#or even brown people re: the ambiguity

[chemicalarospec]

you'll never be fucking happy with what people say just shut the fuck up. other POC are using BIPOC too. its whatever terminology and acronyms you feel comfortable using and feel represent you and your people best. i'm not gonna stand there using fourteen fucking sentences to say 'black people' when i can just say 'black people'

this might be a disproportionate reaction... (tbf tho there was a tone shift in the post from playful to frustrated b/c the first half was an old draft, which this tag dates back to. Still, I didn't deride people who use "BIPOC", just their lack of consensus, or swear at anybody.)

I literally said people should say "black people" when they want to say "black people". but uh. go off I guess.

[grapecaseschoices]

Cheers! I saw your chat with the paved in ashes author and I wanted to tell you it is so much more than sport ~ you can also skip the sport time from what i read somewhere on the blog * i am also not a sports if fan but i will try the sport part here > maybe. I am just here for the romance and it is already so delicious 🤤 i love the ros so much i am already addicted. I just hope i am patient enough because it seems to be the side project only so ~~~~~~ patience! ☠️ what i wanted to say is you should have a look 🤭

haha okay, okay. <3 i can admire and respect a game that has so many encouraging [is that the word i want? im tired, but it's not just dedicated] fans. your excitement is contagious.

and i do love a game that prioritizes the romance and your drool emoji has me intrigued!!

i wish you patience as well anon! i totally get how that rolls. so i'll peek more thoroughly through the blog.

[writingwithcolor]

How do I respectfully discuss the topic of diversity with a co-author, as well as assigning a race to an “ambiguous” character?

Anonymous asked:

My co-author and I, for context, are both white and in highschool. For the main cast of our story, each of us ended up creating three characters. All three of her characters were white. Two of mine were white as well, alongside one character who is ambiguously brown-skinned. Do you have any advice on respectfully bringing up the subject of diversity to a co-author, even if it means potentially changing our established characters? Additionally, do you have any advice on retroactively assigning a race/culture to a character? I now understand after reading this blog that “ambiguously brown” characters should be avoided, but I did not when initially creating him. I worry that I could fall into stereotypes— while portrayed positively, he’s somewhat of a “nerd” archetype. But I don’t want to whitewash him either.

“Hey, why’d you think we made a mostly all-white cast?”

In other words: Just be normal about it. As you yourself note, you also didn’t exactly put a great deal of thought into the racial/ ethnic identity for your single brown character either, so it’s not just about your writing partner. This is about how you guys like to create as a team, and what sources of inspiration you both tend to gravitate towards. If a pair of high school students who write together can’t have a chill conversation about the races of the characters they are creating, then I’d worry more for their dynamic as a creative team. Discussions of race are only as weird and awkward as people decide to make them, and that’s often framed by the baggage each person is bringing into the conversation.

Whether or not you change the characters is up to you.

“Diversity is a marathon, not a sprint!”

Write diverse characters when and because you want to. I think the push for diversity is best when it’s self-motivated. Strangers on the internet telling you to do something is definitely not the reason to do it. I’ll note the same applies IRL. Otherwise, you’re changing your behavior for the sake of peer pressure. Writing groups on the internet like our blog do not exist to sit in judgment of your work. These are venues to discuss, critique and receive feedback, but the final choice always rests with you.

There’s not enough info for me to tell if the experience of whiteness is so intrinsic to your characters that changing their race will alter them greatly. I would argue the same for gender and sexual identity. Sometimes, changing dimensions of a character’s identity alters a lot about who they are. Other times, particularly if the character is not thoroughly fleshed out, changing their race only adds to their characterization. Only you can say which scenario applies here.

Other mods have written on how to handle your dilemma of “white as default” in an earlier post available here. Please explore our #POC Profiles for more inspiration. 

Your third paragraph can be answered by re-reading all 3 sections of the FAQ and exploring our archives using the tags. 

Marika.

[alfgifu]

Fic analysis 16. In cahoots

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48946120

Word count: 6,025

Chapters: 1

First posted: 29th July 2023 

Summary: 

His tone was light on the offer itself, despite the sturdiness of his declaration of identity. She could refuse him with no embarrassment to either of them, turning this into a joke that they could laugh over with Basil later in the evening - but - but - those steady brown eyes were serious.

“A marriage of convenience?” she said, equally lightly, “how gallant, sirrah.”

How and why this came about

As it became clear that the prompt challenges were going to stick around for a bit I came up with a cunning plan, which was that I would use the quite specific prompt in this one to kick off an AU which I could then populate from different perspectives in following weeks.

The fake marriage prompts were themselves inspired by discord conversations about the timelines and feasibility of Kip meeting Jullanar when visiting Basil - and of course by Kip’s acknowledged childhood ambition to marry Jullanar of the Sea. Several people were working on the idea at the time and there are multiple cakes available on this one, all of them delicious. I’m a particular fan of mantrasong’s Caught Between a Spark and Lightning which started as a flash fic for this challenge but was later revisited and rewritten into a much longer fic.

The loose end game I was working towards here was a Kip/Jullanar marriage of convenience that bloomed into a deep friendship (without sex) and a recognised Kip/Fitzroy fanoa relationship. The only plan I had beyond that was to explore different moments as they worked with the theme of the prompt challenges, and see where it took me.

What worked and what didn’t

As I was posting new stories much more frequently I was still finding tags, titles, and summaries felt like an unwelcome chore. Around this time I realised with a sigh of relief that I could use quotes from the fics themselves as summary text. That worked better in some cases than others, but here it’s fine.

‘Kip Thistlethwaite’ as a name is as fun to say as the scenario is to imagine, which was a definite plus.

The subject of Jullanar’s marriage is lightly touched on in the books but the small snapshots we get of it are ambiguously grim; she finds her husband physically attractive (but only to a point) and morally repulsive. She’s trapped into it by blackmail and makes the best of it but it is in many ways a parallel to Fitzroy’s situation - imprisoned by force and trapped in stifling conventional restrictions, unable to own herself by her true name, afraid of hurting those around her if she reveals too much of herself. It was deeply satisfying to find such a neat way of circumventing it presented by the structure of the narrative.

It was fun imagining young!Kip from an outside perspective and writing a group of friends bantering with one another. Also thinking through how Kip’s training as a tanà might make it easier for him to strike the right tone in this kind of conversation: listening without judgement, leaving space, making practical suggestions with a layer of humour and plausible deniability that offer Jullanar many different ways to back out. I wanted it to be believable that she might agree to the scheme having only just met him and I feel like that worked out well.

What I learned from writing it

One of the things I was experimenting with was writing more from different points of view. When I started Embers the only way I could feel comfortable writing Cliopher’s perspective was by adding a big chunk of backstory at the start so that I could follow the emotional thread driving him all the way through. Here the short format forced me to jump into the action with Jullanar; I didn’t manage to avoid some scene-setting entirely but I kept it minimal and was pleased with how that worked (I know on some level that people reading fanfic are for the most part unlikely to be unfamiliar with the characters, but it hasn’t really sunk in - I still feel the urge to explain context and personality and setting at the start of every story).

I worked hard at getting the emotional beats to land correctly, because I’d begun to see how much that would carry the reader into and through a scenario even when it was unfamiliar/unexpected.

I was also beginning to learn that I got better results when I followed my interest than when I planned in advance, and was adapting my strategy for that fact by making this a self-contained story that left the door open for more but didn’t require it. I’ve never quite managed to get on that footing with everything but it was a good discovery and I’ve used it several times since.

[nerves-nebula]

I hope this isn't an unwelcome addition re: your vent about race, but it reminds me of my own experiences.

I didn't know I was latino until I was 13. Yeah there were *very* strong "hints", what with the whole "grandparents only speak spanish with limited english", "parents can speak spanish", "we're brown (except for my mum)", & "eat spanish food at grandparents". But like. I had never heard someone say what we actually were and I was afraid it'd be racist if I assumed we were latino if we might not be. For some reason.

Hah, I remember getting kinda mad at people who (rightly) criticized the "ambiguously brown" trope in media, because it was the experience I most related to. That's what *I* was. I wasn't anything specific, I was just ambiguosly brown for most of my life.

So like. I finally asked my dad what we were and he was essentially like "haha what are you stupid or something. We're LATINO obviously, what a silly question!"

So I just went "Oh okay." And pumped the brakes on our conversation. Quickly after I realised that that wasn't enough for me. "Latino" is a rather broad category, I wanted to know what *exactly* we were.

I felt kind of stupid after that though, and I didn't want to draw attention to how stupid I was by asking a follow up question (nor did I want to talk to my dad), so I just didn't until I was 16.

I got to thinking about it again, and I realised that El Salvador had been mentioned quite a few times in regards to ~parent lore~ (I truly did not know much about my parents. I literally didn't even remember my mum had an older brother. So I'd just try to piece together their stories whenever they ranted to us about like how our other parent had ruined their life or something. Bits and pieces they'd shared with us over the years).

So I texted my dad about it (who I was thankfully far away from by then. Funnily enough this was one of our last conversations before I cut contact with him), and he said we were salvadorians 👍. So yeah.

But like. I feel so disconnected to my culture. I don't even know what our culture IS. And despite now living in a place with many latinos, I feel like I still can't get into it. Firstly because it would involve me interacting with people. But secondly (and most importantly) because I feel like interacting with latinos would just reveal to them how unlatino I am. I can't speak spanish. I know nothing about us.

