#making stereotypes of any nations' people based on my characters

[ask-pakistan]

He just did some "Friendly" Firing, not a big deal

[nyancrimew]

Sorry, it was unfair of me to send that to you without proper context since you might not be aware of these issues. Irredeemable media refers to any thing with a creator or content  that is harmful and/or bigoted. Of course every piece of media has problems, but irredeemable media is when those problems cannot be ignored and are an indicator of someone's beliefs. 

For example, Harry Potter is irredeemable media because every one knows that JK Rowling is a transphobe, but some other piece of media like Twilight would not be considered irredeemable because even though Stephanie Meyer has done some bad things, they are not as widely talked about, so someone who posts about Twilight on here isn't completely likely to be a bigot, but a Harry Potter blogger would. Also, I know the "to be cringe is to be free" people like your blog, but a lot of the time, what is considered cringey on here is actually based on what is irredeemable. No progressive person or reputable blogger genuinely makes fun of My Little Pony fans any more, however plenty make fun of Hazbin Hotel fans and the such because that content is irredeemable and shows someone's beliefs. So usually, a piece of media being considered embarassing to like on here usually indicates that it is irredeemable.

As for why the other pieces of media are irredeemable, Hazbin Hotel is made by a woman who has many well-documented accusations of bigotry against her and has drawn zoophilia art, not to mention how her work leans into stereotypes about gay people (having a gay man character be a sex addict, a lesbian be named after the female body part Vagina, etc.) or at least that's what I've heard. Attack on Titan is created by a known fascist and many illusions are made to nazi imagery and nationalism in the anime. Captive Prince has a racist premise that sexualizes slavery and non-con. 

People can tell you that liking irredeemable media doesn't say something about who they are, but that's fundamentally false. If someone is uncaring enough to still post openly about these types of media, it's clear they don't care enough about not supporting bigotry. Yes, even if they don't give money to the creators, because they are still willingly exposing themselves to bigoted or harmful content and enjoying it.

The previous ask was not meant to be accusatory. Rather it was meant as a concerned question. Believe it or not, there are still some users on here who indulge in these pieces of content, a few of which hide behind the excuse of being part of a minority (Black, trans, whatever) or simply deny how bad their media consumption is to escape accountability. I wouldn't want you associating with those types of people and have that ruin your reliability on this website.

Hopefully this ask has educated you more on these issues and you'll be able to spot irredeemable media in the future and block it out.

incredible essay, you get a C for Creativity

[vampireistic]

the problem with natlan / sumeru

warning: long post

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to preface this i’d like to say that i’m in no ways an expert in the topics present, i’m just an autistic dumbass with too much time on his hands who enjoys a bit of research — i’m in no way, shape or form trying to belittle players who are excited for the update, by all means i hope you enjoy it, i’m just trying to give criticism.

you can enjoy/play a game while criticising it simultaneously.

when it comes to the topic of racial diversity and a company like hoyoverse that’s based in china, there’s quite a lot of political baggage that comes along with it. while i’ll try my best to go over that, i’m afraid i can only give a very limited eastern european perspective on it and i’ll certainly get things wrong or misinterpret things — if you’d like a more thorough view on the politics, please go read the post made by @zeichannnnn (hope you don’t mind the tag my love)

firstly, i’ll be going over general misconceptions, ridiculous excuses and or stereotypes that i’ve seen commonly come up in this conversation.

any and all screenshots will have usernames cut off for privacy, i want to maintain a civilised discussion and not cause argument.

a lot of my critiques are more so towards the attitude the fandom has when it comes to this argument and their blatant colourism. as my friend above says, no one ever complained about characters in liyue/inazuma being paper white despite the fact realistically, no one in EA is that colour naturally. this of course stems from the beauty standards but that’s a discussion for later on.

the point is that if say a nation like liyue, had the same skin colour as a character like xinyan (who hails from liyue and has a liyue name) people would undoubtedly be upset. so why is it that when in terms of nations that are based off countries with a darker skin colour variety, complaining about the characters being white is seen as a problem?

culture isn’t defined by racial diversity, but when you’re monetising off the representation of different countries cultures, the very least you can do is show the actual diversity within said culture instead of slapping a cultural name on a white model (cue that one picture of the egyptian dude who looks like a plain american).

the idea that because it’s fantasy or anime, having black characters is surreal or improbable is rooted in white supremacy’s hold over unfair beauty standards as well as just the general consensus that black people are less desirable in media. which is completely false.

characters like dehya have proven that a character’s race is irrelevant when it comes to likeness, given the fact the chinese community ended up donating to charities because of said characters story.

the reason why the lightly toasted characters appear tan to you is because the rest of the cast is so horrifically pale (nahida’s hex code is #FFF7F1, cyno’s is #EEC6A6 which when placed next to each other may look like a big difference, but in reality the colours are on the same side of the colour wheel only a few spaces apart).

hoyoverse does in fact use culture as a mere aesthetic and costume to plant on white models. that is NOT to say they misrepresent culture entirely: this post goes over how hoyoverse is perfectly capable of doing impressive research to bring forth forgotten or unknown bits of culture.

even aside from the problems with racial diversity, the character design department has been known to completely fail when it comes to accurate representation. from the sexualisation of the kimono in characters like raiden shogun (which even the eastern part of the fandom have been upset about) to the character of yunjin where the chinese player based believed she was more like a lolita inspired caricature than a real depiction. they don’t understand how to mingle tradition with modernism.

in all fairness, it is difficult — and i will praise the game for making natlan much more technologically advanced and vibrant than people were expecting because having the one nation that’s based off africa and indigenous people be a wasteland would’ve ultimately been a problem. personally, i even love the slight mashup of “tribes” and the pokémon esque aesthetic — its new, and a smart way to bring two things together.

same thing cannot be said for how hyv ignores the fact darker people of colour are also significant when it comes to the building of culture.

please read over these that go more into depth about problems:

natlan being an amalgamation of three separate countries/cultures.

misrepresenting both continents natlan’s based from

another thing that’s always bothered me is the excuses people used in sumeru about the presentation of characters that were based off real people; specifically, kusanali.

yes, she’s based off a hindu moon goddess who’s described as pale and sure that could’ve been the reason she’s nearly the colour white — but how come candace, who’s based off kandake, a fully black woman, is presented as being slightly tan? you can’t pick and choose what you represent and honestly the idea that nahida’s character is supposed to be a depiction of the moon goddess is disrespect to the goddess herself (please go look at a singular picture of her and you’ll understand the utter tragedy).

hoyoverse also has a bit of a history with both whitewashing their slightly tan characters (nekomiya from zoneless zen zero, arlan from honkai star rail etc) but i think one of their biggest proofs of disrespect comes to carole pepper from hi3.

now, this is not at all me saying you can’t present female characters as very muscular — no. in fact, i would’ve loved if characters like beidou had a similar sort of build. but out of all the characters you could’ve chosen to give this to, you chose a black woman.

would this be a problem if it continued with other characters? not really. the issue lies within the fact the ONLY mother in game who’s presented as buff and “masculine looking” is a black woman — something that’s quite literally a stereotype against black women who are regarded as “naturally less feminine” than white women.

eastern beauty standards

the assertion that eastern beauty standards prevent the inclusion of black characters in video games is not only invalid but also reflects deeper issues of bias and systemic exclusion in the gaming industry. this argument is flawed for several reasons, including the diversity of beauty standards in eastern cultures, the global nature of the gaming market, and the responsibility of creators to reflect and promote inclusivity.

to claim that eastern beauty standards universally exclude black characters oversimplifies and homogenizes the diverse beauty ideals present in countries like japan, south korea, and china. these cultures are not monolithic and have their own histories and contemporary movements that embrace a variety of appearances.

creators in the gaming industry have a responsibility to reflect the diversity of the real world and promote inclusivity. video games are a powerful medium that can shape perceptions, challenge stereotypes, and foster empathy. by including black characters, game developers can contribute to a more inclusive and equitable society. this requires intentionality and a commitment to representation that goes beyond mere tokenism. the argument that eastern beauty standards prevent such inclusion suggests a lack of willingness to challenge existing norms and expand the narrative possibilities within games. hoyoverse have themselves stated in their mission statement that their goal is to show inclusivity.

that’s not to say it’s not clear that china’s beauty standards have unfortunately affected the gaming market: but for a game that brandishes itself on localising itself for a global audience (meaning, outside of its region), it’s a poor excuse. those standards aren’t universal and shouldn’t be used as gateway into designing.

once again, i am NOT at all very well versed in politics especially one that’s overseas (well, next door neighbour in a way) so i definitely will misinterpret or misunderstand things unintentionally and if i do, i’m really sorry.

historical nihilism to me doesn’t relate to black people, just actual story events (hence why hoyoverse had to put a warning label for fontaine that the events presented didn’t represent that of the real world and any similarities were mere coincidence). black people existing isn’t regarded as “politically harmful” neither is it an extraordinary idea — it’s just another group of people.

although, the CCP has a MASSIVE history about their demonisation and hatred of black people therefore, even without the idea that the censorship stems from something like historical nihilism, it’s likely something to do with individual prejudice.

politically, i can semi-understand why hoyoverse is in a tight space for racial diversity. but that doesn’t mean i’m willing to baby a company that profits billions worth of profit from other cultures that they misrepresent and i’m even less inclined to hold the hands of hoyoverse dickriders who believe people complain about race just solely to whine. it’s a real systemic issue, and one that’s prevalent in a multitude of games aside from genshin.

people from the cultures presented are rightfully upset and they shouldn’t be told to just “accept”mediocrity. it’s their culture and identities being ridiculed, it’s their identities being profited from for the sake of aesthetics for a game that preaches inclusivity to the people that are willing to ignore its prejudice.

hell, even as a polish person, just thinking about what they’ll do with snezhnaya upsets me even if it’s not racially based — once again, the media emphasises the idea that eastern europe / slavic culture is purely russia meanwhile they steal little things from all of the surrounding countries in eastern europe (won’t forget the fact they changed that password thing in sumeru from “ravioli” to “pierogi”).

