#natlan discourse

[chiclete-com-manga]

What the fuck is wrong with the English translation team????? HOW DO YOU MISTRANSLATE A NAME??????

In literally all of the other languages the character's name is Olorum (an afro-brazilian deity/orixá). THE ONLY ONE THAT'S WRITTEN OROROM IS THE ENGLISH ONE 💀💀

[crows-ramble]

Genshins Natlan just came out and piss me off how easy Hoyo can make npc woth diverse body types, skin colors and texured hair but god no they do it to the playbal ones. Worse then alot of them look better with darker skin and texured hair like they where meant to have it but they took it away to make them "prettier". I know China has pretty extreme beaty standers but you really shouldnt make a game based around other culture if refuse to respact how the cutlture or how people look like there.

[k1ttygam3r]

Before anyone asks (considering Genshin is highlighted in my fandom list, meaning it’s a current hyperfixation), yes. I am aware of the Natlan controversy and its egregious colorism. And no, I do not support it in the slightest.

I joined relatively late in the game’s lifespan, joining the fandom around Sumeru’s release. Due to everything concerning that region, I made an oath to never buy anything from the game. To this day, I’ve never went back on my word, and this recent update made me glad I didn’t.

While I can still find enjoyment in the game itself, it’s incredibly disappointing to see the colorism in Natlan. It’s especially disheartening to realize that if they cared enough, this could’ve been actually decent if they abandoned their racist tendencies.

In my opinion, seeing something bad that could’ve been good is heaps worse than seeing something bad that’s always been bad. Thinking about a “what could’ve been” that’s better than the “what is” just hurts me on a whole different level, you know?

Because of this, I’m choosing to stay away from discussions about this particular subject for the sake of my mental well-being.

However, that doesn’t mean that you should simply ignore this situation. This is a problem that has gone on for far too long, and has only gotten worse over time.

But enough of my yapping. I’m white, I’m not of the people that have been hurt by this racism. I don’t think it’s my place to speak of this in any more detail.

If you want more info of how to boycott HoYoVerse, I suggest you take a look at @hyvboycott and especially their pinned post.

Do what you can. Let HYV know that they won’t get away with this.

[nebsisdead]

I made a dumb post in hoyolab mocking the people who are diehard for a company. And said post proceeded to blow up in the worst way possible

https://hoyo.link/80GCFBAL?q=2EL5rnySSjj

Here's a link if you want to watch the fucking chaos. But here are some highlights.

[intcritus]

strong opinions ahead. don't read, if you're not an adult.

this is about natlan. im really happy to see atleast some people of color in natlan. that makes me happy. because despite it all, natlan is based off a myriad of cultures that are predominately people of color. taino, polynesian, all of that is great. sure the skintones can use some work ( a lot ) but the influence of these cultures is prevalent and it's not up for debate about wanting to see representation for the cultures that are being used. im not willing to debate about that, at all. the influence of these cultures, in every nation is strong and yes, some of them are vastly mischaracterized but you don not have the right to tell someone they're wrong for being disappointed by this. we all would like to be represented, but especially people of color.

there's a connection to these cultures, whether in game form or not, that is important to people. whether im latino, black or maori, it feels amazing to see my culture in a game when for so long, i haven't. so let people have that. idk, but natlan is gorgeous and seeing the different tribes, seeing the rich culture that i wish there was more of in games like this is always important. thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[plottwiststudios]

Offer: "Have you thought about tapping into the Chinese market with your game? We have services~"

Me: *Looks at miHoYo , Genshin, Natlan, and the toxic justifications that refuses to say the vile quiet part out loud.*

Me: *Looks at ALL of the character designs in my game* I... I don't think this offer has seen recent Genshin Impact discourse -- or the fact my game hasn't even sold well where diversity is most encouraged...

[anilyan]

Genshin mod tutorial: How to make recolors

Step by step guide to darken the skin color of a character (but it's applicable to other kinds of recolors too)

I wrote this tutorial since I know many people will be interested and jump into modding given the paleness of Natlan characters, so if Mihoyo doesn't fix it, we can fix it ourselves. Modes even show up in most cutscenes, since only very few are pre-rendered.

You can find more resources and people to help you learn about modding, besides talking to modders, in my SFW modding discord server ^^ Invite here

And you can find most of my works free for download here (other works are collabs posted by other people). I am also almost finished with my long Old Mondstadt fic! People are enjoying it a lot but that part of the fandom is niche so it hasn't gotten a lot of support...

And even if you don't join my discord, you can still learn more about modding in this tumblr post.

