Decoding Dragons

[WoW] That guy in the trailer looks familiar

I, like others, was disappointed in the lack of women in the cinematic. A bit of me thinks is because they can work out the animation of a male orc, but that level of animation of a warrior female orc would be a challenge to get right for the majority of audiences.

However, they did something very deliberate with that trailer. What would have been easier for them would have been reviving the orc and elf that battle in the cinematic for World of Warcraft. Yet they did not chose to resurrect the night druid. Instead they invoked the classic image from the box of Tides of Darkness.

Okay, so the details are somewhat different. The box above is also based on Orcs vs Humans but the naval ‘setting’ of the MoP trailer definitely invokes the pirate-y looks of the above pair. Given what Blizzard have been saying about this expansion being ‘about’ Azerothian conflicts as much as drunk panda bears, this design choice makes very good sense. As much as I would have preferred a kickass orc woman, or even the night elf druid as opposed to the chin-a-licious human male – Blizzard deliberately set out to invoke this particular image. But with less hats.

Which is a shame, because then it would have been Pirates vs Ninjas.

[WoW] That guy in the trailer looks familiar was published on August 17th, 2012, with the tags , , , , , , , under the Games, Warcraft category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.

I am, as they say, excite

There is no polemic today, just a wish to start using the blog more often, in amongst all the hubbub and upheaval of moving to a new job, and a new city. So lets get some things out of my brain and onto the computer screen.

Folkmanis Puppets

While the twittersphere has been extremely enthusiastic about Squishables (and yes they are very cute), I’ve been buying up Folkmanis Puppets for the child of some very dear friends of mine. There is something innately satisfying about sending a Tyrannosaurus Rex to a toddler after they’ve visited the Natural History Museum for the first time. These puppets make fabulous gifts for kids, and you can be as geeky as you like – there are dinosaurs, dragons, bugs, a whole range of cute animals that make great ‘cuddly toys’ or actual puppets.

Folkmanis Tyrannosaurus Rex

A Folkmanis Tyrannosaurus Rex Puppet with a Volcano in the background.

Tardis Ceramic Money Box

This is a classic piece of merchandise and I’m really glad Zeon have brought out a new version of the classic ceramic tardis money box. I’m a little worried that my room will get a little too Doctor Who themed, but the police box look is so classic, and I really do need to start saving some pennies so this would be the perfect excuse.

Doctor Who Tardis

A ceramic money box in the shape of Moffat-era Tardis

Alternatively it will be a perfect present for some Doctor Who loving friend in the future, seeing as I could start saving by NOT spending £16 on this item. I’m still excited by it though!

I am very excited about the Dreamblood Duology

I am very much spoiled for choice when it comes to books at the moment. Apart from a metric ton of books for study purposes, I’ve also recently finished The Killing Moon by NK Jemisin. This is a fabulous book because the author does not adhere to the ‘European medieval’ style of fantasy. While there is sexism, of a type, and sexual violence in the books she has written in a way that takes into the account the true impact of sexuality, of violence, of the competing natures of cultures and religions where one might hold dominance.

For me that’s a huge part of why it’s important to raise intersectional issues – the task is never about eradicating problematic things from fiction altogether, but about making authors aware of the impact of their work, and getting a little sensitivity towards the wider nuances and realities. Not that NK Jemisin needs that awareness, she already has it in bucketloads, but I think the majority of SF writers could learn a lot by reading her work. While a lot of George RR Martin’s work does perpetuate seriously racist fantasy tropes, and he is guilty of using rape far to often to illustrate how brutish or ‘gritty’ his world is, the women that populate his world are some of the most interesting the SF/F world has to offer simply because he really does take into account the gendered way the characters are treated and grow up. For me, I feel that it’s that ability to regard the women as real characters in their own right and not just companions to male protagonists that makes the books interesting at all. If he didn’t, the seedy nature of what happens to a lot of the female characters would render the books even more unpalatable. (And I should note that many feminist readers have serious issues with GRRM, I am amongst them I just happen to still love the characters.)

Anyway, back to NK Jemisin. The reason I am excited is because The Killing Moon is the first book in the Dreamblood Duology, and the second book is due to be released in June. I don’t know who decided this, but I adore the idea of releasing two parts of a Duology so close together.  Is this a new approach in the publishing world? I don’t particularly care if it’s new, but I shall look for it again. The second part of the Duology is called The Shadowed Sun. I highly recommend The Killing Moon in the meantime, and you can read sample chapters from both books up at her website.

Beta would have me excited

Guild Wars 2 owns my soul at the moment, but ArenaNET seems to be magically scheduling Beta Weekend Events whenever I am busy. I can’t wait to get stuck into Tyria, but at the rate I’m going I’m going to be virtually unspoiled when release date finally rolls around. Every time I see some Charr art flash up on Tumblr I get excited all over again, and I’m actually looking forward to possibly roleplaying again. It isn’t a Jesus MMO, but it will be FUN exploring.

The Secret World I am still on the fence about. It’ll really come down to whether I feel I can justify another box cost and another subscription. Guild Wars 2 is already purchased so I can legitimately get excited about it, without worrying that finances won’t work out when release date rolls around.

Mists of Pandaria is…quietly exciting me again. For all that I’m not playing now, I can see myself picking up the expansion and pootling around with a Pandarian Shadow Priest, and that Dwarf warlock I’ve been promising myself since reading a very enthusiastic post by Cynwise. That said the ‘world’ hasn’t really excited me. What got me interested again was playing my Shadow Priest, so my interest could be extremely short lived. I’m not playing the beta, and am unlikely to.