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TL;DR hoyoverse uses other people’s cultures and identities as an aesthetic and proceeds to profit off of it while misrepresenting the sample of people they chose to depict and while a political argument can be made in this regard, ultimately the backlash from people rightfully feeling unjustified in the lack of racial diversity is what amplifies these colourist attitudes: and while hoyoverse has seemingly much more legal repercussions to commit to their idea of diversity, the fandom has no excuse for their disregard of different identities.

also just a funny thing my friend and i did to show just how white these characters are lol

“ blackwashing “ versus “ whitewashing “

i feel like i need to add this little section too because i know there will be a lot of people that draw or reimagine the characters in a variety of different skin tones, and i know a lot of people will be upset (usually it’s just the lowlife weebs who cry at the thought of a black woman being in the same room as them).

historically, media, including video games and anime, have predominantly featured pale-skinned characters, often neglecting the representation of people of color. this lack of diversity reinforces a narrow view of beauty and heroism, contributing to the systemic exclusion of non-white individuals. blackwashing helps to rectify these historical imbalances by providing a broader spectrum of racial representation. it challenges the default assumption that characters must be pale-skinned and introduces audiences to a more inclusive range of appearances.

representation matters profoundly in media. seeing characters that reflect one's own identity can have significant positive effects on self-esteem and cultural pride. blackwashing creates opportunities for black audiences to see themselves in roles and narratives traditionally dominated by pale-skinned characters.

critics (once again, youtube creators and tiktok lmao) of blackwashing often argue that it disrespects original character designs or cultural contexts. however, the impact of changing a character's skin tone is minimal compared to the harm caused by whitewashing. whitewashing often erases the cultural significance of non-white characters, perpetuating stereotypes and denying the rich diversity of the source material. blackwashing, in contrast, does not erase cultural identities but rather enhances the inclusivity of the media. it provides a more diverse and representative depiction without detracting from the character's original essence or storyline.

in addition, usually when a character is black in fantasy media or even just an anime/game with a lore based story, it’s because their race is significant to who they are (i.e tiana from princess and the frog who faces racial discrimination — without her being a person of colour, this storyline and the events that follow wouldn’t make sense).

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i’m sorry for such a long and probably nonsensical rant, but this has bothered me into absolute oblivion especially the community’s response to the uproar of people who rightfully critique and are upset by the company.

[dezertvideogames]

What the controversy? - Genshin Impact

I don't normally make post like this, maybe I should as a mixed video game addict. I bet you've heard about the understanding outrage about the skin tones of Genshin characters. Maybe you've seen the meme pointing out that the White Pharaoh has darker skin than most of the Genshin cast. I'm here to tell you the problem is even worse.

What happened previously?

Genshin Impact has been heavily criticized by fans from all over the world for the blatant colorism in the game.

Genshin Impact is a free open world game with gacha mechanics. Characters come from a myriad of in-game regions each based off of real life ones including Western Europe, Japan, China, the Middle East, Russia, Central Europe, and the most recent region taking inspiration from Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin Nations.

This can be a very interesting approach to this kind of worldbuilding, as Genshin is not unique for this, and often makes it easy for fans to connect to the characters culturally.

Genshin's problems started to show immediately. In fact the first region's set of characters, Modstadt, based off of Central Europe has THE darkest skinned characters in the game. Kaeya and Xinyan, and one of them is a mean obnoxious black girl stereotype.

Like-

As the other regions have been added to the game, the problem has only gotten more apparent. Regions that would naturally have a few more diverse skin swatches among the cast just didn't have them. When Genshin did add darker characters they were often lighter than the average mixed person, or another variation of white skin tones, because lets be honest white people come in many colors too.

Now there isn't anything wrong with a region having diverse skin tones, especially if it's based off a real life region with a very commonly diverse population when it comes to skin tones like the United States, Brazil, Egypt, Iran, or South Africa. These places realistically are very diverse, and the people from then come in many colors.

The problem is in Genshin there are zero characters added with a darker skin tone than Xinyan, and the dark characters they claim to give us are barely darker than average Chinese person. There are very few brown skinned people, and they're all quite pale brown skin tones. Take for instance the Sumeru line-up.

When Sumeru came out fans of Genshin were outrages at the lack of darker skin tones among the middle eastern inspired characters. Since then there has been a demand for darker skin tones, and tons of criticism against Hoyoverse, but their pleas were never answered.

The Latest Region

The latest region added to Genshin Impact is Natlan. It takes inspiration from Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin nations. Players have waited with baited breath to see if Hoyoverse finally adds some darker skinned characters. The answer?

ABSOLUTELY NOT

Natlan came out with one brown skinned character. Meaning in all the regions of Genshin Impact there is a whopping three brown skinned playable characters, and zero black people to play.

This is worse than it seems: Hoyoverse

Genshin Impact isn't Hoyoverse's only game. In fact Hoyoverse's other popular games, including Honkai Impact 3rd, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero also have zero black playable characters and sparse brown skinned characters.

In fact if you are a Hoyoverse fan in general you got your first two furry characters this year, before any dark black characters.

Like-

We got blue people before black people guys

The Outlook & Excuses

Many players are choosing to quit the game, boycott purchases inside the game, or completely moving on from Hoyoverse entirely. In fact I am one of these players (sorry to my mans Zhongli ]: ). I quit when Sumeru came out because I felt very offended seeing the outlook of colorism in the games as someone who is brown toned.

Some fans of Hoyoverse have tried to defend the company by mentioning how it's an Asian game, and these are simply Asian beauty standards.

So how does Genshin Impact hold up to other anime styled Eastern games? It doesn't... AT ALL.

These pictures all come from other Eastern video game companies, including Fire Emblem, Reverse 1999, Arknights, and Dislyte.

There is no excuse for Hoyoverse.

My Video Game Suggestions

If you're a fan of free gacha games I suggest wholeheartedly Reverse 1999 and Dislyte for their diversity. Arknights is also pretty good.

When it comes to open world games there's hundreds out there, many of which Genshin itself is based off of or has been the inspiration of in the first place; like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Palworld.

For games with anime styles the Persona series, and Fire Emblem are super fun. The Xenoblade series has very similar storytelling to Genshin Impact. There are many other series in development that plan to be similar to Genshin Impact, however most have the same hardcore flaw of zero to sparse dark skinned characters. Keeping an eye on them doesn't hurt though, as the lesson might be learnt before further updates are made.

Anyway, play Reverse 1999 if you want a free mobile game to fill the void Genshin brutally left. May Zhongli rest in peace.

I really like the writing, the animation style, the voice acting can be silly but that's because each character is voiced by native speakers of their background.

There's a tons of lesbians in the game too if that's your thing.

(PS. I judge no one who continues to play Hoyoverse games or holds hope for the future of the franchise)

[seventeendeer]

TF2 analysis - on cultural references, context as characterization, and how to analyze comedy

-taps mic- HELLO, TEAM FORTRESS 2 COMMUNITY !

A while back, I received an ask requesting analysis of one of my favorite video games of all time and special interest of 12+ years, and you know I just had to go and turn that into a several thousand word essay for the reading pleasure of the people.

Because that shit got way too long, I’ve decided to put it into a post of its own. Hopefully a big title and no previous context being necessary will give more people an incentive to read it. I spent a long time on it and I think it’s pretty cool, and I would love some nice attention for my effort. ;w;

The ask I received went a little something like this:

Below the cut, I will be replying to these questions individually. It touches on everything from Cold War propaganda to the media landscape at the game’s launch in 2007 to first-person shooters as a genre - all to gain a better understanding of author intent, expected audience reaction, characterization and themes.

Anon previously requested help writing more accurate fanfiction, and damn it, that is what they are going to get!! and MORE

Introductory disclaimer:

First of all, for clarity's sake: this analysis is going to specifically talk about TF2 as seen through a fandom lens. I'm going to be talking about the game as a piece of media, creator intention, and the fandom's reactions to the game and extended canon - that is, the slice of the TF2 fandom that is interested in the characters, in the world and in doing at least semi-faithful fanworks.

I will not be touching on TF2's wider playerbase or meme culture. I greatly enjoy both, but they are not relevant to the post I made that sparked this anon's questions (I will link this post in the replies, in case anyone is curious).

I also have to disclaim that any references I make to real world history in this post have to be taken with a hard grain of salt. I've done my best to fact-check everything, but I am not infallible! For a better understanding of the historical elements I talk about here, please do your own research, and approach my claims with a healthy amount of scepticism, same as you would any unsourced social media post. (Readers may notice examples I give below primarily feature Soldier, Spy and Scout. This is because I feel I have the most solid grasp on the historical events and media that informs their characters, compared to the other classes. All the classes contain these contexts and meta complexities, but in an effort to not talk out of my ass too much, I have decided to focus on the characters I feel the most confident dissecting.)

>1) What tropes was the game parodying/what cultural contexts would you say are essential to understand, in order to better understand the game?

The characters of TF2 were specifically designed as satiric takes on national stereotypes depicted in American propaganda media during the Cold War. Two easy-to-explain examples to illustrate:

- Soldier embodies the ideal of a "red-blooded American" who is strong, brave, hyper-masculine, hates foreign superpowers, loves the vague ideal of "freedom" and firmly believes America is the greatest nation in the world. He prides himself on having personally murdered nazis in the past, despite actually having accomplished no such thing (comparable to the US taking a disproportionate amount of credit for defeating Nazi Germany in World War 2; at the time, WW2 was a very recent cultural memory that made for good propaganda fodder). He fears, hates and dehumanizes communists (as Soviet Russia was the US's highly-villified opponent during the Cold War). The satiric angle: he is depicted as so brainwashed by propaganda that he has become immune to facts and logic. He is horribly sadistic, brutal, paranoid and xenophobic. The ideal he is based on is portrayed as shockingly and disproportionally violent and illogical to the point of being laughable.

