Re: Racial slur in werewolves pack

@xochiquetzl_xkvn 

It is true that it says savage poo on the toilet but I think you will agree that this does not reference a person so we must instead look at the definition for using it as a verb,

@jpkarlsen 

I’ll put it this way.

There’s “The animal ran here savagely,” and then there’s “We’ve based a lot of our werewolf pack visuals and lore on Twilight, but instead of having all our werewolves be explicitly Native American we’ll just tag all werewolf actions as being ‘savage’ or being done ‘savagely.’” One is clearly not a reference to Native Americans and the other….

 Not intentionally, of course, but the tropes are hungry. 

@xochiquetzl_xkvn 

Could you please point me to where you saw that announcement from EA  especially the part about werewolves being Native Americans. I haven't seen such an announcement.

Boozhoo (Hello) @xochiquetzl_xkvn 

  I want to say Miigwech (thank you) for trying to understand the perspective from an Indigenous person of the Americas. I did not know about the toilet action because I did not play long enough to check out the whole pack.

I did try to talk about the adverb of it and how it’s still harmful to Indigenous peoples. As well the relevance the Declaration of Independence has with EA headquarters being in USA.

Some words that could be used instead of one’s that are triggering for Indigenous peoples are ruthlessly, viciously, brutally or destructively.

Again… 

HAPPY INDIGENOUS PEOPLES HISTORY MONTH! 🧡

@JSmithh013 

Oh, thank you! of course! Thank you for taking the time to speak up and educate us. I genuinely appreciate it.

There was some discussion in the Jewish and Muslim representation thread where someone asked how it was possible that a US-centric game produced in the US had no Native American/First Nation representation, and I thought of that comment during the conversation here.

I sincerely hope that the Team considers using a different, less loaded word--one without such an ugly role in US History.

I wasn't addressing any specific press releases, I was attempting to explain how tropes work. I'm not a game designer, but I am a published author (with a day job lol) and there's a similar skill set involved.

For example, vampires. Let's think about how they would implement a vampires pack/how I would write a vampire book. For people to recognize it as vampires, they need to drink blood (or plasma), sleep in coffins, not age, etc. These are tropes and are culturally derived, usually from literature or mass media. In the case of vampires, they gave us mutliple tropes to play with, including the Nosferatu style vampire (Vlad) and the charming vampire (for all your Edward Cullen/Louis de Pointe du Lac needs). Most vampire tropes in the US and UK come from Bram Stoker, who got a lot of them from the Victorian serial Varny the Vampire. Dracula wasn't the first vampire novel in English, just the one that's the most famous today.

For example, farming. Why set a farming pack in the UK? To manage expectations about whether the pack is about having as many cows or llamas as possible (US Midwest/West style), perhaps herded by cowboys on horseback, or whether it's a cozier "All Creatures Great and Small" experience.

For example: werewolves. If you look at the history of werewolf media, the most popular recent examples are Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter books (see The Moonwood Collective) and Twilight. In order to recognize them as werewolves, we need the full moon, turning into a wolf, losing touch with your humanity, etc. Because the Harry Potter books have no vampire/werewolf war and Twilight does, well. (What We Do in the Shadows also has a vampire/werewolf conflict, but it's a parody.) Googling also produces Underworld, but the most famous example is Twilight. There is no Vampire/Werewolf conflict in The Wolf Man, An American Werewolf in London, etc., but Twilight is wildly popular and apparently the trope was considered popular and important enough to include it. Why set a werewolf pack in a logging town in what looks like the Pacific Northwest instead of an English boarding school or London? It's a shorthand to help set your expectations.

This is how tropes work.

However, tropes are sometimes culturally loaded with undesirable baggage, and sometimes this undesirable baggage will spill over. Not using the undesirable baggage is hard work, and sometimes well-intentioned creators screw up, just because of the way tropes work. 

As you were.

@xochiquetzl_xkvn 

So it was all conjecture on your part. Good to know.

Since I was not familiar with Twilight I looked it up and discovered some interesting facts.

1. There are no werewolves in the films only shapeshifters who have a totally different backstory than werewolves. Unlike werewolves their powers are inherited and they are all from an native indian tribe Shape-shifters of the Quileute tribe are also called Quileute wolves. This is is probably why you thought that werewolves where indigenous indians.

2. There are werewolves  in the books but they were omitted in the films. Probably because they did not play a big part in the main story line. The books mention that unlike shapeshifters a werewolf could singlehandedly kill a Vampire.

3. Looking at YouTube I can see that the shapeshifters bears no resemblance to the Werewolves in The Sims 4. Unlike werewolves the shapeshifters can switch to their wolf form at any time during the day not just at night and the looks are totally different.

You fixated on that the scenery from the film resembled the scenery in the films but it could in fact have been  any small logging town all over the world. The book places it in Forks Washington state. 

The werewolf myth comes from ancient Greece where a man called Lycan angered Zeus so he turned him into a wolf. Major belief in the myth came in the middle ages in central Europe where there were werewolf trials in an area that is now Switzerland. Interestingly a lot of places there looks like the scenery in Moonwood Mills.

If you ever want to write a book on Werewolves I hope you are a bit more educated on the subject

@jpkarlsen 

That being said there is a dormant ability called transformation mastery that allows you to transform at will, making it more like twilight.

This a USA company so the words that have been used to harm Indigenous peoples on this continent matters. On this continent because of it’s historical use since settlers arrived some Indigenous people view the “s” word as our equivalent to the “n” word. Which is why I don’t think it’s appropriate to use.

It is correct that the books (and the films?) mentions that the shapeshifting ability is dormant until they meet a vampire.

Don't know what that has to do with werewolves.