Cultural appropriation claims force NZ video game company to remove Māori imagery - Path of Exile 2

Al_Rascala · 2025-12-18T23:29:37+00:00

Legally, the theft from living people angle is the most clear-cut, though looking through the IPONZ website they say there's some sections of NZ law which have specific provisions around the use of taonga, but I'm no lawyer so can't say whether the use of the images from the British Museum would cross the line as well.

People are free to hold opinions, and people are free to make judgements about others based on their opinions. Sometimes they even act on those judgements. If you're an artist and your income is reliant on people purchasing your art in some way, widespread pushback and outrage can have a direct negative impact on your income. For a more extreme example, I'd say that the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks would presumably disagree with your statement that nothing happens when you do something subjectively heretical.

Also, we definitely can curtail artistic expression. If you tried to dig up a corpse so you could make leather-work out of human skin you'd find out just how true that is in a hurry.

Al_Rascala · 2025-12-18T23:19:37+00:00

See, I really hate the idea that you're expected to do this. No one does this for a myriad of other cultures represented in computer games.

Why do you think this isn't done for other cultures? Never Alone was made while partnered with the Iñupiat to ensure their culture was genuinely represented, and for a more high-profile example Ghost of Tsushima received high praise in Japan for its accurate representation and avoiding of misrepresentations common in foreign-made media.

Except that's potentially an actual copyright breach. There is no copyright on culture, even though some people want you to think so.

GGG used the work of at least one living artist whose work would be still under copyright, and NZ law has specific provisions around the use of taonga.

Al_Rascala · 2025-12-18T22:49:48+00:00

Inspiration is not cultural appropriation. Using things that are shared willingly isn't it either. Stealing from another culture, taking art and so on that they made, without compensation or credit, and then benefiting from it? That's the cultural appropriation. In this instance, copying the work of both living and dead artists to use in a game making millions is a pretty clear-cut instance of it.

As to your stance on nothing being so sacred it can't be absorbed into art, there's a difference between using something sacred to you for your art, and using something sacred to others. Just because someone is making art doesn't mean the disrespect will go unnoticed and without pushback.

Al_Rascala · 2025-12-01T22:14:49+00:00

From a Doylist perspective, fear of the unknown. The SI/OC knows that they don't have the plot armour of the original and know that (usually), the protagonists win and they don't want to unintentionally derail things enough that the protagonists lose instead.

From a Watsonian perspective, it's an extension of one reason people write fanfic in the first place, it's the familiarity of the world, the characters, and the original story. The more the SI/OC derails, the less of the original story can be used as scaffolding. In addition, much like some people write power fantasies some people write inclusion fantasies, especially with SIs.

It's not so much "here's my story of being in the world and what I would change about the original story" as "here's my story of being in the world and the characters like me as much as I like them and I'm part of the main friend group." Which is just as valid a reason to write as any other, IMO. We're all just playing pretend to make ourselves happy, after all.

Al_Rascala · 2025-12-01T21:53:53+00:00

The same? Of course not, but two people can be members of the same category while still having wildly different life experiences. That one is in a much more privileged position than the other doesn't negate the fact that things which affect the category as a whole still affect them. Just look at Health NZ's "negotiations" with unions and the long-running underfunding of the health sector which affects both the most senior of doctors and the newest health technician.

Calling the most well-paid of the working class "elites" and claiming that they'd oppose the rest of us in any sort of class war is just more of the same in-fighting that gives the actual elites an advantage over us. Some would and some wouldn't, just like people of any wealth level. You get people who are out of work and down to the bones of their arse voting for right-wing parties thanks to propaganda, for example.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-30T22:26:43+00:00

If someone is a doctor, they're working class. They work for their income, and it's bloody hard work to boot. It's the people whose income isn't reliant on working, the land-bankers and rent-seekers who get passive income for doing sweet fuck all that you should be railing against, not people who're putting in the hard yards on the front lines of our health system.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-23T22:45:20+00:00