- Spy is based on how the US viewed France during the Cold War: as a weak, cowardly, “unmanly” nation. At the time, France was depicted this way because they were perceived to have surrendered to Nazi Germany early on in World War 2 out of cowardice. Spy is one of the least macho of the mercs, he is ineffective when fighting enemies head on, and his main method of attack is reliant on trickery and “not fighting fair.” The satiric angle: Spy isn't actually much of a coward - he is more intelligent, more tactical and more resourceful than many of the others, and simply doesn’t feel the need to risk his neck when he could be working smarter, not harder. The other characters are portrayed as a bunch of meatheads for picking on him. The negative stereotype he is based on is portrayed as largely unearned and ridiculous. (Though note that Spy is also depicted as an upperclass prick to contrast with Engineer being working class; in that dynamic, Spy is depicted as a pompous asshole, while Engie is depicted in a more favorable light. The characters are multi-faceted and no class is universally “better” or “worse” than the others, but right now I'm specifically focusing on the "Cold War stereotype" aspect.)

Notice how, while these two characters have different nationalities in-universe, they are both based on stereotypes seen through an American lens. Notice the way the American character is based on a comedically deconstructed ideal, while the character from a nation the US did not view favorably at the time is depicted as falsely judged by an unfair and ridiculous metric.

The entire TF2 cast and universe revolves on this axis! It takes old American ideals and prejudices and uses them for comedy, adding exaggeration and caveats to make those ideals look absurd.

It’s a parody of media produced in the US during the Cold War, which contained massive amounts of propaganda. It satirizes the political ideals that were glorified in said propaganda media.

Very important extra cultural context: this satiric depiction of old war propaganda was specifically designed to be instantly recognizable to TF2's central demographic at the time of release in 2007.

Older Valve games like TF2 were very specifically made to appeal to pop culture-savvy, nerdy young adult gamers. This demographic was expected to see the characters and think "oh hey, it's like a funny version of X character type I've seen in movies!"

Because those kinds of movies were still everywhere at the time. The Cold War ended in 1991. TF2 was released only 16 years later. To put this into perspective: the Legally Blonde movie came out 22 years ago, in 2001. Think about how many Legally Blonde memes are still floating around the web today, how fondly remembered this one movie is and how often it’s still referenced in contemporary media. Now consider that media produced during the Cold War was fresher in the cultural memory at the time of TF2′s release than Legally Blonde is for us today.

TF2 was never meant to be seen in a vacuum. It was always meant to be in conversation with old media that it expected everyone playing to be extremely familiar with.

I'll say that again: the cast of TF2 are based on Cold War stereotypes - comedically exaggerated - so they would clearly read as parodies to people in 2007.

Those are 3 different overlapping lenses to consider when approaching the characters.

The characters are more than just funny cartoon men with guns and an unusual amount of differing accents. They are commentary on older media trends.

Now, someone might ask - why did the developers choose this specific aesthetic and tone for their online shooter video game?

The developers have stated multiple reasons, including wanting the characters to be immediately recognizable both physically (they generally look like the stereotypical depictions they're based on) and audibly (the differing accents and regional dialects make it easy to identify which class is yelling in your ear mid-combat during gameplay).

However, I also have another theory:

It's been confirmed TF2's comedic tone was designed to combat a lot of negative aspects of shooters in the genre at the time of its creation. I have seen developers discuss that they were going for a lighthearted atmosphere to discourage player hostility.

I, personally, also think it is extremely likely the developers opted for satirizing old war propaganda partially in order to combat the tendency of other shooters often being war propaganda. Valve has always been a politically left-leaning company, with a history of depicting military-like forces and unchecked capitalism in a negative light (see the Half-Life and Portal series, respectively).

By depicting the cast of TF2 as generally unhinged, illogical and clownish, they were able to communicate to players: "War is dumb, nationalism is dumb, whatever Call of Duty has been telling you is cool is actually illogical and copying it makes you look like like an idiot. That being said, we all sometimes wish we could beat the shit out of other people in the desert with a shovel, so let's get our aggressions out in a safe, non-serious environment with no consequences. Come play pretend you're a murderous sadist blowing up equally unhinged people with us, it's silly, but it's so fun."

I believe everything from the cartoonishly over-the-top, non-permanent deaths to the deserted, remote environments, to the lack of any truly innocent or defenseless characters was all a carefully crafted foundation made to encourage players to make the informed decision to leave their inhibitions and moral hangups at the door. They wanted players to have fun and go nuts engaging in military-like violence, without encouraging pro-military attitudes in their playerbase.

For an example of a game that royally screwed up doing the same thing, just look at Overwatch - it tried to preach a "wholesome" vibe that was completely mismatched with its gameplay. Overwatch tries to justify extreme violence as Okay When Good Guys Do It To Bad Guys, which ... yeah, again, that is straight up modern military propaganda, on purpose or not (and knowing the US military’s tendency to pour money into video games that glorify war, “on purpose” isn’t as much of a stretch as one might think). Paradoxically, TF2 comes out both looking and feeling better to play, because it handles aligning player emotions VS in-game actions much more elegantly. It accounts for common pitfalls in its genre. OW jumps into those pitfalls with both legs and instead ends up looking shallow and nauseatingly twee.

Of course, all of this is personal speculation. Whether or not this was the reading that Valve intended, I do believe it's a big reason why TF2 has remained so profoundly loveable over the years - it uses its writing and art direction to put the player in the perfect mindspace to Fuck Shit Up.

It's a fantastic example of how to carefully and artfully craft something extremely stupid for maximum intended effect. It uses the strengths of comedy as a genre to its absolute fullest.

Unfortunately, because of cultural shifts since the game's release, newer fans do end up missing out on a lot of what makes this game so expertly done. Many newer fans don't come into the game with the base cultural knowledge it expected of its original audience. To gain a better grasp on the characters and enjoy this piece of media as it was intended, I think it will be extremely helpful to familiarize yourself with the material it is referencing.

For an introduction to media produced and influenced by the Cold War, I would recommend the Wikipedia article Culture during the Cold War as a starting point.

(I have skimmed, but not read, the full article; I encourage readers to be especially source-critical when engaging with pages like this that detail themes of history and propaganda - it's a starting point, not a finish line!)

>2) What themes/layers do you feel the fandom has lost sight of, over time? (or never really managed to acknowledge to begin with?)

Some of this is covered in the previous section, but I'll use this question as an opportunity to talk about another thing I feel is overlooked by fans (and, frankly, the writers of the newer comics too), especially when creating fanworks:

The fact that the characters are extremely dependent on their setup and narrative context to be likeable.

Something I think fandom culture struggles with in general is interpreting and handling fictional characters not as real, independent people who exist in a vacuum, but as the sum total of countless moving parts inside a narrative all working together to create the impression of a real person.

In a comedy, characters are especially dependent on presentation to feel like themselves. It is not enough to loyally recreate an arbitrary list of personality traits in order to create accurate fanworks - recreating the sorts of situations they get into, the kinds of people they interact with, and cherry-picking the information they have access to is neccessary for bringing out what makes the characters so charming!

This is especially important when interpreting and handling a cast made up exclusively of characters who are mean people with bad intentions, bad opinions and a complete lack of adequate self-reflection across the board.

Canon makes them all come off amazingly likeable, but this is because the writers were manipulating tone, relationship dynamics, setting, and much more to show off the characters at their most distinct, least detestable and absolute funniest.

Overlooking this aspect of writing comedy characters often leads to a very common pitfall in many, many fandoms out there - following the logic of a character's canon personality to a place they don't like, and getting rid of those personality traits to combat their own discomfort.

Making characters too kind, too understanding, too progressive, etc., is an endless source of micharacterization in fandoms in general, but especially in fandoms of media where the characters are a bunch of dicks in canon.

To be clear, I fully understand where this is coming from. Fans get attached to characters like these because they're funny (and intended to be loved!) - realizing that a character you really like would logically react in an unlikeable way if you put them into certain situations feels bad. No one wants to turn a character they love into something they find they don't love anymore.

But this is where carefully engineering your setup and narrative comes into play.

Example:

A lot of TF2 fans are queer. Queers flock to TF2 because let’s face it, the campy vibes and silly fun masculinity and weird women are like catnip to us.

But a lot of queer fans go into the fandom aspect of the game and find that ... wait, shit, these characters are not exactly pillars of progressiveness. Reconciling some of the extremist political views of the characters with queer narratives, with queer values, seems a daunting task to some. Because what’s a queer fan to do? Portray a character they love in a way that makes them unloveable? Painstakingly depict shitty, uncomfortable characterization in the name of “realism” that ultimately detracts from their own and other people’s enjoyment of the story? That’s not fun. Fandom is supposed to be fun. So, what, do they just portray the characters as miraculously having perfectly amicable social politics by the standards of the larger queer community in 2023?

Some do, of course, for their own comfort, and it’s understandable, but it’s not good storytelling. It’s an excessively shallow way of interacting with media - the fanfiction equivalent of confidently sitting down to write an in-depth, flowery review of a horror movie you watched with your hands over your eyes during all the scary parts. You cannot create fanworks that are even remotely faithful to the spirit of the canon while deliberately ignoring the core themes and author intention of the canon you’re working with. These things are, unfortunately, mutually exclusive. TF2 characters are meant to be wrong about most things politically. Hopefully my reply to the first question in this post adequately illustrates why that’s so important.

But the good news is that bastardizing canon in order to avoid making characters unlikeable also isn’t necessary.

There’s a reason Soldier, in canon mocks his enemies for everything from failing at masculinity to being disabled, yet doesn’t have a single homophobic line:

The people writing his lines figured it would detract from the character. It would hurt real people’s feelings and make the character less fun to play as, so they didn’t include it. No excuses, no explanation; it is simply omitted for the sake of likeability.

(For contrast, notice that the writers did not extend the same kindness to certain other minorities, like fat people - playing as Heavy fucking sucks when you’re fat, because every other class hurls fatphobic abuse at him. This is a fuck-up on the writers’ side; they failed to identify this type of humor as meaningfully detracting from the experience for a significant amount of players, and so ignorantly decided to include it.)

This is what I mean by “setup and narrative context.” I also like to call this “maneuvering”, because it involves selectively portraying a character in contexts and situations where they shine and instill the intended audience reaction, while steering them away from situations where they would logically act in ways that counteract how the audience is intended to feel about them.

