Merlkir

OT: How would you abuse privilege? (ie the fact something is NOT happening to you) The concept of Straight White Male Privilege is often used to put the privileged demons in line. You are a straight white male, you should feel bad, because everyone else is living harder lives than you do. That's all fine, I don't mind people telling me to check my privilege (usually it means they're out of arguments). As you say, everyone is being privileged sometimes. Thanks to affirmative action and anti-discrimination laws (themselves often rather discriminative), the prevalence of straight while male privilege seems to be shifting somewhat.

The fact it's limited to members of a privileged group (did I mention I really don't like the way "privilege" is used these days? I do.) means it's not a universal standard. Now you're putting cases of child murder on scales and actually think they'd tip one way or the other. I guess I can never get into your mindset, I'm sorry.

They matter in scale of effect. Being brought up as I was, I always believed the moral principle of recognizing and rejecting racism and sexism was universal and I should not weigh its various cases based on the amount of damage I see them deal. (or measuring them up to some general sum of all damage dealt towards a group to determine its validity) Hating or mistreating someone because of his or her race or sex is simply wrong. That is what racism and sexism mean to me. Adding a framework of "context" seems absurd to me, especially if that leads to a selection of hate and bigotry you're ok with, because in the "wide context", they don't hurt the majority. Your approach may seem helpful to you, but look at what it means to the non-majority: If you find yourself a member of a minority, it's ok if you say offensive stuff, the majority will just have to deal with it. You know what? I'll try not being a **** to everyone the same way. It may not work all the time. Some people will be offended, that's just how communication is.

Because it's pretty much useless if you intended to be "fair". A) you're stating that there is an opressor and an opressee, a one-sided relationship that never changes and is this way by default. Instituted by the opressor, that the world order is specifically designed by the opressor so that his whole class/group can opress the other group. B) You're entirely letting the opressed group off the hook. It's alright if they hate every single member of the other group - they have a reason, right? Anything they do is absolutely fine, it cannot be racist/sexist, no matter if their actions were motivated solely by the sex or race of their victim. This definition doesn't work in general, it doesn't serve to identify generally undesirable attitude and behaviour. It's applied selectively to certain groups you chose beforehand. As such, it's useless as a tool of universal morality. edit: yes, everything PrimeJunta wrote, I find this approach quite hypocritical and morally worthless.

That "definition" is exactly what bothers me. I've only been hearing it fairly recently, but it seems quite common these days.

Oh yes, the absolutely worst caste of all. Asymmetry is a dangerous concept, one that often leads to the slippery slope of "well it's fine for X to do this to Y, because Y is better off than X, so it's not in a bad overall context." Aka "there's no racism other than from white people", or "sexism is only when men do it". edit: or as in the case of RE: "It's absolutely horrible for X to do this, because Y are offended and they have the right to be, because Y are so much worse off than X."

I suppose it's not offensive, but while reasonably ok for art, the design doesn't look entirely functional. (or better - the artist isn't quite sure how all the pieces of armour work together. It's a quite typical armour in fantasy art - not wrong, but not quite right either. Why doesn't she have protection on her right arm, when she does on her left? Why are her pauldrons different? (one being sort of ok, despite the wrongly placed deflection ridge, the other huge and too loose, offering convenient gaps for swords to slide into.) It's alright.

Oh god, please, not this again.

The witcher setting has pretty powerful female mages, in fact more of them are important in the story than male mages. And they don't suddenly make filthy peasants respect all women. People simply fear and respect power. BTW, some posts about the horrors of bigotry in medieval times seem to be quite a bit off. The idea that absolutely everyone was bigoted in many ways and strangers would get the **** kicked out of them for coming too close to a village especially is an odd extreme. It's never good to generalize too much, there were many times from antiquity to the middle ages when pilgrims were very common and it was quite possible to travel all around the world quite safely. People always have been curious about strangers, news from other lands (even a few miles away! no internet in those days), hospitality used to be a sacred custom. It wasn't all black mud and plague everywhere.

That was the point, really. What we'd consider awful disadvantages in real life can be interesting obstacles to face in games. If there is racism in the world and your elf character is in an anti-elf area, it'd be silly not to have characters spit at you in the street, or call you a "pointy-eared devil", just because it's "tired and old". Not to have any form of bigotry be present at all would require some seriously great explanations. (which the gentle-hearted folk suggesting this escapist practice never seem to come up with) The point of including bigotry in your world is not necessarily to "bring something new and original", or to focus on these issues. Personally, I'm sick and tired of both extremes - dumb stereotypes and thinly veiled bigotry (be it mail bikini, or elf ear haters) AND annoying moralizing (oh look how poorly women are treated, let's help them!). Just give me the freedom of choosing meaningful actions without deciding for me what's black and white good or evil.

