#its all interpretive on the part of the culture

[communistkenobi]

Hi, genuine good faith question if you'd like! How is TOS racist? It was my understanding that the OG Series was like, huge for equality in media?

I’m speaking primarily about the content of TOS itself, not its historical impact - I understand it had various historic firsts in terms of having characters of colour in respectable roles, which I’m not dismissing. My experience with the discourse on here surrounding the show is that people front-load these character representations as emblematic of the show’s progressive politics. Which, if we want to go that route, TOS was contemporary to the US civil rights movement, which provides us with a handy measuring stick to see how TOS actually grapples with race, not just the presence of characters of colour themselves. I'm going to be kind of defensive in this explanation, not towards you specifically, but because I have had this conversation with people online many, many, many times, and so any defensiveness on my part is in anticipation of arguments I know will come up as a result of making the basic claim that a show made in America in the 1960s is racist. I'm also going to be copy + pasting from an older post I've made on the subject since it's been a while now since I've watched TOS so some of the details are fuzzy.

Like okay, the premise of TOS is that the Enterprise, as an ambassador of Starfleet/the Federation, is seeking out new alien life to study. The Prime Directive prohibits the Enterprise crew from interfering with the development of any alien culture or people while they do this, so the research they collect needs to be done in an unobtrusive way. I think this is the first point at which people balk at the argument that TOS is racist or has a colonial conception of the world - the Enterprise’s mission is premised on non-interference, and I think when people hear ‘colonial’ as a descriptor they (understandably, obviously) assume it is describing active conquest, genocide, and dispossession. Even setting aside all the times where Kirk does directly interfere with the “development” of a people or culture (usually because they’ve “stagnated” culturally, because a culture "without conflict" cannot evolve or “develop” beyond its current presumed capacity - he is pretty explicitly imposing his own values onto another culture in order to force them to change in a particular way), or the times when the Enterprise is actually looking to extract resources from a given planet or people, I’m not exactly making this claim, or rather, that’s not the only thing I’m describing when calling TOS racist/colonial.

The show's presentation of scientific discovery and inquiry is anthropological - the “object” of analysis is alien/foreign culture, meaning that when the Enterprise crew comes into contact with a new being or person, this person is always read first and foremost through the level of (the Enterprise’s understanding of) culture. Their behaviour, beliefs, dress, way of speaking, appearance, and so on are always reflective of their culture as a whole, and more importantly, that their racial or phenotypic characteristics define the boundaries of their culture. Put another way, culture is interpreted, navigated, and bound racially - the show presents aliens as a Species, but these species are racially homogeneous, flattening race to a natural, biological difference that is always physically apparent and presented through the lens of scientific objectivity, as "species" is a unit of biological taxonomy. Basically species is a shorthand for race. This is the standard of most sci-fi/fantasy genre work, so this is not a sin unique to Star Trek.

Because of this however, Kirk and Co are never really interacting with individuals, they are interacting with components of a (foreign, exotic, fundamentally different) culture, the same way we understand that a biologist can generalize about a species using the example of an individual 'specimen'. And when the Enterprise interacts with these cultures, they very frequently measure them using a universalized scale of development - they have a teleological (which is to say, evolutionary) view of culture, ie, that all cultures go from savage to rational, primitive to advanced, economically simple to economically complex (ie, to capitalist modes of production). And the metrics they are judging these cultures by are fundamentally Western ones, always emphasising to the audience that the final destination of all cultures (that are worthy of advancing beyond their current limited/“primitive” stages) is a culture identical to the Federation, a culture that can itself engage in this anthropological mission to catalogue all life as fitting within a universal set of practices and racial similarities they call “culture.”

This is a western, colonial understanding of culture - racially and spatially homogeneous people comprise the organs of a social totality, ie, a society, which can then be analysed as an “object,” as a “phenomenon,” by the scientists in order to extract information from them to produce and advance state (ie Federation) knowledge. The Enterprise crew are allowed to be individuals, are allowed to be subjects with a capacity for reason, contradiction, emotion, compassion, and even moments of savagery or violence, without those things being assigned to their “race” or “culture” as a whole, but the people they interact with are only components of a whole which are “discovered” by the Enterprise as opportunities to expand and refine the Federation’s body of knowledge.

Spock is actually a good example of what I'm talking about, because he is an exception to this rule - unlike the others in the crew, his behaviour is always read as a symptom of his innate Vulcan-ness, where his human and Vulcan halves war for dominance in his mind and character. Bones (the doctor, one of the main cast) constantly comments on Spock's inability to feel things, that he is callous and unsympathetic, ruled by Vulcan logic to such an extreme that his rationality is a form of irrationality, as his Vulcan blood prohibits him from tempering logic with human emotion and intuition. Now you can argue that Bones is a stand-in for the racists of the world, that Spock proves Bones wrong in that he is able to feel but merely keeps it under wraps, that Vulcans are not biologically incapable of emotion but merely live in a socially repressive culture, but this still engages in the racial logic of the show - Vulcans are a racially-bound species with a single monolithic culture, and Spock's ability to express and feel 'human emotions' is the metric by which he is granted human subjectivity and sympathy.

And on the flip side you have the Klingons - a “race” that is uniformly savage, backward, violent, and dangerous. In the episode Day of the Dove, where Klingons board the Enterprise along with an alien cloud that makes everyone suddenly aggressive and racist (this show is insane lol), the Enterprise crew begins acting violent and racist, but the Klingons don’t change. They aren’t more violent than before (because they already were fundamentally violent and racist), and they don’t become less violent when the cloud eventually leaves (because they are never able to emerge from their violence and savagery as a social condition or external imposition - they simply are that way). Klingons are racially, behaviourally, psychologically, and culturally homogeneous, universally violent and immune to reason, and their racial characteristics are both physical manifestations of this universal violence as well as the origin of it. The writers and creators of TOS are explicitly invoking the orientalist idea of the “Mongolian horde,” representing both the American fear of Soviet global takeover as well as blatantly racist fears about “Asiatics” (a word used in the show, particularly in The Omega Glory where a fear of racialised communist takeover is made explicit) dominating the world.

This is colonial thinking! Like, fundamentally, at its core, this is colonial white supremacist thinking. Now this is not because TOS invents these tropes or is the origin of them, it is not individually responsible for these racial and colonial logics - these conceptions are endemic to Western thought, and I am not expecting a television show to navigate its way outside of this current colonial paradigm of scientific knowledge. I’m also not expecting an average person watching this to pick out all the intricacies of this and link it to the colonial history of Europe or the colonial history of western philosophy/thought. But this base premise of Star Trek is why the show is fundamentally colonial - even if it was the case that the crew never intervened in any alien conflict, never extracted any material resources from other people, this would still be colonial logic and colonial thinking. The show has a fundamentally colonial imagination when it comes to exploration, discovery, and culture.

I think a good place to end is the opening sequence. The show's first line is always "Space! The final frontier." I do not think the word frontier is meant metaphorically or poetically - I think the show is being honest about its conception of space as an infinitely vast, infinitely exotic frontier from which a globally Western civilisation (which the Enterprise is an emblem of) can extract resources, be they material or epistemic

#tos.txt #< have more posts in there also

[leatherbookmark]

ootd features the words "black dress" in its lyrics and people are like oh! this is a reference to another group's song, "black dress"!

i'm unwell.

