#indigenous west asian

[haykhighland]

By Najwan Darwish, Palestinian Poet

#Najwan Darwish #palestine #Armenia #Palestinian #armenian #west asia #west asian #indigenous west asian #Middle East #Palestinian poetry #palestinian literature #freepalestine #freeartsakh #Artsakh

[veone]

It’s a little odd that there’s always people who aren’t apart of a specific racial/ethnic group giving advice and a lecture on said group in this community.

#I understand the sentiment it not meant from a place of malice or anything buts it’s always from people who look ya know 🤷🏾‍♀️ #y’all create the issue with why white people in this community don’t ever listening to black east/west asian arabic indigenous folks in this #community honestly

[jaygaeze]

#culture #rabari #india #west india #indigenous #persian culture #persian #physiognomy #gujarat #rajasthan #asian culture

[bijoumikhawal]

Sometimes I think about Twitter and feel very very heavy

#Cipher talk #People are such cunts on there #Recently someone stood up and bluntly said hey the Arab conquest happened in North Africa and it was bad #Mind you there's nothing you could immediately see to indicate she's not Arab herself #And immediately there were replies talking about how good and natural conquest is #Mixed in with people threatening to sexually assault her #Very normal place! #And you'll see people ignore this that tweet a bunch about how 'other poc can be colonizers too' bc they think Arab solidarity is more #Important than having principles #Or hell even outright endorse mocking indigenous North Africans and West Asians for wanting a future that's safe

[hesitationss]

i believe palestine will be free with my whole heart. the dutch colonized indonesia for 300 years, indonesians, even those who practice indigenous religion, are still here. west papuans are fighting for their independence from indonesia and american settlers, and they are still here. the invasion and bombings of vietnam, laos, and cambodia lasted for 20 years, and i have met some of the most brilliant asian people descended from there. and that was the first televised war! palestine will be free! from the river to the sea. the indigenous/global south world has always survived, and i believe it will live and flourish in the future (in my lifetime) no matter what.

[zedecksiew]

DECOLONISING D&D

In 2019, after seeing yet another round of alarmist discourse in Xwitter about how Dungeons & Dragons is FULL of COLONIALIST tropes and patterns, and needs to be revised, SCRUBBED of its PROBLEMATIC FILTH---I rage-tweeted this brainfart:

"Decolonising D&D"

I've seen this thread round the community, since. Humza K quotes it in Productive Scab-picking: On Oppressive Themes in Gaming. Prismatic Wasteland quotes it in Apolitical RPGs Don't Exist. Most recently, it was referenced in a 1999AD post about Western TTRPGs (an interesting discussion on its own merit; one that already has a counterpoint from Sandro / Fail Forward.)

If folks are still referring to it five years later, maybe I should give the thread a little more credit? Perhaps the fart miasma has crystalised into something concrete.

In the interest of record / saving this thought from the ephemerality of Xwitter, here is the text in full, properly paragraphed, and somewhat more cleanly expressed:

+++

"DECOLONISING D&D"

Firstly: saying "D&D is colonialist" is similar to saying: "the English language is colonialist".

If your method of decolonising RPGs is to abandon D&D---well, some folks abandon English; they don't want to work in the language of the coloniser. More power to them!

For those who want to continue using the "language" of D&D---

Going forth into the "wild hinterland" (as if this weren't somebody's homeland);

to "seek treasure" (as if this didn't belong to anybody);

and "slay monsters" (monsters to whom?)

Yeah. There's some problematic stuff here, and definitely these aspects should make more people uncomfortable.

But! I think it is an error to "decolonise D&D" by scrubbing such content from the game.

That feels like erasure; like an unwillingness to face history / context; like a way to appease one's own settler guilt.

Do you live in the West? Do you live in any Asian urban metropole? White or Person of Colour(tm)---you are already complicit in colonialist / capitalist (yes, of course they are inextricably linked) behaviour. (I can't speak for urban metropoles elsewhere, but I bet they are similar centres of extraction.)

Removing such patterns from the TTRPGs you play might let you feel better, at your game table. But won't change what you are.

I think it is more truthful and more useful NOT to avert one's eyes from D&D's colonialism.

The fact that going forth into the hinterland to seek treasure and slay monsters is a thing, and fucking fun, tells us valuable things about the shape and psychology of colonialism. Why conquistadors in the past did it; why liberal foreign policy, corporations, and post-colonial societies do it today.