Define "poorer game". The Nosferatu in Bloodlines are hideous and either have to constantly cast Obfuscate to move on the streets, or they have to run through the bloody sewers. Why would anyone ever play a Nosferatu in the game, they totally suck, right? I think Bloodlines treats the Nosferatu as second class citizens.

Wow. While he's right in a number of things, that is one horribly written, generalizing and biased article. Man.

I was wondering if someone saw that. I'll leave THIS here. http://janpospisil.blogspot.cz/2013/05/in-semi-defense-of-boobplate.html

Magical armour is usually somehow limited. In a book I read recently these steampunkish soldiers wore personal magic shields - vaguely body shaped bubbles of energy which deflected attacks, powered by disposable crystals. (depending on how it was set up, it either deflected or slowed them down, or stopped even bullets. The high level protection setting wasn't frequently used, because it depleted the power crystals rapidly and also made it a bit difficult to breath as air didn't get inside the bubble easily) Magical armour could be powered by wearer's soul, will or something like that. It can have a number of charges based on the holy number of protective saints whose names are inscribed on the cuirass. Etc. etc.

Errrr, not at all what I meant and not at all relevant to armour design.

High heels aren't very practical, but people still wear them 'cause they look nice. Same reason someone would choose to wear an enchanted mail bikini that provides the same protection as a full suit of plate (which is what centurion was asking about). It doesn't sound very likely, but I'd accept that. Sexuality (especially female sexuality) wasn't historically tied to warfare very often, but I could imagine a weird universe where some women do that with magical armour.

Yeah, lots of high heels worn in battle these days.

I think a lot of personal critique of what we're presented with is built on or even spawned by specific personal interests and education. Some players know a lot about swrods, others are biologists and can see at a glance that this dragon would break its wings if it tried to fly. So it's a given there isn't a Unified Front for Realistic Depiction of Everything in Games. Then again, if someone points the dragon wings out and gives a good explanation, the previously indifferent sword lover is quite likely to agree. Of course there are conservative fans of fantasy who don't need no realism when they're used to iguana dragons and bikini mail, they'll just feel annoyed by all the PC folk ruining their fantasy with boring realism.

Yes, I say so in my last paragraph. That is the creative part while dealing with magic. But, there are still a lot of non magical armours which would function the same as on Earth. BTW, my iguana example of dragon design is not an equivalent of using earthly plate designs. A scaled up iguana does not look convincing, because animal anatomy changes drastically with size. (proportions especially, even if they both have claws and fangs) so for the artists to use iguanas was a first step, but the scaling up didn't lead to convincing designs of dragons, who are supposed to be massive flying creatures. It took serious study of anatomy of other animals (like dogs, lions and the only huge lizards we know - dinosaurs) to evolve dragons into something quite believable. Armour went through an evolution of its own, yes. And yes, not all the branches led to functionality, the vast majority went into a strange mix of historical inspiration and sexy revealing stereotypes. What the "realism" crowd is asking for is not to copy existing earth armour. It's about that sweet spot of understanding reality and functionality and using it to design something new and specific to this particular fantastic world with magic in it.

Just so you know, this is a fallacy, often used while discussing realism in games. The problem of a person advocating this position is a misunderstanding of the opposition and what they're asking for. Magic and dragons are fantastical and out of this world on purpose. They're something we do not have any reference for, only parallels at best. Whether or not the game contains dragons and magic, the only relevant part is if it has people in armour. If it does, we have a ton of reference and experience from real life. If the game's laws of physics are similar to our world (not counting in magic of course), if the humanoids wearing the armour are similar to humans, there is absolutely no reason for the armour not to be functional. We know how it works, why lower our chance of immersion by showing something obviously not functional, or just silly? Of course the armour doesn't have to look like Earth armours from the middle ages, but IF it's significantly different, the designer should know why it's different. Actually tying an outlanding cool looking design into the world's specific features is awesome and will only strengthen immersion. It's actually quite similar with dragons as well. If you look at early dragons in fantasy art, they were either quite badly constructed and don't look functional at all, or they were just big lizards, directly referenced from iguanas. As the genre evolved, dragon stereotypes began to crystalize. Nowadays you still get dragons which don't look like they could "work" as real animals, but you also get Todd Lockwood's dragons, which are absolutely stunning in how accurate and believable their anatomy is. (his anatomical approach draws strong influence from cats btw, other DnD authors used pitbulls for instance) Magic certainly changes things, I can well imagine magic armours looking quite strange and awesome, perhaps even showing a bit of skin (ventilation? vanity? who knows, mages are weird). But plain old metal/leather/cloth armour is just armour, we know what works and how it works, there's no need to blame magic and then invent a square wheel.

