Quote from: Persimmon on February 22, 2022, 08:18:04 PM
And another problem with this box checking legislated diversity is of course that it suggests diversity is simply skin deep and/or based solely on gender, which is about as superficial as it gets.  And of course anyone of color who doesn't accept this narrative is a "sell-out."

Did you see the latest insane blow up?

https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/02/18/mcu-fans-claim-casting-of-xochitl-gomez-as-america-chavez-is-colorist-harass-actress-for-being-too-light-skinned-wrong-ethnicity/

A woman with the name Xochitl Gomez was cast as a hispanic hero, and they're claiming she's too light skinned.

To be fair, they might have a point that Puerto Rican != Mexican. But the whole skin tone policing thing is absurd. Have they ever met a real hispanic person, not a tokenized stereotype on TV? Go to San Juan. You'll see fair skinned blue-eyed blondes, and people that look black. And they're all hispanic.

Quote from: Pat on February 22, 2022, 08:52:42 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on February 22, 2022, 08:18:04 PM
And another problem with this box checking legislated diversity is of course that it suggests diversity is simply skin deep and/or based solely on gender, which is about as superficial as it gets.  And of course anyone of color who doesn't accept this narrative is a "sell-out."

Did you see the latest insane blow up?

https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/02/18/mcu-fans-claim-casting-of-xochitl-gomez-as-america-chavez-is-colorist-harass-actress-for-being-too-light-skinned-wrong-ethnicity/

A woman with the name Xochitl Gomez was cast as a hispanic hero, and they're claiming she's too light skinned.



To be fair, they might have a point that Puerto Rican != Mexican. But the whole skin tone policing thing is absurd. Have they ever met a real hispanic person, not a tokenized stereotype on TV? Go to San Juan. You'll see fair skinned blue-eyed blondes, and people that look black. And they're all hispanic.

No, but this is not surprising.  Was she actually a better actress than the other people considered?  Or is that irrelevant here?

Quote from: Pat on February 22, 2022, 08:52:42 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on February 22, 2022, 08:18:04 PM
And another problem with this box checking legislated diversity is of course that it suggests diversity is simply skin deep and/or based solely on gender, which is about as superficial as it gets.  And of course anyone of color who doesn't accept this narrative is a "sell-out."

Did you see the latest insane blow up?

https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/02/18/mcu-fans-claim-casting-of-xochitl-gomez-as-america-chavez-is-colorist-harass-actress-for-being-too-light-skinned-wrong-ethnicity/

A woman with the name Xochitl Gomez was cast as a hispanic hero, and they're claiming she's too light skinned.

To be fair, they might have a point that Puerto Rican != Mexican. But the whole skin tone policing thing is absurd. Have they ever met a real hispanic person, not a tokenized stereotype on TV? Go to San Juan. You'll see fair skinned blue-eyed blondes, and people that look black. And they're all hispanic.

Their problem is (oh the irony) that the character has darker skin in the comics...

But I'm a racist for pointing out that there's exactly ZERO black dwarves, elves, hobbits...

The American obsession with skin colour which has infected much of the West seems to me a bizarre leftover from the days of slavery and "one drop" discriminatory laws. It really fails to understand how genetics give us enormous variation even within families, like these Scottish-Jamaican twins.

Human variation is a wonderful thing. So long as you're not doing a historical epic or something where the race of the person is a key part of the plot (like say Othello), I've no problem with tossing in whoever you think will be interesting. So yes, Tom Cruise as a samurai is fucking stupid - but Bridgerton wasn't pretending to be real history, so that works for me.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on February 23, 2022, 01:01:15 AM
The American obsession with skin colour which has infected much of the West seems to me a bizarre leftover from the days of slavery and "one drop" discriminatory laws. It really fails to understand how genetics give us enormous variation even within families, like these Scottish-Jamaican twins.

Human variation is a wonderful thing. So long as you're not doing a historical epic or something where the race of the person is a key part of the plot (like say Othello), I've no problem with tossing in whoever you think will be interesting. So yes, Tom Cruise as a samurai is fucking stupid - but Bridgerton wasn't pretending to be real history, so that works for me.