In summary, mods are PC only, they are not cheats and don't change game files, and consequently never got a single person banned in millions and millions of people using mods in the main game. No reason to fear mods

Here are some convincing pictures

[cryptidsmagick]

If you have the energy to answer, what's your opinion on Natlan? I'd imagine the feelings are complex

Oh dear victim, you have made some mistakes.

Where should I even fucking start.

Full Disclosure: I have kintypes consisting of yumkasaur and a natlan mythic, and after a very long internal debate that multiple people can confirm I shred myself over, choose to work with Wayob. This will be elaborated with the rest of the rant.

Why are they white?

I'm sure you know this has become Quite A Tag relating to Natlan, mainly because we have white passing Hispanics claiming that players of other ethnicities are over exaggerating the white washing.

And this isn't an over generalisation, people keep outright saying "I'm Hispanic and feel represented because [...]" or something similar, to which I respond: We Hispanics are racist shits.

I'm putting up no defense for my people—my mother actively tried to erase my black and indigenous heritage, despite the fact my (father's side) grandfather is literally visibly black and the stories & traditions of the taino people have been passed down on my mother's side.

Why? Because we're the exact same people who throw racial slurs at each other every other day and constantly try to justify it as "tradition" or "culture" or "harmless slang."

Look, between you and me, they really just want to see Americans be so naïve when they get called a gringo and follow up with the most vulgar phrases they can think of as..."compliments." I've seen it happen so many times it's just disgusting.

Cubans, Dominicans, Purto Ricans...I've seen so many Hispanics do it including my own parents. They would genuinely start calling people mulattos in disgust and still justify it as a "racial identifier" when it's the same racist bullshit of forcing people to put down exactly how black they are during Jim Crow laws in the US.

Anyhow, point being, I'm disgusted by how little my own people are putting an effort into defending the culture of the ancestors—the Inca, Aztecs, Taino, and other indigenous of South America/Carribean.

Just because modern day Hispanics have forgotten their culture, or are so Spanish they aren't even related to these tribes, doesn't mean we should replace them all with white-passing individuals. Modern day Hispanics are a diverse people with a wide range of skin tones, and characters based on our tribes should not be fucking white majority.

I'm not just "some mestizo," soy taino, and even if I'm on the cafe con leche end, I still want to see people properly represented.

On the non-hispanic indigenous side of thing, can we talk about the white washing of a Jamaican God? Some people have tried to defend Hoyo over the whole Ororon thing but not only is he one of the weakest characters in lore/meta, but he's paler than my very European friends. (In fact, most Genshin Characters are.) He's a complete disrespect to the deity he's named after.

It's not just white passing indigenous culture being used, but defined black heritage from Jamaica, Africa, Haiti, etc. No individual culture should have the right to say Hoyo isn't appropriating as they're taking from the peoples, not a people.

The darkest character we're going to get from Natlan is Iansan, to which we were expecting some darker characters but Hoyo proceeded to white wash their own characters. Xbalanque is black in all the in-game murals depicting him, but the only interaction we'll ever have of him is possessing a white child as filler text for Mavuika's fan service. Kinich is a light shade of tan in his art, then glows like the surface of the sun in-game.

They've tossed a few black NPCs our way, but there are more black enemies in game (inflated by Natlan) than black, interactable NPCs. A lot of them are vision bearers too.

Varka, for example, is a character from Mondstadt people hoped to be playable, who's been leaked to have a vision and dark shade of tan. But he's also been leaked to use the generic NPC model and will most likely never be playable.

Refusing to represent POCs, for the second time (Sumeru), was something that firmly put me against Natlan when it released.

TL;DR: Natlan whitewashed minority groups by choosing to actively integrate their language and cultures, but making minimal effort to include diverse characters. As of currently, 5 characters are white, 1 is so pale of a tan they're nearly white, 1 is the bare minimum of black and still unreleased.

What is going on with the tribes?

When it was mentioned that the Children of Echoes had dancing as a central part of it, I expected to see traditional dances with cultural meaning. Instead, I hear fucking hip hop. And what are they doing on the stage? Breakdancing.

A lot of people with indigenous ancestry found Hilichurls fascinating due to their obviously tribal dancing and wondered if they had defined social structure back in 2020-2021. Now, we know they're from Khenr'iah and their dances are related to abyss rituals.

These Hilichurls, a human-related enemy with a "true death" animation (instead of disappearing into sand/smoke), are given arguably more accurate tribal dynamics than the "proper tribes" of Natlan.

And I just don't have words for how outright disappointing every other attempt of cultural integration was. The People of Springs (pacific islanders) having surfing but the "they're not lazy" thing being overemphasised to make them look lazy. The Scions of the Canopy and their...biblical references brings out some lovely generational trauma (can we talk about how the seelies went from fairies to fallen angels?). The Masters of Night Wind being a purely shaman/priest/spiritual tribe—that's not how it works, individuals worked as a community with multiple roles. The Flower-Feather Clan being so exaggeratedly warrior based that people are essentially useless as Wingless.

