#Asia Culture Center

[nhdiary]

[arc-hus]

Asia Society Centre, Hong Kong - Williams Tsien

[travelella]

Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku, Azerbaijan

Heydar Aliyev Center, a 57,500 m² building complex in Baku, Azerbaijan designed by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid and noted for its distinctive architecture and flowing, curved style that eschews sharp angles. The Center houses a conference hall (auditorium), a gallery hall and a museum. The project is intended to play an integral role in the intellectual life of the city. Located close to the city center, the site plays a pivotal role in the redevelopment of Baku.

Click here to see more!

Taken by Abdelmalek Bensetti

[071793-imjunhyeok]

📍 Nanjang Concert @ Gwangju National Asia Culture Center

© najang_official | 231019

[coralinnii]

Hello Coral~~💖💖✨✨ Congrats on your 2.7k Milestone 💐🎂✨ Like many others, I love your villainess au and happy that many people is supporting it ✨✨ For the event request, I have some brain rots about Sebek Silver Malleus being in a friendly culture (maybe theyre visiting Yuu's hometown and its really welcoming like the people from Kalim's Hometown)!! they refer to them as like their family, gifts them foods the very moment they visited, and not bothered that theyre faes since they know theyre just creatures who protects nature~ i think its a nice culture shock for them considering how secluded and proper briar valley is ✨

‧₊˚✧ It Takes a Village‧₊˚✧ 

↳ Getting Culture Shock from Your Hometown

feat: Sebek ❋ Silver ❋ Malleus genre: fluff, note: no pronouns were used for reader, established relationships, set before Book 7 (mostly because I haven’t finished it yet),

A lot of the scenarios are inspired and modeled after my experiences growing up, which is very Southeast Asia-coded. So, I apologise if this is not actually how you envision. Hope you still enjoy, though. 

similar post: Getting Culture Shock from your Friendly Family (Sebek, Silver, Malleus)

2.7K Followers Writing Event 2023

You’d be absolutely evil if you didn’t even try to warn your uptight boyfriend. I’d love you for that  

Sebek has finally found his match as his own voice gets drowned out by the boisterous market vendors and customers, but he’s more surprised by the forward way everyone seems to address each other. 

“Sir, it’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m-” 

“Sebek, he’s not really my uncle. We call everyone that.” 

You would have to keep Sebek on tight hold because he’s a gullible green bean. The freshman burns in embarrassment at every “handsome boy” or “strong guy” comment calling out for his attention. He won’t lie, his ego is inflated quite a bit but it’s still strange to hear someone other than you call him that. 

On the other hand, he’s not too sure how to feel when vendors of all ages were calling out to you the same way. You may be used to it but Sebek isn’t, especially if he’s not used to calling you beautiful or cute himself yet. 

But, he could take this as a challenge to improve himself. For every compliment they give, he’ll give you tenfold. This he swears!

To your luck, it seems that the market the two of you were visiting was hosting a mini concert as music and lights filled a well-known open space near the market. 

Visitors and locals young and old surrounded the space, either resting while eating their confections or grooving to the catchy tune of the music blasting through the speakers. 

Then, a particularly famous song began to play, and Sebek flinched as the crowd suddenly burst in excited cheers and laughter, you included. Many women and men jumped to their feet, with some confidently running to the center of the space. You jumped to your feet as they did, but you chose to stand close to your confused boyfriend. 

Sebek’s expression was a comedic masterpiece as he watched you and many others start this synchronized sequence of silly movement, identical to the minor beat. Those who didn’t join were still clapping in unison while joyously laughing. 

What sort of local ritual was this? 

The synchronous dance was short lived, and soon people were divided into those who resumed their previous activity or continued swaying to the melody. 

You fell into the latter category, even reaching to Sebek hoping to persuade him to join you. 

Sebek was shocked and a little offended. He was a man of great honor and pride. He’d rather be caught dead than to devolve himself to this undignified manner of dance, if you could even call it so. No, he would never stoop so low, even if the string lights gave off this tempting glow around you, your soft hand still reaching out to him while you looked at him so lovingly… 

Well, the knight-in-training thought he could allow such exceptions once in a while, especially when you smiled so beautifully when he joined you on the dance floor. 

Don’t let Sebek know, but he became sort of a local online sensation as someone slyly took a video of him smiling so softly at you after putting on such a grumpy persona. 

Every reshare of this video was always paired with the caption, “Scary man turns into puppy for his lover”  

See, you can’t tell if your community is being especially friendly, or maybe it’s just that the beautiful young man next to you is just too irresistible to ignore. 

All the chatty aunties were cooing over Silver and even the laid-back uncles sitting around were praising the cut of Silver’s muscular figure. 

But, you won’t say anything because you just wanted Silver to smile and bask in the well-deserved praises. 

“The locals here are quite friendly to strangers like me, even offering small treats.” 

“Mhm, they sure are.” 

Silver is amazed by the seamless blend of close bonds and community from what he sees. Customers casually chatting with workers as children run around without worries in this homely environment. 

In comparison to them, Silver felt a little inadequate as he couldn’t express himself as openly as the locals do so easily. 

But maybe because they’re so open with everyone, he feels this sense of safety to try. 

“So you’re not from around here, are you?” The kind woman asked the silver-haired man as her fingers deftly package and wrap some snacks you two picked out to share with others back in NRC. 

“No, I’m actually from Briar Valley.” 

“Hmm, that’s the fae kingdom, right?” The woman’s curiosity peaked. “Are you fae, then? I couldn’t tell.” 

“Well no, I’m human. I was adopted by my father who’s from Briar Valley.” 

“Just him? No one else?” The store owner asked without looking at Silver once, instead moving back and forth to get things done behind the counter, but her attention was still locked on him.

“There were a few others I grew up with, but my father was the one who raised me” 

It was only then when the busy woman slowed down a smidge, pausing for a moment before untying the bag that held your snacks. You watched her tossed a few more small packets of snacks near her counter. 

“These are very popular, share them with your father.” She looked sternly into your boyfriend’s iridescent eyes, the first time in a while since you’ve been in the store. “Make sure to visit him, okay?” 

Silver wanted to protest, to correct the misunderstanding. The snacks the two of you picked out already included some for Lilia and he couldn’t possibly ask for more without paying. 

It was up to you to intervene. “Just give up, Silver. You can’t change a woman’s mind.” 

The store owner nodded. “Listen to the smart one. Just take it, I insist.” 

