Lets face it. Patriarchal organizations , in a traditionally patriarchal religion. Found in a geopolitical union of some of the most chauvinistic cultures on modern day earth , possessing prominent female roles is a bit of a stretch . But at the end of the day, if its the artist vision they can say purple is now orange and we basically get to put up with it. Aesthetically women in power armor should be almost indistinguishable from the men. Honestly thematically it bothers me female knights are a thing , but only slightly . Visually they just look like rail thin versions of rhe men, who have to be wearing significantly more advanced power armor for it to be so skin tight. Maybe psychoticstorm is right and this will be different when we have the sculpts in hand due to swell and contraction of molds. But i feel female brigada ans female jannisaries look a lot closer to thrir male counter parts than the sword and scabard female knight does.
Yeah sin eaters the guys that are basically slaves....no wonder we havent seen a female sin eater noaw group
Just to be abundantly clear I did not misunderstand you there. I'm a stats guy and I don't have any particular preference in between women and men. But aren't you in essence saying enforcing gender diversity for male dominated areas is good and women should get their safespace? If that is the case I'd feel inclined to call SJW whiteknight horseshit on that. If I misunderstood no hard feelings (seriously, I mean it) and please elaborate. I kind of really want those male Odalisques and Riot GRRRLs more and more everytime someone tells me I can't have them. Oh and I do like the Magister sculpts. Not exactly happy about the Panzerfausts, not exactly happy about the 50% tiny women quota dilluting my HI army aestetics, not exactly happy about the loss of the "Hyperdynamics feel", but nontheless I do like the sculpts.
And here's Teslarod, showcasing why ''international men's day" received more Google searches on international women's day than on international men's day. :P
Lol No, no I'm not. This is exactly the kind of ridiculous, logically baseless comment that makes these discussions impossible. "If you want art to be progressive then you're anti-art!" This is manifestly rubbish. And if you can't appreciate the difference between the level of default Male inclusion and default Female inclusion in wider society and this hobby in particular then this whole conversation is a waste of my time. Your lack of respect for my viewpoint won't lose me any sleep, I assure you. Especially as, well, there are female Knights now sooo
So can we not devolve the discussion to this? it would be much appreciated. I will state what I said before in this thread though, Female knights were not a political statement and please do not infuse them in the authors work.
It seems you quite misunderstand the whole point he was making, as well as the reasons why female-only groups can somewhat be tolerated and why male-only ones should not. Whether that misunderstanding is deliberate or not... Not to mention he did not express any views even remotely similar to Observancy, and has in fact said things like: Given your use of word "propaganda" here, and your essential misunderstanding of the difference between acceptability of male-only and female-only groups means you are either unaware of the world we live in, or are actively enjoying the form it has taken. In any case, I wish nothing else to do with you. ============================ Re: "propaganda" in art : all art carries messages, both ones added consciously and ones added unconsciously. And these messages, by simple default, tend to present the status quo in the society. This is the way of art, and there is nothing wrong with it per se; but when the status quo is not good, pointing it out and making a conscious effort to change is also not a bad thing.
Art is a form of expression, yes, and art is anything that forces you to think, hence why an urinal with a signature actually is art (well its a bit more complicated than that but you get the point), I get the argument that art is political, I disagree that it is always political, but yes, artists tend to express their worldview through it and with that their ideology and values, something that is not always political. What I do not like is others taking a form of art and putting political values in it to express their own political agenda.
But unfortunately, all of these acts are political - even if we don't want them to be. And not-acting is, paradoxically, also a political act - one that says "I'm good with status quo". This is particularly true in SciFi, where you are so often projecting either your fears or your aspirations into future.
I disagree because personal beliefs are not a political dogma, it is a modern mania to herd people to political ideology because of something they believe, disregarding why they believe it. Humans are complex been that can have multiple beliefs and ideology that are not and cannot be classified in one political category and usually have beliefs and ideology that belong to contradictory political camps, because this is how humans really are. And this is what I say, I strongly dislike ascribing political ideology if a form of art because it suits ones political agenda, or taking down a form of art because parts of it do not suit ones political agenda, art can be political and the artist can create art to support a political ideology, but usually art is created to express human feelings or beliefs that are varied and not entrenched in a political dogma.
All art is political. The specific attempt to remove art from politics is, in of itself, a political act.
The issue I have with this is exactly what I said, "political" and the mania to herd people in camps is a modern mania, been political means that you express a certain ideology entrenched in a dogma and deviations from it are not allowed, moreover a certain belief can be claimed by a political dogma while there are many variable ideological and logical ways one can express the same result that have no connection with the dogma that claimed the end result. And hence what I say and believe, art is a piece that makes you think, what political ideology one ascribes on it expresses the political ideology of the ascriber and not necessarily of the creator.
Personal beliefs are still political. And neither Solar nor I are here talking about a wider set of beliefs, but one particular belief - and how it is expressed. As for art, I strongly disagree. While creator may not be trying to express political statements - that does not mean he is not expressing any. In fact, the art may be expressing a completely different political statements from what they are comfortable with. And yes, part of that is what the consumer of the art ascribes to the art. But reading the art is part of the process of appreciating the art.
