Tumgik
#i’m not asian so my opinion doesn’t have much relevance but
Text
(TW, this particular post mentions the Heard VS Depp case. No it’s NOT about me choosing either side. Just me needing to express how my own experience with abuse is effecting how I’m seeing said case)
I grew up in a very abusive environment. Physically, emotionally, mentally. But I’m Asian so it takes a really long time for you to realize that the stuff you were going through was neither normal or Ok. The most relevant part that affected how that abuse trickled down to me and my siblings was the abuse that my parents inflicted on each other. My sisters are too young to remember what it was like in the earlier years. Currently my father has become the more abusive one in the family dynamic.
But, I grew up when it was different. I grew up witnessing how my mother abused my father just as much. Of course neither abuse they experienced from the other justified their actions but and I was a child, so I can’t tell you who had it worse. I only know that it was a lot more complicated than one side being the victim and the other being the perpetrator. Of course not all abuse cases happen this way. But I don’t think we talk enough about how sometimes it’s not that simple. We don’t talk enough about the abuse men go through in domestic environments.
But people don’t get that. People aren’t exposed to it as much. To the idea that sometimes the water is murkier than it seems. Even my younger sisters don’t get that. But I was there from the start and I saw it all change and sometimes it makes me feel so alone.
My opinion (it is irrelevant and you have every right to disagree, but this is simply my own perspective of it) I don’t like Amber. Mostly because, she tries to frame herself as the ultimate victim when proof shows that it was a lot more complicated than that and that just hits a little too close to home for me on a personal level. But that doesn’t mean the vilification of her is fair. It doesn’t mean that it’s alright to make light of the allegations that she herself has brought up. This trial was never about proving who was right. It was about Depp wanting revenge and I absolutely understand why. But the way society has suddenly turned on her the first chance they get feels wrong. And the worst part is, you can’t help but wonder, if it was someone other than Depp. Someone with less charisma, less power and influence. Would we have taken them just as seriously? Is the support for Depp truly sincere or just a desire for fans to find a way to deny or justify the accusations against him.
At the end of the day, I think the real villain here is the mass news and social media taking advantage of this matter for their own gain. For likes and attention. And if we ever want to really have a serious conversation about how complicated domestic abuse actually is and how we can deal with it in a better way, we need to be self aware of that.
4 notes · View notes
alsjeblieft-zeg · 2 years
Text
94 of 2022
Created by fairylaughter
What's the last/current job you had?
I install electricity in train carriages.
What's your thoughts on Donald Trump?
Not worth thinking of.
If you're American, how do you feel about it?
I’m not American, thankfully.
Favorite alcoholic drink?
Beer.
Are you well at spelling?
I hope so?
How did you learn how to type?
In school, I believe.
Do you like to wear rings or bracelets?
I just wear my wedding ring.
Tell me some facts about your Zodiac.
I don’t care about Zodiac, I don’t even believe in it.
Mountains or beach?
Always beach.
What's a cool talent you got?
I pass the Steinberg test, oh my.
When your favorite song comes on the radio, do you hum or sing mad?
My favourite songs never come on the radio. I’m not into mainstream music.
Have you ever huffed gasoline or glue?
No, it’s stupid.
Are you one of those kids that chills at WalMart when they bored?
We don’t have WalMart in Europe.
I am, tbh. What do you do when you're there?
As I said, we don’t have it in Europe.
What's your favorite brand of candle?
I don’t pay attention to brands.
Can you dance like you're not white?
I think I can’t.
Favorite place to go out to eat? (not fast food)
I don’t go out usually, I order takeaway. But when me and my husband want to feel fancy, we choose Wok Palace in Beernem. It’s a really cool Asian restaurant.
Can you rap freestyle?
Sadly I can’t, but it would be cool.
Sports or Netflix?
To watch? Still Netflix. In general? Sports.
Do you sleep with sheets?
Who doesn’t?
If you smoke cigarettes, what brand?
I don’t smoke.
Tell me why I should follow your favorite trend.
I don’t follow trends, so.
What brand are your favorite pair of shoes?
Current ones? Pull & Bear.
Do you got a nice butt?
Nicer than you.
What do you think of Satanism?
I wouldn’t follow it, but I respect people’s religions, whatever they are.
Do you like banana bread?
Never tried, to be honest.
How do you feel about global warming?
I don’t have an opinion, leave it for people smarter than me.
What color is your least favorite pair of underwear?
I don’t categorise things this way. Underwear is underwear.
Are you vegan?
I’m not.
Do you enjoy haunted houses?
Honestly, it’s kind of boring.
Kanye West: Genius or legal retard?
Really sick person, leave him alone.
Get eat or eat?
What? Eat.
Isn't iced water so much more satisfying?
I’m not a big fan of water, but iced drinks are awesome in summer.
Is feminism relevant to you?
Nah. I just believe everyone is equal.
Can you feel your heartbeat in your neck right now?
No. Omg, I don’t have a heartbeat :O
Do you know how to handle somebody having a seizure?
Yes. I’ve had first aid courses. Besides, there are over 40 types of seizures and not all of them look the same.
You ever had seizure?
Man, tell me something about it. I have epilepsy.
Worst drug you've ever done?
I don’t do drugs.
Most painful physical experience in your life?
Actually a tonic-clonic seizure, I’ve only had it once in my life, but I remember how it started and how big the force of muscles is. You can’t confuse it with anything else.
Do you like your teeth?
I don’t think about it.
Does time matter to you?
Time is money.
Earphones or headphones?
Headphones at home, wireless earphones outside.
Metallic or matte?
Metallic.
Have you ever been to a drive in movie?
Yes, but I was bored like hell.
What bothers you most?
Right now, that I’m gonna be late to the hospital.
0 notes
cherrymagicals · 3 years
Text
am i the only one that thinks it’s kinda ridiculous that MDL only allows entries of shows and movies from 7 countries in asia? like i get all the other rules for entries but that one doesn’t make sense to me. why only 7?? and india nor vietnam is one them?? make it make sense
2 notes · View notes
a3day · 2 years
Text
A3Day Extended Commentary: CL “ALPHA” (2021)
DISCLAIMER - An Album a Day is my exploration into the Korean music scene. This blog, just like my podcast, will cover mainstream, indie and some underground artists within the scene and provide both factual and opinionated commentary. The biggest benefit to sharing my thoughts this way is that it will hopefully expose you to more great music and exploration of your own.
Tumblr media
I have -- WE... we have waited, Blackjacks and GZBs. 
Arguably one of the most long-anticipated solo returns in all of K-pop, multi-hyphenate artist Lee Chaelin (CL) globally released a full-bodied, 35-minute album entitled “ALPHA” on October 20, 2021 from her own label, Very Cherry, in conjunction with Sony. And y’all, it sounds like nothing we have ever heard from CL before.
Let me fangirl for a minute. MY BITCH IS BACK. LONG LIVE THE QUEEN, PEASANTS!!! WHEW!!! *Gross sobs* WHEWWWW BABY WE WAAAAAAITED UGGGGGGHHHHHH. We ain’t know what the hell to expect, CL? Eh? Not a damn clue? Tracks been all over the place for years, not a damn clue of what to expect was really revealed! HOW’D YOU HOLD THE HAND FOR SO LONG?! THAT’S ALPHA SHIT, I’M GONNA VOMIT FROM ENTHUSIASM~~~
*Clears throat.* 
Distance was made fully from idoldom. This is undeniable. She is not under the thumb of the machine (that once was and is now reorganized), that of the Big Three. She is not on the fence between artistic representation. She is 30 years old, and anyone who’s lived long enough to get into and/or surpass this decade of life knows that you step into your cu- I mean your self awareness, in new ways. If you missed the memo when she did “Hello Bitches” and “Doctor Pepper” (both in 2015); and if you missed per-my-last-email reminders with everything that was done from then until now, well... mama’s letting you know for damn sure that she’s grown-grown.
The track list, as listed from Wikipedia, is still updating credits at the time of this blog post. I believe it’s always important to give a nod to the team behind the vocals, ya know? The song lyrics, the rap verses, are nothing without a composition to suit it and talented ears to engineer the sound to perfection. 
Tumblr media
In context of sound, “ALPHA” is warm and structured nicely. There are production choices that are boomy (big on low end sounds) and boxy (big on midrange tone) but this album moves, bish. You’ve heard me talk about musical movement before but for the unacclimated: each performance -- both CL and music on its own -- emotes. There is a feeling that ebbs and flows appropriately from one track to another. Structuring an album to ride from start to finish without skips is already an art as it is, so you can’t fail the artist and the listener by tossing any ol’ shit together, especially pieces of work from an artist notoriously known for using her mother tongue (Korean) with her second language, English. “ALPHA” wins in this area.
As far as the artist goes, CL doesn’t depend much on low octave vocal stacking, as she maintains the same level of vocal power and tone through most tracks we’ve heard her on over the course of her 14-year-long career. However, there are moments of nice effects on the vocals. So let’s get into these tracks, non-Korean speakers. I won’t talk too-too long, I don’t want to impede upon your own vibes.
Tumblr media
1. Spicy -- fun to nod your head along to and say the bits of relevant English
Albeit that this is the first single consumers received from this album, it’s the third we’re familiar with. Much like its sibling “Hwa,” it was a choice. Truth be told, this song ain’t for Us (a...every song isn’t for the majority or other minority groups in other countries, lol) and I respect the hell out of that. It’s for the Asian community, specifically South Koreans, to feel that swag, that drip, and all the other pop culture terms for instilling cultural pride within oneself. Bringing in Baauer to handle the production gives it that dance bass/bounce that is needed. 
2. Lover Like Me -- the song on the soundtrack of your life post-breakup that you’ll later hear and memories won’t hurt as deeply
See my review here.
3. Chuck -- the track that you won’t understand until you read the lyrics in your own language and then go, “Ohhhh. Hmm. Okay.”
Nothing like calling out fakers. The word “Chuck” is the sound of the Korean word for “pretend” [Romanized: Cheok] and she’s being playful with the liars and fakers trying to reach her. If you’re not a person who believes err’body has at least one hater, then it might not resonate too much. When you’re 76+ listens into the album, this might be the one you’ll skip over regularly. Might.
4. Xai -- the song that CL decided to snap about grown folk activities
This is the standout track of the entire album. It’s foreplay, without an over-saturation of sex. It sounds airy and her tone is commanding but vulnerable. The vocal arrangement is relaxing and I will be replaying this until my ears bleed, thank yew.
5. Let It -- Another life soundtrack song. Insert the appropriate scene in your head from the film, TV show, or M/V you exist within
“Don’t worry! I can just flow away, always do what I feel like.” Refreshing, and about as youthful as CL sounds anywhere on this album, it has the capacity to take you back to 2NE1′s “Happy” or “Gotta Be You” (both in 2014) with the cadence of her rap, the song structure, and the live instrumentation.
6. Tie a Cherry -- the track where she’s reminding y’all WTF she is
Endurance is essential in the entertainment industry and CL’s letting you know that “no one can see what [she] can see,” as it comes to this next phase in her career. You know what? I have to agree with her from that Owen Meyer’s piece for Billboard from earlier this year, where she said, “I know exactly where I’m going, what I want to do. Of course it’s not going to be the same.” This doesn’t sound like 2NE1, past features, nor does it sound like the other singles she’s released just a few weeks before this album. This track is placed perfectly in the middle and creates a good transition for the remainder of the ride.
7. Paradise -- trap, trap, throwaway Rihanna track
Could’ve gone to Ri and it would’ve worked just as well. Could’ve gone to Migos, Desiigner, or Future and I wouldn’t have complained. As a Westerner, the production style of trap music is immediately identifiable. I’m not mad at this song at all, I can only hope that you have the proper headphones to hear this in its full glory. It bangs. The vocal refrain and the ad libs is it. “My God, that’s a paradise!” 
8. My Way -- the song that she tells you off-rip that she’s doing things her way
This genuinely could’ve been named “Alpha” and I’m not unconvinced that it wasn’t the name at some point. It feels like the personification of the album’s title. This shit is gritty, features a rumbling bass, and accents the vocal effects with traditional Korean instruments. It belongs on a/your workout playlist for the days you need the adrenaline boost, truly.