One thing about it is that I feel like I have to learn Spanish before I'm allowed to try to engage. But learning a whole language takes so much time. And I don't like doing it because it reminds me that I don't already know it! And I *should*!

Oh well. Not like I could've learned it when I was younger, or in that house with my dad. I don't know why they didn't raise us bilingually. But it's not like I could've learned it when I was young either, my dad makes fun of my mum for her spanish (she spoke exclusively Spanish when she was younger, but had to learn English when she moved to the US at 8. She lost a lot of her Spanish since then), which would make me way too nervous to practice spanish and be bad at it at first with him around (he somehow didn't think that would impact us? He ended up wanting us to learn spanish, so good luck with that when you act like *that*).

Also. I keep worrying that I look white. I've always been light skinned, but until 8th grade I thought it was obvious I wasn't white?? But maybe not so. It's not like I can ask people.

In 8th grade the teacher briefly left the room and left me in charge of it (I was seen as the most responsible/trustworthy), so I made a joke about me turning out to be a dictator, to which someone joked about that being racist, to which I said "It's not racist, 'cus I'm not white" (in a manner that I *hoped* conveyed that I was *joking*, and that the joke was that poc can still definitely be racist (I mean c'mon just be around my dad, you'll see)).

And he just stared deadpan at me. I thought he confused me for white, so I kept reiterating that I wasn't, and he just stared and stared at me the whole time.

I realised later that maybe he thought I was being serious, and that was why he wasn't smiling, or maybe he just didn't think the joke was funny.

But like. I couldn't know. "Later" was actually quite a *while* later, so at that point I was already out of school at home all day, under the pretense of "homeschooling" (there was never any schooling).

I don't even know why it matters if I look white. There are plenty of latinos I know of that could pass as white, who I never doubt are latino. Ugh. I don’t know. This is an issue that could be solved by interacting with more latinos. In fact, all of these issues could be solved by hanging out with more latinos. I gotta get over myself sometime and realise that there are PLENTY of latinos who are disconnected from their culture and who don’t know spanish so it's FINE interacting with fellow latinos is FINE there's no way I can fail some sort of latino authenticity test. Whatever. Problems and solutions for later.

because I feel like interacting with latinos would just reveal to them how unlatino I am. I can't speak spanish. I know nothing about us.

hahh. sameee

This is an issue that could be solved by interacting with more latinos.

also same... UNFORTUNATE!

i getcha tho. and i also get the whole "not knowing what we are until i'm a teen" thing. ive always thought it was weird that my mom and dad know a ton about their own family histories but never really made much effort to impress it into us. EH oh well.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hurling another enrichment pumpkin at you : any thoughts on how Secrets handles its sociopolitical themes? I haven't had the chance to check the podcast out personally so far but from what I've seen on tumblr it seems to take a much less vague approach to those themes than even Unburied did, and considering how multiple people mentioned that the podcast seems a bit rushed, do you think that affected the handling of this too?

one of the things I did really like was removing any ambiguity as to whether or not we're supposed to interpret this version of the Riddler as a Muslim Indian man, and I think it's fair to assume that by extension that this cements Bruce and Barbara as Black and Latina, respectively. I don't think any of those were really controversial opinions, especially per the fandom I see on our glorious hellsite, but the conformation is cool!

I think exploring the way that Eddie's status as a brown man would contribute to his sense of disenfranchisement and resentment for Society is interesting for sure. it's also used to enable some like... COMPELLING bastard behavior that's very specific to him as a man of color, namely misleading the GCPD to arrest some entirely unrelated Indian man that they can't tell apart from Eddie, and the bit where he's having his little tantrum re: his sister's social climbing and insinuates that she probably has a white husband/boyfriend, which is a thing Asian women are FREQUENTLY attacked for in Asian incel communities. interesting move, I applaud.

I was less impressed by how the series handled its humanization of criminals and incarcerated individuals, which I wrote about a lot on this post about the depiction of Azrael. idk, I like that the rogues look out for each other and we get to see the horrors of realizing that you're so dehumanized by society that your vicious murder becomes a meme, that's a perspective on Gotham's rogues that I feel we don't get a lot! but the series seemed to waffle pretty hard on its own stance on this, Batman seems to be operating a pretty different wavelength than he was at the end of Unburied (he's soooo much more of a cop), and I also genuinely don't know what to do with the reveal that this version of King Tut was running a sex cult, especially since literally the only person who criticized him for that was. you know. also responsible for several brutal murders.

at risk of harping on this too much it feels very strange that a series would be so invested in the humanity of villains and then also have an actual antagonist who's as one note as Azrael is made out to be and gets offed with so little fanfare. the series' other big issue seems to be coming down hard on the side of "we hate violent Christian fundamentalists, they're Bad" and like. yeah, I agree, and that obviously ties in very closely with exploring racism and Islamaphobia that the Riddler has grown up experiencing, but as I said in the other post it's also uuuuuh very weird to make Jean-Paul the narrative scapegoat for far right fundie Christians when, in the comics, that's not his bag at all. he's a dangerous and careless Batman, sure, but he's also very much a victim of the Order of St. Dumas, and it feels like both a sloppy use of the character and a WILDLY missed opportunity to explore the church as a corrupt system akin to Strange's medical abuses in Arkham and everything about the GCPD. idk, it feels like Secrets in the Dark just really jettisoned much more interesting potential stories building on Unburied's themes in favor of a much more black and white narrative.

tl;dr I cannot believe that Secrets in the Dark has forced me to point to David S. Goyer as a comparative paragon of nuance and taste!!! what!!!

[thenixkat]

Black Superpower Breakdown Re

Considering redoing that Black Superpower project but a bit more detailed/properly broken down. While it will definitely take *awhile* for listing shit and even longer for crunching the numbers and making graphs I’d like to get suggestions for characters to include.

For the purposes of this project, any Black character from a work of speculative fiction where there are people with supernatural or superscience powers/abilities are in it are viable even if the character in question does not have powers (the absence of powers is also valuable data). And Black means any group racialized as Black which is not limited to people of indigenous African descent. This includes Melanesians, Blackfellas, Torres Straight Islanders, and more folks than just Black Africans and their diaspora. 

There will be 4 major categories for characters: Confirmed Black, Ambiguous Brown Bitches, Visibly Nonhuman, Claimed by the Community.

- Confirmed Black- there’s characters are unmistakably visibly Black. Confirmed to be Black by the creator. A openly bigoted white bitch would look at them and go “Nigger!” with zero modifiers.

- Ambiguous Brown Bitches- Characters who are visibly brown but, especially in nonlive action media, are not actually given any specific visibly ethnic features. The kinds of bitches that any medium to darkskin bitch of any race could look at and go ‘That Me!’. Those kinda bitches.

- Visibly Nonhuman- Fuckers who do not look human but ... you know they Black. Whether its b/c the actor wearing the makeup is Black, or the voice actor is Black and gives the character a Black voice, or the design aspects invoke/reference Black stuff. 

- Claimed by the Community-  those characters that you’d be hard pressed to actually define and defend what makes them Black but a good number of Black folks claim the bitch for the community.

Still working out what specific powers and nonpower abilities will be termed as. But for character suggestions pls include: - Real Name and Code Name if applicable - Media of origin - Their powers and if they don’t have powers what technology/weapons/bonds are they using that makes them stand out from the average joe (ie. supersuits; cybernetics; pet monsters; martial arts; shit tons of money; etc) - Gender - Age/Life stage - Ethnicity if known - Species

[amoebab22]

I completely agree with this. I feel like this is one of the worst parts about Veilguard. My Inky is in the South, and while I firmly believe Orlais is the devil, it's very weird that Tevinter is just super chill about my elf Rook when my elf Inky had constant micro-aggressions as well as just out and out slurs hurled at her. Also I'm going on a rant about Mythal.

SPOILERS BELOW

Bellara also seems to just...kind of ignore that I'm an elf? Davrin makes more sense. He left his clan and joined the Wardens because he just didn't really vibe with the Dalish. He'd think of himself as a Warden first, I think. Wardens don't seem to give much of a shit about your race or religion or sexuality or whatever. In The Calling, they canonically don't give a fuck about the gay couple in their little group, or that Fiona is a mage and an elf. Absolutely irrelevant. So Davrin could start to fall into that mindset because frankly, it's a nice way to live. It's just not real outside the Wardens.

So when Bellara is like oh my god our gods are evil and Davrin is like eh, fuck 'em, that's actually about the most realistic reaction we've got re: elves. Davrin is just out here like yo I'm a little busy saving the world fuck them gods. Love Davrin.

Also, in Inquisition, there's concern that knowing Corypheus's artifact is Elvhen will cause violence against elves. So knowing it's the Elvhen gods causing all of this? The consequences of that, even if an elf Rook saves the world, should be looming for a Shadow Dragon in particular. Clearly Inquisitor Ameridan's race did nothing for the elves of Orlais. It was covered up over time. His sacrifice meant nothing to the humans. This should make Solas's plans to restore the elves much, much more tempting.

