#today i give you this paragraph. tomorrow? who knows probably something about hades 2 that makes even less sense

[stillness138]

i'm digging through the game soundtracks to find anything genuinely nonwhite in a painfully white world and wrote a whole thing about how it would benefit us all if the remaining carcass of the witcher fandom spent less time bending backwards trying to excuse domestic violence while drawing their fave abuser with brown skin and more time on genuinely examining those parts of the universe that are clearly meant to be fantasy nonwhite and criticizing both Sapek and CDPR for barely doing anything with them (and for orientalism when they do) but then i landed on the good ole "old man wrote a companion piece on Ciri's family tree only to give us Lara Dorren's measurements" and actually, in the end the point is what i've been saying for a while now. The fandom should, more than anything, quit passing this guy as some revolutionary feminist icon and look critically at him for one damned minute. Sorceresses are fierce and independent, but they also must all look like supermodels, complete with "the ugly one" (the one with an eastern name no less) getting a makeover lest the others make fun of her. Like yeah there's stuff that continues to age well given the time and place it came to be and there's stuff that's meant to be relatable because it shows imperfection but nothing exists in a vacuum and everything is made with some kind of bias. You have to include the creator in your analysis of a piece, even if you (unlike twn or even the games) actually like said piece. I am reminded of my high school art history textbooks and the pages dedicated to just laying down the cultural background for any given topic, the context is crucial. I love the game soundtracks, but whoever did the first one didn't care all that much about Azar Javed being Zerrikanian (neither did the writers tbh) and now nearly 20 years later we still have fuck all and i'm gonna go continue being in agony over his entire existence.