Speaking personally:

I write stuff that evokes / deals with the context I'm in---Southeast Asia. An intrinsic part of that is looking at the ways colonial violence has happened to us---as well as the ways / reasons we now, supposedly free, perpetrate it on others.

A long chain of suffering. Heavy stuff.

I also write for people who want to have fun / kill monsters / pretend to be elves, of course. But for those people who want to consider serious stuff like colonialism: I offer no FIGHT THE POWER righteousness, no good feeling, no answers.

Only discomfort. Because the truth is uncomfortable.

Here's a screenshot of the Author's Note for Lorn Song of the Bachelor:

"Any text inspired by Southeast Asia has to reckon with colonialism ... This text presents a difficult situation; there are no easy solutions. "... If I offered a mechanical incentive for you to fight colonial invaders, you wouldn’t be making a moral decision, but a mercenary one. "The choice you face should echo ... the kind of calculus my grandparents faced."

I stand by that.

Also: might we be more precise and more careful about using the term "decolonising", please?

Here I quote Tuck and Yang's landmark and (sadly) still trenchant "Decolonization is not a metaphor":

"Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies ..."

+++

Further Reading

So this post isn't just me reheating a hot take, here are some touchstone writings from around the TTRPG community about colonialism as a subject and mode of play in games:

+

"Jim Corbett was called upon to hunt down another fifty maneaters over the course of the next 35 years. Together, those tigers had killed over 2000 people, for much the same reasons as the Champawat Tiger - injury, desperation, starvation, and habitat loss. Would you look at that. The root cause was British colonialism."

D&D Doesn't Understand What Monsters Are from Throne of Salt

+

"Another effect of having colonizers in my setting would be giving players the opportunity to drive them away from the islands, their home. This maybe just be for the catharsis. After all, isn’t catharsis a big part of why we play roleplaying games?"

I’m Adding Colonizers To My Setting from Goobernut's Blog

+

"When you have a slime boy and the other characters are a really fat lizard and one's playing Humpty Dumpty, it completely shatters the straight-faced serious authoritarian illusion of race, and replaces it with complete fucking nonsense. I love the idea of proliferating the number and types of "races" into absurdity, to the point where the entire logical structure of it collapses in on itself and race as a category ceases to become coherent or meaningful in any sense."

Interview with Ava Islam - Designer of the RPG Errant from Ava Islam / The Lost Bay

+

"Perhaps most critically, the fundamental basis of power is not land or even money but manpower. That’s what local rulers fight over, and what Chinese commercial networks export, in return for unique island products. It’s what the European colonists really need (even if it’s not what they most desire). There is rich loot to be grabbed in the form of spices, Spanish silver, Indian gold, sea cucumbers (the Chinese love ’em), perfumes, dyes, cloth etc. so there’s ample opportunity for piracy, trade and smuggling, but the key to long-term success – the key to independent survival – is nakedly and unquestionably uniting people."

Counter-colonial Heistcrawl: previous high scores from Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse

+

"They worked their own land—which they dispossessed from American Indians—or became small shop owners or opportunistic gold diggers or bounty hunters or itinerant ranchers. To me, substituting these situations for one ruled by industrial monopoly ignores that the Wild West is a perfect example of how capitalism operates outside of (or prior to) mass industry, instead being composed of self-employers and self-sustainers."

Fantastic Detours - Frontier Scum from Traverse Fantasy / Bones of Contention

+

"... using the Western framing and D&D's baked-in imperialist and capitalist structure to get people earnestly participating in the experience of forming imperial power structures and the early roots of regional capitalism ... The PCs aren't the drifters on the train or the townsfolk watching with apprehension - they're the railroad itself."

An Arrow for the General: Confronting D&D-as-Western in the Kalahari from A Most Majestic Fly Whisk

+++

#colonialism #theory #ttrpgs #d&d #politics #lorn song of the bachelor

[that-odd-puzzle-piece]

Something that Americans (and also other Western people, but especially Americans) need to understand is how much US hegemony affects non americans, and how much power you guys hold over us.

The only problems we talk about are the ones that the west notices, because all of social media, and honestly, all of power, is held by America and the west. We don't talk about genocides that have been happening for centuries and problems like caste that pervade south Asian and the treatment of indigenous populations in different countries because Americans don't talk about it.

