#not the racism though
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
sa-sssa · 30 days ago
Text
I watched this vid with a guy explaining the parallels between encanto and one of his favourite books, 100 years of solitude. he explained that shit so beautifully and passionately, that I became a bit obsessed, watched a Ted animation about it (which further cemented my craze), immediately purchased the book after, binged the netflix version, and am now working my way through the book quicker than I've ever done before in my adult life (it arrived yesterday). how was I only just made aware of this beautiful piece of art. fuck my assignments, I've got *actually* important shit to do 🤧
Edit: the racism toward the end of the book squashed my excitement. I was enjoying it as a little sick, twisted piece of literature, but the unnecessarily racialised caricaturisation of *nigromanta* wasn't enjoyable to strain through. that's racist art. right at the end of the book as I was on a high, excited to finish (which I did, with a great sense of disenchantment) </3 like... why? do people really write about other "races" of ppl like that? that sucks. iykyk. Also, why does no-one talk about nigromanta? Didn't hear a peep about her. idk I still enjoyed the book, but I can't forgive it for that. and all the anger I squashed about how the other women were written - I've unsquashed it.👎🏾 men stay pissing me off. Idc if he (G.G.M.) was trying to do something, it was racist asf. She was not assigned 1 human quality, not even her name. 👎🏾👎🏾👎🏾 apparently its a play on the word necromante, but likeeee??? I mean yeah, she is in commune with a marked man. But it's clearly racialised and I don't like that.
8 notes · View notes
deaddee-anime-brownfanlady · 3 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
4K notes · View notes
menlove · 1 year ago
Text
can't do this one as a poll bc there's endless choices but if you're in college/university or went to college/university what's been the most fun/enriching class you've had?
15K notes · View notes
ratbastarddotfuck · 3 months ago
Text
if you're a white person taking pleasure in the idea that Trump voters of colour are experiencing racist violence from white trumpers because "they got what's coming to them" I don't think you're anti-racist at all, I think you were just waiting for an acceptable target, and you're also fucking weird.
Bad Person Deserves Punishment For Their Sins give me a fucking break and get yourself out of the fucking catholic church. you're all prison abolitionists until you see someone you don't like.
1K notes · View notes
mischiefwife · 7 months ago
Text
Hey, think twice before supporting the BG3 Stardew mod.
Saw this nice looking Stardew Valley mod with BG3 characters, pretty quickly knew something was off when you see Halsin/Astarion/Rolan front and center with no mention of Wyll at all.
Tumblr media
Then we get this whopper of a cry post, maybe suggesting they can't be anti-black because they're not white? They can't show misogyny cause they're women? They can't be blamed at all because they're just polling their PATREON votes? Fucking do better. Can't even hide behind the usual excuse that it's a free fanwork, it's not.
Tumblr media
Fandom's got a racism and misogyny problem. Step up and draw the line with these creators crying victim when asked 'where's Wyll?' (And yes I checked, the replies are 90% positive and 10% where's Wyll, where's the women) when you've already fully developed your random minor npc first. Team members being made uncomfortable translates to being called out for contributing to a lil' racism.
The misogyny hydra and the racism in fandom runs deep i know, but for the love of fuck can we push back against it?
Or you can side with the mod's supporters (this is one of the devs actually lol). Who post things like this.
Tumblr media
And the creators don't say a fucking thing at all about it, they just keep playing victim. It would be so easy to approach this system with a SMIDGEN of respect, just acknowledging the racism at all. Seriously BG3 fandom. Demand better.
Tumblr media
I don't give a shit if they're the most popular, there's also a REASON why Wyll is not. But if you want to just eat this shit up and contribute making your fandom shitty and uninviting, by all means.
560 notes · View notes
marisatomay · 11 months ago
Text
Anti-intellectuals are always making up a cinephile that can’t shut up about experimental short films that only screen once every ten years at a specific theater in Toronto and no you’re not invited because they’re better than you meanwhile the Criterion Channel and I are both trying to get people to watch Cocktail (1988)
872 notes · View notes
fumifooms · 5 months ago
Note
do you happen to have that page that talks about the beauty standards of each race?
Yeah sure. While scavenging pics for this I found this neat reddit compilation & chart & theory talk too. I had um, way more to say than I anticipated (I know you only wanted the one page. I have nothing to say for myself. Like most topics in Dunmeshi things snowball because they’re so interconnected. Mercy…) so, many races and observations are only mentioned near the bottom.
Beauty standards and race in Dungeon Meshi
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Not pictured there’s also how elven society is harsh on visibly disabled people, and how the demon took away Mithrun’s silver eyes and ears to take away his pride. There’s also how Senshi might have fit in with the orcs more easily because of the dwarven wide body shape, and how they tend to have more body hair too I suppose. In the extra on orcs we see Senshi living with the orcs and he gets judged because of the hierarchy rather than his looks.
