Hmm, now which do I think applies in the context of a single quote about a single theatre from a single commander which refers to considering everyone a "threat" and pacifying them. Combined with another quote which is literally the definition of a massacre. And in the context of an area full of a certain ethnicity within Yu Jing controlled territory that are currently not all "pacified" / dead. Its called having perspective, and as freya has just pointed out, not making lazy argumentative cliches.
Thats right kids, if you don't get every last one its not genocide and its totally ok to execute mass ethnic cleansing! Also its entirely within Yu Jings character, what are you complaining about and also simultaneously it was just one guy if you ignore all the others so Yu Jing couldn't be responsible because they would never do that! This is getting tiresome. The excuses grow ever more wildly offensive, bordering now onto justifying and minimizing real world acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide (note: most of which did not get every last target) in an attempt to pretend fictional racially motivated mass murder is totally ok. Have a look at yourselves, how can you feel good about yourselves as human beings and type such vile excuses for vile actions? Where is your conscience? Your integrity?
Also known as the "I've already adopted the most extreme viewpoint so that any form of differing opinion can only be seen as endorsing the opposite of my viewpoint and therefore you are a shit human being whose opinion means nothing" argument. Classic logical fallacy playbook.
There are some here who just like arguing for arguing's sake. However, there's been some fine critiques on Uprising as well. Hopefully CB isn't plugging their ears and going "blah, blah, I can't hear you". Looking at the two locked threads and this one the discussion has gone over into 100 pages. To be expected for such a large and drastic change for the faction. Some have had well thought out grievances while others can only still see red. Question will be when is CB going to start talking about YJ's actual future? Until then the stuff surrounding Uprising is going to fester.
Lots of things to reply to, pardon the length of the post. You literally said that the problem isn't Gutiers. You're saying anyone with an issue with the fluff is the one with the problem. Telling someone "Your opinion is wrong" without anything to back up that statement is the height of condescension. It will instantly make someone angry (trust me, I was furious after you said that) The fluff has no parallels to any time in history, despite all the realpolitik happening all over the place and the various nations all acting in their own interests at the time? Seriously? The point is that a police state doesn't do ethnic cleansing just because they're a police state. Yes, Yu Jing is one of the darkest factions in the fluff (right there next to the Hassassins, if you want to get down to it). But before this, Yu Jing wasn't black, with highest-authority giving explicit approval for ethnic cleansing. Most police states don't care who is inside as long as they don't break any laws (I could describe the US military as a police state, since any NCO can give a statement that is accepted as legally true). Do you job, don't make any trouble, the State and the Police won't make any trouble for you. Also, note that the trooper scanning the citizens is a Bao, one of the most extreme troops in the ISS. So extreme that they are under Imperial Order to never leave the barracks without a Pheasant escort to keep them in line. He's not shooting someone before asking questions. He's doing the 23rd Century equivalent of "Papers, please" with a retinal scan. Can't fake a retinal scan, can't spoof a retinal scanner with an eye cut out of someone's head (because the lack of blood pressure causes the veins to collapse). He's not being very gentle about it, but Bao are rather rude people at best. I had (past tense) a bit of a different picture of this, since I'd thought for a bit that it was possible that the Bao was ID-scanning a captured criminal. Then I realized that the scanned person had his hands free, which makes him not a criminal. So yeah, I agree with this entire post. How is it in character for an organization that is ID-scanning instead of shooting to suddenly start shooting anyone in the area? Even in the US, the various police forces are the internal security forces of the US. That's what police are. Again, authoritarian states are not necessarily genocidal. (Yu Jing is not Totalitarian, the Emperor is not in charge of the State, just the Judiciary). It's easy for them to go that way, but it isn't a 100% correlation. I'm not sure if you're in the US, but seeing officers in full tactical vests (without helmets) is pretty common where I live. And it's not like Boise, ID has a big problem with violent crime. But we do have a significant population that carries firearms, which is why our officers all wear heavy-duty vests. For