#the universal seasian experience of

[sleeping-donkey]

[Redemption AU]

Adudu and Ejojo gets haunted, more at 11

Bonus:

[cornplateur-fritz]

We're Gayuma and this is our main and dragon ball blog!

Last update: Aug. 11, 2024

System/DID, bodily 25↑, and SEAsian! Here's our rentry for dni/byf details, our other socials, etc.

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Nice God - [Nov. 17, 2022] Dende contemplating about being Kami. Less than 1k words. Details posted here | AO3

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[gaiuskamilah]

elves:

lore tablets like the one you've shown are exactly what i had in mind! it is definitely an expression of dominance and control and echoes how many real world religions and philosophies dictate how a family and relationships should be structured (i mention philosophies because confucianism is an example of a pervasive societal philosophy used to structure society, but it's not necessarily a religion, as shown how in south korea 60% of the population is irreligious but common patriarchal notions of how relationships and family are held because of historically mandated institutional confucianism). if you want to structure a society, you start from the very basics of it, ideas seeping down to interpersonal relationships and gender.

so while on the surface the dinvali-kilvali split is seen as an "improvement" from our own real world notions of relationships, i feel that context and class analysis is often disregarded in the discussions i've seen. especially notable is how the lore specifically states that elven marriages are inherently political in nature and meant to preserve an oppressive societal status quo:

orcs:

i think orcs are another case of "looks good at first glance (because we live in a patriarchal world), actually kind of fucked when you think about it more" LOL they have their own version of gender essentialism, where they go "yep females are inherently stronger than the males" which is just an inverted version of typical "men are strong objective people while women are [insert misogynistic thinking point here]" we experience in real life. this time, "masculine" (as we understand it to be) women hold the power. to the readers, we easily identify imtura as a gender non-conforming masculine woman. however, in-text, she is very much conforming to the in-universe notions of womanhood set by orc culture as an orc woman. she faces no potential backlash amongst orcs for this gender presentation, and is lauded (by orcs) for her conformity.

to me, this diegetically insinuates that orc men experience a degree of cultural subservience — thus oppression — under orc women. and i very much agree, no matter which way gendered discrimination goes, it hurts everyone.

the varying clans of the orcs and this pre-ventra decentralization reminds me lots of societies in southeast asia as they were formed in the same way, especially in maritime SEA where many political units were determined by boats. orcish political structure is described as "individualist" in-game and "socialist" by book 1 lead andrew which is a bit of an enigma to me, but i choose to interpret it more closer to southeast asian political and societal practices. a lot of it parallels how orcs organize themselves, such as the idea of the seasian man of prowess, which is only one of many parallels!

humans:

tbqh i do not know exactly where to start wrt humans because they seem like the typical medieval humans but also with homophobia and misogyny surgically removed, but also still kind of conforming to our expected notions of gender. i think this applied most to the one diamond scene in book 1 where you can go into town with imtura and nia and two noble ladies make fun of imtura for daring to look at a dress, but this also might honestly just be racism towards orcs which is a dime a dozen in book 1 ahgkjfdhkghd

been thinking about the dinvali-kilvali split in blades. on the surface i think it seems to us a more "progressive" way to view relationships as it's reminiscent of the split-attraction model and is very aspec friendly as the only thing actually needed for marriage is emotional loyalty, not necessarily romantic or sexual at all. QPRs can be married without the usual romantic and sexual associations attached to it as is for many in real life.

however, in a diegetic sense, this structure of relationships is to the detriment of elves in blades the same way romantic and sexual monogamy (and even polygamy in some cultures) can be for many in real life. these relationships do not work in a vacuum and this structure of relationships was directly influenced by religion - the old gods made it so in order to exercise (unjust) power over the lives and bodies of elves, and that included their interpersonal relationships. to elves, to be monogamous is controversial. that tyril creates a whole new word to describe his (in-universe) monogamy is radical because it goes against the hegemonic control of dinvali-kilvali philosophy.

this also extends to tyril's kilma, who never took a dinvalir. tyril wonders how much she must have suffered for doing so, i.e. not conforming to elven customs.

i choose to view this as a critique on how pervasive power systems and philosophies extend their power down to the smallest units in society, starting with the interpersonal foundations of the "family" - the smallest unit of such. it does not matter if one is strictly monogamous or more in favor of "open" relationships as is with the elves, the fact is that these relationships are strictly mandated by institutions of society - in this case religious ones - and that to not follow is to risk social rejection and lack of support. changing the model of relationships on the surface does not erase that the foundations of setting that "standard" were done with imperial and controlling intent.

same can be said the with "matriarchy" of orcs. to many of us living in patriarchal societies, the idea of women having power is an appealing one. however, that does not erase that despite the orcs in blades being a matriarchy, elements of imperial monarchic control remain. inverting traditional gendered power dynamics does not remove the fact that the hegemonic, unequal rule of a gender binary remains. the overturning of one system without destroying the root of said system only allows for the continuation of inequality in society but with a different face.

