So - We Need To Talk About Tā Moko - Before Varuna

Face tattoos, has any body seen Mike Tyson face lately?

 

There is an easy answer to that.
Too many to keep track off.

Especially when you're not trying to be actively offensive. Your priority is simply to paint your damn metal minis the way you want. So if your PanO troops happen to be white with dank tatoos, that's a very, very simple line to draw for a well placed fuck off.
Call it artistic freedom or whatever.

Especially if every random whiteknight thinks it's his place to take up any flag they find lying around, claiming it theirs with no effort to consult the actual party in question.
As mentioned you can make up any half assed background explanation anyway. Or a serious one. Ultimately doesn't matter.
Haven't seen anyone complain about getting the tartan for Scots wrong (yet).
The Kempetai bullshit was dumb enough:
"They're presented too nice"
"Nippon Stasi who doesn't give a damn about their own people isn't bad enough"
"They need to be depicted even worse than Psycho Crane"

What the hell is wrong with people?

There are endless little wars to fight, at least find one that actually is your business.
Find me someone who has a better horse in the race than to gratify his misguided sense of "justice" to get off.

It's mind boggling how an adult can sit there yelling "muh proxy privilege" to feel offended for the weirdest reasons.
Fucking tats on a metal mini because the damn guy wasn't tan enough....

I dare you to find an Maori and ask him if he is cool with someone ridiculing his culture for a reason like that. Pretty sure there are like, actual ethnic problems the Maori are facing in society. Maybe one could consider to hop on Facebook, find himself a nice group and fight the good fight they're craving so badly.

 

I guess to me it's just a default assumption of respect. If I were going to paint models with any culture's specific symbology I'd do at least a cursory amount of research into that beforehand. Be that tartan patterns, ta moko, bindi, or whatever else. If it's a distinctive part of a culture's appearance, it probably means something, and so I'd want to make sure I wasn't blatantly disrespecting it.

 

Are you absolutely sure it is your civil duty to give me shit for not caring about fair skinned Croc Men?

Because the damn contrast is simply better and that way you'll actually get to see that awesome freehand tatoo.
Seems to be more of a in the heat of the discussion thing, instead of something you'd actually pick a fight over IRL.

 

Which is what I was getting at for the kirituhi. Because I can really see a "Croc Man" regimental tattoo more than individual Ta Moko, unless getting into the Croc Man regiment carries with it "the adoption into Maori culture" idea.

I could go into great detail about the 3,506 US submariners who lost their lives during WW2. I could go into more detail about the 129 men who died on USS Thresher, the 99 who died on USS Scorpion, the 3 who died on USS Bonefish, and even the one who died after injuries sustained on USS San Francisco.

Wearing a submariner's Dolphins means having broken the back of Imperial Japan at the cost of one in six of your brothers not coming back. Having lost two more ships for reasons still unknown to this day (Thresher and Scorpion). Every man among them is my brother.

Fuck with my brothers at your peril. If you really piss me off, it may well be the last thing you ever do.

If you say, "well, the contrast was a lot better with the pale skin" that's fine. I'd like to see your awesome freehand tattoo, too.

If you say, "I don't care about fair skinned Croc Men," and leave it at that, I see it as my civic duty to not play an asshole like you.

Which impression do you want to give?

 

To all of you that want to walk away from a game because of the way someone painted their figures. Please do it in the name of peace. Please take your name calling and violence somewhere else.

 

Peace is certainly preferable.

But like that little example showed, you never know what will set someone off. Me? I'm still a little pissed off that some asshole wastes of oxygen stole the brass plaques dedicated to the 3,506 dead and managed to sink the WW2 submarine that was a memorial in New Jersey. The worst part is that those memorial tablets were destroyed by the time anyone knew something was wrong. Even worse than that, simply refloating the submarine is thousands of dollars that neither the city nor the museum volunteers have. Actually restoring the sub (and the various artifacts inside) would take millions. Fucking methheads. Their heads literally on pikes would not be enough for me.



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If you care enough to paint up the Maori tats, or the Scottish tartans (or even Submariner Dolphins), please care enough to learn what they stand for. To learn what it takes to be able to wear them.

Paint someone in pale skin with Maori tats and tell me, "yeah, the contrast was just much better with pale skin" and I will say, "yeah, makes sense. Nice freehand, how the hell did you get lines that small?!?"

Paint someone in pale skin with Maori tats and tell me, "he's pale-skinned, what are you going to do about it" and I'm going to pack up my toys and concede the game.

 

Whichever makes me happier that day?

You don't want to play me because I've ruffled your feathers, that's your call, guy. Realistically, y'all might want to just preemptively pencil me out. No telling what I might do given my proclivity for making decisions for myself. I mean, chances are pretty good my army won't even be painted, but why take the chance?

Do your "civic duty"!

If you think those of us on the other side of this debate are going to be losing sleep over a bunch of dudes online who dislike how we might consider painting some minis ... yeah, it's not happening.

But keep up the outrage, by all means. Y'all are clearly ... winning? Is that the point of pressing this "do what we say or else" garbage?