9. Siren -- you think you’ve heard this song before and that’s intentional
The VOCAL ARRANGEMENT!!!! Listen. No, really listen, at least this time it’ll be easy because the song’s fully in English. You hear that piano over a gurgle? You hear how it sounds like the end of her lines travels around you? What about those programmed strings? Oh oh, that little construction sound in the back? This song was crafted to sound like indie pop tracks that you catch a snippet of in a commercial or promo video and you’re clawing to find it again. It’s beautiful, the construction of it. She’s trying to salvage a relationship but I’m telling you this is your guilty singing pleasure playlist entry. 
10. Hwa -- South Korean flexing for South Koreans. 
We don’t/won’t touch songs that will hit different for the core demographic.
11. 5 Star -- the unexpected summer love bop
Chile, just tell us when you and That Man are marrying and let us join via Zoom. Thank you, Tablo, for lending your pen on this one.
My Official Ranking
K-pop fans, on a scale of 1 to 5 where 5′s essential listening and 1′s not worth mentioning, the A3Day ranking on CL’s debut album is 5. While hoping there would’ve been more to the writing, the album is an impressive return that delivered nothing expected to an audience well-aware of who she is.
26 notes · View notes
valley-of-the-lost · 3 years
Note
I don't know if you watched BPA, but.. I have a question, that I don't know if you can answer this, but it's been nagging at me (this is a multi-part ask, this will be a quick rundown): A blog that used to be interested in Barbie claimed that BPA has some racist undertones; this is because, as they claimed, due to the antagonist (who has, as they put it, brown skin) tries to take over the kingdom of a white princess/queen. 1/?- Barbie Multiverse Anon
Tumblr media
Okay, so, a quick explanation. This ask has been sitting in my inbox for a few days, and I sincerely apologize to Multiverse Anon for making them wait this long for me to weigh in on this. When I received this ask I was neck-deep in part of an art challenge that wore me out and I had not watched BPA (which I assumed was Barbie Princess Adventure) at the time, and I felt that this was the type of ask that I needed to chew on for a couple days and talk to some people before I was certain of my thoughts on it.
Now, I have done some cursory research, watched Barbie Princess Adventure myself, and bounced it off some of my friends for their take as well. Thus I will attempt to answer this to the best of my ability.
I do agree with the unknown blogger in question that Prince Johan is a brown-skinned character, and that the plot has racist implications due to the combination of this, him being the antagonist, and the fact that his kingdom lost a war to Amelia's prior to the plot to drive his motivation hence why Amelia is taking over the rule of both her own and his kingdom. However, I disagree with them that this is an ongoing theme or that there's a pattern of racist undertones in previous Barbie movies. At least from my own knowledge. 
(under a read more because I don’t want to clog people’s dashes, this is not a simple topic to unpack + the movie did some weird things I wanted to explain too)
Before I really delve into the meat of why I take this stance, I want to quickly discuss why I had to even assert that I agreed that Johan is a brown-skinned character as its own point on the off-chance someone else encounters the same initial weird impression I did. You can skip this part if you want, I'll put a triple asterisk where this ends (***).
Prior to watching BPA myself, I did some cursory research on the Barbie Movies wiki, prompted by this ask. I put together that Johan was probably the antagonist that was being referred to, but when I was on his page, his wiki picture was just this.
Tumblr media
This was all I had to go off of at this point, because he didn't have a screenshot gallery for me to cross-reference him throughout different points in the movie. So the conclusion I drew at the time was "he just looks like a tan white guy". This impression was reinforced by his light eyes and recycled Ken face model. I cross-referenced this with some friends, and we came to the conclusion that at best he looks racially ambiguous, with no reason to think he was a character of color unless there was other indication about his race in the movie itself.
And then I watched the movie. And changed my mind when I saw what he looked like in these scenes.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Johan looks noticeably darker than he did in his single wiki picture, especially when next to other more obviously white characters like Barbie and Amelia. His skin tone is closer to Alphonso whom I would call a brown character pretty confidently in the same movie (I wanted to minimize comparisons across movies to eliminate the possible different variables that would come with it).
While this might not be as noticeable to other people casually watching the movie, I found this a bit jarring myself because I was focusing on his skin tone in particular due to the subject of the ask and my initial impression from the wiki picture when he was arguably at his lightest in the whole movie, as well as when he was introduced he was at his darkest because it was set at night. Also the way the animation team decided to shade him to convey that its nighttime confused me because he looked a lot darker than I thought someone of what I assumed his skin tone would look. And then the next scene with him and Barbie further confused me, because he suddenly got this reddish undertone that really highlighted their difference in skin color.
Tumblr media
(Barbie’s hands are on the left and Johan’s are on the right for sake of direct comparison)
Finally, in his last scenes in the movie, Johan's skin tone is most like that of his wiki picture's. Darker than Barbie's when they stand in the same shot but light enough that he could've passed as a tan white guy. What cemented my confusion is that he still looks like this in the throne room, where he was before when dancing with Barbie so it should reasonably have the same lighting and bring out that reddish undertone, but no he still looks like that. So my final conclusion on him was that since he looks like a brown-skinned character in around 2/3s of his scenes and there's a 2D painting of him in the bg when Barbie and Amelia are kidnapped, that he is indeed a brown-skinned character and the animation department probably fucked up their lighting which messed with how uniform his skin tone looked across scenes. ***
Now that I've explained my process of confusion and then final agreement that Johan is indeed brown-skinned, let's discuss how this compounds with other elements to create a rather unfortunate picture. I'm afraid its a bit worse than Anon described.
First off, the added context of the history between Amelia's kingdom of Floravia and his kingdom of Johanistan. Prior to the movie proper, these two countries fought in a war and Johanistan eventually surrendered to Floravia. The two countries signed a treaty that said that after her coronation, Amelia would rule both Floravia and Johanistan.
Tumblr media
There is a severe lack of critical details about the war itself, such as what caused it in the first place, which really works to the film’s disadvantage, since the absence of clarity does little to clear up the questionable implications of what is known about the relationship between Floravia and Johanistan.
Amelia’s kingdom is the one that took over Johan’s initially, since they won the war and Johanistan would be ruled by Floravia’s queen, with the implication being that she’d depose Johan’s family, the original ruling family. While the lack of details makes it so it can’t quite be said that Floravia is colonizing Johanistan, it also means that it can’t be said that Floravia is not colonizing Johanistan. What is known about the war is very broadly reminiscent of tactics white people have used to colonize other countries, such as using a war to depose the original royal family for the colonizer’s own gain (the US colonizing Hawaii by staging a coup against their ruling family because the white plantation owners got mad) and putting the other country in a disadvantageous position with a treaty (Opium Wars). This would probably just be viewed as normal Kingdom vs. Kingdom politics if... well Johan wasn’t a character of color.
Combined with viewing this movie through the lens of real-life racial biases (which people are predisposed to do because we're inherently based in reality), the likely conclusion drawn is that this white ruler (Amelia) is effectively ousting a character of color (Johan) and his family out of power and force-assimilating his country, and there's simply not enough clarity about previous events before the movie takes place to dispel it sufficiently.
This also poisons the plot proper because Johan's motivation is to take advantage of the law that the rule of both kingdoms falls to him if Amelia doesn't show up to coronation and regain rule of his own kingdom and Floravia as a nice plus. The intention was probably to show him as greedy for wanting lone rule of Floravia and Johanistan, taken together, it honestly comes across as the movie villianizing a character of color because he wants to regain sovereignty of his own kingdom from a white ruler. Its completely understandable that Amelia wouldn't want to lose her own kingdom especially coming off of war, but also her kingdom is also the one ousting out the previous royal family of Johanistan without giving any good reason why they can't compromise.
The effect would be somewhat mitigated if another character of color had a similarly prominent role as Johan on the side of Barbie, but there's really not. The closest I'd argue would be Alphonso, but he doesn't have equal plot relevance. This does, in my opinion, make Barbie Princess Adventure's plot give off racist vibes like that unknown blogger said. But I do not agree with them that there's a "pattern" of racist undertones in other Barbie movies.
Due to the lack of details of what exactly they meant by a "pattern" of racist undertones, I am assuming they mean a consistent pattern of racism across the movies, for example the movies consistently dipping into anti-Asian sentiments with their villains, or their plots inherently having racist vibes woven into them like I just talked about in BPA.
Despite the Barbie movies occasionally dipping into offensive territory, in my personal experience I have not observed a pattern of racist undertones or consistent racism targeting a specific group. I acknowledge that I could fully be wrong and a lot of things could have slipped past my notice, especially since I have not seen all the movies, but from the ones I have seen I have not observed a pattern with regards to this. However, I will point out the offensive/iffy things in the movies that I know of, with varying degrees of detail depending on how much I can remember. This is by no means a full compendium of all the problematic stuff Barbie films have touched on but these are the ones I am aware of at present.
Barbie of Swan Lake - Antisemitism. There was a TikTok on this somewhere that discussed this more in detail that I can't find but will link if I do, but what I do remember was Rothbart was given an extremely large nose which is reminiscent of the "Jewish nose" ethnic stereotype. Also there was something about his name and Tchaikovsky himself being antisemitic and those views being reflected in his ballet. I don't remember all the details I'm sorry and google wasn't giving me much.
Barbie in the Princess and the Pauper - Antisemitism. Preminger hits a couple of antisemitic stereotypes in the movie, such as having a noticeably larger, hooked nose compared to the other male characters which is reminiscent of the ethnic stereotype of the "Jewish nose" and being greedy and corrupt (literally mining every singe piece of gold out of the mines) which is a stereotype of Jewish people. His name is also of Jewish origin which by itself wouldn’t be a necessarily suspicious thing but combined with those other tropes it does add up.
Barbie Diaries - Tia, a black woman and also the only one with curly hair in the cast, making an iffy comment about "getting the tangles out of her hair". POC with different hair textures have gotten a lot of racist shit for their hair so even though this is a small oneoff comment seeing Tia talk about her hair like this in a negative manner rubbed some of my friends with curly hair wrong.
Barbie in a Mermaid Tale 2 - Polynesian racism. Another friend of mine who is Hawaiian brought this up in Mermaid Tale 2, when Merliah and co decided to have a luau (which is a traditional Hawaiian party or feast usually accompanied by entertainment) in Australia. My friend found it a bit iffy they were doing this when most everyone is white, but what they found worse was when poi was being served in the luau. Poi is a traditional Polynesian dish, but in the movie they claimed it was an Australian and Hawaiian dish, which its not, there’s no Australia in its origin. And then there was a "gag" where the people eating the poi were gagging on it, so essentially this movie was making a joke out of another culture's aesthetics and food.
Barbie Princess Adventure - Reread the above text.
Maybe my sample size isn’t big enough but I’m not seeing a pattern or a trend here, which in my opinion would be a larger cause for concern because for these movies their issues are largely contained to their specific movie, and a pattern would be indication of a wider problem. Maybe you see a pattern I don’t, that would be completely valid.
Now, do I think this means you can’t enjoy Barbie Princess Adventure? No, I’d be a bit of a hypocrite if I said that because I still enjoy some of the Barbie movies I listed above that I just said also have problematic elements (Swan Lake and Princess and the Pauper specifically). But I do think it is good to at the very least be aware of it, hear it out, keep it in mind. At the same time I understand why people would be turned off by this topic because they’re here to have fun riding the serotonin of childhood nostalgia and not delve into discourse.
But I hope I answered your question to your satisfaction Multiverse Anon! I’m going to go take a nap now I’m tired 😭.
32 notes · View notes
maxwell-grant · 3 years
Note
Charlie Chan. Who is fascinating, because he was created explictly to be an anti-Yellow Peril character. Unlike most Chinese characters of the time, he's both intelligent, physically capable, and unambiguously heroic. In the novels, he's simultaneously proud of being Chinese AND proud of being an American citizen. He gives orders and instructions to white people, and the narrative treats this as perfectly normal and acceptable. There's a bit in the first book, when an attempt to trap the..(1/2)
(cont'd)There's a bit in the first book where an attempt to trap the protagonist fails, because a message supposedly from Charlie clearly isn't because Charlie's English isn't broken, it's like poetry. Etc. The movies made him more stereotypical, & played by white actors in yellowface, but still, he's a heroic Chinese man, who is as capable and patriotic as any white man. Nowadays, he's thought of as racist caricature. Which he is, but still, it makes one think.
