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I just discovered the Alien Dungeon Fantacide website, and I have been rather disturbed by the Liberi Faction. The faction is a cruel panoply of harmful Native American stereotypes. In my opinion it is a particularly dehumanizing act of colonization.

Alien Dungeon has not only perpetuated a colonizing metanarrative of the vanishing Indian and noble savage, but figuratively merged what can only be seen as a Native American person with a horse and further suggested that the resulting man-beast has no soul:

"The Shamans are quite capable in Earth Spirit Magics such as Fire, Ice, and Time, but not the unnatural (to the Liberi anyway) magic of Soul."

I suspect that the game and miniature designers were not deliberately attempting to create a faction with such harmful and offensive meanings. Such stereotypes are sadly ingrained in the fabric of American culture. And yet this is what makes the Liberi faction so particularly damaging.

If you are very quiet, you can hear the.. yes, thats it... the sound of hundreds of tiny little butthurts typing....

This is like saying that the Imperium is racist to blacks and Asians because the only models you see are white guys (apart from the Salamanders, but that's different, if you catch my drift). Move along.

Sincerely i do not see so much racism in this faction... I see awful minis but not racism... Come on... It's a fantasy world, and these guys do not even looks like homicidal savages but rather like shamans and nature-bound people...

What we should say about 40K ? Even with the horrible political correctness that GW is trying to introduce (because they want to sell to small kids), It's a setting filled with the worst example of intolerance and obscurantism...

no differnt from makeing all dwarfs nordic is it ?
is that racist perpetuating the idea that everyone from the scandinavian states are short grumpy bearded people with axe's ?

or that people from south america are really laizards ?

name one game that dosnt use historical stereotypes in its races ?

its a game and i think you can read into it what you want to read in to it tbh.

Okay, let's try a similar example involving black people.

What if the faction was "Furtumi," (from the Latin for theft), and was composed of chimpanzees in blackface who lived in the ghetto, loved to eat watermelon, and were addicted to drugs?

Would that also not be racist?

Does anybody has made a factionlike this? I don't think so... there are boundaries that nobody is willing to trespass...
Still the "Furtumi" could work in a very specific setting... Maybe a setting in which racial stereotypes are willfully used... Come on... I wouldn't be offended by the lazy and noisy Spaghezzis that form Mafiarious clans....

As some would say with that second example: Pow! Homerun! You knocked it out the park!

weeble1000 wrote:
Alien Dungeon has not only perpetuated a colonizing metanarrative of the vanishing Indian and noble savage, but figuratively merged what can only be seen as a Native American person with a horse and further suggested that the resulting man-beast has no soul:

"The Shamans are quite capable in Earth Spirit Magics such as Fire, Ice, and Time, but not the unnatural (to the Liberi anyway) magic of Soul."

I think you're reading that bit backwards: to me, it sounds like the manipulation of the soul with magic is what the Liberi see as unnatural.

Centaurs beads in their hair? Racist? More like IP ripoff.

They look no different then the Centaur from WoW.

 DeffDred wrote:
Centaurs beads in their hair? Racist? More like IP ripoff.

They look no different then the Centaur from WoW.

They've got more in common with the minotaurs than centaurs, I think. IIRC, the centaurs are more Mongolian.

weeble1000 wrote:
Okay, let's try a similar example involving black people.

What if the faction was "Furtumi," (from the Latin for theft), and was composed of chimpanzees in blackface who lived in the ghetto, loved to eat watermelon, and were addicted to drugs?

Would that also not be racist?

Well it probably would be racist....... BUT how is that analagous to the centaurs? I wasn't aware American Indians were commonly referred to as centaurs as historically African Americans have been compared to monkeys. So you are making a very poor analogy. It is almost so poor that I would say you are purposefully blowing this way out of proportion.

 punkow wrote:
Does anybody has made a factionlike this? I don't think so... there are boundaries that nobody is willing to trespass...
Still the "Furtumi" could work in a very specific setting... Maybe a setting in which racial stereotypes are willfully used... Come on... I wouldn't be offended by the lazy and noisy Spaghezzis that form Mafiarious clans....

I dunno, GW themselves do Goliwogs in the form of Salamanders...

 AlexHolker wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:
Centaurs beads in their hair? Racist? More like IP ripoff.

They look no different then the Centaur from WoW.

They've got more in common with the minotaurs than centaurs, I think. IIRC, the centaurs are more Mongolian.