The way the Crows were presented REALLY bothered me as well as someone who romanced Zev. The Crows *tortured* him, sexually assaulted him, made him feel worthless, because it was seen as necessary. Sure, Lucanis being blood family might give him a very different perspective and experience, but Jacobus is just allowed to be a Crow and start his own house when he wouldn't kill? I mean, I totally agree that prolonged, public shaming and imprisonment is worse for this individual, but like.... That's not how the Crows work. They kill stuff for money. Sure, they run Antiva and would be pretty pissed off about the Antaam taking their territory I'm sure, and they might work with Rook since Rook helped Lucanis and he's a big deal to the First Talon. But like... It should be a hard choice to work with them for Shadow Dragon Rook, because SLAVERY.

I feel like the pullback on slavery is to make Solas's actions seem more ambiguous, and to make it seem like there was some equal power between him and Mythal. But I have a very hard time believing he was never Mythal's slave. Also, a spirit of BENEVOLENCE? Get ABSOLUTELY fucked. She was fine with SLAVERY. Thought she could just slowly phase it out, maybe. Yeah, no .

Because here's the thing: slavery is evil. Whatever you have to do to stop slavery, short of participating or killing slaves, is pretty easy to justify. Maybe I'm just John Brown-pilled from living in Kansas a good chunk of my life, but killing slavers and slave owners and freeing slaves is MORALLY CORRECT. FULL STOP. A "kind" master is still a master. Sure, you can give them a chance to free their slaves and make reparations first, but waiting to vote slavery out didn't work. The US had to go to war. Haiti had to rebel (and give basically all its GDP to France for like two hundred years. Fuck Orlais AND France).

The only reason my Inky was able to befriend Dorian, at first, was their shared trauma in going to the future. That changes people (that whole quest fucked me up the first time I did it) and I think my elf Inky was looking for reasons to trust Dorian and ignore the system he participated in. She didn't have to see it so it seemed less real. He's an altus so he doesn't own the estate. He seems open to other opinions! And some part of him knows it's wrong, or he wouldn't be so awkward upon talking to Inky the first time.

But Solas's inherent and never fully overcome distrust of Dorian isn't wrong. Solas needs to see action; words aren't enough. I don't blame him.

This is the same softening we saw of the Templars in DA2 and Inquisition, but if you read The Stolen Throne and The Calling and play DAO, it's very clear that mages are oppressed by the Chantry and live in horrible conditions. The ones in Lake Calenhad are described as pale and kinda sickly looking (or something like that) because they don't get any fucking sunlight. Fiona is happy to go to the circle at first because she was a SLAVE in Orlais (Honestly Loghain's hatred of Orlais is justified even though his actions aren't). If you decide to allow the right of annulment or whatever in DAO, Zevran calls it genocide. Zevran isn't one to mince words. He doesn't pretend he isn't a killer or that he wasn't tortured.

My Inky and my Rook are both 'no gods no masters' types, which is why I think clan Lavellan sent their First on a risky mission supposedly by herself (got real sick of her shit lol). As a result, she heavily sympathizes with Solas's cause, and would have happily joined him in bringing down the Veil if he'd just agreed to spend time making sure as few people died as possible, particularly after she meets the Avvar and sees how spirits really are. She knows Solas better than anyone, and even without a full explanation, she'd know that his reasons for doing this were morally right. He freed her people. He never meant to hurt them. He can't live with his guilt. Inky (who in my game was more like 30 because I don't think she could have made decisions or led on her own at 20, nor would she have been a studied enough mage) wants freedom for everyone. She's chaotic good.

Rook is a Shadow Dragon who killed slavers a little too hard for an organization dedicated to killing slavers (based Rook). They're also chaotic good, and a bit of an idiot, bless them, who kinda sees everything as a nail because they have a hammer. They see slavery, they fight it. Fuck the consequences. Solas did the same.

So why is Rook not bringing up slavery a lot? Why is Rook only finding out that Solas freed slaves on the regular at the beginning of the game? Did Varric just decide that wasn't worth bringing up to a person whose entire life revolves around ending slavery? Why is Rook not having an existential crisis after talking to Solas and finding out the truth of his past in his memories?

Look, all I'm saying is that I don't understand why more people aren't angry with Mythal and why no one is talking about slavery and racism. The whole point of fantasy and sci-fi, and the point of Dragon Age, is to critique modern society through thinly veiled references. That's why people get so passionate about Star Trek. And yeah, yes, it's necessarily going to make a piece of media more niche, or people are going to bitch about it (especially gamer bros my dude calm down, sorry something is very briefly not about you), but it makes a game *good* and lasting

BG3 did a good job of exploring the themes of trauma and power imbalance, and while some characters I think needed more fleshing out (Wyll my beloved, I owe you a lengthy fanfic for the injustice done to you), it was particularly powerful in Astarion. The people are ready for real exploration of real issues. We always have been. Backing off was a mistake.

ANYWAY I have feelings and none of my friends share my special interest. Here you go.

Why Fenris could Never Cameo in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

In the run up to Dragon age: The Veilguard, I was almost certain that Fenris would be our main legacy character from previous games. Not only has he been central in the comics released between DAI and DATV, he is an escaped Tevinter slave who's plot revolved around magisters, magic and the structural prejudices surrounding elves in Thedas. Not only that, but he's canonically in Tevinter killing slavers currently so he's geographically in the right place for us to meet him.

About halfway through the game though, it was clear to me: Fenris could never cameo in The Veilguard. Because he'd break it.

How the Veilguard treats Thedas is...odd to me, to say the least. I will be writing another post about how much I adored the expanded big lore in this game (the titans, ancient elves were spirits, where the blight came from etc.) and yet while these large lore expansions worked for me, the actual culture of modern Thedas is entirely softened, its sharp edges filed down until it's a sanitised fantasy world devoid of what made the franchise so vibrant and compelling in the first place.

So let's start with Fenris and slavery. In all three games, the reality of slavery is pushing at the corners of the world. In DAO Loghain allows Tevinter Magisters to enslave elves in order to raise money for his war effort. In DA2 Fenris is fighting to be free from slavers who will not leave him be, let alone the reminders that the city was built by slaves which are everywhere. In DAI one of the two possible mini-bosses is Calpurnia who was a slave, and characters such as Gatt and Dorian both show us how much slavery is tied into Tevinters culture and success.

But DATV the first game actually set in Tevinter where we get to see the famed Minrathous...it's like the game purposefully wants to avoid the issue. I can feel it tilting the camera away to not allow me to see. Slavery is mentioned, but never talked about in depth or as a specifically ELVEN problem in Tevinter. This might have been done to be less problematic, it feels ignored.

We are in DOCK TOWN. We are at the DOCKS. You would think that slaves from all over Thedas who are being smuggled and bought by various groups would be everywhere. You would think that the injustice in dock town would be partly built on the back of ships we've seen in the comics crammed with elves in chains. This is the world Dragon age set up for us. And yet...nothing. zilch. A tiny easily skippable side quest where we free a couple of venatori slaves, but only one of whom is an elf.

None of our Tevinter characters seem to have been influenced by their culture even a little bit when it comes to how they view elves; there is no moment when Neve fucks up and says something prejudiced, no moment when Bellara or Davrin are distrustful of her for being a Tevinter mage.

The same goes for Zevran; a character who epitomised the issues with the crows. The crows have consistently been characterised as very morally dubious assassins who kill for the highest bidder and who buy children on the slave market and torture them as they grow in order to assure that they reach maturity able to withstand torture without giving away a client's name. Zevran is very explicit about the fact that if you fail a contract your life is forefit.

Nobody responds particularly to you if you're an elf. Nobody trusts rook less for it in Tevinter. Nobody treats Rook any differently. Even DAI had better mechanics for this; with nobles in Orlais less likely to trust you as an elf.

Considering one of the main plot points of this game and what makes Solas sympathetic is the fact that he was fighting against the slavery of ancient elves...you'd think the game might want to mirror that in modern Thedas. It might want to show us how characters fighting to end slavery in Tevinter are similar to Solas and how the society Solas fought against was similar to the one that characters we love such as Fenris have fought against in modern Thedas. Maybe we'd want to explore how in a world of slavery like this, how could the answer NOT be to tear it all down? Maybe we should have that option at the end of the game so it really can chose whether we agree with Solas and his plans or not.

Adding Fenris to this game would entirely break the game because Fenris refuses to allow you to look away from this horror. He is a sympathetic character who had to learn to trust mages again because of course he didn't trust them. Of course he didn't. Fenris wouldn't allow the camera to shift focus because he's literally covered in the lyrium scars that show how slaves are used as experiments in Tevinter. Fenris WOULD question Neve on how she feels about elves and slaves. Fenris WOULD have things to say about Lucanis and the crows (let alone the fact Lucanis is an abomonation). So he could never be in this game; he'd drop a bomb on it's carefully constructed blinders to the very society its supposed to be set in.

And yet, in DATV, the crows are presented as...a found family of misfits and orphans? The politician who opposes the crows having absolute power in Antiva is framed as a comically evil idiot who doesn't understand that the crows are ontologically good. Yet...they're NOT. Crows in this game act more like a secret rebel group than an assassin organisation. We see no crow taking contracts with the VERY RICH venatori magisters despite being hired killers. We see crows just refuse to kill people despite having a contract because 'its crueler to leave them alive'. The crows don't feel like the crows here, they feel like a softened version of a cool assassin group who are cool because they wear black and purple.

