#on my own thread no less

[mercless]

🗡 dozing off writing replies but im curious how others go about writing out stuff/the order you write particular parts, and if you have a different way of writing depending on if it's a reply, ask, or a drabble 🤔 in most cases I find I write out any spoken words first, then the tones or actions done while talking, and then depending on the writing purpose add trains of thought, other actions or specific actions that convey emotions. stuff I looove getting lost in writing include describing scenes, settings, environments, food or the time of day! for drabbles I usually start with these descriptive elements to get into the mood of it.

[daisywords]

in the spirit of "you're more likely to follow through on your goal if you tell someone about it" um. For the month of October I am going to try to spend 15 minutes a day (no distractions) in my outline/zero-draft document for Fear Me. The hope is that by the end of the month I will have a fully detailed outline/ramble draft to help me with real drafting come November

[al-luviec]

still haven't moved on from zane in this episode (aka I hit tag limit again and am unhappy about it)

[viaetor]

hi everyone! i hope you're all doing well and taking care of yourselves and having good days. i haven't been very active here because of my surgeries, but i plan on being more active soon since i've been missing writing a lot. before that though, i need to state something very important for my blog going forward: i will not be interacting with any natlan characters/blogs or characters related/inspired by the region (including ocs), only if they're canon divergent. this will not change with the release of the archon quests. i will simply take whatever i feel is relevant to my aether and that’s it. my reasons for this drastic decision will be explained below. please take this post not only as an announcement but as well as a vent and an attempt to call for awareness, especially since many of us are not only roleplayers but writers, artists and content creators. i'd appreciate it if you could all read this post in full.

this post is also not directed at my mutuals or any people i have contact with. this is just me trying to make my boundaries clear, explaining them, and hoping you can understand (and perhaps relate to) my hurt. read this post and make your own judgement. i appreciate your time regardless. 

i'm latin american, proudly born and raised. my parents fought in the dictatorship of our country, my grandparents were of indigenous settlements. i'm a history graduate with honours, and before that, i studied social and political sciences. i've been a part of political movements in my university to guarantee equality and education, and i only stopped being part of some of them because i received threats by alt-right extremists targeting my family. even so, i still continue to be a constant participant in assemblies and projects. i'm an avid volunteer worker in local schools, and i worked in hospitals, too. i speak portuguese, spanish, french and english with varying levels of fluency. i've lived most of my childhood and early adolescence in villages. i've participated in many religious rituals, invited by practising people of those beliefs, and i've shared so many wonderful memories with people from so many latin american backgrounds that i can't even make a cohesive timeline of all my adventures. 

i'm saying all this to emphasise that i'm speaking from a place of experience, knowledge, and culture. my word is by no means the law, but i sure do believe it holds weight. you're free to disagree with me and think otherwise, of course. but i do think that, if that's the case and you have very strong positive feelings regarding natlan as a whole, it'd be best if you would unfollow and block me for both of our sakes.

i've been playing genshin impact since its launch, and ever since the release of inazuma as a region, i've been discontent with how the game has been progressing in design. i've also written and published scientific articles about the inherent colourism, racism and orientalism found in genshin, specifically in sumeru, while also nodding in acknowledgement to some of the research that the design team put in some characters—namely al-haitham, nilou and cyno. i know the issues we are seeing today are not new. however, it for sure has gotten worse. 

with these disclaimers out, i'd like to put some of my grievances out in the open. 

when you play genshin, you can feel that liyue is china. mondstadt feels like germany. inazuma resembles japan. fontaine is an ode of love to french steampunk and was very well designed. even sumeru, with all its issues of blending all of swana in one single region, has some research done when it comes to the islamic golden ages and pre-islamic mythologies. so if you see anyone arguing that hoyoverse is “just a videogame company”, know that they can and have done better. as their popularity and revenue grow, as players—free to play or otherwise—we are entitled to expect the same quality or more from them.

i don't feel the same way about everything we've seen of natlan so far, and i've been feeling more and more disrespected. 