What is fashionable also differs from culture to culture, and there’s how tattoos only seem common with elves, though dwarves and others do also sometimes have some. They seem to not raise much brows, which makes sense since for many essentially they’re for professional (magical) purposes especially with elves. Gender roles also differ in type and importance, but generally they are similar to irl ones for the races we see. Elven society seems to be the least gendered, which would be an unsurprising logical outcome of having lesser sexual dimorphism aka they look more androgynous. Comparing fashions and gender roles and how they affect beauty standards would be a whole other compilation and conversation. Kui has great worldbuilding partially because she’s got such a good grasp on sociopolitics and geopolitics. History affects cultures and beauty standards greatly. Kui’s oneshot Distant Utopia was very eye opening on her way to worldbuild and the consideration she gives these things, I do really recommend reading it.
Out of the big 5, we know the least about gnomes, but their sheet does say both culture and region are similar to dwarves’ and they end up being confused together often, so we can imagine the beauty standards are similar to dwarves’ as well.
I wanted to touch on this in a post eventually, but how one daydream hour page said half-foots tended to be curvaceous like in the artwork below puzzled me for a long time, all the half-foot characters we see during canon are rather slender and lanky after all, Chil’s succubi also being more curvy than plump. Economics are for sure a factor in that I imagine, the half-foots characters we see are all implied to be some flavor of poor or malnourished, as are half-foots depicted as empoverished oppressed minorities in general. Even comparing the artwork with the half-foot sheet’s depicted average half-foot, the ones on the left seem bigger. Wouldn’t it make sense though, if unlike dwarves half-foots don’t have similar naturally wide bodies, yet due to idolizing dwarves they work towards having a similar body shape/type to emulate them?
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
It’s said half-foots tend to stick to pretty ethnically homogeneous regions (aka half-foots-only communities) unless they move to the big city with ambition to try and make it big (like Chilchuck and his wife & kids did), and that’s interesting imo because then that would mean that in a ton of half-foot communities, they rarely see or interact with dwarves whom they try to emulate. Of course, one thing about beauty standards is that when they get adopted, at one point it stops being "this is how dwarves look and so this is how half-foots should look" and just becomes "this is how half-foots should look", most people feel as though beauty standards aren’t learned but innate, so I figure the half-foots wouldn’t have any problem still seeking dwarvish traits when there are no dwarves around.
There’s also stuff you can glean here and there if you want to extrapolate more. Like how in the race swap artworks, Mickbell is only smiling in the dwarf portrait, and Rin’s elven portrait looks very close to her elven one- Rin who is stated to be beautiful in her profile blurb. Benichidori’s extra does teach us tallmen can definitely have harsh beauty standards, but also since the text portrays her as very dysmorphic that’s likely reflected in her thoughts to a much more intense degree than is common, not an accurate strict baseline to go off. Ah, Kabru’s blue eyes are also why he and his mother lived a rough life in Kabru’s hometown, but that seems to be regional. Good post here on the topic of Kabru’s blue eyes and ties to irl history. There’s a lot to be said about Kabru being a man that in many ways is close to elven beauty standards, and how that might have affected or been affected by his upbringing with elves + his persona as someone that can effortlessly charm most people. Marcille’s section here in this essay also goes into Marcille’s struggles to fit in with the ideal image of an elf.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Looking human
Also notable are beastkins and demihumans: Demihumans are all dehumanized which makes people treat them worse. So if you differ from the visual idea of "human" (an in-world subjective categorization just as much as demihuman is) most people do judge you negatively. Elves and dwarves get to fight about which type of human is considered the prettiest, but demihumans are below tallmen and half-foots, they are considered as simply below the beauty contest, incompatible with it.
Onis are perhaps the demihuman people we know of with the least cultural influence on the dunmeshi world, and with the least intensely different appearance than other demihumans—they seem to be technically categorized as human to people not from the eastern archipelago?— but even them are treated as lesser than human, treated as beasts to slain for reputation points or useful strength to have around and command. It’s said their "magnificient horns" and fangs are often shaven off when the oni lives in tallman towns, so you could easily make the argument that onis are denied the right to have their own beauty standards, having to conform to other people’s and going through mutilation to take away features they might otherwise have taken pride in. Inutade was bought by the Nakamotos from a dangerous sumo fighting ring that got one of Inutade’s tooth broken on her first and only fight, and kept as a low ranking servant ever since. Remember when I said different fashions existed in dunmeshi and how those could also affect beauty standards? Like the elves, if you look at the portraits pages which include a lot of characters that aren’t in the story you can see distinct cultures within the same races, for example one young elf is bald which is in sharp contrast with the usual elven long luscious hairstyles, and that’s especially true for onis I think. Maybe not only from different regions but different eras as well… They have a bit of population in the very north of the western continent, so I like to think some of the ogres live in very cold, maybe even subarctic or arctic conditions. The point I’m getting at here is that within a race, culture/ethnicity like with Kabru will also influence them it isn’t just tallmen as a whole, different communities will have differing beauty standards. The oni history blurb and third row first collumn portrait remind me of Mongolia (which historically was a lot of different nomadic communities with different cultural identities as well. Something something, the oni empire experienced a decline and then tallmen overpowered them, and now they’re governed and split apart by stronger social classes & slavers and the richness of culture was hurt for it especially if they have no real community left of their own), but obviously many of them are dressed and look rather japanese, makes sense considering living in/close to Wa, and first row second collumn portrait reminds me of ainus which again would be logical considering geographical placement, though I’m far from an expert. Interestingly, ainus are indigenous people both in Japan and Russia- Perhaps the northern western continent ogres are meant to be closer to Russia than Canada like I imagined? Ok tangent over.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
The kobold sheet says they’re especially sought after as slaves because they’re "adorable", but locally in the western continent they’re repeatedly said to be seen more as ferocious and dangerous. The dehumanization is most apparent in the first comic below. The language barrier and conflicts no doubt worsen this by a lot, but I think it’d be hard to deny that their canine appearance makes the dehumanization worse. "They’re ferocious beasts, they’re demihumans, they can’t be communicated with". Most characters in Dungeon Meshi’s world are desensitized to slavery and most characters are prejudiced one way or another. Point being, kobolds are fully removed from human beauty standards, but no doubt for kobolds, other kobolds are more beautiful than humans are. They’re assumed to be an uncivilized bunch, but just like any other people they like to adorn themselves with nice clothes and jewelry and keep themselves clean and groomed; they too take care of their appearance and take pride in it.