With a sliver of guilt but a lot of warmth, Silver eventually accepted the kind woman’s offering before leaving the establishment. 

What Silver didn’t see however, was you sneaking a few snacks and a drink onto the counter with adequate fare tucked underneath. You shared a look with the store owner before leaving, playfully staring her down to not to refuse your offering. 

The store owner let out a laugh, thinking what a cute couple you were. 

Regardless of wherever he goes, Malleus sticks out like a sore thumb, a very intimidating sore thumb. 

Eyes naturally glance at him with curiosity throughout the market, amazed by the regal figure walking around, like a celebrity strolling around the local areas. 

If your hometown speaks another language, some of the market vendors would tell you not-so sneakily how attractive your lover was while Malleus was none the wiser.

But, as curious as the humans were, they were quick to accept him as is, which shocked the fair-skinned fae. It wasn’t as though he was being avoided or judged, but rather the community took him and his inhuman appearance as typical. Undaunted by anything, the nosy sellers would joke and compliment him like any other walking around here. 

“What a handsome fae you are, you can be a model!” “And tall! He can reach the top of our tent, haha!”

Malleus can tell his horns and ears are eye-catching to say the least, but everyone was quick to grow accustomed to his features, even warning him to watch his head should he bump into anything in this crowded alley. 

“Are those with my features a common prevalence in your homeland?” 

“No, you’re a rarity around here. But that doesn't mean you don’t belong here any less.” 

“Ah, so this is how a beautiful soul is cultivated,” Malleus thought, gazing softly as you and a kind merchant searched around the store for a shirt that could fit the future king.

The day was setting, and you and Malleus decided to rest at a popular park that was famous for its view of the town. You weren’t alone as both locals and visitors filled the space, either resting or making memories with their friends and families. 

Then, you heard a whisper from a timid voice behind the two of you. 

“Um, mister.” You turned around to see some local children looking curiously at Malleus. 

“Are you fae?” The eldest boy spoke first, nervously clutching his jacket. 

When Malleus calmly responded in affirmation, the other children lit up with excited smiles. 

“You’re super tall, taller than my dad!” Another child exclaimed, “Are all fae tall like you?” 

Malleus smirked rather haughtily. “Very few others, fae or otherwise, stand on par to myself.”

”I’m the tallest in my class!” The eldest boy blurted out, even puffing his chest and slightly leaning on his toes. “It’s because I drink my milk everyday. Do you drink milk?” 

You abruptly nudged your lover before intervening. “Yes he does, which is why you need to drink milk and other healthy food to keep growing.” 

A little girl, hidden behind the first two children, spoke out. “How long is your hair? My hair is really long too!” 

She pushed her long braided hair to the front, comparing her neatly combed hair to Malleus’s direction. 

“Your hair is quite long indeed, perhaps matching mine in length at first glance.” Malleus commented back, amused by the children’s competitive nature. 

After sharing all of their thoughts, the curious children finally left when their guardians called them back, waving at the two of you before running out of sight. Now free, Malleus looked to you with curiosity of his own gleaming in his striking green eyes. 

“The offspring of this land are inquisitive as they are fearless,” Malleus smiled in your direction. “I wonder if all children hailed from here shared these traits.” 

Were you like them as a child? 

You picked up on his unspoken question and replied with a cheeky expression. “Wouldn’t you like to know~” 

Would he? Would he like to know if you were the type to run around so carefree and see the world with such interest and curiosity. If your future children would be like those endearing little ones just now…

Yes, he would.

[utilitycaster]

I wanted to explore the idea of people who dislike C3 not engaging with its themes because I haven't actually seen anyone making the argument give a full rundown of said themes, and this may end up being several posts. I'd like to start with anticolonialism. Perhaps it is a theme; if so, I think it's presented exceptionally badly, in a way that appeals uniquely to white westerners desiring to see themselves as a combination of victim and savior, rather than as a complex issue in a story centering the colonized. It got very long, so it's under a cut.

If this is the theme with which we as the viewers are not engaging, I'd argue neither is the work itself - it's largely projection. As many others have pointed out, the use of Marquet, a setting inspired by Africa and Asia (and presented in a highly stereotyped and Orientalist way in Campaign 1 no less) as nothing more than a casual backdrop with little engagement with the cultures present, and with much of the story elsewhere, undercuts that badly. I'd actually argue this is a recurring issue with Critical Role's works; Ank'Harel appears and is even fleshed out more in Call of the Netherdeep, but the story follows, and mostly takes place, among the Calamity-era ruins being excavated and amid faction squabbles concerning them. The culture and politics of Ank'Harel remain a distant second to the greater mythology of the Calamity, and again, after the society and culture and everyday people of the more European-inspired Wildemount took such a front seat in Campaign 2, it seems like a worrying pattern. Given the increased sensitivity and investment towards the cultures based on those in our own world that (for the most part) did the colonizing, and the "set-dressing", as others have called it, status of Marquet, perhaps this world is not a good one to tell that story. What's also interesting, and telling, is that the African and Asian - especially West, South, and Southeast Asian - was even a defense within the fandom: the reason so few of Bells Hells were from Marquet, we were told, is because the cast is white. In that case, and given how Marquet is so poorly integrated into the story that multiple beats relying on knowledge of the Apex War fall flat, why didn't we set this in Issylra (notably, the continent in which modern, mortal-driven occupation efforts are occurring)? And more importantly why are we trusting a group nearly entirely made of white culturally Christian Americans to tell what is argued to be an exceptionally leftist story on religiously-motivated colonialism if we can't even trust them to play a character from a real-world culture heavily impacted by said colonialism?

Another rather significant wrinkle is the fact that those wishing to release Predathos in the service of destroying the gods were happily working with the Kreviris Imperium, who desired to colonize Exandria. Remember how everyone was just talking about how the poor Ruidians would die if the planet were destroyed and how they're the victims in all this (and honestly, I don't disagree that the commoners of Ruidus, especially those without psychic powers, have a uniquely rough deal) when the planet cracks? Well, let's talk that through. I think the role of the Vanguard's Ruidusborn in this is rather important, ie, if they are throwing off the colonialism of the gods (to be discussed later whether I consider that valid), they are doing so by stepping on the necks of the common people of Ruidus. And if those people will be doomed by the release of Predathos, it is Bells Hells who doomed them.

