#But I mean- unintentional racism is still fucking racism lol

[dappy-dappernette]

I still find it hilarious that this one white ex-friend of mine wrote a whole ass fanfic chapter where they described characters, that they admitted they based off us (a friend group of BIPOC), "demons" and "rowdy", called us a "gang", and portrayed them as violent criminals who brutally beats up their self-insert.

[butwhatifidothis]

You know, i've long wondered whether or not Fodlan being left in a miserable state after CF was intentional on IS's part or not; the fact that shit like “Edelgard ordered a historical play to be shut down just because she didn't like how it portrayed her” is pretty clearly meant to be seen as a “cute girl getting embarassed lol” moment instead of the blatant and horrific abuse of power that it is, along with the information that Edelgard installed a secret police and orders her henchmen to spy on her citizens only being revealed in a throwaway line in a random paired ending, with no acknowledgement of how fucked all that is, leads me to think this might have been unintentional.

Ehhh, I wouldn't say it's unintentional - there's a good bit more in 3H to show off how deliberately villainous Edelgard is. Off the top my head and not including what I already said regarding the endings, there's the facts that Edelgard:

is the only person to be readily okay with sacrificing her own citizens (with the only other people who do the same being TWS and a crazed Rhea who is visibly not mentally stable - a state which neither Edelgard nor TWS are ever in when they sacrifice innocents)

has her path be constantly riddled with direct links to the "need" for mass death ("the pool of blood at my feet," "the scarlet path" Hubert prepared for her to walk, "no matter how much blood flows at her feet" - yes, that is a completely different reference from the first link - etc.)

shares much of her motivation (destroying the Church and eradicating the Nabateans) with TWS

has her route be the only one where the story cuts to the other side so that you the player can see the effect your actions have placed onto the antagonists when you kill their close ones (Claude, Rhea, Dimitri)

is the only protagonist to be explicitly and violently racist

initiates extreme and mass violence for the explicit purpose of imperialism

Along with a myriad of other things, one being that she's, uh, literally called a villain by her creators lmao. And imo, 3H would have done a good job of writing her as such... if it weren't for what this other nonnie points out:

Man if you get rid of the uwu cutesy moments, Edelgard really is a sinister villain. The racism, the victim blaming, her desire for genocide, what you mentioned before about taking out anyone who opposes her and spying on her citizens, taking over a religion and remaking it your way i.e cultural erasure, getting rid of two countries' autonomy over revanchist nationalism. Like holy crap, how does anyone not see this and say "yeah that's definitely villainous". Oh right because she wanted to walk with you, isn't it sad ;_;? Seriously though, Intsys kinda dropped the ball here. Like we could've had a sinister villain and in bits and pieces we get that, but a lot of it is obscured by "I wanted to walk with you sensei~", and "I drew a sketch of you. Don't see it uwu." It's like having a cake with a great batter but you put all your effort on the hard frosting instead.

Her villainous behavior, methods, ideologies, etc. are all obfuscated by the ever-present need for her to still be a waifu that's marketable. Yeah, sure, she's realistically speaking a massive piece of shit to put it lightly, but she wants to walk with you :( and draw you :( isn't it cute when she screams at rats :) and she opens up to you that she's scared of rats actually she trusts you so much :) and she asks you if you're sure you wanna fight with her on CF she cares so much about giving you a choice ignore how choosing to NOT fight for her means getting murdered by her instead :) and look at how sad everyone is to fight her :( Doesn't that endear you, the player spending money on this game and its DLC and its gacha spinoff, to her, the cute waifu who's the main face of the game's marketing and who just cares about you the player oh so much?

It's not that her villainy is unintentional, it's that her marketability takes precedence over her character

[henrike-does-writing-sometimes]

HENRIKE!!! i’m sorry life is being shit rn 🫂🫂 i would love to know more about ruben and anruh’s backstories before they meet each other—friends and family they have (or struggle with) and that kind of stuff! or their favorite things to do together/favorite things about each other

would also love to hear fucking ANYTHING about the divine boys im love them sm it’s Unreal

Ren my beloved <3<3<3<3 !!!

sorry this took a while, today's been rough lmao

Here are some Ruben and Anruh backstory bits (that I can think of for now);

Ruben is in his second year of high school, where he studies nature science. The story is set during the spring term, meaning he's 17 turning 18 (February 20th).

His happy stims include hand flapping, bouncing, and a slew of vocal stims like shrieking and humming. Humming, along with rocking, is also what he does when stressed or overstimulated.

Him and his friends play DnD together and he basically always plays Wood Elf Druid because it best aligns with his special interests lmao.

While I have yet to fully figure out his parents, I do know of his older sister, who I've spoken about before; Karin ! (pronounced like car-in). She's 7 years older and managed to avoid eldest daughter syndrome, good for her.

She is, however, both dismissive and overbearing, leading to the two of them having a lot of fights.

Karin works as a Ranger which, while not affiliated with the police, functions in similar ways just out in the wild and dealing with mythical beings. And with none of the racism and shot-first mentalities.

