#not entirely unrelated but when they say media literacy is dead

[florelia12]

do you have a fancast? like perfect irl people that remind you of florelia (and the rest) not necessarily actors but people in general. tbh it's hard to find the perfect tan girl with green eyes. sometimes it's easy when people aren't in your ear telling you flora is latina bc she might be but it's hard to find latinas with flora's physical traits. and helia to me he's not asian he just has cat eyes. though I have to admit I like it when in fics people say helia and musa are cousins.

okay there is a lot to unpack here.

First of all, no, I actually don't have the perfect fancast for Florelia or any of the Winx characters really and its not something that really bothers me. I don't want a live action (not everything needs to be made live) or a reboot, I want them to fix the mistakes they've done in the actual show and bring back quality content.

Secondly, I am that person in your ear telling you Flora is a Latina and that Helia is Asian.

Not because she might be, but because it has been explicitly said since forever that Iginio was inspired by Jennifer Lopez when creating Flora. The WHOLE POINT of the characters Musa, Aisha and Flora being designed the way they were was to include diversity.

The proof is coming out with the original designs for Musa and Flora where they are both clearly white. What other reason would Iginio have to change their features and the colors of their skin if it wasn't to be inclusive? And what is wrong with him doing that?

When people say Flora is Latina they obviously don't mean she is a Latina, Puerto Rican girl living in an alien world. Her character is inspired by a Latina woman. Hence, her features and skintone (when doing art or fancast) and possible stereotypes (when making hcs or writing fanfics) need to be taken into account.

When you say it's hard to find Latina's with Flora's traits, it's not because Flora's not a Latina or girls who look like her don't exist, it's because there is not enough representation of darker skinned Latinas. THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT. Especially if you're looking for it on pinterest, like you search girlhood in there and all you get are white girls?? Where the hell are the rest of us?

Also Flora having green eyes is directly related to the fact that she is the Fairy of Nature (they literally glow when she powers up) but that doesn't mean Latinas can't have green eyes. One simple google search will show you.

You can argue for Linphea since it doesn't look like Puerto Rico but it also a realm of Nature and that doesn't leave as much room for them to work with as they got to with Musa and Melody (even that has its issues of lumping in all the different cultures) and lets be honest we barely got a glimpse into Linphea's actual culture as it was.

Then we have Helia. Yes his character wasn't explicitly said to be Asian. But his design doesn't leave much doubt, especially the moment someone points it out. His features are inspired by East Asian features, he shares similar design characteristics to Musa and other asian characters.

The fact that you said he just has cat eyes already proves how you view Asian features. And also the fact that you identify he has Asian features but don't want him to be Asian is because of whatever prejudice you are holding onto.

The joke is so fucking old, it was never, ever funny.

Also I want to pose this question to everyone, not this person since they didn't say they think he's white. Why is it that if a light-skinned character's inspiration isn't explicitly stated, they are just by default white?

And anyone pointing out the possibility of them being otherwise makes people think they have the free-reign to just to ignore because the character is light-skinned?

When Helia's background is left for interpretation it makes more sense to explore the hundreds of Asian cultures that exist instead of ignoring all of that and jumping straight to him being white. Like there are East Asians and there are Southeast Asians and no these aren't just two cultures they are a number of different countries with different cultures.

I am South Asian. No, I do not look like Helia or Musa, I look like Nabu.

Hell, I thought Flora was Indian and Helia was white when I was NINE. It took one person casually pointing out "hey they're not" to realise oh ya they actually aren't.

I don't know if this was a targeted ask because I have posted in this account about how i find the Helia and Musa being cousins hcs uncomfortable.

But yeah, I find it uncomfortable because where I'm from (I can't speak for every single Asian country though I don't think this is an isolated experience) it is a joke to ask any new Asian person you meet if they are related or if they know this other Asian person that you know. Again it's an old joke, it's not that funny, it never was.

It is also a joke to say yeah all Asians are related, or they all cousins. It may seem harmless, but I'd say it has deeper roots of incest accusations/stereotypes like marrying your cousin or whatever. Even if I'm wrong about that (if i am please someone who is a poc correct me, white people shut up), it's still a stereotype you are perpetuating. (and no I'm not just talking about older fanfics that were probably written by 11 year olds where everyone is always related, i'm talking about the ones written by adults.)

