Quote from Flisch »Quote from ThyLordQ »It'd sort of be like putting creature type Goat Demon on a depiction of Satan.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with that. Just like how "Cerberus" was an entire group of multi-headed dogs on Theros, I could theoretically see a "race" of demons called Satans that have the creature type Goat Demon in some magic plane. Sure, it'd sound a bit silly to us but it's not problematic.
The Rakshasa of Tarkir are just based on the mythological ones, just like literally every single other creature in Magic. I absolutely don't understand how this change is necessary. And whether DnD does it or not doesn't matter. If it was done for real world cultural reasons then DnD faces the same issue. And if it doesn't, then why does Magic.
Also, the tribal thing continues to baffle me. When has "tribal" ever had a negative connotation? Savage I can understand but tribal???
There's kind of a big history of white western fantasy taking whatever the hell concepts it likes from nonwestern, nonwhite cultures and religions and just doing whatever the hell they want with it, basically just using the fact that it is a real religious/mythological thing to give it some kind of 'exotic' flair. But this can all get rather uncomfortable if you are from that background and don't get to see much representation of it, and then when you do it's just madeup fantasy creatures in a half remembered costume of it. Not to mention the problematic associations of nonwhite, nonwestern cultures happening to be portrayed as more mystical (and therefore it must be great to throw in their words), literally demonising spirits and deities (Baal is Canaanite deity, Astaroth is a Phoenician deity etc), lumping in all sorts of thing under the umbrella of western concepts, and the broader long history of using other culture's concepts as toys and props, misrepresenting and sometimes going out of their way to disrespect them.
Rakshasa as the DnD tiger demons stinks very much to me of a disrespectful attitude. Leaning on some version pulled out of thin air, with this very obvious Rakshasa=Indian India=Tigers element, plopped into western dominated fantasy lacking much of any real Hindu context that shapes their real meaning, showing a weird loyalty to continue to reinforce an existing popular inaccurate depiction. Just feels unmistakably orientalist tbh.
There's always subjectivity to this of course, but it's pretty easy I think to make a case for why it's not great and just not much of a reason to keep it this way.
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But as his political views are very right wing and he has repeatedly associated and worked with white nationalists (even going to karaoke with Richard Spencer), yeah, I'm comfortable calling him at least Neo-Nazi adjacent.
I'm also comfortable calling him a paedophile and a swindler.
Can we go back to talking about Oko now?
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@TOO "all the people should be treated equally" except for the people who you're going to misgender because you know their life better than they do?
Language appears to have moved on.