#shrimp thoughts #also 'you people just Don't Understand' part 2: apparently there will be Part Two. just like with gee idle's allergy and queen/card #which. lol. apparently 'when allergy came out people were shocked because the it was basically 'if you're ugly tough shit just get a #surgery' but once queen/card came out everything was clear!' and like. how was it clear. what was clear. #one song is 'boo hoo i'm so ugly i hate looking at myself in the mirror and no one likes me i should get plastic surgery' #and the other is like 'ya hoo i'm so hot and sexy i'm like these two western celebrities!!!! i'm so cool i'm twerking on the runway' #kp/op kinda sucks balls in that it's like.... musical equivalent of tjlc crossed with marvel. it's basic ass pop made to sell except with a #faux deep garnish. and sometimes the garnish stands on its own! like if you take guerrilla it's clear that there's actually no deeper or #more detailed philosophy behind it. it's not really n.o where the 'rebellion' was actually supposed to be against something concrete #it's like. we want to feel! we don't want... not to feel! but the sound and visuals are strong enough that you don't mind it #like fuck yeah the lads are staging a revolution now! and now they're outlaws in a western! sort of! and now it's alice in wonderland! #but v often the companies actively make use of the fact that kp/op stans will obsessively look for Depth and Serious Themes in their #cultural reset slaying sotys. a girl looks at a butterfly? oh the song is about having an identity crisis like in that one poem about a guy #dreaming about being a butterfly. it's actually very deep and you can see it was all planned because there was a little butterfly icon #above the tracklist. and the fans get so attached to their headcanons theories and interpretations that they don't stop for a second #to check if there was anything in the 'text' in the first place #remember that one magritte post? this is also how kp/op stans interpret things. she wears a blue dress here and blue is the color of summer #and summer is when you have holidays and don't have to go to school! so by this blue dress she's trying to say that you should love #yourself and strive to be the best version of yourself by embracing your hobbies and extracurricular interests. this is so genius 😭

[15000bugs]

no bc in retrospect why did (and probably still does) the dr fandom have ZERO media literacy its insane. ive never seen that level of cognitive dissonance in any other fandom in my LIFE

#its probably due in part to source material being horribly written #but the fun of fandom is that you get to interpret things beyond the text #but dr fans just REFUSE #like they dont take into account that all of these characters are in a life or death situation #they treat them sooo one dimensionally #starting huge wars over characters sexualities which arent even CANON just hinted at.. 😐😐 #like you DO know theres other media out there with canon queer characters.. #you do not have to gun this hard for oumas gay card or whatever #plus the shipping culture is INSANE. psa you do not have to like only crackships. it doesnt make you morally superior or whatever #and characters can exist beyond their canon thats the WHOLE POINT of fanworks #i promise you kodaka was not trying to queercode his characters hes definitely just transphobic #i love trans hcs i think every dr character should be trans (/lh) but dont act like it was the authors intent for like.. komaeda to be gay #anyway that fandom is just so… whew. so much animosity and for WHAT 😭 #ramble over i pinky promise

[writingwithcolor]

Author with cultural disconnect: How do I write without making it seem as if I hate my own heritage?

Anonymous asked:

I’m a white-passing Asian author, and I’ve never felt all that connected with my heritage. My current story centers on a fairy (re: fantasy-world POC) child and ends with her realizing that her parents are toxic af and her human best friend’s family takes her in. This is the perfect opportunity to sort through my own issues with my heritage and finally convince my monkey-brain that it’s okay to not know how to cook Vietnamese food or celebrate tet or speak Vietnamese… But I also realize that if I’m not careful, this could easily slip into “Hey, I hate my heritage and so should you!” So how can I stop that from happening?

Writing for yourself first, not an audience

I ask you a simple question: why put pressure on yourself to have any sort of non-offensive messaging for a story that hasn’t been drafted yet and is to convince your monkey brain it’s okay to exist as yourself?

That seems like the fastest way to stop the story from being actually cathartic and instead a performance art piece when you already feel hung up on performing as “properly” part of your culture.

As I said in Working Through Identity Issues and Other Pitfalls of Representation, not all stories you write need to be for public consumption. Especially stories you’re using for your own self-processing and therapy, because you’re trying to get a cathartic moment that is rewriting your own story.

At what point does the public need to be involved in that?

I do understand the compulsion to want to post—I have definitely posted some Questionable™ material in my drive to get validation for feeling the way I do, wanting people to witness me and say “same.” It’s a powerful urge. Sometimes it’s worked, but most of the time it’s just made me feel horrifically exposed.

But you really do not have to post in public to get any sort of validation. Set up a groupchat with friends if you want the cheerleading and witnessing—people who will know your story and give you good-faith interpretations and won’t accuse you of anything. Honestly I’d suggest setting up this groupchat anyway; as someone who just got one again after quite a few years without it, my productivity has skyrocketed from being around supportive people.

Let the monkey brain have its monkey brain moment and shut off the concept the story is for the public. Shut off the concept of performing for an unknown audience. It’s for you. Be authentic, no matter how bad it would look to outsiders. They’re not reading it. Part of getting catharsis, sometimes, is being the worst version of yourself, somewhere nobody else can see it.

Deciding to publish the work

If, after you do write it, you find that you actually do want to polish it up and put it somewhere… edit it. Rewrite it entirely if that’s what it takes. Take the story through the same drafting process every story needs to go through, ripping out the unfortunate implications as you go.

Editing can be its own form of healing, as you try to figure out what this character would need to not be hateful. As you realize, once this longform journal entry is out of your head, what was bothering you now that you can see it pinned down on a page. But you absolutely do not need to write with the intention of editing in that healing. When I’ve tried, it’s fallen flat.

The healing will come from being yourself, no public involved, and writing about your feelings in their rawest form. Anything else is extra.

There’s no point in trying to put guard rails on the drafting process, not for a deeply personal piece. And by the time that drafting process is done, you’ll likely have specific scenarios and contexts that you can ask about, and you might even have ideas on how to fix it yourself once the story has a shape to it.

This is 100% a situation where there’s no real sense in idea workshopping something in the plotting stage. You’re doing something for you. Decide if it’s for public consumption later (while acknowledging “no” is a perfectly valid answer), and only figure out how to make the story not overtly harmful if you decide to put it out into the public.

~ Leigh

#culture #cultural disconnect #creator responsibility #writing #authors of color #asks

[doorhine]

Ok so I wanna talk about the guy we all know and hate, Abijah Fowler, because there are three scenes that do a fantastic job at characterizing him and speaking to the story’s themes.

*SPOILERS BELOW

The Chapel Scene: Fowler’s whole “prayer not prayer” is so interesting because he presents it as a business deal (which says a lot about how individualistic and apathetic he is). And honestly, that speaks really well to the use of christianity in imperialism, colonization and capitalism. If anyone here is familiar with Antoine Fuqua’s version of The Magnificent Seven (which is based on Seven Samurai), Bogue’s speech in the beginning of the film does a similar thing. In the case of Blue Eye Samurai, Fowler basically says, “we’re not friends but these people are ‘godless’ and if things go my way you’ll have a nation of souls to convert.” And I really liked that wording “a nation of souls” because it shows how imperialism and colonization, in the process of stealing other country’s natural resources, are, by design, meant to pose a threat to the entire culture and livelihood of the people that live there in order to do that. And a major way it’s done is through the spread enforcement of the colonizer’s religion over the ones of the people they invade. Which leads me to…

The Finale Monologue to the Shogun: because Fowler literally spells it out how the process of these systems, how white supremacy, is meant to twist and erase the culture and beliefs of those they invade to the point where they conform and assimilate to the invader’s culture and view them as superior. It also creates the idea of a white race in the first place that has its own ethnic and religious hierarchy that determines what the “best” kind of white is. I really liked the detail where he mentions spreading their shame because so much of white culture and its interpretation of christianity, whether or not it was the dominant form in its country of origin before being enforced on others, thrives on shame and enforcing that on other people (just look at the US). Lastly there’s…