Anruh is 4 years older than Ruben, making her 21 during the story then 22 on September 3rd. (however, whenever I write kink-related content of these two they're 25 and 29 or older)

She works with silviculture and is one of the few to do night shifts, practically being alone in her region. There are reasons for this, but I kinda want to keep those secret for now.

Those things are also the reason she kills. Urroa's are omnivores, but Anruh's basically been a full-on carnivore since she was 6 when she first killed.

She likes poetry, and as a kid it was her dream job. She still dabbles in it, but is happy with working in the woods.

Her dad is named Freryn and he's everything. Before Ruben he was the only one who was patient with her. He brings her food and checks in on her when she's been isolating for too long <3

This is not backstory, but fun fact ! Because of their antlers, urroa shirts lace up in the back

As for the Divine Boys, I've for one realized that the way I've so far written their fighting styles is influenced by their hobbies/sports. Rei's a gamer so he's a quick and strategic thinker. Andie's a cheerleader so they do a lot of jumping and spinning and flipping. Timothy does ballet so he's light and graceful. Nico skates so he's quick and more aware of his surroundings. Mike's an archer so his fighting is long-ranged.

This was wholly unintentional but I love it sm.

I've also figured out what the Circus' deal is; ORGAN HARVESTING ! But with a twist, it's about the 'core' of a person. Kinda like the soul. So they basically lure people to their circus, wear them down little by little, then swipe the people who are ripe for the picking.

I also need to draw them again <3

I'm currently trying to get into The Divine because I feel the urge, but yeah things are happening alot lol

[girluimfailing]

@dcmeme

reply was too long so I made a reblog instead.

I'm sorry about your experiences man, I truly am, and I hope you get free of that trauma. I hope you find a good outlet, because frankly male victim experiences are joked enough about already.

"Not knowing" is not an excuse for promoting an extremely harmful stereotype. And your intentions being nice still doesn't excuse promoting a harmful stereotype. Your actions weren't based on race, but the thing you were unknowingly promoting WAS. That doesn't make you a racist person, but it does mean you promoted racism, despite it being unintentional.

Explaining you did something racist=/= pinning you to being a racist.

The first time I said that you can search the proof of the assault being retconned. "girl what the fuck lol" means I was astounded. I didn't swear at u other than calling your mouth dirty. Please understand Talia fans have faced hatred from batcat fans too many times, and Im sure you were probably introduced to this nasty trope by some fanfic that portrayed Talia as such.

I did explain all my points when I reblogged the second time. I believe I was overall nice in it, even offered a few links if you are still confused about the origins of this trope? #If you're still confused on why the rapist talia trope is a some links that explain it harmful narrative pls infrm I would be happy to shar #share some links that explain it really well #Perhaps you were unaware of the post morrison and pre morrison division? I dont know but knowing abt it might help to know why its bad (sorry abt the spellings omfg)

The definition of racism is when one is discriminatory against someone else due to their racial and ethnic background. Something that the author of the storyline you are using did. The author took a lovely character and turned her into a monster just because he hated the al ghuls. And you were promoting that specific storyline in your post, just to uplift Selina.

Also you collecting comics since you were 7 has nothing to do with you not reading a comic about Talia, or at least a minor google search about her even if you don't feel like reading abt her. Which is what I was referencing.

You don't need to defend whatever you did, admit it is wrong, idk change the damn storyline or at least put a warning above that says "talia isnt a rapist in canon", probably block me, and move on damn.

Im glad you understand that's not the real Talia and hope you will stop spreading the misinformation, and I'll learn to be nicer when I see someone who headcanons Talia to be a rapist. I admit I was a bit harsh. You don't need to reply to this. Thank you.

oh man this girl not read ONE comic

B*tcat fans y'all need to stop being obsessed with Talia STOP TRYNA MAKE US HATE SELINA WE AINT AS PETTY AS U FOOLS

[dalishious]

(Replying to this post)

@gangsterofoz I’m... not really sure... where to begin... I suppose by just saying I’m kind of stunned you wrote all this in response to me point out Cassandra was wrong about something and the writers’ reasons are ridiculously transparent?

Well it makes sense that Cass would try really hard to convince herself of the Chantry’s justified actions - it’s not that she’s purposely trying to condemn the elves, she just does not want to see the evils and mistakes of an institution she has pretty much built her adult life on. A life that allowed her to follow a path she felt was befitting of her skills and soul. And like many people with religion, they cannot seperate the institutional failures and serious misconducts from the faith.

I absolutely agree it is in character for Cassandra to be ignorant about this, given other things she has said expressing refusal to acknowledge elven point of views. But it’s not a good quality for her to have. And as @faerunner already said, the big problem isn’t that Cassandra has this point of view, it’s that this is the only point of view we hear. Dorian shares it too. But here is no argument. We’re just supposed to accept this comment, despite as I pointed out in that post, it is inaccurate.

