#which means learning all the intricacies of unspoken human social rules and how to tell quality from expensive trash

[giulolosblackmail]

i wanna vent about orens which means i’m angry about hh so like to start off you have to understand that helix waltz is a refurbished and genre transported helix horizon which was a money grubbing jrpg themed fantasy gatcha cn rpg that happened to be headed by this one guy (Mingjing Yoshikawa) who thought having an actual story would make everything better, and he was right! to an extent! helix horizon did do well enough to get a sequel game, but god was the world building and premise covered up by so much horny fanservice that it was hard to take anything seriously

but how does that relate to orens? i’m so glad you asked! you see, orens were created in the world of helix horizon mostly to check off a bunch of older-than-they-look catgirl boxes to fill more niche kinks for the gatcha pool, and you can see this in other characters in HW too (florna hitting the weirdly prevalent busty blonde nun with glasses and anxiety template), which is why orens are largely stupid, child-like, cutesy characters with cutesy names and manner of speech that all have one defining characteristic, because that is the result of churning out gatcha characters, and while HW did a pretty good job patching over HH to make a functional character driven visual novel/dress up game, they never really took orens seriously enough to make them people

i know that orens do get their own political faction in s2 and there’s moves to give them full citizenship, but it is very much an “in spite of everything” kind of move, like the writers for the game are giving orens rights because it is bad to not take the side of characters they wrote as oppressed minorities, instead of because they’ve shown that orens are people that deserve rights

let me explain, in-game orens are described as humanoid orcs, so we can infer that orens are closer to a type of fantasy monster (not people) than fantasy race (people), but they look and act humanoid enough to coexist with other humanoid races like elves and demons, this means we should expect a lowered intelligence and animal-like instincts/characteristics (ie cat orens napping a lot and fox orens being crafty), but on top of that, orens are also glaringly child-like, which i assume is a holdover from the older-than-they-look-loli trope, the most egregious example of which is motiti

i want to like motiti, i really do, but she is literally the poster child for every negative oren stereotype and the story practically bends around her to allow her to exist in-universe, which is insane because she was created just for helix waltz, every other oren that we’ve met has been a fully grown adult regardless of their cutesy appearance, all of them have adult jobs and responsibilities and get mad about being infantilized by others, so we can assume motiti is an adult, she is never treated like a child by the other orens (not even brala - who immediately tried to take care of nyx (16ish teen) - treats motiti like a child), it’s just magda who does this (magda is canonically bigoted in that she treats all oren like they’re children even after helena called her out on making light of brala’s blatantly romantic/sexual crush on her because she never saw him as an adult), and we have no in-universe explanation for why she’s so fucking stupid, her one goal in life is to wear cute maid dresses. she doesn’t... she doesn’t even want to be a maid... I... she’s not even interested in maid dresses in general, just- she just wears them without knowing anything about fashion or quality or modeling or makeup just-

another great example of infantalizing orens is bacon day, bacon day is an oren holiday where pieces of bacon are tied to trees and roofs with long pieces of string so that they dangle around, enticing orens to pounce on them, in-game giulolo was the only oren that had a problem with this because she thought it was undignified, we later find out that she thought it was undignified for a very childish reason and participates in bacon day happily after replacing bacon on strings with books on strings, i think it really just pisses me off so much because they could have actually taken a stance on how orens perceive themselves and deal with the prejudice they face and how giulolo, who meets a lot of rich merchants and nobles through her job, might have taken issue with an oren tradition that feeds into the perception of orens being no better than dumb animals, it’s just this kind of pervasive attitude of the writers never allowing oren characters to actually be sapient enough to comment on their own circumstance that undermines the entire narrative of orens being oppressed peoples and not just animals who can talk, none of them have the capacity to talk about all the horrific murders committed in broad daylight by humans because orens have no protection under the law, this also happens to elves as well, none of the elf characters will give a solid answer on why they’re so ok with being enslaved to humans despite being intellectually, physically, and magically more developed, the two times an elf suggests that they’re unhappy with their situation get quickly resolved without actually changing anything, and i will forever be mad that nala wasn’t chosen when HH was turned into HW (nala was a bavlenka elf that raged against the prejudice she experienced by physically beating the shit out of anybody that said anything racist about elves in her vicinity, she is blatantly unhappy with the way things are and says so)

bUt It’S a DrEsS uP gAmE, why are you expecting nuanced social criticism from an app where you pay 25 dollars to get a pretty jpg that makes the plot progress, shhhhhhhh, i’m just in love with what could have been

