5 hours ago, BD Flory said:

One thing that's being left out in the "how they portray themselves and prefer to be portrayed", argument is the assumption that, even if true, Japanese peoples' feelings about how they should be portrayed are neither universal, nor necessarily representative of people of Japanese heritage throughout the world.

It also, generally speaking, falls into the same trap of speaking for someone else that people accuse posters concerned with diversity of, and/or presumes one person of Japanese heritage speaks for all people of Japanese heritage.

If we take the position that we can never truly know how the Japanese/asian people want to be protrayed, because every person in that group has their own feelings on that matter, than the accusations of whitewashing or westernizing the art have even less ground to stand on. Who is to say that some of the Japanese people don't want to be portrayed with caucasian face features? Who is to say that they don't want to look like the native people of Zimbabwe?

We need to deal in numbers. I am not sure how it looks in Japan, im positive @McDermott can tell you more, but in other asian countries both in media and society the ideal of beauty always includes whiter skin and majority of the people want to work towards that ideal.

Oh and the whole argument about whitewashing and "how do you know asian people want to be portrayed this way" just falls apart when we get to know it were actually asian artists that drew Hotaru and many others.

4 hours ago, BD Flory said:

Please check six posts up, where I explain, again , what I've been saying throughout the thread.

Specifically, the first paragraph.

"I can't speak for Himoto, but for myself, I haven't brought up who might be offended at all. I began from, "here's what I think would be neat," and other people assumed that I wanted those things because I was offended by their lack or because I thought someone else was."

People have been persistently setting out strawmen like cultural appropriation, and I address those concepts both because some don't apply the concepts correctly in their posts (such as asserting the blame for cultural appropriation is on individual artists), and to explain that it is not at all what I'm arguing.

Nobody has a problem with you saying "here's what I think would be neat". People have a problem with what makes you say that, and they try to show you why these ideas are poorly argued. Unfortunately every time they respond, you seem to Pivot! Pivot! and call strawman on them, because "you just said it would be neat".

If you have some reason to say "here's what I think would be neat" then give us this reason.

If you don't have any reason than twenty other people will say "no that wouldn't be neat" and that is where discussion ends.

Using "caucasian" for "white" should die in a fire.

16 minutes ago, WHW said:

Using "caucasian" for "white" should die in a fire.

My bad I spend too much time on the internet

12 minutes ago, BordOne said:

If we take the position that we can never truly know how the Japanese/asian people want to be protrayed, because every person in that group has their own feelings on that matter, than the accusations of whitewashing or westernizing the art have even less ground to stand on. Who is to say that some of the Japanese people don't want to be portrayed with caucasian face features? Who is to say that they don't want to look like the native people of Zimbabwe?

Unsurprisingly, you're once again arguing against things I haven't put forward. What I said was that one person can't speak for an entire culture, and that what is true in Japanese culture may not be true in the Japanese diaspora. And that what art communicates varies based on context, and that includes the speaker, which means that the same piece of art produced by two different artists do not and cannot mean the same thing.

I did not say that these things could not be known, or analyzed. I didn't say it was inapproprate for a Korean artist to portray Hotaru with blonde hair, or even taken a position on whether or not he had even done so (which seems to be in some debate).

In fact, it's quite bizarre to me that I'm being attacked over that, given it's more consistent with what I would prefer, which is a more diverse Rokugan. And that I've made exactly 0 comment on Hotaru's look, and in fact haven't even seen the art , to my recollection.

21 minutes ago, BordOne said:

If you have some reason to say "here's what I think would be neat" then give us this reason.

I've given quite a few reasons, of various kinds. And if you review the thread, I think you'll find I'm happy to discuss those reasons when people actually address what they are rather than what they imagine they are.

When that happens, it's a wide-ranging and interesting thread that taps into a lot of fields of knowledge. Some I know well due to education, profession, and other reasons. Some less so, which for me is an opportunity to learn and discuss. Not to "win," or score points.

Sorry if you feel that challenging ideas and argumentation is "pivoting," but given several posters have an avowed desire to shut down the discussion, it shouldn't be surprising that I'm not willing to accept how those posters choose to misrepresent my statements and assertions.

@BD Flory Dude I am not attacking you, I am talking with you.

And I said that looking from your point of view there is no reason to argue about "white washed Hotaru" on which point we agree, which is great. You also argued that the art for a card has different meaning if it is done by white person or asian person, so it must be soothing now to know that a lot of art will be in fact done by asian people.

I disagree that it is an interesting topic. It is interesting for small group of people that studied certain subjects and like to stir up controversy around non - issues. Or just people with a lot of free time.