Tumblr media
I'm not nearly as acquainted with Charlie Chan as you are (and I definitely suspected he was less racist in the original books because that's nearly always the norm when it comes to pulp characters) but yeah, that "Which he is" is forever going to be the most unfortunate and saddest part of it all when it comes to Charlie Chan. For all the virtues that can be bestowed on Charlie Chan, for everything great that the character had going for him and inspired, the fact that the least offensive image of the character I could find to put here for illustration's sake is from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon kinda exemplifies the big elephant in the room when it comes to Charlie.
Charlie Chan is a great example of two things: One is the way progress is never a fixed quantity and often what was progressive and forward-thinking in it's time can become something outdated and backwards and downright offensive given enough time, and the 2nd is my constant stressing that this is all the more incentive to reclaim the pulps and either highlight or fix aspects of them, instead of dismissing every aspect of them based on the preconception that everything about it's history is unforgivably bigoted and must be handled with the nuance of a sledgehammer.
I stress time and time again the need to highlight and understand the prejudices that went into pulps, because either ignoring them or wielding them as a weapon to attack them does no favors to anyone. The pulps weren't exceptionally bigoted - look at literally any medium in it's time period and you'll find bigotry and prejudice and hatred - and they were exceptional in the number of POC heroes and heroines. Pulps were a medium of experimentation and cheap entertainment that gave way to much, much more varied kinds of protagonists than were permitted in films, serials, novels, comics and radio serials of the day. Imagine if no one was allowed to bring up and discuss superheroes without mentioning the Superman Slap-a-Jap posters or the Captain Marvel story so horrifingly racist it was recounted by an American ambassador after it deeply offended a friend's son and a major influence on the 1950s anti-comic trials. "Pulp fiction had deeply, unforgivingly racist depictions that deserve intense scrutiny and cannot be ignored" and "Pulp fiction was significantly ahead of every other medium at the time in regards to authors and editors striving to publish stories about heroic POCs, this cannot be dismissed and is something that needs to be perpetuated" are not exclusive facts. "A product of it's time" is not an excuse and never was, but it's a fact nevertheless.
Every time someone speaks favorably of Charlie Chan in any capacity, they have to start with a long preface of everything positive that the character had going for him. Yes, he's a deliberate subversion of the Yellow Peril, he's a heroic protagonist, he's plump and good-natured and humorous but far from a joke, he's friendly and pleasant and well-educated and wise, he's a good dad and family man and a terrifically sharp detective who's so good at his job he gets called to solve crimes all over the world, and none of these traits are apparent to people who have to google the character and repeteadly see a white man in awful make-up into every single image of the character, who watch the movies and cringe at the broken English. It's hardly relevant in the face of all the Asian-American critics who acknowledge the character's virtues but rightfully point out that this fortune-cookie spouting caricature, acting subservient to whites and whose virtues are based around his proximity to a white American ideal, doesn't represent them and they shouldn't pretend it does.
Which isn't to say that to like Charlie Chan is "wrong", a lot of East Asians love Charlie and the character's obviously got fans in Asian Americans. It's a complicated subject and I obviously cannot begin to vouch in a subject so heavily based around perceptions I cannot experience. And I deeply detest the idea of speaking for others on their particular experiences on this kind of matter, which is something Americans do a lot everytime they talk about representation in media.
So instead, I'm going to tackle this on a roundabout manner by going on an unrelated tangent to bring up an example of representation that isn't quite representative of what it's supposed to be, has a lot of issues that have been dissected by critics among the people it was supposed to represent, and none of that stopped the character from being popular and beloved and from being claimed anyway. And it's a Brazilian fighting game character, which means it's completely within my ballpark.
Tumblr media
Yeah, obviously Blanka doesn't look like anyone who lives in Brazil (whatever resemblance he bears to redheaded jungle protectors of Brazilian folklore is purely accidental). Obviously neither Jimmy nor Blanka are Brazilian names or even exist in the Portuguese lexicon. Obviously there are issues in Street Fighter's approach to representation across the board, sure, and I'd actually say Laura is much worse than Blanka in that regard (again, my opinion, obviously not universal), but the fact remains that Blanka is and has always been pretty controversial. Obviously there's Brazilians who took offense to Blanka and they weren't wrong to do so, and I obviously do not speak for everyone here, that goes without saying.
Obviously the idea that Brazil's major representative in a global cast of characters, the first big name Brazilian character in videogames, is going to be a freakish jungle monster who roars and bites faces has problems, as is the fact that all the others get to be regular people representing fighting styles from their countries while Blanka doesn't. None of the Brazilian SF characters represent Capoeira, which is kinda shitty to be honest. And there's a whole stereotype of Brazil as a backwards land of beasts and savages that Blanka's creation played into. There's no shortage of ground to criticize Blanka's representation and Ono actually apologized in an interview once, but then he learned one teensy little thing:
Street Fighter is very popular on Brazil. Would you like to leave a message to the fans from there?
"Ono: Yes, I'm aware. At the time of Street Fighter II a lot of the arcade machines produced went there, so I knew we had lots of fans there. A message to Brazilians, well, I'd like to apologize. I know Blanka's a weird character and I don't want any Brazilian to feel uncomfortable with that.
When Blanka was conceived, we knew there were forests in Brazil, and so we thought he could look like that. I was actually kinda nervous knowing I'd meet Brazilian journalists. Still, this is the first Street Fighter in ten years, so we'd like all fans to play, including Brazilians, which are many.
Thanks. Well, but you should know that Brazilians love Blanka
"Ono: Ah, good! I was scared of getting beat up if I ever went to São Paulo! (laughs)"
Tumblr media
(That's from a 2012 tv special called The Greatest Brazilian of All Time where over a million viewers voted to elect whoever they wanted, and Blanka was going to win. He was polling ahead of Aryton Senna and PELÉ, fucking Pelé, yes this happened. He wasn't even disqualified for being a cartoon character, it was an open poll, he was disqualified due to canon stating he had been born in Thailand, which I think may have been retconned since then. Again, A MILLION BRAZILLIANS voted for this contest, and Blanka was going to win.)
Blanka is great and sweet and lovable, he made the best out of the incredible shitty hands fate dealt him and became a cool and strong green man who shoots lightning and flies, a self-taught warrior who rides whales and planes to fighting tournaments, and he loves his mom and friends and kicks ass and after he's done he dances in joy and gives the kids of his village piggyback rides, and Brazil loves him. He doesn't represent any existing person or fighting style, he's rooted in a negative stereotype and incorrect assumptions, he's not even really Brazilian, and he's our boy and nobody can take him away from us.
No criticism of Blanka, no matter how in-depth or even right it is, is ever going to affect that, because regardless of what was wrong or misguided and offensive about him, we claimed him and loved him so throughly that Capcom kept playing up Brazilian representation in every subsequent game post Alpha, and because of Blanka's impact and reception in such a big game, Brazilian characters have become a staple of fighting games, and that's how we got much more diverse representatives in those games. Fighting games have more Brazilian representation than LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE on media not produced here. It started as BAD representation, with way less thought put into it than Charlie Chan, and it still mattered to a lot of Brazilians who reclaimed it and made it better than it was ever intended to be, and as a response to it, it gradually became better. 
Progress is not a fixed quantity, it's an uphill battle, and it's not unwinnable. Everything's gotta start somewhere.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
The Good Asian is a ongoing comic that I think does the best job I've seen yet of handling an Asian American detective protagonist, which is not really a high bar in the first place, and more to the point, The Good Asian illustrates the 2nd part: the reclaiming. The Good Asian deals a lot with the realities that a 1930s Asian-American detective would run into, the strained circumstances and relationships between said character and the world around him, because it's born from an author who took a look at Charlie Chan and Mr Moto and the like and recognized the potential in those stories that could not be fulfilled in it's time period by the people writing said stories. 
The Good Asian pays little reverence to Charlie Chan, but it acknowledges that it cannot exist without Charlie Chan, and it reclaims the Charlie Chan premise at the hands of someone more adequately equipped to tell a gripping story that goes places none of Charlie's contemporaries would ever go. Regardless of how good or bad of representation Charlie Chan was, Charlie Chan mattered and was beloved and inspired a better example for others to improve on or rebel against.
Tumblr media
I desperately wish that I could google Charlie Chan without having to look at a guy in yellowface, and the ONLY way that's going to happen is if the character ever gets meaningfully brought back and reclaimed for good by people who can meaningfully tackle the character and present him as he should have always been presented.
And then, I imagine it would be a lot easier to show people on how swell Charlie really is. A true, positive role model and hero, who no longer has to look like a gross cartoon to be able to exist at all. Who can finally be what he was always meant to be, and always was deep down.
52 notes · View notes
thealexchen · 3 years
Text
One Year On: Life is Strange 2 Critique
December 3rd, 2020 marks a year since Life is Strange 2 ended. I was inspired by @smitethepatriarchy‘s text posts (here, but there are several other answered asks worth reading) and @suhaplays’s text post (here) criticizing Life is Strange 2 to write a critique about how Life is Strange 2 handled certain themes and social issues.
(tw: gun violence, police brutality, animal death, incarceration, racism. In this essay, I use the word “queer” in a reclaimed sense, as a queer person myself. Of course, spoiler warning for all five episodes of Life is Strange 1 and 2).
A year on, my feelings about this game have soured... a lot. When the game was first announced, I was overjoyed that our new protagonists would be two Latino boys. Finally, we would have a culturally meaningful, groundbreaking video game with people of color and their experiences at the forefront! 
Then the game was met with immediate backlash and I utterly exhausted myself defending it for weeks on Reddit and Tumblr. Throughout 2019, as the episodes came out I became increasingly disillusioned, frustrated, and disappointed with where the story was going. I couldn’t figure out why I felt so damn miserable while playing this game.
Then in the summer of 2020, when Tell Me Why began rolling out pre-release material, I noticed that they posted a Q&A about transphobia, gave content warnings, and discussed at length about their collaboration with GLAAD, Checkpoint, and the Huna Heritage Foundation to make the game with sensitivity and proper research. I cannot speak for trans and gender non-conforming people on whether Dontnod succeeded at doing so with Tell Me Why. But Life is Strange 2 did… none of that.
Essentially, I realized that the reason why I was so frustrated with LiS2 is because it focuses way too heavily on a trauma narrative. This comes off as insensitive to players of color without any content warnings or extensive research.
Sean didn’t have to get kidnapped, kicked in the face, and called a racial slur by a gas station owner. Daniel did not need to watch his puppy get mauled by a mountain lion for the sake of a “difficult choice.” Sean didn’t have to lose his eye for the sake of heightened drama. Sean didn’t need to get called a racial slur and humiliated by his native language/beaten in the desert for refusing to sing. Daniel didn’t need to get shot— twice. Hell, all of “Faith” probably could’ve been cut— how is a church cult that brainwashes Daniel and beats Sean half to death relevant at all to the story?
Even if not all of the game’s violence was racially motivated, the consistent trauma that Sean and Daniel endure does not make for positive representation— or even good characterization. There is a difference between sympathetic characters and well-written characters, and trauma does not make Sean and Daniel any more complex or likable-- just more fucking traumatized.
LiS2 is more grounded in reality, but that also makes plot holes that much harder to excuse (Daniel’s powers being spotted, most of the Parting Ways ending, Sean’s prison sentence). But most of all, it grounds all of Sean and Daniel’s pain and trauma in reality. 
There is no magicking away a town-destroying storm with time travel. Sean can’t keep his dad alive by ripping up a Polaroid. After Max unlocked her powers, she was still a Blackwell student, reconnecting with Chloe, taking photos, saving lives, and uncovering a murder mystery. After Daniel unlocked his powers, the Diaz brothers lost everything. 
The game never lets you forget that Sean and Daniel are homeless, wanted, constantly in danger, and that they are never getting their old lives back. It permeates the entire game, and for players of color, just reinforces a sad, miserable, grim reality about living in the United States. It is, as @smitethepatriarchy said, potentially triggering for players of color, and it is certainly not something I needed to be reminded of.
