#Post Colonial Fantasy

[brw]

Something with Krakoa that I keep thinking about is the way fans seek to justify it by saying that Krakoa couldn't be colonial because there's no actual colonised groups that the mutants oppressed by founding Krakoa, and this feels like such a Watsonian perspective that it really irks me. Just because the writers of Krakoa (who by and large were cishet white American men) chose to erase the consequences of colonialism from Krakoa's narrative does not magically mean that the act of a predominantly white cast of characters settling in a tropical island and forming a government that acts with impunity any less colonial. Fantasy and science fiction refusing to acknowledge the consequences of colonial behaviours and colonial exploits doesn't mean that those actions stop being colonial, it simply means that the writers think that those behaviours are fine and justified so long as no actual people are involved. I keep coming back to this, but you cannot in good faith claim that Krakoa was not a colonial project when Charles dressed up as an 19th century jungle explorer in one of the first issues of HoXPoX, when Emma called herself the East India Trading Company of mutantdom, and all the other egregious things I could rattle off. Not even getting into Magneto's history of founding ethnostates as a character whose fan-favourite characterisation is based on a Zionist, which is always conveniently left out of the "mutants keep making damn ethnostates" conversation.

[domwitch]

I need to be a vicious evil warlord and he's my precious spoils of war that I scantily dress and drape over my lap so I can grope him easily during my council meetings >:)

[luckthebard]

Genuinely confused as to how so much of the fandom watched the first 2 CR campaigns and Calamity and yet still ended up in a “Ludinus is right let’s kill all the gods” position. Like it’s baffling to me how much content/context people have just decided to completely forget? We had 2 full campaigns of very positive interactions with the gods and the moment there’s some hypothetical and interesting musing and speculation about their roles in the world from a more disconnected place we’re just throwing that out the window?*

Tbh the number of people who watched episode 4 of Calamity and still saw Asmodeus as sympathetic or having a legitimate point is unsettling to me, but while that’s a related issue it’s not quite the same conversation.

But like legitimately how did we so quickly make a hard turn from “The Stormlord teaches his barbarians to use the power of friendship, he’s a funny kindergarten teacher” memes to…this.

*(This is not, btw a comment on the characters having philosophical debates in-world because I think those are interesting and on-theme for the campaign and are also nearly always concluding with “our personal relationship to individual gods and feelings about them are irrelevant actually, the people trying to destroy them are doing wider harm and are in the wrong and must be stopped.” I’m actually loving the engagement with this by the characters in-universe but the fandom is exhausting me.)

[nerdsandbabyteeth]

Can I just say for all the people saying Belos ‘deserves a pathetic death’ and alike, I agree but it’s not about the death itself. He didn’t suffer, he died thinking he was right and trying to continue his manipulation, trying to start all over again. I think for his death to be truly satisfying he needed to remember, he needed to be plagued with visions of the past and the consequences of his actions, how they have amounted to nothing and destroyed his body and his mind in the process. I wanted him to realise, and this could have happened AND them leaving him to die in the rain and stomping on his skull. I understand most people watching the owl house aren’t looking for signs Belos is completing the hubris, harmatia, peripeteia, anagnorisis timeline of tragedy like I was because I keep thinking abt him through the lense of my tragedy course lol but I really wish he had that anagnorisis, that moment of realisation. I just wish he didn’t die thinking he could be martyred in any way for his efforts and death for his cause hmm

Edit: SORRY I turned reblogs off bc this was meant to be just throwing a thought out there before I rewatch the episode tmr and my opinion may change and I am not in a mental state to debate things or respond to people atm

[lesmurples]

I rewatched season 1 of Our Flag Means Death after getting bored with Veilguard, and I was surprised by how many similar character types and themes the two (loosely) share:

Therapy-speak loving mediator as the leader of a ragtag group of mismatched weirdos

A character realizing their nonbinary identity

Background elements of colonialism/imperialism and slavery which our intrepid heroes must resist

Queer found family vibes (tho with DATV the queerness is mostly incidental and does not seem to inform the characterizations much)

Pirates are there

Except while these are some of my favorite aspects of OFMD, I despise how they’re executed in DATV. The overwhelming corporate stink on Veilguard really interferes with the writing’s ability to talk about queer or anti-colonial themes meaningfully.

Comparing the two has actually helped me work through what it is that bothers me about the lackluster character writing of Veilguard and how it could have been better (besides, yaknow, comparing it against the much better-written previous games - they were far from perfect, but god Veilguard makes them look amazing by comparison). To be fair, I’ve yet to finish the game, but I’m privy to like, 50 hours worth of content at this point between playing myself and watching my sister’s playthrough, so if the game finally improves on these points after that long it feels like too little too late.

If you want to read a waaaay too long screed comparing these largely unalike properties, then boy oh boy is this the post for you!

1. The therapy speak:

So uh, the thing about OFMD’s anachronistic, HR-approved managerial therapy speak is that it’s a joke. OFMD is a comedy first and foremost, so this fits right in with the overall tone of the show, and it’s pretty damn funny if I say so myself. Watching Stede - this campy, middle-aged, 18th century theater kid - tell a bunch of hardened pirates to talk through their feelings is hilarious. And really all it does is alienate him most of the cast - the first episode is about his crew planning to mutiny and kill him as a result of his bizarre behavior.

But, as time goes on and Stede and the crew work through hardships and get to know each other a little better, they form a bond of trust and learn how to communicate more effectively. Stede still tries to mediate and resolve conflicts peacefully among the crew, but more directly and with less artifice, while the crew grows more patient with him and realizes the potential benefit of some of his ideas. It’s pretty basic character progression writing overall, but it’s competently executed, which is more than I can say for Veilguard.

In Veilguard, Rook’s youth pastor energy as they mediate every petty squabble between their teammates casts a bland veneer over a deeply bland cast of characters. Disregarding the fact that Rook is the most milquetoast DA protagonist by far, their involvement in every character interaction leaves me feeling like I’m meeting with HR, and not in a funny way. And Rook seems to attract HR-approved pep talks just as much as they dole them out, particularly from Varric but also from Solas and Morrigan of all people. It’s pep talks all the way down!

