A couple of questions to the CB staff about fluff direction and the Infinity fandom

Gosh this is out of hand.

Next you'll be accusing the catholic church in spain of genocide. Go take a break, you're so far over your skis your face is bouncing off the snow.

The wars between Colonial and native governments weren't a genocide - they were wars, between vastly unequal powers. The purpose of an overwhelming majority of the conflict was not some sort of genocide, the term didn't even exist at the time, and most of the native population was destroyed by disease, which despite idiots in the modern age claim was used as a weapon, was a thing that happened quite by accident because at the time they didn't even know what germs were.

Just because you've arrived on your high horse today doesn't give you the right to go back through history with a big judgmental marker to edit everything to fit your perspective, despite your clear desire to do so.

 

Hooboy.

Let's lay this out.

My father was a Vietnam Veteran. He suffered from horrific PTSD til his dying day. He died almost 8 months ago, but for the 18 years I lived at home, I couldn't remember a week without him screaming terrifying things recalling horrible moments. He never complained about the year or so I dated a Vietnamese girl. I also didn't blame her for anything that happened to my Dad. I do hate Pho.

As life would have it, my Mother was Jewish. Would I play SS in a WWII game? What are their statlines? Aside from really good paints made by Vallejo for their cool looking tanks, I might play them.

My brother has fought against Al Qaeda, and in Modern Warfare 2 I did play that scene where you are going along with the terrorists attacking the mall.

My mother's older brother was vivisected by the Japanese in WWII. I drive a Honda. My mother refused to ever buy anything from Japan ever. My father loved the Japanese. Lived there for a time. Even was married to a Japanese national at that time. Me? I love a lot of aspects of Japanese culture, others such as sushi....hard hard pass.

It really is just a game.

Don't like it? Don't play it.

I hate some of the newer models. I don't buy them.

I think it would behoove some folks to take an internet break. I don't get bent out of shape over a sci fi game.

Hell, I'd run out of games to play otherwise.

I applaud CB for moving their game forward rather than being the same old stuff for 20+ years. They can take it whatever way they want to. It's theirs. If I don't like something, I won't spend money on it.

To quote a true classic:

"Chinese religion is all mixed up. Look what we have to work with: Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Chinese black magic... we take what we want and leave the rest. Just like your salad bar."

 

And you gloss over the chinese laborers on the railroads, the irish in factories, and plenty of others who have suffered and struggled in the history of building a nation without a foundation - both trying to learn how to make freedom work, which nobody else had tried before, and how to build a modern nation without the infrastructure inherited from past centuries.

It was war for land, it wasn't about ethnicity - blacks owned blacks, whites worked whites to death in the factories, and greed was the evil behind much of it - yet at the same time Americans often did a lot to help natives, natives slaughtered colonists, practiced cannibalism and ritual sacrifice... trying to act like the history was simple or one-sided is quite inaccurate. Yes, the natives came out the far worse for it, but they were a civilization that was a good two thousand years behind, as far as industrial and military capacity was concerned, which meant in open conflict against an enemy who wanted territory, they never stood a chance, especially after they lost their massive numerical advantage to disease.

 

And how long did it take the Imperial Service to discover that the entire ethnic-Japanese population was against them? They should have at least started out trying to play the noncombatants against the combatants.

Again, this is all counter-insurgency 101. Something that should be so drilled into the Imperial Service (except probably the Bao) that they barely need to think about it.

Ooops. Failure to convey proper tone in a text-only environment. :embarrassed:

But thank you for your answer!

I admit, I can also play the bad guys when I know they're bad guys going into the game. Someone needs to play them, after all, or you don't have a game.

My issue is that I was not aware that Yu Jing was the Designated Bad Guys(tm). They certainly were not sold as such back in 2006 when I started this game, though they got a bit darker when N2 Human Sphere came out and introduced the Kuang Shi and the Japanese as second-class citizens.

 

This comes up a lot and I must be honest, where are the imperial service sold as the best counter-insurgency unit? I had this vision of (heavily) military police and anti-terrorist (in the context of small groups).

I didn't envisage them as a military unit, which would explain why they struggle in what turns into straight up conflict, albeit within civilian areas. Throughout uprising (IIRC), whenever yu jing successfully deployed their actual army units (like the invincible divisions) the JSA got their faces kicked in until outside pressure changed the scenario sufficiently.

 

Let me get back to you @Alphz , I need to dig up the N2 fluff.

 

A while ago now, I wrote my graduate dissertation on the movie The Fly II (because high art is always worth deconstruction and analysis ... ) and in the course of researching horror and how it worked in society and what possible value it might offer, I attended a lecture by fantasy-horror author Clive Barker who said an interesting thing that might be relevant to this whole debate.

Someone in the audience (perhaps a fundamentalist Christian objecting to his Hellraiser films) asked him if he thought it was a good thing to glorify evil by writing about demons. Without missing a beat, Barker replied "Ah yes, that's an interesting thing to say because some people believe in angels and demons and the sorts of characters I write about. Can you tell me if you do too?" She said she did and he went on "Ok, then I entirely understand your concern. But you see from my point of view it's different, because I don't".

