#I told myself I'd do a tl;dr but I did a tangent

[tmrrwppl]

Not to vague post, but I'm mad for my friends and the genuinely sweet people that had to go through all this. And I'm late to the whole topic so, no names or anything, just me yelling into the void, probs... And I'm sorry I didn't go full bitch and scream this from the rooftop at the time, as I feel this would have saved a lot of hurt.

But a person made gifs of a native youtuber doing a whole joke about the Spirit Halloween native costume. And claimed it was regalia.

I knew enough about the tribe to know that it was a costume, not to mention the youtuber explicitly states it-- and waves around the packaging. I messaged the gif maker just saying 'hey, I need to tell you, this is not regalia' and they were incredibly snooty about how they had been to a local pow wow and saw these outfits on native ladies there and it was clearly NOT a costume.

I supplied the actual Spirit Halloween Link and pointed out in the video, that they referenced the gifs from, where the youtuber explicitly states it was a sexualizing costume as well as waving the package around, then said that I was feeling ill from people reblogging it thinking it was regalia (like I said, I knew enough about the tribe to know it was not the right cut, the dyed feathers were BS, etc etc etc).

They were more mad I sent 5 messages (I sent three, I just checked) with each point and told me to delete my reblog where I said it wasn't regalia (which, my bad, I can see how it was annoying and stuff, but I have problems keeping my thoughts in clear order so I had to divvy the messages up so it wasn't one long tangent of rambles-- already doing it here!).

And I sat on this interaction for literal years while good friends of mine trusted this person. Because I'm not someone to question when another claims to be native, and because let's be honest my own native blood is questionable at best, in spite of my family's oral histories. So I'm not going to try to speak over someone who is more confident about their ancestry, which this person was. And it was admirable. But they weren't my cup of tea, based on that interaction... So I just ignored this person until recently, when I empathized with hate they were getting and extended an olive branch to wish them well.

And then I wander off Tumblr for a couple weeks and come back to people I care about being hurt by this person's words and actions, and people feeling tricked and betrayed by this person's claim, and I'm angry at myself and that person for doing that and allowing that to happen.

TL;DR: I know words can only do so much, but I am sorry they did this to you and broke your trust and hurt you all. And I'm sorry for not being the bad guy and pointing it out earlier (there was also a lot going on in those days and I wasn't keen on stirring the pot). I hope you all can heal and move on and that the native community and RPHs can go back to being fantastic and wonderful hooman beans who provide so many resources and learning for everyone.

I just had to get this off my chest or I'd be up all night thinking about it, I'll probably fuck off for a little longer while I fight the legacy editor, but I love y'all. Drink your water <3

[otverzhennyy]

@ragnfinder​ i'm not scared i'm Curious now & that's insufferable

Hahaha aaw that's sweet of you the tl;dr of it is that Genshin writing is very transparent on the political side it's praising, a political side I find highly detrimental to anyone but the 1%. It goes hand in hand with the Chinese propaganda in China and totalitarism (dictature) that's been going on over there. Genshin playable characters do imo extremely questionable things that are actively praised by the narrative, a lot in mundane interactions.

If you are *that* curious I can always talk on discord about several instances.

It goes from Ningguang using children as informant and not paying them despite being rich, then the narrative jokingly saying that with this free child labor the children “haha” did not do their homework and skipped lessons but Ningguang then praises that children “become more mature by working rather than going to school” ― it’s praise on the Chinese (but really it applies anywhere where that issue is present) child labor that you are being fine with only being paid in honor (and not salary) by such a powerful and cool person. It is played mundanely and for jokes, it normalizes it, and then we get a cute hangout CG of just that. Fantastic.

