Talk:Order of the Baristas

Hi! Fair warning- I use the term global north/south here and while these terms are not without their problems, it is the most mainstream and sort of acceptable short hand term in certain cases when discussing international geopolitics and how with regards to many nations, there is a number of similarities in their colonial history and the way colonial powers have and continue to impact these countries. I myself am a member of the "Global South".

Coffee is a popular drink worldwide and largely originates from the Arabian Peninsula, and it is largely cultivated in disenfranchised regions of the world. Given that both of these groups tend to be whitewashed in history, the simplification of coffee as a recent Tim Hortons joke (especially given Tim Hortons is really North American and pretty Explicitly White in Name) has some unfortunate overtones of whitewashing and a colonialist narrative.

This is coupled and made worse by the following bits of lore:

• Order of the Holy Beans: turns real world places where coffee is grown into fictional places and strongly mirrors language around the search for spices by European explorers and the resulting colonization.

• Order of Orders • Order of Orders: just kind of the same unfortunate overtones about the same as above but less direct. The Global North also has a long history of staging political events in the other nations both for economic greed and for political beliefs and the rest of the page is so close to that entire phenomena that it is difficult to read this with good intentions. Also really reminds me of both IRL and fictional orders with fascist or imperialist ideologies that style themselves from the same Eurocentric and Catholic movements.

• King Tom Hurtin: once again, unfortunate overtones of a member of royalty [who has a really white sounding name] wielding mysticised authority over coffee growing nations, which are often former colonies and are members of the Global South.

• Usage of the word "tribe": tribe can be a very loaded word with complicated connotation specifically regarding nationality, the way colonialism has impacted many sovereignties worldwide and is often used in a way thats reflective of stereotypes of non-White nations, including places where coffee is popularly grown such as Ethiopia and Kenya. It is worsened when combined with portions discussing Tom Hurtin "talking with tribes", both erasing the presence of actual Indigenous nations on unceded territory as well as affirming parallels between this page and real & ongoing colonization.

Given the complexity of these issues and that I am not one of the primary writers of this page, I'm talk paging this.

If no one objects I plan on:

• changing "tribes" to "clubs", overall avoidance of turning the groups into nations or nation like communities.
• remove mentions of coffee originating in America and changing it to imply it is simply imported.
• reworking the OoHB to be only about brewing coffee, working with different farmers or growing coffee. Delete any and all religious overtones to getting coffee. Please google the three g's of colonization if unfamiliar with why every bit of OOHB reads as extremely colonialist.
• deleting Order of Orders description. Turning it into a group dedicated to helping coffee drinkers and Baristas by helping create better orders. Derisively called the The Mysterious Hipster Society by non-Baristas (and some Baristas.)
• delete mentions of Tom Hurtin and Canada being foundational or origin for general coffee related things.
• overall pulling back of the Order as an explicitly religious organization. Overall edit of the page to lessen religious overtones while preserving substance and renaming all the orders to sound more like generic secret societies rather than one styled after Eurocentric and Catholic sects.
• Changing the following names: Order of the Great Machinists-> MACHINSYNC (and turning them into more of a music group than a religious order)

Order of Holy Bean-> The Confessions of a Wallfilter Order of Orders-> The Starbucksitter's Club

• Change page name to The Baristas (Community Lore)

The... General vibes of the Great Coffee War are kind of weird and possibly not in line with existing Flowers or MTs lore. I am unsure if the best measure is to delete it or what edits are necessary. Any opinions would be great. Currently going to delete the first section of the paragraph starting with the city being defenseless and pulling back on making this conflict sound like a real military conflict and instead lean on the go fish bits.

You make a lot of good points here, I really appreciate the proposals! I especially love the Order of Orders revamp. I've had an issue with how religious this whole group comes off as for a while, but I never had the time or energy to figure out how to reshape it.

That being said, the fact that there's some amount of a mystical quality to the Order and coffee itself is what drew me to the Barista lore in the first place, and I'd be pretty bummed to see that taken out completely. While I'm all for the removal of the religious overtones, maybe we can find a middle ground that leaves space for roasters of Thunder Plains Arabica?

I like the fact that the name of each Order informs what it is they do, so if their names need to be changed could they be changed to something that reflects their focus? I'm low on mental energy tonight so I'm all out of catchy titles at present 😔

The only other note I have is for the Holy Bean rewrite, I'd like for the new section to lay out that they're a nomadic group. The idea that they're a branch that focuses on learning by traveling and sharing knowledge is how their lore has grown since the original writing of this page.

Also, while I was not there for it myself, I know someone went over to talk to the flowers about history section in like... season 9? So there was floral input on it at the very least, though I also have no idea how up to date that is.