#rant #i understand that motiti is the useless cute mascot character but bru did they have to do her so dirty #like look i can characterize her better #she's a teenage oren who moved to the big human city because she fell in love with the concept of maids #so by sheer fucking luck she got a job as a maid but she fucking sucks at it because she's still growing and has severe dyslexia #severe dyslexia can make you mix up directions and mess with your sense of balance making you very clumsy #which also keeps her illiterate and severely limits her ability to adapt to life in finsel #despite this and how nobody actually tries to help her because most of the staff and everybody in charge of her are all racist and actively #sabatoging her so that she'll get fired and they won't have to deal with her anymore #her goal is to become the best maid ever #not just wear the fucking dress #which means learning all the intricacies of unspoken human social rules and how to tell quality from expensive trash #she idolizes lucilia as the most competent maid in finsel #and chases her around trying to learn from the master and begging lucilia to take her on as an apprentice #which does double work in giving lucilia more screen time outside of her relationship with florna #there was that so fucking hard

[formsofseeing2017spring-blog]

Quit Making it Weird

Ian Jeffery

As anyone knows, human social interaction is quite a tricky subject. Not that it’s confusing or anything to interact with one another, but rather it’s the little details and intricacies of the conversation and gestures that can drastically change the scenario. Power dynamics play a crucial role in any interaction, and when those dynamics are contested or played with at all, the cohesive social dynamic that was, is now no more. Our society is full of preexisting social norms that can be applied to many different situations and contexts, and depending on the looking interaction, can cause issues with the norms and those trying to take part in it. In an environment where a customer must receive some kind of good or service from a service member, the looking interactions play an important role in determining the power dynamic between the two parties, allowing each member to analyze the other they are interacting with, and take part in the slight intricacies of maintaining a normal and professional interaction.

            I’m sure everyone’s had a mother/father figure give them some lecture at some point about how not to look at people, and how not to be a little weirdo in public. But no one really tells you how important the other member of the interaction is going to be. To successfully do anything in public involving another person, you must not only act and look at the person in a social acceptable way, you must also handle responding and reciprocating the appropriate response, which can be a bit of a challenge for a few, as I’m sure some already know. When interacting with another individual and try to understand the person in front of you, you are both using the reliability of one’s visual appearance to set up a cohesive interaction. According To Daniel Segal in ‘Can You Tell A Jew if You See One?’ humans will try to use visual cues to inspect another’s identity, whether that’s reliable or not; “…then for those cases for which visual appearance is a reliable sign or identity, we cannot account for the reliability by invoking this faculty.” In the context of a public and professional environment, If one of those taking part in the looking/interacting skews the situation, provides some excessive or unneeded stimuli, or makes a visible attempt to change the power dynamic, then the other member’s ability to analyze and interpret the conversation/looking is no longer reliable and causes a lapse between the two parties.

            I was interested in the idea of power and the dynamic that is utilized on a daily basis, sometimes unknown to us. There are interactions, conversations and looks that are motivated and driven by one’s power and dominance towards the other, and we aren’t even aware of them because of preexisting social conditions, nor do we fully comprehend how the situation changes when that power is shifted or taken away. On the topic of power dynamics, I wanted to analyze and see the effects in an average workplace. I spent some time studying the sometimes spoken and unspoken rules of interaction from food serviceman, to the customer. With food service, there are rules and scripts for how one behaves and interacts with customers, and how one can behave to reflect the customer and provide a less stressful scenario. I took my time to study the interactions between customer and service member, when the service member was asked to provide excessive eye contact with an exaggerated expression. I wanted to put some strain on the prohibition surrounding excessive staring in a professional and impersonal service environment, and how putting strain on this particular unspoken rule shines a light on the dynamics at work, and how people react to having this unspoken rule violated.

            To study how customers would react to this almost invasive act of looking brought on by employees; I had to look at the normal human interactions that the customers exhibited when dealing with the employees. Those in the industry are obviously under guidelines and rules for what to say and when to say it, so the customer's interactions are usually reflections on how the employee acts, coupled with personality traits the customer portrays.  The member of service will almost always act in a way that shows politeness, and eagerness to serve, while the customer will reflect this and based on their personality and mood of the day, will determine how the interaction goes. A majority of customers will usually not stray too much from the script they run through when trying to get their food, coupled with some slight variations in dialogue from the staff, while some customers did spark conversations or try to make more eye contact and form a bit more of a connection in the short time in the establishment. With fast and casual environment of the restaurant, the dynamic is that of a customer getting the order, so the scripts and interactions usually follow the establishment filling the customers orders in a prompt manner, putting the customer in this position of power throughout their time.