The people of Ruidus were told of their manifest destiny of the Blue Promise by their governing body (which also served, effectively, as religious leadership, with mind control). I think "Propaganda" is a poor real-world metaphor for "sends dreams of the land promised to you each night, making you both jealous of what they have and very much influenced by their culture, while you have no dreams of your own" but it's the best I have, but that itself occupies an interesting space. It's a great beat for sf, but this actually leads to a rather worrisome metaphor regarding the nature of cultural influence (which was spoken of on a 4-sided Dive and is often cited here, and I think the way it's discussed fails to consider the implications). The idea of cultural hegemony and globalization is a very real one. It can occur within one's country (I, a non-Christian American, am well acquainted with many Christmas songs and traditions and am given Christian holidays off work but must use vacation for my own). It can also occur outside of it, as with globalized beauty standards - white ideas of beauty leading to light skin being prioritized in India, or double-eyelid surgery becoming common in South Korea. The situation on Ruidus therefore has some interesting implications. What does it mean for them to have inherited culture from Exandria - but at the hands of their own government that seeks to colonize Exandria? Is this a good way to explore these topics, when Exandrians are neatly excluded from the spread of their own cultural hegemony (as they had no idea) and are also poised to become the victims in this colonization? This idea, incidentally - that the people of Exandria exist in an impossible in-between space in the colonization metaphors, blameless victim yet free from the ugliest consequences of being a colonized culture - will recur, and I think that is the most damning evidence that this is at best a story of anticolonialism stripped of nuance and complexity.

In a further exploration of the cultural impact of colonialism, what does it mean that, again, I, Jewish from birth and raised in a Jewish home and sent, even, to a Jewish school through middle school (though not a Jewish preschool) have a pretty thorough knowledge of not just Christmas songs, but could probably name a bunch of individual Christian denominations and maybe even the intricacies in how they depict their crosses - while generally having freedom to practice my religion within the dominantly Christian US, if not equality in doing so - but Bells Hells, living under the presumed thumb of the gods, can't reliably tell their symbols or domains? Others have already covered this but if the gods are the dominant force, why have Bells Hells managed to largely avoid any actual consequences for godlessness other than "when I asked for something, I didn't get it?"

Why have all the governments we've seen, save Vasselheim (which, again - we haven't ever spent a ton of time in, so why did we go to Marquet again?) failed to convey religious dominance at the hands of the gods? The Clovis Concord, Tal'Dorei, Whitestone, Niirdal-Poc, Syngorn, and as far as I can tell Ank'Harel, Jrusar, Bassuras, Court of the Lambent Path, and the Stratos Throne (and if the latter isn't then Imogen and Ashton grew up in its borders without any religion forced upon them) are all secular governments that at most have outlawed Betrayer God worship. The Empire (in which Ludinus Da'leth has been a major political force for centuries) has strong restrictions on worship of all but six gods, and if you look at the first Tal'Dorei Campaign setting, it was at the timed conceived of as banning all deity worship. The Dynasty is a theocracy for a non-pantheon entity, engaging in missionary work but largely depicted as (if I may, oddly) devoid of violence. While Uthodurn's King Imathan Talviel is himself a worshiper of the Arch Heart, Uthodurn appears to have no state religion. Indeed, I'd say, as again, someone of a frequently persecuted religious minority, who lives in a country with a dark history of forced conversion of the native colonized people into Christianity [the Native American residential school system] I'd say that for a world in which the gods are objectively real? Exandrian governments are bizarrely lenient and bloodless when it comes to religion. Only the Dynasty even has a state religion of the aforementioned locations, and they don't even outlaw worship of non-Betrayer gods. The Empire, Concord, and Dynasty have, at most, fines or incarceration for worship of illegal deities. Hearthdell lost more people from their own attack and from the people teleported away by the solstice than from the missionary work; you think the might of Vasselheim couldn't have slaughtered the entire town if they went in? The only places we know of as even possibly more brutal are the Betrayer-worshiping Iron Authority, which remains vague and undescribed (weirdly, actually, given that the Crown Keepers might have gone there in the time between EXU Prime and Bells Hells); and Aeor (execution by hanging for deity worship).

I am not saying that any outlawing of religious worship (nor lack thereof) is a good thing, but we live in a world where people have - and still are - killed for gods for which we have, in my opinion, no proof of existence. It is unbelievably telling that the grievances provided (Tuldus, Ludinus, and members of Bells Hells) are all entirely individual experiences rather than anything systemic. It's people mad at their small communities or their parents, and that anger is valid, but it is immensely dangerous to take one's own individual negative experiences and treat it as systemic. This is the underlying motivation of how countless people are radicalized into hate groups (see: MRAs/incels, who are mostly mad at their mothers or at the fact that increased rights for women means women don't have to date or marry men if they don't want to - men are still the dominant class here, but their perceived individual slights and their extrapolation to this as systemic dominance of women is the radicalizing factor). The fact that Exandria has failed to set up a world where this is any sort of religious hegemony - Vasselheim is certainly important, but they aren't even a centralized governing body of worship a la the Catholic church, let alone a force outside of Othanzia, and are seen as an ally by the nonreligious Percy and Keyleth - again lethally undercuts the idea of this as anything but the most softened and childish discussion of colonialism and religion. Even Deanna's question to Pelor regarding Hearthdell reveals it as inaction - a failure to stop - rather than a command to act. It's at the level of how we teach American kindergarteners of the first Thanksgiving, except unless the entire narrative is wholly unreliable this is the actual story of Exandria. One giant pulled punch.

To quickly cover other items highly relevant to any sophisticated discussion of decolonialization/postcolonialism/colonialism in general that are absent from Campaign 3, and indeed Exandria as a whole: as multiple other fans have discussed, there is no concept of people of mixed race if the gods are the colonizers here. There is insufficient discussion of how, for example, many colonized or oppressed cultures have adopted western religions and see them as highly integral to their culture today - Catholicism in Central and South America and parts of Southeast Asia; Islam in other portions of Southeast Asia; Christianity within Africa and among African-Americans descended from slaves. This does not make the original forcing of said religion right or just; but any discussion of decolonization must account for the wants of those colonized, and I find that Campaign 3 fails to do so. The lack of meaningful conversation with common people across Exandria is something many of us have brought up. If we assume the members of the Accord are not necessarily speaking for those they rule, why do we have no concept of how the people at large of Whitestone, Gelvaan, Jrusar, Bassuras, Uthodurn, the Silken Squall, the Empire, the Dynasty, and the Tal'Dorei Republic feel? And if they are speaking for those they rule, well, we know how they feel.