I would disagree with you too. The centaurs are certainly visually presented as American Indian like. Just look at the painted ones and you will see they are inspired by the American Indians and not Mongols.

Personally I'm much more concerned about the sexism that exists in sci-fi and fantasy wargames... What the hell... For example Cadia and Catachan are supposed to have the whole population in arms but still no female minis... maybe Cadian and Catachan females are very masculine...

weeble1000 wrote:Okay, let's try a similar example involving black people.

What if the faction was "Furtumi," (from the Latin for theft), and was composed of chimpanzees in blackface who lived in the ghetto, loved to eat watermelon, and were addicted to drugs?

Would that also not be racist?

weeble1000 wrote:Okay, let's try a similar example involving black people.

What if the faction was "Furtumi," (from the Latin for theft), and was composed of chimpanzees in blackface who lived in the ghetto, loved to eat watermelon, and were addicted to drugs?

Would that also not be racist?

punkow wrote:Does anybody has made a factionlike this? I don't think so... there are boundaries that nobody is willing to trespass...
Still the "Furtumi" could work in a very specific setting... Maybe a setting in which racial stereotypes are willfully used... Come on... I wouldn't be offended by the lazy and noisy Spaghezzis that form Mafiarious clans....

here ya go ! http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/miniatures/judge-dredd/apes-of-mega-city-one.html

...what? :S

I think you are really clutching at straws that aren't even there weeble.

At the risk of ruining th fun if your being sarcastic, it's hard to tell sometimes. I don't understand why we can't just enjoy a fun fantasy/ scify game or activity without some killjoy, " not meaning you in particular just in general" has to come in and bring up the ethnic, sexist or religious issue into it and ruin the fun.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/landingArmy.jsp?catId=cat440014a&rootCatGameStyle=

poor french ! :[

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/landingArmy.jsp?catId=cat440023a&rootCatGameStyle=

poor germans ...

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/landingArmy.jsp?catId=cat720001a&rootCatGameStyle=

poor romanians !

i think your reading more into this than is there

That's not technically racism, CURNOW. As for the OP, I think you're stretching a bit here. The use of the 'noble savage' archetype far predates Fanticide and has little to do with racism at this point except when it is applied to real people.

This is not the Troll we are looking for. Move along, move along.

weeble1000 wrote:
Okay, let's try a similar example involving black people.

What if the faction was "Furtumi," (from the Latin for theft), and was composed of chimpanzees in blackface who lived in the ghetto, loved to eat watermelon, and were addicted to drugs?

Would that also not be racist?

??? Seriously?

I do not even know how to respond to this line of arguement. On one hand I want to berate you for some mind numbing retardation spouting from thy hand. On the other, I don't even want to deal with something as anial as that line of thinking.

If you haven't figured it out yet, or no one has told you- Fanticide is pretty much as non- PC as you can get, and the figures are not going to be much of an issue, especially in light of the rest of the factions. The future of this game is going to get pretty much man handled, and no one is safe in this world.

I'm working on something myself, that makes your cry for the poor pitiful misunderstood centaur, that is going to be a cry like a babe in the woods, hunted down by a pack of rabid wolves...

Thinking homicidal orphan packs with a perchent for violence, ALA The Lord of the Flies.... Only in this pack, the hunters are running the show, and piggy has gotten with the program and is in his cave, doing some pretty funny stuff with clockwork, and dropped tech from the outside...

Gathering up several good ones from Hasslefree, Reaper, and several more from Spinespur.

Little Piggies minions are some robot minis I have going from a few different companies, but I might have said a little too much already...

The Lawn Gnomes are coming along fine, by the way. I have a very special number I am bringing over from Reaper that is just begging for a red cap and, being the bully boy, he just might have to become a Lawn Gnome Warlord.

Here's the figure in question.

http://www.reapermini.com/Miniatures/troll/latest/03382

Greenstuff hat, and a batch of goblinars, and we're on out to the pale



But... back to the faction...

I'm not a real fan of the figures. I'll more then likely be adding in a few more from other ranges, becasue quite frankly, I think they missed an opportunity, and I've seen quite a few over at Otherworlds that really fit my bill for them.


I really like what I'm seeing from that game, by the way. It reminds me of old school WFB, with the factional build your own warband thing.

weeble1000 wrote:
Okay, let's try a similar example involving black people.

What if the faction was "Furtumi," (from the Latin for theft), and was composed of chimpanzees in blackface who lived in the ghetto, loved to eat watermelon, and were addicted to drugs?

