People of color in Wesnoth

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Pentarctagon
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Re: PoC in Wesnoth

Post by Pentarctagon »

Gambit wrote:For now, the latter, as to have minimal impact. They don't necessarily need to all be black either. Hence my use of the phrase "people of color".

Hopefully having them inspires some explanation from writers and fans. Our campaigns are selected from high quality user content, after all.
So will there eventually be some kind of official canon backing up that non-white-race-A comes from here and non-white-race-B comes from there, etc? Because if there isn't going to be some kind of actual effort to expand on this, then its becoming less of an "inclusiveness" thing and more of a "here's a token minority, now stop complaining" thing.
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Re: PoC in Wesnoth

Post by Yomar »

In my original sentence I stated this > Well there are persons that are almost white (like some nordics), but also others that are almost black (for example certain africans).

But that does not mean that thre were only white and black ppl, in fact Attila and his tribe (the Huns) had Asian origins and Mongols arrived also in Est Europe, like Polland.

At a certain point in the middle ages there were a great presence of blacks in Europe, at that time they were called blue men or Bleu People, but afterwards mostly Moors, for a period some of them settled in Spain an Sicily (sud Italy) among Arabians, there were a lot of years of skirmishes (and also bigger battles) between Cristians and Muslims.
Arabians beside East-Europe reached even the Capital of Austria (Vienna).

There was even a black comunityies in Germany formed by Nubians (Africa) and Iranians (Middle-East).
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Re: PoC in Wesnoth

Post by revansurik »

So will there eventually be some kind of official canon backing up that non-white-race-A comes from here and non-white-race-B comes from there, etc? Because if there isn't going to be some kind of actual effort to expand on this, then its becoming less of an "inclusiveness" thing and more of a "here's a token minority, now stop complaining" thing.
Good point; if other ethnicities are to be included, it'd be better if there is a background on them, otherwise it'll be merely political correctedness; what about the humans of the Northlands? At least some of them could belong to a people that already lived there before Wesnoth's founding, or maybe they came from the east as migrants. Also, there could be groups of humans from the South Seas (isn't there a faction about them) living in Wesnoth's seaside working for the kingdom, having arrived there thanks to Wesnoth's commerce with their homeland...
At a certain point in the middle ages there were a great presence of blacks in Europe, at that time they were called blue men or Bleu People, but afterwards mostly Moors, for a period some of them settled in Spain an Sicily (sud Italy) among Arabians, there were a lot of years of skirmishes (and also bigger battles) between Cristians and Muslims.
Arabians beside East-Europe reached even the Capital of Austria (Vienna).

There was even a black comunityies in Germany formed by Nubians (Africa) and Iranians (Middle-East).
Do you have any link to an article about these medieval African communities in Europe? Now I'm curious about it :-)
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Re: PoC in Wesnoth

Post by 8680 »

revansurik wrote:humans from the South Seas (isn't there a faction about them)
Yes, in Archaic Era I believe, but that belongs to doofus-01’s canon; as far as I know, they are not present in mainline canon.
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Re: PoC in Wesnoth

Post by Paulomat4 »

just what about the khalifa? We've got a great faction without already done porctraits. I believe it would be a great possibility to introduce them. they could live in the great desert, who can be seen in the map of the southguard. this way, we'd have a background for them and the possibility to create black portraits. It would even make sense, why they would be of darker skincolor. soldier of wesnoth (umc) introduces them this way.
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Re: PoC in Wesnoth

Post by revansurik »

just what about the khalifa? We've got a great faction without already done porctraits. I believe it would be a great possibility to introduce them. they could live in the great desert, who can be seen in the map of the southguard. this way, we'd have a background for them and the possibility to create black portraits. It would even make sense, why they would be of darker skincolor. soldier of wesnoth (umc) introduces them this way.
Besides, the Khalifa are said to be receptive of other ethnicities who want to join their culture, so their nation could have members from many different backgrounds.
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Re: PoC in Wesnoth

Post by Gambit »

Pentarctagon wrote:Because if there isn't going to be some kind of actual effort to expand on this, then its becoming less of an "inclusiveness" thing and more of a "here's a token minority, now stop complaining" thing.
I hope nobody here would ever be uncouth enough to respond to that manner of complaint with that sort of phrasing.
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Re: PoC in Wesnoth