[zedecksiew]

“Exotic Warrior”

(Am writing this because it’s been bubbling over in my mind. This post is an exorcism of bad vibes over bad ideas that have held me hostage, the past few days.)

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There is now criticism on Twitter arguing that the “Exotic Warrior”, one of Troika!’s d66 Backgrounds, is racist because it is coded as Orientalist / Asian.

I would like to respectfully disagree.

(There are other arguments in the initial complaint. I am commenting the “Exotic Warrior” specifically. Because by being actually East Asian -- part of the diaspora, living in Southeast Asia -- I feel I have some standing to comment.)

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When I encountered “Exotic Warrior” in the book it stood out as a neat background and helped sell me on Troika!.

As I read it, the Background is a deft piece of work: it references the “adventurer from a foreign land” thing, but occludes said trope’s usual Orientalism -- an attempt at deconstruction.

A foreigner, in Troika!, can be anybody. This isn’t just a platitude; it’s supported by the book’s implied science-fantasy setting -- is essentially Spelljammer, but on more acid.

It is similar to Electric Bastionland / Planescape / etc in that it features a melting-pot, nobody’s-local “city at the centre of creation”-type deal. (I have Thoughts about RPG setttings that focus on metropoles, but that’s a separate post.)

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Here’s the “Exotic Warrior” ’s text, in full:

24 EXOTIC WARRIOR No one has heard of your homeland. Your habits are peculiar, your clothes are outrageous, and in a land jaded to the outlandish and new you still somehow manage to stand out.

POSSESSIONS - A WEIRD & WONDERFUL WEAPON. - STRANGE CLOTHES. - EXCITING ACCENT. - A TEA SET or 3 POCKET GODS or ASTROLOGICAL EQUIPMENT.

ADVANCED SKILLS 6 Language - Exotic Language 3 Fighting in your Weird Weapon 2 Language - Local Language 2 Spell - Random 1 Astrology 1 Etiquette 

Honestly? None of the above reads as particularly problematic. It’s a legit, characterful beginning point for a player-character.

Sure, my Western-media-battered brain jumps to Samurai Warrior -- 

But immediately also to Sufi Missionary or Varangian Guard. And indeed comes to rest at Indeterminately White Gentleperson Naturalist -- the kind of exotic visitor Southeast Asia got, a lot, those scouts of European imperialism.

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These readings are possible because of the illustration the entry is paired with. Here they are together:

Setting aside the surrealist stylisations:

The shape of the costume, the belt, the “skirt” -- these look like Europeanisms, to me. And the figure’s laughing abandon opposes the standard Orientalist tropes of wise inscrutability or red-faced savagery.

The choice to run “Exotic Warrior” with a decidedly non-Orientalist-coded illustration isn’t an unintentional piece of art direction.

(PS: any critique of an illustrated text that only focuses on the words is incomplete. Image is half the text of an illustrated text.)

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The nondescript-ness of the entry plus its accompanying image is an open door. Opening this door isn’t without risk: whatever assumptions you make about your particular “Exotic Warrior” are drawn from your own biases.

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Regarding “Etiquette” and “Astrology” and “Tea Set”?

With my biases: I don’t read these things as uniquely East-Asian. (When I first encountered “tea set” in Troika! I genuinely thought: “English tea service”, instead of: “temae”.)

The one that I did read as real-world Eastern was “Pocket Gods” -- but many human cultures had this, pocket gods are a part of Troika!’s wider fantasy setting, and “Exotic Warrior” isn’t the only Background to start with them.

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A note on “exotification”:

The criticism of “Exotic Warrior” fundamentally seems to be: “Playing a character from the Other / that is Other-ed = BAD”.

I fundamentally disagree with this notion.

I have no lived experience of a society where being other-ed (in terms of culture, race, class, gender expression, etc) isn't an ever-present thread in the fabric of one's life -- and therefore a crucial and profound source of conflict and insight into the human condition.

(The ethnic fault-lines in Malaysian society have become so unbridgeable today primarily because it was official policy to sweep all that other-ing under the rug of “Malaysia Truly Asia”, as opposed to working through our ugly whispered prejudices towards understanding.)

We are not all the same. Cultural, geographic, and material differences exist. The mismatch in knowledge and understanding this creates? It matters.