Where this flavor of therapy speak was used with intention in OFMD to say something about the characters (and to get a laugh), here its purpose just seems to be to nip all interpersonal conflicts in the bud so our cast can be a big happy family. Teamwork! Yay! Except we started with everyone on the team being more-or-less cordial coworkers, and then we end on them being… more cordial? A bit friendlier? There’s no meaningful progression for the audience to enjoy, no real change. Every argument starts bland and it ends bland, and the few that are allowed to continue through companion dialogue are so inconsequential as to be pointless.

The previous DA games had an obvious fix for this: make the characters socially and politically opposed to each other and let them duke it out, all while having to maintain an alliance against a common enemy. The player could get in on this too if they disagreed with someone - twas a grand time. These interpersonal conflicts were a microcosm of the larger political conflicts of the story, and it allowed the characters to explore the influence of their respective cultures upon their current viewpoints. The progression and tension thus hinged on whether the influence of other characters was able to change their perspective, and if it did, what the consequences would be. A somewhat different emphasis when compared to OFMD, but both understand that allowing your characters to come into conflict with each other and resolve it over time is far more engaging than fixing every little issue right off the bat. This isn’t a sitcom where we need to resolve family tensions before the half-hour mark - it’s an 80+ hour game.

(oh god i swear i’ll try not to make every entry this long)

2. The nonbinary identity storyline:

Alright, there is one thing I like about Veilguard (shocking I know), and it’s the option to be trans/nonbinary. I’m nonbinary and have never played an rpg where that was an option before, so that was pretty dope. I think Bioware’s approach to nonbinary and trans inclusion in the character creator was fairly well done and reasonably flexible - definitely better than the trans options in Cyberpunk at any rate. I also like that we have a nonbinary companion, especially since I totally called it when Taash was revealed and felt super smart and vindicated. The execution of Taash’s nonbinary journey though… eh. It’s mostly left me kinda cold.

I won’t be the first to state that the use of modern terminology for nonbinary gender identity is offputting in this setting, and others have explained it far better than I could. It’s a missed opportunity to think through the question of what gender really means in this setting across different cultures (beyond some lip-service to the Qunari being strict about it, which besides being a retcon doesn’t really tell us much), and whether there are existing nonbinary spaces that would potentially align with Taash’s experience of the world, rather than having one transplanted from our modern sensibility. Third genders have existed irl throughout history and are embedded within cultural understandings of gender, and interpreting Taash’s gender through a more historical and/or speculative mode that better fit the setting would feel far less alienating. As it is, Taash’s story just doesn’t seem to fit comfortably in this world, not least because we’re having them discover their identity rather than already have an understanding of it. Their self-discovery story feels out of place in a narrative focused on a high-stakes, end of the world scenario, unless I’m missing something. It reads more like a fanfic that was accidentally tacked onto the source material. (I love fanfic, but the tone just doesn’t mesh here.)

This is perhaps why the writers felt the need to connect Taash’s gender journey with their bicultural experience, which… hoo boy, that didn’t go well. We have to make a binary choice for which of a nonbinary character’s cultural ties should be discarded? Disregarding the fact that this is not how culture fucking works, why are we making this decision for another person? This is the Cole situation all over again, but worse.

Our Flag Means Death, on the other hand, gives us Jim. Jim has lived most of their life presenting as an AFAB woman, but when the show starts is in hiding as a cis man with a fake nose and beard. After their disguise is revealed, Jim goes through the awkward process of addressing the cis dude-heavy crew’s inane questions about them “being a woman now,” indicating that they’re not really sure if they are one. They tell the rest of the crew to treat them like normal and continue calling them Jim, and that’s that. From then on, they’re referred to with they/them pronouns - maybe they had a talk with everyone about it off-screen, or maybe the show wanted to lean on a sort-of magical realism vibe where everyone just knows Jim goes by those pronouns now. Either way, it fits within the tone of the show and doesn’t need to take up much more space than that. We later see where Jim grew up and learn about their background getting trained by an assassin-nun to murder her family’s killers - we got bigger fish to fry.

Does every queer identity story need to be handled like this? Of course not - there’s space for a range of queer stories, whether the queerness be incidental or integral, discovered or established. In OFMD’s case, they perhaps could have spoken more about Jim’s nonbinary experience and how it fits into the setting, but they didn’t really need to. They established what they wanted to about Jim’s identity, and they decided not to go into the issue of misgendering from that point forward. I personally like how normalized it makes Jim’s presence feel, even if they perhaps could have done more. But OFMD is a limited series about a large ensemble cast of different queer folks, and they chose to be economical about how some of those queer identities were communicated onscreen.

Dragon Age is likewise made up with an ensemble cast, and considering its high stakes end-of-the-world plot line, maybe it should’ve taken a leaf out of OFMD’s book and not spent quite so much time on Taash’s personal gender journey when we could’ve focused on something a bit more outwardly relevant (a big ask for Veilguard’s very personalized, individualistic style of character writing). We could have certainly related their sideplot back to their gender, but there had to be a better middle ground than what we got.

Anyway, while OFMD is fairly comfortable with anachronism, limiting the explanatory dialogue for Jim and other characters’ identities probably also helped to not break immersion. Bioware likely didn’t want to go this route for Taash, but if I might make a suggestion for our consideration: Krem. Krem was a great example of an integrated trans character who talked about his experience through the context of the culture he grew up in. Turns out, it’s very doable, and in a Dragon Age game no less.

(oh god they’re all going to be this long aren’t they, what have i done)

3. Background colonialism/imperialism and slavery:

Something that Veilguard and OFMD have in common is that the wider context of colonization, imperial conquest, and slavery that each story takes place in is more-or-less kept to the background. The characters and plots are certainly informed by this context, but the main storylines don’t often engage with it directly. And herein lies the problem: this is arguably an appropriate approach for OFMD given its comedic tone, while for Dragon Age - considering that its previous installments engaged very directly with these themes - it reeks of erasure and sanitization.

Hell, OFMD engages far more directly and frequently with these themes than Veilguard’s bloated, 80+ hour runtime, and it’s a 2-season long TV show! It’s 20 hours total at most! It explores the heterosexism of settler colonialism that chased a very gay Stede away from home, the racism and classism of the English naval crew they encounter, the power and constant threat of colonial fleets, the fact that colonizers have been slaughtering indigenous peoples, the presence and mistreatment of African slaves, and so on. They do this all while avoiding direct depictions of traumatic colonial violence, but they don’t shy away from its presence.