Would that also not be racist?

Racist....maybe. Funny.....Yes.

brettz123 wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
Okay, let's try a similar example involving black people.

What if the faction was "Furtumi," (from the Latin for theft), and was composed of chimpanzees in blackface who lived in the ghetto, loved to eat watermelon, and were addicted to drugs?

Would that also not be racist?

Well it probably would be racist....... BUT how is that analagous to the centaurs? I wasn't aware American Indians were commonly referred to as centaurs as historically African Americans have been compared to monkeys. So you are making a very poor analogy. It is almost so poor that I would say you are purposefully blowing this way out of proportion.

The question is: do you find my hypothetical Furtumi example offensive?

It sounds like you're saying, yes but its not the same as what's going on with the Liberi.

If you want to we can go down point by point and compare the offensive Furtumi example to the Liberi. The Furtumi example lines up pretty damn well, it merely invokes cultural stereotypes related to Black people as opposed to Indians.

First the name:

Liberi - Which is intended to mean 'Free.' The Liberi live free lives on the open plains, perhaps freed from the strictures of 'modern' (read: Advanced) culture which they can never be part of. The implication is that to be in "civilized" society (the society using technology more advanced than a steel sword) the Liberi would not be Free. See how that works?

This invokes a very destructive and harmful narrative that American Indian activism over the last, oh, couple hundred years has been reacting against. It even has a name: Vanishing Indian. You can trace its modern scholarly roots back to Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis, but it ultimately goes back to the very real conflict between Euroamerican peoples and Native American peoples over control of land. Let's pick a random event that we might say is emblematic....how about the Trail of Tears in which Native American peoples from East of the Mississippi, such as the Cherokee, were forcibly removed to what is now Oklahoma during the 1830s. Bear in mind of course that the Cherokees in particular had largely appropriated markers of "civilized" Euroamerican society, even having established a government with a constitution based largely on the US constitution which was then less than 60 years old. Arguing that American Indian peoples could not live their lives among the whites, President Andrew Jackson championed the removal of said peoples beyond the Mississippi where they could live "free" as savages unburdened by the "civilized" society that then surrounded them.

This process has been justified by the narrative of the vanishing Indian which in short posits that the removal and eventual disappearance of American Indian peoples was inevitable. American Indians were simply barriers to progress; a faceless force against which the white people strove to achieve their "manifest destiny." Am I ringing any bells yet? If you are American, I hope at least that you got some of this in grade school. This fiction belies the very real existence of American Indian peoples who have largely been forgotten and neglected by the wider Euroamerican culture which still threatens even today to devour their culture and identity. That process has a name too. It is called colonization.

Okay, so we can say that just the name "Liberi" itself evokes a great deal of baggage.

Let's turn now to the hypothetical faction name "Furtumi."

Furtumi from the Latin word meaning thief. One could say that this evokes a spate of harmful stereotypes of African American peoples. Let's start with the perception that Black people are poor, and being poor they tend to rely on social services like food stamps and medicare. Politicians today tend to refer to these as "entitlement" programs, suggesting that the persons who use them feel that they are entitled to have those services. The implication is that taking advantage of those services prevents such people from making an effort to take care of themselves. They merely continue to take advantage of such services, which costs the taxpayers extraordinary amounts of money, without ever intending to use them as merely temporary assistance. They are therefore thieves, and more than that, lazy thieves with no ambition.

This narrative is belied by reality, including the reality that not all Black people are poor and live in the ghetto, just as not all Native American peoples wear headdresses and live out on the open plains wallowing in the freedom of noble savagery. But we don't need to get into this very much more I don't think. I would hope that you would have by now gotten the point.

If you like, we can move beyond the names into the physical appearance, the animal nature, the cultural descriptions, etc. etc. I can do that all day if you want.

The point is that, yes, my offensive black thieving chimp person example is fairly on point with the Liberi. The fact that you find one offensive and not the other should induce you to question why.

Weeble: Now we can't be having you calling them "American Indians" as that's racist too! If you want to be completely PC then you're going to have to call them "Native Americans"

I don't know if I would go to the level of intentionally racist - however it is definitely intentionally stereotypical.

With many aspects of fiction, especially snapshot fiction, you have to rely on the stereotypical knowledge and view points of the reader (or gamer in this case).