The one drop of Langston Hughes or the obsession with passing as in Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress, is very specific to the US, too. Most instances of slavery weren't strictly race-based, and I can't think of another example that was so binary. Just compare it with something like all the subtle gradations that were recognized in Brazil. The US's experience with slavery is a very unique outlier, which is why it's so hard for people from the US to grasp historical slavery.

I think you could do a great Othello with a Japanese/Chinese cast.

Quote from: I on February 22, 2022, 06:56:49 PM
Does ANYBODY else on this forum think it's necessary to see "people who look like you" in a movie, TV show, book or anything else just in order to enjoy it?  Because that idea is just totally alien to me.

Alien and absurd. Like all people of the same race or ethnicity are interchangeable with each other, and totally agree, behave and like the same things, and are incapable of relating to another being unless it looks just like them, which is the complete polar opposite of what "empathy" is like, and sorta explains why these people are such insufferable monsters*--they lack the capacity to relate with others, as can be easily demonstrated by ANY interaction with them.

One of my favorite shows as a teen was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I'm not a blonde white woman. My favorite Star Trek show was Deep Space 9, and I'm not a bald black guy. A bunch of cartoons I saw as a kid had talking animals in them. According to these people no one could watch Lady & the Tramp and relate to these dogs. They're fucking lunatics.

The few times I ever saw a Hispanic guy in a film or something I didn't like the character and the guy still didn't look like me, cuz guess what: we don't all look a like even if we belong to the same ethnic group. And even if we did, that still doesn't mean that we're gonna like each other. It's absurd.

*and I mean this 100%. They're fucking MONSTERS.

Quote from: Pat on February 22, 2022, 07:12:58 PMThat said, I think it's cool that Hollywood is breaking their old stereotypes about who can be a lead.

Thing is that, while its true that at some point in history Hollywood had genuine issues when it came to representation in the sense that they used to cast white people for obvious non-white roles, like Asians or Egyptians, a lot of these issues where addressed in the 90s, when we started to see more non-white people in prominent roles as actual characters with real character development that weren't just some race swap or token. But we have to pretend that we're still living in blackface era, when that was so long ago I didn't even know WTF "blackface" was till the internet CHOSE to be offended years ago when a white actress (can't remember who) decided to dress as "Crazy Eyes" from Orange is the New Black and people started to loose their minds.

But I'm sure that pretending that Sisko from DS9 didn't exist and race swapping a bunch of characters instead of creating real ones will somehow fix the perceived problem.

Quote from: Pat on February 22, 2022, 08:52:42 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on February 22, 2022, 08:18:04 PM
And another problem with this box checking legislated diversity is of course that it suggests diversity is simply skin deep and/or based solely on gender, which is about as superficial as it gets.  And of course anyone of color who doesn't accept this narrative is a "sell-out."

Did you see the latest insane blow up?

https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/02/18/mcu-fans-claim-casting-of-xochitl-gomez-as-america-chavez-is-colorist-harass-actress-for-being-too-light-skinned-wrong-ethnicity/

A woman with the name Xochitl Gomez was cast as a hispanic hero, and they're claiming she's too light skinned.

To be fair, they might have a point that Puerto Rican != Mexican. But the whole skin tone policing thing is absurd. Have they ever met a real hispanic person, not a tokenized stereotype on TV? Go to San Juan. You'll see fair skinned blue-eyed blondes, and people that look black. And they're all hispanic.

I saw this coming a mile away years ago when this shit started kicking into high gear. I'm mostly of Spanish descent (might need a DNA test to determine specifics), so I might as well have sailed with Columbus to the New World and slaughtered the indigenous population as far as these people are concerned. It was only a matter of time before they started complaining that Hispanics casted into these roles were not stereotypically brown skinned enough (which means that they're probably mixed race, BTW, not that Hispanics are inherently brown skinned) to be "Hispanic".

I had a friend who had blue eyes and blonde hair, and people would often speak to her in English, assuming that she was a gringa, then she'd reply to them in strongly accented Spanish. And those were other Puerto Ricans speaking to her. If one of these cretins saw her, they would assume she was some privileged Karen invading the island, when in reality she's a natural born, pro-Independence proud Puerto Rican hippie surfer chick.

Quote from: Pat on February 23, 2022, 02:14:03 AM
I think you could do a great Othello with a Japanese/Chinese cast.

