point all of their Wednesday comedy block alongside Modern Family. Similarly, Fox has had housewives as main characters on most of their animated sitcoms, and with rare exceptions their occupation is not treated as a joke. On NBC's most popular show (This is Us), the lead female character is a housewife.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#244

Post by AsyncAwait »

gwd wrote: post #206
AsyncAwait wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if the game has an "anti-christian" tone, but I think in a secular society that should not be a problem, even if true.

The author's problem with the game is, in fact, that it ends up mirroring Nazi ideology almost exactly: Manly men with superior genes and culture, looking for lebensraum, improving the effeminate, "weak" culture they're colonizing. Oops.

This is in fact what American Exceptionalism leads to as well, frankly.

I think no religion or religious organization should be spared of critique, but realize that in the West, (Christians), have been exporting culture that's kind of about trashing other peoples.

Take a look at Call Of Duty or even something as innocent looking as Uncharted for how 'we' are treating other cultures.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#245

Post by coredog64 »

teachrdan wrote: post #214
gwd wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's try your formulation in a different context and see if it works. Imagine someone saying this in the '50s: > There's a lot of media that uses caricatures to vilify [Blacks], but there is relatively little uproar from [Blacks] about it. They don't seem to be very sensitive apart from a small handful... I assure you, Christians are aware of how poorly they're portrayed by the media, and aren't happy about it. It s…

The actual lived conditions matter, too. In the 1950s, Black Americans were harassed, beaten and killed for registering to vote; no such discrimination against Christians has ever existed in the US, or even in North America or Europe, where the games we're talking about are largely developed and marketed. I agree that Christians are sometimes treated more critically in popular culture. But this is simply criticizing…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_conquest_of_Hispania

Or, if we want more recent history, the Bosnian war or even the currently ongoing dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

If you squint, you might even be able to include sect-on-sect violence which seems like several hundred years of European history, to the point that a group of religious practitioners crossed an ocean to escape it.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#246

Post by newacct583 »

ljm wrote: post #116
konjin wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your samurai game includes werewolves and machine guns you don't get to turn around say you didn't add something because it wouldn't be historically accurate. You have to use a better excuse, like you felt it would be dumb or that you didn't feel like it. So a werewolf invasion of the Tokugawa shogunate would need to include Latinx genderfuild bipocs or be racist? I guess I'm racist then. Puts on Nazi hat and rea…

> Latinx genderfuild bipocs I can't help but think there's a field of woke eugenics that uses terms like this completely unironically.

Why are you both doing this? Those are terms that have been used by real people to describe themselves. There's room for discussion about what they describe, how they should be used, etc... Identity is a hard problem.

But they aren't jokes. You're using them now because they're new and you can get away with it, but could you imagine your same logic in another decade picking on "spicks, fags and niggers" using the same logic. Is that really what you're trying to say? If not, how?

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#247

Post by Dirlewanger »

ethbr0 wrote: post #202
veddox wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the two pretty orthogonal...

How so? Presumably an individual from a specific background is more likely to be able to evaluate slights against that background, vs a random individual. Individual experiences vary, but it's a helluva better start than... you know... not .

Because it's complete nonsense.

With this logic, I can make a game about the Belgians colonized the Congo, leave out all that business about slaves on plantations, maiming said slaves on plantations for not meeting their quotas etc., portray the Belgians as magnanimous bringers of culture, and then say "oh, well, we had British people involved in the making of the game so it's OK"

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#248

Post by [deleted] »

flippinburgers wrote: post #213

The author exposes his biases by indicating that historically questionable accuracy in terms of racial diversity is perfectly OK but that glossing over the atrocities is NOT OK because of some phantom fear that modern day nazis will interpret it as a celebration of ... whiteness I guess. The entire thing comes across as white is bad. Further evidence of how academically overboard he is is illustrated by the fact that…

[deleted]

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#249

Post by throwaway894345 »

teachrdan wrote: post #214
gwd wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's try your formulation in a different context and see if it works. Imagine someone saying this in the '50s: > There's a lot of media that uses caricatures to vilify [Blacks], but there is relatively little uproar from [Blacks] about it. They don't seem to be very sensitive apart from a small handful... I assure you, Christians are aware of how poorly they're portrayed by the media, and aren't happy about it. It s…

The actual lived conditions matter, too. In the 1950s, Black Americans were harassed, beaten and killed for registering to vote; no such discrimination against Christians has ever existed in the US, or even in North America or Europe, where the games we're talking about are largely developed and marketed. I agree that Christians are sometimes treated more critically in popular culture. But this is simply criticizing…

> The actual lived conditions matter, too. In the 1950s, Black Americans were harassed, beaten and killed for registering to vote; no such discrimination against Christians has ever existed in the US, or even in North America or Europe, where the games we're talking about are largely developed and marketed.

I quite agree. There can be no meaningful comparison between Blacks in the 50's and Christians in recent history.

> no such discrimination against Christians has ever existed in ... Europe

Well, it hasn't for a very long time, but it was pretty bad for quite a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_t...

Mostly I share this as an interesting historical tidbit; not to refute any of your points.

> I agree that Christians are sometimes treated more critically in popular culture. But this is simply criticizing those in positions of power.

Of course, like all groups (be they religious, racial, ethnic, gender, etc), Christians are incredibly diverse such that there are no real criticisms that generalizes well, and all of these criticisms depend on caricature and stereotype which are (by definition) inaccurate and hateful. Moreover, to target a group for being "powerful" when that power is merely "numerousness in a democracratic context"--without any sort of evidence that the group behaves as a class, conspiring to increase or preserve the power of the group and to distribute that power throughout the group (to give privileges to constituents merely for being part of the group)--is lazy at best and hateful at worst (theories of a Jewish conspiracies spring to mind).

> To quote a certain comedian: "Christians won the world. The Christians won everything. If you don't believe me, let me ask you a question. What year is it?"

Maybe this is an amusing joke, but I don't think it supports your point very well. Lots of different cultures have given us different conventions and standards. We tell time using a Babylonian counting system, but we wouldn't say "Babylonians won the world". Similarly, we use a semitic alphabet but we wouldn't say "Semites won the world". We use Arabic numerals but we wouldn't say Arabs won the world. I could go on and on and on.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#250

Post by KittenInABox »

etripe wrote: post #218
goto11 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've grown up in a period when pop culture didn't care much about cultural sensitivity. I don't think such a period ever existed. Hollywood had the Hays code, comics had the comic code etc. Popular culture always have to navigate the hangups and sensitivities of society. It is possible that these concerns were invisible to you because they corresponded to your own values. When they change because society changes, y…

> I don't think such a period ever existed. Probably not in the US, no. Then again, the world is comprised of many other locations and cultures. Even in the West, I'd say mainly predominantly protestant countries (among which the anglosphere as a whole) tend towards political correctness.

Where did this exist outside of the US? I'm a Chinese person and you can see all the way in our long and well-documented history that literature has always expressed notions of class, culture, gender roles, and clearly knew what audience it was being distributed to and considered appropriately. The language of scholarly text expected to only be read by other scholars vs the scholarly text expected to be disseminated widely are very different.
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