I finally want to discuss that weird and, in my opinion, nonexistent irl space between actual colonizer and the colonized that mortals occupy. I personally reject the idea of the gods as colonizers given what we've seen in Downfall and because the metaphor is rather messy given the mythic scale. However, let's let treat them as such in this moment. Exandria was populated by titans. The lore is (possibly deliberately) vague and at times contradictory here, but either the titans lay dormant for a time after the gods arrived but before mortal society developed; or they lived in harmony with said mortals (who were created by the gods). They assisted, in some tellings, of the sealing of Predathos by the gods. They then, for unknown reasons, either awoke, or turned on the mortals; in the resulting schism they were killed and sealed by the Prime deities and the mortals. The Betrayer gods were those who wished to leave. The Betrayer gods too were sealed. The last known titans, sealed but not dead, were either destroyed or banished by the Ring of Brass during the start of the Calamity in order to prevent complete annihilation. The titans are now dead. Per Ashton's commune with them, there may be something that will rise again should the gods be eliminated; [only] the strong will survive it.

Questions to consider:

Why are a number of fans arguing that this story is one of anticolonialism so eager to place blame on Asmodeus and hope Predathos eats him first, when he is arguably the ringleader of those who most hoped to leave Exandria to the titans while they were still living? Do you hate the leader of the one most willing to decolonize? Or is the issue that this would also mean abandonment of the mortals, in which case, which is worse - destabilization or maintenance of a current situation (ie, the status quo)?

If the gods are colonizers, why isn't Predathos? It is no more a native of Exandria than they are. We know the gods were driven by an existential danger to their lives (which may or may not have been Predathos). Did Predathos lead the gods to Exandria and later corner them there, setting all of this in motion? Or is Predathos no different from them, driven to Exandria out of the need to survive? Given the titans opposed Predathos as well it is difficult to paint it as their savior (and the idea of an external savior of the colonized is, as discussed, one with unfortunate implications)? What is Predathos, and why is it better than the gods, if you believe it to be?

What are mortals here? They are not colonizer, nor are they native. I've discussed the (also very unfortunate) implications of treating sentient beings as ecology metaphors, but given that mortals truly did have, per the story, no agency in arriving on Exandria but were rather created here, are they akin to a non-native species? Such a species can be either invasive or beneficial, which fits with the idea of mortals being unique in their ability to change. Mortals were the ones under threat from the titans despite, again, being neither colonizer nor colonized; mortals participated in their destruction.

Where do the eidolons - seemingly unaffected by all of this - fit in? For a story about how change and newness might bring a better world, why the focus on the long-dead titans instead of the nature spirits that have seemingly taken their place? Why are many of Bells Hells constantly looking back and not forward?

And that last point feels particularly salient. The people of Exandria - a people whose opinion, again, in this campaign, it feels we have failed to explore - exist in an in-between state. They are more the heirs of the colonizers, in this assumption that the gods are colonizers, than the colonized. They cannot undo what the gods did. The gods can at this time only act through them.

What does it mean that we as the audience are intended to see ourselves most in a people who were not themselves those doing the colonizing, who are now under threat from colonization, and who might cooperate with the driving force behind that colonization? What does it say that our mortal viewpoint characters put more effort speaking to and for the dead than to the living? What does it tell us that many of them see themselves as the victims? What does it say that past campaigns had multiple characters subjected to actual systemic oppression (the twins, Jester, Molly, Veth-as-a-goblin, and Fjord all experienced racism) and explored the concept of the other (the Dynasty) and Campaign 3 never did? And when we add that to all of the above - that this world has failed to set up religion as even remotely close to both the meaningful and the oppressive force as it is in our own, despite the gods being real, that the grievances are individual and not systemic, that nearly all actions by the gods are motivated not by greed but by survival - is this an anti-colonialist work? Does it grapple with the problems of decolonialism meaningfully? Or does it let a white American viewer fantasize about a world where they are the oppressed, under threat of colonization, where their personal grievances are all forms of systemic oppression, cleansed of their own complicity in these systems, and where they can never be blamed for their actions because this is all so hard to choose- despite a far softer and gentler world than the one in which we actually live. And does it do so in a work they were going to watch anyway because they've been watching since well before this was introduced, thus permitting them to pretend they are experiencing a sophisticated anticolonialism narrative without having to go through the effort of actually reading that linked pdf of Orientalism they reblogged?

[fatehbaz]

About the entanglement of "science" and Empire. About geographic imaginaries. About how Empire appeals to and encourages children to participate in these scripts.

Was checking out this recent thing, from scavengedluxury's beloved series of posts looking at the archive of the Budapest Municipal Photography Company.

The caption reads: "Toys and board games, 1940."

And I think the text on the game-box in the back says something like "the whole world is yours", maybe?

(The use of appeals to science/progress in imperial narratives probably already well-known to many, especially for those familiar with Victorian era, Edwardian era, Gilded Age, early twentieth century, etc., in US and Europe.)

And was struck, because I had also recently gone looking through nemfrog's posts about the often-strange imagery of children's material in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century US/Europe. And was disturbed/intrigued by this thing:

Caption here reads: "Game Board. Walter Mittelholzer's flight over Africa. [...] 1931. Commemorative game board map of Africa for a promotional game published for the N*stle Company, for tracking the trip of Walter Mittelholzer across Africa, the first pilot to fly a north-south route."

Hmm.

"Africa is for your consumption and pleasure! A special game celebrating German achievement, brought to you by the N*stle Company!"

1930s-era German national aspirations in Africa. A company which, in the preceding decade, had shifted focus to expand its cacao production (which would be dependent on tropical plantations). Adventure, excitement, knowledge, science, engineering prowess, etc. For kids!

Another, from a couple decades earlier, this time British.

Caption reads: "The "World's globe circler." A game board based on Nellie Bly's travels. 1890." At center, a trumpet, and a proclamation: "ALL RECORDS BROKEN".

