Swirly313

An autistic bisexual geek

A writer and geek whose interests cycle around animation, comics, and video games.

Icon art by Stina Rudebjer

Header image from "Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!" (2020)



AtFruitBat
@AtFruitBat

between Bsky, where one weirdo said yesterday that all Japanese people are white (I just straight up block that kind of person, because hahahaha no. But from seeing other people reacting to that, that went down like a lead balloon there.) And this place where some of the white leftists are apparently saying that talking about Orientalism in vidya games makes you a cop.

Which is the usual sort of thing that white leftists say when they feel uncomfortable about conversations relating to race that don't center them, or their feelings of comfort. It's the old "it's the left eating the left" takes which get wheeled out when leftists of colour are saying: "hey, this is an issue, maybe think about this a bit more".

It's fine to be critical about Orientalism in video games. It's healthy for all creative folks (making all types of media) to ask ourselves: why this setting? And esp if it's not an Own Culture setting. Sometimes you can unpick an entire chain of unconscious associations that you are making with an Other culture, as well as your Own. Which is the kind of thing we all unconsciously carry around, because we live and move through social systems that are built to implicitly and unfairly assign specific traits to different cultures.

That process of attribution is also about having the power to assign defining traits to Others as well as yourself. So of course it's uncomfortable to work out what you may have been doing, unconsciously for a while now, with the power you didn't even ask for, and probably don't even want if you do become aware of it.

But that's how we go around identifying structures that need changing - working out our own relationship to power, and then being able to make more conscious choices about how we engage with those larger power structures. Including in the kind of creative work we do, the choices we make when we create media that we are asking other people to buy into.

While it can be uncomfortable to look at that baggage for yourself, where it can result in further harm is lashing out in your discomfort and making that the problem of the person going: "hey this is kind of stereotyping" or "did you mean to alienate folks from my culture, because this feels jarring", etc.

You can just not do that. Sit with the discomfort. Go away and do some reading. Watch video essays if that's your thing. Write a private journal about it. Talk to your therapist... Thee are very many ways to handle the discomfort that don't involve dumping it right back out on the person going: "did you really mean to do this with my culture?"

By the way, while I have time for people talking about this in good faith, I really don't have time for "and this is why Wholesome Games are so evil!" Like hahahaha there's plenty of Orientalism to go round the entire sphere of gaming. COD has an entire genre of video essays and articles about its Orientalism. Horror games made by non-Asian devs and studios frequently plunder Asian horror tropes and settings. Etc, etc.

In the scheme of things are there likely to also be some cosy games that do Orientalism? I would be very surprised if that isn't the case. Is it likely that in a showcase of >70 games, some of the games will dip into these tropes and settings, and some of them could usefully think about "why this setting" or "what will this look like to folks from that culture"?

Sure. Of course.

Again, it's often useful for creative folks to think about these things.

Where I will block or mute on this topic is if I feel the person is all about bashing Wholesome Games more than they have a genuine interest in thinking about Orientalism - and I say that as an Asian. I am not well served that way by people (and I do notice when it's white people doing this and not fellow Asians. Some of you are really obvious in that respect) taking Orientalism and using that to push an agenda that is actually about their dislike of cosy games, or their dislike of Wholesome Games.

OK. Now I've said all that I am going to do other things. Because it's yet another day of predominantly white social media platforms being fucking weird about Asians, and meanwhile I have work to do. 😂


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in reply to @AtFruitBat's post:

You can just not do that.

nothing smart to say, just yes. it's so easy. it's what i did lmao, i did not post through my discomfort to no end, i just processed/process it.

no one is hurting you, probably they're literally trying to help and offering emotional labour by writing and platforming this knowledge, at worst it's like a joke that again you're not hurt by. but god can you hurt them, so so so bad.

it's liberal-brained, is the miserable 'internet-pilled' way i'd describe it. like, still holding the framework that only bad people can do bad things, so you reject the idea you could even do harm cos like, you're a good person right? black and so-very-white morality that reinforces the harm.

and there's like a very baby trans thing i did a bit of (i am embarrassed about it and should be) of like responding to people's joy with how my own situation sucked (done to me too, it sucks). like just using other people as an emotional sink.

and just the way i dealt with it was consciously finding people i could talk to about how i felt. same thing applies, talk to people. but also critically this is... maybe a little harsh lol. but if you're white, and are like targeting non-white people for this shit, i know you have other white people you can talk to instead.

Yeah. I mean, when it comes to Orientalism, I often laugh when I see jokes from other Asians about self-Orientalising because I know I have internalised stuff that way too. It's also me! And then I can talk to Asian pals about that. It's easier for me to unpick some of these things with other people who I know are also in the process of unpicking that, and who also have similar lived experiences, and so on.

So odds are pretty good white folks can (in theory) talk to other white folks about this too, if they want to. This is ostensibly a leftist site, so there should be a big pool of other people who are at various stages of figuring some of these things out, to go and talk with. In theory, anyway. 😂

Oh, I think it's Renkon doing a lot of heavy lifting at the moment. I'm somewhat insulated by having blocked or muted some of the discoursers (probably earlier than this round of discourse started up), and am only very slowly looking up specific accounts to see what things they have been saying. Some of the things are... Not good.

Whereas I think Renkon has unfortunately gotten the brunt of a lot of immediate knee-jerk reactions from some folks who should really know better.

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