i was sceptical when natlan was first announced, and some leaks were happening. i expected the worst, and honestly, it sunk even deeper than i thought. the names of the characters we've got, alongside some leaks, suggest that the characters we will be getting are based on the north, central, and south americas, africa, and oceania. this worried me very, very deeply and today, with the newest released trailer, i just gave up hoping for anything good, really.

although some people may (ignorantly? optimistically? blindly?) claim that all these continents are connected—and they certainly have many influences on each other through religion, culture and economics, born from colonisation processes—, it's at best stupidly naive to believe that one single entire region in an online videogame will tactfully tackle complex non-western and non-asian cultures and customs. because, yes, those are non-western and non-asian societies: we are progressively denied a place in western politics and cultures, we are treated as lesser, and we do not participate in global economics. when did you last buy a chilean videogame in the united states or europe? or a fiji pair of shoes? or a nigerian movie ticket in your city theatres? if you've answered "never" to just one of those questions, you've proven my point that these countries and regions are not "part" of the west or even asia. we are outsiders. we have always been treated as outsiders. while these european and asian powerhouses were allowed to stand as their own regions, genshin muddled all these cultures and ethnicities into one melting pot that they are calling natlan. the game is quite literally a global phenomenon now. imagine the impression natlan will be projecting to an audience that is none-the-wiser to the cultures natlan is meant to be inspired from.

so, again: when it was announced that natlan would take inspiration from all these regions, my heart sank. it feels like we're all being put together in one single frying pan of "exotic," "distant," and "unknown." everything that is considered "tribal" (because that's how westerners and asians tend to see us) is being thrown in natlan. it's demoralising. 

this is not to mention the clear money-grabbing and capitalist recycling of character designs going on with some of the characters—something never seen before in genshin impact’s history, by the way! they always came up with new concepts—and the abhorrent colourism that has been intensified. 

the disrespect has been getting rampant. some of the already shown characters have tribal tattoos that are used by some of the indigenous people for important rituals. the patterns of clothes they've shown also mix many cultures and peoples (sometimes even historically rivalling ones, to top that off) that are disrespectful. they went for a streetwear/biker kind of look that looks completely soulless and unimaginative, instead of doing the bare minimum of researching beautiful contemporary indigenous-owned fashion companies. because it's easier. i think it’s also easier to hire voice actors who aren’t latines, right? we must be “scarce, barely existent”.

and, what kicked the bucket for me, after trying so hard to give genshin the benefit of the doubt: an important deity for the yorubá people, iansã/iansan/oyá, has been shown as a fucking child in the game. she… and olorun, who you might know as ororon if you play in english, even though in all other translations (japanese, korean and chinese), his name is written correctly as olorun. but of course, the english translation team for hoyoverse, as usual, couldn’t do the bare fucking minimum. because it’s a nigerian name, right? why do they/you care? but just so you know, in case you’re the least bit curious: iansan and olorun are two of the most important orixás/deities in african and african-latin american religions. they’re worshipped to this day. they’re real, representative religious symbols. not tokens. not your average dead gods. i want to ask you, sincerely: what would you think and how would you feel if genshin named a guy "mohammed", or "allah", or “jesus christ”, or a girl "mary magdalene"? what do you think happened when cod vanguard showed the quran's pages on the floor? people were pissed. and of course, people should be pissed. and don't try to "oh, but people do that with greek and egyptian gods". don't be disingenuous, i know you’re smarter than that and that you know there's a difference and creeping power dynamic here. 

if this is not enough for you, then please, enlighten me. where are the beautiful forests of natlan that could have been inspired by the amazon? where are the amazing deserts inspired in bolivia or chile? how about the colourful cities of el salvador or cuba? is it truly enough for you guys to have something slightly resembling the aztec empire and its continuous fetishisation? wouldn't it be easier to play crash bandicoot or the old indiana jones games? why are we celebrating this?

i'm beyond heartbroken. 

to my latine siblings, whether you’re celebrating/enjoying natlan in your own way and finding light in it or if you’re as disappointed as i am, we deserve better than this. 

to my usamerican, canadian, european and asian friends, please, please, please listen to people who have lived and loved latam and all the other regions. i already did what i could: i've sent tickets to hoyoverse, i'll be muting natlan-specific words, and i will not be rolling on any upcoming natlan banners. 

so this here is just the nail of the coffin: i will not be accepting anything natlan-related on this blog.

thank you for reading!