Our pirate group are also sanitised; the Lords of Fortune are good pirates who only steal treasure that's not culturally significant. Theyve clearly read the modern critiques of the British Museum and have decided to explicitly stop anyone levelling similar critiques at them. There is no faction of the Lords of Fortune who aren't like this, no internal arguments about it. Everyone just. Agrees. And is able to accurately tell what a cultural artifact is vs. what treasure that you can have yourself is. Rather than showing us why a pirate stealing cultural artifacts might be bad (like in da2 where such a situation literally causes a coup and a war) it just tells us it's bad. But also pirates are cool so we still want them in our world.

This issue seaps into Thedas and drains it of any of the interesting complexity and ability to SAY anything that this franchise had before this game. It becomes a game about telling and not showing rather than the other way around. The games have ALWAYS asked questions about oppressive structural systems and their interplay with society, religion and culture and how these things can affect even the most well meaning character. Dragon age at its best IS a game about society and how society functions both for and against it's characters and what happens to societies built on cruelty and indifference. The best bad guys dragon age has given us are those who are bad because they embody these systems or have been shaped by them. Our main characters have had to wrestle with questions surrounding how to exist in these systems, fight against them, learn and grow.

Yet every group you come across in DATV is sanitised and cleaned up to the point of being as non problematic as humanly possible. None of our cast of characters have to wrestle with where they came from or the world that shaped them. None of them have to confront their own biases. They start the game perfectly non-problematic and end it that way too.

And this just...isn't what Dragon Age has been in the past. It isn't why I love the franchise. The whole game just felt, in a way, hollow. And this was a CHOICE and it is why the legacy characters are few and far between. Too many dragon age characters are just too...angry and complex for this game. You can feel them pulling their punches on this one. I have to imagine they did this because they didn't want to be criticised or have too much controversy? But I think it honestly goes far too much in the other direction and just makes it bland.

I can't imagine what I say here will be unique, but it is the basis for a LOT of my other thoughts on this game so I wanted to get it out of the way first. The softened Thedas and characters make this game by far the weakest in the franchise.

[blue-village]

The impossibility of fully becoming a white settler - in this case, white referring to an exceptionalized position with assumed rights to invulnerability and legal supremacy - as articulated by minority literature preoccupied with “glass ceilings” and “forever foreign” status and “myth of the model minority”, offers a strong critique of the myth of the democratic nation-state. However, its logical endpoint, the attainment of equal legal and cultural entitlements, is actually an investment in settler colonialism. Indeed, even the ability to be a minority citizen in the settler nation means an option to become a brown settler. For many people of color, becoming a subordinate settler is an option even when becoming white is not. “Following stolen resources” is a phrase that Wayne has encountered, used to describe Filipino overseas labor (over 10% of the population of the Philippines is working abroad) and other migrations from colony to metropole. This phrase is an important anti-colonial framing of a colonial situation. However an anti-colonial critique is not the same as a decolonizing framework; anti-colonial critique often celebrates empowered postcolonial subjects who seize denied privileges from the metropole. This anti-to-post-colonial project doesn’t strive to undo colonialism but rather to remake it and subvert it. Seeking stolen resources is entangled with settler colonialism because those resources were nature/Native first, then enlisted into the service of settlement and thus almost impossible to reclaim without re-occupying Native land. Furthermore, the postcolonial pursuit of resources is fundamentally an anthropocentric model, as land, water, air, animals, and plants are never able to become postcolonial; they remain objects to be exploited by the empowered postcolonial subject. Equivocation is the vague equating of colonialisms that erases the sweeping scope of land as the basis of wealth, power, law in settler nation-states. Vocalizing a ‘muliticultural’ approach to oppressions, or remaining silent on settler colonialism while talking about colonialisms, or tacking on a gesture towards Indigenous people without addressing Indigenous sovereignty or rights, or forwarding a thesis on decolonization without regard to unsettling/deoccupying land, are equivocations. That is, they ambiguously avoid engaging with settler colonialism; they are ambivalent about minority / people of color / colonized Others as settlers; they are cryptic about Indigenous land rights in spaces inhabited by people of color.

- Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization is not a metaphor (2012)

[newstfionline]

Monday, August 14, 2023

Canadian wildfires could persist for rest of ‘marathon’ summer (Reuters) Record-setting wildfires in Canada could potentially continue burning at an abnormally high rate for several more weeks, though the spread of blazes is likely to start diminishing in September, according to federal projections released on Friday. Forest fires have engulfed parts of nearly all 13 Canadian provinces and territories this year, forcing home evacuations, disrupting energy production, and drawing in federal as well as international firefighting resources. Four firefighters have been killed in the line of duty. So far about 134,000 square kilometers (52,000 square miles) of land have been scorched, more than six times a 10-year average, and nearly 168,000 people have been forced to evacuate at some point this season.

Rent reality (NYT) An enduring image of urban American 20-somethings is one of carefree living with friends in spacious apartments, as depicted in shows like “Friends” or “How I Met Your Mother.” That portrayal, never really all that close to reality, is growing further from it in part because of one factor: high rent. For years, we’ve been told that what you pay for housing shouldn’t exceed 30 percent of your monthly income. But that’s not reality for many people, especially because housing costs have soared in the past few years. Many Gen Z adults are setting aside the pursuit of certain passions or career paths, migrating out of big cities or moving back home with their parents. One 24-year-old, Ives Williams, who lives in Baltimore and spends half of his monthly income on rent, said the only way he could see himself owning a home one day was if he bought one with friends. It’d be like “one big sleepover,” he joked. Savannah Scott, a 23-year-old renter in Reno, Nev., told us that she spends about 75 percent of her monthly income on rent. She limits her driving to once a week and buys only basics at the grocery store (“brown rice and beans”). Kellie Beck, 25, in Brooklyn, spends around 40 percent of her income on rent. She shares a room with her partner in an apartment with two other roommates and said she turns down opportunities to spend time with friends.

Judge warns Trump not to threaten witnesses in 2020 election subversion case (Reuters) A federal judge on Friday granted former U.S. President Donald Trump leeway to publicly share some non-sensitive evidence that will be used in his trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, but she warned him to tread carefully before making inflammatory public statements about the case. “Even arguably ambiguous statements by the parties or their counsel- if they can be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors—can threaten the process,” U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said on Friday. “I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements about this case. I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.” “He is a criminal defendant. He is going to have restrictions like every single other defendant,” Chutkan said. “The fact the defendant is engaged in a political campaign is not going to allow him any greater or lesser latitude than any defendant in a criminal case.”

Maui Blaze Kills at Least 93, Highest Wildfire Death Toll in Over 100 Years (WSJ) The wildfire that reduced the historic center of this island town to an ashy rubble has left at least 93 people dead, officials said, making it America’s deadliest wildfire event in over a century. Residents and tourists who were briefly allowed to re-enter West Maui found a blackened landscape of destroyed homes, burnt-out cars and smoldering embers. It will cost over $5 billion to rebuild from the Lahaina fire, officials estimated. The center of Lahaina remained barricaded. People were warned to avoid the area because of toxic particles in the air and advised to wear masks and gloves. The cause of the Maui County wildfires has yet to be determined. Hawaii fire researchers had warned officials in the past about the risk of extreme wildfires in and around Lahaina.

Argentine farmers back conservatives in election, hoping for freer markets (Reuters) In Argentina’s grains fields and cattle ranches, farmers are hoping upcoming elections will bring political change and an end to years of economic uncertainty, ushering in freer markets with fewer currency controls and export limits. The government, battling an acute shortage of dollars, annual inflation scraping 116%, and a fast declining currency, has imposed strict capital controls, limited some exports, and hiked interest rates to 97%. That has made business difficult in one of the world’s top soyoil and meal exporters and No. 3 corn exporter. Many farmers, or “chacareros”, from the wide Pampean plains, the engine room of Argentina’s economy, say they will get behind the conservative opposition as they did in 2015, when they helped propel former President Mauricio Macri to power.

Wolves, once confined to fairy tales, are back in Germany, stirring debate (Washington Post) At first Nancy Denecke couldn’t figure out why the sheep were panicking. “It took me a moment to realize what was coming out of the forest,” said the 37-year shepherdess, recounting one eventful day last summer in northwest Germany. She was grazing her herd in a treelined field when she saw the wolf pounce. Virtually extinct in Germany for more than a century, wolves are flourishing here once again. Their numbers have increased more than sixfold in the past decade, with Germany now home to as many as 161 packs, or about 1,300 wolves. But accompanying their rebound are attacks on livestock—and an emotional debate. The spread of wolves—through Germany and into Belgium, the Netherlands and beyond—has become an issue at the highest levels of the European Union. Last fall, it touched a personal nerve for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, when a wolf killed her pony outside her home in northwest Germany. She wrote later that the E.U.’s executive body recognizes “that the return of the wolf and its growing numbers lead to conflict.” At a local level, the conflict pits farmers against conservationists. People on both sides have been accused of taking matters into their own hands: Hunting shelters have been burned down and wolves have been illegally shot.