The Famine Monologue: Something I really like about Fowler’s character is how he was written to be Irish rather than some posh English guy. It’s a nuance that adds a whole level of depth to his character and role in the story. Ireland was colonized by the English, which Fowler discusses when he mentions the Tudors. One of the ways that colonization was enforced was by replacing catholicism with protestantism. In this scene though, Fowler talks about the intentional famines that killed his parents and sister. It’s a graphic memory that shows how a victim of colonization will sometimes use the same tools used against them, to gain a sense of autonomy and control at the cost of other people’s livelihoods. This is compounded by the fact that Fowler is able to assimilate into the concept of a white race that was created to justify these systems and the oppression/exploitation of people of color that maintained them. Fowler is fictional but there were plenty of Irish people who took part in Britain’s colonization of other people one way or another. You’ll hear elements of Irish vernacular in places like Barbados for a reason to bring up a small example of the consequences of that. On a side note, this is also an interesting video on how the habitual “be” is used in both AAVE and Celtic languages. 

Long story short, Abijah Fowler is a very nuanced and well written villain.

#blue eye samurai #blue eye samurai spoilers

[ignitesthestxrs]

there's something about the way people talk about john gaius (incl the way the author writes him) that is like. so absent of any connection to te ao māori that it's really discomforting. like even in posts that acknowledge him as not being white, they still talk about him like a white, american leftist guy in a way that makes it clear people just AREN'T perceiving him as a māori man from aotearoa.

and it's just really serves to hammer home how powerful and pervasive whiteness and american hegemony is. because TLT is probably the single most Kiwi series in years to explode on the global stage, and all the things i find fraught about it as a pākehā woman reading a series by a pākehā author are illegible to a greater fandom of americans discoursing about whether or not memes are a valid way of portraying queer love.

idk the part of my brain that lights up every time i see a capital Z printed somewhere because of the New Zealand Mentioned??? instinct will always be proud of these books and muir. but i find myself caught in this midpoint of excitement and validation over my culture finding a place on the global stage, frustration at how kiwi humour and means of conveying emotion is misinterpreted or declared facile by an international audience, frustrated also by how that international audience runs the characters in this book through a filter of american whiteness before it bothers to interpret them, and ESPECIALLY frustrated by how muir has done a pretty middling job of portraying te ao māori and the māoriness of her characters, but tht conversation doesn't circulate in the same way* because a big part of the audience doesn't even realise the conversation is there to be had.

which is not to say that muir has done a huge glaring racism that non-kiwis haven't noticed or anything, but rather that there are very definitely things that she has done well, things that she has done poorly, things that she didn't think about in the first book that she has tacked on or expanded upon in the later books, that are all worthy of discussion and critique that can't happen when the popular posts that float past my dash are about how this indigenous man is 'guy who won't shut up about having gone to oxford'

*to be clear here, i'm not saying these conversations have never happened, just that in terms of like, ambient posts that float round my very dykey dash, the discussions and meta that circulate on this the lesbian social media, are overwhelmingly stripped of any connection to aotearoa in general, let alone te ao māori in specific. and because of the nature of american internet hegemony this just,,,isn't noticed, because how does a fish know it's in the ocean u know? i have seen discussions along these lines come up, and it's there if i specifically go looking for it, but it's not present in the bulk of tlt content that has its own circulatory life and i jut find that grim and a part of why the fandom is difficult to engage with.

#tlt #the locked tomb #i don't really have an answer lmao this is more #an expression of frustration and discomfort #over the way posts about john gaius seem to have very little connection to the background muir actually gave him #like you cant describe him as an educated leftist bisexual man #without INCLUDING that he is māori #that has an impact! that has weight and importance! #that is a background to every decision he makes #from the meat wall to the nuke to his relationship with the earth #and it also has weight and importance in the decisions that muir makes in writing him #it is not a neutral decision that he's known as john gaius lmao #it's not a neutral decision that the empire is explicitly of roman/latin extraction #it's not even neutral that this is a book about necromancy #it's certainly not a neutral fucking decision that john was at one point a māori man living in the bush #when the nz govt decided to send cops in #like that is a thing that happens here! that is a reference to nz cultural and political events that informs john's character and actions #and with the nature of who john is in the story #informs the narrative as a whole #and i think the tiresome part of this experience is that #in general #americans are not well positioned to understand that something might be being written from outside their experience as a default #like obviously many many americans in online leftist & queer spaces are willing to learn and take on new information #but so much of the conversation starts from a place of having to explain that forests exist to fish

[tanadrin]

Imagine that a century or two from now, the eastern half of the United States is conquered by the Canadian Empire, its intelligentsia deported, its land colonized by Canadian immigrants, and its remaining people mostly gradually absorbed into a Neo-Canadian identity. The West reorganizes, developing a new political and cultural center, and comes to regard itself as the "true" United States, with the remnant culture of the East (by now much changed by Canadian rule) as representing an unchanged tradition stretching back to the time of George Washington. The holdout western half is subsequently conquered by the Reformed Mexican Empire, and while most of the population remains in situ, its elite is taken to Mexico City. There, for three or four generations, they do their best to maintain their distinct American identity, focusing on the American "civil religion," the distinctive political ideals and cultural features that mark them out as Americans, and come up with a new way of interpreting their history that allows America to be a perennial idea, something not directly physically tied to the territory of the United States, which no longer exists. They compose a body of historical works based on Washington Irving's rather fabulistic approach to early American history, the half-remembered popular versions of the stories of Columbus and the Pilgrims, the First Thanksgiving, even the Revolutionary War. They don't have access to the original texts anymore--let's say this is all taking place in a post-Collapse North America where long-range travel and communication is difficult and a lot of history has been lost--but they do their best. They append to these books, or include in their text, of history a copy of the Constitution, big chunks of the United States Code, and Robert's Rules of Order.

Subsequently, the Empire of Gran Columbia invades, conquers southern and central Mexico, and its Emperor lets the captive Americans go home. They return north, mostly to California, find that the version of American history and civics that is remembered there isn't the same as the version they have (not that the Californian one is correct--the Mexican Empire has suppressed English-language education and high culture in its Aztlani provinces), and set about reforming and reorganizing the Western States (as they're now called) to be more in line with the forms they brought back from the exile. In the meantime, other bits of important literature start being kept in libraries next to copies of the received histories: some bits of early American literature, like Hawthorne, the Song of Hiawatha, some highly abridged Herman Melville, Thomas Paine--heck, even some John Locke, and quotes or fragments from Shakespeare. Some traditionalists now argue the capital of the United States has always been located in San Francisco, and that Washington, D.C. only because the capital later, under the influence of Eastern heretics.

In the following centuries, the Western States retain their independence for a time, but eventually become a secondary battleground for a lot of other empires--the Mexicans, the Canadians, the Pan-Pacific Federation, and so forth. American culture remains distinctive, insulted in part by its unique traditions, though now everybody speaks Future Spanish, and only learns English to read the old texts. In this period additional material, including later compositions, continues to accrete, forming a distinct body of sacred American scripture, although it does not exist in a single canonical form. Attempts to reconcile distinct sources, like more literal and historically-grounded accounts versus the simplified narratives of figures like Irving, produce hybrid texts that sometimes are full of internal conflicts.