            Upon implementing my test into the system, an immediate shift is noticed. By adding this pressing form of staring and looking into the normal system of interactions, you get a sense of power and dominance that you never could have noticed before. For instance, after having fellow employees implement the staring, the first thing noticed was the customer’s lack of comfort, and showing signs that they were uneasy towards the additional scrutiny from the employee, and in their actions and implied gestures, tried to break this excessive eye contact, and release them from the questioning gaze. Aliyah, a fellow FUSIAN employee, commented, “It’s interesting seeing how necessary it is for customers to feel they are running the show,” while another employee named Graham stated: “It’s uncomfortable breaking the norm. I’d rather just let them feel like they run stuff to avoid all that.” Both noteworthy interactions the two were involved with showed the customer almost squirming in place, trying desperately to either break the tension, or to finish the interaction, as feeling someone was serving you and studying you is rather unnerving. Others would use breaks in the interaction to look around to somewhat confirm with the surrounding customers, in an attempt to readily make sure they are not providing strain on the interaction, and that others can sense that the normal interaction is now no longer viable. One noteworthy interaction was a customer who turned and discussed with a neighbor about how “weird the sushi chick was.” Sara, a day time employee, said, “Seeing how the customer reacts when put on the spot shows how easy it is to cross the line with what is acceptable. It’s fun seeing them get upset like they’ve done something wrong.” While few ever confronted the employee, some were willing to either meet the questioning gaze in spades, or to verbally question the employee and for what reason they have for providing the staring and changing the system up.  Two employees, Jake and Gavin, both had uncomfortable experiences, as both times they implemented the staring to the customer, the customer either countered it or brought attention to it. For Jake, the customer stopped the interaction ask what he was doing to deserve the staring; for he felt like he was no longer someone asking for something from another, but rather that he was being judged and questioned.  For Gavin, the employee simply stared back with the same level of attention. Gavin described it as, “incredibly and painfully awkward.” The customer noticed to have recognized the dominant stare being applied to him, and reflected it, in an attempt to remind who was the server and who was the customer, and to ensure that the customer was not doing anything out of the ordinary, creating a stand off. This varying in reactions among customers shows the range of feelings that a customer can experience when an employee violates the “rules” of a restaurant, and tries to shift power away from the customer, and make them feel they have made a mistake or are under scrutiny.

            Upon studying interactions with the inclusion of the excessive staring, I have learned quite a bit more about interactions in a restaurant environment, as well as the complexities in the power dynamic between people in certain environments. Humans pull all our information with our social interactions from those they are interacting with. Visual cues and information provided allows our subconscious to determine the threat of the person you’re talking to, what their intentions are, and how they are analyzing you. This staring and studying allows you to come to a conclusion about the interaction and the person. As discussed in Staring: How We Look: “…staring is always an interrogative gesture, this empathetic way of expressing our response to others nonetheless varies wildly in meaning…” Customers go into this situation with a perceived sense of how it will go in terms of the server following orders correctly, serving without and attitude, or just making the customer feel like a ‘deserving’ customer. By providing them with an exaggerated look of interest coupled with extended eye contact, you provide a social interaction that is starkly different than what is expected, but also what feels right. When the customer was one the spot, they felt awkward specifically because they were able to recognize the unseen dynamic had been shifted and that the interaction was not going as intended. This is what allowed for the range of reactions to follow, from ignoring, to subtly trying to revert the situation, or to call out the server and attempt to rectify it manually.

            Looking and staring are one of the few ways we as a species has to receive and transfer information, and to analyze a situation as entailed. This endeavor allowed me not only see the factors that can cross the line and change the dynamic, but to also get a sense of how ingrained certain interactions are meant to be in the workplace, and how the customer is predisposed to a position of dominance and power in the interaction. By adding that extra level of scrutiny and analysis in a situation where it’s not called for or needed, the idea of how the situation is meant to go according to each member is shifted. This can open up new possibilities in future interactions, as well as provide some insight on human nature, and our disposition to fall into regulated pattern and to stray from a shift in the dynamics that exist and permeate through human conscience and society. 

Works Cited

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Staring: How We Look. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.

Segal, Daniel A. Judaism: Page 234: Can You Tell a Jew When You See One? 2nd ed. Vol. 48. N.p.: Proquest Research Library, 1999. Print.