The only reason the world is noticing Palestine is because the west decided to take interest, and the only way Palestine will be free and all these problems will be brought into the world's eye is through the west's (and Americans') continued interest.

Look into these problems, talk about these problems. We wear jeans and watch American shows and eat from American food joints. The kind of soft power you guys hold is unimaginable. Use it.

#us #us politics #america #western #palestine #free palestine #caste #india #asia #talk about this #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #free congo #end caste #fuck israel #israel #yemen #i want to blaze this but im so broke #gaza #jerusalem #history #current events #world news #news

[vorthosjay]

Hi Jay. Not wanting to sound mean, but I really think it must be commented and that there's no softer way of doing that: the company's statement of Thunder Junction being an inhabitated plane prior to MoM is not a honest way of capitalizing on a sellable trope without touching its uncomfortable issues. It's even disrespectful. They have done it in a less flagrant way with Kaladesh and both Ixalan iterations, but now they've gotten too far with Thunder Junction. Colonialism is too big an issue to simply being put under the carpet as it never existed and we could just enjoy the sunny part of the history. I really hope Hasbro as a company acknowledges this and changes its way of dealing with the theme. Thanks for letting me pointing this.

Look, you caught me on a bad day, so I'm going to be as polite as possible but let's start with the foundation that this is not a complaint to direct at me. I have no control over any of this. Mark Rosewater exists and takes feedback on Tumblr.

But, let's talk about it, because I've seen some folks take this to extremes.

First off, I've seen a lot of well meaning folks speaking up on behalf of hypothetical indigenous americans, but I'd love to get takes from folks this actually impacts. I'd love for Wizards to post something about their work with cultural consultants, for sure. But the only actual thing I've seen so far is a great story from Magic's first indigenous american author. And when you're speaking on someone else's behalf, you tend to miss things. Like, Kaladesh is not the great representation of south asian culture that you might think when you jumped to it, and it's okay if you didn't know that, but it sort of proves the point that it's very difficult to actually protest on someone else's behalf. And I just haven't heard from anyone who has also mentioned they speak from authority or are impacted by this. That doesn't mean you're wrong, necessarily.

But here's the thing. Thunder Junction isn't history. It takes cues from the American West, sure, but it's a fake world. And sometimes it's okay for a fake world to ignore the bad things that happens in real life and create something more aspirational. Magic does this all the time. Magic doesn't have homophobia, but that isn't really realistic or representative of the real world, is it?

No one, and I mean literally no one, came to me and said that people of color needed to be ostracized and not allowed to work alongside the white people in the demon mob families of New Capenna. That racism was real, it was systemic, and it was violent. But did it need to be tackled in a fantasy crime drama based on america in the 20s? Should it have been? I don't think anyone would have enjoyed it as much. Sometimes it's just fun to play gangster.

Similarly, the colonization and manifest destiny that was the reality of the American West was tragic, but does that need to be our only depiction of indigenous peoples - being colonized? If they were erased completely from the narrative, that would be awful, but can't they just have fun being cool thunder slingers? The Atiin were developed with a consultant, and if you want answers ask Wizards to talk about it.

There's a reason the Oltec were depicted as being sealed off from the Immortal Sun drama that had happened on the surface. To have an aspirational mesoamerican culture that wasn't affected by the Dusk Legion and Azor and all that.

To put it in another perspective, does every period piece featuring black americans need to feature systemic racism to be respectful? Is Bridgerton disrespectful (I mean probably but not for that reason)?

The reason I've framed a lot of this as questions is because I don't necessarily think I know the right answer, especially not for a fantasy card game. I've worked with tribal governments in my emergency management career and spent a week on the Navajo Nation, and talked a lot about perspective on things, and I would not presume to know what the right answer to all of this is.

Edit: to be clear, Could it have been handled better? Probably. I will never deny that. But also it’s a complicated and fraught topic and I’d love to hear from the people wizards contracted who actually know what they’re talking about.

[snowviolettwhite]

I just need to rant about the antisemitism in leftist spaces and the erasure and re-writing of Jewish history and heredity from people who claimed to be for marginalized and oppressed people. Because I have no where to let it out. I feel betrayed by the leftists and libels, like I can no longer trust them or feel safe around them, they claimed to care about me and Jewish people but they lied and are out for violence.

You can be for a free Palestinian without antisemitism. Some people are being disgusting with their hatred for Jewish people and wanting the annihilation of the only Jewish state. You can be against corrupt governments but innocent people shouldn't suffer.

