Hi, can you tell me what exactly is wrong with RRR? /gen
here is an article written by a writer from the Gond community about the dehumanising portrayal of their community by Rajamouli
It's behind a paywall so i can't read most of it, but what I've gathered from my own viewing of RRR is that the story is basically historical rpf about two real-life revolutionaries who never actually met. One of them was upper caste (don't remember if he was Brahmin or Kshatriya) and the other was Gond. The film is made by an almost entirely upper caste team and the writer and director + both lead actors belong to dominant castes. Rajamouli especially is known for his ultra-hindu epics like the Baahubali movies and Magadheera (all wonderful films) and he is obsessed with coding every single character in this film as a mythological character from the various hindu epics. So Alluri Sitarama becomes the Ram from Ramayana and Komaram Bheem becomes the Bheem from Mahabharat.
This feeds into the forced-hinduisation of indigenous Indian communities. The Gond people are portrayed as stereotypical tribal caricatures. They are shown to be "innocents" who only care about their own community and do not have any real interaction with the rest of the world. Even the way the actor talks about his role is, honestly, very infantilizing (along with the director ofc). Komaram Bheem was a literate man and in the movie, he is shown to instead be an illiterate simpleton who needs an upper caste saviour to "teach" and "educate" him. Even the famous slogan he coined, "jal, jungle, zameen" (the water, the jungles, and the land) is attributed to Alluri Sitarama Raju. Komaram Bheem was also most likely named after a Gond deity and not the Hindu Bheem, so to picturise him exclusively as a Hindu deity is extremely harmful.
The movie also has a problem with whitewashing Non-Hindu and non-UC involvement in the freedom struggle. The most apparent way they do this is through the portrayal of Bheem and the other way is by making it seem like only Hindus (or people they appropriate in that category i.e. Sikh, Gond) were fighting for independence. The end credits song is a hilarious piece of propaganda where they glorify Indian political leaders and leave out all Christian, Muslim, Buddhist etc figures. They even feature, like, Shivaji? Who wasn't even alive when the Independence struggle took place??
But yeah, RRR is a masterfully made but deeply flawed piece of work. I hate how it's being universally praised while almost no one is talking about its really horrible politics.
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I wanna request some more stereo sans if that’s okay, I LOVE HIM THE DESIGN IS SO SCRUNKLY RAAAAAHHHHH
Also hi I love your art✨✨✨
HI HELLO!!!
I gotta say I was surprised to see Stereo in my Asks, but I am SO glad u requested him!!! 🥺💖💖💖
The goofy himself! I missed drawing him sm!!!!!
He's really silly because I don't really have lore for him outside the main Eternal Ashes storyline, and that's a whole can of worms, so no Lore-Dump unfortunately. BUT if u want some Design History lore I'm dropping some beneath the cut!
Okay so, Stereo was one of my first ocs for utmv. Like. I think he was designed right after Ichor (<- my first Sans oc) was. He was part of a Trio, made up of Orchid, Reset, and himself. Currently they're the three longest surviving cast members of Eternal Ashes, but Stereo has gone through very few changes.
Here are his First Reference (left) and Revised Reference (right) from about 2019 and probably 2020 respectively.
The one on the left is so funny to me because, yeag, I used to have an awful style 🫶 but Stereo's design is honestly pretty consistent over the years.
Like the rest of the designs like him, he kinda Grew Up with me as I learned to draw better and as I developed the story he was involved with. He's one of my special blorbos that (while he doesn't have a ton of lore like I usually give my ocs) is always fun for me to draw and revisit!!!
Thanks for the request, Anon!!!! Maybe I can do some more proper scene doodles for him in the near future! (I love drawing him in motion thanks to his clothes/arms)
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SPOILERS but...
There's two things I keep noticing in my playthroughs that would have so much of a bigger impact if the game gave them a bit more time to marinate. Killing Alfira and Astarion's ascension.
You're pretty much guaranteed to murder Alfira before the tiefling party and she's REALLY easy to miss at the grove if you don't know where to look for her and are not the "I must explore every nook and cranny" type of player so her death is just shocking, the element of "Fuck, I really cared about that character" missing. But what if she really stayed at your camp for a few long rests? What if you could chat with her, get to know her a bit more? And only THEN do you wake up covered in blood with her gutted body at your feet. It would mean a lot more story-wise too, make Sceleritas' threats of "You don't want a repeat of what happened with the bard, right?" more impactful. Because in-game right now she was simply a temporary stowaway and Durge can rationalise "well I would never hurt my friends", lulling themself into a false sense of security and an illusion of being in control. With Alfira being able to become their friend before they kill her, the stakes suddenly become much higher. I honestly would have had my heart in my throat every time I made the party long rest when playing good Durge after something like that, just WAITING for something bad to happen. It would make Alfira's death more of an omen than simply just a reveal that there's something seriously wrong with the character you're playing as.
(I'm overall team "there should've been more Urge saving throws/unavoidable bloodshed, but that's just me. You can't deny it feels a bit too easy to be good, though. Right?)