Oh, and through all this, some institutions of American government like the Supreme Court still function, although their rulings only apply to Americans, and there isn't much in the way of a federal bureaucracy.

Finally the Great and Sublime Brazilian Potentate conquers most of the Americas, sets up an American client state that roughly coincides with the heartland of the old Western States (California, Oregon, most of Washington and Nevada), and allows the Americans to elect their own President (subject, of course, to Brazilian approval). During this period, an apocalyptic street preacher from Los Angeles claims to have inherited the authority and power of George Washington, and is executed by the Brazilians; his later followers point to the prophecies of Emperor Norton, and out-of-context bits of a Quebecois translation of Moby-Dick and some Mark Twain stories to say no, really, he was George Washington. Inexplicably, a version of this religion becomes the dominant faith of the Brazilian Empire before it collapses. But long before then the American state in California fails, crushed when it tries to revolt against Brazilian rule; the remnant Easterners likewise dwindle down to only a few hundred souls living in a village in Alexandria, Virginia. Centuries from now, as the descendants of the descendants of the Brazilians colonize Mars, they will point to the sacred Americanist scriptures, the Neo-Americanist narratives of their prophet's life, and the letters written by the early leaders of Neo-Americanism, and say, "all of this was written by the spirit of George Washington, and is free from contradictions." Meanwhile the remnant Americanists, who have been writing about Americanism and how it applies to their everyday lives in the centuries since, and whose commentary has formed around the copies of the last editions of the U.S. Supreme Court Reporter (SCOTUS managed to outlast the final American state by a hundred years or so) plus the thoughts of the remaining Americanist community in Mexico, continue to regard their traditions as the unbroken and unaltered practice of American culture, politics, and ideals as they existed since the Revolutionary War.

This is, as far as I can tell, approximately how the Bible was composed.

[burst-of-iridescent]

South Asian and Hindu Influences in ATLA (Part 2)

disclaimer: i was raised culturally and religiously hindu, and though i've tried to do my research for this post and pair it with my own cultural knowledge, i'm not an expert on hinduism by any means. should i mess up, please let me know.

please also be aware that many of the concepts discussed in this post overlap heavily with religions such as buddhism and jainism, which might have different interpretations and representations. as i'm not from those religions or cultures, i don't want to speak on them, but if anyone with that knowledge wishes to add on, please feel free.

Part 1

In the previous post, I discussed some of the things ATLA got right in its depictions of desi and hindu cultures. unfortunately, they also got plenty of things wrong - often in ways that leaned towards racist caricatures - so let's break them down, starting with...

Guru Pathik

both the word "guru" and name "pathik" come from sanskrit. pathik means "traveler" or "he who knows the way" while guru is a term for a guide or mentor, similar to a teacher.

gurus were responsible for the very first education systems in ancient india, setting up institutions called gurukuls. students, referred to as disciples, would often spend years living with and learning from their gurus in these gurukuls, studying vedic and buddhist texts, philosophy, music and even martial arts.

however, their learning was not limited merely to academic study, as gurus were also responsible for guiding the spiritual evolution of their disciples. it was common for disciples to meditate, practice yoga, fast for days or weeks, and complete mundane household chores every day in order to instill them with self-discipline and help them achieve enlightenment and spiritual awareness. the relationship between a guru and his disciple was considered a sacred, holy bond, far exceeding that of a mere teacher and student.

aang's training with guru pathik mirrors some of these elements. similar to real gurus, pathik takes on the role of aang's spiritual mentor. he guides aang in unblocking his chakras and mastering the avatar state through meditation, fasting, and self-reflection - all of which are practices that would have likely been encouraged in disciples by their gurus.

pathik's design also takes inspiration from sadhus, holy men who renounced their worldly ties to follow a path of spiritual discipline. the guru's simple, nondescript clothing and hair are reflective of the ascetic lifestyle sadhus are expected to lead, giving up material belongings and desires in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment and, ultimately, liberation from the reincarnation cycle.

unfortunately, this is where the respectful references end because everything else about guru pathik was insensitive at best and stereotypical at worst.

it is extremely distasteful that the guru speaks with an overexaggerated indian accent, even though the iranian-indian actor who plays him has a naturally british accent. why not just hire an actual indian voice actor if the intention was to make pathik sound authentic? besides, i doubt authenticity was the sole intention, given that the purposeful distortion of indian accents was a common racist trope played for comedy in early 2000s children's media (see: phineas and ferb, diary of a wimpy kid, jessie... the list goes on).

furthermore, while pathik is presented a wise and respected figure within this episode, his next (and last) appearance in the show is entirely the opposite.

in the episode nightmares and daydreams, pathik appears in aang's nightmare with six hands, holding what appears to be a veena (a classical indian music instrument). this references the iconography of the hindu deity Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and knowledge. the embodiment of divine enlightenment, learning, insight and truth, Saraswati is a member of the Tridevi (the female version of the Trimurti), one of the most respected and revered goddesses in the Hindu pantheon... and her likeness is used for a cheap laugh on a character who's already treated as a caricature.

that's bad enough on its own, but when you consider that guru pathik is the only explicitly south asian coded character in the entire show, it's downright insulting. for a show that took so many of its foundational concepts from south asia and hinduism and yet provided almost no desi representation in return, this is just rubbing salt in the wound.

Chakras

"chakra", meaning "circle" or "wheel of life" in sanskrit, refers to sources of energy found in the human body. chakra points are aligned along the spine, with energy flowing from the lowest to the highest point. the energy pooled at the lowest chakra is called kundalini, and the aim is to release this energy to the highest chakra in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment and consciousness.

the number of chakras varies in different religions, with buddhism referencing five chakras while hinduism has seven. atla draws from the latter influence, so let's take a look at the seven chakras:

Muladhara (the Root Chakra). located at the base of the spine, this chakra deals with our basest instincts and is linked to the element of earth.

Swadhisthana (the Sacral Chakra). located just below the navel, this chakra deals with emotional intensity and pleasure and is linked to the element of water.

Manipura (the Solar Plexus Chakra). located in the stomach, this chakra deals with willpower and self-acceptance and is linked to the element of fire.

Anahata (the Heart Chakra). located in the heart, this chakra deals with love, compassion and forgiveness and is linked to the element of air. in the show, this chakra is blocked by aang's grief over the loss of the air nomads, which is a nice elemental allusion.

Vishudda (the Throat Chakra). located at the base of the throat, this chakra deals with communication and honesty and is linked to the fifth classical element of space. the show calls this the Sound Chakra, though i'm unsure where they got that from.

Ajna (the Third Eye Chakra). located in the centre of the forehead, this chakra deals with spirituality and insight and is also linked to the element of space. the show calls it the Light Chakra, which is fairly close.

Sahasrara (the Crown Chakra). located at the very top of the head, this chakra deals with pure cosmic consciousness and is also linked to the element of space. it makes perfect sense that this would be the final chakra aang has to unblock in order to connect with the avatar spirit, since the crown chakra is meant to be the point of communion with one's deepest, truest self.

the show follows these associations and descriptions almost verbatim, and does a good job linking the individual chakras to their associated struggles in aang's arc.

Cosmic Energy

the idea of chakras is associated with the concept of shakti, which refers to the life-giving energy that flows throughout the universe and within every individual.

the idea of shakti is a fundamentally unifying one, stating that all living beings are connected to one another and the universe through the cosmic energy that flows through us all. this philosophy is referenced both in the swamp episode and in guru pathik telling aang that the greatest illusion in the world is that of separation - after all, how can there be any real separation when every life is sustained by the same force?

this is also why aang needing to let go of katara did not, as he mistakenly assumed, mean he had to stop loving her. rather, the point of shedding earthly attachment is to allow one to become more attuned to shakti, both within oneself and others. ironically, in letting go of katara and allowing himself to commune with the divine energy of the universe instead, aang would have been more connected to her - not less.