Tumblr media
And the orcs! This one we have the most contact with in canon, with not only there being foreigner characters from the ethnicity or hearsay of their homelands and culture but full on contact with a community. We get to see up close what they’re like and what they think, and of course in turn they’re our introduction to how demihumans are harshly looked down upon and seen as inferior, less human and thus less worth valuing and less dignified. It’s text that orcs are ugly to most humans and humans are ugly to most orcs. Since I judged they didn’t need accompanying explanation the pictures showing this are in the pictures dump at the top.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
God forbid you sell vegetables to orcs my god- but then again they do basically mandate adventurers to kill any orcs they come across so yeah the world isn’t above that even a little bit.
Tumblr media
So yes, my main point here is simply that orcs are yet another evidence of the physical ideal of "human" being an important beauty standard for human societies globally.
Izutsumi is our glimpse at how beastkins are treated in the world, and in Wa at least that’s ending up being caged and mistreated as part of a freak show. Izutsumi hates her appearance and wishes she could leave the feline part of herself behind to only be human. Interestingly, not that we have a lot of info on them so this is very much a take with a grain of salt situation, but there seems to be less stigma around artificial beastmen, those who can shapeshift at will. The main difference is of course appearance, that most of the time they simply look like average tattooed humans. Artificially creating humans is an illegal practice, and no doubt it’s not well regarded, but being able to hide that makes them less likely to be discriminated at any moment, or even just discriminated less intensely. Again, looking human is important, not only for belonging but for safety’s sake. Beauty standards rule the world with harsh hands.
Mermaids and fishmen
Ok we’re done now right? Right-! But wait… Wait…! Mermaids and fishmen are said to be demihumans too, special separate cases to the main three demihuman species however, which is also represented by how mermaids and fishmen both are in the Adventurer’s Bible chapter Monsters meanwhile ogres, kobolds and orcs are in the chapter World. They’re an interesting topic because they directly tackle this topic, not only in a meta way for the readers but also making characters themselves struggle to quantify their humanity with the goal of knowing wether they should be eaten or not, especially Chilchuck. Chilchuck’s "is it really just a matter of feelings?" mini arc.
The party asking themselves "Should we eat this?" is very common, and often they end up playing a little loose on morality, like eating the red dragon’s meat despite it having digested Falin. Not unsimilarly Marcille freaks out a little over the vegetables they harvested having been grown with fertilizer, aka largely human poo. Half of the motivation of "should we eat this perhaps sentient creature" is out of consideration and compassion, but more strongly and more often, the characters struggle with a sense of taboo at eating something too closely related to humans. Even, feel uncomfortable because of the deepseated impression that eating it would dirty them in some way. Cannibalism is an interesting and relevant topic in many ways, but what I want to mention is how there’s the more or less universal belief that committing cannibalism inherently taints you as a person and turns you more monstrous, morally but also literally depending on some myths such as w*ndigos and onis in some cases, like in Touge Oni. Marcille and Izutsumi both express a fear of eating monsters turning them monstrous. Maybe this is part of what Laios was hoping for, honestly. There are two fears here, if eating a demihuman monster constitutes as cannibalism or not, and so, will eating it taint you because it’s a human, or will eating it taint you because it’s a monster? You are what you eat, until it’s a little too literal. You morally are the means by which you get your food, and you physically are the result of your nutrition. Dungeon meshi manages to mix an exploration of humanity with the theme of food because our relationship to food is very deep and complex, psychological as much as physiological.