Religions by their nature need to be deontological - meaning it can’t have flaws and inconsistencies. It needs to be by its nature always ‘true’ to its core messages and therefore exists philosophically in the realm of black in white. When in reality, it’s in the moral grey area as much as everything else. The people within it can be flawed, as Cass we know really prefers focusing on, but she manages to largely not see (at least historical actions not really the more recent ones) as the failures of people - individuals - not her faith, not the group. Which is fundamentally just inaccurate as no one can commit genocide or invasion without the willing consent and support of the group as a majority. Im so glad you pointed this out - it’s just more credit to brilliant character construction and intimate understanding of how people justify religious evils.

Hey maybe don’t paint every single belief system with the same Christian/Catholic brush because that’s not true?

I would argue that Cassandra is almost equally bad at recognizing the failures of people in recent times as well. 

It’s really like they researched the morality, psychology of Crusaders or Renaissance religious figures who maintained justification of the Crusades. I love Cass but she like everyone in the games (and like all brilliant series that study the flaws of politics and religions like Game of Thrones) is seriously flawed. Cass is not evil, she’s just reacting to an inherited childhood situation, she’s doing what she needs to to feel safe and valid.

LOL I think you are giving BioWare way to much credit, but yes, a comparison between Exalted Marches and the Crusades can definitely be made. It’s just a shame that, as the whole point of that post, they didn’t spend just as much time on how the victims felt.

Like Dorian and Varric opposing consistently undermine the traditionalism and omnipotence of institutions in an attempt to be independent from them and therefore safe because hierarchies and institutions have so consistently not only failed but seriously harmed them on such an intimate level (the Dwarven caste system/way of life and Tevinter as a society). Varric and Dorian still find admiration or use for aspects of their childhood societies but it’s their flaws that have made them view those institutions the way they do in the time of Inquisition.

You are comparing Dorian opposing tyranny to Cassandra defending it?

It’s so clever - because we don’t judge these figures as historical persons through a lens of fact but we get to know them so intimately. They become real persons for whom we see our actions make consequences directly. It puts us in the position of leaders of Catholicism during the Crusades - it perhaps says, “It is more difficult to condemn people you’ve come to know because they are real and thus it makes taking moral action much more difficult.”

HOLY FUCK.

No. No, I absolutely judge through facts, and you know, general morality. No, it absolutely does not make it more difficult to condemn a character saying something wrong when they are in fact, 100% wrong. 

It’s like when Tyrion kills Tywin - he basically plunges the entire political system of a really powerful nation/continent into chaos - like fuck you now everything’s going to go to shit and the White Walkers are going to so easily come and kill everybody ! But man who didn’t want Tyrion to kill to Tywin? We were all on his side when that happened. But through a historical lens, the boy did some serious damage to the citizens of the country. Not that Tywin was a brilliant moral leader but one could argue at least the country wasn’t plunged into political factionalism and thus unable to successfully defend itself against the ice boys.

I have no idea what you’re talking about because I stopped watching Game of Thrones after dragging myself through the second season; I found the story interesting enough, but the copious amount of gratuitous sex and also general shitty treatment of the few characters of colour and female characters was too much to continue. But I’m gonna go on a limb and guess this has nothing to do with anything in the post I made.

So yes Cass is super wrong but it also is 100% how she would manipulate herself to see that slice of history. I mean - how scary is that that a leader has that view sitting on the Sunburst Throne (if you pop her there)? You say, “well she’s got all these great qualities etc.” but then what are the ramifications of putting someone with some form of internalised racism in a position of power?

Oh gee, what a high-fantasy thought-provoking question that is. A person who gives zero shits about the people who’s land they settled on and now rule over. I wonder what the ramifications would be. It is so hard to wonder. I just don’t know. //Sarcasm

What if she in some years starts another Exalted March? Historically, we’d look at the Inquisitor and go, “What were you thinking!?”

Yeah I sure fucking would especially because my Inquisitor would never do that to her people.

But history doesn’t happen historically. People are biased and function through personal relationships, moving through the world within the framework of those dynamics. The moral of this section of the games is, you’re going to need to make decisions that will shape the world but you will struggle to make them unbiasedly. And the consequences of that can be cataclysmic. Anyway lol unintentional essay

This might be news to you, but sometimes making decisions using bias can be a good thing. It’s called having a moral conscious. So yes, as I have said a few times now, I will absolutely judge Cassandra for lacking one in this scene. And general history knowledge.

Anyway, this whole unintentional essay was almost entirely irrelevant to the point of my post, but whatever. Glad we could clear up that what Cassandra said here is a bad thing and bad things should be recognized as bad things, not unquestioned qualities.

[yaz-the-spaz]

WIP MEME

was tagged by the lovely @beautifulkingzayn -- can’t wait to read all the things you’re working on! (that stripper!zayn fic and the blue is warmest color au sound especially interesting!)

the rules are thus: list all the things you’re currently working on in as much or little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on. This can be writing, art, vids, gifsets, whatever.

oh god.

so. i have a shit ton of things i’m working on simultaneously... 