People are using what is happening as an excuse to be vocal about their antisemitism. What is more upsetting is the fact the people who consider themselves goodhearted and for the oppressed being disgusting to Jewish people and refusing to see them as human than the right wing conservatives. Because at least I know they are dangerous and they are not hiding behind fancy words and trying to erase and rewrite Jewish history and identity.

The only reason Jewish people are considered "white" is because for thousands and thousands of years the been forced to leave their homes, forced to convert, be raped or be murdered. Another reason is to erase the historical oppression which has been going on for over three thousand years.

Jewish people have not even been considered white for hundred years and depending on where you live in the world Jewish people are still not considered white. In their legal documents it was literally listed that they were Jewish, not Russian. My parents are not even old, they are only in their early 50s. My family is from Soviet Russia and immigrated to the USA in the 1990s. My parents were not considered white in Russia, they would sometimes experience hate crimes and bullying because of their Jewishness multiple times a day. One of the reasons my parents moved to the United States was because it was one of the safest places for Jewish people. After the collapse of the soviet union the violence and antisemitism was a lot worse.

Your blatant antisemitism in the free Palestinian movement is scaring Jewish people away from it and the from left. Fyi, after Black Americans, Jewish Americas are the largest group to vote democrat and be involve in activism according to statistics and history. People are not calling Black American people or Native American people white or mixed even though Christian Europeans did similar things to those groups as well.

Frankly, I personally feel conflicted when I have to check white in a box because it means European descent, my family has no European ancestry. It is most Middle Eastern, West Asian and North African.

Also, we can talk about how Christian Europeans stole the term Caucasian. The actually Caucasus region is in West Asia and Eastern Europe.

Also I want to state Judaism in a ethnoreligion. People who convert to a different religion can still experience antisemitism. People who have Jewish ancestry but raised as a different religion can still experience antisemitism. Non practicing Jewish people can still experience antisemitism. You can change religion but you can not can your ethic background and your family history.

More than one group of people can be indigenous to a certain place.

Jewish people can not talk about just being Jewish without antisemitic comments, recently saw someone claim an anti-Jewish protest was actually a pro-Palestinian protest despite the the leader of the event literal said it was an anti-Jew protest. A pro Palestinian group wanted to hold a protest at the Holocaust Museum and the antisemitism has been on the rise for years.

My grandparent are Holocaust survivors my grandpa was almost killed by a Nazi in his hometown twice, my grandma almost died from the same thing the killed Anne Frank, I had family that was buried alive.

It has not even been hundred years since the holocaust happened, so stop claiming their is such a thing as Jewish privilege. Jewish people are still being murdered and bombed and all these terrible things for being Jewish.

#jewish history #antisemitism #jewish #leftist antisemitism

[criptochecca]

Sorry but I just find it so INSANE how Israelis insist that they’re indigenous to West Asia but then they’re in a European thing like Eurovision. They always act like the Europeans they are until someone reminds them that they’re not West Asians.

Avi Shlaim, Iraqi Jew historian.

[haykhighland]

Nare Simonyan, displaced Artsakhtsi

Film: "Armenia: The Fall of Nagorno-Karabagh"

Director: Astrig Agopian

#Artsakh #armenia #palestine #indigenous #armenian #free artsakh #free palestine #Middle East #west asia #indigenous west asian #indigenous liberation

[mysteriouspercentage]

happy aapi heritage month, loving and friendly reminders

stop erasing pacific islanders or i'll rip out ur spine

asians outnumber pacific islanders by millions and more often than not this month gives CRUMBS to pacific islanders and it's honestly, transparently anti-indigenous at this point.

pacific islanders are melanesian, micronesian, and polynesian. these identities are not homogenous or interchangeable, but are deeply historically connected.

filipinos are not pacific islander and we are not discussing this further

(i am not pacific islander so if anyone from that community wants to add more friendly reminders onto this post, pls do 💛)

east asians are not the only asians

despite being the face of "asian-ness" in the us, there are actually more countries in asia than south korea, north korea, japan, and china.

celebrate southeast asians !

celebrate south asians !

celebrate west asians !

celebrate central asians !

celebrate north asians !

there is so so much diversity in the pacific islander and asian experiences worldwide, and it's well past time we celebrate all of the facets of our identities

celebrate indigenous asians !

celebrate asians who aren't mixed with white !

celebrate dark-skinned asians !

end the diaspora wars !

we need to stand together in community as we face down the capitalist, imperialist, white supremacist machine. uplift each other, and hold each other accountable, always

#aapi heritage month #aapi #asian #pacific islander #asian american #k thats 5 bye

[fatehbaz]

Just in case, some might enjoy. Had to organize some notes.