the same reason, UK police almost all wear stab vests instead of bulletproof vests, very few firearms but potentially a lot of blades in the local population. I admit the UK did a better job of making their stab vests look like normal clothing instead of military issue. The Retinal Scan, like I said, is the 23rd century equivalent of "License and Registration, please". You're right, the Bao is being a dick about how he gets his scan. Bao have always been the loosest cannons in the Imperial Service, and honestly I'd expect them to be shooting off their mouths about "Kill all the damn traitorous Japanese." The fact that it was a Crane was a bit disturbing, they're supposed to be better trained than that. That's not clear. It's been stated that the public elects the new Emperor when the old one dies. But I know that in today's PRC there are elections. Yes, they are between different members of The Party, but there are greater differences between Reformers and Traditionalists(? whatever the Chinese call the Maoists these days) than there are between the Democrats and the Republicans in the US. Plus, despite theoretical StateEmpire Control of the media, it was all leaked by various sources. Hell, Candy Crush (or whatever the hell her name is, I still don't even have a shipping notification for my book!) was a PanO media idol. So I'm doubting that there is much media control in YJ at all. Yes, those are totally believable initial reactions. It's why General "Mad Dog" Mattis says that counter-insurgency is the hardest task in the modern military (written in the Commandant's letter at the start of the US military's COIN Warfare book). The US military's COIN Warfare field manual specifically warns against acting on your initial impulses, because that plays right into the insurgent's hands. And, as I've said multiple times before, even the Chinese military uses the US Counter-Insurgency manual. It's that good, when people actually follow it. Are you saying that it isn't genocide/ethnic cleansing when you flood a city exclusively occupied by one ethnicity? That has only happened ONCE (and from the sounds of it, it needed to). It was indirectly threatened a second time, when the Triads were so powerful as to attack a courthouse to rescue one of their own. There's an enormous difference between "getting a helicopter shot down on the way to the op in the combat zone" and "getting Coronado blown up to kill SEALs and their families." For any jihadi reading this, please, try it. If you're really "lucky", the US will say fuck it and just nuke your homes in return. No. I do not want the Imperial Service to be war criminals. I do not want YJ to be outright evil. I want CB to succeed. I am extremely upset by the way the secession was conveyed in the fluff, because I think CB is going down a path that they will be hard-pressed to recover from. Actually, for the precise reason you're talking about: people not wanting to play the designated human bad guys. This game has been a part of my life since 2006. I really don't know what I'd do without it, since I don't much like GW or PP. Flames of War has basically died out where I live. I'd have to find someone willing to play a game that I do, which means I need to provide both sides of the game. I'm saying that as a trained US troop (which includes significant time spent on what makes something a legal order), if my Commanding Officer said we were going to air-quotes "pacify" an area, I'm understanding that to mean kill everyone in the area, My Lai style. Man, woman, and child. And that's without the Shield Division's established history of maximum violence to traitors. Yes, as a US troop. From a nation with a reputation for hanging people who commit war crimes. The Treason ITS module fluff doesn't look very good, when seen through that lens. Very much this. Quite frankly, I'm not going to stop until CB talks about YJ's actual future plans. And if those actual plans are as the designated human bad guys, I will probably be out (and out permanently once the play-by-post RP wraps up).
Yes, meu filho, it’s entirely within ISS behavior, or did we forget the eradication of the Golden Dagger and the wholesale slaughter of Triads at the same time? The already extant discrimination from YJ toward the Japanese? The use of Keisotsu to flush snipers and traps? And why the devil are you getting in such a twist over a totalitarian police state’s secret police 175 years in the future being portrayed as exactly what it is? The use of political prisoners as suicide bombs was fine? The Invisible Prisons were fine? However, the most brutal division of the ISS acting as such in suppressing an insurrection where combatants can and do hide among the populace, almost all of which is actively supporting the rebellion, is a bridge too far? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.
When they’re ready and it’s the right time in the story they’re creating for their game, and not a moment before. For those who don’t like that answer, well, do as you will.