The Avatar State

according to hinduism, there are five classical elements known as pancha bhuta that form the foundations of all creation: air, water, earth, fire, and space/atmosphere.

obviously, atla borrows this concept in making a world entirely based on the four classical elements. but looking at how the avatar spirit is portrayed as a giant version of aang suspended in mid-air, far above the earth, it's possible that this could reference the fifth liminal element of space as well.

admittedly this might be a bit of a reach, but personally i find it a neat piece of worldbuilding that could further explain the power of the avatar. compared to anyone else who might be able to master only one element, mastering all five means having control of every building block of the world. this would allow the avatar to be far more attuned to the spiritual energy within the universe - and themselves - as a result, setting in motion the endless cycle of death and rebirth that would connect their soul even across lifetimes.

#atla #atla cultural influences #hinduism in atla #welp i thought this would be the last part but i ended up having more to talk about than i thought #so i'll save the book 3 inspirations for the next post #including my absolute favourite combustion man #and by favourite i mean kill it with fire why did you ever think this was okay to do writers

[taylorswiftstyle]

"Fortnight" music video | April 19, 2024

Elena Velez Fall 2024 skirt

In authentic Victorian fashion, this black ensemble Taylor wore was actually separates and not a dress. Her waxed denim jacket as previously posted was by Unttld and this ruffled skirt by Elena Valez from her Fall 2024 collection which only debuted this past February. Elena told Laird Borrelli-Persson for Vogue that her “purest objective as a brand is to really bring a lost Midwestern woman back to the American cultural narrative.” Her desires in this collection were to bring a “more multi-dimensional representation of womanhood, good and bad; one that accepts the difficult, complicated, ugly truth of being a woman as part of the beauty that makes us whole and complete and 360. It’s a character journey that sometimes goes through an antagonist journey, but ultimately resolves itself with meaning and goodwill.” I frankly can’t think of a better ethos to match an album that centers much of its narrative on Taylor exposing wounds many of which she describes as “self-inflicted.” 

It’s my suspicion that TTPD is not an album that will be, nor was designed with the intention of, understood or liked by the masses. To my ears (and still overwhelmed brain feeling like I’ve absorbed an encyclopedia of words across these 31 songs) this is an album for ‘Swiftie scholars’ who have the time, space, and devotion to wade through the heaviness of an album this dense and complicated. And that’s okay! When Taylor described this album as one that she needed to make, now that we have it I interpret her meaning as her willfully confronting and hurdling over the elephant in the studio with her. Addressing the “how did it end?” questions that will plague her as soon as possible and structuring it in an album messy, complicated, and strewn with all her most vicious thoughts about the last year of her life in order to get out from under the weighted blanket of those expectations, clearing a path for her next LP to be constructed in clearer air. 

Worn with: Unttld jacket

#taylor swift #music video #skirt #elena velez #april 2024 #fortnight

[easays]

To Ragh; or, On Fatness

Hi! Below is an actual play mini-essay. These are written as part of a personal writing practice of thinking critically about actual play. I hope you find this reading engaging and know that all I write reflects my own interpretations rather than as an official representation/canonization of these shows. Keep reading for my interpretation of Ragh Barkrock's fatness as part of queer representation in Dimension20.

Ragh Barkrock may be one of the most beloved NPCs in Dimension20. It would be easy for Ragh, a bloodrush player good enough to potentially play professionally, to be presented as hypermasculine. In fact, the freshmen year art for Ragh, when he was antagonist rather than beloved ally, showed him in a muscular, inverted Dorito shaped body typical of a jock.

He's, obviously, built, and his cut jaw and cheekbones only bolster that image. As Ragh comes to terms with being gay at the end of Fantasy High, his countenance changes. When we see him again, the new art reflects a chubbier, happier Ragh.

The show aligning weight gain with acceptance and happiness already works against prevailing stereotypes that use weight loss as a quick metaphor for improving yourself and being the "real you." Moreover, connecting Ragh's acceptance of his sexuality with what seems like a larger comfort in his own body is a strong indictment of hypermasculine gay culture. As Gabriel Arana writes, gay men "must reconcile their sense of masculinity with their failure to conform to its heterosexuality." Not doing so has negative mental health outcomes, as Arana points out, and contributes to a culture that devalues fat queer people (see the popular "no fats, no femmes, no Asians" that often is touted in masculine gay subculture).

All of this, I think, is why Ragh's art for Junior Year was particularly impactful for me as a fat queer person. If being a gay man (or half-Orc, in Ragh's case) means having to situate your life in relationship to failing compulsory masculinity, then it seems there is an inherent queer aspect to embracing, celebrating, and showcasing a beloved NPC in an explicitly fat and happy body.

FHJY Ragh art by @caitmayart

Ragh is still strong and he is still fat. His body radiates a commitment to the power of fat bodies to exist in spaces they are often violently unwelcome in, such as gyms. Existing in gyms and sports spaces as fat people means dealing the "impossible standard that rejects nearly all of us" and upholds a diet culture rooted in impossible, Eurocentric and colonial body standards. In TTRPGS or actual plays, there is a unique opportunity to think about how bodies might exist in worlds different from ours, to imagine bodyminds as otherwise. However, as queer critics like Paul Preciado have noted, sci-fi and fantasy representations of cyborgs and other transformative bodies often lean into "fixing" disabled people or moving gender nonconforming bodies more easily towards technologies upholding a normative standard rather than questioning the standard all together.

Spyre is a world that deals with similar issues to ours, even without direct one-to-one correlations, so it, too, is a place where the narrative and artistic choices should be examined in how it helps us interpolate the world the audience resides in. From the Applebees cultish adherence to a deity-based nationalism to the various representations of parental neglect and abuse and every side story in-between, Dimension20's flagship show does not shy away from difficult realities even when recasting them through fantasy. Ragh, as a half-orc gay son of a disabled single mother, then, I see the arc his fat body goes through as meaningful and intertwined with his self-acceptance and queerness. He moves away from the toxic masculinity engineered into his blood rush team to instead pursue coalition comraderie with his friends to the point that he and his mother end up joining a communal living situation with those friends and their parents. Ragh's body expands as his family does, as his ties to community do, and to me, the gift of his fatness is the invitation to expansion that it holds out to us as viewers.

#dimension 20 #actual play #fantasy high: junior year #fhjy #fhjy spoilers #ragh barkrock #lydia barkrock #brennan lee mulligan #emily axford #lou wilson #zac oyama #siobhan thompson #ally beardsley #brian murphy #riz gukgak #kristen applebees #fabian seacaster #adaine abernant #gorgug thistlespring #figeroth faeth

[royboyfanpage]

Lian Harper has a better understanding of Snowbirds than much of the modern fanbase

I've been reading the Green Arrow 80th anniversary special and one part in particular stood out to me. One of the stories in the comic is Roy telling Lian (and Ollie) a story over the phone, specifically *Roy's* story, in the style of a Navajo story, and Ollie and Roy are called Green-Man and Autumn-Son.