There is no desire to shut down the discussion. There is desire to deconstruct it so it doesn't lead to what it often does, which is putting heads of usually innocent people on spikes.

Some ideas are not worth challenging or were challenged so many times that it looks silly to do so again.

1 hour ago, BordOne said:

We need to deal in numbers. I am not sure how it looks in Japan, im positive @McDermott can tell you more, but in other asian countries both in media and society the ideal of beauty always includes whiter skin and majority of the people want to work towards that ideal.

Eh, probably not, I can say that the ideal of pale skin has its root in the concept of wealth. Basically having pale skin meant you weren't slaving away in the fields to survive (as in you weren't tanned and weathered, not everything is rooted in american racial dynamics) and had resources. The fact that you had those resources meant that a lot of the beauty destroying aspects of things like malnutrition and backbreaking physical labor didn't affect you. Basically its a holdover from WAYYYYY the hell back when that has only recently began to fade away.

4 minutes ago, BordOne said:

@BD Flory Dude I am not attacking you, I am talking with you.

Fair cop, poorly chosen word. My befuddlement on the point of Hotaru remains.

6 minutes ago, BordOne said:

And I said that looking from your point of view there is no reason to argue about "white washed Hotaru" on which point we agree, which is great. You also argued that the art for a card has different meaning if it is done by white person or asian person, so it must be soothing now to know that a lot of art will be in fact done by asian people.

It's quite a bit more complicated than that, but as I've said upthread a few times, FFG's stated their commitment to inclusive and diverse games, and I've been nothing but supportive of what they're doing.

16 minutes ago, BordOne said:

I disagree that it is an interesting topic.

Then why participate? This continues to mystify me. No one is forcing you to read the thread or post to it if thr subject doesn't interest you.

19 minutes ago, BordOne said:

...which is putting heads of usually innocent people on spikes.

Yeah, it would be pretty terrible if one were to behave as if someone said something they didn't, wouldn't it?

1 minute ago, McDermott said:

Eh, probably not, I can say that the ideal of pale skin has its root in the concept of wealth. Basically having pale skin meant you weren't slaving away in the fields to survive (as in you weren't tanned and weathered, not everything is rooted in american racial dynamics) and had resources. The fact that you had those resources meant that a lot of the beauty destroying aspects of things like malnutrition and backbreaking physical labor didn't affect you. Basically its a holdover from WAYYYYY the hell back when that has only recently began to fade away.

Thanks. I asked you specifically about Japan because this country is pretty unique when it comes to asian countries and social and cultural changes tend to go a bit different there.

I know the pale skin is a sign of wealth. I also suspected that Japan out of all countries might be the fastest to go away from this idealization.

I'm living in Taiwan right now, telling a girl she is brown or yellow is the same as telling her she is ugly here.

Just now, BordOne said:

Thanks. I asked you specifically about Japan because this country is pretty unique when it comes to asian countries and social and cultural changes tend to go a bit different there.

I know the pale skin is a sign of wealth. I also suspected that Japan out of all countries might be the fastest to go away from this idealization.

I'm living in Taiwan right now, telling a girl she is brown or yellow is the same as telling her she is ugly here.

I'm straight up not japanese so.....

7 minutes ago, McDermott said:

I'm straight up not japanese so.....

welp i completly misread your post.

11 minutes ago, BD Flory said:

Then why participate? This continues to mystify me. No one is forcing you to read the thread or post to it if thr subject doesn't interest you.

Yeah, it would be pretty terrible if one were to behave as if someone said something they didn't, wouldn't it?

These questions are connected and I already answered them kind of. I participate in this discussion because I don't want it to devolve into something that this type of threads tend to devolve into.

And when I wrote putting heads on spikes I meant (nearly)literally putting heads on spikes - defaming certain people, making them lose their jobs and all other things that often tend to happen.

The one who criticized the depiction of Hotaru was me, actually, not BD Flory.

And even if that artwork was done by the most Japanese of persons, I would still have preferred her depicted as more Asian looking. It's true that with the other color filter it's better, but she still comes across as a European blond haired woman, and it's far from the first time I've seen L5R artwork of Cranes with their hair dyed white.

Anyway, while I actually like the artwork , my preference is to see those who are supposed to look Asian to actually do so, and not European. We have Merenae, Thrane and whatnot who can appear that way. And to see a bit more of the range of looks that part of the world has to offer. Rokugan draws from more than Japan, so why not show it?

This is all subjective and personal, of course. For some a kimono and katana is enough to communicate that oriental feel, others would like it accentuated more.

8 minutes ago, Doji Namika said:

The one who criticized the depiction of Hotaru was me, actually, not BD Flory.