This has been argued to death by the community at this point, so I’ll try not to go too far into it, but Dragon Age as a series has always been interested in sociopolitical conflict and systemic oppression. It pulls quite a lot of influence from real-life history - one could say too much, perhaps - to create a fantasy world informed predominantly by the sociological forces of hierarchical society.

Past games have struggled to portray DA’s analogies for real-life racism unproblematically, but I don’t think the answer was to cast them aside or minimize their presence in Veilguard. This only trivializes the systemic oppression of this world retroactively; elven enslavement and oppression (especially in Tevinter) and Tal Vashoth and Qunari as otherized minorities are barely a blip on the radar of the game that is a) heavily focused on Solas’s past as a freer of elven slaves and b) set in goddamn Tevinter, where both elven enslavement is widespread and a longstanding war with the Qunari is still ongoing.

Yes, these story elements been handled poorly in the past, particularly with how elves mirror both African enslavement and Indigenous oppression in a way that creates unfortunate connotations when written carelessly, and how the Qunari have orientalist, Islamophobic undertones. They should not be portrayed through violent, traumatic scenes or within the same problematic scope as previous games, but they should not have been minimized to the extent that they were. It’s a structural writing issue if nothing else - the foundations of Dragon Age’s worldbuilding rely so heavily upon these forms of systemic oppression that removing and minimizing them makes the story incoherent. These elements cannot be written out of the story without completely transforming it, and because they were not willing to do that with Veilguard, we’re left with a gutted husk of a story missing most of its core elements.

Couldn’t we have just, you know, hired some sensitivity readers? Or - god forbid - BIPOC writers? Christ.

4. Queer found family vibes:

This one is bit of a stretch since the characters of Veilguard are not brought together through shared experiences of queerness; rather, they are collected randomly like Pokemon from all over the globe for their dubious skills. However, I do believe the writers are clumsily implementing found family tropes whenever you gather your team together, and they are all queer by default so that Rook can fuck them no matter what. At least that Dragon Age staple was respected if nothing else - The Characters Must Be Fuckable.

But I do think this is why we’ve been saddled with all this corporate HR team-building therapy-speak throughout the game: someone on the writing team thought this is how you write that found family thing the kids these days are so crazy about. Everyone’s super supportive all the time, no one fights too much, and when they do your character steps in to correct them (you do not get a choice in this - all of your dialogue options as Rook are effectively the same mediating bullshit). They’re all growing into a happy little family, and isn’t that sweet. Except that none of these characters are fully fleshed out because that would require giving them backgrounds that connect to the story’s wider lore and worldbuilding, and the writing team were either unwilling to do this or incapable because of production restraints. So it’s really just a bland group of pretty people being blandly nice or blandly rude to each other all throughout this bland, bloated game.

All that said, maybe we could’ve had a (queer) found family at the center of this game and actually made it work. There’s no law that says there have to be people on your Dragon Age team who will never get along or are too politically opposed to ever see eye to eye (even though I vastly prefer that in a DA story and think it reflects the series’ themes better *cough*). Absolution did a decent job of it from what I remember, though I think there were still a few conflicts between the members of that team that were used to communicate worldbuilding to us - that’s what character conflicts in Dragon Age mostly do. That is the narrative function they serve, and it’s not surprising to me that in a game with minimized companion conflicts, we likewise find minimized overall worldbuilding with respect to the various cultures of the current setting.

Anyway.

To be fair to Veilguard, I do not think we needed everyone’s entire life story in order to successfully execute the found family trope. Take Our Flag Means Death - the only character we really get much backstory for is Stede, with Jim coming in second at my estimation, and Blackbeard third. You don’t really find out that much about their histories overall, and you learn barely anything about the rest of the crew. For example, we know Lucius used to lie to his mother that he liked girls and was a bit of a pickpocket, which was not cute - and that’s all we get for him. We can infer that he was probably upper crust to a degree since he’s literate (and just from his overall vibe), but that’s about it, and the other characters are much the same.

The thing is, while I would welcome more information about the OFMD crew, I don’t actually need it. The characters are portrayed in such a way that you can infer most of what you need to know about them through the actor’s overall performance. OFMD was blessed with a wonderful cast who do an excellent job acting both scripted lines and the heavy amount of improv that was encouraged on set. Their character voices are finely honed and well-delivered, and so I’m able to get a strong sense of who these characters are, what motivates them, and how they relate with each other through their well-executed sense of voice.

Veilguard struggles quite heavily with character voice. The companions as written have some distinct qualities, but they never really have much life behind them. Davrin comes the closest to having a naturalistic voice, and I think it’s because he’s a self-serious straight man (comedically, not heterosexually). The rest of the cast relies on much more exaggerated and whimsical character tropes - a noir detective, a quirky gadget whizz, a perky necromancer, etc. - and the character writing just cannot summon level of energy these characters would usually have. We’re given a few fluff scenes with them that are sweet, but outside of that, none of these characters actually have much personality. Taash comes close with their moody teen affect, but it never quite sits well within their character arc, so it often feels incongruous.

And this brings me to my most damning criticism of the game: it is not funny. At all. Okay, maybe that’s not fair - it got a few small chuckles out of me within the 50 or so hours I’ve seen/played, but not more than like, 3 times. These characters just aren’t funny. Taash is kinda funny at first, but it dries up pretty quick. The script is just not capable of consistently good comedy. The only real humor I experienced was from Ghilan’nain acting like a goddamn Looney Toon, which was completely unintentional. Like everything else in Veilguard, the humor is bland, bland, bland.

Previous DA companions are brimming with humor, and it’s a huge part of what makes them so enjoyable. Comedy does a lot of work endearing you to a character, and you can use it in a variety of ways - it can highlight their cleverness, or reveal vulnerabilities and undercut them, or create chemistry or tension between multiple characters, all while giving the audience a sense of surprised pleasure that opens them up to connect with the characters emotionally. With a story as busy and occasionally dark as Dragon Age, using humor helps to quickly endear the audience to your characters and encourage engagement in their stories, while also releasing tension after harsher story beats.