And the representation of POC? It feels shallow and ill-researched. It would only take a Google search to find out that Dia de Muertos (a holiday to honor the dead, no less) was from October 31 to November 2 in 2016, the year the game takes place, but Daniel only talks about Halloween in episode 1. Sean and Daniel never discuss any Mexican customs, foods, or holidays. Sean doesn’t speak Spanish with his immigrant father, only during a scene when he’s traumatized (again!) by two racists, and again when talking to Mexican immigrants— in jail. Daniel doesn’t speak Spanish at all. Most of their allies throughout the game are white, including Finn and Cassidy, who appropriate Black culture with their dreadlocks.
So what’s left? Sean and Daniel’s existence as people of color is, at worst, just a narrative prop to justify everything that happens to them. They are people of color on the surface only. In a meta-sense, the game only considers the color of their skin and their last names as what is narratively important… yikes.
I don’t have anything against people who genuinely loved the game and were moved by its messages and story. But I can’t help but feel bitter that white players have the luxury of only thinking of this game as a work of fiction and not feeling any personal reliability to Sean and Daniel’s racialized trauma.
I don’t regret playing LiS2, but I do regret all the time and energy I spent defending it in the beginning. I understand now that I shouldn’t let people’s opinions get to me, nor should I feel obligated to like or defend a game for its attempts at representation. But now, I think I understand how queer fans must have felt in late 2015 when Polarized released. After following the game for 10 months, to see that Chloe’s ultimate destiny was to die and Pricefield is another ship plagued by the Bury Your Gays trope (in the ending that the devs clearly put more work into) must have been just as disillusioning and infuriating. I understand why some fans were so quick to unfollow LiS or develop mixed feelings about the series, because that’s how I feel too after following LiS2’s development from September 2018 to December 2019.
Before I end, I will admit that Life is Strange 2 arrived at a time when I needed it. I still stand by my belief that DN did a great job characterizing Sean, Daniel, and Chris without toxic masculinity, which is the best thing they could’ve done for a male-focused follow-up to a game about queer women. I love that Sean is still a canonically bisexual man of color in a major video game and that DN didn’t forget their queer audience. I love the world and characters that DN built, but I still prefer AU fanfictions of their normal lives, without all that trauma. 
So, I will continue to treasure Lyla and her 10 minutes of screentime (aka the only shred of Asian American representation I can get from this series). I still reblog LiS2 fanart to support the artists. I still support Dontnod, because as Tell Me Why has shown, they are capable of researching and writing stories with more sensitivity. And let’s be honest-- I’m still gonna be hella excited if Life is Strange 3 is announced.
But so many aspects of Life is Strange 2 were bungled that it came off as a remarkably average and forgettable experience. A year on, I don’t hate Life is Strange 2, but I am writing this to move on from it.
Thank you for reading.
169 notes · View notes
kiingocreative · 3 years
Text
Tumblr media
The Structure of Story is now available! Check it out on Amazon, via the link in our bio, or at https://kiingo.co/book
.
.
.
Every author starting out will know how important reviews are. If you’re yet to be convinced, here are some fun facts about reviews*:
1. 88% of consumers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.
2. 72% of consumers will take action after reading a positive review.
3. Positive reviews tell Amazon and Google you’re worth ranking and can boost search results for your book by feeding into SEO (reviews account for almost 10% of total search ranking factors).
So reviews aren’t just a nice to have — they’re critical to the success of a book.
Now, amongst the writers community, we talk a lot about receiving reviews, but less so about giving reviews. I enjoy writing book reviews immensely, because it makes me think about what I’m reading on a different level, and forces me to learn how to articulate that opinion. This is actually one of the main reasons why I got into professional BETA reading.
I was asked recently how I structure my book reviews (all of which can be found on my blog), so here you have it: all the secrets to how I go about writing book reviews, along with some concrete examples!
Start With Why.
The most important question to ask yourself before you even start writing a review is this:
Why do people read book reviews?
In essence, they want to know whether the book is good, what it’s about, and — more importantly — whether they should read it. They generally like some context and detail to back the review so that they feel it’s genuine and trustworthy.
If you can keep in mind what people generally want to get out of a book review, this will help you keep your review relevant and useful. It’ll help you figure out what’s worth including and what isn’t. If in doubt, ask yourself what you would want to read about in a review when you’re trying to decide whether or not to buy a book.
Some Key Questions.
Before you start writing, you also need to ponder a few things. It may not always feel natural to reflect on a book on this level of detail — it didn’t for me at first. I either liked a book, or I loved it, or I didn’t, but I rarely spent a lot of time critically thinking about why I did or didn’t like a read.
If you’re also finding this uncomfortable at first, I say stick with it. I found it extremely interesting to make myself think these things through. It’s made my writing so much better, because I’ve developed that objective evaluation muscle that activates even when I’m with my own work. It’s also made me much better at forming and formulating an opinion, which is something I didn’t use to be good at!
Here are some questions to start with before you start on your review:
• Did you like the book?
• What did you like about it?
• What didn’t you like about it?
• Are there any themes that were particularly well handled?
• Were there any characters you liked above others, and why?
• Would you recommend the book to a friend?
These few questions will start shaping your view of what you’ve read and provide the main elements of your review.
To take your critical reading to the next level, you may want to ponder the various elements of the story and the writing as a whole. Think about:
• The plot / storyline — is it strong? Consistent? Original? Enticing? Are there gaps?
• The characters and character arcs — are all characters well developed? Multi-layered? Do they make sense? Are they relatable?
• The key themes — what are some recurring topics through the story? Are they well handled?
• The pace and timeline — is the story progressing at a good pace? Where does it lag? Does the timeline make sense?
• The writing style — how was the writing style? Did it flow well? Did it feel unique or original?
• The dialogues — did they feel natural? Were they believable? Were they engaging? Did they add to the overall story?
• The editing — how was the editing? Were there any typos or formatting errors?
Example Review Outline
Once you’ve spent some time with those initial questions, you’ll find it gives you the best part of your review content. At first, you may want to note down your answers to each of these. With time, you may find you can process these in your mind faster than you did before, and you don’t need so many notes. Whichever way is right for you, once you have this, you’re ready to start structuring your review.
I tend to use the following outline (though, of course, this isn’t the one and only way to write a review!):
1. Star Rating:
It’s most common in this day and age to include a rating in your review. There are talks out there about not leaving a rating on a book, because these can be extremely subjective — someone’s three-star rating may mean they loved the book but for others it’s a negative rating, some people don’t leave five-star reviews out of principle etc.
If you’re reviewing the book on Amazon and Goodreads however, you don’t have a choice but to pick a rating out of five stars. Have a think about how that rating system relates to you. For instance: would you leave five star ratings? What rating do you use for a book you liked versus a book you absolutely loved? What kind of book would warrant a low-rating? etc.
2. Opening:
Start with a short overview of what you thought of the book. This should give the reader a concise view of what you thought of the book, in two or three sentences. The idea is that, if they read only this opening part of the review, they should know your view on the matter.
Here’s an example opening paragraph I wrote for Heart of a Runaway Girl by Trevor Wiltzen:
‘Heart of a Runaway Girl is a breath of fresh air. As far as crime and murder investigation novels go, I only ever read Agatha Christie, so my standard is high. But this book did not disappoint.’
3. Synopsis:
The next section of the review is a short summary of the book, which should give the main elements of the plot. I tend to keep that part really short because I find that, if anyone wants to know the specifics, the book blurb the author so diligently wrote for the back cover is a much better place to learn more about that. Yes, you need to give a sense of what the book’s about, but it shouldn’t be the bulk of the review.
I think this is a matter of personal preference, I’ve seen reviews out there with a much longer synopsis section, but I always find myself skipping those bits to get to the nitty gritty of the review, which is what the person thought. There again, go back to the why — people who read reviews do so to find out whether or not they want to buy a book, so the more valuable pieces to help with that (in my view) are your opinions, more than an in-depth summary which they can find elsewhere.
For instance, when I reviewed Counter Ops by Jessica Scurlock, the second opus in the Pretty Lies series, I kept the synopsis paragraph to:
‘In Counter Ops, we meet a familiar duo, Ivy and Nixon, as they face the aftermath of the Elite Auction, and each endure its painful consequences. We follow their journey as they try to escape their fate and attempt to come to each other’s rescue — in more ways than one.’
4. Highlights:
The next part is what I call the ‘highlights’. This is where you talk about what you liked most about the book, or what you thought the strongest parts of the book were. This can focus on one element of the book (a character, a part of the plot, a theme etc.) or cover multiple elements.
See, for example, the highlights I picked for my review of Age of the Almek by Tara Lake:
‘I loved the author's ability to give every character their own voice and a distinct perspective on the world around them. I loved how involved I became with every character's fate and woes. I loved the precision with which the Almek world has been created, with such minuteness you can picture it down to the finest details.
My favourite part is the portrayal of the many facets of human nature, be it through the reactions of the masses to the barbaric ways of their rulers or the individual views of the protagonists. In every Almek citizen is a piece of the great puzzle that is humanity at large, and the author has a gift for writing it as raw and real as it gets.’
5. Mitigate your view:
Right after the highlights is where you’d add anything that mitigates your view. That’s anything that wasn’t quite as strong as you’d want it to be, or anything you weren’t a fan of.
You can skip this part if there’s nothing you didn’t like about the book — you don’t have to go nitpicking if nothing comes to mind. And it doesn’t have to be a bashing of the author and their work either. Keep it constructive and explain why you felt that way. There’s never a need for insults or expletives, and these wouldn’t enhance the quality of your review anyways. Formulating constructive criticism takes practice, and requires tact and subtlety. It’s a valuable skill to have if you’re willing to invest time in honing it.
Here’s how I phrased that part of the review for Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan:
‘But - and there's a but - my qualm with this book is that, for a story that revolves entirely around Nick and Rachel... There's actually very little Nick and Rachel in it!
Yes it's all 'about' them and it talks 'of' them loads, and we're told theyare happy together and want to be together... But it's all 'tell' and no 'show'. Their intimacy is sorely lacking, so I was left missing that added colour to convince me that they, in fact, do love each other. And I'm not talking saucy passages — I 'm talking about basic things suchas them actually talking to each other and spending time together.’
6. Conclusion:
The final part of the review is a short paragraph with closing remarks, such as a short summary of your view on the book, whether or not you recommend it or some indication of what readers the book may be for (e.g. ‘if you liked… you may like this book’).
When I reviewed Collision by Kristen Granata, I ended the review with:
‘Readers used to intricate, far-fetched romance plots may find this book too straightforward for their liking. In my mind, this is what makes the book's key strength: it's real and honest, it takes the reader through difficult situations and complex emotions beautifully, and that makes it all the more relatable.
A great read overall - and the moment I finished the last page, I was on Amazon ordering the next book in the series!’
How long should a review be?
I don’t think there should be a minimum or maximum word count to a review, though I find that mine end up being around 300 to 500 words. I feel this is a good length because as a reviewer this forces me to be concise and clear in expressing my opinions, and as a reader it’s long enough to give people a sense of the book, but not too long that they’ll drop off before the end.
Final Thoughts: To spoil or not to spoil?
My view on adding spoilers in your review is simple: DON’T.
Try as I might, I can’t fathom what could be gained from adding spoilers to a review. Once again: back to the why. Someone reads a review to find out if they want to read the book themselves. If you ruin the plot for them in that review, what’s the incentive to pick up the book?
It just hurts the author’s chances of making a book sale, and it robs a fellow reader of the joyful rollercoaster of finding out those plot twists at their own pace. Don’t do it, it’s just rude.
*Sources:
www.bookmarketingtools.com
www.searchenginewatch.com
www.dealeron.com
11 notes · View notes
safeandtuckedaway · 3 years
Text
Is it possible to like anything? Mixed thoughts on morality, turning a blind eye and "The Matrix"
I care a lot about media, and communication. As a guy that has some issues talking about exactly how he's feeling and has low social energy, things like shows, movies and books were a lot more important and relevant to my formative years than interaction with other people – not that I didn't have friends on my teen years, I did, just. Well, a lot of stuff to consider at that time that is irrelevant to this stream of consciousness. Something that I also care about is the message said media brings, and how that is inherently linked to who wrote, or directed the piece of media. This brings question to some of the internet's most infamously discussions: is it "ok" to like something made by someone that does very questionable decisions? I honestly don't have a definitive answer for that. More often than not, this kind of discussion feels to me to be in a vacuum in the internet, or of less politically inclined people. There are good articles out there, but they never seem to demand you not watch something, but to make people reflect on the bad writing, direction or production something got. Which I think is the way to go. Most of what I read and watch of radical left doesn't even mention such an issue with representation and how it should be completely isolated and burned to the ground, as I'm afraid they're more concerned with some more "tangible" problems, like the rise of imperialism, neoliberalism and fascism and imperialist and neoliberal feminism as a tool to maintain the capitalist system, often times built by people of color and resources from the "Southern" countries, and maintained cleaned and pristine by women of color (VERGÈS, 2019)¹.