To Raiden Shogun only making grand political statements about how better Inazuma is without doing anything to make up for the physical, mental and emotional trauma she caused on the population. She makes a grand statement on the plane of Euthymia, and everyone is fine and the Tri-Commissions still have authority in Inazuma and are highly respected... and the commoners are fine with it, they don’t do anything. Not uprising, and Ei is overall seen by the narrative as a very good, caring person. She’s a protagonist, a main cast, when honestly if anything Momoyo and “Gendou Ringo” would be more proper underdog main characters for the region. A lot of people were surprised when Ei was discovered as being entirely forgiven for what happened, but that is the point of the narrative. It is praised that the governmental power cannot do anything wrong, it is intricately a political statement―which is something that most people don’t agree with thus why the dissonance that people find it so weird why this happened.

And it is exactly what happened with JK Rowling’s writing.

Both the Genshin and Joanne writing are radical centrism, alt right, whatever you wanna call it. They praise high people of power who rise above people their station through opportunities, but without ever doing anything about the status quo. Said status quo executed by corporations should never be changed or even questioned.

It is why we get so many dissonance in Genshin from writers like “Why doesn’t Ningguang give money to the people in Liyue that are, you know, committing suicide over debts”, “Why don’t the Knights do something about Eula’s ostracism”, “Why does Inazuma doesn’t become a democracy I thought this was gonna be the point of the whole antagonist overbearing Shogunat arc”.  All those questions go away the second you apply that the writers are radical centrists and praise the church of never questioning the higher authorities.

Oh ok sure so why am I so peeved about this ? Well that’s the thing. I like my politics in fantasy, I don’t like when it is praising things that I find really harmful IRL. The implications of such a radical stance in writing while never showing other sides to it thus making the praise and thought one-sided is just extremely tasteless to say the least as someone who greatly enjoys medias and the effect they have on people.

If you are lost and are wondering what I’m talking about, let’s put it this way:

>Let’s say you’re openly gay >Gays are ostracized through inherent homophobia in society >With hard work and by taking opportunities, you rise to the top of your society and being gay is now not a taboo for people who perceive you and you alone because you have so much power >However, you would not do anything to promote that other gay people are ostracized because you find that the status quo make sense and is a GOOD thing. And that the only reason you are not ostracized for being gay now is because YOU and YOU ALONE rose ABOVE your station. But it would never go through your mind that “Hey I could make life better for other gay people.”

And with the new Ayato quest that exactly keeps doing this, every update I’m, honestly? If we be real? At my worst I’m really fucking tired of this. I love novels, I love games, I love theatre, I love cinema, so I know how to compartmentalize, take some lose some, etc. but this downright grind my gears the wrong way. I do my best to make up for everything I love in this. Again it’s just like Harry Potter, I love the Wizarding World but the rest o o f . “Oh but just ignore it” yeah in some cases I can, but this is radical writing, it’s so praised through the simp writing for this ideology you cannot escape it. So I take the lore, the NPCs (that are very obviously not written by the same people, two departments: one for gacha characters to make money and the other are world building; thus the weird as hell dissonance that playables have no characterization and only expository dialogue are they are walking aesthetics and the NPCs have actual, tangible character arcs and growth.) and I play around with it.

That is actually something fun in roleplaying in Genshin (like Harry Potter lmao), it is the fun of exploring all those things, and I give an absolute gold medal at people who do the amazing writing of adapting their muse’s political stance to make the interactions really organic (as, again, in my rules, I’m canon compliant), and smooth those really bad radical edges.

This is also like. 1/10th of how long I can talk about this because I am. A. Big. Anthropology. Nerd.

If you read this so far, omg, er, thank you very much it feels good to be heard out even if you disagree no hard feelings. This is a softcore porn loli/shota heavy anime gacha game made by a billionaire Chinese corporation, at the end of the day it’s not Genshin it’s the whole industry. AND yes I have fun in Genshin, a lot of fun. I take the characters as their concept not their bad writing as much as I can, the combat is fun, the community is a LOT of fun (I made hopefully lifelong friends here I love you guys). Just that sometimes I have a bad day and it goes under my skin ok. It’s like if you’re in animal care and every update you see one puppy kicked and played for jokes and ok the whole update is not that but it’s EVERY. TIME.