Same year that the United States "closed the frontier" and conquered "the Wild West" (the massacre at Wounded Knee happened in December 1890). A couple years later, the US annexed Hawai'i; by decade's end, the US military was in both Cuba and the Philippines. The Scramble for Africa was taking place. At the time, Britain especially already had a culture of "travel writing" or "travel fiction" or whatever we want to call it, wherein domestic residents of the metropole back home could read about travel, tourism, expeditions, adventures, etc. on the peripheries of the Empire. Concurrent with the advent of popular novels, magazines, mass-market print media, etc. Intrepid explorers rescuing Indigenous peoples from their own backwardness. Many tales of exotic allure set in South Asia. Heroic white hunters taking down scary tigers. Elegant Englishwomen sipping tea in the shade of an umbrella, giggling at the elephants, the local customs, the strange sights. Orientalism, tropicality, othering.

I'd lately been looking at a lot of work on race/racism and imperative-of-empire in British scientific and pop-sci literature, especially involving South and Southeast Asia. (From scholars like Varun Sharma, Rohan Deb Roy, Ezra Rashkow, Jonathan Saha, Pratik Chakrabarti.) But I'd also lately been looking at Mashid Mayar's work, which I think closely suits this kinda thing with the board games. Some of her publications:

"From Tools to Toys: American Dissected Maps and Geographic Knowledge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century". In: Knowledge Landscapes North America, edited by Kloeckner et al., 2016.

"What on Earth! Slated Globes, School Geography and Imperial Pedagogy". European Journal of American Studies 16, number 3, Summer 2020.

Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire, 2022.

Discussing her book, Mayar was interviewed by LA Review of Books in 2022. She says:

[Quote.] Growing up at the turn of the 20th century, for many American children, also meant learning to view the world through the lens of "home geography." [...] [T]hey inevitably responded to the transnational whims of an empire that had stretched its dominion across the globe [recent forays into Panama, Cuba, Hawai'i, the Philippines] [...]. [W]hite, well-to-do, literate American children [...] learned how to identify and imagine “homes” on the map of the world. [...] [T]he cognitive maps children developed, to which we have access through the scant archival records they left behind (i.e., geographical puzzles they designed and printed in juvenile periodicals) [...] mixed nativism and the logic of colonization with playful, appropriative scalar confusion, and an intimate, often unquestioned sense of belonging to the global expanse of an empire [...]. Dissected maps - that is, maps mounted on cardboard or wood and then cut into smaller pieces that children were to put back together - are a generative example of the ways imperial pedagogy [...] found its place outside formal education, in children's lives outside the classroom. [...] [W]ell before having been adopted as playthings in the United States, dissected maps had been designed to entertain and teach the children of King George III about the global spatial affairs of the British Empire. […] [J]uvenile periodicals of the time printed child-made geographical puzzles [...]. [I]t was their assumption that "(un)charted," non-American spaces (both inside and outside the national borders) sought legibility as potential homes, [...] and that, if they did not do so, they were bound to recede into ruin/"savagery," meaning that it would become the colonizers' responsibility/burden to "restore" them [...]. [E]mpires learn from and owe to childhood in their attempts at survival and growth over generations [...]. [These] "multigenerational power constellations" [...] survived, by making accessible pedagogical scripts that children of the white and wealthy could learn from and appropriate as times changed [...]. [End quote.] Source: Words of Mashid Mayar, as transcribed in an interviewed conducted and published by M. Buna. "Children's Maps of the American Empire: A Conversation with Mashid Mayar". LA Review of Books. 11 July 2022.

Some other stuff I was recently looking at, specifically about European (especially German) geographic imaginaries of globe-as-playground:

The Play World: Toys, Texts, and the Transatlantic German Childhood (Patricia Anne Simpson, 2020) /// "19th-Century Board Game Offers a Tour of the German Colonies" (Sarah Zabrodski, 2016) /// Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany (David Ciarlo, 2011) /// Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875-1919 (Erik Grimmer-Solem, 2019) /// “Ruling Africa: Science as Sovereignty in the German Colonial Empire and Its Aftermath” (Andrew Zimmerman. In: German Colonialism in a Global Age, 2014) /// "Exotic Education: Writing Empire for German Boys and Girls, 1884-1914". (Jeffrey Bowersox. In: German Colonialism and National Identity, 2017) /// Raising Germans in the Age of Empire: Youth and Colonial Culture, 1871-1914 (Jeff Bowersox, 2013) /// "[Translation:] (Educating Modernism: A Trade-Specific Portrait of the German Toy Industry in the Developing Mass-Market Society)" (Heike Hoffmann, PhD dissertation, Tubingen, 2000) /// Home and Harem: Nature, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel (Inderpal Grewal, 1996) /// "'Le rix d'Indochine' at the French Table: Representation of Food, Race and the Vietnamese in a Colonial-Era Board Game" (Elizabeth Collins, 2021) /// "The Beast in a Box: Playing with Empire in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Romita Ray, 2006) /// Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games (Mary Flanagan and Mikael Jakobsson, 2023)

[olderthannetfic]

On the topic of the ao3 ship stats thing, I would also like to call into question the inclusion of the "Race" category and how races are being categorized and if they should be included at all.

The first thing is that I see Latino is considered a race, but I believe Latino is moreso a cultural/ethnic category and not a race. It makes it more interesting that Afrolatino is separate from Latino, since it means that everyone categorized as Latino could be white Latino characters and therefore not as racially diverse as the category seems to imply? Or something?

Same goes for the Asian category- wouldn't it make sense to separate it into East/South East/South Asian at least since Asia is massive. Especially since it would be interesting to see the % of Asian representation that is taken up by East vs. South East Asians, given that K-pop, anime, Chinese BL, and Thai BL are all very popular.

I don't think that it's a bad thing to include a race category when taking into account this data, but the fact that these racial categories seem to be arbitrarily decided makes it less reliable in my opinion. Also what about characters who are mixed race, or mixed ethnic heritage?

In some ways, I think it would be more interesting to categorize the origin of the media/source material for these ships. How much of the chart is taken up by Korean origin ships (i.e. K-pop groups) vs. Japanese origin ships (i.e. anime) vs. American origin ships (i.e. American movies and TV)? It would also a valuable insight since I would expect something like Thai BL to have all or majority Asian characters. So in some ways, the race category is more insightful into the diversity of American/UK/Canadian/etc. media. It would also be interesting to see how much of the Asian characters are coming from Asian media/music groups.

This is not to say that analyzing the racial/ethnic/cultural backgrounds of characters in the most popular ships wouldn't give insights. I think it would be interesting to see how this changes over time. But I think that if we want the data about racial discrepancies and diversity to be meaningful, the categorization must be consistent and done with more care.