It also works the other way around - when tragedy comes or characters are made to suffer, it can hit that much harder because you’ve become so endeared to them. When the Grey Wardens fail to halt the blight at Ostagar in Origins and are all but wiped out, the sense of loss is best communicated through Alistair, who up until this point has been a friendly, wise-cracking presence at your side. Seeing his grief and sense of despair in contrast to his usual good humor signals what’s been lost better than just being told, and because we are (assumedly) endeared to Alistair through his humorous attitude, we can empathize with his struggle and feel the weight of this story beat more effectively. It’s also shockingly, darkly funny when Morrigan is completely unsympathetic and later calls him a whiny pissbaby for missing all his dead friends. This helps to transition us out of the previous scene’s lower mood, and it tells us a lot about her character and her dynamic with Alistair.

And humor is an extremely valuable tool in executing the (queer) found family trope. Humor not only does a lot of work for characterization (especially with a larger ensemble cast), but it can also signal comfort and trust between characters, as well as highlight tensions without fully compromising the feeling of security offered by the found family. If tragedy strikes, it then offers a contrast against the usual comedic tone that can emphasize a scene’s drama to good effect. Humor isn’t absolutely necessary to pull this off, but it’s highly effective at establishing characters and their relationships quickly and enjoyably, and so it can be a valuable tool for large casts and plot-heavy stories where you have limited time to spend learning about each character.

Comedy is subjective, and so maybe Veilguard’s humor works for you in a way it doesn’t for me. Likewise, maybe the humor of the previous games and even OFMD don’t work for you the way they do for me. However, my main sense of Veilguard is that less investment was put into any comedy writing as versus the previous games. Less time is given for jokes, both in character dialogue and in the outer world, from what I’ve seen of it (I cannot imagine anything like the Golden Nug merchant in Orlais happening in this game). At best we get sorta sarcastic comments from Rook, but even Rook’s “funny” dialogue option only prompts any kind of humorous or sarcastic response like, maybe half the time. The writing staff just did not prioritize humor in this game seemingly at all, either by choice or necessity.

Add to this the lack of character depth and detail with all your companions, and they just have nothing for you to grab onto. They have so much potential with their quirky, surface-level descriptions, but no one did the work to flesh them out or make them engaging. Good humor or a strong character voice could have saved them even with the lack of detail and dimension, but it’s just not there. And because there is no real depth, detail, or good humor to unite the characters with each other, the found family trope falls flat and every interaction just feels like an office event.

If you like queer found family feels and haven’t seen Our Flag Means Death, check it out - highly recommend it. That show nails found family like a fuckin pro, doesn’t even break a sweat. And it’s gay as fuck.

5. Pirates:

Both have pirates. I vastly prefer the OFMD pirates over the Lords of Fortune tho. In case you were wondering.

OKAY. This insanely long post must end. It started as a thought experiment to see what we could learn from OFMD’s successes and if they could be applied to Veilguard, and then it turned into me giving unsolicited writing advice. All I can really add is to tell you that any time I’m playing or watching Veilguard, I’d rather be watching Our Flag Means Death.

Or playing the other DA games. They were pretty good. Yes, even Inquisition - at least Inquisition was funny.

[memberofthejazzclub]

In my small relatively liberal southwest University town, MAGAs are are shouting “The mass deportations are coming!” to **any** person they see as Latinx or Mexican or immigrant. In the U.S. we know that the discourse of “go home, wetback” has never gone away. (Thank you, Chicano Studies.) This is exactly what T**** means by “make amerikkka great again.” Be safe out there but remember, this is nothing new, don’t get rattled, we’ve been fighting colonial violence all along and we have histories of solidarity. How is this a Libertines post? My band has never stopped supporting anti-racism on their side of the pond. Cranking up the speakers to drown out the maga noise.

[deus-and-the-machina]

ffxiv garlemald discourse is so funny because people will go "ugh people just cant stand it when things aren't black and white" and then you look at how the empire are portrayed in stormblood and shadowbringers and its like hm. that seems like a pretty intense and accurate display of violent imperialism to me! Wow I wonder why people in this day and age may find it hard to feel sympathy for them or even hate them on principal. god its such a mystery.

the games like 50/50 to me on how it tackles these themes because I actually like the garlemald arc in EW, I think it has a lot of horrific and powerful scenes depicting how self destructive fascist propaganda and beliefs are, but I also think it doesn't go far enough on some fronts. the garleans' xenophobia is most notably and obstacle to getting them to accept the contingent's help, which is what they're there to do,

but there's never an admission of harm from any garleans on the uuuuuuuuh massive amount of war crimes the nations around them are still suffering from they're just kind of like "we misjudged you...but you actually wanted to help us all along" like yeah thats great now can we get you all some deprogramming because you keep talking about returning to your prime and glory days and I think we need to unpack some stuff you really SHOULDNT return to. im not even really talking about EW proper but the patches where things are a bit more chilled out and people are recovering.

It feels like they wanted to have their critique of imperialism and also have things end with the beauty of human connection and reaching out and these things just don't mesh well because hey a lot of your modern day audience is not gonna like having to treat people yelling xenophobic things at the cast and your character with kid gloves after you showed them hours and hours of the awful things these people's beliefs have done. especially in the present day hoo boy.

[olowan-waphiya]

down with cottagecore, hobbitcore is where it's at.

why be a colonialist fantasy when you can be about living in a cute hole in the ground???

[silencedminstrel]

(Photography by Daniel Cheong, Artworks by Boris FX Optics)

VOICES OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE - A SCENE FROM XIAN GAN PRIME'S ROADSIDE MARKETPLACE

But the price's used to be stable, ma! This is not fair--I'm sorry Human, but the Wrentian Region's "problems" just escalated, I'm down to my very last stock until next week! (Sigh)

Guess I'll take half a kilo then...! Chee Sin! (Crazy) Why Fentomium suddenly went up? What happened to Ah Wan?? And why is this Rekiscian selling here instead??? Chee Bai!

Ever since that (local politician) Ng Kee Huat decided to run for the Union's Chairman next year there's been a flooding of aliens--even from the Gamma Quadrant some more!

And what did President Chua do? ( Scoff) He encouraged it! Something's not kosher here! Oh well! Let's just hope that those loony tech cultists don't decide to move in here next...!