Fanworks can absolutely do the same thing! Fanworks can even take the technique further, because they’re not bound by limited time and focus, the way the original work is!

Sticking with the above example of wondering What The Hell To Do when portraying a character who, due to the ideal he’s satirizing, should by all rights be on the wrong side of history in relation to queer rights, let me make a bold statement:

Soldier TF2 is not homophobic. He's a nationalist, a right-winger, a sexist, a xenophobe - but he's not homophobic.

Why? Because he just so happens to never encounter any gay people in canon. They happen to never cross his mind. He's thinking about other shit. If there's a Pride riot in Teufort, he just so happens to be looking the other way.

Soldier TF2 is not homophobic, because he can't think for himself. He's an idea, a fraction of a bigger narrative that he does not exist outside of.

And if he needs to encounter gay people in a fanfiction, don’t just passively follow the logic of his character to that uncomfortable place none of us enjoy going to - use that maneuvering! Make him misinformed, make him misunderstand, give him incomplete information - the character is not only a face with personality traits attached, his soul is also in the context of the story!

Make him homophobic, but he's pretty sure only Europeans can be gay (just look at them!), and it's already so damn sad that they weren't born in beautiful, paradisical AMERICA, so he pities them instead of hating them. Make him think he's successfully being homophobic, but he has misunderstood what a gay person is and thinks it's a particularly venomous type of snake (men who kiss other men are fine, why would he care about that when there are HORRIBLE HOMOSEXUALS slithering around in the desert that he needs to go blow up right now before they bring this glorious nation to ruin). Make him homophobic, but literally "phobic" - he's shaking and crying hiding inside a cupboard, and his newly-outed gay friends have to lure him out with canned meat and a trail of small American flags, treating him like a feral cat that needs a little time and space to get used to people.

That's funny. It's likeable, it's charming. He isn't portrayed as a good person, or woke in a way that clashes with the themes of his character, but with a little maneuvering, he is faithful to what makes him such a legendary character in canon - being a silly caricature that brings us joy.

If Soldier himself needs to be gay? There are ways to make it happen. Same approach. Get creative. Make it silly. Go for thematically appropriate comedic explanations, not cop-outs or realism*.

That is what I think the TF2 fandom is lacking - understanding of how to manipulate context to make a character feel like their own unique, lovable selves.

Characters are not just visuals and personality traits. They are also what happens to them, what they conveniently find out, what they happen to miss.

This is the same for every story, but it is especially important to understand in a comedy. Doubly so in a whimsical, hyper-violent, morbid comedy like TF2.

It's one of the most important layers to be able to recognize, and an even more important one to be willing to try to recreate.

*Unless you feel like doing a deliberate deconstruction, in which case, go ham, sometimes actively engaging with canon means doing some real weird stuff to it to make a certain point on a meta level. This is obviously different from the issues I described above.

>3) "even the newer official comics don't even seem to really "get" the original game" … I've had a nagging sense for years now that the TF2 comics don't really match the game, tonally -- which has admittedly soured my enjoyment of them -- but I've never been able to put two and two together and fully determine why that is. What would you say they've failed to "get" about the work they're based off of?

While I very much love the newer comics on their own merits, I do think they are wildly removed from the game, and lack a lot of depth by comparison.

I believe the greatest failing of the comics, especially the long-form comic, is that the writers do not seem to be aware of either of the subjects I covered above.

They do not handle the satirical aspect well. The newer comic writers don't even really seem to be aware that there is a satirical aspect - they treat the world as just a silly version of mid-1900′s media, with a narrow focus on silver age comics (which were primarily superhero comics, not an easy genre to match with TF2′s more grounded setting - see the comic’s limp attempt at doing a Superman parody with Sniper) + a dash of the Man’s Life magazines (would have been a good match, if not for the fact that it’s primarily used as aesthetics, with no attention given to themes the way the game does with its own media references). They attempt to write parody only, and even the parody aspect is a hollow effort. Crucially, the writers don't seem to have much of an opinion of the old media properties they're parodying, and without opinions to guide a parody, it becomes shallow and lifeless. "Mid-1900′s media was a bit silly, right?" isn't enough of a hot take to justify its existence. It needs an axis on which to spin to feel complete.

Reiterating the point I made in my answer to question 1: the game's satirical aspect circled the point that was "American media made during the Cold War pushed a narrative that was illogical and ridiculously misaligned with reality."

Its absurd humor is grounded in reality and follows a thematic red thread that the comic does not. As a result, the comic (again, primarily later entries) loses a lot of the sting and edge of the game.

Even though the comic attempts to be more serious and "dark" at certain points, the much more silly and easy-going game (and Meet the Team videos, not to mention) comes out looking more mature, interesting and layered, even though many of the layers remain subtextual. The game is fully married to comedy and has no intention of "getting real", but it is loyal to the spirit of satire. It has opinions. It has bite.

In the game and early supplementary material, there is a dread and horror in the subtext that the comics tried to bring to light later on, but the comic writers didn't know what the scary thing behind the curtain was.

The scary thing was - is - the Cold War.

The scary thing is the dread injected into the genre it's satirizing by people who wanted American readers and movie-goers to be afraid. Scaring people into compliance, into finding a sense of safety and comfort in their national identity, was the entire purpose of many, many pieces of media released at the time.

The comic writers didn't notice the subtext and figured they had to make up their own reasons for why the world of TF2 is so utterly fucked.

They didn't understand the cultural context, and they missed the mark entirely.

This also hindered the comic writers' ability to reproduce the game's humor and characterization. Without understanding where exactly the game's humor was coming from or why the characters were so likeable despite being horrible people, they lacked direction. They made the characters at the same time too impassionate, too stupid, too uncaring, and too nice. All together, the characters became less interesting, less likeable.

Example:

- In the game, Spy was not intended to be Scout's father. Spy having a relationship with Scout's mother emphasized Spy's craftiness and intelligence (undermining the enemy team not only through brute force, but through infiltrating their personal lives), and showed off the strengths of his aforementioned "softness" and sentimentality (he's the only mercenary shown to have consistent luck with women). It also emphasized the flaws in Scout's worldview, and his status as the team underdog, and showed a clear contrast to Scout's non-existent love life. Spy came out of the situation funny and likeable because he 1. was portrayed as cool and capable in a way the other mercs aren't, and 2. his softer side is simultaneously humorously endearing, consistent with the rest of his characterization, and highly informed by the satirical aspect of his character in a way that clicks perfectly thematically. Scout comes out of the situation likeable because his ego is balanced out by his bad luck - you can simultaneously see that he's trying too hard and why he's trying too hard. Spy and Scout's dynamic in-game is also fun and interesting, because you have a tough, hyper-violent, wannabe-macho young man who is desperate to gain the respect of both his team and his enemies getting freaking owned by a guy who is nowhere near the impressive-tough-guy ideal Scout strives to embody. The game's satirical points inform the characters and their actions, which gives the comedy depth and nuance, which in turn makes all characters involved fun to watch and easy to get invested in. It is the establishing of and subsequent pointing-and-laughing-at an ideal that produces engaging, character-driven comedy in this situation.

- By contrast, the comics decided that Spy was Scout's father. Spy's motives for getting involved with Scout's mother is no longer about gaining intel on his enemies. In this version of events, his motives are reduced to merely wanting to reconnect with an old flame. This completely undermines the dynamic described above, for multiple reasons: the situation no longer shows Spy as having a particular skillset that sets him apart from the other mercs, he is no longer portrayed as emotionally "softer" than the others (in fact, having left a poor woman to raise and feed 8 kids on her own while he was off enjoying his upperclass life makes him look incredibly cold in a way that is distinctly unfunny; I don’t think the writers thought this part through), Scout's comedic poor luck is no longer on display, and the "macho character is humiliated by the type of guy he respects the least" satirical aspect no longer works. There is an attempt to replace it with a mutual "ugh, I'm related to this guy?" running gag, but it's a very pale substitute for the layered, strongly characterized, thematically appropriate dynamic present in the original game. Spy comes out of it looking like more of a cowardly, cold-hearted fuck-up than a hilariously brilliant tactician with a heart. Scout comes off way too pitiable, because he is not responsible for his own misery here, and the person horribly bullying him and picking apart his self-esteem on the battlefield is his absent father who abandoned him as a child. He's not an objectively badass character who nonetheless fucks himself over in humorous ways trying to chase an ideal that objectively sucks - he's just a regular shitty guy who ended up in bad circumstances because of things outside of his control.

The comic writers didn't understand what Spy and Scout respectively represented in the game, and because of this, they didn't realize they were taking the characters off the rails and making them much less interesting as a result. They didn't realize they were killing off an endless source of comedy that supported the game's satirical angle in a fun, unique, dynamic way.

It resulted in a flat, flavorless subplot. It had some superficial attempts at "heartwarming" moments ...

... but here's my take: if the writers wanted to include more warmth and sincerity in the comics, wouldn't it have been way more heartwarming if Spy started treating Scout as his son even though he wasn't?

Would it not have been way more endearing to see him look out for his girlfriend's child, not because he has any personal ties to him himself, but because he knew if anything happened to Scout, his mother would be devastated?

Why not build from there? Why not make it an active choice? Why not preserve the existing dynamic and themes, and just follow that narrative thread to its logical conclusion?

Spy has an established sentimental side. Scout is desperate for approval. The reluctant surrogate father/son development practically writes itself. It would have been such a good way to explore TF2's themes more explicitly, too!

But again, the comic writers did not seem to realize the game even had themes.

I do like the newer comics. I do think they're really fun, and I did even enjoy the "Spy is Scout's father" subplot in its own way. But this complete inability to identify the game's themes, and thus the source of all its comedy, and thus the red thread defining characterization - it resulted in supplemental material that was lackluster, directionless and unable to scratch the same itch the game does.

They're good comics, but they're hardly TF2 comics.

>4a) … Sheerly out of curiosity, how do you feel Expiration Date holds up, in comparison?