The quote is suggestive, not vague. If what was meant was literally just pacify, the quotes wouldn't have been in there. The massacre in question is portrayed as part of a larger, more systematic effort. Though genocide doesn't have to be any of those three things you mentioned. If your position feels untenable then maybe there's a reason for that. I wouldn't say the fluff glorifies ethnic cleansing, per se. It's still portrayed as villainous, and the writing goes out of its way to avoid making Yu Jing seem like "cool" villians, with their constant failing and acting like a child caught beating up their little brother when PanO invades them rather than retaliating in force. But it *does* treat it with little gravity - as you are here. That's the point of the other thread I started - if, in the next story arc, Yu Jing is presented in some sort of favorable light, and they just don't talk about what happened in Treason, then it'll be bad storytelling - and that's exactly what I'm worried about. Ethnic cleansing is some serious shit. What happens when they decide "Oh, PanO's the villain this time. We're going to portray their treatment of Ateks and the Varuna natives with all the compassion of the Atlantic slave trade, and then expect everyone to pretend nothing's happened when we don't need them to play the villain." Or maybe not, because CB has decided that PanO, as the most numerous faction player-wise, will be portrayed more heroically and unironically as the setting's protagonists, like Space Marines in 40k. I see no reason this story is going to keep going. It was clearly written as an asspull to get JSA independent from Yu Jing by any means necessary, no matter how much it shat on the verisimilitude of the setting. Now that JSA is independent, there's no reason to talk about it. The shoe seems to fit.
You're actually trying to pull the 'you're a genocide apologist' argument on someone who is Jewish enough the Nazi's would have gassed me. I've been to the Rwandan Genocide museum in and talked with survivors. You want to clutch pearls and play 'how dare you?' now? Really? How dare you lessen the impact of real world genocide, of the suffering felt by real people, in real places, by trying to compare a fictional event, which isn't even described as such, to their suffering? If we're going to play that game, how fucking dare you use people who have actually suffered as a shield for your anger and indignation about changes to a game you like - this stopped being about uprising a long time ago, and started being about your own opinion of it and the need to prove it was right. Well, I refuse to play your game. I'm not going to hide behind all that and play 'how dare you' because unlike you, I am not ashamed of my own morals and I'm certainly not going to look at the harsh realities of humanity and say 'oh this is has to be ignored'. I'm a christian, I believe in redemption for all, in light in the darkness - I play my units in that perspective, and so I will never run a unit of the yuandun, but I will totally defend the idea that not all of YJ has to be like that, FFS the United States today has units that are amazing and to heroic, self-sacrificing things (shielding enemy civilians with their own bodies) and it also has drone strikes getting official sanction that just happen to wipe out large numbers of civilians who happened to be in the way. An organization can be neither good nor evil, and that is what I think YJ is portrayed as - just that the evil face of YJ is the one CB is writing in this particular event. The world is not simple or easy, and the fact that you insist on arguing in bad faith has completely soured me on any attempt to discuss this - You've taken me from a 'uprising was badly handled' position to actively defending the fluff which I don't even like just because you won't stop lying about it and putting words into Gutier's mouth.
Why wouldn't they, when they've got people like @A Mão Esquerda , @psychoticstorm , and others to tell them they're perfect no matter what they do? I guess when they've got something new in the Yu Jing line to sell? So next year, I think.
No, no and NO again ! This. is. NOT. how. genocide. works. You are now the third person - together with Fyeya and psychoticstorm - who has obviously not a single clue, what genocide is. Genocide doesn't have to be systematic. Genocide doesn't have to be methodical. Genocide doesn't have to be prolonged (the last one doesn't even make sense, since it would exclude any genocide that is being done ... "right" ... against a smaller group and as such doesn't need a long time). All of those elements are indeed common, but are NOT requirements. Quite opposite - especially big, systematic, methodical and prolonged genocides tend to have many levels of different kinds of participation in genocide, ranging from national, organized genocide where the state NOT necessarily "drags ALL people of a group and shots them on the street" (but uses them for work or tries to commit a "cultural genocide" - a term, coined by the one who is responsible for the term "genocide" in the first place - by re-education, cultural destruction and