[shivasdarknight]

@koopytron

Forgive my ignorance, but doesn't a set like this help expose people to cultures that they might not have known about? What about players that live in that country and want to dress up in their traditional clothes, are they not allowed to?

I’m responding over here mostly because my reply got a bit long.

First off, I’m no authority on the Sámi.  I want to make that very clear - I’m just echoing what has been said so far by people who have a vested interest in this gear’s removal.  And again, I want to reiterate by pointing out that for information your best bets are the initial letter to Square Enix, as well as this thread by a Sámi player.

The argument for exposure looks nice on paper, but usually isn’t ever executed well - especially in the case of the Far Northern attire.  FFXIV isn’t set up to teach people about cultures (unless it’s Stormblood and the two different fantasy Japans), it’s set up to use cultures as an aesthetic to give each nation a bit of flavor.  Thavnair is India, Ul’dah is your typical desert city, the elves are French, Ala Mhigans are Kurdish and Armenian, Xaela are Mongolian etc etc.  And how much care that goes into representing and educating players about these cultures varies depending on who it is and if Square cares about them.  And every instance of an indigenous culture has been the exact opposite.  Even their treatment of the Xaela and Ala Mhigans are extremely demeaning, but that’s a different topic altogether.

If Square had any interest in exposing people to Sámi culture, they would have contacted the tribe for a collaboration and make them have more of a presence in game than just a glam item that costs $18USD.  They would’ve also done research into what gákti actually look like, and maybe named each piece appropriately.  Instead, we have an offensive caricature that costs $18USD, doesn’t have any cultural presence in the game, and is nothing but a disconnected costume meant to line their paychecks.  And as a reminder: the Sámi were never contacted, Square has not reached out after this demand, and they’ve received no money for Square using their material culture for profit.  What’s sad is Disney did better than them after Frozen, as they similarly appropriated their regalia and even took their music.  Frozen 2 saw them collaborating and the film was even released in one of the Sámi languages, though I’m not entirely sure if they ever saw any amount of the film’s revenue - if someone happens to see this and they know, feel free to correct me.

I think the more important thing here is: do we even want Square to be exposing players to Sámi culture?  Because they do not have a good track record when it concerns portraying indigenous cultures.  Anyone can feel free to add in stuff I’ve missed, but there are plenty examples through the entire Final Fantasy franchise - including, but not limited to: including monsters that have roots in nativist imagery (anthropophage) but naming them after a particular spirit in Algonquin folklore that people keep asking to not be named or included in media; the entirety of Red XIII’s character (even the name he’s introduced by, despite him actually being named Nanaki); the initial portrayal of the Ronso in X (that then got “sophisticated” into the suddenly Icelandic Hrothgar); and the palewashing of Viera (mesoamerican indigenous coded in XII) in the jump to XIV by only focusing on the palest of individuals and making most of them white-looking.

And then there’s the stuff in XIV.  Most of the Tribes (which up until recently were literally known as beast tribes) up until Stormblood are based in some racist depiction of indigenous peoples - like Square did all of their research through racist American movies from the past century.  Many speak in the stilted English you’d see in racist advertisements and media (eg. the Vanu Vanu, and the yoda-like speak of the Ixal), they’re all anthropomorphized animals to some degree and not at all...y’know, human; you spend a significant amount of the game hunting them and being rewarded for doing so (especially if you do daily Clan Centurio marks), many are based on real cultures (Ixal are clearly meso-/south american, Vanu Vanu literally have totems and everything), and the Amalj’aa embody the entire Noble Savage trope to a T (only source for this is unfortunately Wikipedia because everything else was paywalled or didn’t touch on how racist this is).  We only saw this shift in not calling them “beast” tribes anymore around Stormblood because we suddenly got the Kojin (respected merchants based on Kappa), and the Namazu - techincally also the Lupin, but the shared factor is that they’re all predominant Japanese cultures that they’d never bastardize because the entire Doma half of Stormblood is them drinking the Japanese Imperialism kool-aid (again, another topic altogether and best discussed by someone like the journalist, Kazuma Hashimoto - who goes into it a lot on streams).  After that, we saw a deemphasis on indigenous cultures in the tribe quests and the removal of the name once Dwarves, Pixies, Arkosodara, Loporrits, and Omicrons were added.  Qitari are loosely here because they are the First equivalent of the Qiqirn, but they’d still “fit” in the old category by Square’s measure.

And then of course the Whalaqee, the entire New World nonsense, how they portray the Mamool’ja (who are from the “New World”), and the entire racist premise of the BLU questline.  Which is literally just “White Savior is the only one who can save this dying native tribe from evil oil ceruleum barons who brought diseases over, and your main reps are two animal looking guys and a very pale native boy like the tropes from the old movies”.  And yes, this is where the racist New World gear comes in, because that’s the clothing every single member of the Whalaqee wear despite it being a disgusting caricature of ceremonial gear with the war bonnet and everything.  The Mamool’ja are also frequently depicted as unintelligent and only suited for war, and are extremely sexual and there’s a fate where one gets kicked out of the Camp Bronze Lake baths for being too sexual.  Which again: nativist stereotypes that don’t just apply to indigenous tribes of the Americas, but also Japan’s own indigenous peoples - especially the Ryuukyuuan!

The New World gear wasn’t put in there to expose players to indigenous cultures.  They included a racist caricature so people could play dress up with those pieces, and locking their (racist) context behind a side quest most people skip or ignore.  And what ends up happening is whenever I do see players wearing it, it’s almost never people of those cultures doing it “for their own sake” - as it’s a racist caricature and not actually their cultural clothing or what they’d wear - it’s instead people playing out the racist caricatures.  I’ve seen white catgirls with neon pink war bonnets and bikinis, I’ve seen literal red-skinned players in the full get up, and many other offensive costumes that’s come as a result of this set being in the game.

But that set is obtainable through normal gameplay.  The Far Northern set is paywalled, making this especially egregious that it’s a racist caricature of Sámi regalia that they’re making a load of money off of.

