#boycott Kind

[news4dzhozhar]

[the-meme-monarch]

funny streamers i like have been 'playing' kingdom hearts union x and I haven't finished the vod yet but they're on some cinderella quests and i was overcome with Man I Should Watch Cinderella Again. i remember watching that movie all the time as a kid having such strong feelings about it (i am not paying for it as I watch it now)(I own the dvd)(am I watching it on the dvd? that's a secret I'll never tell) and I was having a good time before suddenly it ruined it bc I forgot and was reminded how they just made a cat evil for no reason. maybe the strong feelings were i hated it

[maythearo]

I hope you all know that twisted wonderland is in fact, disney owned and yall should not be spending money on it rn

[vyorei]

I'm sickened to my fucking core

[hajihiko]

I'm thinking I might *try* and do like, a live art stream, while Eurovision airs? Since none of us are watching that bullshit right haha.....Right

[g0ldgauntlet]

Hilichurls and "Tribal" Portrayals.

While we're talking about Natlan, I also want to mention how awful it is that a section of the fandom tried to make us all out to be crazy years ago for pointing out how racist the portrayal of the Hilichurls are.

Quick content warning for mentions of slavery, colonization, genocide, and anti-Indigenous racism. (Image description is in alt text)

Hoyo used Indigenous people as references for these in-game enemies, which we literally have video proof of, provided by the company itself (Timestamp: 1:30).

The Hilichurls were constantly belittled by Teyvat's people, with an Inazuma npc likening them to demons. I remember Paimon acting like the items they collected were meaningless or pieces of junk during the earlier parts of the game.

They become a lot more sympathetic later due to their actual origins in-game (which I'm sure @phoenix-creates can confirm for me because I know you're farther ahead in Genshin than I am right now), sure, but I always found it strange that Hoyo used Indigenous cultures to portray these "monsters" who have lost their sense of selves (meanwhile their human forms are white), as if to imply that Indigenous cultures are more "wild" or "savage."

Genshin fans of color, since 2020, have pointed out the racist undertones that Teyvat's people were perpetuating against the Hilichurls due to them acting the same way that racists irl act towards non-White cultures, but they were told that they were overreacting and this was swept under the rug as a result. The very next year, it's brought up again with more people finding out about it, and we were still being told that we're overreacting.

So now that we're at Natlan, is it seriously that hard to believe that Hoyo straight up just doesn't respect Indigenous cultures? Black (and many brown) cultures too, because it's very telling that Iansan, the Natlan character with the darkest skin so far, is given a more stereotypically "tribal" look on her design with a bunch of bones used as her accessories despite that not being what her actual inspiration looks like.

(Artist for picture on the right: vieirapx on Instagram)

Sucrose has confirmed in her "Something to Share" voiceline that she collects Hilichurl bones, which is similar to colonizers taking the bones of dead Indigenous people with this added context.

Also, please read or reread the Teyvat Travel Guide Vol. 1. Alice basically confirms that she wants to enslave the Hilichurls for labor and also feed the weaker ones to the stronger ones.

That latter point is cannibalism. I know that many people are fans of Alice, but a lot of what she talks about in the first guide is why I don't like her.

Yes, it can be argued that Indigenous cultures are not the only inspiration for the Hilichurls, as it's been said that they may take inspiration from goblins, Bokoblins from the Zelda franchise, and the Amanojuku from Japanese mythology. Answer me this question, though.

Why is Hoyo capable of referencing a creature and not a human being when it comes to the Japanese inspiration for the Hilichurls, but this does not apply to the Indigenous references? It's dehumanizing, and it feels like another double-standard that needs to be addressed.

Hoyo has casually made black and brown cultures in Genshin appear to be less civilized and more "tribal" compared to our White and East Asian peers, both with the human characters and the non-human ones. Sumeru's quests and enemy npcs had multiple examples of this, with the Traveler and Jeht even destroying almost the entire Tanit tribe with the narrative justification being that, conveniently, most or all of them were selfish, bloodthirsty, and manipulative (Jeht's profile on the wiki page goes into what happened with more depth). They had to die because the tribe was dangerous - even though the main problem seems to be Babel - and Jeht's white, blonde companion needed to help save everyone from these evil, power-hungry savages.

(Sidenote: I think this is the second time overall that Hoyo has come up with an excuse to justify Traveler committing genocide on an entire group of people, with the first being the Iwakura Clan.)

I'm sure that the same thing is going to happen with Natlan's quests and npcs because Hoyo has always been weird about the portrayal of black and brown-inspired characters. The question is not whether any of the creatures or humans from specific groups are bad, suspicious, or designed to fit a specific image. We know the answer to that. The real question is why they are portrayed like this, and why it keeps happening more commonly to the black and brown cast members compared to our lighter peers.

[ceaseless-rambler]

Look, am I scared of this being a thing that the right rallies around? Yes. Am I scared that "retaliatory" hate crimes will go up? Also yes. Am I still going to laugh at yhe tumblr posts abiut it? What fucking else can I do

[phoenyx-rising]

We're watching Eurovision because we love it, and we love Jewish people 🇮🇱💖 Hope this helps you antisemitic asshole

Equating condemning a genocide with being antisemitic is kind of fucked up, don't you think? Maybe don't use bigotry to defend bigotry. And hiding behind anon while spreading your hate, yikes

It's not virtue signaling when it's a boycott, and yea, I get that it's a thing that people enjoy, as I stated (I guess I don't know what you are responding to, since you hid behind anon, so maybe you didn't actually see much of my opinion and just decided to go on the attack?). But that's kind of the point of a boycott. It's not virtue signaling, it's not holier-than-thou, it's listening to the people suffering and following through with their requests. Sure, you can watch it, but you have to sit in the misery of being a scab. I'm sure it's worth it. Unless you're Palestinian, I don't really see why you get to lament about the "sea of terrible-ness" and how this thing that is hurting Palestinians is your only escape rather than something that is less hurtful. Like reading a book. Or touching grass. Have you tried touching grass? Again, yikes my cowardly anon, yikes

[subsequentibis]

given how badly so many people involved with dashcon were treated, like volunteers and artists and guests and staff, and after reading the interview with the kid who had the original idea and how badly it hurt her, i think doing a cutesy tongue in cheek dashcon two is deeply disrespectful & in incredibly bad taste

[aeonianlunartine]

No joke when I first saw this design in a video with Natlan lore, I legitimately thought the video creator was using some random game to represent Natlan.