(it’s a tiny part of the reason, among many others, that i take such long breaks from the twelve fic cause half the time i get caught up working on other shit and then i’m like wait no gotta get back to twelve it’s been way too long lol smh)

but anyway the main thing at the moment, as many of you all know and as i’ll probably ramble on about for way too long is the twelve fic, which is sort of a winter soldier au, or at least that’s what it was inspired by anyway but it’s kind of deviated so much from that and taken on such a life of its own at this point that idk if it can even really still be considered an au of that verse anymore but it features zayn as a brainwashed assassin who goes by the name twelve after being kidnapped and having all of his memories wiped when he was a kid. it’s super triggery and basically involves every bad or horrible thing you could imagine happening to a person happening to zayn at some point until (by chance) he encounters liam, his childhood best friend, who he doesn’t remember in the middle of a bank heist and then later gets assigned to monitor liam b/c the person behind the whole brainwashing child assassin program, aka the director, is a sick fuck. cue liam freaking out and trying to do everything he can to help zayn but having no clue what he’s doing and the other boys finding out and pitching in to help too, along with some interesting side characters both original and non-original. okay i’ve gone on about this fic long enough, onward to the mountain of other ficlets i’m working on smdh…

a sex pollen fic set in 2015 (shortly after zayn left the band) wherein liam gets drugged (sort of) by a fan while out and about in LA with zayn and thinks he’s just coming down with something/getting sick till they get back to zayn’s house and liam ends up begging zayn to fuck him while zayn tries to be the good guy and resist and not take advantage of a naked, drugged out liam

a peter pan ziam/ot5 au featuring zayn as peter, liam as wendy, harry, louis & niall as the lost boys, little mix as fairies, simon as captain hook, and dan wooton (ugh sorry i fucking hate his name so much) as smee (also a name i hate so it works lol), still debating on the mermaids…might make one of them t-swift and maybe throw kendall and gigi in too (and possibly throw in cheryl as part of hook/simon’s pirate crew idk?)…and i also haven’t settled on anyone for tiger lily yet either but i’m open to suggestions for that too if anyone wants to throw someone’s name in the hat. anyway it should be a wild ride if i ever finish it, but got writer’s block shortly after writing the first few scenes and tried to come back to it twice but just couldn’t figure out where to go from where i left off so we shall see…

what else? um…a super angsty bottom liam bdsm ziam fic set during the wwa tour

a drabble wherein liam has a secret voice kink and gets off to zayn’s m.o.m album when he’s home alone

a weird ass fairly oddparents inspired au where liam is basically timmy and zayn keeps coming home to find new stuff in their house and vague explanations as to where they came from (should be posted soon i think)

part three of my outlaws series, which is a ziam prohibition era au series with lots of friendly ot5 feels and some struggles with period-typical homophobia and racism, featuring zayn as a bad boy bootlegger, liam as a good church-going small town boy (at first anyway), louis as a pimp, and niall and harry as his rent boys; in the part i’m currently working, part three, zayn and liam end up going back to liam’s hometown and liam has to grapple with the demons he left behind, including facing his parents (mainly just his mom) who he hasn’t seen in over two years and some of the shitty townsfolk he used to be friends with

there’s also a half-finished ziam five times plus one drabble that got shortened to a four times plus one (and honestly may end up getting shortened to three plus one just so I can get off my ass and finish it because it’s been half done for going on like eight months now and it’s honestly ridiculous smh) but anyway it was originally supposed be the five/four times zayn and liam woke up in bed together and it didn’t mean anything/was just friendly (supposedly) and the one time it meant more

and then there’s the main one that’s taking up my time lately (besides the twelve fic) and that i’m hoping to be ready to start posting soon as well, a slave!liam ot5 fic where the other four come home to their shared flat to find a box with a live boy inside (liam) sent to them by way of a secret organization that calls themselves modest and deals in underground human trafficking, training people to be servants and then shipping them off to groups of people/families whose needs they feel the slave’s skills would match best…it shares a lot of similarities with my twelve fic (in terms of the whole forced servitude thing, brainwashing, and a secret underground org that deals in kidnapping and human trafficking and monitoring people and all that) which was completely unintentional because i actually started writing it around like three years ago now and had completely forgotten about it up until a few months ago when i found it again at the bottom of one of my folders while in the middle of working on twelve and was like holy shit why do i keep writing things like this lmao but then decided to continue it anyway and i’ve been working on it piecemeal ever since and not sure when it’ll be ready to post cause the beginning still needs a lot of work, but hopefully it won’t be too much longer cause I’m really curious and excited to see what people think of it and am kind of anxious/antsy to post it lol

oh and i also have an original fic i’ve been working on kind of piecemeal too, a super angsty fic about an incubus who hates being an incubus and basically tortures himself with sleep deprivation to keep himself from using his powers while also trying to deal with the trials of high school, his abusive father, his asshole of a step-brother (who’s also a siren) and being gay, but ends up falling in love and being forced to kind of come to terms with himself…also kind of delves into what makes someone a monster and how we perceive and define ourselves, and the whole monsters vs. humans debate and which ones are the “real” monsters, etc.