--

Lulu seems like a nice person, but she is a dumbass about Asian media. She told me once that she was shocked the year BTS suddenly popped up all over the top ships.

Like... really? You were shocked? And you literally had never heard of BTS? As a fandom researcher? If that had been 2013, sure, fine, but it very much wasn't.

This isn't even about being Western-centric because shittons of fans in the UK and US are into Asian fandoms. (UK because that's where she's from. US because that's the place we all wank about being centered all the time.) This is just a basic failure of a lot of meta writers and even academics who study fandom.

Part of why people insist on staying this dumb is that acknowledging Asian media, particularly live action stuff, makes it obvious that the real issue is how the media handles characters. Fans who were all about the white guys all the time still fell hard for Wangxian.

Clearly, fandom has no problem attaching to nonwhite characters when they are the unmarked ethnic majority leads in something. So the supposed failings of fic might be about skin color or antiblackness specifically, or they might really be about the failings of media when it either fails to include certain characters or sidelines and others the ones it does have.

Those conclusions aren't as tidy and don't make as good a tire iron to club other fans with.

[pmamtraveller]

FRANZ EISENHUT - BEFORE PUNISHMENT, 1890

In this artwork, Eisenhut depicts a scene set in an oriental context, which was a popular theme among European artists during the 19th century. It shows two nude female figures, depicted as harem slaves, locked in wooden foot stocks secured with a padlock. This scene is set against an ornate, presumably Middle Eastern, architectural backdrop.

The title "Before Punishment" suggests that these women are awaiting some form of disciplinary action. There's an insinuation of narrative tension, where the viewer is invited to speculate on the nature of the punishment to follow, potentially involving traditional methods like falaka or bastinado, which is foot caning. The composition centers on the women, drawing the viewer's eye to their plight and the instruments of restraint.

At the time, Orientalism was a significant trend in European art, where artists sought to capture the perceived exoticism, mystery, and allure of the Eastern world. This interest was partly fueled by increased travel, colonial expansion, and the fascination with the cultures of the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. Artists like Eisenhut were influenced by the works of earlier orientalist painters like Jean-Léon Gérôme or Eugène Delacroix.

The painting's theme of a harem scene with elements of punishment would likely have drawn interest for its sensational and exotic narrative. Such themes were part of a broader public fascination with the East, often portrayed through a lens of Western fantasy.

[notaplaceofhonour]

I understand and agree with pointing out that the Holocaust didn’t just affect the Jews that lived in Europe, and shedding light on the stories of Jews in other territories under Axis control. Every life lost or uprooted in the Holocaust matters and deserves to be remembered, not just Ashkenazim.

However, I’ve been seeing a bit of an overcorrection to the point that this valid & important point get twisted by some into the idea that Ashkenazim weren’t actually all that affected by the Holocaust at all and may have actually been safer than other Jews due to being White/European*, and I wanted to walk through exactly why that is so far from the reality and gets into really dangerous Holocaust Distortion.

The fact is that the vast majority of Holocaust victims were Ashkenazim. How do we know this? Well, first and most obvious without even getting into the numbers: the Nazis were most active in Eastern Europe, where most Jews were overwhelmingly Ashkenazi. Germany had colonies elsewhere and the affect the Holocaust had on Jews living in Africa and Asia is not any less important (and the fact remains that their stories are a genuine gap in Holocaust education that needs to be filled), but this doesn’t change the fact that the center of Nazi activity was Europe, and thus that is where their impact on Jews was most intense. But it’s important to not just go off of what seems “obvious” because what’s obvious to any given person is subjective and subject to bias. So let’s look at the numbers:

Estimates prior to the Holocaust put Ashkenazim at 92% of the world’s Jewish population (or roughly 14 million of the 15.3 million total Jewish population), meaning that it would be physically impossible for less than 4.7 million (or 78%) of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust to be Ashkenazim.

Even that number is only possible to reach by assuming that only Ashkenazism survived and literally every non-Ashkenazi Jew died in the Holocaust, which we categorically know is not the case due to the continued existence of Sephardim & Mizrahim, as well as other Jews. So the number has to be higher than 78%.

Additionally, the fact that the proportion of the world’s Jewish population that was Ashkenazi fell so drastically during to the Holocaust and still hasn’t recovered (from 92% in 1930, only recovering to close to 75% in the last couple decades) means that not only a higher overall number of deaths were Ashkenazim, but that a higher proportion of the total Ashkenazi population died than from other groups.

We also know that 85% of Jews killed in the Holocaust were Yiddish-speakers. The fact that Yiddish is endemic to Ashkenazi culture (and not all Ashkenazim would have even been Yiddish-speakers) due to assimilation means that at least—and most likely more than—85% of Jews killed in the Holocaust were Ashkenazi.

So, no, Ashkenazim were not some privileged subcategory of Jews who avoided the worst of the Holocaust. They were the group most directly devastated by it.

That doesn’t change the fact that the devastation the Nazis and their allies wreaked on other Jews is every bit as important to acknowledge and discuss, and must not fall by the wayside. The stories and experiences of all victims & survivors deserve to be heard, remembered, and honored, not just the most common or most statistically representative of the majority of victims. However, we can (and must) do that without allowing the facts of the Holocaust to be distorted or suggesting Ashkenazim were somehow less affected by the Holocaust or more privileged under the Nazis. The Nazis hated all Jews. Antisemitism affects all Jews. Period.

*without getting too deep into how categories like Ashkanzi/Sephardi/etc. don’t map neatly onto race like so many people seem to want them to. that’s a different post, but just pointing that out

[nhdiary]

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

Intercultural Bias in the Fan Experience of QL

I've been thinking about writing this post for a while, and I think it's an appropriate time for it after reading @hallowpen's post today - which if you haven't read yet, please do so.

I'm saying this as someone who's been on a lifelong journey of learning, and is also extremely aware I still have so much that I don't know. I am from the U.S. and that comes with a truckload of bias and privilege. But this is something I have learned that I think is worth sharing.

There is a danger, for those of us who are progressive, yet grew up in countries that have been historically exploitative and oppressive to other cultures.

Because colonizer bias is insidious. And it can be very tempting to say, I'm aware, I've done the anti-racism training, I've read the books, I have my own oppressions I have to fight every day, I'm aware of my privilege, I'm an ally, etc, etc, etc. But this is just like racism - if you are not being actively anti-colonialist in your interactions with other cultures, you are likely perpetuating bias and oppression.