historical eradication) to local, spontanious outburst of individuals like "genocidal rape" by german soldiers (no, SS Soldier didn't have a nice pamphlet, telling them to systematically rape non-german lower races and actively trying to weaken their gen-pool for the great Führer), or german officers in colonies spontaniously throwing people into the desert or using a non-planned femine actively against an ethnic groups like under Stalin. And just out of fun, here is the offical legal position which many countries (like Germany under the regulation of "Völkermord") copy basically one to one: "In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html Do you see any mentioning of "systematic", "methodical", "prolonged" or "when dragged on the street and shot only" ? No ? Surprising ... And to make this even funnier: You are aware that we historians critize this Article - that already is way broader than whatever some people here think genocide is - regularly because it is too narrow in its definiton as a result of political interests ? (like the exclusion of "political groups" since the USSR had influence on the formulation of this Article). And I don't write this even as a mad Yu Jing player. I write this as a mad historian who seriously can not believe how uneducate some people are about the topic of "genocide" and how they don't even realize how revisionistic and apologetic their whole argumentation is. I don't expect you to run to nearest university and borrow every book about genocide from Rafał Lemki to today, but at least use Wikipedia - the legal text from above can be found on the polish, german, french, italian, english and even japanese wikipedia site (trust me, I looked them all up). It is not hard to inform yourself. Zakalwe showed a good example of an - and I can't even believe I have to call it this way, with the image some people have about genocide here - not "classic" genocide. Additionally his/her example is from the general geographic region where the main formulator of the term "genocide", Rafał Lemki, comes from. Varsovian further pointed towards the fact, how easily "brutal occupation and suppression of insurrections" can go hand in hand, fluctuate between or change into for exmaple "cultural genocide" (because sorry Fyeya, but "ethnic cleansing" of regions for the arian race, the killing of intellectuals, teachers and cultural figures, burning down of schools, libraries, museums and polish culture and the limitation of education to only basic schooling is more than "just" a "brutal occupation" - resulting in the fact, that is specifically on of those regions, where the term "cultural genocide" or just "genocide" is often used).
I'd really like to stop harping on what genocide is-or-isn't. Mostly because then I can avoid thinking about the fact that my secondary job in the US Navy was to utterly exterminate an entire country, man, woman, and child, in a series of nuclear blasts that totals about 3x more explosive force than used in the entirety of WW2, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I will point out that the US Navy actually gave us a combat decoration for going out and NOT shooting, which has been recognized as membership criteria for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I cannot think of a better description for nuking a country than 'genocide'. But yes, I hold the Shield Division specifically (and most of the Imperial Service as currently described) to be as despicable as the Waffen-SS and Pol Pot's butchers. Before someone says, "but you admitted you play SS," I knew going in that they were murderous bastards, and I am not playing a specific unit in history. I'm playing the 808th Propagandakompanie and the 101st Panzer Jager Kompanie, which are fictitious units from Mamoru Oshii's Kerberos Saga (and I think they're technically Heer, but I wanted the Fearless Veteran stats in-game, which means I had to play them as SS). I'm really upset about having been sold a faction that was, believe it or not, founded on one of the ideals of the US (that together we could make a nation that is greater than the sum of the parts), only for that nation to be turned into monsters who openly condone killing civilians at the highest levels. I'm upset that what was sold as an organization so competent that it forced PanO to create a new, no-holds-barred intelligence service, is now so incompetent that they didn't see activity that dates to the foundation of the nation as potentially hostile, and as escalating in that hostility. I'm upset that what was sold as the foremost counter-insurgency organization in the entire Sphere could actively make an insurgency worse. Not limited to one or two individuals, because shit happens, even in the US military some people just don't grok COIN. I mean the entire damn organization goes off the deep end and makes their immediate situation on the ground worse. And I'm upset that I still don't have a damn shipping notification for my book. I can't come up with a plan to write a way out of this mess, or write a less-objectionable selling of YJ and the ISS (and the JSA, if we get right down to it), until I get the damn book.