 

Yeah I'll play ISIS.

 

Sounds like a cool scenario indeed! Maybe with the StarCo. as mercenaries protecting the HVT? I like such narrative play. I would obviously prefer to play the mercs.

 

And you’re exactly right. And even the ISS fluff in N2 talks about their preference for violent and drastic measures, including noting that violence is the universal language and that an Agent without blood on their hands isn’t doing their job properly. At most they are allowed to operate as military police and commissars, with all that entails.

 

StarCo definitely don't seem the types to be taking out whistleblowers, witnesses and such! They're strictly honourable, legal and above board operations, reputation means a lot to them.

 

Huh, missed have missed those *exact* words between noting their violence, their disregard for human rights, their penchant for killing first and asking questions never, the way they're hated by all of the troops, the contrast between the penal and human bomb regiments and the pampered Imperial Agents and Su Jian... no, it does not use those *exact* words. Sorry, I just made a logical leap, but now I know that establishing a pattern of overreactions and bloodthirsty methods to crush and/or any all dissenters or anyone the ISS has deemed a danger to the nation, the Emperor and the Party is insufficient. It must be the precise phrase "kill all Japanese civilians". I'll look for it when I get home from work tonight.

 

So how does that come together with playing the victim card over and over while behaving entitled to something?
The heck do Warcors suddenly have to du with it? There are people sternly disagreeing with your narrowminded point of view. Some of them happen to be Warcors. How is that suddenly another reason to paint yourself as the victim?

I for one am not aware you're showing any sort of respect for the game or community, so I wonder why they shouldn't return the favour and drag you back to reality. This is getting more and more delusional.

See that is precisely the point. You're complaining about fluff. Then you claim the particular fluff bit that upsets you is the new trademark stamp for the entire faction. JSA are according to fluff just a minor part of the YJ empire, a minor part unproportionally high represented on the game tables.
Also who cares if CB wants to make YJ into the 4th Reich? What is evil anyway? Who was worse in WW2 the Russians or the Axis powers?Aren't we all just told the winner's side of the story? Isn't the US not just as bad after the Cold War comes into play? Who is able to accurately judge that from the heavily biased information we are fed?

Why is it a contest? Progress and evolution are a struggle, someone always gets the short end of the stick.
Let me remind you again that you are complaining how YJ gets portrayed in a book that is about a revolt of second class citizens against an oppressive gouvernment only to serve as the lower class of a new administration - with the difference that the privileged citizens are now far less common and visible to the plebs.
Is it better than before or worse? Isn't it just easier to bear when you're not confronted with the truth every step along the path?

How the heck is anyone to win a popularity contest in that setting? The entire thing is a switch from one regime that treats the Japanese citizens like shit to another where they're still treated entirely disposable but can live in blissful ignorance behind a new propaganda machine.

That might be because albeit I am addressing you in terms of language, I do not believe you're willing to see anything beyond what you have established for yourself as the truth.
You and a few others infest the root of a discussion that could have been fruitful, but you just will never let it go until the entire thing crashes and burns. I'll play devils advocate because it amuses me to see how long you intend to keep this bullshit going.
Nothing against you personally, but you'll have to be better at selling your bullshit to people than anyone who disagrees with you can call you out on it.

Where to even to start. There isn't any enthusiasm in killing Japanese civilians, even Psycho Crane blames the Kuge for the needless bloodshed of their own people. He did what he had to do and is addressing the masterminds behind the entire thing. I'd guess he takes a fair bit of pleasure to see their plans partially ruined after they blew part of his agency sky high to set things in motion.
PanO was obviously prepared to step in, they're always looking for a way to screw YJ. Ofc they'd see to it that the best people money can buy slander YJ on Maya.
Would that be the point to remind you that the Uprising Book is subject to the usual trait for Infinity fluff? Part of it is written from an inside point of view, subject to bias and propaganda. I'd be interested why the book handling mainly JSA would tell the story equally distributed in between JSA and YJ.

Not especially. After you tried to pull an ad Hominem at me through my Faction, my age and my person, one might get the idea you take this personal. So may I return the same question?

That's a straight lie, or at least a careless mistake on your part. Let me quote the thread title to you:
Dear fellow YJ Players - you do not want IA ASAP
I wonder if there is room for interpretation there, still the OP should make things clear. I'm all for getting Immortal Army out - when it's due. Mind you this was a response to some people, including you, yelling murder for reparations because CB "owed them".

Honestly couldn't tell if that would do more damage to the game than your current course of action. Stick to .... criticizing... to the best of your ability.

Nah, I just like people who don't go grab their pitchfork after an obvious bomb that has been there for years suddenly explodes. JSA always had the "2nd class citizen and not happy about it" part in their fluff. That part isn't a deus ex machina, there are official statements of Gutier and Bostria that they always wanted for this to happen at some point.

Oh my, that hurts coming from you. If even you can tell I'm pretty certain all that double checking I did has been for nothing. What a waste.