Shakespeare is for everybody and he wrote his play specifically with this aim. While there are some indications about places and characters' origins (we know that Romeo and Juliet takes place in Verona) the rest is sheer dialogue. A friend of mine (who is a Shakespearian actor by trade) once told me that the friendship between Romeo and Mercutio can be interpreted as simply virile, as Mercutio hiding homosexual feels for Romeo and everything in between - and the text supports all of these interpretations.

I loved Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo+Juliet" and I can't wait to see Denzel Washington (hardly a Scottish noble) as Macbeth. These are only two examples.

However, I still remember when, as a young boy in 1985, I saw Akira Kurosawa's "Ran" in a theatre, with the original Japanese dialogue and Italian subtitles. I was stunned and I actually thought "If only they were able to do a LotR movie shot like this one..."

Of course in "Ran" you only have Japanese characters in a movie drenched in Japanese medieval culture and legends (even if it was partially inspired by "King Lear"). But that was the whole point for an European: to appreciate a visit in a wonderful country during a wonderful period of its history. I never, ever thought "but there are no Europeans here!" Even as a young boy I would have been offended by any attempt to "diversify" it.

And that's the whole point. Try to remake "Ran" but "more inclusive for the modern world" and the Japanese will re-enact Pearl Harbor right on your head. So will do other cultures with their beloved tales. Only in the West we are selling our ass out and call it "progress".

Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 09:36:42 AM
And that's the whole point. Try to remake "Ran" but "more inclusive for the modern world" and the Japanese will re-enact Pearl Harbor right on your head. So will do other cultures with their beloved tales. Only in the West we are selling our ass out and call it "progress".

I'm not sure what you're advocating here. Should other cultures not be bothered by adaptations? Or should the West be more thoroughly against others taking its culture? Ran itself takes a lot from Shakespeare's King Lear, while in turn Western movies adapted Kurosawa - like The Seven Samurai.

I feel like there's a tendency to be inconsistent on both sides. Some left-leaning people are outraged at casting white actors in non-white parts, but OK with casting non-white actors in white parts. Conversely, there are right-leaning people who don't care about casting white actors in non-white parts, but are outraged at the inverse.

Broadly, I lean towards less outrage. I think skin color is just one trait among many, and it's not all that important. It can be a signal for other themes in the story, but by itself it isn't the most important.

I'm also good with adaptations of stories from other cultures - though I find that most Hollywood adaptations of foreign films tend to be pointless rehashing that lack all the power of the original.

Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 07:25:48 AM

Quote from: Pat on February 22, 2022, 07:12:58 PMThat said, I think it's cool that Hollywood is breaking their old stereotypes about who can be a lead.

Thing is that, while its true that at some point in history Hollywood had genuine issues when it came to representation in the sense that they used to cast white people for obvious non-white roles, like Asians or Egyptians, a lot of these issues where addressed in the 90s, when we started to see more non-white people in prominent roles as actual characters with real character development that weren't just some race swap or token. But we have to pretend that we're still living in blackface era, when that was so long ago I didn't even know WTF "blackface" was till the internet CHOSE to be offended years ago when a white actress (can't remember who) decided to dress as "Crazy Eyes" from Orange is the New Black and people started to loose their minds.

But I'm sure that pretending that Sisko from DS9 didn't exist and race swapping a bunch of characters instead of creating real ones will somehow fix the perceived problem.

You'll notice my example was Will Smith, who became a blockbuster movie star in Independence Day (1996). Which is an interesting movie, from this perspective. They were blatantly and explicitly going for diversity, with drunk pilot's mixed kids and all that stuff. And nobody really cared, because they weren't horribly racist or sexist about it.

But while the 1990s were good for breaking some of those old stereotypes, others persisted. Asian men as romantic leads for instance, has been a slow sell.

Of course, that explains why the new breed of racists and sexists have to erase history. In order to proclaim their virtue, they need to pretend things are horrible and they're revolutionary heroes breaking new ground. Which means the achievements of the past become inconvenient.

Quote from: VisionStorm on February 23, 2022, 07:25:48 AM
I saw this coming a mile away years ago when this shit started kicking into high gear. I'm mostly of Spanish descent (might need a DNA test to determine specifics), so I might as well have sailed with Columbus to the New World and slaughtered the indigenous population as far as these people are concerned. It was only a matter of time before they started complaining that Hispanics casted into these roles were not stereotypically brown skinned enough (which means that they're probably mixed race, BTW, not that Hispanics are inherently brown skinned) to be "Hispanic".