Tumblr media
In the end, the characters sort of shrug and accept that they’ll never quite understand the world of mermaids and fishmen and how they operate, and what that means about them. Laios is the one always challenging these notions other characters take for granted, it’s not obvious to Laios why people are softer on mammals than other animals and plants, it’s not obvious to Laios why people would be afraid of eating a monster just because it’s a monster, it’s not obvious to Laios why some food is gross to Marcille but not fish testicles, it’s not obvious to Laios why you should immediately regard orcs and kobolds badly.
Tumblr media
"Cows are probably closer to humans [aka closer to being human] than fishmen, though they’re clearly intelligent", dehumanization to lessen empathy towards them to be able to eat them. Meanwhile, mermaids seemingly have a less noticeable "civilization" or intelligence, they hunt in groups like fishmen, but they don’t use tools and such, they feel more primal and similarly instinct driven, and yet… Do they attract sympathy more? Mammals, humans, is it because of their nature or because of their appearance?
Both the nature and appearance of fish are ones people don’t typically sympathize with. "Fish don’t feel pain", "goldfish only have 5 seconds of memory", "it’s okay to keep fish in completely empty bowls too small for them until they die from it", so many lies and misconceptions exist that make people less considerate of them. The average lifespan of a goldfish is 10-15 years, the record is 43, but they’re not seen as lives that really matter, so a lot of goldfish die in a few weeks of bad aquarium conditions. There’s a lot of research on animals evolving to look cute and appealing to make some predators want to kill them less and parents want to care for them more, including humans. First good google research result gave me this credible short article on the topic. In Chilchuck’s weighing wether a fishman is far enough from being human or not to eat, "face is 100% fish" is his biggest argument for it being more acceptable. The face, the most important thing for empathy and recognition. The face, the decapitated fishman one that falls into his hands next chapter.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
To quote @room-surprise: "Chilchuck can't explain why it's wrong to eat the merpeople, even though it's NOT complicated. But the problem is Chilchuck would have to accept and acknowledge that the merpeople might be people? And that's outside of the worldview he passively believes, so he can't just say that, because he doesn't think that's true. But that IS why he "feels" it's wrong. And it's all you'd need to say for Laios to understand! But it would require acknowledging that maybe the way they're treating and talking about the merpeople is wrong."
The idea of Chil not being able to grapple with how maybe some monsters are more humans than they seem, him who had been an advocate of half-foots rights, half-foots who get undermined and treated as inconsequential sacrifices… Grappling with how he could relate to the merpeople’s situation almost, and pulling away because it’s so existentially horrifying. I do not want to see myself into an hostile fish-faced warrior I can’t communicate with. In a way this also relates to Chilchuck being the only party member who doesn’t see Izutsumi as a cat in the relationship chart, the only one to treat her with full human dignity. He knows the struggle to be taken seriously, he knows being infantilized and he knows what it’s like to be treated as less than human.
Tumblr media
Below, you will see Chilchuck draws the line of where they become not okay to eat as when "they already look like mermaids". Above, there’s speculation that the algae hair is partly to mimic "the mermaids’ beautiful female form". Is it because mermaids are their enemies and the ambiguity might give them extra seconds to attack or flee? Is it to trick adventurers instead? It’s striking to me that this is what works, with the adventurers. Sure the fishmen are intelligent, but explicitly here, what makes them no longer acceptable prey to Chilchuck is that they look close enough to a mermaid, close enough to human. Mermaids who of course themselves have this form to entice and seduce and charm the adventurers they prey on. Chilchuck considers the intelligence due to the tridents, but most of his internal debate centers around their appearance, and the image of a fishman skewered sickens him. The power of mimicry… Mimic being a beautiful human woman. Mimic being cute, babies being wired to make us feel protective and softened. Half-foots, sometimes pretending to be children for scams or help or avoiding trouble.
Tumblr media
The mermaids are only concerned by their differences and not their similarities, and have no trouble treating the fishmen as food rather than peers. To an outside perspective like us, the audience, all these categorization of "more human" and "less human" between onis and orcs and elves and tallmen etc seem stupid and unfounded, but to the people living in Dungeon Meshi’s world, elves may as well be mermaids while onis are fishmen, not alike at all, unworthy of empathy and thus fine to eat.
Ultimately, Dungeon Meshi promotes unity. It’s about seeking to understand the unknown and the misunderstood, the dehumanized and the inhuman. It shows the good that comes from seeking to understand what you do not, even when that’s one another.