The plains could work, because I mean, most countries have some kind of plain somewhere and if not, coffee is rarely grown in low lying regions anyway. But it kind of feels like right now, we're getting a fictional place and kind of just mashing it on the map without regard that we're putting in a real, populated country. I think as it is, like Arabica is kind of fine because its common jargon related to coffee and often used in mainstream adverts, but I think it's the way that it's written and presented is giving me very mystised, vague treasure from distant land when one of these distant lands is like, closer to me than Los Angeles is to Chicago yknow? I think OOHB can only work if we reframe it as less nomads on the hunt for rare spices (which, again, idk if thats the intent) but more like, how real world, small independent roasters and grinders probably source their coffee. From real, actual farmers in a booming industry, yknow?

Also dskjfn the more I have to talk about why exactly the concept is making me go 'oh boy', the more mind is connecting the dots like, its kind of giving me begpacker vibes because most people aren't just nomads these days, it's usually either a specific job (lots of people travel to specifically scout locations for a variety of industries) so they dont really call themselves nomads or uhh they're Americans/Europeans taking advantage of their lopsided, very lax entry requirements to beg their way through ASEAN nations. and I'm like, I'm sure y'all didn't mean to do this but I feel like this is kinda the result bcus the realities of the lore don't feel very grounded in the reality of the situation? I would think that framing it aslike, a secretive group travelling around the world to meet local producers and study what makes each bean special, and maybe like about helping connect different producers to various roasters would help. So this shifts the kind of mystical quality to a place or a vague country to their internal process, if that makes sense. Like, how religion's meaning is kind of inherently faith based but the actual logistics of it are pretty mundane and we just gotta to balance in making this seem a bit mystical but not in a way that perpetuates mysticizing other places way.

Regarding Boston: as far as I can tell, I had jsut asked them if its good and the summary seems to be that while a little hammy, its in line with their lore so that's good.

Hi! As an Arab who was born and raised in the Middle East, I am very uncomfortable with keeping the lore about Thunder Plains Arabica due to the fact that it promotes a ‘mystical’ (read: racist) view of the Middle East. I have no idea why you would keep this lore, especially after the Garages’ recent attempts to relore McDowell Karim. Please consider deleting it from the wiki, in addition to making other changes to the article.

Understandable! You're right, we are trying to be better about that. If it helps any, I never really pictured the Thunder Plains to be in the Middle East. I figured it was a location in South America, or maybe Vietnam. Maybe the lore can be that Middle Eastern coffee is known for the origins of coffee and how its quality is unrivaled (perhaps newcomers to the Holy Bean or whatever its rename ends up being start their journey of learning there), but there are other parts of the world where different locations, roasting styles, and even weather patterns give local cultivars of beans different properties. Would that be acceptable?

Ok so in this message you:

1. Somehow didn’t connect the name ‘Thunder Plains Arabica’ to either Arabica, the ancient name for the Gulf region of the Middle East, or even the country Saudi Arabia, while associating the word ‘plains’ with Vietnam, a country that is notoriously mountainous,
2. Mention preexisting lore regarding a pilgrimage in the Middle East to the holiest place in the coffee religion that sounds a lot like either the Crusades or the Islamic pilgrimage Hajj as a solution to this problem, despite saying that your team is trying to be better about Islamphobic lore, and
3. Have completely ignored my request for the lore to be deleted, despite my background.

If I could see a way for this lore to be changed in a way that would make me happy, I would have suggested it. However, I did not. I highly recommend you delete any mention of Thunder Plains Arabica from this article, as it doesn’t seem to impact the rest of the lore, and I ask that you at least consider implementing Devilouscurious’ proposed changes.

I got curious and googled it and it seems there definitely are plains in Vietnam. entirely unrelated to anything else here, but, it stuck in my brain and i thought i should share

My apologies, I was taking the arabica in "Thunder Plains Arabica" to mean arabica coffee grown in the Thunder Plains, not as a place, since the other location mentioned in that passage mentions robusta, both of which are coffee bean types. The Thunder Plains do serve an important lore point, as it's part of the background of Sparks Beans. If we used a different kind of coffee bean roasted there and changed the "Plains" part to match the area of where it's located, would that be acceptable?

For your second and third points, I was hoping we could find a middle ground. I agree with Devilouscurious changes and I truly do want to get rid of all the religious and colonialist components of this lore while upholding the importance of coffee's origins, which is why I proposed the middle east as a place of learning for the baristas. But if that is problematic, I'll drop it.