[v-arbellanaris]

[trevisos]

rotating post-game xarrai and astarion in my mind. if u even care

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

been making thasmissy edits

[designernishiki]

well. finished yakuza 5.

[monsterhugger]

I may not be good at repair/handyman stuff but I hate spending money and I refuse to replace things until they are literally unusable so I convince myself I can fix things. that’s my one toxic male trait

[ultrabananapudding]

// Transphobia

TERFS are the most brain dead and annoying people on this earth bro like everytime I'm unfortunate enough to come across one of their tweets my eyes roll so far back into my skull and I lose a few braincells

[austerulous]

Rules have been updated.  You’ll find the gist of what’s been tweaked in the tags. I’m gaming tonight but I’ve got tomorrow free, so I’ll be around then. ♡

[savrenim]

Hello hello if you want more info about the rusty quill stuff here's the other side

a good breakdown: https://fataldrum.tumblr.com/post/703490177324220416/whos-afraid-of-bad-attempts-at-journalism

from an rq affiliate: https://www.tumblr.com/malevolentcast/703493906802868224/you-probably-already-know-about-this-but-an

more on reactions from others: https://eliias-bouchard.tumblr.com/post/703479494816743424/real-quick-summary-of-all-this-fay-fable

focusing on a misquote: https://dadhuddle.tumblr.com/post/703488191401984000/journalistic-integrity-re-newt-schottelkottes-rq

arc has a lot of solid posts but especially this one: https://callmearcturus.tumblr.com/post/703483865829949440/since-you-and-others-in-your-inbox-have-been

I'm not say rusty quill is 100% squeaky clean but it's more a business with growing pains during a pandemic and living cost crisis than some horrific "no ethical consumption under capitalism" corporation

oooh fascinating, fun to hear the other side of the story, I.... expected that it was probably not quite as one-sided as the medium article would make it appear, mostly because I have a fair number of friends in indie ttrpg design and between designers and writers and artists and editors and people who run gaming communities I have Seen Things Go So Messy So Many Times always in the splashiest ways

funny but not surprising to have nice evidence gathered for me that podcasting is the same, and also that Rusty Quill is not necessarily Pure Evil as the article would imply, I enjoyed tma and had a lot of mutuals who enjoyed their actual play stuff and while at this point I'm jaded enough by internet callout of Problematic Authorship being sensationalist and one-sided enough that it takes, like, JKR levels of The Author Is That Bad for me to decide to Drop A Fandom Over It, nice to know that I should categorize this in my head as 'petty small community infighting' and not 'large organized problematic institution'

[daydreamerdrew]

I know it’s been a bit since this all happened but seeing people say, after having watched the second Shazam movie, that they wanted a Mary spin-off, and then finally actually watching the movie myself was so strange for me.

because I would have assumed that, as someone that’s already really invested in Mary but was also not expecting much of anything too substantial from these movies and was excited to see her depiction anyway, I would be the easiest person possible to please with her portrayal as long as she wasn’t characterized in a way that actively contradicted how I view her, which would then really bother me. but then I really didn’t care about her at all in the movie. it wasn’t that her usage in the story bothered me so much as that it didn’t really prompt a response from me in the first place.

because her problems exist in the beginning of the movie and then nothing specific happens with her regarding them for the rest of it, they only serve to prompt a specific reaction from Billy as a part of his arc, and for me that’s a situation that inherently cannot make her compelling as a character.