#Dungeon meshi#dunmeshi lore#Compilation#Ok… I think I didn’t forget anything. Feel free to point things out or discuss in comments and tags though#Delicious in dungeon#Ik i strayed a bit from the central topic but who knew beauty standards and discrimination went hand in hand /s#Ask me about my dunmeshi kobold oc……….. ask me about my dunmeshi ocs……..#Can we give body neutrality an amen#Tw racism#cw racism#The “what are you talking about Marcille. Senshi is handsome” gag has 2 layers then doesn’t it#Like obvi Marcille is noticing the difference between shapeshifter and og senshi rather than making a judgement#But the elf being *the* one to notice and say “Senshi looks more handsome than usual that’s weird??” may very well be an effect of living#with elven beauty standards yeah#Meta#I wanted to make a post on the half-foots body type thing and the oni mongolian coding and the chilchuck merman thing so#Three in one 🎵 why take the initiative when you can just wait for the tiniest opportunity#Chilchuck tims#Analysis#dunmeshi fishmen#It’s very interesting to think of how there being so many people *that* physically different affects politics and beauty standards#Mimics…. Pacing my room. Pondering. Mimics………#The burnout is over yippee#Ok but for reals though race is largely a social construct. Critical race theory good. Go read Distant Utopia by Ryoko Kui#‘Yeah sure.’ < person who thought she’d just be grabbing like 3 pics and had no clue she’d become hyperfocused for hours#The classic societal obsession for classifying and exaggerating physical traits into boxes of innate goodness vs evil…
290 notes · View notes
visenyaism · 4 months ago
Note
How is Criston Cole subject to a racist view by the Westerosi when he’s white-passing as hell?? The black (Velaryon) and Asian (Mysaria) characters face no racism in-universe (not talking about the racism in the writers’ room), but you think the white-passing man does? He could be subjected to xenophobia because of sharing ties to Dorne (not part of Westeros), but that’s not the same thing as being viewed through a racial lens, like you’re suggesting.
He is literally introduced when he takes his helmet off for the first time and Alicent says “oh gods he’s Dornish.” Because of his appearance. To them he “looks Dornish” and is racialized in-universe as Dornish which is in-universe perceived as a racial “other” in the canon. I do not know if they could have spelled it out clearer for you. Did we watch the same show
187 notes · View notes
asthedeathoflight · 3 months ago
Text
Yk I keep circling the issue of like how Armand gets talked about in the fandom because he does do some bad shit but at the end of the day nobody has to put a fucking disclaimer on their Lestat posts do they so I'm pretty confident in saying its just fucking racism. Every time anyone mentions Armand in the broader context of the whole show they have to do an aside about how hes an irredeemable monster who we are only discussing in the context of fiction but everyones favorite mediocre white guy doesnt need a disclaimer because everyone just magically understands that this is the choose your favorite war criminal show when the war criminal is blonde.
130 notes · View notes
lobotomy-lady · 3 months ago
Text
moc claiming racism when criticized for their misogyny is exactly the same as ww claiming misogyny when called out for their racism lol oh in fact I'm just gonna say it the men do this more often & with less backlash bc even so called socially conscious ppl don't take misogyny nearly as seriously as any other form of bigotry. look at this Tyler the creator shit the vast majority of ppl criticizing him said literally nothing about his race but he tried to make it a race thing & then went "you're gonna make the old me come out" wow yeah I can really tell you've changed! also him saying he's apologized for it when all he's ever done is make excuses. this man both in his lyrics AND OUTSIDE OF THEM threatened to rape actual women by name (Taylor & Selena specifically) along with saying more general shit about raping pregnant women and so on.
lol I mean can you fucking imagine if a white woman sang about lynching black men constantly & threatened harm to black celebrities by name then went "teehee I was just playing a character" as IF anyone would excuse that! they'd rightfully cancel her forever. but men get away with the slim shady excuse all the time even when it's very clearly just that, a thin excuse to harp on about sexual violence they definitely do want to commit.
75 notes · View notes
aroaceleovaldez · 4 months ago
Note
i'm so happy you brought back up the topic of rick's shitty writing of anyone even remotely non white / "white passing"
with that being said, do you think the shitty script he gave to annabeth in the show has to do with him just being deeply uninterested in adapting his story to include characters of color? bc it seems like once rick encounters a character that cannot be easily erased all ethnic or racial identity of to fit them into an usamerican specifically white ass narrative, he gets lost.
i just keep thinking how the only thing that "changed" about annabeth as presented in the show was her race but her plot relevance and her characterization got downgraded severely. meanwhile percy, whiter than before (wheres the mediterranean god look......................................), got half her functions. like i just look at rick in context and i wonder if he just gives so little fuck about characters of color he cant even write a decent character arc for an adaptation of a very established persona
thoughts? thank u!
I wouldn't be surprised if it's Rick (and the writer's room, since it actually seems Rick isn't all that heavily involved if much at all with the script itself based on some interviews) just has internal biases that he refuses to reflect on. It would be a consistent trend with the uptick in offensive writing in the books themselves (see: the troglodytes in general, all the Jewish kids in CHB being in Hermes cabin, etc etc). Rick seems to want to engage with these topics but refuses to actually assess how he's approaching it and his own biases while also overemphasizing his engagement with the topics. It's a kind of big talk/words vs actions type thing to me.
[this got a wee bit long so throwing it under a cut]
I was having a couple of conversations about this topic recently - one being group reading/discussion of WottG and how, allegedly, the slightly different characterizations in that book are inspired by the actors in the show. Annabeth is repeatedly and frequently described as motherly and maternal in the book, plus some other misc characterizations that make you tilt your head and go "Wait, what about Leah made you want to write Annabeth this way?" and concerns about it leaning into stereotypes. (It's also strange, because in the show Sally is MUCH more aggressive and less maternal, and this is painted like it's supposed to be a girlboss thing cause her being too soft and motherly was too weak or something? But now book Annabeth is now being described as all soft and maternal??? What. What is happening.)
