Discover Top Posts Tagged with #crystallineabyss

I started playing XIV back in June and finally caught up in the MSQ fairly recently, and can I say it's been a blast rereading your Z'ahra comics with context? also feels good (read: bad) to now know why his fur has changed. he needs a Break, preferably with his boy

Ahh yay for catching up! Now you’re all set to join us on the moon >:)c

And yeah he’s taking a nice long relaxing nap with G’waha as we speak, no worries UuU

#destiny answers #crystallineabyss

xion's mech is BADASS!!!!

THANK U!! I love her final boss fight and I love big gundams and (whacks the two concepts together like they’re barbie dolls) hohoHO

#ask #crystallineabyss

Hey, 'nother white bitch here. I just wanted to thank you on all of your insights concerning Xehanort, Kingdom Hearts, and race based topics with it. Maine doesn't do much in the regard of diversity, so hearing your perspective has been eye opening, to say the least. You've definitely affected how I see the game and other media, and I wanted to thank you for it!

I’m definitely happy to provide my perspective!

Kingdom Hearts is a sort of unique property, in that it is a JRPG but one that takes from, is inspired by, and is uniquely intertwined with Western properties and storytelling. A lot of the series is told from a Japanese perspective but blends with classic Western morality tales of light and darkness, good and evil; its major influences, by dint of being a Disney production, are European fairy tales, and as such its supposed to be a sort of aracial globally applicable story that can be appreciated by all audiences, taking place in that Earth adjacent but not really Earth setting one can only call “The World of Disney”.

But media isn’t produced in a vacuum, and it is in turns interesting and distressing to see the intersection between Japanese and Western colorism, the very white landscape of pre renaissance era Disney films (and the preference for films that feature white leads in European or European inspired settings from films that take place during and after the Disney renaissance), and the effects it has on how characters are designed and presented within the game.

There are definitely characters designed with mukokuseki, or “aracial but should be presumed stand ins for the Japanese audience”, in mind (the Destiny trio come to mind, with their Japanese names in a world of otherwise Latin or otherwise Western styled or inspired names), and the clothing of the Wayfinders, Eraqus, and YE and YX are clearly Japanese inspired (making me think the LoD and SaC’s clothing styles are deliberately meant to be the Japanese equivalent in this universe), but just as much of the worldbuilding takes after Western societies, thus giving us the ability to interpret the myriad cast members as not just mukokuseki, but of differing ethnicities in the world of Kingdom Hearts.

With that in mind, it’s hard not to notice things like the darker skinned Xehanort wearing predominately Western styled clothing when not in his trainee days, having a name that is not Japanese like the Destiny trio, and having Western devil motifs in his design and weaponry, and perceive him not as a Japanese man drawn in a mukokuseki styled design but as a deliberately “foreign” element, perhaps a Black man as in my interpretation, or another darker skinned ethnicity, or simply “not typical”. This is why I find the “well, they’re probably all supposed to be Asian anyway” dismissal a bit naive: the world of Kingdom Hearts is predominately Western. We are no longer dealing with just the Japanese perspective, but the Japanese perspective existing alongside a Western animation studio that draws upon Western tradition for a Western audience.

Ergo, it is not only plausible but likely that many of the original characters are supposed to be seen as Westerners a la the rest of the Disney cast (in fact, Nomura outright tells us that the original KH characters should be understood as Disney characters, not Final Fantasy or Square Enix ones), which unfortunately allows colorism to also dive into racism, and more specifically, antiblackness, which is a global phenomenon and not limited to white people.

From there, Ansem SoD and Xehanort onward start to seem like a “Scary Black Man” stereotype. The way the kids in Twilight Town in KH3 automatically defend Ansem the Wise from Ansem SoD despite the latter calling out the former for hurting children, INCLUDING ROXAS, who is the kid they’re looking for, and showing no indication that he is the villain, is hard to chalk up to anything but the kids assuming the blond haired white passing man is the hero who needs saving from Big Black Scary Dude. In KH1, Ansem SoD wasn’t supposed to be an islander like the rest of the gang: he was a foreigner, a ruler from a world modeled after Western styled castles and architecture, and who looked different from the Destiny trio.

He was always supposed to be “the other”. And his otherness made him scary. And his most prominent othering feature was his dark skin. If KH1 was made with a predominately Japanese audience in mind, and that audience was supposed to identify with the Japanese named Destiny trio, then they were supposed to find Ansem, dark skinned differently named Ansem, to be different, Not Japanese, scary.

And that is what stuck out to me as I got older. That’s how a black person playing KH as a series can see the othering of the darker skinned man painful, hitting too close to home at times, even despite him being a villain, perhaps BECAUSE of him being a villain. Disney is already deeply white, though they are trying to branch outside of that mold in modern titles. Japanese culture has issues with colorism that paint dark skin in an undesirable, negative light. There’s layers to this mess on both sides of the ocean that when combined create a confusing tangle of criticism to level at a video game that ostensibly exists in a world where race…isn’t really a thing, despite having European, American, Asian, and African worlds canonically exist within them.

There’s nothing I’d love more than to just enjoy the series without bringing real world issues into them, but unfortunately because I am black and I am aware of these sorts of microaggressions, intentional or unintentional, and that affects the way I consume, interpret, and enjoy the story, I just can’t.

#AND THATS AN ESSAY FOLKS #crystallineabyss

Came for the Kingdom Hearts, stayed for the Good Omens and lovely style you have 🙌

Oh, that makes me happy I was sure I was being annoying with all the Good Omens stuff

#ask game #i don't remember how snake crowley wearing a flower came to be #but it is a thing #crystallineabyss #i don't know how to make it not blurry.....

Are the full merch bundles limited in supplies?

Hello!

Thank you for the ask ♥

No, the only limited bundle was the early bird, the rest have no stock limit :3

Director Sarya.

#ask #answered #crystallineabyss

Oh it great. I have an older iPad Pro - like before this stupid new one - and the disconnect between hand and screen is gone. Procreate is a great program, and like 10 bucks, and has so many realistic brushes and pencil brushes. If you have the money for it, you should get it!

I have the money but I’m unsure I REALLY need it atm, but I’ll keep it in mind ;D

#crystallineabyss

Terra and Isa, 45?

45. Meetingagain after years of not seeing each other

I know they technically never interacted in BBS but they probably saw each other around in RG prior to Everything. And this is not a very happy reunion, sorry Terra

-Don’t reupload/edit/use without proper credit, ask first please-