Why is it never Sky and Stella being cousins? Or Riven and Tecna? They have similar features. Why not them? Why is it always only Musa and Helia?

But that just brings us back to you saying you don't think Helia's Asian. Musa is clearly Asian (if you're going to say she's not then you are just plain ignorant). But, Musa's Asian and her "cousin" Helia just has cat eyes ???If you like that hc then why can’t you accept that he is clearly Asian?

Before white people get defensive about poc calling out racism that you claim isn't intentional, stop and think WHY. It has been said time and time again, racism is not always inherently overt or 100% intentional. It can come out in even as something as 'small' or 'not as serious' as cartoon characters. But it is serious because we poc exist in these spaces too.

Also you can be POC and still be racist. Funnily enough, that was the very first direct interaction of racism I experienced in this fandom. That also does not mean white people get a pass (it's sad I even have to add that as a disclaimer)

I don't even know if you bothered to read this far, but I hope you've learned something.

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Ouendan (Video)

Watch this video on YouTube

Thumbnail and script below the fold!

February is Smooch Month, a month dedicated to considering media that falls under the heading of smoochy. Things that are about relationships, forming relationships, building or deepening relationships, and things where a romantic relationship is important. This presents challenges because it might not surprise you, but in videogames, despite their breadth of content, haven’t done as much with this element of human interaction as you might think. Oh, there are a lot of games about romance, and a lot of them handle it in a linear or systemic way I dislike a lot. For all sorts of common cultural reasons you might be familiar with, romance in videogames tends to be about an agent pursuing an object and getting it. Super Mario Bros and onwards. Or Donkey Kong if you want.

None of this is to say that ‘all games that try to be about romance are bad,’ but there are a lot of games that are more or less replicating the same basic idea, existing in a binary between a language maze or an entirely unrelated linear story. What’s more, often romances aren’t depicted as if they express a relationship as an interested interaction between two parties who both want something. And this is pretty strange when you consider how much art has been made on this idea and how many forms that art has taken.

Like pop music.

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan is a game whose name you don’t have to shout but come on, you should want to, you should be shouting in your heart, that is the original progenitor of a game you might have heard of called Elite Beat Agents. It’s a rhythm game on the NDS and 3DS, so the unique interface of the console presented designers with new(ish) opportunities to make a type of rhythm game. You tap the screen in time and place to correspond with the flow and movement of the music, and that’s kind of it.

(In a lot of ways, Ouendan as a game is a thing that benefits immensely from the material realities of what the DS is.)

If you know what a rhythm game is, you probably can work out how to play Ouendan in just a few minutes, even across the language barrier for non-Japanese speakers. In fact, it was that accessibility in part that led to the game being picked up in the west, and enjoyed so much we got a American localised version of the same game, Elite Beat Agents. This was in fact so much of a thing that at the end of the credits for Ouendan 2, there’s a thank you note in English. That approachability is only part of the reason why you can play Ouendan without literacy, though; another element is that the NDS doesn’t have region locking, so you can just buy a Japanese copy, jam it in your Belgian NDS (I assume you have one of those) and it’s going to work, rather than requiring you to pay distributors in your country. This meant that this game, in all the ways it’s very Japanese is available for you to experience without changing anything about what it is, its cultural framework, and its visions of what it wants to say in a story told through its particular framing device.

Because that framing device, to a common western audience member like me, seems at first impression to be bananas. In Ouendan, you are finding people who need help, then helping them. What kind of people? Well, you might help a kid with their university entrance exams. You might inspire a noodle shop cook to get over his problems with a stray cat. You might bring back the dead for one last dance. You might help a kid avoid wetting the bed in his sleep, or fight a virus or help Cleopatra build the pyramids. The first game culminates in the Ouendan saving the world from an asteroid strike through the power of rock and roll.

What’s important about this, though, is that in each of these stories, you aren’t playing the people who the story is about. You’re playing cheerleaders.