Another conversation that i had with my therapist (cause we talk about pjo a lot lol) and later repeated and discussed more with other folks on discord more specifically regarding the show was a lot of discussion about the casting. Particularly casting choices and how the writing either is refusing to take casting into consideration to respectfully approach how things would be changed to avoid problems or are actively changing the script for characters in a way that is potentially if not downright offensive. Clarisse is the number one example i bring up because a lot of people say that the reason a plus sized actress wasn't cast for her was to avoid the "fat bully" trope. The thing is, there is ALSO a POC bully trope that is just as bad if not worse, so if they were actually taking offensive tropes into consideration one would expect them to avoid that too (especially since Percy was cast as a pasty white boy - which just makes it all look worse)? (Also other plus-sized characters like Dionysus and Gabe were also cast as skinny, same with Tyson. So it just seems like they don't want to cast plus-sized actors either.)
But also they're rewriting stuff that actively puts the casting decisions into worse tropes. Like hey, why is Percy (a white guy) the one who knows the "real" versions of all these myths and is expositioning them to Annabeth (a black girl), who in the books is supposed to know more than him? Why does he know better than her for some reason and have to guide her? Why is Percy teaching Annabeth about pop culture and how to be a kid? Not to mention stuff like the show constantly encouraging the viewer to doubt or distrust characters like Grover and Clarisse and Annabeth as red herrings as to who the traitor is. Plus there's no adjustments to stuff from the books like Annabeth initially being somewhat aggressive/antagonistic towards Percy, or Clarisse's aggression and bullying towards Percy to try and circumvent those being bad tropes in the contexts of the casting.
And there's an ongoing trend of characters who are antagonistic towards Percy in the books being divided into two groups: those who continue to be antagonistic towards Percy in the show, or those who are tweaked to suddenly become kinda silly-goofy and significantly less threatening. Gabe, Dionysus, Ares, and Hades are all examples of characters that should be antagonistic towards Percy but are softened SIGNIFICANTLY and played for laughs in the show. Echidna is played as a twist antagonist because she initially because she approaches the kids as very sweet and helpful. And they're all cast as white! Meanwhile other characters like Clarisse, Luke, Zeus, etc, are still antagonistic towards Percy (plus also like Annabeth initially and again, Grover being painted as a major red herring). Plus some new additions like Hermes, Mr. Lin Manuel Miranda himself, being wholly introduced into the plot when he's not supposed to appear until book 2, and all he does is sabotage the quest. Like, it's weird! That's a weird writing decision!!!! I get wanting to get that sweet sweet LMM cameo money, but, why is Hermes an antagonist here???????? he's not even supposed to be here yet!.
We also have stuff like Poseidon (who, like many of the god/major kid pairings so far seems to have been cast to match each other appearance-wise) saving the day for Percy and being this weirdly good dad, versus the books where we get the iconic "I am sorry you were born" line and Percy and Poseidon's tension is part of their arcs. Notably, Poseidon does this by ceding to Zeus, who is actively about to start a war. While Gabe is rewritten to be a total loser, Sally is MUCH more aggressive and her yelling and screaming at young Percy is supposed to be sympathetic for some reason? If Gabe were acting like Sally does in the show, he would actually be significantly more like his book counterpart! The show is making active decisions to paint these characters the way they do!
Admittedly, part of it may just be they got overzealous with their casting (not inherently a bad thing! diverse casting is good!) and then proceeded to not consider how that casting affects the way the characters are perceived. It also doesn't bode well for certain guesses we can make going further into the show - Thalia is very at odds with Percy initially. She's a very aggressive character. They fight a lot! Also Annabeth's description already implies that they're tweaking Thalia's character to be more "tough love" versus the books where she's significantly more of a bleeding heart when she first meets Annabeth. Like, I'm very happy about Thalia's casting, her actress seems amazing, but also I'm VERY concerned with how they're going to approach her character to make sure it doesn't end up wildly offensive. Athena is similar - we can guess based on casting decisions so far that they're going to try and cast Athena as similar in appearance to Annabeth/Leah. The show has already painted Athena has antagonistic and uncaring towards her daughter. If projected trends continue, these things are not gonna be great.
And the show does seem to rarely want to engage with these topics - like the scene with the cop in the train. You can tell what they wanted to address by having Annabeth be the one to confront him. The thing is they were too cowardly to actually have that conversation! They paint the kids as being unreasonable and getting unnecessarily upset when they aren't directly being accused of destroying a room, therein painting the cop as the one in the right in that situation. The implication seems to be a little bit they were going for "Oh, this is Annabeth's hubris getting them into trouble" but. that's such a bad way to do it! That's like the worst way you could have done it! (This is also a trend in books from HoO onwards, more or less - Rick tries to engage with certain topics, often using characters of specific demographics, and then proceeds to do a really bad job of it.)
