Academagia - 2

ETA: Snippet from response2
"We also desire Portraits of differing ethnicities for the Player, and
perhaps this is something we will be able to do in Year 2. It certainly is
a reasonable request."

Putting this in a separate post, because, wanting representation/ to see myself; having to send an email and point out the lack of representation, having to deal with their excuses of; dragons, magic, floating islands, but having nonwhites just wouldn't quite work, but you're asking for it is a 'reasonable request'....

The expectation that I and me and mine should have to BEG and ASK and POINT OUT we deserve to show up?

IS SOMETHING I FUCKING RESENT.

No. fucking. more.

I shouldn't even have sent the first damn email. Or pointed out the Moors and the Renaissance aren't mutually exclusive in the second. I sure as hell ain't pointing out that if someone had to email them to ask 'where are the girls?' and be told 'that's a reasonable request, maybe in year 2' - perhaps they might, maybe could see the problem 'clearer' as relates to humanity and representation.

I don't need to give them my money (especially when they don't seem to fucking want it).

Academagia

Despite my better judgement, I have just sent off an email via the 'contact us' mailto link at Academagia, asking them if they have any response over the fact there are no nonwhite character portraits and I had yet to see any nonwhite NPC character portraits.

But I'm going to say publically right now? That I RESENT having to do so. I resent having to bring up the fact that there are people making games who have forgotten that me and mine exist. I resent having to 'remind' them that I exist. I resent the types of replies others before me have gotten (from other spheres), and which I will more than likely get here, full of dithering and blabbering about 'not seeing colour' and aw shucks, and whatever - if I get a reply back at all.

Something as simple as a character portrait; far less expensive than pervasive character models - and yet, there wasn't one thought that in a world of dragons and magic and magical schools and people being born under stars of destiny - IT JUST MIGHT NOT BE AN ALL WHITE WORLD.

Or there just might be People of Colour, interested in fantasy and games and magic and visual novels who'd appreciate seeing characters like themselves?

The bullshit that the only colour creators and businesses see is green (or whatever colour money is dominant in their living area) is just that; BULLSHIT.

Because clearly, these individuals don't want my money. It's not good enough somehow.

Tell me that's not something to resent; the lack of acknowledgement of my existence as a person, of the history that went into creating me, of my interests and hobbies.

Tell me it's not something to resent, this lack of people who look like my family, my neighbours, my friends, my community, and my ancestors. And as a multiracial individual? I'm speaking of a broad range of brown and black and dark and non white here.

PS: I refuse to spend money on games where I have to do modifying work in order to see a fantasy version of my reality, one that includes me as I am. This isn't about games where you don't get to choose the propagandist so you're making a choice at the start when you buy it to be this or that gender, or this or that ethnicity with this or that set of skills. The background ability for creation in this game is IMMENSE. In fact scouring the forums, it seems the characters (with portraits) are meant to grow and age over a five year period as the game progresses with installments. So much thought. So much detail. They just stopped short of offering up a world with nonwhites in it. Whereas a somewhat similar game? Magical Dairy? Does include PoC, including as a possibility for the PC.

ETA: Snippet from response
"On the other hand, while the City of Mineta is very cosmopolitan, the Renaissance/Reformation setting precludes a lot of long-distance travel and thus the majority are caucasian."

Totally what I expected. I am so. damn. done.

ETA: Snippet from response2
"We also desire Portraits of differing ethnicities for the Player, and
perhaps this is something we will be able to do in Year 2. It certainly is
a reasonable request."


ETA: PS 'non-caucasian ethnicity', doesn't exist. Being caucasian isn't an ethnicity. South East Asians are caucasian, their ethnicity is South East Asian. Straight up, talk about nonwhite, it's whiteness that's the problem. But of course, they won't.

Modelled Behavior (Precis)

I have, strong but incomplete thoughts on 'modeled behavior'. Why it matters, how it contributes to intergenerational trauma, how it's influenced and perpetuated by the media and why the very acknowledgement of it, as a concept and function of healthy human dynamics in broader generalized terms makes so much aversive racism/I didn't know it was racism defensiveness when called out, equal so much BULLSHIT.

There's also something brewing about sexism and other isms being modeled; from where they're being modeled, how they're modeled (and excused) and how that creates self-perpetuating systems of oppression.

But the thoughts aren't complete, because there's so, very much involved, from the dog whistle; children need two married parents/two married heterosexual parents, to gays turn you gay. This thing where somehow it's only ever parents who deviate from the (societally approved) 'norm' modeling behavior, but no one and nothing else is creating a framework for which any and everyone from ages 0-30 picks up concepts on how to handle the world around them.*

But basically? Gay Panic Defense? Modeled. Rape Culture? Modeled. Sexism? Modeled. All those books talking about the commodification and sexualization of girlhood? They're discussing modeling. The doll test? That was about what was modeled.

And there are hazier thoughts about what European, European Descended interference in PoC ways of life, tribal structure, family structure - the degradation, humiliation and subjugation of various peoples was modelling and how coping mechanisms of that were modeled and how striking out past that began to be categorized as mental illness - schizophrenia, how draptamania was recategorized and given a different name.

With a side point (intergral but a little parallel) about how veterans of bullshit horrid childhoods who want to move past and embrace their lives and true self-worth have to deprogram themselves, accept that what was modeled wasn't healthy, so they don't internalize it and stay frozen all their lives (emotionally, mentally) or worse, become an abuser/oppressor.

But like I said, incomplete. Possibly because it all infuriates me so damn much.


_____

*Footnote: The advertising industry hires experts on child psychology to streamline the best models of behavior to put into their products to get children nagging, bugging, throwing tantrums and demanding products. It's behavior they're actively cultivating - the modeling presented in their work. Not just for children, though for me that's the most atrocious, but attacking insecurities to get people to 'buy more stuff' / the shift from promoting the product, to selling a lifestyle, selling fear, selling a sense of not being good enough without their products or the stamp of approval of their brand.