In fact: To insist on universal cultural-knowledge parity; To push for “nobody’s born here, everybody belongs” melting-pots as the default framing; To nudge questions of difference and arrival into ghettos (to paraphrase one of the tweets I saw: “you can only explore issues surrounding the Other in a game specifically designed to do so”);

All that comes off to me as a very neo-liberal position, designed to safeguard and disguise the privileges of “mainstream” metropolitan melting-pots.

I read it as:

“Post-modern cosmopolitan societies want to be inclusive but don’t want to pay the admission price of history and discomfort, so they generally opt for erasure instead.”  

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Throughout this post I have been careful to speak from my particular context. Because context matters.

More context:

I like Troika!. Like, a lot. I think its creator, UK-based Daniel Sell, strives and succeeds at making thoughtful work. I consider him a friend, whom I’ve had personal (albeit Internet-bound) interactions now and again.

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I have BJ Recio to thank for the following insight. Talking to him about “Exotic Warrior”, BJ brought up a crucial point that I’ll paraphrase here:

Roleplaying the outsider can be bad, especially when it is used as an excuse by the West to do fucked-up shit. But it is not default bad. Assuming it is default bad centres the discussion on “Will White people fuck this up? (Yes.)”

Essentially, the argument against “Playing a character from the Other / that is Other-ed = BAD" assumes two things:

(a) Western participants as default; (b) harm (because of ignorance or bad faith) as default.

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If your context -- your Background, hah! -- prompts you to experience Troika! with those assumptions; and therefore read “Exotic Warrior” as necessarily Orientalist, and racially-charged?

Your context is your context; I’m not going to invalidate it.

If you are located in a society where the binary of White / non-White overpowers everything, I certainly understand the whys and hows of your position.

Your context matters.

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So does mine.

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I think I’m reacting badly to this because I personally feel turned away by this RPG Discourse Around Representation (tm), supposedly done in the name of my East-Asian ass.

I resent the idea that “Playing a character from the Other / that is Other-ed = BAD”. It threatens to render verboten the entirety of my RPG work.

I am a SEA creator trying to explore and be true to my context. If there is one constant throughout SEAsian experience, it is difference.

Our peoples have ever encountered and glamourised and hated each other, all of us simultaneously Us and the Other:

Japanese and Malay enclaves in Ayutthaya; Mongol invaders in Java, who never left; Luzones mercenaries, employed by both the Sultan of Melaka and his Portuguese enemies; The reputation of the Ilanun / Bajak Laut; White conquistadors (aforementioned above); The entire history of diaspora Chinese identities (my identity!) in SEA, generally;

Foreigners from foreign lands -- feared, not fully understood, not fully understanding, simultaneously conquering and settling and finding modes of belonging, becoming a part of the land.

Always arriving.

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That the background music of my geography, discordant though it may be, is somehow so harmful it may only be meaningfully depicted in the hermetic context of a “game specifically designed to explore that”?

This feels bad, and extremely unwelcoming. It feels like a shut gate instead of an open door.

I refuse to be turned away.

+++

(Hopefully I can finally stop thinking about this shit.)

[triskaidekaphilist]

📃💎 for the commonwealth series? i dont think ive heard much of it before and im inchrested

Thank you so much for the ask! I don’t think I’ve written anything about it, at least not recently, and it used to be my one big media special interest from the ages of like 10 to...20?

📃 what is the plot of your hyperfixation? and is it a movie, game, show, etc?

It’s a series of, I think, 28 novels and 8 short stories (of which I have read 23 and 1), and actually not a single series, but multiple connected ones playing in the same universe, which means there are isn’t a single plot, but if I were to condense them all into one - it’s about humanity discovering space travel, making one big best friend, and, while sometimes failing, trying to do better and be better. It’s basically one big space opera - one big old space opera, with the first novel being published in the early 70 (and the most recent one in 2017).

Humanity’s best buddy in this series are the insectoid Thranx - they have 4 legs, 2 arms and two limbs that can be used as either, have a blue-greenish color that changes with age and smell like flowers. They have evolved from a colony type species into one that values the individual, though I think they still have stuff like communal child raising. One of the series describes how both societies met, cautiously learned to know and then protect each other, until finally forming a unified...republic? Which is called the Commonwealth, or the Humanx Commonwealth. But it’s not just on a governmental level but also involves sharing religion and language. Some of my favorite characters are a (headcanon: gay-ace?) pair of a human and a thranx - they are confirmed as being each other’s singular partner, and the thranx has still his cover wings, which they lose when mating.