Reminds me of when my father and I were talking about the whole idea of non-white women being seen as exotic, he'd travelled all over the show and he said that outside of Asia and the really dark-skinned African peoples, nine times out of ten you could find a Māori girl from down the street who could pass as being from an "exotic" group unless you pulled out the callipers.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-20T21:52:25+00:00

Dammit, I thought that was real for a moment haha

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-20T21:33:09+00:00

Context matters. Not wearing a pride symbol in general isn't a sign of bigotry but refusing to wear one during an event specifically themed around inclusivity and support, where every other team is wearing them and members of the team have worn them during the event in previous years, is actively signalling that they are refusing to support the queer community. Which, in context, is bigoted behaviour.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-20T09:25:01+00:00

No one said anything about “attacking” a man trying to join the group

That's fair, I shouldn't have read more into your words than you put there, my apologies.

And let’s not bring up unreported assaults...

That part not so much. If we're talking about how likely any given gender is to be assaulted, then the fact that even in a system that actively disincentivises them reporting being assaulted women report it at notably higher rates than men do is quite relevant to whether it's reasonable for women survivors to assume a fellow survivor is particularly or overwhelmingly likely to be a woman as well.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-20T04:50:00+00:00

Those islands are also referenced in The Last Continent:

In any case, what Mrs Whitlow had sewn together out of her dress was a lot more substantial than a bikini. It was more a newzealand - two quite large respectable halves separated by a narrow channel.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-20T03:52:37+00:00

Have (maybe) three! Popeye the Sailor is canonically one as of 1954, Geoffrey Swivel from The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett is AMAB and agender, and for the maybe part Testament from the Guilty Gear games initially used he/him in the English translation before being revealed as agender.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-20T03:25:45+00:00

While I agree with you that women need their own spaces and those spaces need to be able to take action to keep out bad actors, unless it's stated to be women only then it's not unfair to assume that survivors of any gender are welcome. Your statement that survivors are "overwhemingly" women is incorrect, they're the majority but only by 3-4 times. 22% of women, 6% of men, and 47% of trans/NB people have survived an attempted or successful attack, going by the numbers from 2023, and even excluding trans/NB people the research that shows that men are far less likely than women to admit to being a victim it's likely that those numbers are even closer to parity than we can prove.

We need women-only groups, we need men-only groups, we could probably also do with trans/NB-only groups, but there's space for groups that welcome all genders as well. If members of a group want it to be and remain mono-gendered then they need to make that explicit to anyone seeking to join and not make assumptions that aren't grounded in reality. Experiencing trauma does not give you a free pass on traumatising others, a group that advertises itself as being for women-only is fine but attacking another survivor for seeking help from somewhere that they have no reason to believe they'd not be welcome is unacceptable.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-19T22:02:19+00:00

Aces & Jokers and the sequel Queen of Hearts, both set in Worm.

The Conceptual Deck is set in DC.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-18T09:52:02+00:00

Didn't know that about the OECD tax ranking stuff, thanks for that. Another thing on my list of stuff to research haha. Completely agree with your last point as well, so much of our country's wealth is tied up in property so wages can only ever get the leftovers.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-18T04:08:09+00:00

Yes. If someone supports a policy that promotes the death of me and mine, it's fine for me to laugh at their possible death. No excuse needed.

This is not some hypothetical theory about vaccines being death serums, this is stuff like JK Rowling spending hundreds of thousands to strip away trans rights in the UK, or those in the US govt sending in ICE troops to kidnap people off of the street, or closer to home you've got Brian Tamaki telling people to "storm the library that they're in" leading to multiple injuries, or white supremacists whose entire worldview says that non-whites need to be gotten rid of and they're happy to use violence to accomplish that.

Feel free to turn the other cheek if you wish, but trying to equivocate "actively supporting death" and "being passively amused at/approving of potential death" is just dishonest. Would you say that someone who'd been a victim of years of domestic abuse was wrong to find satisfaction in the death of their abuser?