There are also some aspects that are just like - in the books, Luke being a middle-class blond-haired blue-eyed pretty white boy is relevant! Because the fact that he has privilege from that particularly in how he's perceived is part of how he came to where he is and why he acts the way he does. Percy not having those same privileges, and having aspects like constantly inherently being labeled as a trouble-maker just based on his atypical (neurodivergent) behavior and coming from a lower socioeconomical background play heavily into his character!!! Percy being both a poor and disabled kid (and implied potentially POC) plays DIRECTLY into why he feels so strongly about standing up for other disenfranchised kids (in SoM, explicitly including other disabled kids and kids of color). It directly relates to his experiences and standing up for kids who are like him because he didn't have that, versus Luke whose perceptions and goals are very self-oriented. Now, in the show, we've essentially swapped Percy and Luke's appearances, and that paints a very different narrative. And that's important to acknowledge!
146 notes · View notes
mohntilyet · 3 months ago
Text
let me be clear i like veilguard but it does suck that no one disapproves anymore outside of like. three choices. i want to be fighting for my life earning approval back again someone has GOT to hate my ass. i should be careful about party composition and companion reactions again. i miss tactically taking fenris out of the party before i'm nice to merrill like those were the days
#please omg can someone hate my ass . not really. but in previous games it sometimes did feel like i was earning approval back#like a. 'even when we fight i still love you. don't forget that' way . i wanted some uphill battle and dav IS super sanitised#the difference is more staggering to old players than new ones. i think dav plays rly well for someone who doesnt know the franchise#but i keep asking questions like 'should the dalish not be more worried about solas/etc' 'the crows r not this nice'#'why wouldnt isabela ask about varric' 'there should probably be more fantasy racism here'#of course these r the devs who were slandering zevran weeks before release. however its also just. man.#I AM ENJOYING THE GAME THOUGH. just wish it had a bit (a lot) more relevance and respect to what its built up in the prev games#dragon age#dav spoilers#veilguard spoilers#dav#txt#like for example i think one of my favorite small writing moments is cass asking about the inquisitor's family in dai#where she approves if you are also estranged but disapproves if you say you want to go back#because for a split second she does not just see a so called 'herald' that she's forced to work with#it's someone just like her who never got along w their family and despite herself she likes the inquisitor more for it#or it's someone who couldn't be less like her and her dislike and initial mistrust becomes more certain#it just. there's is an amount of depth lost when vg tries this hard to make rook be loved as a default
64 notes · View notes
butwhatifidothis · 3 months ago
Text
I guess the ultimate thing that kills CF for me - or at least nudges it away from me saying I definitively like it - is just how much Edelgard is clearly written with the player in mind before she's written with her character in mind.
Because on all of the other routes, there's a power to Edelgard's presence. Even on BE, there's a sense that for as lonely as Edelgard might be, she still ultimately will do whatever it takes for her to get what she wants. Be that be killing her citizens (or otherwise letting them be killed), endangering her friends, assisting in kidnapping people, allowing Byleth to support her only when they have the Sword of the Creator, covering for TWS - no bar is too low for her to limbo under if doing so means she's even a step closer to her goals.
She's manipulative! She's deceitful! She doesn't care for the lives of her people! Even her friends are forfeit if they try to stand in her way! And this happens no matter how close you, the player, get to her, in the case of BE - C+ ain't stoppin' Remire, and going to the coronation ain't stopping the Holy Tomb.
And in the war phase, she is dominating the field. She has the Kingdom completely on the ropes, down to a few houses standing against Imperial rule, and the Alliance is stuck in neutrality - she may not be able to do much to it, but neither can they do anything to her (to say nothing of the Alliance houses who stand with her). She's far from the underdog in this race, and she shows off how threatening she can be.
CF? Her route?
She scweams at scawy rats. She gets embawwassed when you find her dwawings. She's just so wonewy, and she's just so gwad that you chose her. She somehow fails to capture Rhea, or frame Dimitri for regicide, and so now has to deal with that on the Kingdom's side of the war. But that doesn't stop Elly Welly-kins fwom twying to find her pwecious teacher, because you're just so important to her. She cwies and hugs you when you meet her in the Goddess Tower!! Because she missed you so much!!
It's like... Dimitri and Claude certainly show different sides of themselves on their respective routes. It's the whole point! You grow closer to them and thus see how they treat those close to them, as opposed to being the Kinda Neat Teacher they see run along every now and then. But, like... Claude doesn't become a blushing maiden whenever Byleth speaks with him on VW. Dimitri doesn't scream at scary rats and get called cute for it on AM. They don't get Basic Bitch Gap Moe Traits slapped onto them that are only ever shown to the player and only on their routes. Unlike Edelgard.