Post by 8680 »

Gambit wrote:
Pentarctagon wrote:Because if there isn't going to be some kind of actual effort to expand on this, then its becoming less of an "inclusiveness" thing and more of a "here's a token minority, now stop complaining" thing.
I hope nobody here would ever be uncouth enough to respond to that manner of complaint with that sort of phrasing.
It seems to me that the problem Pentarctagon is attempting to raise is not that someone might actually say such, but rather that such intent might be perceived by others — if there is no effort — or perhaps more importantly, no visible effort — to expand upon them.
Also, if you’re not going to expand the acronym in the thread title, may I?
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Re: People of color in Wesnoth

Post by Pentarctagon »

I'm not entirely sure what Gambit said means. In any case, the point I was trying to make was if there isn't going to be any particular effort to explain their origins, then is it even worth doing at all? It seems, to me at least, that it would be worse to just throw a few non-white people in and call it "inclusiveness" than to leave it the way it is now.
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Re: People of color in Wesnoth

Post by Gambit »

Pentarctagon wrote:It seems, to me at least, that it would be worse to just throw a few non-white people in and call it "inclusiveness" than to leave it the way it is now.
Okay, thanks for elaborating. It's not worse.
8680 wrote:if no visible effort — to expand upon them
This is some visible effort. As opposed to nothing at all. This, right here. This thread.

More will come. Baby steps.

The status quo is "no visible effort".
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Re: People of color in Wesnoth

Post by revansurik »

What about the people of the Green Isle being the result of different migratory waves from humans of other lands, and thus being ethnically diverse? This would explain the presence of different ethnicities inside Wesnoth, and would even explain the presence of the dark-skinned guys in TRoW story images :-P
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Re: People of color in Wesnoth

Post by 8680 »

Gambit wrote:
Pentarctagon wrote:It seems, to me at least, that it would be worse to just throw a few non-white people in and call it "inclusiveness" than to leave it the way it is now.
Okay, thanks for elaborating. It's not worse.
Perhaps you could elaborate upon why it is “not worse”? (I will note that, as I said elsewhere, I do not necessarily think that it is, indeed, worse.)
Gambit wrote:
8680 wrote:if no visible effort — to expand upon them
[…]
I was merely explaining Pentarctagon’s post as I understood it, not engaging independently. Also, you didn’t even quote me right.
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Re: People of color in Wesnoth

Post by Pentarctagon »

Gambit wrote:
Pentarctagon wrote:It seems, to me at least, that it would be worse to just throw a few non-white people in and call it "inclusiveness" than to leave it the way it is now.
Okay, thanks for elaborating. It's not worse.
How is it not worse though?
Gambit wrote:
8680 wrote:if no visible effort — to expand upon them
This is some visible effort. As opposed to nothing at all. This, right here. This thread.

More will come. Baby steps.

The status quo is "no visible effort".
This isn't so much effort as it is a debate, effort would be actually sitting down and writing out their origins. I'm not asking or expecting to do any of that right here right now, but I would like to know if such effort will be put into making their origins canon in the future.
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Re: People of color in Wesnoth

Post by Crow_T »

I think most people get that the medival fantasy genre is based on middle ages Europe, aka white people ( Spain/Portugal being the *kind of* exeption). I think the Khalifate* would add some interesting variety, as would a African tribal based faction, kind of like in LotR.

* I disagree with the name "Khalifate" however as it is still too attached to modern religious ideology for my fantasy tastes. Easterners, or Westerners, or whatever geographical region they come from would be better- my Arabic is a bit rusty, but perhaps a nicer term, "Of the Desert," etc. could be used.
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Re: People of color in Wesnoth

Post by Gambit »

Crow_T wrote:I think most people get that the medival fantasy genre is based on middle ages Europe, aka white people ( Spain/Portugal being the *kind of* exeption).
I've already addressed this twice now in this thread.
Crow_T wrote:I disagree with the name "Khalifate" however as it is still too attached to modern religious ideology for my fantasy tastes.
And this has already been addressed on many occasions in other threads. Pretty much every time someone mentions the word, in fact.
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