A NEW GERUDO DISCOURSE HAS HIT THE SECOND TOWER!!!
....Well, hello there. my time to shine i guess.
Nobody is gonna read this, i do not matter in this discussion, especially considering that the discussion is happening mainly on youtube and twitter. BUT. for those that might.
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Skittybitty has released a new video discussing the greudo and orientalism, which i highly recommend.
And then the opinionated nation attacked.
Now is a matter of censorship, politics in my fantasy videogame, "they're not real bro", and "if you're thinking about it this hard, you're the real racist/sexist/pervert". all that fun stuff.
Now, my intention is not really to touch all of that. i want to go to the root of another problem, one that is really at the foundation (in my opinion) of why some people find the Gerudo so problematic, while others think of them like any other fantasy race/species with no strings attached.
....Are the Gerudo hylians (humans) or are they a different species???
(from now own i'l say humans to indicate all the humanoid creatures that i think belong to the same species, like hylians and sheika).
That for me is the fundamental question that everyone that wants to engage in this discourse should answer first.
Skitty at some point in the video makes her stance clear, though with a tone that implies "obviously they're humans", a security that i personally do not share.
To me it's not obvious, it's choice of interpretation that one makes based upon a loose set of lore details even nintendo is unsure what to do with it (i think. i do not remember any esplicit confirmation in the games, but i might be wrong).
Why is not obvious? mainly due to:
how they are portrayed in botw/totk,
Them being only women is the principal issue: it's clear that no thought was given to it and that it was adapted and reinterpretated later on, but with an hollow fundation.
You can make the case of the gerudo being just a different ethinicity of humans as long as you don't factor in how they reproduce, at which point nothing makes sense anymore. You can reason about it with the faint implication of them being a cursed tribe, but they still act more as a separate group of people that thrives on its own, plus it's not how they are presented later on.
If they are another species, this is their distinctive trait and you can work around it, if they are humans, this just makes no sense (as it is presented. i'm not saying that an all-women culture cannot exists, just that it's NOT presented as culture/tradition, but as a natural trait).
In botw/totk they are clearly different from humans in how they are portrayed. They always tower over other humans, they are always built differently, and their faces are always angular in a way that no human has.
You could make the case that they might just be different looking humans; even in real life there are group of people much taller than anyone else, with uncommon (for some) facial features and colors.
Problem is, there is a somewhat wide variety of humans in the games, with colored skintones and varied facial features, but they still are all clearly differentiated from gerudo, so this is an intentional choice, separating the two.
Then the sheika: by the way they are presented, they are functionally humans; they all look the same as hylians and their nature is seemingly the same. Only thing that changes is hair and eye color.
With no other info on them, and judging by how the game proposes them to us, they are humans.
Gerudo and sheika on paper should have a similar presentation in the world, but it's not the case, because one group is seen as an ethinicity, while the other is seen as a species.
That is why i think it's more of a choice of intepretation.
Gerudo should be humans, it would only make sense, but it gets awkward and confusing the more you try to define them as that.
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Now, why do i think this matters more than talking about tropes and stereotypes first; after all an offensive caricature can be offensive regardless of its nature.
Mostly to build a good fundation for talking about solutions, to properly discuss how to change them and to better explain it to those that do not get it.
People that view them as a different species won't view them as humans, they only see the cool design and the distinguishing traits.
Hylians = generic humans (ears don't count, they are human enough).
Sheika = generic humans with cool aesthetic.
Gerudo = fantasy race.
So their line of reasoning would probably be more like:
"of course it doesen't represent real people. it's like dwarves. do you see celitc and scottish people being offended by dwarves? Then why should middle-eastern people be offended by them".
(to be clear, i do not agree with this, but i think this is the wall against which we are throwing ourselves in discussing this).
All this while those who see them as humans and not a different species immediately feel the ick at seeing a group of colored people be reduced to a monolitic culture in the "land of the unfamiliar".
The problem here is that they want to immediatly fix them by portraying them as an accurate human ethnicity without changing the fundamental natural traits that make them not humans.
And thus the clash of heads ensues.
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My personal recommendation, by the authority of wanting to make a full redesign project of the gerudo and twili people while never actually working on that because i'm unfocused as hell (jokes aside, i have no degree nor studies in this matter, this is all a long articulated gut feeling), is to choose what you want them to be before proposing a redesign.
If you want them to be humans, get rid of their unhuman traits, and focus more on culture rather than physical difference.
If you want them to be a fully separate species, then make them more unhuman, with a fully different kind of culture that represent their unique traits somehow.
My personal preference goes more towards different species, simpli because i like the different natural traits, but heavily dislike how they are explained and presented.
In my own design project, what i'd like to do is to make them much more different from hylians and sheika, with many more settlements on the mountains and on the coast, all with different aesthetics and characteristics; for the all-women thing, i was thinking about making them a particular kind of intersex people, where they all look and present like women, but have an actual variety of sexes. Then the uniqueness of someone like Ganondorf would be being the only one with a full beard and no tits uhuh (aesthetically. i also dislike the idea of "the dickborne shall rule us aaaall!", so in my setting it would be more of a conquest of power among their ranks).