This is just the tip of the iceberg lettuce

There are many things that have me excited, and no the least is being able to participate in geeky events and meetups in London, now that I’ll actually be living there. I won’t promise more posts, but more ideas than ever are bubbling away in draft form. One day I might even publish them.

 

I am, as they say, excite was published on May 30th, 2012, with the tags , , , , , , , , , , , , under the Meta-blog category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

[Warcraft] From Pygmy to Sherpa

This is a difficult post. Not because it’s personal for me, but I feel like someone should say something. The casual cultural appropriation that Blizzard continues to practise is tiring, dated, and makes me very uneasy about Mists of Pandaria. I am western european and I am white. I don’t feel comfortable pointing this out, as it is not my culture that Mists of Pandaria is appropriating in a disneyfied orientalist fashion.

Think back to the pygmies

In Cataclysm we saw the introduction of the Pygmy model. A brown-skinned race depicted as savage – supposedly based on heavy metal characters, but in actuality echoing the colonialist stereotype of the peoples of North Africa. The very name taken from real cultures in Africa. During the course of questing through Uldum, players would kill and cage the pygmies, hit them with mallots etc. WoW Insider did a great post-mortem of Cataclysm, and I’m going to quote from them here

The things that disgusted me about Uldum don’t end there, either. Uldum is what, to me, solidified the pygmy race is a racist caricature. I didn’t mind them in the goblin starting area. They were a little weird, but they fit exactly what Blizzard described them as; they’re modeled after classic rock roadies. Their tribe is even called the Oomlot Tribe, which if you haven’t figured it out, is a nod to the umlaut. They fit that in the goblin starting zone. In Uldum, that goes out the window. Blizzard took this thing that was already racially charged and, instead of taking the high road and doing something cool with them, stayed right down there with everybody’s worst expectations and made them a really insensitive thing.

Now considering that the orcs, trolls, goblins and tauren are codified as people of colour (as opposed to the very westernised cultures of the humans and dwarves particularly) Blizzard’s track record on sensitivity to racial issues and cultural appropriation is already bad. I’ve seen posts on various forums from Native Americans lamenting and wincing at the broad strokes used to define the Tauren. Sadly I’ve not seen any Chinese (or asian) reactions to Mists of Pandaria, only ‘my friend is ____’ type comments from westerners.

That said – it is Warcraft and I’m not surprised or rending my clothes over the continued lack of subtlety on the grand scale of things. Pandaria fits in with Thunderbluff. There are many talented artists, animators and writers working at Blizzard and they continue to do grand work within the schemes laid out for them by the needs of the game, the theme and the overarching story. Much of the artwork for Mists is breathtaking, and I do think they’ll tell some interesting stories.

From Pygmies to Sherpa

Well, now. Sherpa. One of the latest updates at WoWhead has included a character model codenamed ‘sherpa’. Take a look at him on wowhead, or just click the image below for a bigger one.

 

Well. First of all there are the Sherpa People, of the Kingdom of Nepal. The stereotypes surrounding this group of people in general are relatively benign – they have some renown for physical superiority. The term ‘sherpa’ is also often applied to local mountain/climbing guides of other ethnicities. The image of the western holiday-maker or explorer surrounded by locals carrying their belongings is the image that the above model invokes. As the model uses the pygmy model, this makes me distinctly uncomfortable and I’m not at all of the mind that this was in any way appropriate for Blizzard to include. Please note that I’m not certain if ‘Sherpa’ is simply a code name or the actual model name, we’ll have to wait until later to find out.

They have made an efford to make the model less humanoid via the skin texture and fingers, but I’m really not convinced that it’s enough. They could easily have done something different to fill this NPC niche. It makes me wonder if we’ll see more development of the in-game pygmy race in lore, or if they will forever remain a one-off joke, based on colonialist views of people that are ‘other’ to the western experience. Including non-western cultures in a nuanced, imaginative and sensitive fashion is a good thing, but I don’t think Blizzard have managed that here.

This isn’t about racial slurs

I’m not saying that ‘pygmy’ or ‘sherpa’ are offensive terms in and of themselves. They are perfectly legitimate, correct terms for two peoples. Blizzard hasn’t been offensive by using those terms, but in the way they are applied and the characters depicted. With regards to the Sherpa ‘model’, perhaps this is just temporary name and the NPC will appear with a more appropriate name. I hope so, but the ‘sherpa’ model is not ranked with humanoids which suggests that, like the pygmies, they’ll be seen as sub-human and subservient, echoing those colonialist attitudes that took the Oomlot tribe of the Lost Isles from heavy metal to racially charged by placing the npcs in an environment that invokes the stereotypes. I have no idea if any of the Sherpa people play Warcraft, or even care about stereotypes in a video game, but it’s indicative of a larger problem within world building.

Benign but ignorant

It’s all packaged up as entertainment, but it’s a bit like reducing the British to tea, crumpets, the Queen and Sherlock Holmes. Except it isn’t at all. This is mostly western entertainment, devised for westerners. Occidentalism, that is the negative stereotypes of westerners, doesn’t really have the same power in games developed by westerners for westerners. I really think Blizzard needs to sit down and think about it’s continued use of cultural shorthand in world building and culture creation.  Non-western (and non-white coded) cultures and NPCs don’t have to be the sole province of anthropromorphic races or secondary NPCs, or even enemies. They don’t have to be coded as exotic, or other.

 

 

[Warcraft] From Pygmy to Sherpa was published on March 26th, 2012, with the tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , under the Analysis, Social Activism, Warcraft category. There are currently 18 comments on this article so far.