During this, obviously, one of the major plotpoints is Roy's addiction and a retelling of Snowbirds Don't Fly from Roy's perspective, in which Roy accounts how Ollie was angry at him. Lian actually *corrects* Roy, saying that Ollie was scared

And honestly? I think this is *how* this was meant to be interpreted when it was written. Snowbirds was never meant to show Ollie as in the right, but it was also never meant to make him the villain. Ollie is, in this story, essentially a caricature of a 70s parent's reaction to finding out their child is using drugs. Keep in mind this was written *during* the war on drugs, a time where misinformation was rampant and every parent's worst fear was finding out their child was an addict. I personally firmly believe that Ollie views Roy as his son, and vis versa, but even if you don't Ollie finding out that the kid/young adult he'd been mentoring is addicted to drugs? Terrifying. Especially since Ollie's aim had always been to teach Roy strength, and addiction was seen as the worst possible weakness, meaning Ollie had not only failed as a father but as a mentor in his eyes. Snowbirds is repeatedly used by Oliver Queen haters to demonize him, to show him as a bad father, but Snowbirds is and always has been a product of its time, not in terms of writing but culturally. Yes, Oliver *would* react like that in 1971. And so would most DC heroes. But you know what? He grew. He developed, he changed his mindset and he *listened* to Roy, and snowbirds ends with him being *proud* of Roy.

So yeah. While there were definitely aspects of his reaction that were undoubtedly angry, that was all vastly overshadowed by *fear*. Lian Harper was, as always, right.

Edit: I did a big post on Snowbirds here

#Tw drugs #snowbirds don't fly #roy harper #green arrow #oliver queen #Speedy #red arrow #Arsenal #Lian Harper #Dc comics

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hello! It's me again. I'm probably pestering you, lol. I think a lotta people give flack for the Octavinelle trio being ruthless and "behaving like a Mafia." But I think considering where they live it makes sense? They live in the ocean. And the ocean is a kill or be killed environment, where you have to the strongest and toughest. If not? You at least have to be quick witted and unable to be seen, otherwise you'll be dead. If the trio become too soft they'll be fish meat.

I think the fandom is pretty divided when it comes to perceptions of what the Coral Sea is like. On one hand, you have the people who think of it as like living in Atlantica, which is basically just like living in a peaceful and pretty city (but underwater). Then you have the people who think the environment would be so different it would shape its inhabitants to behave differently as well. The second one tends to be a darker or grittier interpretation which aknowledges dangers such as other undersea creatures and treacherous living conditions.

Personally, I lean on and enjoy the latter, since TWST rarely ever designs purely for the aesthetic of it; one example of this is how the twins are confirmed to be bioluminescent in the Magical Archives. This is a decision that was not made “because it would look cool”, but because many deep sea creatures rely on this trait to intimidate potential predators. It would make more sense for the cold waters of the Coral Sea to change its people rather than merfolks’ cities simply being civilizations moved several leagues under, especially seeing TWST time and time again really consider the geography and history of each new location and how those inform the cultures that form there.

However, I want to state that the Coral Sea would be very different depending on which area you’re in, just like how there are nice parts and bad parts of a city. It’s not ALL nice or ALL bad. For example, the Atlantica Museum in book 3 appears to be in a more photic zone, so there’s more sunlight and it appears pleasant to be in. Even the merpeople there seem to be different than the Octatrio; they less so resemble specific sea creatures and are much more akin to being human-like. We have yet to really see how the benthic zones are—but we do know they must be harsher, since Floyd has mentioned exploring shipwrecks and various dangers there (like sharks).

I also want to point out that there are subtle signs in dialogue which could imply merpeople prefer traits that promote survivability and adaptability in the ocean. Azul’s bullies are noted to taunt him for his weight, but also for his bulky tentacles and inky tears. Now why those traits specifically??? Because these impede his ability to swim swiftly (making it harder to escape danger) and easily give away his location (if he’s in hiding or camoflauging).

I’ve seen others suggest that maybe these comments are because of racism against octopus merpeople, who are a rare kind of merfolk. This is entirely possible, yes! But thinking about it like that… Isn’t it also possible that there aren’t a lot of octopus merpeople at the moment because it’s more difficult for them to escape or to hide from predators? Which then informs and perpetuates preexisting prejudices. In this context (plus the bullying), it makes sense why Azul may have “hardened” as a defense and survival mechanism. The same goes for the twins, who were explicitly taught how to defend themselves (although this also goes into the Leech mob family theory, which is a whole separate matter) and have often made references to fighting others in the Coral Sea. Their upbringings also play a part in their personalities, but so does the environment they grew up in. Like Azul and the twins, you’d have to harden mentally or physically to some degree to ensure your survival through tough circumstances.

It’s hard to say for sure though! A lot of this is speculation based on current but infrequent lore, and the Octatrio themselves are a very small portion of all merfolk. They may not be representative of the behaviors of all other merpeople, and we should keep this in mind when referring to them as our exemplars. That’s why I’ve been hoping for a Coral Sea hometown event so we have a more concrete idea of what life under the sea is like 😭

#twisted wonderland #twst #Azul Ashengrotto #Octavinelle #Floyd Leech #Tweels #Jade Leech #disney twisted wonderland #disney twst #notes from the writing raven #book 3 spoilers #twst theory #twst theories #twisted wonderland theories #twisted wonderland theory

[writingwithcolor]

Creatures of Folklore Who Represent Cultures Preventing Wars Throughout History

Anonyomous asked:

Hi! I’m writing a story which is set in a fantasy version of our world. The main difference between our real world and my fictional version is that the spirits and fairies of each culture and folklore exist, and that the majority of them basically stop war from happening because they react very badly (and potentially violently) when invading forces etc try to start battles. 

I’m doing a lot of research into the histories of the various cultures that will be featured in the books set in this world so I can hypothesise how they might have developed without, for example, violent colonialism, and where trade and so on might have flourished in its place. However, it’s possible for colonialism to happen through more insidious ways, such as assimilation. In one of my books, I’m intending to use this as part of the plot, where Japan will try to colonise the Ryukyuan Kingdom through assimilation, but will be stopped by the Ryukyuan Kingdom making allies with other nations (amongst other tactics), but I was wondering if you had any advice for respectfully handling the colonialism that very much did happen in real life in a fantasy setting where it didn’t manage to occur, without erasing the history and ramifications etc of what actually happened?

Do fox spirits have citizenship? 

You mean well with this concept, but there are multiple key problems. 

One major issue with cordoning off spirits and folklore creatures by “patron” culture and have them fight said patrons’ battles is that there’s a lot of overlap. It’d be hard for there not to be a conflict of interest. 

For example, everyone knows about the kitsune fox spirit from Japan. But the story of the fox spirit was introduced to Japan and Korea by China, where they are called húlijīng. These foxes are remarkably similar, with their characteristics and stories almost borrowed wholesale. Are they all the same “species?” If so, when small differences emerge in the countries’ folktales, how do you resolve this? Do these spirits also morph and specialize, or does one interpretation win out? How about when kingdoms are unified, like the Korean Three Kingdoms–do separate versions of the kumiho reverse-evolve into a single variant? What side do they pick when these kingdoms and empires try to battle? If they live apart from humans or aren’t very friendly with them, why would they have a reason to care about invasions when they have no reason to be allegiant to said borders, or whatever name they’re called in whichever country whose land they live on?

Folkloric beings are never static, and are influenced over time by cultural shifts and exchanges, including shifting borders. Human history is stuffed cover-to-cover with events of what we called “conquest” then and “occupation” or “colonization” now. And through these changes, cultures diverged and came together, creating new stories. In other words: not even fairy tales are immune to colonization. 

Leigh can explain the rest. 