Similar to the way I dislike Spy being revealed to be Scout’s biological father for coming off as a stilted, superficial attempt at being “heartwarming,” I also immensely dislike later supplementary material trying to promote Ms. Pauling to Scout’s recurring love interest for the exact same reason. Expiration Date pushes this subplot way past its breaking point and shows off extremely well why the “jerk characters are secretly a bunch of softies” treatment is so deeply, deeply out of place in TF2.

Back in the early comics, Scout hitting on Miss Pauling was played as a joke at his expense. He was an idiotic, sexist guy incapable of talking to a pretty woman without trying to fuck - she was a highly skilled and deviously manipulative minor character who mostly existed to show off how dangerously competent the Administrator and her people were. Scout acting like an utter dumbass too entrenched in his own limited worldview to notice what was happening right in front of him was important characterization for him, Miss Pauling’s quiet, calculating efficiency was important characterization for her boss, and their clashing personalities set the tone for the dynamic between the entire team of mercenaries and the conspiracy going on right under their noses.

Expiration Date chose to eliminate these layers and invent a completely new conflict for these two specific characters to go play with in a corner, which had nothing to do with their original characterization or the larger plot. Scout is now portrayed as being genuinely in love with Pauling, even noticing small details about her mannerisms and knowing about some of her interests, even though the entire point of their original interactions were that Scout was so busy trying to live his tough-guy-with-a-pretty-girl-on-his-arm fantasy he did not bother to listen to or learn anything about the women unfortunate enough to cross his path, allowing Pauling to carry out her job without causing suspicion.

Instead, Scout’s sexist approach to interacting with women is played for sympathy (”he’s actually a romantic underdog because the lady he likes accurately clocked him as an idiot!”) and inadvertently validated (”once she gave him a chance, she found out he’s actually a pretty okay guy!”).

In the process, Miss Pauling loses far too much of her usual competence, being visibly freaked out over having to perform a job she’s been shown to handle with grace in the past, and being taken aback by what should by all rights be routine weirdness in this world, all so she can have an eye-roll-worthy forced positive reaction to the entire experience at the end of the short, in a weak attempt to justify why she comes to like Scout more despite all the trouble he’s caused for her and wants to spend more time with him in the future.

The romance subplot is only made possible because the characters are heavily edited compared to their past portrayals, is only able to develop in the direction it does by aligning itself with the values of a character who existed to be a laughable, obviously-mistaken caricature, and is only able to distill a happy ending to the whole mess by stripping the other character of personal standards and agency.

Scout and Pauling are frankly two halves of a whole shitshow in Expiration Date, because the writers either didn’t notice or didn’t care about what older works were gunning for - all they saw was that Boy Liked Girl, Girl Did Not Like Boy, and that just wouldn’t stand! After all, everyone likes romance, right?

Scout, as he is portrayed in the game and in the early supplementary material, is one of my absolute favorites of the mercs. I find him incredibly funny, and the way his hyperactive, fun-loving, jokey traits overlap with his intense bloodlust (literally - he’s the class with the most weapons available that cause bleed damage!) and barely-suppressed rage makes him fun and fascinating. The little man has so much unchecked ADHD and cultural trauma he just has to go and kill people about it, which is just so intensely relatable in the “forbidden mood” way TF2 handles so well.

Unfortunately, I get the impression he has in later years fallen victim to the curse of being a skinny young white guy character, making him a target for writers who think every series needs a relatable everyman protagonist for either themselves or the audience to project onto (and who think skinny young white guys are the most relatable people around, for reasons you can probably imagine I’m not personally very fond of).

TF2 absolutely does not need a character like that, and butchering Scout’s established personality in the name of “relatable” and “wholesome” is first of all Some Bullshit, and second of all a lost cause. The character simply has too much baggage as an over-the-top caricature to be comfortably rewired into an author- or audience-surrogate. He’s always going to come out looking like an asshole - whether this aspect of his character turns out likeable or unlikeable is entirely controlled by whether the story itself acknowledges it.

I did find Scout and Spy's dynamic to be quite well done, though, especially if you ignore the "Spy is Scout's father" reveal from the later comics.

The idea that Spy didn't have to go and do all that, but has grown a soft spot for Scout purely because his girlfriend clearly loves her incredibly annoying boy and her happiness is his happiness, is perfectly in-character. Scout has also long been established to desperately crave approval from his teammates, and on paper, the idea of putting him in a situation where he had to let go of some of his macho man dignity, imitate Spy more closely and ultimately win a tiny bit of that approval he's been looking for is interesting and plays well with the game's existing themes.

It's just a shame Scout's motivations ended up being conjured out of thin air, in direct conflict with past characterization, for the purpose of enabling a schmaltzy, tonally dissonant romantic subplot.

tl;dr, I'm conflicted on the subject of Expiration Date. It's funny, it's cute when it's not trying too hard, and seeing the mercs dick around off the clock getting into stupid shenanigans together is something I've always wanted to see in a longer animated format. It’s largely a good time and a fun watch, despite its questionable gender politics and trope-y execution.

However, like the newer comics, it suffers immensely from writers who are simply unable to identify the themes, characterization and comedy style of older material, and thus, in my opinion, falls way, way short of its potential.

>4b) I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts on Emesis Blue, should you end up watching it.

I'll be sure to share my opinions if I ever get around to watching it!! I'm super curious about it. As I mentioned in another post, what little I've heard of it seems much more on-point thematically, and even with the characters being so far removed from their official characterization, I really get the impression this is a deliberate, informed choice, in stark contrast to the newer official supplementary material. I’ll be sure to drop some words on it if I ever get around to watching the full thing!

Anyway, that about wraps up my thoughts! If you’ve read this far, thank you for sticking with it, and please do consider reblogging - I’ve spent an insane amount of time writing and re-writing and fact-checking this, and I would love for it to reach just half of all the people who were curious about my initial posts on the subject. :’)

Follow-up questions are very welcome, though to be clear: I’m not really interested in “debating” the subjects I’ve talked about here. I know I posit a lot of hard opinions in this post and not everyone is going to agree with me and that’s fine - if you feel differently, I invite you to simply ignore me and write your own take on your own blog. No hard feelings, I just don’t enjoy those kinds of discussions. (Corrections on any factual mistakes I’ve made are of course encouraged).

[chakotaybodypillow]

CHAKOTAYS TRIBE !!!!!! PLEASE READ IF YOU WANT TO KNOW HIS TRIBE!!!! I'VE DONE RESEARCH TO TRY AND FIND THE ANSWER!! <3

What the hell even is Chakotays tribe??? Would it be a surprise that there is an answer to that? What tribe he was based on has been questioned for a while and I’ve only seen a few people come close to a proper answer. I’ve seen people say that he is of Navajo/Dine descent or Ojibwe. I wouldn’t say any of those are wrong as his “traditions” were all over the place it made it hard to tell. Our first bit of evidence is the location he and his father traveled to in the episode “Tattoo”. Now this is my least favorite episode in Voyager, almost as worst as TNG’s Code of honor lol. So, it’s always hard to watch and I haven’t done so in a while, but I do remember they said they traveled to Central America. Obviously, this makes up a few different countries and tribes, but the most predominant Nation in this area are the Maya. I’ve been doing tons of research on this matter, and its literally impossible to compare Chakotay’s tribe to an individual Maya tribe. This is where the writers used the “Hollywood Indian” stereotype because its just all over the place. Other than the location, a few things that gives it away is the name of his tribe. They call themselves the “Rubber Tree People”. If you are familiar with Mesoamerican history, you would know that this is what “Olmec” is roughly translated to. Linguists were able to translate it from the Nahuatl word “Olmecatl” meaning “the rubber people who live on this land”. The rubber tree also plays a significant role in Mesoamerican tribes. The rubber from the tree was used to make the ball for the sacred game of “ulama”. Which played an important role of in the creation story in the Popol Vuh about the Hero Twins. The Olmecs came before the Maya and Aztec, but a lot of Olmec culture influenced their own. Whether or not Chakotay’s tribe were direct descendants of the Olmecs is unknown to me. It wouldn’t make much since historically speaking, but it would fit the narrative of the episode “tattoo”. Another indication would be one of his decedents, Ce Acatl. Ce Acatl Topiltzin was a real person who was a ruler of the Toltecs. I’ve only read a lil bit bout him so I won’t speak on what he did or who he was until I’ve done more research. Finally, one of the other MAJOR indications to me was in his short background story of pathways. I am aware that these are not canon, but it gives a glimpse into what the creators had in mind while creating theses characters. The literal first page is his father recounting a story from the Popol Vuh, and he’s talking about the Hero Twins, Seven Macaw, and the Maize God. My mind was blown when I read that, cause I started research about this a few yeas ago and was using clues from the show and figured since I had read the book before and didn’t remember any significant information about his tribe, there wasn’t any point to open it up. I read the book again at the beginning of the year and lost my mind. All of my answers were there lol. But it confirmed what I already knew. I felt hella proud cause I took the long way to get an answer and was still right. Anyways there’s still sooooo much to say about this and I’m working on a well put together paper explaining why the customs and traditions they gave him were wrong or confusing. I hope people will read cause I put a lot of research into it. I also have what I think to be some good lore that could fix a little bit of the damage that was done. More on that later though 😊.

[luckanio]

Assassins as DSMP Characters

So i got really into this musical called "assassins" by steven soundheim, which is about 9 of the presidential assassinations (attemped and successful), and i was listening to "another national anthem" earlier today, and i got the random idea of it but with dsmp characters

It mostly started off from when I was listening to "the gun song" and thinking about SBI as the assassins there (Czolgosz as Techno, Booth as Phil, Guiteau as Wilbur, and Moore as Tommy). Then I was trying to think about the entire cast: that Czolgosz could really fit c!Techno, and then making the connection with Guiteau and c!Wilbur, Booth as c!Dream, the balladeer as c!Tommy, the proprietor as c!Ranboo or c!Phil (I leaned more toward c!Tommy), and then Byck as c!Ranboo

Keep in mind I haven't seen any recordings of the actual show, I just listened to the soundtrack and read about people's reactions to the show in comments and such. And also, it's been a while since I've consumed any primary sources for the dsmp, so I'm mostly going off memory (and I generally only watched Techno/Tommy's streams, though I did tune into others time to time)

I then fully fleshed out the whole sort of "cast" for "another national anthem":

Booth = Dream Zangara = Jack Czolgosz = Technoblade Hinckley = Sam Fromme = Karl Moore = Nihachu Guiteau = Wilbur Byck = Quackity Proprietor = Ranboo Balladeer = Tommy

For Booth and c!Dream, it was mostly cause they're both the most, like, "comically evil" of the bunch. I don't know exactly how to describe it but I'm sure everyone can get what I mean.

