Say, what's that kid that Bill Murray experimented on in the Royal Tenenbaums doing nowadays other than writing for Exalted?
Hahaha that kidder Stephen, he's such a comedic geni- Oh wow. He's not joking, and this makes me really sad for some reason.
That's... not so bad... I mean, he isn't saying "never ever get inspired by other cultures" as much as "be careful when you do". There's a fair bit of "white guilt" there, which is frankly not always a good thing, but apart from that...
I think I remember that thread, it ended up being pretty interesting too...
Number 5 just stuck out to me as less of a bad thing than him trying to reconcile his line of work with the vaguely segregationalist SJW bullshit, and then ultimately failing due to the sheer cognitive dissonance inherent in such a action.
It's more "this is what this bullshit does to creative freedom" than saying he was bad for saying these things.
I don't know. While I'm the first to agree that cultural appropriation in the (as you put it so eloquently) "vaguely segregationalist SJW bullshit" way is stupid beyond belief, there's an argument to be made that when you do art that is inspired by other cultures, you have to be careful.
Like, if somebody goes to me saying
"you're wearing a gi and doing martial arts, that's cultural appropriation, you're a horrible person and you should feel bad!" I'm gonna laugh all my way to the dojo.
But when someone says
"you know, having white people start to play jazz a few y ears after it became popular in the african-american community was a problem, because suddently those who invented that music didn't see a penny of worth from it because due to racial bias, most white artists were paid a lot more than black artists, thus in essense robing the african american community of one of their discoveries", I'm gonna have to agree on that.
When it comes to
monetizing things that other cultures inspired, you should at least take a minute to ask yourself what the repercutions are going to be. Of course, refusing to use those sources of inspiration results in erasure, which is a worst problem in many ways, so there's also that to take into account.
(Granted, I don't think a rpg like Exalted is going to have huge issues with that : as much as I like it, it's so much of a niche market as to be nonexistent, and so the question is moot, but hey, whatcha gonna do...)