With Astarion's ascension I really did not like how he IMMEDIATELY switches once the ritual is finished. How there are red flags all over from the second he speaks to you for the first time. Magical means or not, people don't work like that. He's too fucking obvious with it to me. From the start you know EXACTLY what you're getting into if you stay with him and I think a more compelling and narratively sound way of going about it would be to not have it be so instantaneous. Astarion did not know what he was getting into when he accepted Cazador's offer, you not knowing either and being convinced that everything he's doing is really out of love not whatever the hell that whole situationship becomes in canon, would really make the circle of abuse theme shine. Have him seem genuine, don't have him press so hard. If his words did not have "I WANT TO OWN YOU" written all over them and his angle was instead not wanting to lose Tav/Durge to their mortality, it would be so much sane to accept the offer, only to have it later become obvious that it was a mistake. And I know that's not the angle the writer was going for, only the "good" ending deserves to tackle heavy themes, ascended ending is for the loveless vampire fetishists, but I still mourn what could have been if they kept with the themes of Astarion's story better, let it play out more instead of the ritual and long rest cutscene being basically the end of it.
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EO3 (partial) lineup - November-December 2022
Peak MAbo is collaborating with your best friend for a(n admittedly unfair) final project (for web development!!!! an elective!!!), saying you would post it, forgetting about it for a year, posting it on Artstation and forgetting about it again.
As always, AC drew the lineart, and I colored. Designs were more of a collaborative effort between the two of us!
Probably should have shared this when the HD collection came out... anyway it's here now!
Some design ramblings under the cut :0! There's a lot i wanna share especially given that we recently did a soft rewrite that departed from the guild system entirely ^^" and EO3's cast was actually one of the first that we had, surprisingly!
Micah is quite clearly alt gladiator 3, but in an entirely different profession. instead of going into the labyrinth, he works in what i imagine would be an analogue to the forge in Tharsis (aka helping people make things busted af). It probably works best for his character, since he was always a gizmo freak even in his first iteration! geomagnetic (or submagnetic, ugh) gizmo is AC's idea!
Micah's brother, Eva, is a very loose spin on zodiac 3, but with a wayyyy lighter colour palette. Admittedly, i did steal a little bit of the spiritmaster's coat from bravely default, but AC managed to spin it back to resembling the original coat that the class had. Eva works as an astronomer, hence the little telescope he always has on him.
Next up we have Eva's protégé, Miri (who was imported from AC's stories)! Theoretically, Miri would be a second zodiac, and, after watching some EO3 speedruns, would probably be really strong in the earlygame when working with Eva in an actual playthrough. AC's design heavily borrows from Patho II's Grace, hence the coat + dress combo.
Following Miri in this lineup would be Noa, her admittedly very lazy but clingy sibling. I think it's apparently here that we didn't have much time to filter what a believable design would be in an EO setting, given that Noa's clothes were translated directly from our designs of them in school attire. It's actually funny how for we diverged from their original portrait (buccaneer 3) to the point that she is literally unrecognizable. Truly a pipeline from good sea boy to j-horror twist character.
Last in the OC section would be Masaru, who recently found work for the Senatus. Admittedly he does have another example of "incongruent time period" clothing (the jacket), though it's a lot more reworkable than Noa. We also made his design a lot less poofy and rugged compared to the original, and I mixed the base and alt color palettes as well to make him less, well, glaringly red. Probably one of the funnier things is that his clothing palette made him blend in more with the likes of Kujura, but given that they work for the same place, it'll probably work out fine.
Now we go onto NPCs, and who better to start than with Flowdia! Admittedly, her art was one of the last ones that we did, hence why her design looks relatively plain (sorry lola). Probably one of the things I would like to add would be more ornate patterns, perhaps of butterflies to tie her closer to Gutrune!
Before we get to the Princess, we gotta get through her bodyguard first! >:0 I honestly don't like Kujura because I answered honestly in his first question, and he said that I was prideful, but AC likes him so he looks really good here. He isn't as rendered here as he is in his portrait, since he was also one of the last characters we made, and I didn't really get to notice that he doesn't have as much value contrast in his clothing as Masaru does. Probably something to think about next time I color him >:0
Next up we have Gutrune!! We decided to make her look more jellyfish-like, while still keeping it a bit uncanny and unsettling. We tried to give her a more traditionally Filipiniana look (mostly on the Maria Clara gown), but we haven't yet made a poncho design that mixes well with butterfly sleeves without looking cluttered. As such, she has a more nightdress-y look here. AC drew in a few tentacles, and I couldn't help but make them look squishy.
Last but not least is Olympia! We wanted to align her appearance more with her background, hence her altered design :0 Having rips of the artbook easily accesible online also helped us flesh out her hair in particular, since we didn't want to just transplant Gutrune's hairstyle onto her.
And that's all of them!!! I'm honestly hoping to draw more EO characters, though Seyfried's design scares me (honestly the reason why I couldn't make a Reversed Emperor comic).
Currently, I've made a lot of progress on the EO4 game, and I'm excited to draw up the three N-turned-PCs + Xiuan >:'0!!! I don't think I can ever get as cool as Morika tho. If you've come this far and aren't into EO, please check out their blog!! Their art is stunning and has come a really long way :")
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