I grew up in a very liberal part of the U.S. and had a very progressive education starting from grade school. I got education on systemic racism in junior high, my high school had one of the first gay/straight alliances in our state. I studied science in college, but since it was a liberal arts degree, I also took classes on sociology of race, the religions of Asia, Chinese history, etc.

But despite all this I still grew up in a country with a fuckton of bias about our role in how we interact with countries around the world. And as we all do with bias that we grow up with, I internalized some of that.

It wasn't until I took some graduate coursework on Intercultural Training & Communication that I really was able to recontextualize my perspective and become aware of my unconscious bias, thank to an amazing instructor.

Other countries do not need us to come in, tell them what is wrong, and tell them how to fix it. Whatever problems there are, there are people in that culture who know, who are actively working on it, and they know better than anyone outside what needs to be done.

Honestly, it doesn't even need to extend to other countries - just look at all the nonprofits and charities in the U.S. that talk about helping the poor, but in the end just perpetuate the cycle of oppression by coming in to neighborhoods and doing zero work to center the perspectives of the people most affected.

You can absolutely support and spread awareness and send money and share expertise when asked, and do the things that the people of that culture ask you to do.

But if you come in, and try to say "this is what you all are doing wrong, and this is what you should be doing" - you are perpetuating a colonialist mindset.

And yes, this extends to media as well.

This is why I struggle with some of the takes I have read, especially those that attempt to rank the "queerness authenticity" of shows, from an entirely Western perspective, with no engagement with the idea that one's queer identity is impacted by one's culture (among other things), and that it can look and be expressed in a million different ways.

There are criticisms of queer directors, blaming them for a myriad of perceived sins, with zero understanding of what queerness might mean to them both individually and as a Thai person, and what they might also be trying to navigate socially, culturally, and politically.

There are people making broad sweeping statements about the direction that they think QL is headed in - some of which enter the realm of catastrophizing - entirely based on their own subjective opinion of what is most important for a different country and culture to care most about in a particular moment in time.

You know why I'm not worried about the direction of QL? Because I know there are millions of Thai people who care about it too. I know the Thai queer community and their allies are speaking up, and pushing for change and progress. I know that they are extremely cognizant of when representation fails, and I know they are the reason representation has already improved so much (sorry interfans, it's not about us).

And yeah, sometimes the pendulum swings the other way - those of us in the U.S. should be very aware of this. But the fight doesn't stop.

There are Thai people who are working to promote mental health and therapy, to encourage people to have strong boundaries with family who have hurt them, to provide more representation for groups who still aren't seen. And someone from a different country complaining about all the ways they think their culture is failing isn't helping a thing.

Like @hallowpen says, this is not about saying you can't critique. Most of the people I follow do a great job at making it consistently clear that their perspective is subjective, and they relate it to their own life and experience. That's great, and a place for people from different cultures to connect!

But those of us who are interfans have a responsibility as members of a global community. There are people from Thailand who read your posts. From Japan, from Korea, from China. Are you speaking up to support them? Or are you talking over them? Are you expressing understanding for what they are navigating from historical context and current political conditions? Or are you just lecturing them on how you think their world should be?

[tranquilskies2]

KFP Characters as the five celestial guardians Intro

(NOTE: Designs shown are NOT final)

If you're a longtime Kung fu Panda fan, you may know about the existence of Paws of Destiny. It's a Netflix animated show that only lasted for one season. To summarize the show, it centers on Po being a mentor to four panda cubs who gained chi of the four celestial guardians.

For those unfamiliar with the four heavenly beasts (Also known as "Four Gods", "Four Guardians" "Four Heavenly Creatures" & "Four Auspicious Beasts), the five celestial guardians are five mythical animals who serve as guardians & protectors of the world and four directions. These five creatures also represent constellations, seasons & elements. For thousands of years, they remained an integral piece to Chinese culture & mythology.

A few months ago I came across a blog post (unfortunately, I can't find the blog post). This blog post proposes a theory that Po & the four movie villains we have so far represent the five heavenly beasts. Although OP did not invent the theory (nor could I find out who originally invented the theory), I still remained intrigued by it.

The four heavenly beasts consists of: Azure Dragon of the East, Black Tortoise (sometimes known as Black Warrior) of the North, Vermilion Bird of the South & finally, White Tiger of the West. You may be wondering:Five heavenly beasts? Weren't there four? Believe it or not, there is indeed a fifth (and often forgotten but yet most important) heavenly beast. The fifth heavenly beast is the Yellow Dragon of the Center.

According to (insert username of person who made the og post here), the representatives of the five celestial guardians is as followed:

Po- Yellow Dragon of the Center

Chameleon- Azure Dragon of the East

Kai: Black Tortoise of the North

Lord Shen: Vermilion Bird of the South

Tai Lung: White Tiger of the West

In the next following weeks, I'll be posting fan-made designs of each along with text explaining why I have them assigned to those roles.

Chameleon as the Azure Dragon of the East>>

Sources:

https://www.localiiz.com/post/culture-local-stories-chinese-mythology-101-four-symbols

https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-asia/four-mythological-symbols-china-001792

https://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/ssu-ling.shtml

https://www.bigstrawmagazine.com/home/four-symbols-of-eastern-mythology

https://www.cits.net/china-travel-guide/four-mythological-creatures-in-china.html

[max1461]

>Have you seen religion discourse on this website?

I think so, I've lurked here for a while, but none of it included the Idea that the Japanese are especially religious (!?), which would seem to be contradicted by surveys, my anecdotal experience, and their general anglosphere stereotype(s).

Anyways, when Japanese people say "westerners" they usually mean Americans, and "Americans be unusually religious " is like, a super common and basically correct stereotype.

The opinion that you commonly see is that atheism or general irreligiosity are Western in origin, imposed on other parts of the world through either direct colonialism or general Western hegemony. This is not true, and our lovely memecucker has been doing the lord's work (ahem) in dispelling this idea from every angle, but people still cling to it.

Anyway, it's often pointed out that viewing irreligiosity as inherently Western is kind of weird, in light of the fact that many of the world's least religious countries are in Asia, and indeed (as far as I know) the only countries that continue to maintain an official state policy of atheism are in Asia. People try to rebuke this by saying something to the effect of "well, religiousness means something different over there, people only say they're not religious because the survey questions are Christian-centric" or something to that effect. Now, this rebuttal seems to be... sort of a misremembered version of an actually true fact, but the way it's used is total nonsense.