Yeah, good luck with that.

Peace.

 

Afterthought: I still think respecting the Maori is the right thing to do.

I just also think that a lot of you are being controlling @$%&&*$#@'s.

For the record.

 

Perhaps its just me but I feel like certain individuals are being unnecessarily worked up over this. The language in this thread is becoming very dramatic.

Passionate debate is great but attitude and expressions can be detrimental. I'm not trying to start shit but I have to say, @Teslarod 's expressions for example feel unnecessarily antagonistic. You don't need to agree with us and we don't need to agree with you but there's a polite way to disagree even in an emotional subject - although I'm yet to figure out why you yourself are using such emotive language if you're as disassociated with the subject matter at hand as you claim. Although ultimately I land on the same camp as you "its the future, fair skin + tatoos are OK", I think we've approached it with very different intents and extremely different language. I don't think hostility is warranted just because some people feel so passionate about protecting a culture they don't identify with. Just as you say, its not their job to defend these cultures but its also not your job to tear them down if they choose to do so.

It's commendable in fact but you seem to have some idealistic opposition to the notion which is personal. As you said, (paraphrasing:) there's too many different cultures so you can't be bothered being respectful. Ok, that's your choice.
Others can absolutely make a moral stand to not play against disrespectful players as you yourself can choose not to play against "SJW" players.

I disagree with @yojamesbo, it's not about being controlling. It's about drawing a line in the sand about what's acceptable to you from your fellow players. I might be lazy enough to accept a white skinned miniature with tribal tatoos without quizzing the player about their intent, but I absolutely will scream obscenities at anyone trying to climb Uluru. That's where I draw the line. Also not going to play against a player that non-ironically plasters swastikas over all his infinity minis even though someone could argue this makes me a hypocrite given my laziness about the tatoos.

If you don't involve your morals in your mandollies good for you. And if others want to keep their morals in their mandollies, good for them. No need to be so dramatic because someone else is unyielding in their beliefs :/

 

And this is why I asked if all else was really needed.

Realistically nobody has the right to enforce to others what to think, or care, if you really want to raise the cultural awareness for a subgroup/ minority group/ not really well know group, the best strategy is to make a well written article without the negativity and engage positive without engaging negatively you end up with a positive discussion without any arguments and anybody that was motivated to care is an addition to your cause.

This is my suggestion for all such threads don't start aggressive, engage only positive, ignore negative posters, you will get a better result with less effort.

 

I really can't speak for the Maori, but I can offer some views on the tartan. None of me, my friends or anyone I have met in Scotland to date has cared about what tartan someone is wearing, let alone painted on a metal mini.

If you want to learn the history of the clan before you paint it, go ahead, but I would never pull someone up on it or God forbid walk away from the game because of it...

Imagine if we got offended by every tourist that wears tartan! Would be enough to drive you to drink... Wait a minute

 

I mean we could get into some rather graphic cultural norms and ask if you want to respect and be sensitive to those. But I think the basic fact is that there is a fairly clear disagreement on what respect and being sensitive entail and their requirements are. Frankly, the calls for respect come from a moral, ethical and political premise I do not agree with as they violate several other principles I hold dear.

Ultimately, the idea of cultural appropriation leads to worse and worse social restrictions as the idea gets pushed to its logical conclusion. What starts as, “you must be x in order to wear/use/do x” begins in racializing culture. You use this to justify ostracism after ostracism in our group until everyone is weary and silent. They leave, stay and keep their heads down or join you in fanaticism. Outside your group you use it to begin tearing others down. But soon that’s not enough. The representation isn’t true enough and you begin demanding the racialized culture to be enacted in the hiring of said race. After all, you can’t have someone of another race adopting the culture for use, why would you have someone of another race use it in art or literature? So now you’re demanding race be the leading factor in artistic pursuit and hiring and you’re beating people who may have been your friend over the head because they aren’t the right race. I am so sick and tired of seeing this bigotry gain traction again and again by useful idiots. Worse, it’s completely backwards at spreading a cultural idea. How much of human endeavor is lost to the sands of time? It’s immense. We have lost languages in our lifetimes because they weren’t shared and recorded. The more you isolate something, the more likely it is to disappear. Further you hurt a culture’s ability to capitalize on its culture for trade and tourism by limiting who can actually partake in said culture. Cultural appropriation is one of the worst ideas being propagated today.

 

This discussion makes me want to paint a Maori Cutter. Is the pilot truely Maori or not? We cannot know! Schrodingers cultural appropriation camo, boom!

Actually I should really paint the Cutter I've had for ages some day.

 

Well that was a shit show.
I am digging the idea of a tatted up cutter though.
Now where'd I put those pens...

 

Guess we can add this thread to the pile where battle heels, female knights, and sexual objectification is...

 

I feel like you're putting some words in my mouth here.

 

Sure, I'm not saying we're signing some sort of cultural respect death-pact where we have to abide anything anyone does, no matter how morally offensive or obviously destructive/dangerous. This thread is talking about facial tattoos, not abducting children to make blood sacrifices under the new moon or whatever.