~ Rina

The Problem with Retconning War

A very simple question for you:

How are you going to rectify every single historical war that’s ever existed?

Like, the whole plot of the Trojan War as we know it is that the gods of the same culture were on different sides! And the gods made the war last as long as it did. Alexander the Great was a colonizer. Romans were definitely colonizers. Ottomans and Mongols, also colonizers. It wasn’t to the scale of modern colonialism, but it happened. If you look at census records from the 1800s of Indigenous populations in North America, you’ll find that the men 20+ have way lower numbers because they died in war! 

I’m not of the opinion that the basic state of humanity is war and we are barely contained by base instincts. But I’m also not so far in the other direction that I believe humans lack any sort of warring instincts. It shows up in chimps and other primates, so it shows up in humans.

In a way, it sounds like you’ve taken a very Christian-fundamentalist-centric view of things, which is: humans need religion to be “contained”. That humans are amoral without some sort of religion or folklore or spirits telling them to not do a “bad thing.”

This is ignoring how people have been using religion to justify wars since religion was invented. As Rina said, there can be overlap in groups’ beliefs and deities so there’s the side-picking issue, which as I mentioned is the whole plot of the Trojan War. Even when humans write about gods meddling in war, they have the gods not all be on the same side.

Humans have war. Humans try to take over other groups because they want the resources that group has. Alliances shift. Territories shift.

This is also treating humans as a monolith—there are populations within the colonized groups that agree with the colonizers because they get benefits. Claiming that all colonized groups hate all aspects of their colonialism all of the time is deeply ahistorical and flattened. Sometimes the benefits were only for a small group, but sometimes the benefits were far-reaching. It’s in the India tag on WWC, varying views of the Mughals. 

Also, how will you handle the Christianization of Europe? How will you handle all of this folklore that only got written down via monks and nuns making notes and modifying beliefs to fit the Bible? Will any area with only Christianity’s records written down not have folklore? 

And how will you handle folklore drift? Religions are not static. If you look at Greek myths, there are ten to thirty versions of each story and those are just the ones that survived. Each city-state had its own mythology, using the same gods, modified to fit the local needs.

And what about folklore that deals with war and thrives in war? What about the gods of war and destruction? I know Norse mythology is Christianized beyond recognition, but even in its Christianized form half of it is about war. Would the Valkyries, whose whole purpose is to find valiant soldiers slain in battle, not want war? Their whole purpose is war.

Also, on top of it—how will you handle revolution?

You say yourself, colonialism could still happen subtly. Colonialism and injustice can still happen. Will these subjugated spirits force an already disadvantaged group to exclusively use a rigged system to try and politely ask for their rights back? Or would these spirits want to be free and support the means necessary to take it back?

War has happened to upend the divine right of kings. War has happened to free slaves (Haiti). War has happened for basic workers’ rights (some union strikes have resulted in war). 

You’re basically removing a whole toolbox in the fight for a better world. Yes, not being able to colonize because of fantasy AU sounds fine, until you realize that pretty much all of human history from the Romans has been created via war to some degree.

You’re basically just saying “violence is bad and humans need fantasy babysitters to not dive into it”, which really doesn’t sound that great once you sit with it. It removes human agency, removes human nature, and ignores the entire history of the planet.

-Leigh (Lesya)

Marika interjecting here:

We had an ask (Linked here) envisioning a story set in a de-colonized Hawai’i and the socio-political issues with that. Same problem.

#folklore #fairy tales #war #Religion #worldbuilding #world history #colonization #colonialism #history #mythology #asks

[makapatag]

Tactical Combat, Violence Dice and Missing Your Attacks in Gubat Banwa

In this post I talk about game feel and decision points when it comes to the "To-Hit Roll" and the "Damage Roll" in relation to Gubat Banwa's design, the Violence Die.

Let's lay down some groundwork: this post assumes that the reader is familiar and has played with the D&D style of wargame combat common nowadays in TTRPGs, brought about no doubt by the market dominance of a game like D&D. It situates its arguments within that context, because much of new-school design makes these things mostly non-problems. (See: the paradigmatic shift required to play a Powered by the Apocalypse game, that completely changes how combat mechanics are interpreted).

With that done, let's specify even more: D&D 5e and 4e are the forerunners of this kind of game--the tactical grid game that prefers a battlemat. 5e's absolute dominance means that there's a 90% chance that you have played the kind of combat I'll be referring to in this post. The one where you roll a d20, add the relevant modifiers, and try to roll equal to or higher than a Target Number to actually hit. Then when you do hit, you roll dice to deal damage. This has been the way of things since OD&D, and has been a staple of many TTRPG combat systems. It's easy to grasp, and has behemoth cultural momentum. Each 1 on a d20 is a 5% chance, so you can essentially do a d100 with smaller increments and thus easier math (smaller numbers are easier to math than larger numbers, generally).

This is how LANCER works, this is how ICON works, this is how SHADOW OF THE DEMON LORD works, this is how TRESPASSER works, this is how WYRDWOOD WAND works, this is how VALIANT QUEST works, etc. etc. It's a tried and true formula, every D&D player has a d20, it's emblematic of the hobby.

There's been a lot more critical discussion lately on D&D's conventions, especially due to the OGL. Many past D&D only people are branching out of the bubble and into the rest of the TTRPG hobby. It's not a new phenomenon--it's happened before. Back in the 2010s, when Apocalypse World came out while D&D was in its 4th Edition, grappling with Pathfinder. Grappling with its stringent GSL License (funny how circular this all is).

Anyway, all of that is just to put in the groundwork. My problem with D&D Violence (particularly, of the 3e, 4e, and 5e version) is that it's a violence that arises from "default fantasy". Default Fantasy is what comes to mind when you say fantasy: dragons, kings, medieval castles, knights, goblins, trolls. It's that fantasy cultivated by people who's played D&D and thus informs D&D. There is much to be said about the majority of this being an American Samsaric Cycle, and it being tied to the greater commodification agenda of Capitalism, but we won't go into that right now. Anyway, D&D Violence is boring. It thinks of fights in HITS and MISSES and DAMAGE PER SECOND.

A Difference Of Paradigm and Philosophies

I believe this is because it stems from D&D still having one foot in the "grungy dungeon crawler" genre it wants to be and the "combat encounter balance MMO" it also wants to be. What ends up happening is that players play it like an immersive sim, finding ways to "cheese" encounters with spells, instead of interacting with the game as the fiction intended. This is exemplified in something like Baldur's Gate 3 for example: a lot of the strats that people love about it includes cheesing, shooting things before they have the chance to react, instead of doing an in-fiction brawl or fight to the death. It's a pragmatist way of approaching the game, and the mechanics of the game kind of reinforce it. People enjoy that approach, so that's good. I don't. Wuxia and Asian Martial Dramas aren't like that, for the most part.

It must be said that this is my paradigm: that the rules and mechanics of the game is what makes the fiction (that shared collective imagination that binds us, penetrates us) arise. A fiction that arises from a set of mechanics is dependent on those mechanics. There is no fiction that arises independently. This is why I commonly say that the mechanics are the narrative. Even if you try to play a game that completely ignores the rules--as is the case in many OSR games where rules elide--your fiction is still arising from shared cultural tropes, shared ideas, shared interests and consumed media.

So for Gubat Banwa, the philosophy was this: when you spend a resource, something happens. This changes the entire battle state--thus changing the mechanics, thus changing the fiction. In a tactical game, very often, the mechanics are the fiction, barring the moments that you or your Umalagad (or both of you!) have honed creativity enough to take advantage of the fiction without mechanical crutches (ie., trying to justify that cold soup on the table can douse the flames on your Kadungganan if he runs across the table).