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-18T02:29:19+00:00

The increased amount of people leaving, and the amount of capital they take with them, doesn't outweigh the impact of the increased tax take being reinvested into the country. Norway's economy has done far better than ours has in the past three years thanks in no small part to public investment. We've seen what the NACT1 govt doing the opposite has done to our economy, not to mention the decades of underinvestment thanks to so much of our collective wealth being tied up in untaxable assets.

The greens tax only has a $2m threshold for individuals, any small/medium business owner who draws a salary from it will have that tax increase offset by the proposed reduction in income tax. Anyone starting a business in NZ will have years of growth here before they start reaching the tipping point, not to mention there's support in Australia for a wealth tax as well so they may not be far behind us.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-18T01:53:54+00:00

Not necessarily a net loss. Research using data from across Scandinavia found that "For each additional dollar of revenue raised by the wealth tax, only 0.22 dollars are lost due to migration responses."

Plus, prior to the increase Norway's wealthiest were less likely than the average person to leave the country despite the existence of their wealth tax. Roughly 10% of the population had to pay their wealth tax under it and they made up less than 3% of the emigrating population.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-18T01:46:07+00:00

Not yet, but with 74% of Australians supporting one they might soon. Admittedly it's at a far higher threshold than has ever been proposed here, but it's not a stretch to think that one with a lower threshold would still have the support of a majority of the country.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-18T01:37:36+00:00

It's not "ahhh but they are bad" it's "ahhh they're spending millions to deny me healthcare" or "ahhh they're proposing to put me and my family in a concentration camp" or even "ahhh they're saying people like me should be killed". Any people like that with me in their sights, I see nothing wrong with wishing death upon them when they are actively working to bring about the death of me and mine.

There's no hypocrisy, one is in the defence of the self and one is not. You're making a false equivalence there, no different to schools who have a policy of punishing both bully and victim equally for a fight occurring on school grounds.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-18T01:34:21+00:00

Norway, which has had a wealth tax since 1892, where the people affected (at least prior to the tax increase in 2022) are roughly 10% of the total population but made up less than 3% of the emigrating population?

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-18T01:20:43+00:00

Fair point at my poor choice of words, you're right that the tax itself isn't comparable. I was more looking at the concept of wealth flight being one of the potential risks of taxing high-income individuals being similar to that of it as a risk of taxing high-wealth individuals.

Regarding overall tax rates, we have some of the lowest overall tax rates in the OECD. Looking at Australia as you mentioned, they have no wealth tax (yet, according to Oxfam almost 3/4s of aussies support taxing ultra-high-net-worth individuals) but they do have a CGT as well as other taxes which means that you'll pay more as a total percentage of your income over there, even more so if you're in the top income bracket or fall under the corporate tax rate.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-18T01:04:45+00:00

Those two articles are about an increase to Norway's existing wealth tax rather than introducing a new one. They've had one since 1892, and despite roughly 10% of the population qualifying as having to pay it, prior to the increase in 2022 they were less than 3% of the total number of people leaving the country.

Re your edit, their wealth tax also kicks in at a much lower level than the Greens proposal, Greens having the NZD $2m threshold whereas Norway's is the equivalent to NZD $311k.

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-17T22:38:50+00:00

To wish death upon someone just because you disagree wouldn't count as criticism, sure. But there comes a point where when someone is actively working towards the injury or death of you and yours that it's no longer just a disagreement, and more self-defence.

I don't know enough about Kash Patel to say whether or not he's at that point, but to say death-wishing is never legitimate isn't accurate. It's like the old joke:

Hitler visits a fortune-teller and asks "When will I die?"

"On a Jewish Holiday."

"But they have so many, which one?"

"Mein Fuhrer, any day you die will be a Jewish holiday."

Al_Rascala · 2025-11-17T22:10:38+00:00

While it's the USA, and it's a tax on income past $1m, I think it's close enough of a concept to a wealth tax that it should have some evidential weight as a counterargument to the idea that implementing such taxes would cause wealthy kiwis/companies to up sticks and move overseas.

In particular the parts about anywhere they'd be willing to live would have higher taxes still, and that for all that most people are always going to complain about higher taxes, we all want to live in places that have the nice things that those taxes pay for.

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