For Zangara and c!Jack, the whole sort of bitterness Zangara showed in "how i saved roosevelt" just reminds me alot of c!Jack's character, specifically the whole tommy anti plot that he had.

For Czolgosz and c!Techno, this was based on "the gun song" where Csolgosz' monologue about the workers strikes really similarly to c!Techno's anarchist opinions. I think in general communists and anarchists appear somewhat similarly to each other.

For Hinckley and c!Sam, Hinckley's whole bit in "unworthy of your love" just reminds me a lot about c!sam's "oh woe is me i do it for him"

For Fromme and c!Karl, I'm gonne be honest I don't remember why I made this connnection. In my notes I just wrote "karlnapity breakup." I feel like in general Hinckley and Fromme (and to a lesser extent Byck and Moore) don't really get much attention compared to the other assassins.

For Moore and c!Niki, same situation as with Fromme-Karl.

For Guiteau and c!Wilbur, it's because Guiteau is the most, like, manic!crazy of all of the assassins, which just reminds me alot of c!Wilbur. And just alot of beats from Guiteau's characterization feel VERY similarly to pogtopia!wilbur

For Byck and c!Quackity, I feel like Byck had alot of cynacism that feels very in line with c!Quackity's character

For the proprietor and c!Ranboo, I just feel like the proprietor is like sympathetic to the plights of the assassins, which to me felt very in line with c!Ranboo's whole "choose people not sides" bit he had going on. I was considering putting c!Dream here, considering he supplied people similarly to the proprietor in "everybody's got the right" but I thought that c!Dream would be better as Booth.

For the balladeer and c!Tommy, I just think that c!Tommy comes across as a stereotypical "oh but we must have hope no matter what!" shonen protagonist, and the balladeer just feels like a sort of antagonist to the assassins' cynical ideas, some people described him in "another national anthem" as if the embodiment of the American Dream (tm).

Here's the song if you're interested:

[burstfoot]

Arknights, 2 and 13

2 because i'm curious

13 because of the ask i got :)

Thank you for the prompts annie!!! 2. Oh jeez to pick from three??? To pick from three??? I guess if I had to pick (and this isnt from most to least fav just an arbitrary order) Goldenglow is one of my all time favourites, I love her design sooo much its so cute I stockpiled emotes and used her as an icon even before I actually started playing the game, and then when I actually got to Light Sparks in Darkness I was glued to the event the whole time... her story about trying to give the Infected and poor of Caladon dignity and having such a simple dream crushed by the greed of the rich in the area hit really close to home... I don't think people talk about the scene where Haze talks her down from committing suicide enough, that scene is REALLY good and one of the standout moments in Arknights for me. Also s3 carries me through every boss thank u susie <3

I probably have to choose between Silence and Ptilopsis cuz they're so intertwined so it would be sort of pointless to just do both of them for 2 and 3. I'll go with Silence cuz she has way more screentime even though I do love Joyce a whole whole bunch Unlike GG I had 0 clue about her before I started playing and sort of experienced her story out of order, I read Dorothy's Vision and was like "yeah she's cool :)" and then didn't think about her that much and then I finally got convinced into reading the manwha and it transformed my mind forever... the complexity of her story and relationship with Ifrit and Saria and Rhine Lab, how selfless & passionate she is to make up for the things she did wrong... ;-; < 3333. The underdog story of all of these great minds in columbia being unfolded by a tired, dedicated 5 nothing owl mom is so good. I also really love her design and Nori might be my favourite AK artist so every piece of art he does of her I love seeing. (also i really like guardians of gahoole as a kid so im obssessed with owls)

^ the bubo bubo For my third I could go with like, Specter or Muelsyse or Flametail or any other character within my favs who actually has lore to base my love upon them on but I wont. Pudding

Pudding :) Shes so cute. Let me get straight to the point. I have seal 13. I don't want to be too negative on my account hashtag peace and love... BUT... Related to earlier mentions... I kind of can't get behind Redblade/GG anymore. It's not necessarily that I hate the idea of them together, but it feels like "red miraculously showing up to save GG from problems" is pretty much the weakest storytelling aspect of Light Sparks in Darkness that exists just to move the plot along and as a whole the pairing almost always feels like it severely downplays the depths of her character in favor of STRONG MAN protect CUTE GIRL. It's a very stereotypical M/F pairing I'm much more interested in her relationship with Quercus or Haze, both of who have seen Susie at her lowest points and reached out to support her, as opposed to Red who pretty much just like. is nice to her and saves her from goons Also every single male doc / female operator pairing kinda grosses me out, it's pandering that reduces the characters to one note caricatures of themselves. If you read doc as male all of his actual in-universe relationships are made less interesting by being romantic or you are inventing a sex god chad that does not exist to magically seduce operators that do not interact with him in the story. I was going to call it self-insert garbage but the male!doc/female operator fan content i have seen is an insult to self-insert garbage.

[I don't hate m/f pairings btw mr nothing kroos nation. Men getting pegged. Mountain and domma and/or robin is cute too]

P.S. I like wracked my brain to find a yuri pairing i didnt like becasue i dont think being like. straight people are NOT COOL is going to be controversial at all on tumblr dot gov but i legitimately could not think of a popular one that i couldn't at least slightly get behind. even the worst yuri mischaracterization is fine to me ive seen the horrors of gachabro fancomics

[wundergeek]

T-Day Sale: Because Transitioning is Expensive

PLEASE reblog.

I'm starting T in a couple days I just started T(!!!), and there are a number of associated expenses for things that would be REALLY HELPFUL in managing my dysphoria and making public washrooms safer/more accessible, but are also pretty hard to justify while I'm unemployed.

So for the next month I'm running a sale on Itch:

Ash's T-Day Sale on Itch

- you can pick up any of my queer games for 20% off, or save a little more and get a bundle of 5 games for $37.50.

The Games:

Fellas, is it Gay...?

Fellas Is It Gay…? is a darkly humorous yet silly party game for 5-8 players that deals with exploring the ridiculous nature of fragile masculinity through humorous and specious arguments about what “counts” as gay, or what “makes” something gay. (It’s important to note that slurs are NEVER used while playing. This is a game about the inherent ridiculousness of fragile masculinity, not about denigrating queerness or queer people.)

There Is Only One Bed / Queer Sir

There Is Only One Bed and Queer Sir, are a pair of games that use the same character and situation generation engine, but are played in two different ways:

There Is Only One Bed is a card-based RPG (originally a hack of Alex Roberts' For The Queen) in which two players take turns drawing cards and answering questions to create a story of queer longing and romance as inspired by queer fanfic tropes in approximately 1.5 - 2 hours.

Queer Sir, is an epistolary game in which players tell the story of a romance between two queer characters by sending letters as your characters. Play will progresses over three acts (Realizing the Attraction, Tortured Pining, and the Declaration of Love) according to prompts that will reproduce tropes from queer slash fiction.

Both games end when one person declares their love and the romantic tension is resolved into a happy and successful queer relationship.

Our Traveling Home

Our Traveling Home is a GMless game for 4 to 5 players that uses simple-but-evocative questions and prompts to help players tell a story inspired by the works of Studio Ghibli’s many movies that feature both otherworldly magic and slice-of-life intimate emotional moments. Our Traveling Home is for people interested in telling stories about happy queer romance and oddballs and misfits finding family with each other. It's also for anyone who is hungry for stories about weirdos flourishing thriving in spite of a society that is trying to break them.

The Straights Are Not Okay

The Straights Are Not Okay is a comedy LARP about gender essentialism, heterosexism, and the rigidity of gender expectations in which you play a group of people at a gender reveal party in a national forest. The game ends when the gender reveal goes hilariously wrong and the party-goers burn dcown the forest.

(Content Warning: This game revolves around themes of gender-essentialism, gender binarism, and heterosexism, although it does so as a way of holding up a critical lens to these common stereotypes.)

[95jezzica]

Your replies are closed, so I'll send this as an ask instead. I strongly agree with your idea of "Canon-Canon Nyo Nations", where the male and female characters represent regional cultures within the same country instead of making the female nations a "dream universe" gimmick. Expanding on this idea, what do you think about OCs who represent regions of the same nation? I would think it's a logical next step because 2 characters per country still wouldn't be enough to represent all regional cultures.

[Picture ID: Jamtland send an additional ask which says: "Whoops, I forgot to include this part in my first ask about "Canon-Canon Nyo Nations". What are your ideas for which regional cultures the female Nordics would represent, and what would the differences between them and the male Nordics? Picture ID End].

Oh yeah, sorry, the replies are still turned off. I have a post which seems to summon a lot of hateful idiots, so eventually I got too annoyed by it and turned off replies.

For the rest I will preface my answer with the fact I saw you're also Swedish on your profile, but I'll likely leave some extra information for any non-Swedes who might also read this, since I mostly use Sweden as an example. Also, fair warning to everyone: Long Post. [Below "Read More"].

For simplicity sake I've also choosen to just call nyo!Sweden Svea, and our canon-canon Sweden for... Well, Sweden.

Now, I personally don't make a lot of OCs unless they're humans or I'm making a human AU. (For an example I made Finland some "AU Parents", because I got REALLY tired of people always making Finland the orphan with no other family). With that said making OCs for regions and the likes is obviously still valid.

I also agree 2 personifications are too few for many countries, but I also understand why Hima wouldn't want to draw 3-100 characters for every country. Identity within a country is complicated too, because it depends a lot on who you're talking with as you describe your own identity.