so yeah that’s pretty much it for the most part but i do also have a whole doc full of plot bunnies for like a million other fics (mostly ziam and ot5, but also a few original ones) that may at some point in the future get fleshed out and posted…if i ever get around to finishing the ones i listed here first…le sigh i am a problem child...so sorry this dragged on as long as it did but hopefully out there finds these at least mildly interesting and isn’t completely put off by the fucking dissertation i just wrote about my stupid wip’s

anyway, thanks again @beautifulkingzayn for the tag! tagging @doveziam, @zipplekink, @wlwharrie, and @ohthathurt and i know there’s probably a bunch of other people i could tag but my brain is farting at the moment and i can’t think of anyone else, if anyone sees this though (if anyone even bothers to read it lol) and feels up to joining in even if you weren’t tagged, feel free to participate! i’d love to see what everyone else is working on! (and apologies if you’ve already been tagged or just don’t feel up to doing this)

[pathfindersemail]

Do you think people like Reyes because he's the spicy Latino character? im trying to understand the hype. I kind of think people just like him for being hot brown boy with hot accent.

lol wtf you’re like the third nonny to ever ask me to speak for the entirety of Reyes stans and tell you why we like him. I mean, whatever answer I give will be personal and not necessarily a reflection on the community, so let me get started on something I can generalize: fetishization.

[*Note I have a small postscript answer anticipating Sloane Kelley’s characterization at the end of this post.]

Short answer: No, but… Long Answer: Yes, but… >both buts lead to: but racism is something we participate in regardless of whether or not we are anti-racist.

Basically, we consume and propagate tropes and images regardless of how we problematize it, and it’s really up to your consumption of Reyes’s character to determine your complicity in the fetishization that inevitably follows a character like him.

The Unintentional Lecture on the Spicy Brown Boy with an Accent Trope

I think you’d all be lying if you say you didn’t get a wee bit charmed by the accent when you first heard it. It’s subconscious; it’s ingrained in everything we consume; the person with the accent is exotic, mysterious, and jarringly different from the identities you formed in the creation of your protagonist.

Writers, filmmakers, and artists have constantly employed accents for characters to instill a very impermeable yet nonetheless alluring sense of “difference.” This is why George Lucas racistly gave the aliens accented English in the prequel trilogy despite having given them acceptable yet unintelligible (to us) alien languages in the original Star Wars trilogy. The bureaucrats starving Naboo for a trade deal get the haughty Japanese businessfolk accent; the slaver who owned Anakin and is “stingy” has a vaguely semitic accent; Jar Jar Binks with his “massah” lingo and incoherence eerily mimics the language white writers ascribed to black slaves in 19th-century fiction (as seen in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Huckleberry Finn), and it’s weirdly reminiscent of Jamaican accents as well, so you can’t help but think of his “tomfoolery” in a racialized undertone. I’m sorry to call out George Lucas in this (I’m really not tho), because he isn’t alone. My point is that in the most blatant of cases, accents from real communities and groups are transposed onto alien or monstrous creatures in a move that simultaneously anthropomorphizes them (i.e. giving them voice and characterization) without granting them the dignity of being fully human and an American or British accented English seems to be the dominant mode of doing this. [Let’s not talk about how Bioware has handled accents for aliens in GENERAL in the ME Original Trilogy for now, because this is complicated]

On the flipside you can dehumanize human characters by giving them this same treatment of accents. See this post for an elaboration.

What happens when you give a human character an accent?

Oh all sorts of things. I’m gonna just drop it right here and lay it on y’all this foundational and phenomenal book called Orientalism by Edward Said. Being a product of the late 70s, updates and headway have been made in this mode of literary criticism. But basically, artists and writers have always romanticized “Eastern” tropes, cultures, and artifacts (including speech) in a way that hides the violence of imperialism while inundating the “motherland” with its stolen wealth. Writers loved them their muslin fabric, their jade jewelry, their olive-hued women; the sexual provocativeness of 1000 and One Nights. It was a way for the “West” to impose and project its imagination on cultures they do not and refuse to understand.

Spanish accents (whether from Spain, Latin America, and other spanish-speaking post colonies) are not exempt from this “Orientalism” despite its emphasis on the East. As some of you might recall, Spain was once part of the Islamic empire of Al-Andalus in the fifteenth century; Western Europe (cough cough mostly England cough cough) constantly ascribed to the Irish and the Spanish a “blackness” associated with “Moors” - no doubt a result of their trade dealings with Muslim cultures at the time. There is a long history of Spanish figures and characters being treated as malcontents - they are outsiders who fit remarkably well in their courtly contexts. [See this post for examples, but I also recall Spanish Tragedy as an early modern example]. 