I'm just a guy in his mid twenties with a degree in graphic design and a thesis in communication design. I didn't study political science in university. So I think I can do my part by talking about communication, then. Also I will try not to pull info out of my ass.
As some people might know from now, Matrix "4" Resurrections' trailer launched this week, and with that, some people were kind to remind past's fuck ups of Lana Wachowski regarding race in many of her works, like Sense8, Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas. Listen, I can't ignore the fact that the decisions made in these films are in the very least, questionable and distastful, specially regarding Asian people. Also she really out there rocking dreads, which I'm not even gonna get into, as I think it's already very well established why that's not a good look for white people. I only watched maybe one episode of Sense8, but this article here sums up pretty well what's weird about it. It also brings a good message by the end.
So, can you like anything without being morally crushed by what you know is right? Can you enjoy a piece of media that is flawed by the creator's White Gaze/Straight Gaze/Cisgender Gaze? I admit I have a hard time dealing with feelings of morality. It feels rather individual and super subjective on most accounts, and doesn't leave out (ironically?) a lot of nuance for different cultures and practices in the world. I wanna talk about that more in the future. Either way, about media, I'm of the opinion that you can enjoy those things if you wish to. Fuck it. Make it your own. Be critical of what you consume, as most things we do are made under the wing of big corporations owned by people that don't care about us, if we need screen time or actually be portrayed as a human being.
If anything, I would like to plead that people pay more attention to the independent side of media creation, if possible. The internet has its advantages in that regard. Don't lock yourself in on Netflix and [insert other streaming services here] and its desperately neoliberal vision of queer people. It's hard, but there's many POC and LGBTQIA+ folks that work hard to bring better stories for people just like them. Look for POC that make books and short films and documentaries. By comparison, it will be easy to spot how flawed The White Gaze makes when telling a story.
I'm gonna talk a little about The Matrix (1999) below, so I'm gonna do one of those fancy "Keep reading" right now.
So, I re-watched The Matrix (1999) yesterday and found the plot with Cypher turning against the other members of the Resistance as a pretty good analogy of what most people live their lives currently, under capitalism and overconsumption: Willing to throw your group under the bus, to literally destroy the remains of human existence that are still left, for the comfort of being blissfully ignorant. "I wanna be rich, and someone important, like an actor", he said to Agent Smith, that probably wouldn't fucking do that even if the plan did the way they wanted to. I like to believe it was the greed of the few that brought down humanity by their own creation in the Matrix universe, but unfortunately that is not brought up, in that case, bring in that "humanity" as a whole did it. There's another scene, when Agent Smith is alone with Morpheus, where he monologues about how "humanity" is a "cancer" for the Earth, for "abusing all the resources from an area and have no way to survive but to move to another area". This again shows the lack of perspective from The Wachowskis, blaming humans, that have existed for thousands of years, for the environmental atrocities that capitalism, that has only existed for a couple hundred years, has caused to the planet.
Like I said, it is okay to like things that can be questionable. I like this slip that the character Cypher is. He is the embodiment of a lot of issues and he is inherently opposite of our "good guys" characters in Matrix. I can still be critical of their lack of eyesight on what – and who – is really killing the planet, and their very distasteful idea of going post-racial when the fact is that race still very much matters.
¹ VERGÈS, FRANÇOISE, Decolonial Feminism. 2019
16 notes · View notes
imsebastiansta-n · 3 years
Note
I respect your opinion but I’m just wondering why you believe it’s a PR relationship? Obviously you don’t have to answer, I’m just wondering as I genuinely believe it’s real and think they look in very in love and am curious to know why some people don’t:)
Okay so basically, all the information here is from an account on Instagram, she’s done so much research and it makes a lot of sense.
If you want to believe it’s real that’s absolutely fine, I’m not gonna chew you out or be horrible. I respect your opinion also.
But for me, whenever we see him with her, he looks so damn miserable. Like he doesn’t even want to be there, and his body always looks extremely tense and uncomfortable whenever she’s near him. It’s like he’s being forced to be there.
He has cameras shoved in his face so much just so she can get a bit of publicity to be relevant. His smiles don’t even look real anymore, they don’t reach his eyes like they used to.
He’s made a lot of posts as well which if you look into it, seems like he’s crying out for help. Like he’s trying to get out of it.
His management are also trash, they’re awful people. They couldn’t give two shits about Seb or his mental health, they just want money in their pockets.
There’s also a lot of stories and things about her, and there’s also a lot of proof.
She’s constantly flirting and very touchy with her male friends, she even has another guy as her phone wallpaper. Now if you were meant to be in a relationship would you do those things? Because I certainly wouldn’t.
She’s also a racist. She made fun of Asian culture and laughed about it. She thinks COVID is a joke and has repeatedly broken the rules for it by flying to other countries. All the while, all the stuff she does and says, Seb gets death threats and gets body shamed for it and not once has she apologised for any of it or defended him and taken responsibility for her actions.
They may look in love, but I firmly believe that it’s all for show.
But, again this just my opinion. If you want more info on this, follow theimmortalraccoon on Instagram she has so much more info on this 🙂
13 notes · View notes
thedreadvampy · 3 years
Note
Ok please if you don’t mind saying - who is Stuart semple and what did he do? I’m so confused. Like I recognise the name and I think he might the an artist or something but I have no idea
He is indeed an artist! He’s a English multidisciplinary fine artist best known for his ongoing beef with English sculptor Anish Kapoor over the 2016 exclusive licensing on the process to make Vantablack colour coating, which meant Kapoor was the only artist allowed to use it. Then Stuart Semple made Pinkest Pink pigment and said it was available to everyone but Anish Kapoor, and there was a big blowup which there’s a lot of documentation of - it was very memed.
Since then, Semple has made a bunch more pigments, most of them with the available-to-everyone-but-Anish-Kapoor disclaimer, and the beef periodically flares up, although I will say as time goes on it seems to me to have got increasingly one-sided given that Kapoor has pretty much wandered off.
(I’ve used several of his colours, btw. Pinkest Pink is pretty good. Blackest Black, his attempt to make the blackest possible paint (as opposed to Vantablack which is a nanofibre coating) I was pretty disappointed in, I’ve honestly had better light capture from mid-range art shop paints. His other pigments vary in quality - some I really liked, some I was meh on, but I think Blackest Black is the only one I was actively unimpressed by)
Anyway. Where I come in is much less exciting. 
A few months ago I reblogged a post on Tumblr asking about Semple from a discourse tag (my reblog did not tag or @ anyone), and I made a glib comment where I said (very truthfully) that while I thought he was pretty decent at pigments, both his paintings and his online persona came across pretty adolescent to me.
so it turns out Stuart Semple is an inveterate name searcher (hi Stuart if you’re reading this!) 
(Side note: I actually should have guessed this from 2019 Twitter when he saw and commented on an untagged thread I wrote about him and Kapoor’s beef (which was because I’d seen an article in which Kapoor, a British-Asian man, said that the racist Prevent strategy was liable to drive young British-Asian men into the arms of terrorist groups by making it clear their country hates them reblogged on Semple’s account with a caption claiming Anish Kapoor was pro-terrorism, which, while tongue-in-cheek, isn’t a neutral statement for a white person to make about an Asian person and was a pretty phenomenally bad-faith reading of Kapoor’s actual words) and in my thread I pretty much said that when the story had broken, I, like everybody else, had found it very funny and been firmly on side with Semple’s bit, but I felt that a) after a couple of years it really wasn’t very relevant any more and it had started to feel less like Fighting The Power and more like bullying the amount of Semple’s web presence was devoted to talking about Anish Kapoor; b) that it was a shame that Anish Kapoor was increasingly only known as The Vantablack Guy given that I really like a lot of his work and c) that continuing to frame a Jewish person of colour as the Face of the Artistic Elite was a bit weird given how overwhelmingly white the high-end art world is. but I digress. Semple responded to that thread, I don’t really remember what he said, it wasn’t an acrimonious response but it was a bit Oh I Didn’t Do Anything To Tag You?)
so anyway he found my reblog and commented saying ehhh I don’t remember, something along the lines of not feeling like I was being very kind and that he was trying his best. also I think he said I had accused him of being racist? which again the actual Tumblr post literally just said I thought his art and persona came across as juvenile and I think in the tags? I mentioned that I thought it was time for him to step off the Kapoor beef. 
then he screencapped my post, including my profile picture and username, and posted it on all his socials with a kind of :( people are so mean on Tumblr :( caption and um
idk if you know this about Being A Public Persona With Tens Of Thousands of Followers but. if you post someone’s identity and say ‘I do not like what this person is doing’ it. can get messy fast.
uh I don’t follow Stuart Semple (see the original post I made) but he commented to make sure I knew he’d posted my post on Instagram and “all my followers like your wig :)” which. according to my partner who did go and look at the time, the Instagram comments were largely about how I was an ugly non-passing trans woman aka “man in a wig” which. throw the whole suitcase out. There were a good few days where I got a lot of angry anons, ranging from ‘stop bullying Stuart Semple!!!!!’ to ‘die in a ditch graphically’ to ‘how can you claim to have opinions on art when You Are On Tumblr’ (I have been a freelance illustrator for 7 years and I have a Masters in art and design) to ‘your art sucks and you’re fat and ugly’ and my personal favourite ‘how can u be cis and use she/her pronouns you dumb snowflake’
(within that furore was a whole branch where someone was like ‘sex worker huh bet you’re bad at it’ and I was like ‘yep! that’s why I don’t do it any more! it’s hard work and it involves a lot of self-promotion and customer skills which I don’t like and am not good at!’ and this was a Whole Thing where they kept trying to insult me (much like today’s anon) about my supposed failures as a Slut Who Is Bad At Sex and I kept going like ‘ok but here’s how that just. doesn’t make sense in reference to what sex work actually is so like, ok?’)
and Stuart Semple and I were also having a conversation which, depending on your perspective I would call his attitude either conciliatory or passive-aggressive, there was a lot of ‘me and my followers would never say rude things about you :) keep up the art kiddo :)’ and being charitable I would say he was trying to be nice while being angry, and to avoid escalating (but with the added context I got later about the wig comment, I think that interpretation of his behaviour maybe. has some cracks?) and ultimately he took down the posts, we had a brief conversation about keeping pet reptiles (apparently he has a lizard) and we left it on, if not good terms, at least peaceable ones. 
however I still periodically get messages about it from angry Semple stans. and I’m not sure the argument was resolved, in that I still very much think it’s fair to make criticism, including quite harsh criticism (which I’m not sure ‘adolescent’ is), on art which is put out for public display and enjoyment, and that it isn’t a personal attack to post a criticism of someone’s public-facing work and statements on social media unless you actively target it towards them (for example, @ ing them), and Semple still thinks there’s no difference between a random blog with under a thousand followers criticising a public figure’s work and a public figure with 100k followers on most platforms criticising that blog (out of context - he clipped out the post I was reblogging from and my explanatory tags, and looking at my blog you may notice that 90% of my nuance is in the tags) while giving his followers all the information to find said blog.
(also as multiple people have remarked. if you want to say it’s an unfair criticism to call your online presence immature, being a middle-aged artist who as far as I can tell has a net worth over a million who spends your time name searching yourself in order to get mad at untagged mild criticism from strangers on the internet and share it on all your socials for your followers to join you in Being Big Mad is uhhhhhhh. it uh. it’s not like. not super thin-skinned and immature)
(also also I just googled his net worth and unsurprisingly I can’t find a source on it I’d consider reliable, but I did find multiple articles about him getting in trouble for breach of contract and nonpayment for gallery employees, including two accusations of him writing a big defensive blog post then changing it after a few hours to a very short post saying I LOVE YOU so like idk how true that is but it does seem. consistent with the above interactions.)