If you weren't a native English speaker, I'd assume you have trouble understanding text. No, I don't have a problem painting unrealistic designs for money, nor does it mean I can't find them unrealistic or badly designed when I see them. Have you ever worked freelance? Yes, I do take jobs that don't fit my preferences, for various reasons. They may be high profile jobs that will give me good experience and work credits, or they may pay very well. It also depends on what jobs I have lined up and if any of them get cancelled suddenly. I haven't turned down Blizzard, no, I haven't even applied. Surprisingly, because I don't play WoW and am not that interested in their style. Still, I'd do it, I don't have a block about it. I do turn down job offers, because my schedule is full at the moment. So guess what, it's neither. You presented a false dichotomy. I'm not a struggling artist, nor am I turning down Blizzard. How can this be?! As I said, there's plenty of good historical fantasy work for me. You continue to mistake (or twist on purpose) a couple of things. 1) Preference, or finding designs bad or poorly functional does not equal to "I'd never do it." or "The person who made this is a loser and should burn in hell." It's ok for DA:O's designers to do their designs however they want. I don't know them, I don't hate them, I don't think they're idiots. The designs aren't very functional, that's my professional opinion and my preference lies elsewhere. 2) I am not a bitter loser hating any more successful artists. In fact, artists are a very friendly bunch. I got a lot of helpful advice from a few artists I've admired for a long time, some of them I've become friends with. I have a lot of respect for the artists at Blizzard, despite my personal preference of design style. Do I wish I made more money, or had more high level clients? Sure. But that's natural, it's ok to have dreams and aspirations, plans even. I learnt a long time ago not to wish someone else's job was mine. I know I get the jobs I earn and deserve. And you know what? I'm doing alright so far. I'm getting better at what I do, I'm getting better jobs and work with more professional clients. I'm not sure why it is I'm explaining myself to you. Perhaps because you're being really offensive and my work is very important to me.

So, again, you sit there and judge other people's work, but place your own work (which has the exact same "issues") above similar critique with a neat little justification. It's the classic amateur's perspective: everyone else does it wrong, but the reasons I did it wrong were out of my control and thus should not reflect upon me. Most people mature out of that mindset once they become professionals; apparently you never did. Are you at all able of not telling me what I do for a living, or what I think? I am well aware of the cases when I disagree with the design I'm supposed to paint. I don't consider my work to be above critique, I am very critical of it myself. It's not a justification of mine, it's a fact. Sometimes the design is not up to me. I still do it, because it makes me money and I need that. I don't think the client is a bad person, or that the product is ****, because the design is not as I'd do it. There's objective critique that can be applied to anything and I don't exclude my work from it. There's also nothing wrong with critique of other people's art, if I don't shove it in their face without them asking for it. Neither do I see everyone doing it wrong while only I do it right. In fact, there's plenty of people doing stuff in the direction I enjoy, a big portion of fantasy is evolving towards a more realistic style. And even so, I can enjoy "unrealistic" fantasy art, while simultaneously pointing out what's unrealistic about it. You keep pushing this into the line of me being jealous of my more successful peers, which I understand. It's just not the case and you won't make it so by repeating it. I have friends who work for Blizzard painting World of Warcraft cards, who do illustrations for Warhammer, DnD and even more out-there fantasy franchises. I don't think any less of them because they do it, I wouldn't mind doing it myself if there wasn't other work. Luckily, there is. I'm booked months in advance and it's all very historical looking fantasy, fitting my preferences and style. There's a difference between personal preference of functional historical designs and being jealous of "more successful illustrators", one you fail to grasp even now. I AM a professional. I do this for a living and keeping the best business practices I can. Please, either come up with a real argument, or stop wasting my time insulting me and telling me what I'm like as a person and an illustrator.

You're right you're not bitter; you just take everyone opportunity you can to mock people more successful than you at your own profession because they have bad taste and awful art sense. Not bitter. At all. Not so funny. Look, you're not shaming me, you're not exposing me. 1.) Art directors are not in my profession. 2.) I take every opportunity to talk about realistic depiction of swords and armour in ALL media, not just games or art. It has nothing to do with the author being more successful than me. 3.) It's not "Your taste and art sense are awful!", it's critique of functionality, accuracy and sometimes aesthetics of the design. I do this, because it's a thing I've been interested in for a long time and that I care about. I can't not look at things this way, I'm sure gun fans are rolling their eyes just as often while watching movies.

:D You're funny. Because the big companies always do things right and there's no need to change anything. I'm not bitter, I don't want to be an art director at Bioware. I'm pretty happy as an illustrator. You're funny.