The only person being offended, defensive and kicking up a fuss is you, pal Rest of us are having a discussion here. Getting a bit sick of people coming and screaming "STOP SCREAMING ABOUT BEING OFFENDED, YOU SNOWFLAKES" at us. Delicate flowers much?
So very much this! Being a European company, I know CB is familiar with the legalities of the use of SS/Nazi names and imagery. For whatever reason, "Kempeitai" never got the legal prohibitions. It has social prohibitions instead. So this thread really is a case of asking, "Hey, CB, did you intend for the nasty baggage of the historical Kempeitai to attach itself to the fictional unit in your universe?" And based on the Secessionist Kempeitai fluff, it seems that it was intentional. I was a bit concerned back when the Kempeitai were more... 'heroic' in their defense of the Japanese soldiers. As I've stated before, fragging officers does happen, and usually gets covered up. But it's still never a good thing, even when it does meet the legal standards for justifiable self-defense. I get really fucking offended when people use "I'm offended" to shut down discussion. Use of profanity intentional.
@Section9 roughly speaking, and I really mean roughly, but my theory is that while Soviet/Russia never really had to confront their transgressions for obvious reasons, the fact that USA using the Nuclear bomb on Imperial Japan meant that the USA had a vested interest in not pursuing and forcing Japan to do the same regarding their crimes in South East Asias. (Related reading is a very solid theory that the nuclear bombs only provided IJA an excuse to surrender on more favourable terms, since they had missed their chance to surrender to Soviet earlier)
That's not an unreasonable reading of the events. I think another big piece was that the US decided to keep the Showa Emperor in power, which meant that the Allies couldn't dig too deep in the war crimes depertment due to a lot of orders having the Emperor's personal signature on them. Can't support a man who might be a War Criminal, after all... I'm not convinced that the Imperial Japanese could have surrendered. Surrender = Defeat = Death in State Shinto and the version of Bushido they were following. The US changed their leaflets from "Surrender" to "Stop Fighting". You've known me a long time, PS. I try very hard to be civil to people as a general rule. It's not any more work than being rude, usually. Sometimes my frustrations get the better of me, and people saying, "I'm offended" to shut down discussion is a major pet peeve raging psychotic hatred for me.
Well, we're getting side tracked, the thing is they had been discussing a conditional surrender to the Soviet in order to avoid the rapidly advancing US fleet, but before they could send a delegation to the Soviets, the Soviets broke their armstice. Additionally, the surrender came way, way, too quickly following the bomb, getting the Emperor's signature fast would have taken at least a week and we're talking days, so the surrender petition was probably signed prior to the bombs were droppes. Then there's the fact that those two cities weren't the only cities completely flattended that week, nor even the largest cities. To even react to the bombings beside noting the damage done would have been strange when already faced with daily reports of cities and villages being deleted. Nuclear bomb was fortunate, all in all, sufficiently deadly to save face (not to mention save them from the much more brutal Soviets), providing enough luggage on the US to readily accept it without pursuing too many war crimes, and also providing the US with an important victory and chilling effect against the Soviets. Everybody wins (except the people in the 50 or 60 cities, except Edo, that were levelled to the ground) One could say the bomb was a political, rather than military, statenent.
Yeah, the US basically destroyed every large city in Japan during the war, except for Kyoto. Why not Kyoto? Because one of the officers on the target-selection list had been there on his honeymoon and loved the place. It helped that Kyoto didn't have any major industries, so this officer was able to convince his counterparts that by not bombing Kyoto the US would be at war with the Japanese Military, not the Japanese Culture/People. But based on the effects of the US invasion of Okinawa, I'm not sure there would have been a Japanese people left alive on those islands after the US invaded. And I say that when one of my friend's mom's remembers the day 78,000 Americans showed up uninvited for a beach party. But we are getting way side-tracked.
No worries, I do not mind an opinioned discussion as long as it is civil, or at least the participants try their best to remain civil.
We try, but you know, being a bunch of JSA players it is kind of hard when you can't challenge people to katanas at dawn. Edit: Oh you meant civil... I thought you meant civilized... my bad ;-)
Yeah, I'm not liking where this is going. But maybe maaaaaaybe you get something like the Kempeitai arranging an atom bombing in Tiān Di Jing, to hit the StateEmpire military high command meeting the Emperor and Party officials, taking out mass numbers of civilians. Decapitated and enraged, Yu Jing lashes out genocidally! It could happen, maybe, I wish I believed it.
Maybe it would help you understand some people's feelings if you exchange the word "offended" with "disturbed". I don't really feel offended, I feel disturbed by the use of the term Kempeitai. I don't feel well when real life genocide and war crimes are used in entertainment for no good reason. I have read through many posts of this thread and I come to the conclusion that the reason why people don't understand why others feel disturbed or offended is that they are completely detached from such horrific events. I understand that. If you are younger and live in some rich country, you may not understand the feelings that others associate with terms like "Securitate", Kempeitai" "SS" etc. I have listened to my grandmother and her stories about the second world war, for example. Therefore I do feel disturbed when I see Nazi insignia used in certain ways. I can extend that feeling to others, I can imagine how e.g. Koreans or Chinese feel about the Rising Sun symbol. Btw. my grandmother felt really offended whenever she saw something war-related as entertainment. She once scolded me for watching Star Wars. "Don't watch this shit. This is war. War is not fun!". Well, I obviously have not listened to her. But I do acknowledge and accept her feelings. I am just too detached from war that I am able to play war games. I don't think my grandfather who was in North Africa and Russia would have ever played a war game. I would like to ask those people to simply accept that other people do feel disturbed or offended. What is so difficult about that?
That really does not look good. I understand that large chunks of Infinity background stories are composed as the propaganda pieces of the various factions. I get the idea that there is no good and evil in Infinity, just shades of gray. Like in reality. All factions have their skeletons in their closets. I got pretty disturbed when I realised that my Ariadnans are committing settler-type genocide like the real-life Australians do. I thus did not get the Antipode slaves for a long time. Somehow I accepted and embraced the idea because this gives the game a more realistic feel. But I can't warm with the idea of using names that stem from real genocide. I prefer to stick to analogies like the murder of the Antipodes, who are not the aliens on Dawn. Humans are.
And who decides what constitutes a good reason? How about the fact that the unit fulfills virtually the same role within the fictional JSA military structure as the real one did within the Imperial Japanese Army in WW2?. Sounds like a perfect reason to me. People read that name and know immediately what that unit is about. That's what you want as a creator. That aside, I'm sure most people can sympathize with people who suffered these atrocities. My grandparents were Polish fugitives in WW2 and I heard a lot of stories that still give me goose bumps when I think of them today. War is a nasty thing - it always has been. However, that doesn't mean I can't enjoy fiction about war. I can read a paragraph about innocent people getting slaughtered in a novel and feel angry about it, but it would never occur to me to direct that anger towards the author, much less wishing or even demanding they never write such horrible things again. My feelings should not dictate what can or cannot be done in fiction. In fact, I want fiction to be disturbing, so whatever it is I find disturbing can be confronted in a safe way.
Everyone has his tastes, I guess. I like my fictional escapism to be nice and good, because there is enough shit in real life to deal with to want my escapist fantasy to also be full of it. Guess that's why I didn't like ASOIAF/GoT.