I did revise my definition in a later post (i generally don't edit but will now as I had assumed people read the whole thread before replying), so I'd appreciate not being talked down to quite so condescendingly. We could certainly have an indepth debate about whether whats written about the conflict toes the line or fully crosses it in terms of the actions of Yu Jing and ISS divisions, and you raise some valid points that I came out a bit too strong on the "its not" stance. I don't believe there is enough information to come to a solid conclusion, and some posters here are being far too absolute, particularly to use it to deafen any kind of conversation about the topic. I got defensive of that attitude and took the opposite side too far. @Hecaton honestly, you've accused several people of being dishonest and are pretty uncharitable bordering on plain stubbornness. I don't see any point responding. Really want to emphasise that many of these are all valid points. I think the shield division are pretty fucking repulsive, and I can understand that the uprising is still dredging up some upsetting emotions around Yu Jing. I don't necessarily fully agree with the scale of incompetence here. I don't feel like the fluff has covered all of the aspects of uprising yet, and sure that in itself might feel its not good enough, but lets be honest about what that is, its a hunger for more info. CB aren't selling novels here, they want people to want to know about this story, be involved in shaping it or playing games within this backdrop. You can't write absolutes otherwise people can't make their own stories. Maybe even they hope the yu jing player base steps up here to redeem the nation in the upcoming campaign. But ultimately @Section9, if you haven't read uprising, you might want to chill your jets. Theres a lot of stuff in there that you might find isn't quite as bad as whats been sold on these forums by other posters. A lot is up for interpretation and doesn't outline what happened in absolutes. Eg. the flooding event you mentioned was written to be done by a ninja commando... Was that under strict instruction from the ISS, or did they act alone. Was it a clan action to try destroy a rival clan. Are all ninja's japanese ethnically? Theres a lot of questions. Which is why posters coming on here and talking in absolutes is fucking infuriating, because it kills the fun of delving into this kind of fluff. Its controversial, but its also fictional. But academic discourse goes out the fucking window when one side is calling the other "genocide apologists".
Translation: I have no idea what I was talking about and finally got backed into a corner I couldn't blather my way out of. I became uncharitable on the topic because it's clear that there are a decent amount of people on this forum who will fanboy for CB beyond all reason. I saw this tank WW and I'm not too fond of it. If the fluff had any depth to it it'd be interesting to delve into. It's not written to be complex, however, as near as I can tell - it's written to be an asspull to justify the Japanese leaving Yu Jing.
We lost access to a third of our unit options, including four named characters. This has left a lot of us with miniatures we can't use in Yu Jing and gaps in our armies - both situations requiring us to buy more. We've got a right as customers to expect a certain level of quality from Corvus Belli, and one of the reasons this forum exists for us to voice our concerns. I do understand that at a certain point we will have to just wait and see, but we've been left in the dark about the future of our faction after having a very large portion of it removed. The fluff is also clearly an issue, but that discussion/debate seems to be impossible to have here.
Adjusting ones view based on information other people bring to a conversation is how normal people behave. I'm sorry that seems so foreign to you that you can only interpret as total capitulation. This response probably symbolises your attitude better than any attempt I could make to describe it.
You didn't adjust your view based off of new information, per se, though... you adjusted it based off of your inability to twist language to avert having to deal with the truth. You know the fluff is either incredibly clumsy or paints Yu Jing as participating in ethnic cleansing, you just desperately don't want it to become something openly spoken about, because it would make CB look bad.
That hasn't stopped GW, but point taken. I'd like CB to keep their fluff to a much higher standard than GW. A little hard to believe, given the faction bonuses in the Treason Narrative Event. Either you: Support YJ and the Imperial Service Support the Japanese Secessionists Support the Combined Army There's no alternatives. There's no "refuse to weaken the Human Sphere in the face of Alien Invasion" option, except to not play in the Event at all. There's also the fact that Yu Jing and Imperial Service players cannot choose a different option, they MUST take that faction bonus. Similarly, the JSA and Combined players don't get to choose their faction bonus. But here's the thing. Since I can't see any human players siding with the Combined Army, that means they have the choice to support either YJ or JSA. The well has been heavily poisoned against YJ with everything that's been released, so I can't see many, if ANY, non-YJ players supporting Yu Jing. Kinda by default, the entire rest of the Sphere is going to be supporting the Japanese. Per the "Post-Uprising Situation" blogpost, all the Ninjas are Japanese. It's just that the ones who stayed in the employ of Yu Jing are the minor clans. So it's possible that the Ninja involved was instructed to make sure that it's clan's loyalty was demonstrated to the utmost. After all, it's the recent convert who has the most to prove. It's still state-sanctioned War Crimes. And honestly, given the massive damage that happens during a flood, I find it hard to believe that it wasn't deliberately ordered. If it had been a minor clan acting without direct orders to kill the entire city, it would have been an easy blame-the-insurgents. "You cannot even trust the Japanese soldiers to keep you safe anymore, they are the ones who flooded your city!" Counter-insurgency 101: Blame as much as you can on the insurgents. Because he's doing everything he can to blame you for it!