The true fact that I think it comes from is that religious identity in the Abrahamic faiths is centered around belief (usually) and is exclusive (if you're Christian you're not Muslim, and vice-versa), whereas in many other religious traditions, religious identity is centered around practice and is non-exclusive. So, for instance, in Japan people have historically engaged in a mix of Shinto and Buddhist practices, because there is nothing about the doctrines of either Shinto or Buddhism which says you have to believe one or the other, it doesn't work like that. And Shinto in particular does not consist of any one set of canonical doctrines or beliefs, it's more like a loose collection of different stories and practices that have existed in a huge array of variations across Japan and across its history.

I don't know much about Chinese folk religion, but I take it that it is in this regard similar.

In the present day, a lot of people in Japan still celebrate Shinto-Buddhist holidays and practice Shinto-Buddhist rituals, despite describing themselves as atheists or non-religious. And because Shinto has always had huge variation in doctrine and has always been defined more centrally by practices than beliefs, there's a case to be made that such people "are Shinto"—they fall well within the variation that Shinto has had in the past.

Except, no, that's fucking stupid! Because people will tell you that they're not religious, that they don't believe in the supernatural, and that they practice Shinto-Buddhist rituals mostly because it's part of their culture—the same way plenty of American atheists celebrate Christmas or, I don't know, knock on wood to avoid bad luck or whatever. Yes, religious identity outside of the Abrahamic faiths doesn't work the same way as it does in Christianity, Islam, and most forms of Judaism. And that's worth remembering. But does that mean that people who tell you they aren't religious actually are? No that's fucking dumb.

Anyway...

[utilitycaster]

I'm glad to see you mentioning how disconnected the PCs are from Marquet! I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen more discussion of this in the fandom at large (although maybe I'm looking in the wrong places), since it was a point of discussion at the very beginning of the campaign in a couple of private PoC tabletop/LARP groups I was in. The consensus in the aforementioned groups at the time was that maybe the cast didn't feel comfortable representing characters coming from cultures that were explicitly based on real world PoC cultures (but the decision to have almost everyone be an "outsider" in a PoC-coded culture had unfortunate Orientalist overtones). This was very, very early campaign (like e10 maybe), though, before we really knew the trajectory of the plot (or that they'd spend so little time in Marquet).

It definitely came up a lot early on and I think a lot of the people who felt this either left Campaign 3 quite early and said "this isn't working for me" or else said, as I did, that it is what it is.

I think my issue here is that like...Imogen and Dorian are the only Marquet-born characters and while I have complicated feelings about how people see Imogen (see my previous comments about the bizarre bordering on creepy glorification of a very white-coded Southern culture that have spread into like...white anglophone but not United States portions of the fandom) she and Dorian are both very much coded to North American cultures (Imogen, accent aside, honestly fits any rural agrarian portion of the country and honestly reads closer to the great plains than the south, and Dorian is influenced by Native American culture). I actually do think that Taliesin did a good job making Ashton feel like they were part of Bassuras (and they aren't from there originally, but did grow up there culturally), but the fact is I've seen multiple people ignore that "Bassuras" is specifically taken from Tagalog (and that Makenzie de Armas was one of the Marquet designers) and hc it as Central American rather than Filipino despite Matt explicitly saying it's the latter.

I do think that the answer, if the cast was not comfortable playing Marquesian characters (and I am not a POC so take this with that grain of salt, but I also think, with some effort and some sensitivity work, they could have done so, particularly since Marquet is inspired by but not one to one), the answer should have been to either be clearer this wouldn't be centered in Marquet and would simply start there which would have lowered those expectations and to perhaps plan an EXU in Marquet that does primarily star actors who are from north Africa, or western, southern, or southeast Asia; or just set the campaign in Issylra or something. I get that Marquet is more central and cosmopolitan than Issylra by far, but we're now in an awkward position where we might have a campaign set mostly in Fake North America; a campaign set virtually entirely in Fake Europe/debatably central/northeast Asia; and a campaign that was ostensibly set in Fake SWANA/SEAsia but really was mostly about the moon. Like, the cast doing a thoughtful but perhaps imperfect go at Marquesian characters would have, at least in my opinion, been preferable.

If it helps I think the way Matt and the worldbuilders describe Marquet it doesn't feel (to me) overly orientalist and the fandom has definitely had way more "do you see this shit Edward Said" moments than the cast, despite the fact that only half the characters had spent significant time in Marquet. Really, the narrative issue is "the characters don't feel tied to this place or invested in the same way in this plot because the plot isn't tied to this place", and the unfortunate overtones come from the fact that it was the Ostensible Marquet Campaign that got the plot that's not really about Marquet.

(as someone running Netherdeep - I will say that helps. The bulk of that story is in a lovingly and sensitively reworked Ank'Harel. I'm hoping TLOVM also does a better job than C1 with Ank'Harel.)

[polish-art-tournament]

paintings* round 1 poll 90

Lady in a lilac dress by Władysław Czachórski, between 1880-1890:

propaganda: I just love the many different textures in this painting, I want to touch them all, the fabric of the ladys dress, the flowers, the vase, the curtain and the marble and even the oil painting in the background, I think you can really see the difference in all the material and its impressive and just gives a very tactil feeling even if its just 2dimensional painting.

On the ship - Colombo, Ceylon by Julian Fałat, 1885:

propaganda: I am sure people much more educated than me had better thoughts about this than I do, but the change from the sketch here; showing a brown woman in the center vs the final product replacing the model with a white one, gives the art works such different vibes - both versions are outside perspectives, in different ways, both are informed by orientalism in different ways (for a short read (17 pages) I recommend "JULIAN FAŁAT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: Hybridity and Mimicry in the Memoirs of a Polish/Kakanian/European Painter" by Grzegorz Moroz (free to read and download via jstor) which does not discuss Julian Fałats art but his writing and touches on the failure to connect the loss of Polands independence to Russia, Prussia and Austro-Hungary to the colonioal rule over Asia and Africa). The version with the white lady gives such an expected picture, the white feminity in the center, soft and courted, the white man having an eye on the interaction with the brown men - its important to remember that this as and sadly is a big image in our culture - but the sketch is much more interesting to me: the brown woman in center, and the small difference in her expression, looking more active to me, as if she is speaking while the white lady looks half asleep, the pose of the white man watching is different too, and I want to go find some research about this (if anyone has recs please share!)