I had a friend who had blue eyes and blonde hair, and people would often speak to her in English, assuming that she was a gringa, then she'd reply to them in strongly accented Spanish. And those were other Puerto Ricans speaking to her. If one of these cretins saw her, they would assume she was some privileged Karen invading the island, when in reality she's a natural born, pro-Independence proud Puerto Rican hippie surfer chick.

I have similar stories. We'd take a mixed group of native Puerto Ricans and visitors out to lunch in a small town, and the person the locals would always address in Spanish was this guy with no hispanic ancestry whatsoever. He was literally the only person in the group who didn't speak a word of the language, but because he was a bit darker skinned they'd always assume he was the native.

I'd avoid the DNA tests. They're basically garbage, and there are real concerns some of them are being used for DNA harvesting.

Quote from: Pat on February 23, 2022, 01:01:50 PM
I'd avoid the DNA tests. They're basically garbage, and there are real concerns some of them are being used for DNA harvesting.

I would agree, avoid the DNA tests. I dunno about DNA harvesting, I wouldn't be surprised, but also, if your test reveals some congenital risk (that may or may not be real, and that you can't do anything about) then you can no longer truthfully tell an insurer that you haven't been told about having it. Supposedly we have a legal protection that prevents the tests being used that way  by insurers but....I would say stay away.

That said, I may be straying into Pundits own forum territory, this isn't about rpgs or media so if there's follow up on that topic, maybe move it over there

Some of it goes back to the highly-charged nature of miscegenation accusations. Regardless of who was what color.

Hell, that's what caused Preston Brooks to beat the shit out of Charles Sumner with a cane. I'm not excusing it in the slightest, but buddy, when you say something like:

"The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator. The frenzy of Don Quixote, in behalf of his wench, Dulcinea del Toboso, is all surpassed."

Holy shit, pal, you better have a gun and a knife 'cause those are fighting words. Even if you're right. Especially if you're right.

Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 12:45:53 PM

Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 09:36:42 AM
And that's the whole point. Try to remake "Ran" but "more inclusive for the modern world" and the Japanese will re-enact Pearl Harbor right on your head. So will do other cultures with their beloved tales. Only in the West we are selling our ass out and call it "progress".

I'm not sure what you're advocating here. Should other cultures not be bothered by adaptations? Or should the West be more thoroughly against others taking its culture? Ran itself takes a lot from Shakespeare's King Lear, while in turn Western movies adapted Kurosawa - like The Seven Samurai.

The answer, here, is two-fold. First: what was the intent of the original author? And, second, what do intend with "adaptation"?

We could say that Shakespeare was, for the lack of a better work, very "open" to interpretations. In his plays we get the bare minimum - usually a place, the initial relationship between characters and little else (some scholars think that Shakespeare put the name of places in his plays as a recognition to from where the tale who inspired him came). He was able to write about universal values that resonate with everybody - and I guess that people from, let's say, a Bantu tribe in Africa would be able to connect with the idea of love that we find in "Romeo and Juliet".

"Ran", on the opposite, is a very "closed" tale. While it is a partial adaptation from "King Lear" (and the earlier "Throne of Blood" is a more direct adaptation from "Macbeth") it is also inspired by Japanese feudal legends - a hint to the universality of some themes. It is set in a specific place and time; the movie characters, the landscapes, the weapons and the attitudes reflect this. Kurosawa worked for ten years to get it right. You can't insert "diverse and inclusive characters" in a "more modern adaptation" of "Ran". It would be both stupid and almost sacrilegious towards Kurosawa.

"The Magnificent Seven" isn't a "westernised" version of "The Seven Samurai". True, the basic plot points are the same so they bought the rights (so not to be sued like when Kurosawa successfully sued Sergio Leone for having based "A Fistful of Dollars" on "Yojimbo"). "The Magnificent Seven", however, is an original western built from ground up to be its own story set on the American frontier. It isn't "The Seven Samurais but with some cowboys so that the American audiences can identify!" And once you discover Kurosawa's movie you can enjoy it too even if it has no cowboys.