There is no in game “Far Northern” culture - it’s just a racist costume for players (and they’re designing this for the majority white, and Yamato Japanese player base) to play dress up with.  They design the game with dominant cultures in mind (hence why everything is so heavy handed with European and Japanese aesthetics and gear, but there’s a suspicious lack of Korean and SWANA names, material culture, etc. when both exist in the game in their own ways through “Far Eastern” attire and Ala Mhigan stuff).  If they’d had any intention on exposing the players to Sámi culture, they would’ve contacted the Sámi for sensitivity or even just copyright issues.

But they didn’t.

Exposing and teaching other people about cultures varies depending on who you’re talking about.  It’s especially sensitive when you have a matter of appropriating not only a minority culture, but one that’s being suffocated by colonization and majority culture appropriation.  It’s why it’s not really an issue that places like Ishgard are a few mixes of European stuff, or that Hingashi is based in Japan pre-border opening, but it’s a major issue for them to bastardize Mongolian, Armenian, Kurdish, and the various indigenous cultures that they have in their inclusion through the Xaela (described as barbaric, and “will eventually be their own extinction” according to the Namazu quests), the Ala Mhigans (who are not treated with the same level of dignity or respect as the Domans, and are portrayed as aggressive and lower class), and the ARR-HVW tribe quests + the Whalaqee (see the above).

It’s fine to want to expose people to other cultures.  You just have to do it on the terms of the cultures themselves.  And going behind the backs of the Sámi people and creating a racist costume that costs $18USD isn’t exposing anyone to their culture (if they did, it’s through discourse like this); it’s just Square making money off of a racist costume so people can play dress up with regalia that isn’t theirs.

[darkwood-hollows]

booktubers: trying to reinvent magical realism into "curio fantasy"

latinos:

[deciphered-narrator]

i can't believe it took me this long to realize that other computer science majors do stem classes for their electives. i have to do humanities or i'll kill myself

[orchidbreezefc]

i just finished super metroid today. i think bookends to a game are cool, but not when they highlight the fact that you are exactly where you started with nothing to show and in fact things would have been better if you never did anything at all and just stayed home.

the game starts with the player answering a distress call on ceres and facing ridley, who escapes with a metroid larva that samus saved in the previous game and was quite attached to her. then the first bookend: a self-destruct sequence on ceres activates for some reason and you have to escape.

samus follows ridley to planet zebes and the rest of the game happens. you explore and shoot aliens and find gear that lets you explore more places to shoot more aliens. it's a very fun game actually!

in the final bit, your old metroid larva pal (now grown up) is mortally wounded in the process of saving you after you awaken the final boss by shooting the jar it's in. defeating the final boss then starts THIS planet's self-destruct sequence for some reason. so there's your other bookend; you can spend it running to your ship and thinking "so... nothing i did in this game had any benefit, huh?"

when you answered the distress call you didnt save ceres, or even stop ridley. your metroid pal thrived on zebes, feasting like a king and growing huge, maybe even breeding. YOU activate a dormant monster, which causes the death of the metroid and then, minutes after, the planet and everything on it.

when i started playing the game i was feeling the standard colonialism video game discomfort, like. why am i killing these aliens. that seems ethically dubious. theyre just chilling in their native habitat. many of them are hostile, but im an intruder in their territory, of course they are! i didnt expect the game to validate this feeling so completely.

the framing doesn't register the bleakness though. as you fly away from the explosion the game exclaims "MISSION SUCCESS!" and i just sat there thinking, what mission? what success?

if my "mission" was to stop whatever ridley's plan with the metroid was (can ridley plan? he seems to be just a big space pterosaur) then you do succeed, by killing ridley (a while earlier), and the metroid, and everything else on zebes, and zebes. you got some suit upgrades and weapons, so that's cool i guess. don't think too much about the intelligent civilization on this planet that made them, or the artifically constructed environments they had built.

this is admittedly a very 2023 way of thinking about this game, but if you ask me, the bigger statement is that this wasn't the 1994 way of thinking about it. i guess it is a really fun game, after you manage to quiet the moral questions in your head, and before they all come rushing back up at you again.

[everyday-is-brighter-with-you]

[ ID: A picture of the cover of the book "The Black God's Drums" end ID]

PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin or that Babel was too heavy-handed just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here

Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn

[mesetacadre]

107 years ago today an organized group of workers in the Russian Empire decided they had had enough of war, misery, the oppression of women, and of a corrupt democracy that had promised much and changed nothing, the Tsar still in his palaces, the workers still giving their life for a cause foreign to the working class of Europe and the world. Most bolsheviks were industrial workers, with an insufficient formal education, precarious salaries and conditions. The working class in the Russian Empire had tried liberal democracy, had seen its hipocrisy in the months following the election of the provisional government, and understood their historic goal of progressing further beyond the democracy of the landowner, businessman and aristocrat. It wasn't the first time the proletariat had attempted to take power, both worldwide and in the Russian Empire, but this time they were ready, educated, an organized enough.

The armies of 14 imperialist powers combined could not stop the will of a mass of workers that had realized their worth, their potential, and most importantly, their dignity. They no longer had to bow down to paternalism, electoralism, and the capitalists to whom they sold their labor, no armed intervention, no amount of propaganda, no adventurist distraction, could take away from that fact. This isn't a fantasy, it isn't idealistic, it's a historical fact, that revolutions are possible, have happened, succeeded, and that the opportunity presents itself sooner than most expect. The only task at hand is to organize towards it. Agitation, education, an actual dual power structure predicated on a unified will, not on voluntarism and horizontalism.

I understand the topic at hand for the last 2 days and many more to come will be the results of the US election. But the US is not the only liberal democracy that increasingly creates disappointment among the social majority. After all the posting about the various liberals that make up the US electoral environment, it is imperious that nobody falls into despair. Not in a self-care way, not in the way most left-liberals have been talking about, referring to an abstract sense of "preparing", but because of the simple necessity for this election to further erode any popular faith in reformism, whether it's Trump's reforms, Harris' reforms, Bernie's reforms, or Stein's reforms. Wallowing in despair is as useful as placing yet more stake into whoever is wheeled out next to promise even less, in what will most certainly be also called the most important elections of our lifetimes.