37 notes · View notes
drwcn · 4 years
Note
Hello. I wanted to ask about lwj's punishment and your opinion on it. I'm Asian and I cannot for the life of mine imagine ever going against my elders like that, and 33 of them, holy smokes! Which makes the punishment.. sort of well deserved. Then again the cultivation world was in the wrong about wwx but the man also killed SO many people and lwj was hiding a mass murderer. The punishment makes sense to me, but also seems awfully cruel. It's all very confusing. What do you think?
Hey anon, 
Yo listen. I know the fandom was like omg that was so harsh, but being a veteran of the cdrama genre, I was like.......uhm *nervous laugh* no? 
I don’t think the fandom understands fundamentally how different Asian society and Asian culture - even now - respond to authority. Now, I’m not saying I agree with it, because I don’t.  I was raised in western society but by fairly traditional parents, so I like to think of myself as devil’s advocate for both sides. 
Nevermind that elders of Gusu Lan genuinely believed Lan Wangji was doing something wrong and therefore deserving of his punishment, nevermind Wei Wuxian may or may not have been canonically a little off his rockers, nevermind all of that -
Just the whole “disobeying your clan and your sect and your elders” alone -
.....
There is an antiquated term that is no longer used or relevant, but its essence I think still somewhat lingers in the subconsciousness of chinese society. The term is 以下犯上 , and it means “those below offend/disobey/challenge those above”. One might think from a western standpoint that oh...isn’t this just “rising up”. Isn’t this a good thing? 
Well. Culturally. Historically. No. 
This term is used in a negative way. It is a bad thing to speak and act above your station. It doesn’t even matter if you’re right about whatever it is that you speak up about. The fact that you are even speaking up against your superiors is already a strike against you. I think this partially is why eastern society find obeying authority so much more acceptable? Because for thousands of years this is what has been taught and internalized.
So coming back to Lan Wangji. His punishment? Peanuts. 
So we don’t see corporal punishment being shown by other sects, but just from an innate understanding of that world, I can bet you that it happens in every sect. Not only that, historically, corporal punishment happens in...almost every household, every classroom. It’s just Gusu Lans have very strict rules. It doesn’t mean their punishment are more severe than other sects. 
His 33 lashes or 300 canes or whatever. Yeah... I mean, it sucks, but for what he did? I understand it. I don’t condone, but I understand. 
Also, y’all haven’t seen “harsh”. Yo who here has been around in 2015 when Journey of the Flower (花千骨) came out? Do y’all not remember what they tried to do to Hua Qiangu for accidentally releasing “an evil force” because she was trying to save Bai Zihua? No? Just me? I was hollering! Hollering! 
Yo that was 100 times worse than Lan Wangi’s lashes. 
(He was “bedridden” and “almost died”. I think the point was to render him incapacitated. I don’t think gusu lan tried to kill him.)  
Pfff lashes. Child’s play really. 
!!ADDENDUM!!
So I didn’t mean the punishment was “light”, obviously it wasn’t because lwj was knocked out of commission for months. I meant as far as a trope goes, it’s not that out of the ordinary. Hence --> “child’s play.” 
Like, putting ourselves into the elders’ shoes. It’s not just that LWJ disobeyed or fought them or whatever, it’s not JUST that. Of course, that alone was cause enough for punishment, but coming to the heart of it, it’s that they literally think LWJ was half a step away from supporting Satan, Lucifer, Voldemort, the Dark Lord himself. These are all uptight monks. So for them it’s like :OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, this is the worst crime ever.  
159 notes · View notes
julieandthefandoms · 4 years
Text
Representation in Media and How It Can Be Harmful (Basically Why It’s Important to Acknowledge the Faults in Media, Specifically When Dealing With Minority Groups)
Note: The following essay is not meant to harm anyone, and if it does, please inform me, so I can edit it immediately. I only want to inform you why people are pointing out these issues in representation, and help you understand why. If you still don’t understand after reading this, feel free to message me, I’ll be happy to help.
I’ve seen a bunch posts criticizing posts pointing out flaws in the representation of POC in TSC and YA in general, and I know none of you probably care about my opinion, but I just want to ask you to be mindful. I’m not going to argue for or against this topic, if you want to know my opinion on the matter, feel free to look under the ‘ash ranting time’ tag. What I am going to do, is address those who are ignoring or refusing to understand where these posters are coming from.
To be clear here, I am not against Cassie Clare as a writer, and love her books as much as the rest of you, but it’s extremely disheartening to see people bash or counteract someone’s claim that her writing has flaws as well. By someone, it usually tends to be a POC, so please keep that in mind for the remaining of this essay. What these posters are generally pointing out are flaws and stereotypes in characters of color, flaws and stereotypes that are extremely harmful, toward the culture the character represents.
Now you might be wondering at this point, how is this representation harmful? First I’d like to preface this by saying use of stereotypes in representation cannot be completely avoided. There will always be stereotypes that are accidental, and those are not the ones I’m speaking of. Flawed and well rounded characters always have the potential to fall into some stereotypes, and that is okay, but there is a moment in writing where the sheer amount of stereotypes on a POC gets difficult to ignore, a point where it cannot be ignored any longer without harming the community as a whole. And how is this harmful? By using many stereotypes in writing, specifically in minority groups, you can unintentionally strengthen prejudices and judgements against and towards entire cultures, all because of a phenomenon called the Availability Heuristic.
Per the American Psychology Association, the definition of the availability heuristic is, “a common strategy for making judgments about likelihood of occurrence in which the individual bases such judgments on the salience of the information held in his or her memory about the particular type of event: The more available and relevant information there is, the more likely the event is judged to be.” In laymen’s terms, this roughly translated to your brain using the information most available to them to make quick judgments, or swapping out the best solution for one that is the most available.
Why is this important for POC rep? By constantly using the same stereotypes to represent a specific group of people, thereby making it more available, authors are further reinforcing that a certain minority is a specific way, leading to strengthening prejudices against them. It is a very dangerous phenomenon and has the possibility to be extremely harmful for the group in question.
(The following scenario is extremely generalized.) Let’s take this scenario into mind. Say there’s an Asian main in a novel and they’re constantly depicted as shy and intelligent. Except let’s make it worse by saying almost all of the Asian representation in media is of shy and intelligent people. Because a ‘shy and intelligent’ Asian is the only representation you get of them, you will, unfortunately, begin to think Asians can only be shy and intelligent, and that there’s no in between. While that may seem extreme, it has already happened before. Think about what you thought when you heard Asian. I bet most of you though of East Asians because that tends to be what is represented when most people say Asia. Now think about how large Asia actually is, and how, by jumping to the nearest stereotype, you immediately excluded the entirety of South Asia, South East Asia, and many many more countries all because of the stereotypes presented in media, essentially alienating entire groups from their continent.
Now that you understand how harmful stereotypes and repeated use of it can be, let’s move on to a separate topic. Admitting someone did something wrong, whether it be in writing a minority or anything else, does not harm anyone in any way. Just because something is problematic does not mean that you can’t still enjoy its content. You can still enjoy the books and understand that some parts are harmful, it doesn’t lessen your joy of the book, only makes them more aware and knowledgeable.
All these people ask is for you to understand that there are issues within your favorite novels, and to accept that. Remember, these can be some of their favorite books too, and they don’t intend to hate on it, only to help spread awareness so it doesn’t happen again. History has the potential of being a viscous cycle if no one learns from the mistakes of themselves and others. So, I only ask you to please keep yourself educated, and listen to when someone tells you something is harmful, especially when that person belongs to that minority group. Thank you for listening.
58 notes · View notes
moved-attre · 3 years
Text
Here is my review of Cyberpunk 2077! It is a bullet point list of what I liked, and did not like about the game. I mean no offense in my writing, and am, of course, willing to be educated if I am wrong about anything! But please do not send me anonymous hate. I know many fans and haters of this game can be very, uh... So take it all with a grain of salt, and form your own opinions.
This is very long and likely boring so if you manage to make it to the end, I will be very impressed! Also, I may ramble or repeat myself, sorry. There’s more bad points than good, since the game is very glitchy and I couldn’t not mention the glitches I have experienced.
Obviously, this contains major spoilers! 👁👄👁
I’ll start off by saying, this is a game where you will likely not get what you expected. If you expected Cyberpunk 2077 to be a game filled with features that were never before seen, to revolutionise the gaming industry as we know it and become the most iconic video game ever made... You will not get that. If you expected it to be the worst, most irredeemable video game ever created that you’ll hate... You will not get that, either. If you expected a game that is a fairly standard RPG with some impressive graphics when played on a high spec PC, albeit with some bad glitches and a wonky story with lots of potential, then you’ve got it!
Pros:
The majority of the voice acting, such as in V, Johnny and Viktor, was very good and emotional. Viktor in particular made me tear up! And the way V manages to sound almost like Johnny with the subtle accent change was amazing!
The character’s such as Takemura, Jackie, the LIs, Johnny, Viktor, Misty (I could go on) and even many random NPCs were interesting! I wanted to know them and loved their relevant missions. The best ones were unromanceable, of course, but that’s what imagination is for.
THE ALDECALDOS! I love them! A found family, and I wish there was more to do with them other than Panam’s missions and a few side missions. I love found family, and I’m disappointed V couldn’t form their own, so I’ll take what I can get and love the Aldecaldos, even if V can’t join them until the very end. Panam had the best missions of all the LI’s, even if the last one felt very abrupt. (At least, on her friendship route.)
Night City felt alive. There was always plenty going on, it felt like a real city, and it could be beautiful.
Jackie and Corpo V’s friendship was lovely. I loved their “To this!” inside joke, and I loved how Jackie roasted V but would jump to their defence in a second. It didn’t feel forced at all.
There’s lots of environmental storytelling. The atmosphere of a city choking to death under it’s own pollution/corruption was very apparent in the areas not lived in by the rich. Lots of homeless characters, violence, drugs, absolute poverty, trash (The dump! I felt sick just looking at it, and I couldn’t even smell it! Poor V, though.) and general apathy from a lot of the residents really sold the concept.
Johnny and V’s dynamic was the best part of the story! I hated him at first, but slowly came to enjoy his commentary and advice. His interactions with V were very funny at times, and thoughtful at other times. He was an interesting perspective for the player to consider, while still being an asshole you could dislike for much of the story. He has some really emotional scenes and I played a V that viewed him as a friend, so it was really nice hearing him call V the closest person he’d ever had. They became so devoted to each other! CDPR did good with this element, but I can’t help wishing for more. The dynamic had so much more to give, and a romance/happy ending could have worked.
And to add on, the mission where Johnny takes over V’s body to go on a bender was great! I loved all the moments to play as Johnny in V’s body. All the symbolism between them was so good. Every mission matters, and you can replay to look closer at details! He also comments on other side missions with no personal relevance to him, which was neat.
All the enemies had unique names. A minor detail, but it made me feel some guilt over killing them. 🤣 I think all character’s had unique names, which is such a nice detail.
The soundtrack was incredible, I loved every original piece and radio song. I have several saved on Spotify, which is big praise coming from me! I very rarely listen to video game soundtracks.
V can adopt a cat! 🐈‍⬛ It was adorable, and Johnny’s interaction with it made me tear up!
The size of the map was good, not too big or too small. I got about 100 hours of play in by exploring, which is pretty good to me! I got lost a few times, but always found something interesting to do in the meanwhile. I loved the Badlands especially. 
Some of the side missions, particularly the more mysterious ones involving investigating deaths and the cyberpsychos, were very enjoyable! I’m a big slut for mystery, and there were some interesting cases to figure out. I wish we could’ve done missions like that with River, though, especially once he becomes a PI.
I was complaining about the lack of aliens in CP2077, but I suppose we did get a couple space themed missions which was pretty fun. I still want to go experience going into orbit, though. 👽 Or the moon!
Separating voice and body in the CC was a good idea, even if it was handled a little strangely. I’ll talk about this more in the ‘Cons’ section below!
Act 2 was my favorite part of the game, but it blended weirdly with Act 3 and that put me off. I am nostalgic for Act 1, but not eager to replay it because it felt so slow... I’m not sure on this point! I liked Act 2 because the story picked up and I was excited for more, but the more I got wasn’t as I expected. So, yes, Act 2 was good.
