Cosmic Encounter: Cosmic Conflict Before I first opened up the box for this expansion from my latest game order, I was telling Ruthie and the kids that the space ship tokens are black and there are 20 new alien powers. We've played the game a few times as a family, and everyone likes it, so we're all familiar with the game.
I mentioned this in the car yesterday, and she was joking that black was the best color, but if black took a colony, the other ships would move away from the planet. We had a good laugh at that. For the uninitiated, given our ethnic backgrounds, we are pretty free with ethnic humor at times that may puzzle others. We're always respectful, but joking on such stuff is not verboten in the house, and if anything crosses the line we talk about it. It's not mean -spirited humor either.
Last night, I was reading the alien powers off the new alien sheets. One was Filth. And guess what? When the player playing Filth successfully takes over a colony, any allies move away to another planet in the same system. This was certainly a "whiskey tango foxtrot" moment.
I am not in any way a conspiracy nut, but it seems too coincidental to me that these were simultaneously released (the black ships & the Filth power). Sure, there are legit reasons for every stereotype, but if some moron at Fantasy Flight thought they were being funny, this would be offensive to me and goes beyond subtle humor (Kevin Wilson is listed as the designer, but who knows who contributed). Perhaps an endomorphic "muffin top", balding, self-important white guy with a bad goatee who is a big fan of Fox "news"? Oh, look; I am using my own stereotypes.
I hope I am wrong on this one. I do have the assumption this is more than just coincidence. If it was just that, did anyone review the contents of this expansion? Beuller..... Beuller..... Beuller..... Beuller..... I hate when people make every effort to use racism as an excuse to be bitter and a host of sad excuses not to be a better person, but I am not so naive to think it doesn't exist anymore.
4 comments:
Whiskey tango foxtrot, eh? :-)
When I saw the card, I thought of "black" more in terms of something not as much racial than as "dark", "dangerous", "destructive", "doom-filled", etc, which is what black decks are most often about, no? And you definitely do want to "run away" from "destructive", "deadly", and "dark" forces, right? Funny--I wonder if you would have as much of a hypersensitivity to this card's implication were you not married to moi? I'm not sure I would have even caught it during play...the African American! :-)
That said, I think that's perhaps why "black" isn't so great a moniker for browner skin-toned Americans; there's already so much unhappy connotation in the color description.
I think it was the impeccable timing of your joke in the car about everyone else moving away. After seeing it as a card effect, I was somewhat shocked, but probably might not have been had that joke in particular not been made. Perhaps I am indeed reading in too much here. I suppose that would be a good thing.......
Turns out Filth is an alien species from the Eon days of Cosmic Encounter.
Good to know, Rob, that it was coincidence. Awkward timing because of our earlier-in-the-day humor, but I was hoping it was simply me reading too much in. 8)
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