Return to the working class of the Russian Empire, of a fractured and hungry China, to the colony of Indochina, to the plantation island that was Cuba. And I urge you to exercise some perspective. These masses of people had suffered more than you for longer than you. Nobody's asking you to feel guilty about your economic position in the world, we're asking you to realize that, for as long as there have been modes of production predicated on the exploitation, division and discrimination of a producing class, there have always been options, better options than sinking into despondent depression. They have managed to cast off their yoke and build towards a society not based on exploitation. They're not utopias, and mistakes have been and will be committed, but they all realized and understood that it's better to commit our own mistakes, than to toil under the rational oppression by another class for any longer.

[kyliafanfiction]

Colonies and Imperialism in Fantasy Fiction

tl;dr - Depiction is not endorsement, and (fictional) colonies in fantasy fiction - in entirely fictional settings) is something I think can make for a very interesting story, and the interplay between colonizer, settler, collaborator and resistor makes for very interesting worlds and very interesting stories especially. I include these sorts of dynamics in my fiction that I write not because I endorse colonies or colonialism, but because I find the dynamics that they create in worldbuilding to be fascinating. Anyone who knows much about the original fantasy worldbuilding that I do, either for the heck of it, or for stories that I write with an eventual eye for publishing (and this is a very small number because I don’t tend to talk about this stuff that often) knows that colonies show up a lot in my settings. Empires too.

Now, these Empires are not always monarchies, though sometimes they are. What they often are, however, is inspired by the flavor of the British Empire, drawing from bits and pieces in the span from 1700 to 1890 in an anarchromism stew. Also, because I’m American, there’s a lot of America in there, and occasionally a dash of the Ancient Roman Republic because I’m a big Rome nerd.

Regardless, these countries, which are usually but not always the ‘protagonist country’ (in the sense that the stories I want to tell tend to focus on them, I give them the most worldbuilding attention, and most significant characters - especially POV  characters - tend to be from them), are not categorically and universally painted as perfect, flawless and right. They are painted as being better in some important respects than many of the alternative powers of the setting, but they’re usually host to steep wealth inequalities, severe poverty for the lowest classes, political corruption that runs deep and wide, and often political systems that are prone to stagnation and infighting over sometimes the pettiest of bullshit. While they may present themselves as doing Imperialism because it’s moral (i.e. a fictional variation on the White Man’s Burden) the stories also make it clear that it’s as much or more just greed and power politics, or so is the intent. Of course, that moral imperative they claim may also inspire them, because some people who think their civilization and culture is the Best One™ are going to genuinely think being part of it is good and right and forcing people to do so is good and right.

These Empires then often have colonies.

These colonies are in distant parts of the world, across some great ocean or sea, linked back to the metropole by naval travel and trade, and sometimes by magical communication (rarely magical teleportation, which does not tend to lend itself to the stories I want to tell). These colonies are generally partially settler colonies, but often continue to have extensive native populations, and even existing native power structures continuing to function to varying degrees. Sometimes these colonies are glorified trading outposts ala the Portuguese feitorias that wield significant influence over local leaders without formally annexing the region, akin to the Residency systems practiced by various European empires (and other non-European empires have engaged in similar practices in the past as well), though the actual level of influence can vary and sometimes shift with the political winds.

For Example:

In the world of the Kantriverse, one such setting of mine, the Kingdom of Kantrias (very much the 'protagonist' country, as per the definition above) exists on the pseudo-Europe (and Middle East/North Africa) continent of Bayetz. There is, to the southwest, and partially in the tropics of the planet, a continent called Guayas. This continent is loosely - sometimes very loosely - inspired by India, Southeast Asia and China. More accurately, it is based on certain specific elements of certain specific periods thrown together into anachronistic stews to fit the stories I want to tell. There is certainly room to discuss the merits or problematicness of this sort of cultural chop suey as a tool for worldbuilding, either in general or how I do it, but that's neither here nor there for this conversation. On Guayas, for centuries, there has been a long-standing cold war between the two largest and most potent nations, the Kingdom of Kharash and the Telvir Ascendency. Because of the geography of the continent, neither nation tends to fight the other directly, even when open war breaks out, and instead, they may fight on the seas, or through their proxy vassal states. Because large swaths of the continent are home to small states, sometimes kingdoms, sometimes not, that both Kharash and Telvir seek to influence, extra tribute from, and use to weaken their rival. By this point, this rivalry has had extensive influence on the internal politics of these smaller states, and existing internal political divides tend to get played out in the various powershifts - one state, Irido, even maintains two royal dynasties, or two distinct branches of one royal dynasty, depending on how you look at it, one that is more partisan to the Telvir and one to the Kharash. The divisions are not always so deliberately artificial, but in each country, wherever you find a two-sided political dispute, one side tends to lean Telvir,  the other Kharash. Which ideology aligns to which power is not always consistent from small state to small state. Gauyas, being the continent from which tea, coffee, sugar and many desirable spices originate, is of course of great interest to Kantrias, which, being British-inspired, sure would like to control the trade in those valuable commodities. Kantrias certainly has products to export, and there is demand for the products Bayetz can produce in some parts of Guayas (for instance, Kantrian wine is considered quite tasty by many in the small Kingdom of Vacca), and Kantrias did - sorta - have a technological edge, as their gunpowder technology was superior when they first started seeking to meddle in Guayas (Gunpowder was invented on Bayetz by the priesthood of a deity that is now literally most often known as 'The Gunpowder God' and while the secret quickly spread, it did take longer to reach Guayas). But that edge was hardly enough to allow them to curbstomp anyone, especially with the distances and logistics involved, and while Kantrias certainly could out-muscle any of one or two of the smaller states, the Telvir Ascendancy and the Kingdom of Kharash both represent enough power to make conquest and colonization impossible. In pure video game 'numbers', Kantrias may have Telvir or Kharash beat, may, but of course, empire and warfare does not work like that. As such, when Kantrian desires to force favorable and lopsided trade agreements on local rulers ran into the reality of the situation, Kantrias adapted. For reasons not worth going into in detail, relations between Kantrias and Kharash were better, due in large part to certain shared cultural values, and the internal politics of the Telvir at the time. As such, Kantrias inserted itself into the existing cold war, on the side of Kharash. And thus, brings it's economic, magical, diplomatic and military weight to bear on the smaller states, swaying more to Kharash's side, and thus... theirs. Because basically part of the terms of the Alliance between Kharash and Kantrias is that Kharashian 'vassals' (even if that term is not often used and only partially accurate) should agree to favorable trade deals with Kantrias, or otherwise give Kantrias some sort of 'favored' status for trading, allowing them the space to build local trading towns/outposts that follow Kantrian law, station ships and troops there (in small numbers, not enough to occupy) to protect their business interests, etc. And with that in place, Kantrias has it's 'Empire' in Guayas (they do have a more conventional settler colony elsewhere, but this post is getting waaaaaay too long and I'm not even to the main point of my post). With their in, they are mostly content, as trade and money is the goal here, but of course, their alliance with Kharash is far from perfect, sometimes they lose out a lot of money when a small state turns Telvir (allying with Kharash does mean pissing the Telvir off more, of course) and that can spark a small war or not. But they do sometimes try to cultivate fully 'Kantrian' factions at the courts or in the populations of the smaller states, rather than just try to work with existing pro-Kharash factions. Because of course, even with most divides splitting between Telvir and the Kharash, some people and demographics get left out in the cold, or maybe Kantrias just has more to offer in some cases.