The scenery is very beautiful, and sometimes the outside lighting is absolutely perfect. The Arasaka parade mission was lovely to look at. I always stop the car and watch the sunrise/sunset, and I like going out to the Badlands to look at the stars!
An addition to that, is the lighting in some main quest missions. Very noir! It made for some beautiful screenshots. (Of which I sadly can’t share because my game doesn’t record well on medium settings. 😳)
The motorcycles are fun to drive! Mainly because I can zoom in between cars and Jackie’s motorcycle has a lot of sentimental value, as well as other vehicles like Johnny’s Porsche and Jake’s car. You can open the trunk to dump bodies in, which was a cool detail., and each one drives differently!
There could be amazing attention to detail, such as making Jackie look like his mother. I expected his mother to be a randomly generated NPC, but she was completely unique. It’s the minor things like that which stood out to me the most.
The scanner was a fun tool and very useful! I liked being able to find alternative ways to do a mission, it felt more realistic than the standard “massacre everybody, pick up an item and get out” fetch quests normally seen in RPGs. I could sneak in a tunnel or a side door! Perhaps irritating and unnecessary to some, but I liked it. I love utilising every possible option.
The interface color changes if you have Johnny controlling V’s body. Another small but good detail! The game is good with the minor details.
The sex scenes were not... awful. I expected much, much worse! I expected fully animated first person porn. Instead, I thought they were fairly realistic and intended to be romantic. Still very awkward, though, and unnecessary.
When they didn’t glitch, the animations were very good. Not as impressive as I hoped, probably because of glitches, but in line with other AAA games like Horizon Zero Dawn, I suppose? I noticed Judy’s animations in particular as being good, and Johnny had lots of unique ones too!
The clothing options are very fun, I like the holographic items and “Bitch” clothes, hehe. Also including Hijabs! 🧕 Great idea, and more games should do that.
The diversity of the NPCs was welcome. I enjoyed seeing Native American, Asian, Black and Latinx NPCs who weren’t there just to suffer! They would occupy important roles in the story, such as Fixers or friends/romance options for V, so they were pretty much unavoidable! It felt very natural, and they helped Night City feel more realistic.
Adding to that, the different cultures included were interesting too! I liked the Haitian characters in Pacifica.
The photo mode is pretty good. Not as good as I expected, the camera angle presets were useful but the filters weren’t very good. I liked that the photo mode could be used in cutscenes, though! It was standard, and I hope more bits will be added in for it.
A lot of the glitches are hilarious, but I recognise not all will share that opinion so I’m just adding this down here. The T-Posing NPCs are a highlight for me. Call that the Skyrim effect.
Cons:
No NB gender options/No pronoun options. Would they/them have been so difficult to implement?
No body or height sliders. There’s so many fat character’s in the game! Why can I not make my V fat? Or muscular?
Gender restrictive hairstyles and clothes. Come on, guys, it’s 2020/2077! Aren’t we beyond gender restrictive appearance options?
No tattoo parlours, no plastic surgeons and no hairstylists for V to change their appearance. I don’t understand why a CC was included at all, since we spent the majority of the game in first person. It reminded me of Far Cry.
The main story started off strong, albeit slow, picked up in Act 2, then felt very rushed in Act 3. The point of no return was very abrupt! 
The celebrity cameos felt very gimmicky. The one exception to this is Keanu Reeves, who did a very good job as Johnny. Genuinely brought tears to my eyes at times... but Grimes was just embarrassing! Why was she there! A talented VA could have done Lizzy Wizzy much better, giving her actual emotions instead of just monotone “boredom”.
I don’t know what the point of owning apartments is. You can only sleep in V’s bed, what is the point of looking in the mirror? V has no use for their terminal in their apartment, they never get any messages after the first time they meet Johnny. It was so unnecessary, especially when there’s several across the map. I can access the stash of weapons and clothes from my car! Why would I ever need to go home? Judy gives me her apartment and I’m like, girl, I’m never visiting unless you have a mission to give me.
Also, there are no penalties for not showering or sleeping. I wanted character’s to comment on that! Call me stinky or tell me I look exhausted!
V doing side missions makes no sense, and no explanation is given for why we can do them. Why would V, who is dying and has precious few days left to live, be driving for hours on end to deliver packages and shoot random criminals? When they could be figuring out how to survive the biochip! Who the hell would care about a some extra money or buying every available car for sale, when they’re dying of something that could be preventable?
Some side missions were either very poorly done or obviously majorly glitched, since it felt like they skipped important parts and I was often very confused at the end of them! For example, the Corpo V side mission was so short! I expected to be able to hunt down Abernathy and get revenge for V and Jenkins, but instead, I shoot some random assistant I don’t even remember? And that’s it? Done in 2 minutes! If that! What is the point of that? I didn’t even have fun! Also, what happened to Garry? I wanted to save him but V just never follows up on it.
And, I wish we got closure with T-Bug. The fact that V never bothers to find her body and give her a proper burial was just poor form. 
The endings were not... good. There are technically 6 different endings, all wrapped up into 3 parts. In my opinion, the best ending is the one where V kills themselves and has a very “Arthur Morgan watching his last sunset” vibe. It made me cry. Another good ending is having Johnny take over V’s body forever, as you can really see how much Johnny has changed as a person thanks to V’s influence. But they still felt very... eh and the story just never got that boost it needed, ending before it could take off. In the “best” ending, the Nomand ending with Panam, V ”survives” but has only another few months to live. So they die off screen. Satisfying? Uh, no. Not at all. There’s no possible ending where V has any hope of survival, but I much preferred being there with V until the very end. I disagree with the people calling Johnny’s ending the “bad” ending, because it really isn’t! I ignore all of this of course, and my V is living happily ever after.
I kind of hate that CP2077 has this illusion of options when some are clearly intended to be chosen more than others. Judy and Panam have the best endings in term of romance. Why bother with River and Kerry? Kerry is more of a fling than an actual romance, and is met very late in the game at a point where you can ignore him completely and just end the game, and River’s romance is so glitched that many people can’t even do it fully, and in every ending he dumps you, so it feels like none of it mattered to him despite him being the most “domestic” of the possible LI’s...
Takemura’s ending! He died in my playthrough, because the game didn’t tell me I could save him. That really annoyed me. Also, I recognise that V is in no place to lecture him, and there is some wisdom to his quote: “You speak against corporations yet offer no valid alternative.” But, Goro, bro... anything is better than fascist mega corporations keeping most of the city in absolute poverty, while waging devastating wars against other mega corporations? I wish we could have opened his eyes a little. There’s a good, even ground between Takemura believing Corps to be doing the best for humanity and Johnny being willing to kill 12k people for a revolution. This game went a little “capitalism is bad, but the alternative is worse!” at times, in my opinion. I wish more could have been done against the corporations, instead they just kind of... exist... in the background. And I know, “Realism! “ because we live with massive corporations like Amazon in our lives and can do fuck all about them but we’re not V. V is an absolute unit who survives death multiple times... I wish there had been two paths, like do Johnny’s path and work against the system or do Takemura’s path and work with the system? Sort of like The Witcher 2?
You know how in Saints Row, The Boss has homies they can call on for help? I wanted V to have homies to help them out in fights. It felt pointless building trust with the Fixers only to not have them help out at all with fights against the NCPD/Militech/Arasaka in their territories. 
The stealth mechanics are not good. They are funny! But not very good. Often, It’s better to just attack and save yourself the trouble of sneaking only to get caught by a guard who can see through the back of his head.
The fact that you cannot get arrested and have someone bust you out of jail. Maybe RDR2 set my expectations too high, but I thought this would have been included.
I’ve read about the cut content, and I’m really disappointed they weren’t included in the game. Wall running would have been amazing! And the police hiring mercs to hunt V down? I would have loved to see it! 😔
Driving cars is terrible. Just awful. Sometimes, you crash. Other times you’re flung up into the air and break through the sky into the void, spinning for all eternity.
River’s glitched romance deserves a special mention. The relationship just drops off suddenly and you cannot interact with him properly again. It does not affect the main story at all, so you wonder, what was the point? The text messages also glitch and V will sent messages that you can’t control, leading to disappointing dialogue, like with Joss.
The romances in general were just not all that impressive. I was expecting something great, considering there was only 4 and thought they’d really affect the main story, but I’d only recommend Panam and Judy. I would have played the game just as well without romances, and they felt very unnecessary but I wanted to do one to get the most possible story content. I think we should all leave romances in RPG’s as the exception, not the norm. Some studio’s can do them well, other’s cannot. CDPR cannot, in my opinion...
Obviously the many glitches and bugs, several of which are game breaking. I usually have to reload a save at least once an hour, because an NPC won’t talk to me or I can’t move the mouse to select different dialogue options! Or my gun won’t equip, so I die.
The AI in general is very bad. Sometimes cars will stop in the middle of junctions for no reason, causing you to crash or mount the sidewalk to get past, meaning you’ll likely run someone down and get a police warrant. NPCs just walk from one end of the road and back again, over and over on a loop. It’s very creepy!
The lighting, mostly inside buildings. Everything is pitch black! Why does V not own a flashlight? The amount of enemies I’ve barrelled into and alerted because I couldn’t see is too much.
The lack of dialogue choice, it was less interactive than what I’d been told to expect. There was only two or three options, with one only ever rarely being unique to one of V’s three possible background choices and most will yield the same results with a few exceptions, like avoiding combat.
V’s personality is already decided by the game, and is not really customisable. Do not expect full control over your V’s personality, as they are very much a canon character and exist outside of your (limited) choices. I didn’t expect Baldur's Gate 3 levels of customisation, but I did expect something more like Dragon Age 2’s dialogue wheel? Nice, Sarcasm and Angry? You know?
Obviously, the seizure inducing scenes were very dangerous. I get a headache whenever I have to do a braindance, and I wish it was skippable!
Accessibility as a whole is very much an afterthought in this game, I think. The subtitles are in “speaking English”, so instead of: Hey, how are you? It’s: Heyyy, how’re ya? It is often difficult to understand, and sometimes I just couldn’t work out what was being said.
It’s nitpicky but I wanted to do a pacifist route and I realised you can’t, you need to kill certain character’s... 
The main “villains” such as Yorinobu and Adam Smasher were very forgettable, and V had no personal stake in taking them out. I honestly forgot all about them. Takemura was talking about revenge and I’m like, who? Who are you talking about? Why are we kidnapping Hanako Arasaka, again? Johnny, why would I bother killing Adam Smasher? If they’d personally murdered Jackie, then yeah, I’d understand! But all V needs is to remove the chip and I don’t know... I just didn’t feel anything.
So, to summarise: I think CDPR were out of their depth. The long, very long, troubled development process was an indication of this before the game was even released, and the story I’ve experienced in the game is proof enough. I don’t think they knew what they wanted from this game, and as a result, we have a game that is honestly very confusing and frustrating with a story that always got close to gripping, but never quite makes it. All in all, I found this game to be pretty average. When the bugs are ironed out, I will think better of it. But as it stands, if I had to score it, I would give it a 6.5/10 or maybe 7/10. Good concept, somewhat misguided execution. The best part of the game was the Johnny/V dynamic, but I wasn’t satisfied with how it ended. They needed more time together! Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens next. 
11 notes · View notes
eerbme · 4 years
Text
If you think a racist stereotype is all Cassandra Cain is, then you obviously do not know her at all. Literally, it’s easy to assume that all she encompasses if you only know the basics from your initial google search, but she ISN’T?? She’s so much more than this label that people are pushing onto her. People are saying that it’s great that she can just be a normal kid, and that’s fine, but if you’ve read her run you’d know that mama Barbara Gordon has always pushed her to still be a normal kid and do regular things and literally goes off on Batman when he forgets she’s still a kid and not just a weapon to fight crime.  So many of my favorite Cass moments are when she is doing normal thing with her family and friends.  The struggle of just trying to be a regular person vs a life 100% dedicated to fighting crime is a big part of her story that I would love to see explored on the big screen.  I don’t understand this assumption that she wouldn't be able to do normal day to day things if her true origins were kept intact.
There are Asian people that are ok with this character, and there are Asian people, like me, that are not ok with how they completely changed her to the point of being totally unrecognizable, and everyone is entitled to their opinion.  