So to sum up what I mentioned above, Reyes definitely is a product of all these tropes at work. As a prominent character, his accent does have a function. Everything you’ve absorbed via your good friend Cultural Osmosis Jones will subconsciously make you alert to the following descriptors: enigmatic, elusive, charming. I also think it’s interesting that he walks up to you as Umi is aggressively making her customer pay by brandishing a dagger. Your introduction to Reyes are therefore associated with: seedy bar fight and accent.

The complicated part of this answer is, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Reyes is nonetheless well developed and humanized. He does not flirt with you at every turn (contrary to what some people say), and he does not make advances if you choose the non-romance options for dialogue. He also expresses genuine vulnerability WITH you (so you’re not manipulated into pitying him). But perhaps the most human part of him (that arguably makes him more exciting than other Andromeda characters) is that he is unapologetically flawed. In the culmination scene of their romance, he either thanks you for accepting these flaws, or he makes a cheesy line about how you have him figured out.

“You’re the encrypted one.”

“haha… I was about to say something cheesy.”

“Say it.”

“Consider me hacked.”

We can say aw cute how cheesy, but what he’s really trying to say is that he likes you because, like any hacker, you mastered his code and can read them, whereas with others he maybe constantly misread to be what they want him to be (a smuggler, the Charlatan, etc). The sweeter option where he thanks you for accepting him is a more straightforward way of admitting the exact same thing. 

To return to the question, YES the accent plays a heavy part in hooking the player into his backstory (conscious or not), but Courtney Woods really did a great job psychologizing him into a very relatable and refreshingly honest figure whose irreverence makes for an interesting experience of a game that otherwise poorly handles ethical quandaries.

Skin Color?

There’s no question that people LOVE a brown character. The aforementioned “classic” Uncle Tom’s Cabin has an array of enslaved black characters, but the only ones who get a happy ending are… “quadroons,” which is a derogatory term for black slaves who are visibly mixed/mostly white (i.e. they pass as “a quarter black”) whereas the unambiguously black character like Uncle Tom dies horribly. But that was the nineteenth century. What has happened since? I don’t have to explain to you that when casting for a protagonist who is also black, Hollywood tends to hire light skinned black characters. Why? Frankly because people are racist and tend to criminalize dark skinned black people. “Brownness” goes along with the orientalism mentioned with accents; it hearkens to an exploited colonial wealth that speaks of exotic flavors. The description of darker skin as chocolate, caramel, or other foods grown from colonies and plantations relies heavily on the consumer/reader/viewer’s acceptance of brown as exotic.

Again, Reyes gets better and more humanizing characterization than his skin color and accent, but this history is nonetheless present in our consumption and imagination of him. And fandom has to be aware of this history if they want to avoid fetishizing a Latino character in their artistic works and contributions. 

So nonny, I think the trope is sedimented in our love for Reyes, but to not be able to see past it and appreciate the better parts of his development would be reductive and, frankly, just as racist as sidelining the few representations of Latinos we get.

Postscript note: Sloane Kelley is also a victim of all this baggage and history. As one of the few black women in the game, she was written to be disposed of and unliked. Even if you side with Sloane from the very beginning, she doesn’t get as much fun developments and moments with Ryder as Reyes does, which means Bioware deliberately made her not easily sympathetic. And unlike the original trilogy’s Aria T’Loak, she isn’t presented as competent given how her mob boss antics are shown as unnecessarily violent (it’s the first thing you encounter when you arrive at Kadara), and she is presented as tactlessly uncompromising whereas both Aria and Reyes are allowed room for a business savvy maneuver. 

I still argue that you should be given the option to broker a truce between the two. It’s so fucking shameful that you basically lock the romance over her dead body (which is why I rarely share gifs and images of the cave scene). It’s violent, and I really expected better from Bioware.

[tumblunni]

MORE PERSONASONA THOUGHTS

Actually maybe it could be cool to imagine a design for a phantom thief whose mask is like a full face-covering thing? Like a faceless mask. or a mask with a buncha eye symbols on it. OR maybe the persona has that aesthetic, I dunno??? One of the beta protag designs in the artbook has a mask like that, but with a smiley face covering it. That + an all-concealing cloak = a pretty damn cool aesthetic! Even if it didnt fit the protagonist its a shame that they didnt give it to another character, so I might try and make something with a similar appeal.

MORE POTENTIAL THINGS THAT SHOULD BE PERSONAS

Bunnies of myth! There’s the Jackalope (a bunny with horns), the Wolpertinger (a bunny with horns AND wings) and Al-mi’raq (a bunny with only one horn, also said to be one of a kind and incredibly powerful despite being regular bunny sized) And there’s apparantly quite a few other tales of powerful horned rabbits from all different countries and time periods! O_O I was totally under the impression that the Jackalope was just made up in semi-modern cryptid legends, and didnt really count as a proper mythological creature. Rasselbock is the german name, and that sounds really awesome! Also there’s apparantly a hella mysterious recurring symbol of three hares attatched at the ears in an eternal circle, which has appeared in multiple cultures across the world and nobody knows its meaning.