A similar case could be made regarding Tau (obvious some sort of Greater Goof Asian culture...likely communist or socialist). Their apparent resistance to the Warp and lack of psykers would indicate that they also have no soul - however, I don't think that that is a jab at the stance which communist governments take on religion (though it may well be).

However, the bigger question for me I guess would be does it matter? My strong libertarian streak would have to say no. If they are intentionally racist, and are attempting to demean a culture (Native Americans in this case - though there are dozens of other stereotypical instances which could be argued as broadly racist by certain definitions) - is it not their right to hold such an opinion and even further it by any means they see fit? As consumers, we should vote with our dollars - and for that matter, you can freely raise your objections to the fiction.

It isn't a popular opinion to take - but I fully suppurt the right of individuals to do stupid and unpopular things. Those are the very things which need protecting the most.

My fiancée is Native (Apache and Choctaw) and finds nothing offensive about the Liberi. She does find companies like American Apparel dressing up their super white models in feathers and warpaint to be offensive.

weeble1000 wrote:
... massive block of over-analyzing....

The black example is offensive and racist (as you blatantly intended it to be) for several reasons - figures too close to real humans - and the stereotypes too present in modern times.

The Liberi centaurs are more like a fantastical rendition of an ancient army - just as I'm sure there is a line of fantasy figures out there - maybe black puma-men creatures wielding Zulu shaped spears and shields based on Pseudo-African culture.

Getting offended at this kind of stuff would be like - "Hey this line of figures is offensive to the true history of the Visigoths - my proud heritage!" At some point it just stops being relevant - if anyone is still thinking of First Nations people as "noble savages" in this day and age they are the ones who are ignorant & racist - not a bunch of fantasy centaur lumps of lead-pewter.

 pretre wrote:
That's not technically racism, CURNOW. As for the OP, I think you're stretching a bit here. The use of the 'noble savage' archetype far predates Fanticide and has little to do with racism at this point except when it is applied to real people.

im not sure what the differnce is ? bretonians could be considerd racist to the french /empire - germans in the same way this "could" be.
now if the fluff had said that the liberi had mutated in to the current centar form because of fire water induced horse bestiality i could see a problem but it dosnt they just share a common theme of being nomadic herd following people just like scores of other tribes around the world.
..if the figure painter had chosen a slightly differnt colour scheme then you wouldnt of even made the connection.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Weeble: Now we can't be having you calling them "American Indians" as that's racist too! If you want to be completely PC then you're going to have to call them "Native Americans"

non indigenous native americans !

brettz123 wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:
They look no different then the Centaur from WoW.

They've got more in common with the minotaurs than centaurs, I think. IIRC, the centaurs are more Mongolian.

I would disagree with you too. The centaurs are certainly visually presented as American Indian like. Just look at the painted ones and you will see they are inspired by the American Indians and not Mongols.

The Centaurs in World of Warcraft. Brett compared the Fanticide centaurs to the WoW centaurs, and I said they had more in common with the WoW minotaurs.

 pretre wrote:
That's not technically racism, CURNOW. As for the OP, I think you're stretching a bit here. The use of the 'noble savage' archetype far predates Fanticide and has little to do with racism at this point except when it is applied to real people.

It is being applied to real people today. Right now. The fact that you made such a statement is part of the ongoing issue. We, as in Americans, are engaging in on ongoing process of colonizing American Indian peoples. Do you know that, for example, the rate of sexual assault among American Indian women is more than twice the national average? That is absolutely the result of neglect; a neglect to a minority population that is directly influenced by the very 'noble savage' archetype that you say has nothing to do with racism.

I agree that the archetype is not necessarily that harmful in and of itself. But when it is unabashedly applied to an image of a Native American person, as in the case of the Liberi, then it becomes something much more destructive. The noble savage archetype identifies those it is applied to as an "other" distinctly not part of the broader society. It is intimately associated with vanishing Indian ideology when applied to an American Indian person, real or fictional. The noble savage archetype excludes American Indian peoples from participation in American society and romantically justifies that exclusion as being natural. Moreover, the archetype is often invoked, even today, as a means of cultural appropriation. The noble savage teaches the "civilized" person about the natural world that he has rejected. The noble savage has a position of authority in this relationship, but this again serves only to disguise the true nature of the interaction. The civilized person can appropriate what it needs from the other and return to civilization but the other is forever excluded, unless it rejects its culture and becomes civilized. The noble savage is ever in a subordinated position and the only road out of that subordination is the destruction of its culture and identity; i.e. colonization.