Just because Cathy Yan is Asian does not mean it’s an automatic Asian pass and everyone has to accept it. Just because an Asian person wrote the script also doesn’t give this a pass.  This character isn’t a bad character and it’s not Ella Jay Basco’s fault since she played the character that was given to her, but it’s still not Cassandra Cain.  Ella stated in an interview that this role was not pitched to her as Cassandra Cain initially, so they obviously just slapped her name on this character of their own creation. At the end of the day, Margot is a producer, I’m pretty sure she had a big influence on the story and the characters, as it’s a very Harley centric film even though it’s titled as a “Birds of Prey” film. 
I literally saw an Asian Guy on twitter refer to her as a quiet exotic stereotype waifu so that’s why they changed her character. Seriously...a waifu...wtf?? Asians literally make up 60% of the worlds population, nothing “exotic” about being Asian and this guy being Asian doesn't make his statement more credible.
This is a great panel about Asian Representation at SDCC 2015 that I remember and find super relevant and I encourage you to watch the entire thing:  https://youtu.be/yI9ypYiticU
Keith Chow states about stereotypes that “what makes a stereotype bad is when the audience or the other person that sees the stereotype doesn’t allow the person being stereotyped to do something else...I feel like those who kind of dismiss the idea of Asian American martial artist characters is as guilty of perpetuating the stereotype of someone who wants them to be a martial artist...martial arts is part of our culture...a very engrained part of our culture and we should embrace that.  The problem with martial arts and how they’ve been depicted in American media is that they’ve been one dimensional and I think that one of the take aways from this whole panel is that we want to see Asian American characters with depth...we want to see characters that are Asian American that have multiple dimensions of a character, so in the future, when other actors, the next generation of actors, go out for roles, they don’t have to worry about being pigeoned holed Asian or deep, that they can be Asian and deep as a character”
186 notes · View notes
sacrinecro · 3 years
Note
I read your posts about Raya, and I was wondering, do you think the movie would have benefitted if it was formatted instead as a tv series? And more emphasis was spent on exploring and spending time with each individual culture they portrayed in depth rather than just briefly brushing over them?
anon im sorry u had to read my ramblings y did u willfully subject yourself to suffering lmao
Quick answer: It depends.
I usually evaluate a story’s value 1) as it is, and 2) as a piece of media existing in a bigger context. Often, I have differing views on the same topic. None of my friends come to me for a decision because I’m like this Pepe Silvia meme:
Tumblr media
Short answers (relevant to your question):
in a vacuum, it's an entertaining story, even if a bit cliche. The pacing, character development, and worldbuilding will very likely improve given longer airtime.
from a cultural POV, it's a confusing story. Extending the airtime may help explain these “cultures,” but I think there are problems with the way SE Asian cultures were viewed and treated in the making of this film and in Disney’s succeeding communication efforts. These problems must be addressed first in order to create a more coherent story, especially if it wants to target Asian audiences while calling itself "representation."
My views may change if I think about them some more or if I come across new info (I’m INTP + True Neutral lol).
I try to keep my opinions to myself, opting for shitposts and infodumps, but since you asked, I wrote some of my thoughts as a SE Asian on 1) audience, 2) cultures, 3) key messages, 4) how exploring the Five Nation's cultures could've improved the overall message.
If “IRL stuff” hinders you from enjoying fiction, you can stop here. TBH I think Raya’s fun if you don’t overthink it. 
(I changed my mind at least five times while writing this lol)
(1781 words under the cut)
Disclaimer: I have my biases and media preferences, so I don't speak for other SE Asians. Neither do I present myself as an expert nor do I claim to know everything. There are, of course, others who would look at this differently. 
I’m going to sound very collectivistic here, but that’s what Raya’s trying to say, so that’s how I’m going to look at it.
But first:
Tumblr media
There are 11 SE Asian countries (10 of which are ASEAN members; Timor-Leste's application is pending) that can be classified into:
Mainland SEA: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, (Peninsular) Malaysia, Vietnam
Maritime SEA: Brunei, Indonesia, (Insular) Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Timor-Leste
Every country has its own set of diverse cultures (so, like, there's a Kumandra in your Kumandra in your Kumandra in your—).
On audience
Simply put, Raya's audience may be classified into three: 1) Asians in Asia, 2) Asians in Diaspora, and 3) Non-Asians. 
(It should be noted that the experiences of Asians in Asia differ from those of Asians in Diaspora. We don’t always agree on things.)
One of the reasons I think Raya falls flat is its unclear target audience. It tries to cater to all three audiences with conflicting needs that may be difficult to balance.
This film was produced in America where Asians are typically viewed as a monolith. Asians in Diaspora would benefit from not being seen as a monolith. “Unity in Diversity” is a message more appropriate for Asians (especially Asians in Asia), but this film isn’t widely accessible (legally) in SEA. So who is this really for? 
Interestingly, one artist involved in early VisDev said this was originally called “dragon project.” Early concept art looks more East Asian than SE Asian. Makes me wonder why they decided to change their theme.
On culture
Tumblr media
Disney looking for material. jk. Also: me @ art markets
I’m not sure how common this opinion is among fellow Asians, but I’m not alone in saying that this story doesn’t feel SE Asian despite how familiar it looks. 
These are some things that I think Disney should consider before writing a story about SE Asian cultures in any format. These are also why I think Raya, as cultural representation, is confusing to people, including Asians.
Culture may be likened to an iceberg. Movies like Raya and Mulan (2020) are both made up of surface-level aesthetics disconnected from the "essence" of the cultures they claim to represent.
The problem is exacerbated when they decided to remove extremely recognizable cultural elements from their original contexts and to combine them without regard for their original meanings. Asian cultures have many similarities, yet Asians often do not see beyond national boundaries. Indeed, we need to see ourselves as part of a collective history and future while maintaining our own identities, like the people of Kumandra. But fictionalizing our cultures while keeping the visuals realistic and then marketing it as “SE Asian cultural representation” is not a very good way to do it. This leads us to the next point:
We are often surprised to see that something we thought unique to us exists elsewhere. Even before this movie was released, SE Asians, particularly those whose cultures were heavily damaged by colonialization and internal strife, have been quarrelling over who copied who. Given how muddled Kumandra’s cultures are, it’s no wonder that SE Asians are once again fighting each other for “ownership” or feeling left out altogether. 
Supplemental material would help minimize the confusion Kumandra brings, but Disney’s efforts to identify which culture inspired which leave much to be desired. While there are indeed “originals,” it would be more inclusive for something that touts “SE Asian cultural representation” to say, “This was first developed in [country], but its use spread to other SE Asian countries where it’s known as [list of all known instances].” This shortcoming, I think, may be explained by the next point:
Non-Asians see Asia as a monolith, but when they do look at our cultures individually, they view our cultures in isolation from each other, ignoring our long history of cultural exchange and development. When looking for inspiration, people tend to look for them in countries with well-preserved traditional cultures (e.g. East Asia). In SEA’s case, Thailand seems to be the go-to, and you can see this in the amount of Thai inspiration listed on their website (though another factor may be that one of the project heads is Thai). This isn’t necessarily bad. However, they’re getting into the same problem Asians have (as mentioned in 2 and 3), i.e. attributing things shared by many SE Asian cultures to only one country as if they were closely guarded secrets. 
Observable South, East, and West Asian influences on SE Asian cultures make cultural representation even more complex. South, East, and West Asian cultures are more easily recognized by Non-Asians. For instance, it's not uncommon for Americans to attribute anything "Asian" to East Asia, and, from what I’ve seen, Raya was not immune to such comments. However, removing these influences in an effort to present a "pure" SEA denies our history and multicultural identity. SEA has its own share of racial conflict, and cultural "purity" is a rhetoric used against marginalized groups.
AND THEN of course there are things unique to one specific culture.
We can’t really expect Disney to do the cultural education for us (this should be on SE Asian governments), but it would’ve been helpful, considering their wide reach, if Disney had been more diligent in their research, development, implementation, and subsequent communications. Or if they didn’t do this at all.
(I do appreciate the creatives who worked on this project. They had to work under many constraints.)
On key messages
As previously mentioned, Raya’s theme, unity in diversity, is appropriate for the Asian audience—it even echoes the type of messages commonly found in Asian media and communications. In fact, this is the ASEAN motto:
One Vision, One Identity, One Community
However, I don’t think Raya succeeded in delivering this message effectively. 
If we use the ASEAN motto as a guide to look at Raya’s message:
One Vision? Yes. Get the Five Nations to cooperate with each other.
One Identity? Kinda vague. We’re Kumandra, but only on paper.
One Community? Eh. People went to party in the end. But it’s just a bunch of individuals, not communities, who worked to solve the problem. 
They should’ve taken notes from Asian propaganda. No, seriously lol. 
Another problem is how Sisu tells us unity will be achieved. She tells us that trust, blind trust even, is all we need to become united. That’s difficult to do when your countries have a long history of conflict.
Hey, maybe they did take notes. "Trust these visibly corrupt officials. We need to be united in our support," is the sort of BS Asian governments spout.
So...
Let’s say the above issues were (miraculously) addressed.
Returning to our original question, 
. . . do you think the movie would have benefitted if it was formatted instead as a tv series? And more emphasis was spent on exploring and spending time with each individual culture they portrayed in depth rather than just briefly brushing over them?
I think “exploring and spending time with each individual culture” would improve the story and the overall message, especially for the SE Asian audience. 
Here’s one way to look at it:
Before the Big Incident, Raya already holds negative views about other cultures. Then, she is betrayed and becomes even more distrustful of everyone. 
She travels, but she doesn’t try to learn about the cultures she visits. She gets to know individuals, not communities. For someone who hasn’t tried to understand other people’s ways of life, wouldn’t it be much easier for her to think of these good individuals as exceptions to the rule, rather than representatives of good communities?
This brings us back to the points made previously. The Five Nations used to be One. Like SEA, they evolved distinct identities but share common roots, which means that they used to have cultural contact and exchange. Surely, their belief in dragons isn’t the only thing they have in common, is it? Aside from historical connections, they likely have observable similarities they fail to see because of their boundaries (I can't recall them talking about this in the film).
Raya’s father tells her they can be Kumandra again, but he doesn’t teach her what Kumandra is like. I think what Raya needs in order to believe in Kumandra again is not blind trust, not fixing a broken gem, but proof of Kumandra—Oneness—in the Five Nation’s histories, cultures, and people.
That’s something she and the rest of the characters can learn by traveling, immersing themselves in each culture, and comparing their differences and similarities. Sharing meals is one thing, but if they can show us that they truly understand and appreciate each other’s cultures, then their decision to cooperate in the end won’t seem like a ham-fisted “unify or die” scenario.
...oh by the way unification is also a dangerous message to send to asians lol we fight/fought wars over this ideal lol 
Tumblr media
Random Comments
(AU idea: The gem broke before Raya’s era. Each piece is held by a nation. Heart's piece is stolen. They need to get each nation to cooperate and combine the pieces to solve the Druun problem, which isn't just some mindless plague. Maybe they're angry nature spirits disturbed by environmental degradation. Turns out they're dragons! Wait that's Moana. More relatable than Raya imo lol)
(HOT TAKE: They made Druuns a mindless plague because they’re cowards who don’t want SEA to unite against US-China imperialism. jk)
(Not enough maritime culture imo)
(Monarchs not having rice to eat means Fang's rice shortage is really bad and if that's the case then how is their monarchy still standing you can't just drop that tidbit and expect me to let it go Namaari)
(How are you dealing with angry and hungry farmers????)
(How did Heart get all those people who hate each other in one place)
(Raya got off easily when she spoke to the adults. I interrupted adults when i was a kid and i was told, "This is an adult conversation. It's rude for a child to meddle in adult affairs." lol)
(Raya’s a cheeky kid, actually. Taunting adults and all that. Her dad's cool.)
(STOP WASTING SHRIMP)
(Here’s a Facebook page that tries to look for common SE Asian cultural elements. People usually go “wow we have those things too, look,” but when the page posted about Raya’s design inspiration using Disney as their official source, people started fighting lol).
(A common joke i’ve seen is, “it’s SEA representation so we should celebrate it the SE Asian way: PIRACY”)
5 notes · View notes