What I'm getting at here is that Hoyo failed to make them actual tribes, and their attempts at traditions were soulless. We partake in Turnfire Night, only for us to have to practice until the actual thing was soulless, and there was no real challenge (despite them repetitively stating there was). We're selected by Elder Tlapo (Claw) to help with weaving scrolls, but not only were half the voicelines barely audible, Hoyo skipped out on opportunities to explain the culture of the Masters of Night Wind, and literally cuts TWO people short as they try to tell us the different versions of the story. We partake in the flight test for the Flower-Feather clan, but the nature of the test itself has no real meaning. In fact, we're given the opportunity to advocate for abolishing it.

These soulless, unresearched attempts at culture incorporation wind up being more appropriation than anything, harming these minority groups the tribes are based on with misrepresentation.

Ancient names are also treated with less value than they're worth, with the Traveler being guaranteed the name before they have noteworthy accomplishments and being granted a high honor despite not earning it in the way dictated by tradition. They could've earned the honor themselves by partaking in the tournament, but were instead handed it. These obsidian slips are a critical part of their culture, and although IRL tribes might gift someone a tribal name, I did not enjoy how it was executed in-game, as the Traveler was only gifted the name for plot armor.

TL;DR: Natlan failed to properly incorporate tribal culture and wound up mostly appropriating it.

Sexualisation of tribal wear?

South American, Caribbean, and Pacific tribes all have minimal traditional wear due to the available materials and climate. So, something like what Mualani wears would be standard. However, proceeding to give every female enemy from every tribe a fucking cowboy hat, boots, and short-shorts is just out right sexualisation. Every's tribe clothing would and should be unique, not a copy/pasted wild west.

Chasca, isn't even an enemy and she's been subject to the same minimalistic cowboy outfit.

Mavuika is wearing a body suit, not tribal wear. To which, is incredibly sexualised for fan service, which they leant on like a crutch. (That bodysuit looks so uncomfortable.)

Male and child-like characters are covered, despite the fact if they were using minimal wear to be accurate, males would also use minimal wear. They're not using this clothing style to be accurate, they're using a "cultural thing" to excuse sexualisation.

They did the same thing with other nations, including those based on Asian culture. Most female Liyue characters wear incredibly sexualised Chinese wear, and in Inazuma, Raiden's kimono was so sexualised they actually had to lengthen her skirt in the cutscene to avoid her bare bottom being distracting to the player.

This has been a long standing problem in Genshin Impact, and after a (mostly) break from it in Fountaine, it's being thrown at players in full force in Natlan.

TL;DR: Hoyo keeps using cultural wear to excuse character sexualisation, and does so exaggeratedly in Natlan by taking advantage of southern indigenous' minimal wear.

The Wayob?

Honestly, the Wayob is perhaps the only thing they might've nailed. The integration of spirits of individual lands, existing as a grand deity, the Great Spirit of This Land. Their portrayal and integration into Natlan's culture was incredibly well done until...

...the Lord of the Night came into the picture. After being colonised and losing most of their culture, what an indigenous person DOES NOT want to hear in reference to their representation is: "joke's on you, angels created the entirety of your culture and the colonists were right."

It was completely unnecessary and, frankly, most lore videos out there fail to acknowledge the confusion of this sudden change of what Seelies are. In Mondstadt, the Seelies are mentioned in their books to be fairies (as their name literally means) who ruled over Teyvat since before Celestia. Then Celestia strode in as the tyrants they are and forced these god-like beings to submit to their authority (and were punished with their memory-less selves when they failed to follow Celestia's rules).

This was a progressive change of the lore, honestly, as in Sumeru, Fountaine, etc the dragon sovereign was introduced as the "true rulers," then we have this colonisation shit being introduced in Natlan (which honestly, Celestia was from the start but they're also canonly evil-ish so...?).

Point and case is, Natlan's separation from Celestia (aside from the Archons, who which, don't follow Celestia's traditions for it) was a distinct feature of it, and suddenly, these angels who predeceased Celestia are, plot twist, suddenly created by Celestia and integrated themselves in Natlan.

So what if they're "fallen angels"? That objectively makes it worse.

When I first interacted with the Wayob I felt connected to my ancestors in a way I hadn't before as I hadn't been lucky enough to be taught my cultural traditions by my mother. I was unfamiliar with most of Dominican traditions, nevertheless Taino ones. It had been incredibly difficult to get a grasp of the Zemi'no especially seeing how my people was nearly driven out of existence, and ironically, the Wayob, a figure from pop culture, was what finally made things click.