I know that part of this is that people went into the movie with specific expectations about how her character would be used from how she was used in the first movie, as well as that the existence of The New Champion of Shazam! (2022) has provided essentially evidence not much of that a spin-off where she goes to college is going to happen but of that it would be a good idea for it to happen, because that something happened in a comic book is often used to mean ergo it should be used in the live-action adaptation because it would be satisfying to see it made into live-action, regardless of how what’s already been done in live-action has or hasn’t set it up for that to be a satisfying direction for that story as a stand-alone work without the context of the comics.

and I do personally really want to see Mary’s life when she’s away at college actually fully realized in a story, but that’s because New Champion convinced me of the potential in that concept and then didn’t fully deliver on it, not the movies, and I don’t necessarily want to see that happen in the live-action format. I’d actually rather see it in the comic book format. which is all to say that I’m not bothered at all that it’s looking like we’re not going to be getting any more of these movies.

[cielospeaks]

aime tachi plot: everything has to make sense, there are rules for the story even tho its self indulgent, yadda yadda, character development, progression consistency

dreamdom hearts plot: anyways the dream works au versions of fe characters and my oc recruit enjoyable single dw villains to go have slightly creepypasta shenanigans with a presumably dead oc

[shararan]

What's with this sudden uptick in "any fanfic depiction is a deliberate slight against the source material that should be condemned" I'm seeing across fandom in general and how the fuck do I opt out of seeing it

[null-siren]

The look on Red's face said it all. Such a simple fix to a lack of fuel for equipment that required it had completely eluded the big lug. While it was clear that there had been a plethora of other important things on the skeleton's mind--survival, for instance--Gaster still felt some small degree of disappointment in his for-now pal.

Which was something so very rich coming from the egghead who had completely forgotten that wind could be used to generate power when it was one of the first things about the world he'd encountered, alongside its snow--never mind how explosive such a thing as 'simply' trying to produce a combustible liquid could potentially become. At least he tactfully refrained from comment. When the item in question was found and presented to him, Gaster took the culinary blowtorch with a manners-minded, "Thank you," and also took a moment to look it over.

It certainly wasn't a welding torch… But beggars could not be choosers. Luckily heat depended more upon fuel than equipment, so whether or not it would be of any use depended upon whatever type of fuel could come of echo flowers, moss, or mutated flesh. He would have to use the samples he collected for less nefarious purposes than, say, experimenting upon his 'pal'... What a scientific tragedy.

Gaster followed shortly behind Red, back out into the front. The sight of the big boned's skeleton's equally big boned blaster - well, frankly, that was, "Cute." Hey, even petty old men bent on ineffectually culling timelines could appreciate something objectively 'cute' now and then.

"It is a pity that I cannot summon mine," he added, before returning his attention to his informally appointed assistant-guide. "Shall we proceed to the location you've deemed suitable for this project?"

Why hadn't the large skeleton considered that? Much like Gaster not considering wind power, Red hadn't thought of the idea of using organic materials to create a fuel capable of use within a blowtorch. Thinking on it now, it made so much sense that he had to take pause and look dumbfoundedly upon his company.

Then again, the skeleton had come to adopt some rather unusual habits in that frozen hell that he once called home. Food was never cooked, as it left unnecessary opportunity for it to be stolen or lost to another monster, finding it far more efficient to expedite the process by chomping down whatever raw material he could in as little time as possible. For heating purposes... well, he didn't have skin to get frostbite and after so long, he just seemed to... get used to it.

This was despite a rather useful bit of magic which, most of the time, he simply didn't have the energy to use. Now, while he did have the strength at the moment, he wasn't particularly willing to expend it, so he kept his trap shut on the topic entirely. After all, he wasn't looking forward to saying goodnight to his blaster again anytime soon...

"In that case..." He fished through the boxes once again, turning a few of them over with a clamor before he finally spotted it, picking the culinary blowtorch from the various pieces of junk and presenting it to Gaster. "Be my guest, pal." He could vaguely remember once upon a time when Grillby had been into making crème brûlée, with the torch used to caramelize the sugar on top.

With that done, he finally seemed to lose interest in the mess of boxes made his way back into the snowy mess of a bar that composed the front room, finding his blaster excitedly staring at him through the gaping window frame.