#lenore rants

[localmacguffin]

The most annoying thing in the Elden Ring fandom is probably the people hung up on Radahn vs. Malenia.

My dudes this game is about questionable people. Neither Radahn nor Malenia are 100% good/evil.

Seeing certain people going on and on in the comments section about how Radahn is so much better than Malenia, or how Malenia isn't really that strong, is really starting to grind my gears.

[localmacguffin]

I have mixed feelings on the latest Sumeru teaser.

I'm very interested in the lore implications. I also think the environments are very pretty, and I love the new creatures.

But at the same time all I can think about is how lazy Mihoyo got with Sumeru.

They defaulted to bad stereotypes for SWANA people (desert mercenaries) which are annoying to me, but probably more insulting for the actual SWANA people in this fandom. They made every playable character pale, except for of course, the desert mercenary. Because we can't let dark skin people not be morally ambiguous. They didn't bother to make any clothing culturally accurate and just mishmashed different things together (Nilou being a Persian dancer but wearing an Egyptian belly dancer outfit, Dehya's whole thing, not giving Tighnari the head covering and just making it his hair for some reason, Dori's entire existence, whatever Al-Haitham and Nahida are supposed to be).

And for the environment, it kinda frustrates me? I think that it is possible that Mihoyo's using the Achaemenid Empire (which spanned from India to Egypt) for inspiration. But at the same time, it feels like they felt Persia didn't have enough interesting things and that they could just mash it together with other SWANA countries? Sumeru would be a lot more cohesive if they stuck with one country, and then maybe added Egypt/India inspired areas afterward, like Enkanomiya/Chasm/Dragonspine to Inazuma/Liyue/Mondstadt. But instead they just put whatever they thought looked cool, making determining cultural influence confusing. In the other nations of Teyvat, even with sexualized outfits, fantastical buildings, etc. you could still tell what belonged to which real life culture. But if you asked me to pick out a singular identity for the nation's origins, I couldn't tell you.

(Side note: I know that Mondstadt is a hot mess of European cultures. However given that at least said European countries had similarities in said cultures due to geographical proximity, I think it's not as bad. Also people know Europe is different from country to country. Many people think the Middle East/Africa is just one big blob. Which is not true, as India/Iran/Egypt/etc. all have distinct cultures which can have some similarities but are very, very different. Mihoyo creating Sumeru this way only feeds into this mentality.)

Also given Mihoyo's history of racialized topics, I'm not confident Sumeru's writing won't be a racist mess. The Hilichurls' role as mob enemies, their role in the story, and their inspiration from Native people leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Carole from Honkai Impact has anti-blackness and colorism built into her character. Tsurumi Island, which is based on the indigenous Ainu people of Japan, is portrayed as an ignorant human-sacrificing civlization. I don't trust Mihoyo to tell a story with a strong enough grasp on racial sensitivity.

Anyhow, this isn't to say that if you're a member of these cultures and you're happy with their representation in Genshin you shouldn't be. I'm not SWANA, so anyone from those cultures should have more say in this conversation. I just wanted to vent my frustrations and also reflect the frustrations I've seen other people, especially other BIPOC, people have on this topic.

[singeronthemoon]

Ngl I’ve been thinking about what if I didn’t leave everyone who was fake and compared themselves to me and made me desperate for any sort of validation while also claiming they loved a version of me that didn’t exist.

I mean it was a horrible time but I kinda miss it. Ignoring the pain and scars of that time was easier than actually dealing with it. It was a lot easier to just constantly lie to myself than to change anything.

Doesn’t rlly help that one of those people is back in my life bc of a mutual friend.

[localmacguffin]

Re: The Barbie Movie

I saw the Barbie Movie yesterday and I think people overhyped it. It was mildly entertaining, but I didn't think it had anything super meaningful to say.

In the most surface level way, it talked about feminism and the patriarchy. But it refused to actually engage with the structural inequalities, just lampshade them very obviously. For example, both the mother and daughter talk in what I want to call therapy speech but could also be "I just learned feminism and want to talk about it in perfect textbook form".

This movie feels like it's trying to be satire, but at the same time using the deflection of "it's a joke" to avoid criticism of its message. This is especially obvious with how despite featuring WOC alongside the titular Barbie, nothing about race and how it intersects with misogyny gets addressed. For all the praise for how feminist it is, I didn't really feel it was. It feels like a very white imagining of a feminist story, but even if it was only through a white lens I feel like they could have gone deeper/fleshed it out more. As such there wasn't any emotional core I could really relate to, despite it having all the talking points (literally).

All in all, this movie is very hollow. If I was rating it purely on entertainment value (how much it made me laugh) I would give it a 8/10. If I was rating it on themes or coherency it would get maybe a 5.5/10. I definitely would not see it again. That being said if you turn your brain off I think you could definitely get some enjoyment out of it.

[localmacguffin]

Sumeru really brought out all the racism in this fandom, didn't it.