These are just some of the newer texts that had been promoted in the past few years at the online home of the American Association of Geographers. At: [https://www.aag.org/new-books-for-geographers/]

Tried to narrow down selections to focus on critical/radical geography; Indigenous, Black, anticolonial, oceanic/archipelagic, carceral, abolition, Latin American geographies; futures and place-making; colonial and imperial imaginaries; emotional ecologies and environmental perception; confinement, escape, mobility; housing/homelessness; literary and musical ecologies.

---

New stuff, early 2024:

A Caribbean Poetics of Spirit (Hannah Regis, University of the West Indies Press, 2024)

Constructing Worlds Otherwise: Societies in Movement and Anticolonial Paths in Latin America (Raúl Zibechi and translator George Ygarza Quispe, AK Press, 2024)

Fluid Geographies: Water, Science, and Settler Colonialism in New Mexico (K. Maria D. Lane, University of Chicago Press, 2024)

Hydrofeminist Thinking With Oceans: Political and Scholarly Possibilities (Tarara Shefer, Vivienne Bozalek, and Nike Romano, Routledge, 2024)

Making the Literary-Geographical World of Sherlock Holmes: The Game Is Afoot (David McLaughlin, University of Chicago Press, 2025)

Mapping Middle-earth: Environmental and Political Narratives in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Cartographies (Anahit Behrooz, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024)

Midlife Geographies: Changing Lifecourses across Generations, Spaces and Time (Aija Lulle, Bristol University Press, 2024)

Society Despite the State: Reimagining Geographies of Order (Anthony Ince and Geronimo Barrera de la Torre, Pluto Press, 2024)

---

New stuff, 2023:

The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (Camilla Hawthorne and Jovan Scott Lewis, Duke University Press, 2023)

Activist Feminist Geographies (Edited by Kate Boyer, Latoya Eaves and Jennifer Fluri, Bristol University Press, 2023)

The Silences of Dispossession: Agrarian Change and Indigenous Politics in Argentina (Mercedes Biocca, Pluto Press, 2023)

The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Dueterte (Vicente L. Rafael, Duke University Press, 2022)

Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908 (İlkay Yılmaz, Syracuse University Press, 2023)

The Practice of Collective Escape (Helen Traill, Bristol University Press, 2023)

Maps of Sorrow: Migration and Music in the Construction of Precolonial AfroAsia (Sumangala Damodaran and Ari Sitas, Columbia University Press, 2023)

---

New stuff, late 2022:

B.H. Roberts, Moral Geography, and the Making of a Modern Racist (Clyde R. Forsberg, Jr.and Phillip Gordon Mackintosh, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022)

Environing Empire: Nature, Infrastructure and the Making of German Southwest Africa (Martin Kalb, Berghahn Books, 2022)

Sentient Ecologies: Xenophobic Imaginaries of Landscape (Edited by Alexandra Coțofană and Hikmet Kuran, Berghahn Books 2022)

Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884–1905 (Matthew Unangst, University of Toronto Press, 2022)

The Geographies of African American Short Fiction (Kenton Rambsy, University of Mississippi Press, 2022)

Knowing Manchuria: Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland (Ruth Rogaski, University of Chicago Press, 2022)

Punishing Places: The Geography of Mass Imprisonment (Jessica T. Simes, University of California Press, 2021)

---

New stuff, early 2022:

Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-fatness as Anti-Blackness (Da’Shaun Harrison, 2021)

Coercive Geographies: Historicizing Mobility, Labor and Confinement (Edited by Johan Heinsen, Martin Bak Jørgensen, and Martin Ottovay Jørgensen, Haymarket Books, 2021)

Confederate Exodus: Social and Environmental Forces in the Migration of U.S. Southerners to Brazil (Alan Marcus, University of Nebraska Press, 2021)

Decolonial Feminisms, Power and Place (Palgrave, 2021)

Krakow: An Ecobiography (Edited by Adam Izdebski & Rafał Szmytka, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021)

Open Hand, Closed Fist: Practices of Undocumented Organizing in a Hostile State (Kathryn Abrams, University of California Press, 2022)

Unsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India (Jessica Namakkal, 2021)

---

New stuff, 2020 and 2021:

Mapping the Amazon: Literary Geography after the Rubber Boom (Amanda Smith, Liverpool University Press, 2021)

Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America (Edited by María del Pilar Blanco and Joanna Page, 2020)

Reconstructing public housing: Liverpool’s hidden history of collective alternatives (Matt Thompson, University of Liverpool Press, 2020)

The (Un)governable City: Productive Failure in the Making of Colonial Delhi, 1858–1911 (Raghav Kishore, 2020)

Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains: Ecology at the Russia-Mongolia Border (Edited by Alex Oehler and Anna Varfolomeeva, 2020)

Urban Mountain Beings: History, Indigeneity, and Geographies of Time in Quito, Ecuador (Kathleen S. Fine-Dare, 2019)

City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763-1856 (Marcus P. Nevius, University of Georgia Press, 2020)

#abolition #ecology

[daenystheedreamer]

what are your asoiaf culture/race headcanons?

ooo im siberian starks truther forever, or just general indigenous arctic circle north. general aesthetics of slav/kievan rus. like kokoshnik ushanka and ryasna are canon to me. harsh, stilted syllables like in russian.

the riverlands is the balkans + ireland to me for sure, cat is so irish to me. i think of like south slav folk costume for them :) lots of ribbons and embroidery and intricate braiding. lilting accent

i like east asian targs :) but also like, they just arent any earthen race to me. hate when people are like "erm they cant be coloured cos they have purple eyes and silver hair?" and its like do white people have purple eyes and silver hair??????

the dornish are a mix of indian subcontinent+west asia+sephardic/mizrahi jewish+palestine+turkish+arab. the melting pot of westeros! like the daynes are jewish to me, and the rhoynar are arab/turk/'moorish'. yronwoods are white latines. sea of dorne/narrow sea evokes the mediterannean :) dornish is described as melodic and drawling, def lots of rolled Rs

stormlands is very german+eastern europe. maybe im jsut thinking of oktoberfest but i always think of them bundled up. lots of headdresses. harsh accent.

vale of arryn is very anglo to me. french/english/swiss/etc. yodelling on the mountains. sweet and sing-song accent.

westerlands is italy to me cos i like thinking of the borgias and lannisters. lannisport gives off SUCH florence/venice vibes.

the reach is again quite meditteranean to me. maybe its the wine? but i hc the tyrells as black, i think the dynamic of "upjumped stewards" compared to the "blue-blooded" hightowers, florents, etc is interesting. its why i also hc the manderlys as black, since they're from the reach :)

iron islands... obviously norse/viking, but i like pasifika headcanons too. i like asha with moko kauae and i just love if the ironborn have cultural tattooing practices. this is lessened by how they do not at all have a pacific climate lol.

#ask #rustwood #just my thoguhts<3

[comradekatara]

Why do you hate omashu being portrayed as largely South Asian based?

I personally liked the change, but I'm curious for what you think :)

i’m not saying it’s a bad thing to portray more south asians in atla — in fact, i think the lack of south asians overall is a glaring oversight in the franchise. that said, for one city to contain not only all of india (already an insane demand), but all of south asia from west to east, and then being like “well we’ve fulfilled our south asian quota!” feels very um. orientalist. and i know that atla is quite literally orientalist and mashes together various cultural influences constantly, and that this is nothing new, but in live action it feels worse because these are real people and it just does not translate well at all. like it’s very clear to me that most of the people working on this show behind the scenes are (east) asian americans and so their portrayal of brown people (whether south asian or indigenous) just feels grossly offensive. but honestly, i was basically fine with it because i loved seeing danny pudi my king and the guy playing jet is straight up one of the most beautiful men ive ever seen in my life (completely wrong vibes for jet, but yknow. that’s another matter) so i was kind of vibing. but then bumi showed up. and his hat is one of the worst things i have ever seen. charles bovary’s hat but make it aladdin. so that’s really the point where i was like okay yeah i can’t do this. maybe all of south asia within the orientalist imagination shouldn’t be crammed into this one city actually.

#twitterpat #asks #natla #I WANT TO BURN BUMIS FUCKING SULTAN HAT TO CINDERS

[transgenderpolls]

#trans #transgender #ftm #mtf #nonbinary #polls #submission #demographics