All of that example is simply to illustrate one set of scenarios that go into the empires and colonialism I write, and the ways I use it to tell what I think are interesting stories. Because I do think colonies lend themselves to some very interesting stories.  Because, let's imagine a fictional colony - Colony X. X is a region that is geographically defined, but was neither culturally nor politicall unified when Empire 1 came along. Empire 1 used a combination of diplomacy, threats, bribery and outright conquest to take over the whole region, unified it under one administrative unit (Colony X) and sent settlers. In this specifiic scenario, Empire 1 had some sort of advantage over Colony X's inhabitants. Probably several. It was larger and more unified, and thus able to take the local political components one by one. Maybe it had superior tech, or superior magic, or a better organized society that allowed them to mobilize more manpower, more resources, more material faster. Maybe Colony X had a big war recently, or major internal tensions,e tc, that were exploited. Who knows. The point is, you now have, let's say a century on, a lot of competing forces in the colony. You have the metropole (Empire 1), which may or may not be unified in what they want from or what they want to do to the colony. You have the settlers, not all of whom may be fully onboard with Empire 1. Some may just not like being taxed and dictated to by a government hundreds or thousands of miles of ocean away, some may descent from dissidents of some sort (political, religious, cultural, etc), some, of course, will be onboard with Empire 1. Some may see the native peoples, or some of them, as potential allies against Empire 1, someone to make common cause with, some may hate them as much as Empire 1 and want to oppress them the same (or even more) and some may be more afraid of them than Empire 1, and see Empire 1 as their defense against them. Meanwhile, in the native population, you may have some groups - local elites, certain mercantile interests, maybe a previously oppressed or maligned cast or ethnic group that Empire 1 lifted up specifically because they were previously oppressed or maligned or mistreated (and thus would be more loyal to Empire 1), maybe just one ethnic group in general is favored over others, etc - who might generally be in favor of Empire 1's continued presence. Then you have another group of collaborators, who might see themselves as just pragamtically accepting the world they live in now, and accepting Empire 1 is in charge because kicking them out is currently seen as impossible. And then there's collaborators who want to try to mitigate Empire 1's damage, or maybe want to learn their ways and techniques and so on to eventually use them against Empire 1 (but of course, have to prove themselves in the meantime). And all of these groups will have their own ideas about the settlers. Then you have people who aren't collaborating, but aren't actively opposing the Empire. And then you have the resistance - some may be native peoples who still see that Empire 1 had advantages, and we should copy those advantages. Some may want to return to old political divisions within the region, so may want unity. Some may want unity on their terms. Some may think that any borrowing of the ideas, techniques, technology or tactics of Empire 1 is horrible and vile and verboten and blasphemous or w/e. Some may want to drive all the foreigners from their shores, some may want to work with settlers willing to work with them. Some may not want to really get independence (because they might be worried about uncontrolled fallout from that) but want better terms or local home rule or whatever. And then you have other nations entirely - say, Empire 2, or Smaller Nation (But Still More Powerful than Colony X) Alpha. Empire 2 or Smaller Nation Alpha may have an interest in Colony X. Maybe they want to take it over, and try to offer (sincerely or not) a better deal to the settlers, the natives, whoever, to get them to jump ship. Maybe they just want to conquer it outright, no need to talk. Maybe they just want to weaken Empire 1, and don't really care how it happens, and cynically arm anyone willing to fight but without any intention of helping them more - it's just about bleeding Empire 1. Maybe there is a genuine anti-Imperialism in Smaller Nation Alpha's governing ideology. Maybe Empire 2 or Smaller Nation Alpha don't want to take over Colony X once it's independent, but they wouldn't mind having economic hegemony or strong influence over the region afterwards. Maybe it's many of these things at once. You take all of these groups, and all of these interests, and even if you tell a story that just a simple 'rebels overthrowing Empire 1's rule over them' narrative, with rebels as good guys and Empire 1 as bad guys - which you by no means have to do, as gray, nuance and complexity makes for a more interesting story generally - there's still a lot of room for cross-purposes, well-intentioned good people fighting one another, disagreement, drama, intrigue. Colonies tell really interesting stories. They're not the only way or place to tell interesting stories, god no, but I have found that for the kinds of stories I want to tell, with the worldbuilding I like to do, colonies and imperialism lend themselves well to it. In the real world, colonialism and Imperialism are, to be blunt, bad, for the colonized people. Sometimes they're great for some specific demographics within the colonized region, but usually not even then forever. They're usually pretty damn good for the Colonizer, but even then, Empire can sometimes come with a  poisoned pill domestically. And that too, is often fascinating and can make for really interesting stories. In fiction, you can sometimes get away with making colonization not entirely bad for the colonized, but usually not, and it's not a great idea to try unless you're sure of what you're doing. On the other hand, depiction is not endorsement. Even when the 'protagonist' does it. Even if the 'bad guy' (protagonist or otherwise) wins at the end of the story. Even if the Empire still controls the colony at the end of the story, or the rebels cross all sorts of moral lines and do things just as bad as the Empire. You're endorsing Imperialism to include it in a story, and every story doesn't have to end with Empire ending. Because, every kind of story you can tell with colonies will often, will almost always be, very, very interesting. Because colonies lend themselves to some really interesting narratives.