Tolkien's world, like Kurosawa's movies, is very "closed". Everything is detailed and explained. Everything has a reason to exist in a certain way according to the specific time period a specific event is set. Sauron in the Second Age is not Sauron in the Third Age. Dwarves aren't black. One can't barge in, put their contemporary identity politics in it and hope to get away with it. What you get is the reactions that you are seeing.

Quote
Broadly, I lean towards less outrage. I think skin color is just one trait among many, and it's not all that important. It can be a signal for other themes in the story, but by itself it isn't the most important.

The easiest answer is "If skin color is not important, why change it from the lore? And if it is important, why don't use the many PoC that, we know, inhabit Tolkien's world? Or, if you really want black dwarves, why do not create your own story?

But even if we already talked about the answer to this (Amazon is so unsure about its own ability to create that never in the life they would ditch elves, dwarves and hobbits) "arbitrary skin color" is only one of the problems that this show has - and not even the most important. The list goes on and on, from the baffling admission that they want to set five seasons in the Second Age while not having the rights to the books, to a stunningly "meh" teaser (this is what Peter Jackson produced as a "teaser" to wet our mouths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-XoEGlvlp0; pro tip: the shot of the Fellowship at the end buries anything that Amazon has shown), to their new "Tolkien Expert" who labels Tolkien as an "anti-semite whose work is problematic" (!?), to, now, these "superfans". It is indefensible.

Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 02:44:19 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 12:45:53 PM

Quote from: Reckall on February 23, 2022, 09:36:42 AM
And that's the whole point. Try to remake "Ran" but "more inclusive for the modern world" and the Japanese will re-enact Pearl Harbor right on your head. So will do other cultures with their beloved tales. Only in the West we are selling our ass out and call it "progress".

I'm not sure what you're advocating here. Should other cultures not be bothered by adaptations? Or should the West be more thoroughly against others taking its culture? Ran itself takes a lot from Shakespeare's King Lear, while in turn Western movies adapted Kurosawa - like The Seven Samurai.

The answer, here, is two-fold. First: what was the intent of the original author? And, second, what do intend with "adaptation"?

We could say that Shakespeare was, for the lack of a better work, very "open" to interpretations. In his plays we get the bare minimum - usually a place, the initial relationship between characters and little else (some scholars think that Shakespeare put the name of places in his plays as a recognition to from where the tale who inspired him came). He was able to write about universal values that resonate with everybody - and I guess that people from, let's say, a Bantu tribe in Africa would be able to connect with the idea of love that we find in "Romeo and Juliet".

"Ran", on the opposite, is a very "closed" tale. While it is a partial adaptation from "King Lear" (and the earlier "Throne of Blood" is a more direct adaptation from "Macbeth") it is also inspired by Japanese feudal legends - a hint to the universality of some themes. It is set in a specific place and time; the movie characters, the landscapes, the weapons and the attitudes reflect this. Kurosawa worked for ten years to get it right. You can't insert "diverse and inclusive characters" in a "more modern adaptation" of "Ran". It would be both stupid and almost sacrilegious towards Kurosawa.

"The Magnificent Seven" isn't a "westernised" version of "The Seven Samurai". True, the basic plot points are the same so they bought the rights (so not to be sued like when Kurosawa successfully sued Sergio Leone for having based "A Fistful of Dollars" on "Yojimbo"). "The Magnificent Seven", however, is an original western built from ground up to be its own story set on the American frontier. It isn't "The Seven Samurais but with some cowboys so that the American audiences can identify!" And once you discover Kurosawa's movie you can enjoy it too even if it has no cowboys.

Tolkien's world, like Kurosawa's movies, is very "closed". Everything is detailed and explained. Everything has a reason to exist in a certain way according to the specific time period a specific event is set. Sauron in the Second Age is not Sauron in the Third Age. Dwarves aren't black. One can't barge in, put their contemporary identity politics in it and hope to get away with it. What you get is the reactions that you are seeing.

Quote
Broadly, I lean towards less outrage. I think skin color is just one trait among many, and it's not all that important. It can be a signal for other themes in the story, but by itself it isn't the most important.

The easiest answer is "If skin color is not important, why change it from the lore? And if it is important, why don't use the many PoC that, we know, inhabit Tolkien's world? Or, if you really want black dwarves, why do not create your own story?