If we take myself as an example. If I was talking with someone from another country I'd probably just say I'm European and/or Swedish, and perhaps mention I live on the west coast if they ask and/or seem more familiar with Swedish geography. If another Swede or Nordic asked I'd probably mention I live pretty close to Gothenburg - and if they live nearby I might go into more details, because my lil' hometown is small enough that there's no chance even other Swedes has heard of it unless they live somewhat close/have family in the area anyway.

My point is that it'd be difficult to make a representation for all kind of national-/regional-/state- identity within a country.

However, if we once again take Sweden as an example, I think (hws) Sweden would likely represent a lot of the middle/pretty far up in the west coast. Think the old Goths, and/or possibly Dalsland, Värmland, Dalarna.

Dalarna has the bonus of having a strong identity of their own in their region, and all three are placed close to (irl) Norway. It'd make sense how (hws) Norway and Sweden got to know each other early on then, but also how they might have met (hws) Denmark early.

Svea at the other hand is someone I view more as being further north-east, likely the literal ol' Svea, and someone I headcanon to have been among the first Swedish personification(s) to get into contact with the Finnish personifications.

It's weird though, because neither Sweden nor Svea really gives off "Stockholm vibes" (sorry non-Swedes/Nordics, I have no idea how to describe what "Stockholm vibes is) - but then again they are all based on Japanese stereotypes about the Swedes, so I guess it makes sense. x)

Another possibility I can imagine is the Swedish personifications in modern days being divided into something like this:

[Picture ID: A map of real life Sweden cut into three parts. From up to down: Norrland in strawberry red, Svealand in autumn leaf yellow, and Götaland in bright sea blue. End of Picture ID].

... with perhaps an additional personification for the far north and south. However, we have to keep in mind a lot of the far north of real life Sweden's lands would still be in the ice age early on and/or simply not be Swedish - and parts of what today is the real life far south Sweden would be with Denmark instead.

[Picture ID: An edited version of the previous picture, now with almost all of Norrland and the far south of Sweden faded out, since they weren't part of real-life Sweden at this point. Only a small part of south-east Norrland remains, now coloured and part of Svealand. The names are now also edited to say "North Swe" instead of "Norrland", "Svea" instead of "Svealand", and "1p!Sweden" instead of Götaland. End of Picture ID].

The picture above is a quick edit made by me and should by no means be used as a picture of research, so obviously not exact accuracy or anything, but it's a rough estimate of what (irl) Sweden would have looked like very early on, and also roughly what I headcanon (hws) 1p!Sweden and nyo!Sweden to represent/have represented respectively.

In history the Svea people more or less forced a union with the goths, but I headcanon (hws) Svea had absolutely no interest in working with the humans leaders and basically dumped all the responsibility and work on our (hws) Sweden instead. While Sweden was forced to work more closely with royals and leaders, Svea set to truly live like their people. That's not say say (hws) Sweden didn't interact with the "common people" at all, because he's a rebellious shit in his own right, but he was still forced to take on a lot of the responsibility and work with his leaders.

It didn't help that once Christianity was brought up in Scandinavia together with a less favourable view of women, 1p!Sweden no longer had a real choice than to take on the work. I think (hws) Svea moved back in with Sweden around the time Christianity became more common in Sweden (the lands and people), too. Partly because she felt guilty over having just dumped all the work and responsibility onto (hws) Sweden, but also because it was safer to live with someone she viewed and could claim as her brother. Svea would also have started out to (secretly) help Sweden out with work around this time, which only became official closer to modern days.

For the rest of the Swedish personifications I don't have a clear picture of what they'd look like, but the personification of "south-south" Sweden (in old days more viewed as "east Denmark") is likely around the same age as Denmark, Sweden and Svea, while the personification of Norrland is much younger than the rest of the Swedish personifications. I'd say (hws) Norrland likely didn't pop up until the Swedish population grew much bigger in the north and the Sami people were pushed further and further out in their lands by the Swedish population.

.

(cough). So I know I've basically only covered Sweden so far, but this post is already getting ridiculously long, so I will cheat a bit and refer you to @ifindus for Norway's regions instead. xD

[Again, art and OCs of the Norwegian regions made by @ifindus .]

Findus fully uses OCs for the regions to be fair, so I'm not entirely sure what I would make nyo!Norway represent since I really like Findus' OCs. x') . Maybe nyo!Norway could be more specifically the Oslo area? Because Oslo Norwegians are very different from Norwegians in the rest of Norway.

As generalization I'd say most of the Nordics probably have at least 3-5 personifications though, with one of them being the nyo. For an example Denmark might be divided into Jylland, Syddanmark, Sjælland, Hovedstaden - or it'd go a bit more detailed like cutting up Jylland in North & South like most maps.

(The Faroe & Greenland would obviously also have their own personifications, btw).

.

Hope this was helpful, and sorry I didn't get to cover them all in the post! x)

If inspiration hits me I might make another posts with the rest of the Nordics in the future. \^w^/

[tired-fandom-ndn]

What's your take on the Monster High Isi Dawndancer situation? Isi was their only Native American doll, but the company, citing many concerns and criticisms from Native people over the course of the original doll's release, have decided not to reissue her in the Monster High reboot, as they feel she's an offensive character and do not wish to insult Native people.

This has caused some people - who are white - to defend why she's a great character actually, and I don't like that I can't find Native voices talking about this. So I turned to you to get actual Native input: is this a character who should be rereleased as a doll and included in the new webispodes, in your opinion, or did the company do the right thing by removing her?

TV Tropes has a quick overview of the character here under Isi Dawndancer (since digging through the 10+ fan wikis is a pain): http s://tvt ropes.or g/p mwiki/pm wiki.ph p/Char acters/Mons terHigh

Okay so I looked at the TV Tropes page and her wiki page and here are my thoughts:

She's a deer spirit, specifically based off of the Deer Woman apparently. Really don't know how I feel about the Monster High franchise using a sacred spirit as inspiration for a character, but she's not a w-ndigo, which is. . . something, I guess. More than I expected. Also I just hate deer-centered Native characters in general. They're tacky, overdone, stereotypical, and often dehumanizing.

"Native Scaremerican" can we fucking not actually. In complete seriousness though, she doesn't seem to have any official tribe/nation, which is very aggravating.

She's wearing what looks to be dreamcatchers, which are Ojibwe (Northern midwest US). The wiki says that her clothing patterns are "Aztec", but they definitely look more like they're inspired by a number of different Southwest tribes, namely the Apache, Diné, and Hopi. She's from "Boo Hexico", which supports the Southwestern influence, but her name is Choctaw, which is a Southest nation. So she's a mishmash of a whole bunch of unrelated cultures :/. Also the feathers are shitty and unnecessary and her name is just stereotypical in general.

"She is a deer spirit from Boo Hexico who lived there all her life until a vision notified her of Monster High and urged her to study there." A vision? Really? The Native American character gets spiritual visions to guide her?

Dancing seems to be the only cultural thing she's got going for her. What kind of dancing is unclear. Is she a jingle dancer? Fancy shawl? Buckskin? Because traditional dances have purposes and meanings, they're not just generic swaying and that seems to be the vibe they're going with for her.

(I hope it's not buckskin dancing. That would be weird all things considered.)

The TV Tropes page says that she has a power that makes guys fall in love with her and she's repeatedly described as flirty. There's a lot of awful stereotypes centered around the idea of Native women being seductive and irresistible and I do NOT like seeing that continued here.

"The birds of the air and beasts of the field are all my friends. I would not want to cause jealousy by choosing one over the other." Wow. A Native American character who just loves animals so much and has a special connection to them. How unique and interesting.

All in all, she's a fucking mess and even just looking at her design makes me want to cringe out of my skin. I definitely support the company's decision to discontinue her for the reboot, but it would ring very hollow if they continue to produce dolls of her. I also feel like just discontinuing her completely is a cop-out because companies use that sort of backlash against stereotypical characters as an excuse to not include Native characters at all, claiming that it's just not worth risking offending people when they really just don't want to put in the work.

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

I love demo so fuckin much but i wish there was more both canon and fanon content for him that isnt just "haha funni alcoholism " like. Idk it super fucking bothers me as a kid of an alcoholic (now recovering and about 2 years sober!!!) like. I would love to rec the game to my dad bc i know he would loce the style and humor but hes also really proud of being scottish and i khow that the main characterization pf demo would probably bother him.

Anyway demo beating alcoholism arc when.

I actually have a ton of posts abt this (u can probably dig thru "#demoman tf2" asks to find them lol) but yeah I rlly think abt this a lot. I'm also the kid of an alcoholic (actually a pretty long line of them, I'm actually pretty predisposed to it myself because I also inherited all the same anxiety/neurodivergency/etc. problems) and I'm also aware of a lot of politics surrounding addiction and am invested in harm reduction n stuff like that, so my feelings abt it are actually kinda complicated. I don't like the idea that Demo being an alcoholic is, like, a "mistake" made on Valve's end that needs to be "fixed" in fan content - it's not inherently wrong to have a character who is an alcoholic or even really a comedic character who is one. I think there's a big trend in fans (especially white people lol) totally overstepping and "fixing him" by just, never mentioning it even in places it would actually be appropriate and just pretending he was never written to have an addiction. I think that's just another way of showing that you think someone can't be a Good Person(tm) and an addict. The other side of the coin, of course, is the INSANE prevalence of people who make it his one defining personality trait and often completely mischaracterize him by giving him traits they associate with alcoholism but that he doesn't have (laziness, aggression, stupidity etc.). I actually find the way he's written in canon to be. pretty okay? There's definitely times where it's Bad but most of the time I think it's alright. Even the "short, violent temper" thing (a trait he's apparently supposed to have? But tbh he doesn't really have in any of the supplemental material lmao) feels less like a stereotype of alcoholism (as fans will make it) and more like an ethnic/nationality-based stereotype (which everyone in tf2 is, so it doesn't feel specifically targeted) (although you can also argue that him being an alcoholic is also a nationality stereotype which like. yeah). Smth I think a lot of people forget but is actually pretty present in most iterations of his lore and also in a lot of his game/intro video dialogue is that he has some kinda trauma and his self-esteem is completely in the toilet. This, in my opinion, adds another layer to his addiction that while maybe not really explored in canon (because it's not that kind of media, no one really gets their serious backstories explored they're just established and then dropped for more jokes) can definitely be expanded upon in fan stuff. I know yall like angst! Stop fucking writing "angst" where you conflate alcoholism with domestic violence and stupidity and start treating him like a human being lol. Write about Demo dealing with or beating alcoholism, but don't write it like it's his entire personality or pretend it doesn't exist. It's a part of him, but not all there is to him. Sorry for the SUPER long response anon omg I love talking and this is a topic I specifically have a ton of thoughts on. Sorry if this isn't rlly coherent, like I said I have a lot of posts abt this topic. I might go rb some now just to clarify my opinions

[fanby-fckry]

Requests:

Requests are currently open for mutuals only. I’m trying to limit requests at the moment, but will make an exception for mutuals if I think I can swing it.