Russia’s new history textbooks (Washington Post) When classes begin next month, Russian high-schoolers will get fresh history textbooks rewritten to carry Kremlin-approved narratives about the “special military operation” in Ukraine and rivalry with the West—part of a wider government effort to shape how young generations of Russians think about the war and Russia’s place in the world. The new manuscript—aimed at graduating 17-year-olds and covering the time-period from 1945 until now—blames the United States for the ongoing war in Ukraine and includes a quote from President Vladimir Putin in which he falsely asserts that: “Russia did not start any military actions but is trying to end them.” It includes telling sections ranging from “confrontation with the West” to “Ukraine is a neo-Nazi state” to “Russia is a country of heroes,” according to scans of the new book posted by Russian state media. History lessons everywhere are rarely spared from national ideology, and other countries are often viewed through the prism of the country printing the books. But the drastic transformation of Russia’s portrayal of Ukraine and the rest of the world illustrates Putin’s fierce determination to sweep aside the dark pages of Russia’s past.

Ukrainian morgues seeing ‘more or less double’ the fatalities since counter-offensive began (Insider) The Ukrainian summer counteroffensive began in June, and, despite Western allies supplying advanced tanks and weaponry, the country’s recent moves against Russian combatants have resulted in only modest gains—and heavy casualties. The New York Times reported morgues in the country are seeing vastly increased fatalities due to the heightened fighting. “There are many more bodies at the moment,” the outlet reported Taras Svystun, a soldier on a six-man crew responsible for recovering and identifying deceased servicemen, said. The total dead in the local morgues is “more or less double since the counteroffensive” started, added. Though Ukraine doesn’t publicly share the total number of casualties it has sustained, Insider reported General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated in February that Ukraine had lost more than 100,000 soldiers since the war began last year.

Americans Held Prisoner in Iran Saw Promise of Better Relations (NYT) When Siamak Namazi traveled to Tehran in the summer of 2015, Iran had just signed a landmark nuclear deal and the government was encouraging expatriates to return home and bring their expertise and dollars. So the 51-year-old Iranian American businessman flew from his home in Dubai to visit his parents and attend a funeral in Iran. But he was arrested and charged with “collaborating with a hostile government”—an allusion to the United States—and eventually became the longest-held American citizen that Iran has acknowledged imprisoning. In January, he went on a hunger strike for seven days to bring attention to his ordeal. On Thursday Mr. Namazi, along with four other dual national Iranian Americans, became part of a prisoner swap deal between Iran and the U.S. “I’ve been a hostage for seven and half years—that’s six times the duration of the hostage crisis,” Mr. Namazi said in an interview from prison in March with CNN, referring to the American embassy staff who were taken hostage in Iran during the 1979 revolution and held for 444 days. In exchange for releasing the Americans, the U.S. agreed to release five Iranians jailed for violating sanctions against Iran, and to release about $6 billion of Iran’s frozen assets being held in South Korea. The money will be transferred to a bank account in Qatar and can only be used by Iran for humanitarian purposes, such as paying for medicine and medical equipment. The ordeal for the Americans being held in Iran is hardly over. Iran’s foreign ministry said the five will be allowed to board a plane out of Iran only when the money lands in the Qatari bank account. For now, they have been released from prison and remain under house arrest at a Tehran hotel.

Growing Segregation by Sex in Israel (NYT) The trains from Tel Aviv were packed one evening last month when Inbal Boxerman, a 40-year-old mother of two, was blocked by a wall of men as she tried to board. One of them told her that women were not allowed on—the car was for men only. Ms. Boxerman was stunned. It was a public train operated by Israel Railways, and segregated seating is illegal in the country. The men stopping her appeared to be protesters going home from a rally supporting the governing coalition, which includes extremist religious and far-right parties pushing for more sex segregation and a return to more traditional gender roles. Public transportation is the latest front of a culture war in Israel over the status of women in a society that is sharply divided between a secular majority and politically powerful minority of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who frown on the mixing of women and men in public. As part of an agreement with ultra-Orthodox allies that underpinned the formation of the coalition, Mr. Netanyahu made several concessions that have unsettled secular Israelis. Among them are proposals to segregate audiences by sex at some public events, to create new religious residential communities, to allow businesses to refuse to provide services based on religious beliefs, and to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts.

[fantastic-nonsense]

While you are digging into batfam lore, could you perhaps help explain what the batkids' legal names all are? Fanfiction has messed me all up. Did any of them actually legally take Wayne as their last name? I see it most often with Tim (i.e. Timothy Drake-Wayne) and Cass (i.e. Cassandra Wayne) but I haven't read any comics that I recall that actually called them that.

Sure! A quick rundown of who's actually part of the Wayne family:

Wayne family: Dick, Jason, Tim, and Cass were all legally adopted at one point or another in the post-Crisis universe (post-reboot is....complicated. Dick, Jason, and Tim are all once again adopted after a long series of retcons; Cass's status is still unknown). Damian is Bruce's biological son.

NOT Wayne family: Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown, Helena Bertinelli, any members of the Fox family (Luke, Tam, Tiffany, Jace, etc), Harper Row, etc.

Duke is a complicated case; he was Bruce's temporary foster son for a year before moving in with his cousin Jay, who now has custody of him. He's...sort of considered Wayne family, in that at least Jason and Tim consider him to be sort of their brother, but he wasn't adopted and no longer lives with Bruce.

Other: Kate and Bette Kane, who are Bruce's cousins and part of the Kane family.

As for legal last names and who actually calls themselves Waynes:

Damian's legal last name is Wayne. The al Ghuls tend to call him "Damian al Ghul" when he's with them, but legally his last name is Wayne; it's also the name Damian goes by UNLESS he's specifically attempting to leverage the al Ghul name amongst his family or the League of Assassins.

Dick continues to go by and think of himself as "Richard John Grayson" even after being adopted, though he explicitly calls himself Bruce's adopted son in several arcs after his adoption happens. You can take your pick of reasons why this might be (and there's quite a few to choose from, mostly connected to Dick's love for his bio parents and already being an established adult when Bruce adopted him), but Grayson was and remains his legal last name.

Jason canonically remained "Jason Peter Todd" after his adoption, per his death certificate:

Jason's death certificate, naming him as "Jason Peter Todd." -Batman Annual #25 (2006)

He was also "Jason Todd" to the general public; it's what people call him when they talk about him both before and after his death. The Red Hood and the Outlaws Rebirth comic (specifically RHATO #33) confirms that this is the case in the post-Flashpoint universe as well. However, there's a pretty reasonable canon foundation to assume that had Jason's adoption not happened in the 80s and had writers not wanted to complicate things, he probably would have chosen to hyphenate and become Jason Todd-Wayne, based largely on a) Jason's relationship with Willis Todd and b) Bruce and Jason's relationship before his death.

We simply don't know what Cass did. Cass was adopted off-panel in the vague period in between Batman RIP and Final Crisis, but Bruce's death threw everything up into the air; Cass was then promptly put on a bus and shipped out to Hong Kong for the duration of the Reborn era, and since she shows up in a grand total of 8 comics during that time we just don't get enough information to make a judgement call about her last name. Her two appearances in Tim's Red Robin book still call her Cassandra Cain, but it's unclear whether Fabian Nicieza, the writer, even knew her adoption had happened:

"Cassandra Cain, former Batgirl, remains one of the most dangerous fighters on the planet..." /// "Cassandra Cain, aka The Black Bat, Hong Kong operative for Batman, Inc." -Red Robin #17 & #25

Since Cass never had much of a public identity to speak of in the first place (and for a long time didn't even want one), it's super ambiguous what her legal status is and what last name she holds post-adoption. It's pretty reasonable to assume she becomes Cassandra Wayne, though, and it's also my personal preference. Though her relationship with David Cain is complicated, she doesn't hold much attachment to him as a father; likewise, there's really no reason for her not to take on the Wayne name given her attachment to Bruce.

Tim is the complicated one here, mostly because his adoption was such A Production™. Tim was formally adopted about a year in-universe after the events of Identity Crisis (when Tim’s dad was killed by Captain Boomerang). The adoption was pretty high-profile; Tim and Bruce even sat for an interview about it:

From 2007-2011, he's called Tim Drake and Tim Wayne (and occasionally Tim Drake-Wayne) pretty interchangably depending on the writer and situation. His legal name is probably Tim Drake-Wayne, though it's actually ambiguous. He tends to go by Tim Wayne in public while usually referring to himself as Tim Drake in private:

"And by the way, it's Wayne when I want a favor or a table at Bartese, and it's Drake when I look in the mirror." -Red Robin #15

"A question for Mr. Wayne--" /// "Reporting live from the reopening of the Newton Community Gym where Tim Wayne is about to address the crowd." -Red Robin #14 and 15

Post-Flashpoint, that adoption was erased and Bruce and Tim’s relationship was very strained; in the Rebirth era, his adoption was implied to be canon again in both Tynion’s Detective Comics run and King's Batman run, but we didn’t get confirmation until Infinite Frontier and Urban Legends, where Tim is once again explicitly adopted and occasionally called Tim Wayne, though he still mostly goes by and is referred to as Tim Drake:

"But just to be clear--we're not splitting the bill, Tim Wayne." -Urban Legends #4

"...and then Mr. Wayne just adopted you? Awful generous of him." -Urban Legends #4

Tim is also the only one regularly referred to in public as "Bruce's adopted son." Most of the time they're referred to as "Bruce Wayne's wards," so whether the adoptions are public knowledge or not is questionable, but their status as his wards and foster kids is not. Though they largely never lived in the Manor at the same time, they've all attended various public functions as Bruce's kids and acted on Bruce's behalf in various capacities while in the public eye.

tl;dr Tim is canonically the only one who takes the last name "Wayne" upon being adopted; he generally continues to refer to himself as Tim Drake, but canon calls him "Tim Drake," "Tim Drake-Wayne," and "Tim Wayne" pretty interchangably afterwards. Dick doesn't change his name and canonically Jason didn't either, though you could make a case that he might have hyphenated had his adoption been written in the modern era. We don't see Cass enough after her adoption to know either way; however, her existing canon relationships with Bruce and her biological family heavily support and/or imply that she probably became Cassandra Wayne.