But even if we already talked about the answer to this (Amazon is so unsure about its own ability to create that never in the life they would ditch elves, dwarves and hobbits) "arbitrary skin color" is only one of the problems that this show has - and not even the most important. The list goes on and on, from the baffling admission that they want to set five seasons in the Second Age while not having the rights to the books, to a stunningly "meh" teaser (this is what Peter Jackson produced as a "teaser" to wet our mouths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-XoEGlvlp0; pro tip: the shot of the Fellowship at the end buries anything that Amazon has shown), to their new "Tolkien Expert" who labels Tolkien as an "anti-semite whose work is problematic" (!?), to, now, these "superfans". It is indefensible.

  I would add, given Tolkien set out to create a "Mythology for Northern Europe", skin color sort of absolutely matters.  It also matters that it has been muddled with SOLELY for the intent of attracting outrage, along with the hint at having sex scenes and sodomy as a norm.  Those are things that the author never, ever intended, of that we can all be 100 percent sure.

Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2022, 12:45:53 PMI feel like there's a tendency to be inconsistent on both sides. Some left-leaning people are outraged at casting white actors in non-white parts, but OK with casting non-white actors in white parts. Conversely, there are right-leaning people who don't care about casting white actors in non-white parts, but are outraged at the inverse.

First off: When/where has it been established that people outraged about castings in these fantasy/sci-fi franchises are specifically/primarily "right-wing", or outraged for political reasons, as opposed to being outraged because they're part of the fandom invested on these franchises?

Secondly: Even if we were to take the above assumption as a given (we're not, but just for the sake of argument), the difference is that when primarily "left" identifying people are outraged at some non-white character being cast by a white actor, absolutely NO ONE who fails to display outrage disagrees with them AFAIK, unless they (the outrage mob) mistakenly believe that a character should be non-white, when that's not necessarily the case (don't recall examples right now, but I know this happened at least once or twice).

NOBODY genuinely advocates casting white people for playing Egyptian gods, for example, even if they don't explicitly come out in droves to social media to say so. Everybody knows casting a white guy to play an Egyptian god is ridiculous. People just didn't show the same amount of outrage when they did it with Gods of Egypt, for example, cuz it's not like that was a beloved franchise. It was just some random film supposedly about Egyptian gods...played by white people, because reasons nobody disagrees are absurd.

The same is NOT true in the reverse. People on the other side of this discussion DO advocate casting non-white, women, etc. actors to play white or male roles just because "fuck white people and men", for political reasons. It isn't only that they rage when someone of the wrong non-white race/ethnicity gets cast, but that even if someone of the correct race/ethnicity gets cast they still nitpick about they not being arbitrarily "dark" enough, cuz that's the level of racists that they are. And if you criticize them you get mainstream media articles written about you and your presumed ideological and moral failings.

So this is not really a case of both sides being equally inconsistent are outraged because "reasons". But more about ONE side being AGGRESSIVELY ideologically motivated and backed up by the media, while the other side is motivated strictly by fandom and subject to intense media scrutiny. And the politically motivated ("left") side pushes both, FOR race/gender swapping of their preferred variety (to opposition of the ACTUAL fandom of those franchises), as well as AGAINST race swappings they don't like (to the opposition of NO ONE, cuz NO ONE likes it, even if they say nothing), while the fandom side pushes ONLY against race swappings (or similar insertions).

Quote from: Zirunel on February 23, 2022, 01:14:57 PM

Quote from: Pat on February 23, 2022, 01:01:50 PM
I'd avoid the DNA tests. They're basically garbage, and there are real concerns some of them are being used for DNA harvesting.

I would agree, avoid the DNA tests. I dunno about DNA harvesting, I wouldn't be surprised, but also, if your test reveals some congenital risk (that may or may not be real, and that you can't do anything about) then you can no longer truthfully tell an insurer that you haven't been told about having it. Supposedly we have a legal protection that prevents the tests being used that way  by insurers but....I would say stay away.

That said, I may be straying into Pundits own forum territory, this isn't about rpgs or media so if there's follow up on that topic, maybe move it over there

Yeah, I'm not taking a DNA test. I was just saying. But yeah, they totally do DNA harvesting. Don't have a link to any article about it right now, but this has been going on for a while. I even heard they used Covid testing to harvest people's DNA too. It's out of control. Don't know how the "no non-gaming politics" works in this section, though. But we've kept it to at least related to the sub-forum's topic category.