Will Write:

Angst with a happy ending

Hurt/comfort

Fluff

Familial relationships

Found family trope

X reader

OCs

Canon x OC

Any relationship style: platonic, queer platonic, romantic, sexual, D/s dynamics

Most kinks

Explicit kink

Non-explicit sexual content

Might Write:

Hurt/no comfort

Crossovers

OOC

Non-canon disabilities and mental illness *1

Alastor as a Voodoo practitioner*2

Explicit sexual content *3

*1 If I’m going to represent a marginalized group, I’m going to do my best to do so respectfully, even in fanfiction. If I’m not confident in my ability to do that, then I may choose not to.

That being said, I’m down to research and I have lived experience with chronic pain and a few mental illnesses. I am extremely confident in my ability to project my own experiences onto my blorbos, and do so quite frequently.

*2 This is mainly for the same reason I won’t write non-canon disabilities. Voodoo is highly misrepresented and I don’t want to contribute to that.

I may write him as a past practitioner depending on the circumstances and as long as his current magic is not Voodoo-based. I don’t have the knowledge or the lived experience to be able to untangle Alastor’s current magic from Voodoo stereotypes, and I’ll leave that up to people who do.

My personal headcanon is that he grew up practicing Voodoo and ancestral magic, but burned bridges in the pursuit of power and lost support because being a cannibalistic serial killer is generally frowned upon. I usually write his current magic as non-specific, demonic, or Eldritch in nature.

*3 My ability to write explicit sexual content varies, so I’ll be taking this on a case by case basis.

Won’t Write – This Fandom-Specific Content:

Note: These are due to personal preference, deeply ingrained headcanons, and nunn’yuh (none ya business). I am not judging or condemning any of these ships/headcanons/etc. or people who make fanworks involving them; it’s just a comfort thing.

Hazbin Hotel:

Rosie in an NSFW context

Chalastor

Alastor x Niffty

Angel Dust shipped romantically with women

Vaggie shipped with men

The Witcher:

Yennefer bashing

Ciri (including adult!Ciri) shipped with any Wolf School Witcher

Ciri (including adult!Ciri) shipped with Jaskier/Dandelion

Won’t Write – This General Content:

Note: I’m not here to take sides in anti-/pro-ship discourse, kink discourse, or police other people’s writing; this is, again, about my own comfort level with writing certain topics. That’s it.

Scat/watersports/emeto kink

Adult x minor ships

Underage NSFW/smut/explicit, including any underage kink

Incest, including adoptive/step family

Detailed or romanticized non-con *1

Detailed or romanticized dub-con *1

Detailed or romanticized suicide *2

Detailed or romanticized self harm *2

*1 I can write aftermath of non-con/dub-con or attempted non-con/dub-con, but will not go into detail or portray it as in any way positive. I won’t write the reader or a canon characters as the perpetrator, unless it’s already in canon – AKA: The Valentino Exception. This does not include negotiated CNC, which I would consider writing under specific circumstances.

*2 Any time I write content involving suicide or suicidal ideation, I write with the National Recommendations for Depicting Suicide in mind.

The way suicide is portrayed in fiction can have real world consequences:

“Studies have shown that both news reports and fictional accounts of suicide in movies and television can lead to increases in suicide. In contrast, when depictions are done responsibly, the media can help to encourage help seeking, dispel myths, and reinforce hope – and ultimately save lives.”

(Source: Alliance for Suicide Prevention)

I am a suicide survivor and have lost loved ones to suicide as well, so this is deeply personal to me. If you’re struggling with self harm or suicidal thoughts, please hold on, and don’t be afraid to ask for help:

International Suicide Hotlines

Australia Lifeline: 13 11 14

Canada Suicide Crisis Helpline: 988

UK Samaritans: 116 123

USA Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988

[yllcm]

Someday, as a non-Romani white person, I would love to write a Romani character but do it right. 

It just feels like all my reading and sources are mainly coming from articles written by WHITE (oftentimes English) historians sociologists.

Below the cut is some thought vomit regarding this and what not...feel free to comment below/reblog with your thoughts+comments+concerns+feedback because I would love to hear other people’s onions particularly from tumblr’s Romani community. 

If you guys know of any good Romani-sourced articles, books, documentaries, journals or WHATEVER please let me know because it just feels like I keep getting the white narrative. Particularly, I’m mostly interested in their historic religious practices, folklore, and any truth to the idea that their ancestral religious practices are in any way related to the concept of “mysticism”. 

For context, I wanna write a book about magic and urban fantasy stuff and my story revolves around a group of witches (or magic practitioners), humans, and other supernatural entities from different cultures coming together to defeat “a big bad”. They all make up a council sort of like a United Nations of witches/magical beings kind of a thing. 

I know there are portrayals of characters who are Romani (such as Marvel's Scarlet Witch although that's probably a terrible example all things considered) but are also magic and have magical powers but, I also believe that writing a witch OC or these kinds of characters that practice "magic" as we see it in movies and TV (or in my case an ubran fantasy book) as Romani are just going to be considered derogatory and only feed into those harmful stereotypes.

I'm currently trying to learn more about Romani culture here and there by doing my own research where I can (which entails a LOT of reading, naturally) but MAINLY pertaining to what their religious practices entail, their folklore, how that feeds into the culture of what it means to be Romani, and how the stereotypes became down to the historical and factual context and so on.

Ironically enough, some sources say that many of the claims of mysticism regarding Romani individuals actually come from false narratives often perpetuated by non-Romani people. 

Today, a lot of Romani people, seeing as how many of their ancestors were initially from India, actually follow the Hindu, Muslim, and even Christian religions. Specifically, Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholic, or Muslim (also feel free to correct me if I’m way off base with this or any of this info). 

[dragimal]

I think what rly kills me abt Genshin is that it could be really REALLY good, y'know? like the base structure is there for something good: a world of diverse nations with deep, expansive lore, and fun, memorable characters with their own deep lore, and an elemental magic system with great "classpect" potential for fancharacters, and a MASSIVE beautiful map that you could get lost in for hours and still find new puzzles to explore

but at every level Mihoyo just REFUSES to be anything but "safe" about it all, as if they're struggling to make more money

like there are all these themes of challenging oppressive systems and teaming up with others to do the right thing... and yet so many npc enemies are either flat stereotypes of poor/oppressed people, literal red scare propaganda, or fucking 'tribal'-coded magically-cursed civilians that didn't do a damn thing wrong besides be born in the wrong place at the wrong time. the character designs are so 'complex' and overdesigned... to hide the fact that they all use the same few base structures with no body diversity and barely any shape changes to the silhouettes. there are so many characters from so many diverse nations... yet I can count the 'dark-skinned' characters on one hand, and even they are barely more than lightly tanned. Sumeru in particular could have been a beautiful representative of Dendro as a nation, with a real examination of colonialist academia's dismissal of indigenous knowledge, especially of ecology, among other themes.... but instead it's a horrific frankenstein of at least 8 different real-life countries (compared to the other present nations only representing one(1) country) with no real aesthetic/cultural commitment to anything, with lore that makes even my uninformed white ass cringe at the implications

and it kills me because like. god, Genshin is really just an accidental litmus test for popular media, because it's not even trying to hide behind "diversity indexes" like Overwatch or anything. it's so unapologetic abt its own priorities, it ends up feeling like what everything else is trying to hide, y'know?

like it's disgusting to see a game so thoroughly and unabashedly confirm the things that are considered "safe" to a wider audience. racism is considered safe. fatphobia is considered safe. sexism is considered safe. 'loli' pedophilic designs are considered safe. boring half-assed research and design and stories are considered safe.

and it's like. I feel like I have to grit my teeth through so much bullshit in popular media, y'know? obviously the answer is to support more indie works from small-time creators that actually care, which I do. but like, we shouldn't have to ignore most bigger projects, right? we shouldn't have to, and yet here we are

[radical-sky]

like not to insult you or anything. but as an lgbtq person of color i am so so scared of the midwest. my family hasn’t had good experiences there and it all just seems so *shudders* i know that’s stereotyping and that there are nice accepting people in the midwest, but the way i’ve been raised is to only stay in the places where you have the most opportunity at success, and people like me don’t have much of that out there. sorry if you don’t want to answer this or anything, you seem super nice

i did not mean to let this sit for so long, but wanted to take the proper time to respond.

i'm sorry your family has had bad experiences in the midwest, but know all of it isn't like that. even where i live deep in red country no one cares two bits about who you fuck or what you look like. crude way to put it but thats how it is.

midwest folks care far more about your character and work ethic than anything else. work hard and you'll go far. doesn't matter what you look like.

i am not trying to come off as insensitive or dismissive, but so many people hate other parts of the country and the people who live there. honest people just trying to make a good living without anyone trying to tell them how to do it. all based on sound bites from the news or viral clips from congress - this is both sides. i'm not trying to point fingers at any group specifically here, it's everyone. there a lot of threats facing this country, and while its definitely not a perfect place we should be able to agree it is the greatest, freest country on earth. the nation is trying to tear itself apart from the inside. to what end?