Okay I LEGITIMATELY DID NOT KNOW that Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream is given neutral pronouns in the original form of the play! O_O I mean, the pop culture version is always male, and in school when we read it the character was taught to us as male! I feel totally destroyed that I missed a chance to learn about LGBT characters in history during my school years... Holy shit I REALLY wanna pick Puck now! I always love trickster figures!!

okay i really do not know much at all about folk heroes/classical literature heroes but I do know one from my country at least! Taliesin (tally-essin) was a kind of robin hood esque figure who gets all the same ‘did he actually exist? is he a myth? did a real man exist but was exaggerated in myth?’ stuff. He was a super magical poet bard dude who was magically blessed with the most witty tongue in all of existance because he stole a potion of super knowledge from a witch as a child. It also made him super beautiful cos the witch’s son was super ugly, I always felt REALLy sorry for the poor witch’s son cos seriously she made this potion for him and some random kid stole it and then he’s never mentioned again except to say that ‘he was so ugly that everyone who saw him died, so he made a career as a warrior’. Poor guy. Man, I actually like Morfran a lot better, can I make him a persona? He’s not really a hero or anything, he only gets like two sentences in someone else’s story but I just wanna give him a hug. It also always bugged me that the description of his ‘ugliness’ mentioned how his skin was ‘so black he was like a human crow’ like seriously screw u ancient mythological racisms... ANYWAY thats the only celtic mythology character that’s interesting that hasnt already appeared as a persona, lol. Tho since most of the personas that’ve appeared have been the scottish and irish versions, Finn MacCool was the equivelant to Taliesin. (Same origin story and everything!) The disadvantage is that his name sounds like a shitpost. Also incidentally its really fuckin sad that the only canonical depictions of LGBT characters in welsh myth are all like.. Problematic As Fuck Negative Depictions. I used to like the character Math Ap Mathonwy but then I read the story where he punishes the villains by turning them into a pig and a sow and making them rape each other and get pregnant... as punishment... its so fucked up.. And they’re like the only gay characters ever, and they’re also incestuous brothers, and just... so fucked up... The bad side of getting a mythology Special Interest as a kid: pretty much every mythology has at least one horrible sex story in it!

I’m really interested in learning more about Tu’er Shen! He’s apparantly a chinese deity of gay blessings, the spirit of a mortal man who was executed for loving other men and reincarnated as the form of a magical rabbit spirit. I hope he ended up finding true love in the spirit world... :( Seriously, even friggin mythological figures are dying from hate crimes. I don’t think people were very optimistic when they created this story, its horrible to know that society still hasnt progressed far enough that this bullshit has stopped happening! Cmon, seriously!! Please say the future is gonna be safe, someday! I can just imagine Tu’er Shen looking down on us and still crying.

Huh! Persona 5′s homophobia also manifesting in a weird unintentional way! They mention how one of the ways everyone attempted to get the sun god Ameratsu to open up her door was ‘someone doing a lewd dance’, and there’s a joke about Ryuji being that person. But I had NO IDEA that originally the person who did that was Ame No Uzume, another female deity! And it seems pretty damn ‘LGBT themes in mythology’, i mean the dialogue is Ame No Uzume saying ‘come and admire how perfect I am’ *points at crotch* I mean they probably couldnt mention all the explicit details in this random cameo mention in a persona game, but seriously would it have been so hard to just say it was ameratsu and ame no uzume? I suppose maybe since its a japanese game there was the assumption everyone would know the myth tho, so its more of a failure of the dubbing.

And then there’s a lot of themes of androgeny and gender-changing in Hindu and various african mythologies, but I feel like I’d have to do a lot more research into those cultures to depict them accurately. Its a damn shame that barely any european cultures had that level of respect for LGBT people so long ago, yet we like to act like we’re the height of progress and assume every other culture followed along the same historical template as us... I’m really interested in learning more about Dahomey mythology, wikipedia says that they have a genderless creator deity who split into two male and female twins, which then combined again into a different bigender deity. (Nana Buluku, Mawu, Lisa and Mawu-Lisa) And apparantly in zimbabwe there’s a shona deity called Mwari who is also genderless. I really don’t know anything about these cultures though, and there’s no way I’m gonna be drawing dumb anime versions of people’s important mythological figures based on just a wikipedia crawl! But at least this has inspired me to wanna go learn more. Also it just makes me feel a lot happier about myself to know that its not like there’s zero genderless people in all of mythology, just because my country has always been hella bigoted ^_^ But man, wikipedia’s list of LGBT figures in mythology is really REALLY focused on only depictions of sex, and it counts all the super negative stereotypes and shit of villainous rapist gay folks and people being ‘punished’ by being turned into another gender. And then any sort of positive interpretation is all THIS IS TOTALLY JUST AN INTERPRETATION HERE IS ALL THE EVIDENCE FOR IT BEING WRONG, YOU CANT IMPOSE MODERN IDEALS ON MYTHOLOGY NOBODY WAS EVER GAY BEFORE THE WORD EXISTED IN ENGLISH SO yeah its really demotivating to me to continue reading this and just Yikes with a capital Yikes. I’m gonna try and find if there’s more sources online about LGBT mythology education written by actual LGBT scholars...