[duskdog]

Very good thoughts here on Steph's conservatism, esp re: punitive justice. She's been on the "losing" side of that of the revolving prison door for her whole life. Dad was in and out, and rather than make her life better, it only made it worse. Not only did Dad never reform, but the stress of having a parent who's in and out can't be denied. Visiting Arthur in prison and listening to him rant about Batman rather than just be with his family (can you imagine him spending that short, precious time expressing how much he misses his little girl? of course not), dealing with Arthur's lawyers and showing up to support him at his court appearances and helping gather paperwork and maybe even having to testify sometimes, having to adjust to shifting dynamics within the house and the daily routine when he's gone and then having to shift again once he's out... it's all exhausting. There's no actual relief there, just an endless cycle of bad and worse and bad and worse. At least he can't hit mom or lock Steph in the closet, yes, but his shadow is always there (probably calling every chance he gets to complain and/or demand money for his commissary). And given how he's shown to react to being put away in the first place, I don't think it's a stretch to say he probably takes out his anger at Batman and authority in general on his family. It's like they're unwitting secondary antagonists in Steph's life -- constantly poking the dragon, but never actually slaying it. It's no wonder she'd be in favor of locking criminals away forever and throwing away the key... or just ending them straight-up, because they always break out in Gotham anyway, don't they? I think it's a little more ambiguous regarding her feelings on reproductive rights. As far as I recall, we're never actually shown how she feels about abortion in general. We see her lash out angrily at the very idea of termination when it comes to her own pregnancy at least twice, yes... but that's also, from my experience, a pretty common reaction, even among some people who whole-heartedly believe in a woman's right to choose. Some women can't bear the thought of going through with that themselves -- just like some women can't bear the thought of carrying a baby to term, even though they have no problem with other people making that choice. We also see her lash out at some friends at school for acting like her having a baby is cool because she gets to miss school and gets a lot of attention... which is fair, because that's a childish way of looking at it. It's completely dismissing the actual stress of being a 15-year-old who's visibly pregnant and obviously going through a difficult time. She expresses that she thinks her classmate who kept a baby was stupid, which is in line with the rest of her conversation with these girls. Unfortunately, that doesn't really tell us much about what she actually thinks her friend should have done. Put the baby up for adoption, like Steph does? Or terminate the pregnancy? What does Steph think about the choices of other women? We just don't know, other than that she obviously doesn't think being a teen mom is cool at all (though she will waver on that a few times, as she struggles with her own desire to keep her baby -- once again, absolutely understandable).

Obviously, we can't really divorce the writing from the writer entirely. But, from an IC perspective, even if Steph is actually anti-choice, I suspect her feelings on the matter are rather complex. As far as I'm aware, we've never seen any sign that the Browns are religious in any way. That doesn't mean they're not, because quite a lot of people hang onto religious sentiment passed down through generations while not actively worshipping, but we have no reason to believe Steph would have a religious motivation for her conservatism. However, I think it would be fair to speculate that her own experiences may give her strong feelings in that direction. Her father was outright abusive, and her mother was detached -- unreachable and unsupportive -- for much of her childhood. How often must Steph have felt like an unwanted child?? Locked in a closet by Arthur because he didn't want to see/deal with her, and not let out for god-knows-how-long by her mother because Crystal was too stoned to notice she was gone? Invisible. Unwanted. Unloved. Did she wonder if her parents wished they had aborted her? Did she wonder if she would have been better off if they had?

Some people do have that reaction to their childhood abuse experience. Some people come to the conclusion that it's kinder, better, not to bring a child into the world if it's only destined to suffer. But other people may feel differently about their experience, and I think Steph is one of those. She's always been one to rage against the dying of the light. Though the question may have occurred to her, I don't think she would have concluded that "yes" was the answer to "would I have been better off if I had never been born". We've seen that part of her reaction to her own abuse has been to become protective over other children. To Steph, the idea of a child being unwanted, like she may have felt, may be horrifying, yes. But I suspect that the solution, to her, is to give that child a life where it is wanted. Even if it can't be with her. And aborting that fetus would be the ultimate gesture of abuse and neglect and rejection -- something Stephanie Brown just cannot abide from herself, at the very least. And I wouldn't be surprised if she felt that way about other potential mothers, as well.

People who want to argue that Steph isn’t or shouldn’t be written as being innately conservative and committed to imprisonment as a punishment and source of retributive justice confuse me.

Steph. The character who has multiple storylines revolving around her frustration that people don’t get the punishment they deserve. Who has a written history of being failed over time and hurt because people didn’t punish people who committed crimes around and to her.

Who has a repeated tendency to punch male characters for upsetting her (Arthur Brown, Tim, Tito, Dean).

Who has writers as diverse as Chuck Dixon, Jon Lewis, Mariko Tamaki and James Tynion exploring this in their writing of her?

Steph mentally sides with victims and seeks to give criminals what she thinks they deserve. She puts herself in those shoes pretty often in her perspective: she originally went after her father because she was mad he was getting away with committing crimes; she sided with and was completely derailed from hero work by the question of whether her work as a vigilante had value – because it caused problems punishing criminals – by the Victim Syndicate; who gets mad over the concept of criminals getting extra chances to reform when they’ve proven themselves to be recidivists in opposition to other Bats like Bruce’s optimism that people can change (Arthur, frequently; also Harvey Dent in One Bad Day).

This is a beat that gets used often, for Steph. It’s imbued in a lot of her characterisation. Just because you like a character does not and should not mean that you have to agree 100% with their perspectives and politics, and vice versa.

[90calibre]

GOD NO i can’t shut up i’m sorry lol as a person of color,  especially an asian woman,  i cannot shut up

the racism in this is just.  there’s so many things like.  the anti-immigrant ideology in that asians cannot hail from another country and move to another place is so.

like,  for example.  consider someone might have lived in idk,  europe or america for GENERATIONS due to their ancestors having been immigrants long ago.  let’s say,  for this example,  these people are asian.  i’ll say japanese because that’s my expertise.  these people become what we call diaspora,  who are people whose roots are native to elsewhere but are now scattered around the world due to immigration for whatever reason.  for example,  in world war two,  countless japanese natives,  both of the mainland and its indigenous people,  were forced to flee,  and generations of families have lived in other countries with their children and their children’s children and so on being born and raised in other countries.  those diaspora have blood ties with their ethnic and racial origin to the country of their ethnicity,  but have no physical ties and if they were to move to japan,  they would technically be immigrants in japan even if they are japanese by blood,  simply because they were not born there and did not grow up or live there.

characters like kayn are difficult when there’s no canon indication as to what his ethnicity actually is.  i personally find his features to be asian-coded,  but that could also just be me projecting but i’ve also found that some of my hcs have been on the nose  (  re:  caitlyn being confirmed mixed asian  )  buuuuut since there’s no proof the world is your oyster.  you can write a white kayn if you want to,  i suppose,  because i guess his origins and design are ambiguous enough,  but again,  i’ve always been on the kayn is asian wagon.  noxus is not a wholly white country.  there are many poc in noxus,  in and out of power.  hell,  even darius and draven are kind of brown-coded and i personally hc them to be middle eastern.  noxus is a melting pot of culture and ethnicity.  it’s home to so many different people,  for various reasons.  conquered lands,  willingly allied lands that accepted becoming noxian under its standard,  people who chose to find home and settle in noxus,  refugees who became noxian citizens whose children may have then born and raised there.  i don’t think we know exactly what racial or ethnic background noxus takes after,  but regardless of that,  it doesn’t change the fact that noxus itself is a huge melting pot of different people of origin,  whether they’re born and raised there or not.

the implication that kayn can’t be ionian by blood just because they consider him a foreigner and is from noxus is really?  gross.  like  ...  i’m half okinawan,  an indigenous japanese person.  i was born there,  but i’ve lived in america all my life.  even though i have japanese citizenship and family there and whatever,  i’m still considered a foreigner there because although culturally i’m part of two worlds,  i’m still much more american than i am japanese.  the same goes for my thai heritage.  i know very little about it and although my appearance is very southeast asian outwardly,  i’m definitely a foreigner there,  even though i’m 1/4 thai.

it’s complicated but it’s also not.  just the whole sentiment of all of this is extremely stupid and gross and just the idea of “transracial” is so fucking gross and stupid and insulting in so many different ways and i just cannot believe the ignorance of people like.  if you had the sense to go out of your way to dig to determine whether or not someone could be transracial,  you’d have seen the countless of other things on top of that that would surely say why that’s fucked up and impossible and not real.