Well the crux of the discussion is this, for personal beliefs to be political they must abide to a political dogma they are supposed to be following, because to be political you must belong to a political ideology and follow its dogma, if a person follows beliefs that are claimed by many different political ideological dogmas, then the person is not politically aligned to a political dogma and hence his opinions are expressing personal beliefs and not a support to a particular political dogma, claiming them to belong to a political dogma expresses the political beliefs and dogma of the claimer, not necessarily of the artist. Again in my belief the mania to herd people in political camps and the polarisation we have now because of it is a modern mania and it does harm to the society in general, better understand and revert to the ideology that all humans are complex ideological been that express many ideologies often contradictory than to herd them into camps and fuel an us vs them mentality.
The difficulty here, @psychoticstorm, is that there are political and theological implications with the Military Orders as a whole. The Arthurian knight and its ideals of chivalry and martial prowess, the historical knight with its regional duties, and the tabletop knight with its lackluster armor and missing mount to carry it into CC, are all very different creatures. The church presented in Infinity is united under the Neoterran Space Pope, a feat that strains the imagination. That this Pope decreed that all roads lead to God is further difficult to parse. The focus from eternal salvation for a single soul, to the chance that you may have a semibiological reproduction created with a copy of your memories is perplexing, but bears slight similarity to an inverted indulgence. The Teutonic Knights, if memory serves, are the only MO faction that has no cube, and thus no hope of Earthly (or NeoTerranly) resurrection. The impression I have always been under was that joining the Military Orders virtually assured a resurrection, provided the cube could be found, you were not sepsitorized, or you were not dishonorably discharged in an amusing way. Part of the reason for the Seraph program was that it was cheaper and easier to build a remote presence TAG than it was to constantly retrieve the cube of a suicidally brave officer. Given how many Seraphs I've wrecked with an engineer, I will personally vouch for the cost cutting happening somewhere in PanO. Where does this leave the female knight question? We have the best one already, Joan. Would it bother me if more woman in power armor are willing to throw away their lives for a brainwashed biological imitation of themselves? Not overly much. Should they be knights? Given the state the church is in theologically, and their 'do what you want' attitude? They can call themselves whatever they want. Unless it's Kempeitai.
Service does not assure resurrection, it is a good chance to have more points than most to go in front of the line, or for really brave and determined ones maybe enouph to guarantee a resurrection, but in general service to the MO just earns more points than in most other ways at least to the common people. Hence the Seraph program assures you can have more high ranking officers alive and directing than in cube banks waiting for resurrection, or to do the paperwork to make an immediate resurrection because of operational needs (if you have retrieved the cube, if the cube is alright ectr ectr). Teutons had their cubes removed only after the CA voodoo tech was a reality, there is nothing in their normal modus operati that demands their cube removal and quite possibly they keep old Cube style cube back ups, I doubt they would get many recruits even with the extra bonus points if the mandate to have the cube removed without some form of back up was the MO standard procedure. Now the political and theological implications of the setting for the church alone are many, the two churches and the many splits churches they had after the main split in the past millennia are deeply ideological (and the usual power struggles), are theoretically unbridgeable, though it is possible in the future a besieged church that loses power to consolidate all the split power into one unified church in order to keep control and survive, that is a really remote case scenario and will need extremely willing visionaries with a big doze of pragmatism to happen, but hey its a sci fi setting, it can happen. Now if the orthodox and catholic church and their host of split churches managed to unify in a single entity, well, female knights are less of a stretch, especially if they are not priests. Infinity borrows old ideas and reuses them in a new way, even the MO are all new with no connection to the old MO, the knights of the modern MO are not the knights of any order we had in the past and probably not having the same ideals, same goes to the Church of Infinity with the various churches we have now.
Art. One of my trigger buttons. I like to draw and have some skill in that area, but I do not like to call myself an artists, because I do not want to be associated with the types of individuals that are the face of current art. There is some absolute and literal rubbish being pushed off as 'art'. All I can say is, good art requires skill in execution. I have no time for any 'art' that does not recognizably require skill to produce. I will take a Thomas Kinkade over a Jackson Pollock anyday. As to the inclusion of females, I get a little exasperated by this dogmatic requirement for representation. I like female only Riot Grrls. It makes sense in context, and adds character to a group. I like female led Observancy. It makes sense in context and adds character to a group. I like male only knightly orders. It makes sense in context and adds character to a group. I do not want all fictional groups within Infinity to perfectly align with my philosophical outlook. That is homogeneous and boring. Variety adds interest. Identity adds interest. Adds spice. Where are my Maori Haqqislamite Jannissaries? Where are my Scandinavian JSA ninjas? Where are my Mongolian Panoceanic male techbees? Not every group has to be represented in every instance. Varied group identity makes the setting interesting, not evil. I feel it is true, that in general females have been underrepresented, and/or misrepresented in tabletop wargaming. However that does not mean they need to be everywhere, or over-represented. I want female warriors where it makes sense, or more importantly where it is cool. Rule-of-cool trumps realism for me. Infinity is one of the best in the business for female representation. Note I didn't say perfect, but one of the best. I am fine with female Magister Knights. I think it can be easily explained as warrior tithes from female cloisters. But I also think it would be interesting to have male only Knightly orders, in addition to female only knightly orders, and mixed gender knightly orders. If CB announced all knightly orders were male only, I would be fine with that, because it makes sense based on the historical information they are using as source material. As I have stated before though, I don't think an order that requires a vow of chastity would have mixed genders in their cloisters, and are unlikely to fill mixed gender link teams. If CB announced all knightly orders were 50/50 mixes of female and male, I would roll my eyes, buy the miniatures I like, and continue to fail spectacularly on the game board. Now I need to go make pew pew noises with my Panoceanians to calm myself down.