And you may be visualising something from your own perspective, and yes, you can unlock those, those are an option, but in Ouendan, you are not playing a western style cheerleader squat. You’re playing an Ouendan troupe: Which is to say, heavily masculine, disciplined cheer leaders who do ferocious poses, stomps, claps, whistles and shouts. This is a proud, established style of cheerleading in Japan. Manly cheerleading. In Ouendan, you play Ouendan who are more specifically, school toughs wearing gakuran and with all the signifiers of delinquents.

These roaming bands of goons find people who need help, burst into the scene in sometimes wildly inappropriate ways, and cheer them on to do their best. You are not competing for the exams; you want the person who is competing for the exams to know they can do their best. You are not capturing the bank robber, you are encouraging the horse to capture the bank robber because you believe in them.

It’s a great game.

It comes to my mind so often when I think about trying to find games for Smooch Month. Games about relationships, about expressing the forming and maintaining of a relationship in some way that doesn’t end when the characters express interest in them? They’re pretty rare. I could find more games about rescuing a dog than I could find about working with a partner!

(Don’t mention It Takes Two to me.)

That’s why I came back to this classic rhythm game, OSU! TATAKAE! OUENDAN!

There are some love stories in Ouendan. There’s a classic one where an Office Lady wants to date the Office Hunk (did you know sometimes those can be boys?) and the culmination of their story is her getting his attention in a literal Cinderella ref, backed by the probably somewhat culturally insensitive Koi no Dansu Saito. There’s also the story in Over the Distance, which is about a ghost coming back from heaven to apologise to his wife for the fight they had just before he died. It’s nice that there’s this bookending between these two types of relationship stages – a beginning and, sadly, an end.

It’s not the one that makes me think of Ouendan! in smooch month though. Melody, one of the early levels, is set in a Matsuri festival, where the person we’re helping wants to Win At Doing The Festival race, because that will get him respect and get the permission of a girl’s crappy dad to marry her. So far so Mario, woman as prize, right?

Now I pulled deep to find this game because I think this successfully breaks a lot of my problems with videogame romances. First, you don’t control the agents in the romance; you’re not the boy or the girl, and your relationship to the other has nothing to do with how well you play the game. These two characters are into each other, and their reactions to how well you play is how well you get them towards a goal they both want (where they want to get married). You want to do well, because you want them to have their chance to get married (and you get a rewarding tish sound). They are dating. They are in love, and they are being obstructed by her dad in this one instance. The girl isn’t the reward and the guy isn’t your character – she’s one of the participants. Your victory is not Him Getting Something, it’s Them getting what they want, because they set up a game event.

It’s a sweet story, it’s about something nice, and in amongst all these games I’ve been digging through to find just a romance that didn’t make me clutch my insides. Like you can read the dad as doing a thing that implies ownership of his daughter’s options for marriage, but even then he gets involved after the boy racer says that he’ll propose when he wins. In that case, it almost looks like the father is in on the game, because he wants the Matsuri competition to be a competition.

What’s more, everyone thinks he’s being a dick — strangers get involved and join in and help our protagonists. He goes from carrying the Matsuri on his own, and then, inspired by that, school kids and old folks and tourists all join in on the race. If you succeed, then the father in law is super happy because he sees it as a good omen for their marriage! It’s not ‘you shall not marry my daughter,’ it’s ‘well, do a proper Matsuri race then.’ At the very end, he’s not grumbling that this man stole his daughter from him; he’s joyfully attending their wedding.

And you know what happens when you fail?

They don’t get married and you failed. That’s it. She doesn’t leave him. The relationship is not contingent on the Matsuri race, just the father blessing them here. They were in a relationship beforehand, and there’s no reason that ends. The story doesn’t need to make this event the contingent requirement for the romance.

And that’s nice!

It can be a big story moment for these two, where you get to show up and encourage them to their best. It’s not told as if this is the make-or-break, it’s not told as if this

Incidentally, I did consider doing this with Elite Beat Agents instead, because, you know, it’s slightly more available and didn’t get a sequel. Thing is, it’s uh, it’s not got a story like this one in it. The closest we get to this song is Queen’s I Was Born To Love You, which shows us Leonardo Da Vinci harrassing Mona Lisa until she agrees to pose for him as a model, which is so much worse as a story.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!