I think the question right now is like, how well grounded is the Thunder Plains? I think setting up the pseudo journey starting somewhere in the Middle East seems inappropriate for the aforementioned reasons, but I think some of these feel like they're feeding into the same problems of mystifying coffee growing places? Like, e.g., coffee isnt really grown in the arab world.

I went into my specific apprehensions in my other reply, but on a similar note, having Baristas have to start in the Middle East doesn't really make sense when much of the lore in this page is very explictly American or Anglo-centric (e.g. the names on here and I've proposed are references to Western media or organizations) and it doesn't really mash well with the sudden dropping in of another country without sounding like the Arab World is some kind of mystical origin for Baristas without any worldbuilding bridging the gap (e.g. coffee is somehow made or ruled over by a white Canadian man despite originating from across the ocean?) So yeah, I agree with ohnoitsal that without significant workshopping, this idea seems kind of careless and that since the Thunder Plains bit is so central to Garages lore, it might be better to post it here as a separate talk page/revision.

My general suggestion is that if there's any new lore you want to add, we should either keep it grounded to the real places and what their role is in the coffee industry or to take care to ensure that it really works as just a silly bit, and both these cases require a better grounding in the real world practices and places this writing works with.

Personally, I'm not particularly invested in Barista lore- and personally, unless I have a very strong reason in order to do so, I try to keep things...as simple as they need to be you know? Like, why make myself have to think about geopolitics when I don't have to. I think keeping this to a secret society type deal that operates alongside essentially the IRL coffee industry is easiest? And you can certainly frame it as them being secretive or loving coffee but just having to bear or exist alongside realities of 2022.

And of course the big caveat- I think if you have details and grounding out, etc, then I feel like that might be best put in a new talk page or summarized in full?

Hi! Can you be clearer about what changes you want to see? Eg new details or what portions you want kept- while I understand that the vibe is important, a lot of it seems reliant on either mirror Catholicism or on mystifying actual countries. If you have other changes in mind or more indepth reasons as to why Thunder Plains Arabica, etc, should be maintained, please let me know!

The entire problem with this page, imo, is that it is remarkably dead set on removing the role of the Global South in the coffee industry when they're already removed and treated badly in the real world industry. In addition to that, this entire article is riffing of a genre of media (Indiana Jones, James Bond, The Mummy, secret society type of media) that already systemically others and commodifies countries like the Arab world, Nicaragua, and Brazil for a White audience. Tbh, I'm very much on the same boat about religion, but the riffs on Catholicism are only worrisome because they riff off the pre-existing colonialist themes. Catholicism tends to go hand in hand with colonialism and modern day fascist movements that draws inspiration from those eras. I just want to be clear on my issues so that navigation of this discussion is easier and to explain what tropes I'm meaningfully trying to avoid repeating in future edits.

I think the holy bean edit sounds good! I'll be honest, I'm just super against having... All this sketchy stuff here for any longer than necessary. I'm thinking mainly of the names- I'm no better with names, hence why I just did pop culture references. Would it be alright if I push these changes with the names I've written with the understanding that these are only placed as placeholders until better names are thought of?

To be clear- my main goal here is to just get colonialist stuff off the wiki asap. In this page, I'm not remarkably attached to my proposed edits other and am totally fine with Garages editing it to put their preferred lore anytime. I just want to avoid an instance of different but equally problematic content to come up but besides that, go ham after I apply these changes!

I can also follow up with the Flowers, I know it wouldn't be the first time that city wiki lore was out of date or quite distant from current community lore.

Absolutely, the colonialist stuff should go asap, thank you again for addressing this. You're right, we can think up new names for the orders at a later date, so go ahead and use the placeholders for now.

To get more in depth, the heart of barista lore for me is the idea that there's a sort of unknown special quality that can be brought about through different methods of coffee production that the various groups of baristas are trying to figure out, especially given how weird coffee and canonical Baristas are in blaseball already. The idea that there are parts of the world where people utilize lightning to roast beans and sometimes take on the ability to do that outside of the Thunder Plains (this is the basis for Sparks Beans background, coupled with their path of learning with the Holy Bean) or forests that can only be found with express permission from those who live there adds to the worldbuilding of it. I'd like there to be room to explore that while keeping things respectful of their real world counterparts, if possible.

Since "Baristas" have been revealed to exist as a canon thing (see: Liquid Friend's post-Vaulting Feed), we're gonna move this page to "Order of the Baristas." A redirect will be left behind until further information is revealed; when the normal Baristas page is made, a hatnote will remain, since I doubt all links will be updated.

Reading through this article, it appears to have been generated by the Flowers or Garages. Does anyone have more information on that? I'd like to change the categories and chosen nav to align with that; this isn't really part of the Coffee Cup.