[vampiresuns]

Aelius Anatole Radošević De Silva

Anatole has changed a bit as a character since i was around the first time, so he’s getting re introduced. His open to make friends.

art by @elizastarkart​

Name: Aelius Anatole Radoševic De Silva. He has two surnames because his mother is latina. He is a mixed Latine-Slav, with family that is all latine, vesuvian, and slavic. People he’s friend’s with call him Anatole (russian/greek pronunciation, he doesn’t acknowledge the French one). Only people he has a strictly professional relationship with, and his uncle call him Aelius.

‘Aelius’ means sun, while ‘Anatole’ means sunrise. He’s fully aware of this, he chose his name himself.

His nicknames are:

‘Nana’ is the most common nickname, and the one most people use.

His mother calls him Lilito, Nana, Nanito, Toly, Tolito, Tortolito.

His father calls him Lily or Lilu.

Toly, Tolytoly or Tolito are nicknames used by his maternal grandmother, his aunt, and his Vesuvian family.

He will not mind if you want to call him Toly, but you cannot call him Lily/Lilu if you’re not his father.

Asra came up with Nanatole, which he doesn’t like but lets Asra call him anyway. Asra also came up with Nana Banana and that is absolutely forbidden.

Family: on his father’s side both the Radošević, who are slavic (yugoslavic, specifically), and the Cassano, a prominent Vesuvian family who has had a hold of the Consulship for years.

On his mother side, the De Silva.

His father’s name is Vladislav, but everyone calls him Vlad, he’s an alchemist, a polymath, and works in what is most similar to biochemical engineering. He has one bother, named Valeriy, who you, however, might now as Valerius. Vlad’s biggest personality trait is being head over heels in love with his wife, and adoring his son more than he thought it was humanly possible to care about someone.

His mother’s name is Louisa De Silva (if you want to add her mother’s surname, it’s Lascal). The L-o-u spelling was a registry mistake she never changed. She moved half across the world while her native country suffer a military-civilian dictatorship to study Medicine. She swore never to go back as long as vestiges of said dictatorship remained in the country. She has two sisters: Paris, who lives in Vesuvia, and Alma, who remained with her parents out of her own choosing. Her medical experience include having been a volunteer war doctor. She didn’t change her surname when she got married.

The Radošević (pronounced Radozheveech) and the Cassano have been entangled families by friendship for generations upon generations, with some marriages between them. Notoriously: Vlad and Val’s father married a Cassano, Matilda, and his bother Mircea, Anatole’s great uncle, also married a Cassano: Florentino. Mircea’s brother and Matilda Cassano died when Vlad and Val were children still, so him and Florentino brought them up.

The Radošević are an overall eccentric family (think the european Addams family), whom are noted for: one, their self-sufficiency/self-preservation, which comes out in a very ‘eccentric people of the world unite’ manner. They appreciate people with character. Two, their leanings towards trades/professions, they do not conceive not doing anything (work hard to play hard). The Cassano, while sharing the quirk, they add the zest for life. It’s like they grabbed the Radošević and told them “you have forgotten how to live and we will remind you how.” Both of them are ridden with racially ambiguous bastard you cannot kill in any way that matters. They simply refuse to. Someone (either the courtiers or Lucio) compared them to roaches, they took it as a compliment.

This will tell you a lot about Anatole’s character.

On a last note, Anatole’s an only child. He has a good relationship with his parents, albeit marked by a sense of distance, solely because he was privately tutored from age 15 and on, which required him to travel a fair share. He was an argumentative teenager, but always cherished whenever he could see his parents. The older he gets, the closer they all become.

Favourite Food: Cake

Favourite drink: Coffee, in general.

Favourite Flower: Iris

Birthday: Nov 1st

Age: 29 (I calculate his age as if he had been born in 1991)

Zodiac:

Sun: Scorpio

Moon: Virgo

Rising: Libra

Mercury & Mars: Scorpio

Venus: Virgo

Patron arcana: Strength & Ace of Swords

Strength

Upright: inner strength, bravery, compassion, focus, Reversed: self doubt, weakness, insecurity      

Ace of Swords

Upright: breakthrough, clarity, sharp mind, Reversed: confusion, brutality, chaos

MBTI Type: INTJ-A

Gender: Transmasculine, but Nonbinary. Uses He/Him pronouns only

Orientation: Identifies as NBLM.

LIs: Julian, Muriel, @ilyamatic​‘s Andrico, @thelazaretmakesmesad​‘s Vishal.

“The sun-like strategist with a solution for everything, and a whole lot of hope in the future.”

More details under the cut!

Physical appearance:

art by @lesbianarcana​

5′4. As you can see in the sprite down below, while he’s slim but with muscle, out of doing a moderate to high level of physical activity. The man has a nice waist and inherited his mother’s hips, which he’s very proud of. He likes his legs and his butt the most about himself

Dark brown eyes, long eyelashes. His hair is naturally black, but he dyes it blond.

Has a mole over his right eyebrow, on the left side of the bridge of his nose, and on his left jaw. He has freckles.

An horizontal scar on his nose, which he got by getting hit with a wooden scaffold square in the face. His nose wasn’t broken out of sheer dumb luck. He has a smaller cut on his cheekbone, which was done by a fencing sabre which lacked the proper tip protection/button. It was done onto him by someone else.

The nose scar is how he met Julian before the plague, as he was the doctor which cured his face.

He has several tattoos:

Right arm: A rapier on his inner forearm. Over his elbow he has a black work band, and over it the words ‘THE SUN IS MY UNDOING’ in all caps, circling his arm.

Left arm: a snake wrapped around his forearm, near to the wrist. The Odyssey quote ‘let’s have a toast to the incompetence of our enemies’ under the inner crook of his elbow, and a floral half sleeve.

Chest and Torso: AMOR OMNIA VINCIT over where his heart is supposed to be. He has laurel leaves on the base of his waist.

Legs: ‘o serpent heart hid with a flowering face‘ in his upper, inner thigh, like really up his left inner thigh. A floral anklet on his right ankle.

Languages Spoken: Too many. He speaks nine languages.

Magic Specialities: His magic is connected to both light and languages (it is a play on words with ‘logos’) so he is both adept in photokinesis — he is able to create and manipulate sources of light — and language related magic — which includes incantation and language manipulation. He learns languages as a faster rate than most people, and while he cannot speak or literally understand a language unless he learns it, his magic allows him to intuitively grasp the meaning of words that are being spoken to him.

This capacity also makes him very good at recognising hidden intentions in people. This is not an ability that he broadcasts having, and when he later succeeds Valerius as the Consul, it is something which aids his diplomatic work but he keeps private.

His words tend to carry more weight sometimes because of his magic, something which he can’t always control — it depends on many factors — so he tries to choose his words carefully and with consideration.

His familiar is a Raccoon, named Antu.

Occupation: While he did study magic and is in touch with his magic, he studied politics, diplomacy and international relations. By trade, and out of will to help people, he is a political analyst and, later in life, a Statesman.

Personality/Trivia:

Willpower or Stubbornness? Depends how you look at it. Passionate, generally devoted, hopeful, independent and sometimes defiant. He is a people-oriented introvert. Competitive, but not aggressively so.

Smarter than he gives himself credit for. Overall charming, even debonair.

Curious by nature, hates having his decisions taken for him.

He is proper, sometimes even distinguished, but he is feral. A firm believer in being kind and compassionate with people, until you cross him one too many times, then nothing will make him taint his vindictive wrath.

Is he humble? For the most part. His humbleness comes from knowing his own limits and knowing he’s not infallible. He does have, however, a good deal of pride in himself and trust in what he can do, and he doesn’t like being underestimated.

He’s not particularly loud, though when the chatterbox is on, then it is on, specially if he’s nervous. He is often never still. 

He’s known he has ADHD since he was seventeen.

Likes dancing.

He fences, almost every Radošević fences/sword fights, and he will let you know at the slightest chance. Which can be either him simply being hyper-fixated in fencing, him flirting, or him letting you know that if the occasion rises, he’s armed.

Friend shaped, lover shaped if you’re daring enough.

He wrinkles his nose when he doesn’t like something.

Speaking of which: he doesn’t like abuse of power, the Court, injustice, supremacists of any kind, unkind, hurtful and selfish people in general; he doesn’t like red meat (he says it tastes like metal or dirt), narrow minded people, incompetence, specially when displayed by people in positions of power, and purposeful apathy.

A mastermind archetype, but he draws his power from connection. He does not conceive a life not lived with others.

A bit of a bastard, he enjoys a good laugh.

He plays the piano and the harp, he sings, he cannot draw, he’s a lightweight when it comes to alcohol (which doesn’t really stop him), he likes the opera because he likes watching other people’s drama without being dragged into it, and his favourite season is winter. Also likes playing chess, reading, coffee, flowers, a well tailored outfit, learning, languages, the sea, mysteries, winter, a well laid argument, collecting quills, music, winning, knowing he loves and is loved in return.

When he was 7 he bribed his dad for more dessert, and he ate so much he vomited. His sweet tooth hasn’t gone anywhere, it is alive and well.

Perceptive little bastard, will knife cat you for the sake of it. He has a way more present sense of humour than what he comes across.

Would call himself a ‘trans masculine Mary Poppins’.