To say I’m surprised would be a lie considering how I saw this coming even before Sumeru came out; the moment I read in the wiki that Natlan was inspired from precolonial Latin American and some tribes in Africa, I stopped playing Genshin for around a year.

Often, the moment authors start meshing together countries and regions together, it starts to become… murky and harder to execute with proper acknowledgment to the sources of inspiration. Especially since the thing is… these are two continents oceans apart which did not have significant/apparent enough interaction between each other prior to colonialism.

As a mestizo (mixed) Latino, I cannot speak entirely for the various indigenous populations/groups represented within this one region, but the lack of care for skin tone and respect for the cultures it is based off—it’s sad. It’s depressing for me.

This company and many others are using less represented cultures as exotic and fun cosplay.

A fantasy costume party for their pale-skinned, idealized white characters—parading around names which erases real life deities from people’s immediate knowledge and now are replaced with some gacha-ass looking dude with barely a drop of melanin. Now when I search up Ororon, all I get is that dude, which is not fucking good since the name is of a Yoruba deity.

I want people to actually commit to not playing Genshin and other Hoyo games if they really care to boycott. I’ve been discovering the extent of how the other games are just as disgusting as Genshin; it’s not enough to just boycott one game, if you want to get your message across to a company, do it to all their products.

I’ve seen people say to do it, yet go on and still play.

Do it.

Fucking do it if you actually are enraged by the blatant racism in this game and in this fandom.

Those who are bystanders are just as culpable as the ones who perpetuate it.

I will now be changing all my socials if they involve Hoyoverse content; I will no longer interact with Hoyoverse content, whether that be fan-made or official, unless it is discussing this matter or redesigning characters whether that be from Natlan or Sumeru.

I know likely many others won’t do the same; it’s an interest, it’s many people’s favorite game, a comfort. And many people are comfortable—fine—with racism in their interests, as long as it can be sugarcoated and excused, y’know… “it’s not bad because there’s some white people there too in real life!” Yes! But it’s majority brown.

Especially before colonization happened.

[naranjapetrificada]

Random OFMD fan: *is sad about OFMD getting canceled, ends their subscription to Max and signs a petition that takes less than 20 seconds to sign*

Tumblr rando: "where was this energy for Palestine? why aren't you boycotting McDonald's? why do you care more about woobified slavers???

Same OFMD fan: *hasn't been to McDonald's in over a decade; has the capacity to care about more than one thing*

[news4dzhozhar]

[grenade-cephalopod]

Pride month draws to a close, but pride is never over. Keep celebrating. Keep advocating for our queer brothers and sisters in Palestine, Sudan and everywhere else they are not free to be themselves. Keep being yourself, and know that nobody will ever be better at being you. If you're family doesn't accept you, know there is a group of people out there somewhere who will. All you have to do is find them.

[eleni-cherie]

on the one hand I'm incredibly happy that seokjin is finally coming back, I had literally set a countdown for that day (I have a countdown for all of them!). but on the other side I'm deeply sad he's coming back to this label, the company he literally helped building, betraying him and his members by being involved in a huge scandal & throwing them under the bus, spending the money they earn them to finance a zionistic-run sub label that is literally losing them money, going against his morals and own fans anddd that is gonna use his first official schedule, a livestream jin and his fans were looking forward to, to milk money out of his fans. and not only that, but also setting him up for an in-person event that is by a ruffle system to, again, milk money out of fans. + that event involves hugging him which poses a major security risk??

and frankly, I don't want him to return to half his fandom being filled w zionistic company stans who'd rather play along the capitalistic game and give that sht ass mess of a company more money instead of forcing them to protect their fcking artists by boycotting them until they fcking listen.

obviously I want jin out of the military, but I also want him as far away as possible from hybe and frankly also those lunatic "fans".

[acebytaemin]

the fact that skz turned down a chase atlantic collab. i hate to say it but this is my roman empire

[holyjost]

there's this phenomenon i've seen talked about where a product is finally being created for a market that wasn't previously being served, and the first response to it being an expectation of moral perfection, especially when the market in question is marginalized in some way (as women are in general, but especially in the world of sports). the product is held to a higher standard than the counterpart that serves the non-marginalized because people are projecting a sense of morality onto the product that they don't with the counterpart because the counterpart is (wrongfully) seen as neutral or apolitical because it represents the non-marginalized.

i'm not by any means saying everyone should shut up and take what they can get, but the threats of specifically boycotting over things that wouldn't result in any comparable amount of pushback if they happened in the nhl (which can actually afford to withstand a boycott and where changes made by a boycott would have a much bigger impact) is worth examining to me. also i don’t know how productive it is toward making the world a better and more inclusive place. is an approach to punishing one single individual having a net positive benefit when the approach could also harm women's sports at large. sometimes it feels like people just want to have a strong reaction in the moment because it makes them feel like a good person