Dimitri's endearing trait is that he's this big huge dude who can bench-press forests and arm-wrestle god who still wants to learn to sew and who teaches kids to protect themselves and who buys candies for his friends. Claude's endearing trait is that he's this mastermind planner who has contingency and lie and obfuscation as three separate legal government names who still wants everyone to be safe and happy and hold hands and be friends.
Edelgard is strong, confident, and willing to do some of the shittiest things known to man for her goals. Her endearing trait is that her screams are cute. She's shy about her drawings of the player character. She blushes over the player potentially joking about having sex with her per her JPN version of her C support; you know, the one about how Byleth walks in on Edelgard muttering in her sleep from a nightmare about her tortured family? Perfect time to joke about fucking her! Dimitri and Claude's endearments are, well, endearing; Edelgard's are all straight up embarrassing for her.
Hell, even the smaller stuff is affected! Claude's passion for poisons and mushrooms are things he has no qualms about having others know about, despite how weird they are. Dimitri laughing at shitty jokes brings him no personal discomfort or embarrassment, despite just how loudly he laughs at them. They have traits to them that can easily be uwu worthy, and they don't care! Of the lords, only Edelgard does! Because, it feels like, the only way for a strong, resolute female character to come off as approachable is if she's knocked down a few pegs for specifically and only you, the player.
And that sucks ass! I'm sorry, but when I'm playing Edelgard's route I don't want to deal with her hiding herself away in her room for a month IN THE MIDDLE OF HER FUCKING WAR because she's just so embawwassed! It is so fucking insensitive that Edelgard is literally the only lord of the three who can have her trauma openly belittled at any point in the story by Byleth, all to have some cheap cutesy uwu moment about her fear of rats (calling her screaming in fear cute and INSISTING that it's really cute which is just. Fucking ew man)! Why can we fucking mock Edelgard's manner of speech during the MASSACRE OF REMIRE?
This shit doesn't happen to Claude or Dimitri! And saying "oh just don't pick those options then" is bullshit because no equivalent options exist for the male lords! It's piss-boilingly annoying that the second you choose to see things from the strong confident villainous ambitious female lord's perspective you can reduce her down to this bumbling moeblob just for you (sometimes unavoidably!) like!! Dude!
#legit not even sure what to tag this because for once I'm going to bat for Edelgard LMAO her writing treats her BAD when it comes to this#this is also a huge thing that fucks me off from liking Edel/eth because Byleth can be SUCH a huge fucking dick to her for no reason#and can be UNIQUELY mean to her for no reason. off the cuff i can't think of another character you can have Byleth act like this to#and most of this shit is well before Byleth as a character has any real reason to actively dislike her so they're just.#bullying Edelgard for fun?? I guess??#among uh. other reasons the ship doesn't exactly Work Out lmao#but yeah for CF it really REALLY brings down my ability to enjoy it fully despite me REALLY wanting to#because it encapsulates just how like. shallowly Edelgard can be written?#because it's not just that no character can meaningfully react to everything she's done (though that is a huge factor too)#but also as SOON as the writing wants you to REALLY like her it goes out of its way to diminish her powerful presence and UwU her#and not to say that she doesn't have her powerful moments - she does! and they're really great to see!#but that her cutesy moments stand out SO much BECAUSE the other two lords very noticeably have nothing akin to that for them#like. you can't jokingly call Claude a loser for having no friends growing up due to the racism he faced#you can't pretend to be one of voices Dimitri hears to fuck with him#you straight up CANNOT joke about their trauma which like. duh?? why would you??#but Edelgard just woke up from a horrible nightmare and that's just the perfect setup for a sex joke#and it's perfectly fine to joke about forgetting what Edelgard said about her trauma she opened up to them about cuz ''she said to forget''#and it's a-okay for Byleth to brush off her opening up about why she has a rat phobia to embarrass her over drawing them#WHY CAN YOU DO THIS. or better yet WHY *CAN'T* YOU DO THIS TO THE OTHER TWO.#it is just so brazenly sexist and i hate it every time i think about it 😭
58 notes · View notes
icecappen · 11 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
 Ik he was probably the whitest man to ever live but let me pretend EAsian Vox is real for a sec 
(Btw he’s supposed to be Korean American here but I was too lazy to draw the American flag LMAO)
279 notes · View notes
jingerpi · 7 months ago
Text
cursed to be perpetually aware of
"transmisogyny targets trans women -> it also hurts trans men -> anti trans panic also hurts cis women"
"the US and Israel are commiting genocide in Gaza -> the genocide is also hurting Palestinian Christians and white tourists -> this war money could be better spent domestically"
"anti homeless architecture makes it illegal to live without a house -> it also hurts disabled people -> ableist structures also hurt abled people"
it's weird because with some of these there are genuine points to be made and it's worth discussing the full consequences of things but I can't help but be aware of the human-value-hierarchy implicit in these statements and how attention is always brought away from those who suffer most from their own oppression. it's not really surprising and it's 100% the system working as intended but you really start to see it everywhere once you look
99 notes · View notes
theanxiousbookdevourer · 8 months ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
I lose my mind over them, actually.
146 notes · View notes