The other philosophy was this: we're designing fights that feel like kinetic high flying exchanges between fabled heroes and dirty fighters. In these genres, in these fictions, there was no "he attacked thrice, and one of these attacks missed". Every attack was a move forward.

So Gubat Banwa removed itself from the To-Hit/Damage roll dichotomy. It sought to put itself outside of that paradigm, use game conventions and cultural rituals that exist outside of the current West-dominated space. For combat, I looked to Japanese RPGs for mechanical inspiration: in FINAL FANTASY TACTICS and TACTICS OGRE, missing was rare, and when you did miss it was because you didn't take advantage of your battlefield positioning or was using a kind of weapon that didn't work well against the target's armor. It existed as a fail state to encourage positioning and movement. In wuxia and silat films, fighters are constantly running across the environment and battlefield, trying to find good positioning so that they're not overwhelmed or so that they could have a hand up against the target.

The Violence Die: the Visceral Attacking Roll

Gubat Banwa has THE VIOLENCE DIE: this is the initial die or dice that you roll as part of a specific offensive technique.

In the above example, the Inflict Violence that belongs to the HEAVENSPEAR Discipline, the d8 is the Violence Die. When you roll this die, it can be modified by effects that affect the Violence Die specifically. This becomes an accuracy effect: the more accurate your attack, the more damage you deal against your target's Posture. Mas asintado, mas mapinsala.

You compare your Violence Die roll to your target's EVADE [EVD]. If you rolled equal to or lower than the target's EVD, they avoid that attack completely. There: we keep the tacticality of having to make sure your attack doesn't miss, but also EVD values are very low: often they're just 1, or 2. 4 is very often the highest it can go, and that's with significant investment.

If you rolled higher than that? Then you ignore EVD completely. If you rolled a 3 and the target's EVD was 2, then you deal 3 DMG + relevant modifiers to the DMG. When I wrote this, I had no conception of "removing the To-Hit Roll" or "Just rolling Damage Dice". To me this was the ATTACK, and all attacks wore down your target's capacity to defend themselves until they're completely open to a significant wound. In most fights, a single wound is more than enough to spell certain doom and put you out of the fight, which is the most important distinction here.

In the Thundering Spear example, that targets PARRY [PAR], representing it being blocked by physical means of acuity and quickness. Any damage brought about by the attack is directly reduced by the target's PAR. A means for the target to stay in the fight, actively defending.

But if the attack isn't outright EVADED, then they still suffer its effects. So the target of a Thundering Spear might have reduced the damage of an attack to just 1 (1 is minimum damage), they would still be thrown up to 3 tiles away. It matches that sort of, anime combat thing: they strike Goku, but Goku is still flung back. The game keeps going, the fight keeps going.

On Mechanical Weight

When you miss, the mechanical complexity immediately stops--if you miss, you don't do anything else. Move on. To the next Beat, the next Riff, the next Resound, think about where you could go to better your chances next time.

Otherwise, the attack's other parts are a lot more mechanically involved. If you don't miss: roll add your Attacking Prowess, add extra dice from buffs, roll an extra amount of dice representing battlefield positioning or perhaps other attacks you make, apply the effects of your attack, the statuses connected to your attack. It keeps going, and missing is rare, especially once you've learned the systematic intricacies of Gubat Banwa's THUNDERING TACTICS BATTLE SYSTEM.

So there was a lot of setup in the beginning of this post just to sort of contextualize what I was trying to say here. Gubat Banwa inherently arises from those traditions--as a 4e fan, I would be remiss to ignore that. However, the conclusion I wanted to come up to here is the fact that Gubat Banwa tries to step outside of the many conventions of that design due to that design inherently servicing the deliverance of a specific kind of combat fiction, one that isn't 100% conducive to the constantly exchanging attacks that Gubat Banwa tries to make arise in the imagination.

#gubat banwa #ttrpg #filipino #fantasy #gamedev #writing #rpg #dnd #southeast asia #d&d #d&d 5e #d&d 4e #i will say #that part of the decision away from a d20 (because gb alpha used one) #is sheer hater energy on my part #like i just didn't want to #because its used by all these other games by white people and especially because its used by dnd #there is like #4 instances where you use d20s in this game

[yuurei20]

I've noticed Epel keeps adding 'kana' to the end of his sentences. What does it mean?

Hello hello! Thank you so, so much for this question, I have always wanted to mention this.

“Kana” can be a multitude of things in English, such as “probably,” “I guess,” “I think,” “I wonder,” etc. A basic explanation would be, “a word used to express uncertainty,” but like most things when it comes to language, that is not the only thing it does.

A quick review of Epel: from his first day at NRC he has been under order from Vil to “speak more politely,” as he tends to use informal speech with his senpai.

As you point out, Epel often adds “kana” to what he is saying, and that is because one of the things that it can do is ‘soften’ something that you’re saying in order to make it sound less direct, and thus more polite.

Examples: Epel telling Kalim that his assumption is wrong, telling Vil that he disagrees with him, saying that his Phantom Bride look is weird, etc., these are all sentences that he is awkwardly gentling via “kana,” often after several ellipses or a comma, as though it is not a part of his normal speech pattern.

This gets into cultural differences: When Ace assumes that Epel is dedicated to a certain brand of apple juice, for example, an English-speaking Epel could probably respond, “That’s not actually the case!,” without sounding rude. But that could be interpreted as a little brusque in Japanese.

In order to soften the expression Epel adds “kana” at the end, which sounds more like, “That might not be the case,” “I’m not sure that is exactly what is going on,” etc., in English.

Even though he knows for 100% certainty that he is not actually dedicated to a certain brand of juice, he is still using “kana” in order to not sound too straightforward.

(screenshot from maggiesensei.com)

(This can and does cause issues when moving in between languages: a Japanese learner who only knows that “kana” means “I think” might not add it onto sentences where they are certain about something, and thus risk annoying their Japanese-speaking colleagues, for example. In contrast, an English learner may say “I think” too often, leading their English-speaking colleagues to wonder why they don’t seem to actually know anything. It’s all part of the joy of language and culture!)

While there are several words in Japanese that can be used to soften your phrasing, Epel seems to have latched onto “kana” in particular, possibly because it is an easy word to add on to the last part of what might otherwise be a rude sentence in an attempt to avoid a reprimand from Vil. 

Other times Epel will belatedly add “desu” onto his sentences, also in a bid to sound more polite than he is used to speaking. 

If you are a language learner I would not recommend using Epel as an example of when to use “kana,” as he will sometimes shoehorn it into places in an unnatural way (as a part of his character).

EN is doing its best to recreate Epel’s “kana” by including things like “kind of,” “not sure” and “maybe” in his dialogue, but as sounding uncertain doesn’t necessarily mean you sound polite in English, this may not be having the same effect. And I have no idea how they would go about recreating this habit of Epel’s in a way that can properly portray what is happening in English—it might just be one of those things that gets lost in translation :<

Bonus: The Japanese language has four different alphabets (kanji, katakana, hiragana, romaji), and katakana is the alphabet used for foreign loanwords. 

Whereas other characters who use honorifics have “-kun” and “-san” written in hiragana in their dialogue, Epel’s dialogue uses katakana. This is possibly meant to symbolize how using honorifics in these situations is foreign to him, and he is not used to it.

(When he does shift into using honorifics in hiragana, it is only when he is talking to people from his own village: people he is used to!)

#twstask #Epel Felmier #twisted wonderland