[dunandtwenty]

tyler + josh + some race things

this ended up being quite long, so I’ll leave it under the cut, but it would mean a lot to me if you read it! 

p.s. there’s a lot of other claims out there of ableism/sexism/homophobia/etc. both within twenty one pilot’s music and/or in tyler and/or josh’s personalities...I don’t delve into that in this post, but that’s not to say that there’s at least some partial truth in them.

TL;DR BOTH TYLER AND JOSH ARE WHITE AND REGARDLESS OF RACE THEY SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR ANY/ALL INSENSITIVE THINGS (NO MATTER HOW UNINTENTIONAL) THEY’VE SAID/DONE. ALSO 21P FANS PLEASE ACCEPT THAT EVEN THOUGH TWENTY ONE PILOTS HAS DONE A LOT OF GOOD THINGS, THEY’RE NOT PERFECT ANGELS. PLEASE BE CONSTRUCTIVELY CRITICAL, NOT JUST OVERTLY DEFENSIVE.

this post was brought along largely by this post that I recently commented on; many other fans (and non-fans) have commented as well, primarily asking why this is an issue or using it as another reason to dislike the band, respectively.

to precedent my spiel, I’d like to note that, firstly, I’m not white - I’m half korean + half chinese. additionally, I love twenty one pilots with my whole heart, and it’s because of this that I’m spending the time to send a critique out into the bottomless internet sphere. I’m not trying to start any arguments here, and quite frankly, if you’re white, I don’t want to hear it.

let’s begin:

1. (A) josh dun does, technically, have asian heritage. as noted in this instagram post, his great-great-great grandmother was japanese. from what I can tell, there’s no other asian blood in his family, making him 1/16 japanese and 15/16 white. honestly, I don’t care that “french, german, swedish, welsh, etc.” is, in the most literal definition, a “mix” - he’s white. he’s white passing, and really the only thing that makes him look even a little bit east asian is his eye smile. josh is white, you guys.  (B) a spinoff of this is the comments section on the aforementioned instagram post. here are some good ‘uns:

      “ur not Asian. ur kawaii”       “YOUR AN ASSSSSSSSIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN”       “his swinty eyes. lol he's asian”       “SQUINTY BEAN”       “Aw I knew it. You look gorgeous anyway.”       “ You're such a beauty tho so thanks Edwin dun”

the issue with most of the comments on this post is that it’s everyone @-ing their friends saying “look, I knew it!” I know these comments don’t come from a place of malicious intent, yet it’s also important to note that that “guess the ethnicity” isn’t some fun game...it’s offensive and stereotypical. there’s also a number of comments that are like “you’re still hot!” which - while also probably not meant to be offensive - implies that there’s something less-pretty about people with asian heritage/looks. also, “squinty” is derogatory. there’s also a lot of comments from asians (mostly half- or full) saying how cool it is that they sort of share ethnicity with a member of their favorite band; this is no way should be taken as “josh dun is asian representation in the mainstream media” because guess what? he’s white.  (C) there’s word of josh being racially insensitive himself - primarily that’s he’s preformed blackface. I can’t find any real documentation (likely because it’s been removed either by josh/management/fans/etc.) but regardless of any of that: blackface is wrong. i don’t give a fuck that josh has asian heritage. even if he was a poc, blackface is wrong. even if josh didn’t do blackface, blackface is wrong. there’s also controversy surrounding his and tyler’s black neck/hand paint - they’ve discussed in interviews before that the paint is a symbol of their negative emotions/insecurities, though it could be argued that this perpetuates our subconscious “black=bad” that’s been created thanks to years of institutionalized racism...this post is long as is, so I’m not going to get into it.

2. (A) tyler is half-Lebanese, but he’s still white. claiming that lebanese people are ethnically arabic is a vast generalization. (you can read more about this here and here.) even if he is ethnically arabic, tyler is incredibly white passing. his name is tyler joseph, for christ’s sake.  (B) I mentioned at the very top of this post claim that twenty one pilots is appropriating (for lack of a better word) black culture because tyler raps without real recognition of the origin of the genre. I don’t want to get too far into this - firstly because there’s already lots of commentary out there on this (here’s a really good post and another really good post) and secondly because I’m not black and therefore have no real authority to speak on this issue. what I will say is this: there’s a ton of twenty one pilots fans out there saying “rap isn’t just for black people/you’re just trying to divide people/this isn’t actually offensive/learn how to deal” if you’re a fan who believes that, you need to back off. you’re right in that there’s more than black rappers now - eminem’s white, dumbfoundead is korean, pitbull is latino. that being said, it’s of utmost important to respect what you’re using, something that twenty one pilots really hasn’t been the best at.

thanks for reading  - amy AKA @dunandtwenty