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OCTOPATH TRAVELER II (2023) | Square Enix, Acquire

"Heh, if you all say so, I got no choice, now do I? I'm hittin' the road. I'll be back once I eliminate that devil called poverty from the world!"

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Magic headcanons

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???? do you want us to be like. gaypath travelers? what?

always a joy to draw these two

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ive been drawing him so much lately i think im cursed

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issues w/ the octopath fandom, racism, and ableism

whats from the source

octopath does some racist bs quite frequently.

the belly dancer stereotype is pervasive in a lot of media, especially the fantasy genre.

cotc (the mobile gacha) has even more of it, and an entire storyline filled with anti-indigenous and racist tropes.

the mainline octopath games have yet to design a traveler with curly hair, and frequently whitewashes the tan and dark-skinned characters in official artwork (compare these with the real ones; here's partitios official cotc splash art). ochette's hair especially is straight-as-a-ruler and silver. also worth considering eye colors. partitio is sad because his concept art had only one design where he's white and a couple even had dreadlocks, and yet his splash art refuses to match his sprite colors.

the beastlings... i'm white and have done more research on the tropes in cotc since i play it more, so while i did have thoughts of my own while playing, here is a better post i found that lists off all the bad choices about them.

also worth mentioning kaldena. one of the few dark-skinned characters in the game is a villain (and also has straight silver hair). other people have also broken down what choices in temenos' story around this were bad better than i could. i can't find a post with a quick search so if you want to reblog this to talk about it i will reblog/link it.

ableism. while i am a big fan of the autism-coding in the franchise, it's still true that there are a lot of jokes made in the games at the expense of osvald and cyrus (moreso cyrus). it's setting accurate for people to be mean to autistic people, but you're still supposed to laugh at "i guess cyrus isn't actually that smart!" which pushes the idea that autism affects intelligence and maturity. i think overall the autism representation is great (pspsps my essay) but it's definitely the source of some awful shit i've had to read people say about cyrus and osvald.

edit 1: friend reminded me of something i forgot that i only learned after talking to it about it a while ago: therion's story is actually really really weird in how it tries to frame cornelia and especially heathcote as helping therion when what they did is enslave him.

whats from the fandom

fanart whitewashing. there is a lot of fanart of therion and partitio with pale skin tones. there is fanart of olberic and ochette with significantly lighter/barely tan skin tones. i'm not going to find any to link because harassment and arguing is not the point of this post, but if you've looked through fanart you've seen it.

here's their skin tones blended. even with the highlights included, they're not white. i get it, their splash art is very ambiguous from the colorism, so if you weren't using the sprites: here's your new references.

ignorance of the orientalism. fanart of primrose in the same inaccurate belly dancer outfit. fanart of the other travelers in their canon belly dancer outfits (*i have done this before. again, this post is about conversation). there are some amazing redesigns of the ot1 dancer outfits out there and they're worth learning.

dancer therion redesign by lev, the redesigns for all 8 that i loved is unfortunately deleted so here's my art of therion based on it, primrose redesign, another alt. primrose outfit

ableism directed at cyrus and osvald. i've seen people complain about osvald's personality writing and then cite ptsd and autism symptoms, so many people call cyrus stupid, an idiot, or imply he is not mature. people assume/default hc that he is bad at adult activies. he is a thirty year old professor. it is his job to be mature, good with children, smart, etc. this is infantalization of an autistic character. it's a default assumption that the autistic man is below-average at adult functions.

infantalization of ochette. there are hcs and portrayals of ochette to be far less responsible and mature than she is in canon. she is the protector of her island, it is a theme of her story that she was forced to grow up more mature than everyone else. yes, she is funny, cheerful, energetic, but some fandom portrayals of her reduce her to just that, like she's a puppy. always being irresponsible, impulsive, etc. this matches to her dynamic with castti going from the sweet found family of their crossed path into "castti is the mother who needs to rein in this wild child"- and also consider how it looks to portray the only (consistently portrayed as) dark-skinned character as wild when she is responsible and mature in her story. similarly to cyrus, people tend to default to hcs that she would be bad at normal adult activities just because she has 'childish' traits.

what do you want me to do about it

eyedrop skintones from sprites or go darker for the guys who aren't white. consider changing their hair up, like using the concept art design for partitio. drawing characters of color differently from canon doesn't solve the racism in the game industry, but it is good practice for drawing poc and representing them more accurately.

don't... insult the autistic characters. there are things cyrus is canonically bad at that have nothing to do with his autism, like singing, but don't act like he's bad at everything that's not part of his interests. real people act how osvald does due to trauma. neither of them are two-dimensional in personality, they're written with nuance and a range of emotions outside of Being Autistic.

respect ochette more. are you portraying her as only silly or the savior of her home, or both? would someone who hasn't played ot2 know that ochette has overcome challenges based on your portrayal of her, or would they think she's a comedy relief?

this is the hard ask /j. i want you to learn about racism. i have a couple short essays on cotc's orientalism and racism. they might not be directly relevant to you if you don't play cotc, but learning about what kind of racist tropes are common in media and games helps a lot with recognizing it in other places, like the beastlings or kaldena. and most of all, learning about racist stereotypes and tropes makes you less likely to perpetuate them unintentionally.

putting the cotc racism essay down here so i can say that it has spoilers for Bestower of Power if you're a cotc player. it's different from the post i linked at the start; way more focused on just the anti-indig stereotypes in the villain's design.

the last thing i want to say is oh my god i love talking about this stuff so much. if you are confused about ANYTHING i talked about or want to talk about it more, or add your own experiences, or ask for recommendations, i love that shit. i made this because i believe most people who are really active in this fandom don't do this kind of stuff maliciously, and would benefit from just having a chance to talk about it. for some reason i am very into explaining/taking apart bigoted language, where it comes from, what it means etc. Please

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He was so real for this

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If you saw this get posted twice no you didn’t

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Dolcinaea Boss Fight had no fucking business being that difficult for a battle that is only metaphorically happening

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hikari on the whiteboard hikari on the whiteboard

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Very good Zoro dating sim (it is really very good)- the 3.0 UPDATE

Hey guys, We've finally finished the route featuring all of your favorite characters from the hit jrpg OCTOPATH TRAVELER (the first one) in the really good zoro dating simulator entirely created on google slides.

to access this new content, simply go to the pride parade when prompted. feel free to play with any of the other previously finished routes and areas as well, anything that doesn't work has been blocked off already for you.

here's some teaser screenshots for you:

access the game here (It only consistently works on a computer, and it's also. 2570 slides. you have been warned.)

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seeing the octopath mobile game re-shrink all of the octo 2 characters is so funny

never talk to me or my moe blob clone again

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trying to get back in the habit of doodling for fun feat. "suddenly i feel bad for galdera"

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✨ happy anniversary and many thanks to octopath traveler! may the road ahead bring us joy and all the more stories to tell 🐙🗺️

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personal hc that after a while with him the travelers start picking up partitio's colloquialisms and are mad as hell about it

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insp

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Replaying Ot2, and….

Hahahaa… hahahahahahahahahah, yeah-

….ABOUT THAT.

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Full microwave explosion masterpost