Most other of its series or novels deal with single planets and stuff happening on them (my favorite here being “Midworld” featuring a planet that’s basically just one 700m tall rain forest, with different biomes in different heights and “Sentenced to prism“ where life has evolved from crystal-like structures) but there’s one other series that spans more places and characters, and that’s what it’s most known by, the “Pip and Flinx” series.

Flinx is a orphan who has been gen-engineered by a now outlawed cult of eugenicists as both a superior human being (but still with the intention of him serving the current cult members as long as they are there, if I remember it correctly). He was one of the few “successful” (as in, surviving) experiments but luckily never stayed long with them as they got fractured/destroyed pretty soon after. What he got from all of this is an emphatic talent - being, unreliably, able to sense the emotions of people around him - and chronic headaches. Pip is a mini-dragon that found him when he was a child or young teen, a naturally emphatic species with beautiful wings and the ability to spit a corrosive venom. They instantly became friends. The series follows him growing up, trying to figure out who his parents were and what their deal with that cult was, and getting drawn into stuff he doesn’t want to bc of his abilities. Some friends he makes along the way are some almost-reality-bending bears who help him get a spaceship? and...basically fake money? Which makes it easier to run from the governments and various other cults trying to get ahold of him or kill him.

💎 are there any fun facts or trivia that you would like to share? Flinx is consistently described as Indian or SEAsian-looking and maybe just as consistently gets drawn as white on the cover images, much to the complaints of the author. I haven’t read many space operas aside from this one, but in general its more non-eurocentric than I otherwise would expected. Earth’s capital city (an with it one of the two capitals of the Commonwealth) is located on Bali.

[cdreamie]

vent nghdsdgsnh its just abt racism and stuff im just . Ghdsghdsgndsh braindump

i wish there wasnt this fuckin. ngngnhnhj Only white peopel can oppress asians :-) because that frankly. isnt true????? like maybe its different in the US, but its also so fucking different here, i wish the internet wasnt so us-centric x_x like ok. okay!!! my grandma didnt nearly get murdered by the japanese for you to fuckin imply that ONLY white people can be racist to asians!!!!!!!! like gahhhh im jsut. asians are racist to other asians!!!!!!! the japanese were racist to the chinese, hell, some chinese people are racist to non-mainland chinese people and im jsut nngnnhhkhkhkhk and like i hate when people assume that like. oh so pale asians oppress other pale asians! and i hate that lol. i hate that. and i KNOW stuff in the us is different, i know its different, but i wish i could talk about my experiences Ever. like (shoves the racism in malaysia article into your face) malay people have power over me. it doesnt matter that theyre muslim, or that theyre not light-skinned, it doesnt change the fact that thye hold power over the chinese -_- i mean i wouldnt call it like oppression but like god Fuck Shit.i also wish how ii coudl talk about how like. islamophobia is NOT a thing here, yes individuals can be islamophobic but it is the default religion, a majority of the population is muslim,And like muslim malay people are the white christians of this country its just so (shakes) literally its like even if youre non-malay and you convert to islam it doesnt matter youre not malay so youre not gonna get any sort of benefits whatsoever like chinese win elections? Riot. people die. malay people get tax benefits and chinese get discriminated against and i jsut Arhghghghhhhhh people from the us dont comment on this issues and pretend their experiences of racism are universal and it pisses me the fuck Off ! haha (cries) i mean our current pm used anti chinese sentiments, i bet therell Never be a chinese prime minister like i can see why singapore left like Ughhh i hate thisssssss i wish i could just talk about my experiences w/o like being seen as Bad!!!!! because its just. its different. and i wish people online oculd talk about racism that wasnt just. oh the light skinned people are Evil! als unrelated i guess but i. Ghghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh stop equating light skinned to white or poc lite i am literally not white passing, i have black hair and a round face and dumb asian eyes and like. Bro. bro shut up. being east asian isnt fucking being white passing. and also i wish people would acknowledfe racism that ISNT just directed at east asian-americans, or just east asians in general., .... like im not east asian. im seasian like. stop speaking for non-american seasians when you talk abotu racism gnbnnhnnnnnn its like, everyone can be racist to everyone here like theres no Majority Oppressive Race. white people arent a thing. my mom is constantly racist to malay and indian people, malay people get benefits and shit and like (sobs) Shut Up. and i mean unrelated again but living here Al lTeenage Boys The Same. even if theyre chinese or malay or indian theyre all racist antisemitic ableist fuckheads who say slurs and make fun of everyone for acting “weird” they r all the same. and ofc im more terrified of the white boys but Gahhhghghnhhhkhnhh i especially hate like chinese dudes who think theyre exempt from being racist assholes just because theyre chinese like. yes people can be racist to you but that doesnt give you an excuse.goodngiht