The Wayob was the only thing that was right in Natlan and Hoyo ruined it for us.

TL;DR: The complete disregard of the Great Spirit through the integration of christian references (i.e. a supreme god and their angels) takes away from the distinct, unrelated force.

So...

In general, Natlan's just a hot mess. And unfortunately, it's not Hoyo's first, and it won't be the last.

China has incredibly absurd beauty standards that require multiple surgeries and treatments due to how extreme it is to achieve and maintain, and this shows in the game's characters—whiter than white skin, thin waist, small shape for most female characters (the tall ones all wear heels).

These beauty standards don't translate well when portraying other ethnicities as Hoyo applies them to them—resulting in the white washing and colorism. And honestly, I would more accurately describe it as racism as there are multiple characters canonly discriminated by race, and the Traveler themselves does it at times (approaching individuals from Snezhnaya and Khenr'iah with hostility, to which they eventually stop doing with the latter...mostly).

They have made a couple of changes (making it so the eremites disappear into sand rather than having the true death animation) but we are mostly going unheard in our feedback, as we're not their target audience. And to be frank, there are Chinese games with diverse skin tones that are just as successful as Genshin, so they have no real reason besides internalised racism/colourist (which isn't a valid reason).

[welcometoteyvat]

if youre satisfied with this amount of rep i'll be happy for you and if you want vastly more from hoyo especially concerning skin tone i will completely agree with you but if you're non latam/african/indigenous american/pacific islander, i'm side eyeing so hard if you start making excuses for genshin's colorist ass

[asrasmodeus]

Portrayed Cultures = Portrayed in Natlan or Sumeru

[narcoticwriter]

Look folks, I have quite a few issues with Natlan as someone who's ethnicity lends to some of the inspiration, but I also have intrigue for how the story and development might go.

It's the cherry-picking of certain things that I simultaneously appreciate and despise given how they are applied.

From a world-building stance, some people do take aspects from different cultures and places and, if done well, they can do a good job and create something unqiue. However, if none of this is done with care for the sources and is meant to not only stick to a certain expectation, but turns it into something that barely resembles anything from the source and only has the label slapped onto it, then it is not a good and faithful adaptation of such.

The fact that I can see both clashing with each other is both heartbreaking and does not inspire much confidence, but I will watch carefully and give it some time before giving my final opinion on the matter.

And if it really is not that good, then I will simply make something that I like. It's what I've done before, and I will do it again.

[ri4naaa]

i don't play genshin like that anymore but hoyoverse i am sick n tired of having PALE ASS MF CHARACTERS . after all these years somehow kaeya is still your darkest character. do better. include these cultures beyond music, names, and lore!!!

[pinkypastal]

https://www.tumblr.com/zeichannnnn/755317359918645248/they-arent-as-culturally-revolutionary-as-genshin?source=share

OK this is actually pretty interesting, thanks for sharing

But I hope if this tuns out to be true people doint use it as an excuse to shit on people pointing to colorism out, or insist it's only Western white people that are complaining like thay did with sumeru (news flash: it's fucking not, Asian brown here)

It's their cultures, and they have the right to be angry about this and point it out, this can also be understood with the nuance

[oceanatydes]

not looking forward to natlan where they whitewash and completely disrespect another set of cultures like they did with india, the middle east, and north africa in sumeru

[iftheworldimplodesmybad]

I’m just gonna say this. I’m laughing at the genshin fandom rn. I find it futile so many people in this god forsaken fandom thought that they were suddenly going to be ✨beacons of representations✨

Why do you guys expect “ black poc diverse rep” from a Chinese Anime Gatcha Game. From Hoyoverse no less. They are making anime gatcha games for their main audience of Chinese otakus. Not westerners with a moral activist complex. Of course they were not going to care what their western fans think. Because if they listen to the western fans, their main fan base is going to lose interest.

Why do yall expect everyone to be beacons of representation. They should have not bothered with it at all honestly.

And do not come for me with some bs. I said what I had to say.

[anotherferalrat]

Had the weirdest fckin dream where Hoyo was tryna nerf Baizhu and they were like sorry, we know we can do better so Baizhu will be replaced by a different character shortly. But the exact wording was just vague enough that nobody understood whether everyone who had him up to that point would keep him or if he'd deadass be replaced by someone else.

And ofc that started a bunch of discourse and u had ppl frantically tryna get a Baizhu, either for the memories or to trade in his cons for the new character but the thing was, he wasn't up so it was rly just ppl praying for the best.

Then I woke up bc I was like I'm f2p i dont have time for this🫶