Orientalism in Dominions

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Plus, I personally disagree-even with your Egyptian friend-in the idea that Egypt is somehow the Orient. That just doesn't jibe with me, even if I were to accept the whole "Orient vs Occident" motif.

According to the dictionary, "Orient" applies loosely to basically everything East of the Mediterranean. Egypt sort of straddles that line, I suppose. But I agree, it's kind of weird to make a distinction that "everything but Europe is Oriental" - as perhaps that was the paradigm of perspective at one time, but (I guess) at least as an American, I never saw that. I was taught that Africa and the Middle East are distinct entities, and the Orient would be all of the East Asian nations, not including any part of Russia or its subsidiaries.

[Poopsi]

I think that for the most part Egypt has always been considered the Orient.

[Kristoffer O]

Egypt is the Orient!

There rises the sun.
There lies Heliopolis where the phoenix rises.
There man was born and civilization flowered.
There the mysteries flowered and died again.

Hidden from our eyes by sand.
Hidden from our reach by heat.
Hidden from our memory by millennia of time.

We will never understand the glory of the east.
And so we love it unconditionally.

---

Hmm, it was not my intention to write lyrics, but it fits well with the theme of the thread Just wanted to say that Egypt is more orient than even Constantinople in my eyes. I believe the original Orient would have been the Middle East and Egypt to the romans. The Orient is a roman concept, right?

[Sombre]

And egypt = ctis = lizards.

Turns out omni was right. KO is a racist! :O

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by Kristoffer O

The Orient is a roman concept, right?

I think it just got called that Occidentally.

Da-dum ching!

[NTJedi]

This seems similar to the issue where one individual was all bothered by the Jewish representation... was it Hinnom? I'm sure there's many dozen angles where religion, nationalities, culture, and other historic aspects could be found as annoying/inaccurate/offensive/etc .

I'm sure if a real MAJOR issue/conflict did exist we would have seen several huge topics discussing the issue... compared with one or two topics each year with very few individuals feeling there's a problem.

[Ewierl]

Huh, quite a thread you all got going here.

One thing that many number-counters/comparers seem to have missed: Caelum is "oriental" also. Their concept and national summons draw primarily from Zoroastrianism, which is basically Iranian.

Plus, whomever counted Caelians as 'non-humanoid' while counting EA Abysia as 'humanoid' is nuts

[Adept]

Meh, the only "orientalist" problem is that japanese themed weapons are way overpowered (seriously, a katana is just a kind of a scimitar, and a yari is just a spear).

The more serious problem is that the early era japan theme demons get equipment from 1600 or so (katana's and other steel gear) where the other people mostly tool about with bronze age / iron age stuff.

[TheMenacer]

Like I said in my previous post, I think the OP's point about orientalism is perfectly valid, but I don't think that the game's offensive in the slightest specifically because everyone gets painted with that brush pretty liberally. Yeah, you've totally got the eastern nations given a romanticized version of their mythology, but every other nation has it too, from the ice giants stomping around the frozen northlands to the forests full of faeries and trolls. There isn't a single nation who doesn't have aspects of their culture and mythology exaggerated and brought to the fore in order to make it more interesting. I mean hell look at the Ermor. They accidentally unleashed death itself trying to resurrect Jesus. I honestly don't think that's any more offensive than extrapolating a nation with hindu mythology from the monkey section of The Jungle Book.

[sum1lost]

Originally Posted by Adept

Meh, the only "orientalist" problem is that japanese themed weapons are way overpowered (seriously, a katana is just a kind of a scimitar, and a yari is just a spear).

The more serious problem is that the early era japan theme demons get equipment from 1600 or so (katana's and other steel gear) where the other people mostly tool about with bronze age / iron age stuff.

The japanese themed weapons are two handed, so they are actually underpowered compared to many of the other two handed weapons.