And even if that artwork was done by the most Japanese of persons, I would still have preferred her depicted as more Asian looking. It's true that with the other color filter it's better, but she still comes across as a European blond haired woman, and it's far from the first time I've seen L5R artwork of Cranes with their hair dyed white.

Anyway, while I actually like the artwork , my preference is to see those who are supposed to look Asian to actually do so, and not European. We have Merenae, Thrane and whatnot who can appear that way. And to see a bit more of the range of looks that part of the world has to offer. Rokugan draws from more than Japan, so why not show it?

This is all subjective and personal, of course. For some a kimono and katana is enough to communicate that oriental feel, others would like it accentuated more.

Thats fair, but there's pretty clearly an off copy of her art floating around that makes her look drawn blonde. The version on the artists page pretty clearly has white/silver hair.

6 hours ago, BD Flory said:

Then why participate? This continues to mystify me. No one is forcing you to read the thread or post to it if thr subject doesn't interest you.

Because someone is wrong on the internet, obviously.

14 hours ago, McDermott said:

Then i'm going to ask you, do you or himoto actually have a point? Because when people argue the points you seem to be TRYING to make you immediately walk it back.

Their point has been exposed to be simply "I don't have a point." It's not a crime to not have a point, they're here for the discussion. It's our fault for assuming they were arguing anything really.

14 hours ago, BD Flory said:

One thing that's being left out in the "how they portray themselves and prefer to be portrayed", argument is the assumption that, even if true, Japanese peoples' feelings about how they should be portrayed are neither universal, nor necessarily representative of people of Japanese heritage throughout the world.

It also, generally speaking, falls into the same trap of speaking for someone else that people accuse posters concerned with diversity of, and/or presumes one person of Japanese heritage speaks for all people of Japanese heritage.

When you look at the vast majority of art both before and after foreigners breached their shores they are basically always portrayed as light skinned. I understand the concept that a few people don't speak for everyone, but when the vast majority speak a certain way historically and currently - should we really worry about a very small minority who may well not exist? Japanese art is more stylized and unafraid of stereotypes than other cultures. When someone is darker in Japanese art it's because they are a peasant or foreigner. In their art being dark skinned kinda means you're lesser. They had a caste system in Japan and overcoming the caste system was very tough. Having skin that showed you worked in the fields may well have prevented you from ever working in an office or owning land... That said - it might be interesting if L5R played with a character who was a lower caste and rose up, like Toku from before, and gave him darker features to illustrate the difference between a person who has worked their way up compared to a high born samurai who has never had to work in a field.

I'm all for that type of story - but that type of story works best when most of the cast is similar and they stick out, the lack of diversity can actually play the story in a more impactful way if they choose to tell it. If everyone is already salt and pepper without a general standard of what is "beauty" then it doesn't matter when someone flawed steps out, there would be no standard for a flawed person to challenge.

8 hours ago, Doji Namika said:

The one who criticized the depiction of Hotaru was me, actually, not BD Flory.

And even if that artwork was done by the most Japanese of persons, I would still have preferred her depicted as more Asian looking. It's true that with the other color filter it's better, but she still comes across as a European blond haired woman, and it's far from the first time I've seen L5R artwork of Cranes with their hair dyed white.

Anyway, while I actually like the artwork , my preference is to see those who are supposed to look Asian to actually do so, and not European. We have Merenae, Thrane and whatnot who can appear that way. And to see a bit more of the range of looks that part of the world has to offer. Rokugan draws from more than Japan, so why not show it?

This is all subjective and personal, of course. For some a kimono and katana is enough to communicate that oriental feel, others would like it accentuated more.

There is a very long standing tradition of Japanese art depicting people in certain ways. It's great that you prefer something else, and that you can admit it's your preference not a lack of representation or whitewashing. All I can say to that is stay tuned. This is 1 set of cards for the start of the game. The starting caste of samurai are probably going to all be artistically similar - but as the game grows other artists and perspectives may be employed in art and story telling to add the diversity you want.

I say the same thing to people who think Toturi's ability is boring because it is similar to Hotaru's ability. In all honesty - every champion may have an ability that is similar like that. It's to create a simple meta for the game to launch around before things get crazy with the expansion packs. The art needs to be a bit homogeneous because it's 1 product at this point. After the new game becomes established they can venture away to more creative realms.

She doesn't look Japanese because she's not Japanese. She's Rokugani, and as it turns out a lot of Rokugani people look like anime characters, most of which do not have "asian features."

25 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

She doesn't look Japanese because she's not Japanese. She's Rokugani, and as it turns out a lot of Rokugani people look like anime characters, most of which do not have "asian features."

That would be true if you couldn't open google and find numerous asian people looking very similar to her