doodleieedlo

the elf I just hooked up with, taking the lavender and honeysuckle lollipop from their mouth: An infinite scroll... most elfmaidens learn to enchant a scroll to never end before they're a mere 300 years old. It saves on paper.

me: oh see that's just writing, with social media it's really bad, it just leads to people doomscrolling all day

the elf I just hooked up with, spluttering and panicked: The Doomscroll! Be silent human, thou shoulds't not speak the name of that fell parchment

DISCLAIMER: i have only the most surface level of knowledge on orientalism. (you need to look into it as a philosophical context NOT a definition the definition is. kinda an example of the phenomenon lol) i mainly consider it as a schema most white americans have regarding all nonwhite/Othered cultures, especially ones they have not directly experienced. everybody, myself included, should read up on orientalism and look out for it. i think it’s useful and important. and makes you a better writer.

LESS IMPORTANT BUT POSSIBLY MORE RELEVANT DISCLAIMER: i know almost fuckall nothing about UPP. i know even less about this new lui character.

1- the name

according to the websites i looked at about name origins/etymology, lui is MOST COMMONLY associated with japanese and chinese. it exists in other cultures/languages (german*, italian, hawaiian) as either an abbreviation of louis/luigi/etc, or as a phonetic spelling of louis.

when googled, it very prominently links to an article from wikipedia about cantonese dialect changes on chinese surnames. in japanese, it apparently (allegedly, i don’t speak japanese and can’t verify this) means ‘kind’.

2- the orientalism of it all

as i mentioned- orientalism is a specific term used to describe how the west (usa, generally white usa) is defined by what it regards as the east. it creates cultural conglomerates, often by outsider perspectives inferencing-in on things- and that misconstrual can either paint these cultures in a charming light or a savage one. it’s almost universally the savage one. (think about how few depictions we (americans) have of countries that are non-christian and non-white as somewhere neutral with neutral ways of life. noble savages in polynesia? orientalism. backward-thinkers doing cheap labor in india? orientalism. sexualizing/infantilizing the women and demonizing the men of majority-muslim countries? orientalism. this modern set of rose-colored glasses lots of people look at mainstream eastern asian culture (korea/japan/some of china) with? ORIENTALISM. i’m cutting a LOT of nuance here but you get the idea.)

when you look at some of the group’s behavior, media preferences, etc, it’s simple to see that often, the biases they hold colors the story they tell. (don’t shoot me, fandom.) if i understand lui correctly, he’s a grizz npc. grizzly fucking loves that last rosy ideal of east-asian orientalism; and the pod rarely creates and sustains non-white characters who get good cultural rep. that’s a complaint i agree with but am not the most qualified person in this room to speak on the nuances of. go listen to black and brown people, esp women, on this. but with that shortcoming in mind, i think it’s fairly easy to conclude that lui is CALLED lui, instead of louis or louie or whatever, because they all get a boner for the chance to use east asian names. or it’s an abbreviation for luigi and we’ve all been had. who fucking knows.

3- implications & footnotes

while the actual name may or may not be white americans inappropriately using east asian names, i think the fact that 1) everyone was immediately like “that’s a weird fucking name, we’re used to your bullshit” and 2) that i was very easily able to come up with an argument and explanation on how racism that we’ve seen go unchecked on the pod for AGES would have made that choice, is more telling. i do not care if this is all some long con about him secretly being named luigi. i care more about the fact that this mindset of using scraps of other cultures in a hodgepodge for Fun And Profit is so prevalent in jrwi, because DnD’s system encourages it and is founded on it- and the (afaik) cis-white-male-isms of the main 4 have colored how they treat characters of color and women for a LONG time. and still does. and still will!

anyway. hope this all made sense.

i used the kera collective’s essay on orientalism for my touchpoint on this post, it’s easy to comprehend if you want to look into orientalism! edward said is the guy who first came up with the term afaik (and he’s palestinian american!) and i think the base idea of defining the rest of the world relative to your in-group status (often whitness… esp in fandoms… ESP…. in jrwi…) is something everyone could stand to unlearn. get curious about the world and the factors in it that have left marks on your worldviews!