He is closest to his parents, his uncle, my other ocs Leonore, Medea and Sabine, his cousins Amparo Cassano and Milenko Radošević, Natiqa, Asra, Portia and Nadia.

If he liked women, he would be paired with Nadia. The possibility both terrifies and fascinates me.

@ilyamatic​, @viviae​, @gaybirdwrites​, @arcanaprentiss​ @apprenticeofcups​

[elfyourmother]

this might be kinda out of the blue, but I've been wanting to make a Viera alt because I've always really adored the buns. Would you consider it okay for a lighter skinned/white person like myself to make a darker skinned character?

( I quite frankly feel uncomfortable as hell at the idea of making a pale skinned Viera as they weren't like that at all in original canon. Never really got why SE decided to make a whole white subtype just for ff14.)

you don't have to answer this question if you don't want to! was moreso looking for opinion if you're willing to give it !

tbqh I feel weird about these questions bc ultimately I can’t give you permission to do or tell you that you can’t do anything. to the point that i usually don’t answer these kinds of questions because I’m not trying to be somebody’s permission slip and trump card to be used in future arguments w other Black folk who might take issue (“well, Aurora said it was ok!”). just so we’re on the same page, know I am speaking solely for myself and my own opinions

but I’m answering because this is re: Viera and I am willing to speak my peace on it bc I am so tired of the whitewashing and the erasure of Viera Blackness that has happened in this game (really since FFXII). I keep quiet about it a lot of time because I’m old and too tired to be fighting w people anymore but it’s really Bad and it hurts as a Black femme to see some of the precious little rep we have had in the FF franchise get systematically demolished, so anything that pushes back against it even a little is fine by me regardless of who’s doing it; I don’t love Viera because they’re Black, but it helped!!

so like if you love Viera then make one! there is such a dearth of Black and brown female characters in the game. fortunately the flipside to the snow bunnies running rampant has been way more darker skinned female characters than I saw prior to ShB. So many times I have been the token Black female character in duty roulette. I can count on one actual hand the number of Black Femelezens in particular I’ve seen besides Gisele. But there have been many more Black ladies running around and it’s worth it to me even if I hate the bs.

I would suggest @writingwithcolor as a resource, look through their links and faqs regarding stereotypes to avoid. research like you would any kind of creative thing you’re not familiar with.

also accept that there will be people who straight up have a problem with it and they have a right to feel that way. there is the “brown paper doll” phenomenon of white folks making ambiguously brown characters for The Aesthetic or w/e, getting plaudits and cookies, but Not Too Brown. and fans of color with OCs of color never get the same kind of praise or positive attention. many of us feel pressure to conform with standards of whiteness in fandom. a lot of folks were sharing their experiences with that during pocwolweek last year. you may see people talking about their resentments; don’t be defensive, just acknowledge that comes from a very real place of pain and frustration. do what you can to minimize harm, boost writers and artists and RPers of color w their characters, engage with their work like you would anyone else.

and also realize that your experience as a white person playing a COC will not ever be the same. being raised and socialized as a Black woman there are things in MSQ that absolutely hit different, for bad (Magnai, Zenos calling you a beast all the time), and for good (the DRK questline absolutely Spoke to Me as a Black femme wrt the burdens we shoulder always with a smile and the resentments we’re forced to bury, etc.). I also experienced misogynoiristic sexual harassment in Duty Roulette once where somebody was going on about “gorgeous chocolate bunny” and I felt so degraded that I left after ripping the dude a new one in party chat and was 100% fine with eating the penalty. yes that would be nasty for anyone behind the screen but when it’s a reflection of the fetishization you experience irl it’s a whole other thing

so with all that in mind, You Do You. I have white friends and mutuals with some fantastic OCs of color. it can be done, and well. but do it in a thoughtful manner and try to be cognizant of the pitfalls and your privileges. and don’t do it for the clout, which I don’t think you are--Viera are fuckin awesome.

[staybackhuwuman]

Allow me to briefly (it's not brief) go insane here,, but i rewatched both seasons because I could have sworn that Aziraphale was consuming alcohol before the 21st century back in season one, but suddenly he wasn't drinking all the way up into the 1800s in season 2, and what was up with that? Anyway, here’s some notes on the experience.

First, the alcohol problem. So, having gone back through both seasons, Aziraphale's drinking in the modern day in both of them. The flashback scene I thought he was drinking in was the meeting with Crowley in Rome s1e3, as Aziraphale otherwise doesn't drink in any of the flashbacks.

The Rome scene is pretty darn ambiguous though. Crowley orders "whatever's drinkable" and receives a jug of house brown. He's shown drinking from a clay cup, then Aziraphale walks up, and there's a cut to Crowley's response, and then a cut back to Aziraphale, and in the time between those cuts, Zira has somehow also acquired a clay cup and is drinking from it but I have no idea what's in it. Was that poured from Crowley's jug?? I would have assumed so, but I also would have assumed that "house brown" was alcohol, so. Did Aziraphale pour himself something else?? Is it not alcohol after all?

So the conclusion of the alcohol investigation is that it's ambiguous, but it's technically possible that Zira's not drinking alcohol in Rome, so this is plausibly not a continuity error.

Now onto some unrelated, but potentially interesting observations.

First, I think there's pretty obviously some things that are going to be resolved in season 3, just on the basis of "that's how narratives and foreshadowing work". The Book of Life. Jim/Gabriel's prophecy that the dead will walk the earth. The 25 Lazarii miracle that apparently results from Aziraphale and Crowley working together, just to name the big ones.

Given how much time was spent on all the magic show stuff, and the new s2 emphasis on Aziraphale not liking alcohol in the past (which wasn't mentioned in any s1 flashbacks), I think it's probable that those things will tie into s3 as well, but I don't know if that will be in more of a thematic way or a directly plot-relevant one.

Second, there's a big Resurrectionist theming to the s2 flashbacks. I feel like this was probably pretty obvious to people smarter than me the first time around, but I didn't catch it until my re-watch, so here you go. Besides the whole pub stuff in the modern day, each of the big 3 flashbacks in this season (Job, Scotland, Blitz) is centered around resurrection.

Job's children were "resurrected" by Crowley in a, let's say, less than literal sense after he less-than-literally killed them, but that's still a resurrection as good as any magic trick, even though we the audience got to see how it was performed.

The second resurrection is in Scotland, and I fully admit, it's the weak link of this pattern. I'm mainly accepting it because rule of three, and because it's the one that's actually connected to the term "Resurrectionist" within the show itself. Interestingly, this is also the one flashback where we don't get the title card with date/location format. Instead we see the date written in Aziraphale's diary, and hear the location from his narration. (This is also the only setting where we even get narration in s2, and I don't pretend to know what that means but it's... interesting).

What I'm counting as the "resurrection" here is a messy combo of the resurrectionists digging up bodies + Crowley and Aziraphale preventing a suicide and giving Elspeth a chance at a (metaphorical) new life with the money. Like I said, it's the weakest link.

It's also interesting that the writing had the obvious set-up to do a clearer resurrection with Wee Morag being shot and Aziraphale wanting to heal her, but then had her die permanently anyway.

The third resurrection is, of course, the Nazi zombies.

In my opinion, this Resurrectionist theming is a nod to the plot of s3 where we (presumably) will have some sort of Jesus running around for the Second Coming, but it also seems reasonable that this could foreshadow something more specific as well? I don't really know my Christian mythos so if there's a significant connection to anything beyond the obvious 3 days and then the Resurrection, I'm definitely missing it. But it's a fun setup.

Finally, we come to Maggie. Maggie is...kind of a weird character to me? She 's awkward in a way that feels different to how the other human characters are portrayed. In fact, on the second watch through, I figured out that she reminds me of Muriel. Something about her dialogue and how it's delivered.

I'm not sure that Maggie is even non-human - I'm prepared to be totally wrong about this - but rewatching with that idea in mind, there were two moments that stuck out to me.

When the shopkeepers are leaving the bookshop during the demon attack, Aziraphale's miracles don't seem to work on Maggie at all. Possibly they aren't working on Nina as well, but Maggie is standing half in front of her in this scene, and Aziraphale is directing his attention mainly towards Maggie, who is the one protesting that she wants to stay. No explanation is given for why Zira's miracles don't work in this scene. Maggie just shakes them off like they're nothing.

Maggie also says something when the demons are taunting her just before she accidentally lets them in. When she's talking about how she's not scared, she says she "had brothers" which is kind of a weird detail to drop so obviously into the dialogue when we haven't seen any sign of her family in s2, and there's absolutely no relevance of these brothers to anything going on at all.

Of course, this season mentions a few other things without them having much relevance to what's going on. There's the threatened mind wipes which are never actually executed and the beings Crowley keeps forgetting he knows from the rebellion. Memory was important to this season's plot with Gabriel, but these unresolved threads probably mean there's more to come in that same vein. And of course there's the allusions to Lucifer with the whole "institutional problem" scene. (Is Lucifer the same as Satan in the GO world or not? Word of God points to yes, as far as I can tell, but sticking just with what we've actually seen on-screen -- what if they're two different entities?)

I have a couple different theories about what Maggie might be if she isn't actually fully human, but I'll just sign off on this question:

If God is a woman in the GO universe, why not Lucifer too?

the wine though???