All that is Descriptive somehow turns Prescriptive

I'm not naming specific examples here because I'm a big fan of not getting anon hate but we all know that if you only interact with one installment, statements about the franchise and contact with its fandom are gonna be extremely reductive, but being a person who watched two still puts you in a feedback loop of thinking everything you see in X is a reference to Y and vice-versa, or thinking that these are the only theme/tonal options that exist in a franchise, which is similarly reductive even if you picked the two most tonally dissonant entries, nevermind if you picked direct sequels.

Adding a third point of comparison is the spot where "it is either X or Y" rationalization stops. Even if you have just seen an entire trilogy back-to-back, you now have at least three points of varying development environments, crew situations, writing philosophy and feedback, etc etc, getting you an understanding of the material, and odds are the time spent interacting or searching about it will get you a basic amount of knowledge about the other stuff you haven't touched yet. You can still talk about your experiences beforehand, but this is the point where your information about the everything becomes solid.

I'm not saying you're wrong, obviously, everyone's entitled to your own opinions. In fact, can you please explain why you like it so much? I'm interested to hear your take.

If I can sum it up as simply as possible, it's because it knows what it is and what it wants to be. It wants to be fun, flashy, distinct. Most of all it wants to be a game that celebrates the series it's in.

So from a foundational level, if a story is very clearly written with a clear goal and identity, then IMO it becomes easier and more enjoyable to read and pick at.

A lot of people think the story is one note and tropey, but I counter that with the belief that it's actually really focused. It sets up the conflict and the drama immediately: Sombron is back, you gotta get strong enough to face him and most of all, you got to collect the macguffin rings to get even more power. Along the way you get more rings, get arrogant and reckless because of more power, end up losing a lot because of that attitude, you pick yourself back up again and eventually defeat the major evil after learning from your mistakes.

It's the classic hero's journey, sleek and clean. And because of that simple structure, the inner details and themes then become more apparent and eye-catching.

The simple structure becomes a backdrop for a story about self-discovery and identity, found family, atonement and growth. Alear starts from nothing; knowing nothing and struggling to adjust to the idea of being a person of great importance. They do what they do out of a promise to Lumera, but don't feel as if they embody the idea of what a Divine Dragon should be at multiple steps of their journey.

But that's just it! It's not the title or the lineage alone that makes them divine; hell, the mere fact that they can summon Emblems without them being corrupted is itself just evidence to what they already bring to the world: love, kindness, courage and guidance.

It's why so little time is spent on the reveal of their origins, because at that point, it doesn't matter that they're Sombron's child. They spent 20+ chapters being the Divine Dragon that everyone hoped they would be, because they were just being themselves.

Similarly, take the other main characters for example. Alfred is unabashedly himself, gregarious and kind, and it's symbolic of how Firene as a country is direct and authentic, hence why Brodia and Solm can have peaceful relations with it. Timerra is fun loving and spirited, but also level headed and grounded, symbolizing how Solm is a country that puts up good relations but will always be prepared to take care of itself without relying on anyone else. Alfred and Timerra represent examples of staying true to themselves and how that leads to success, prosperity and good fortune.

Diamant and Ivy, on the other hand, represent how locking parts of yourself away is bad in the long run. Despite disagreeing with his country's militaristic nature, Diamant goes along with it at first anyway, because that's what his dad expects and that's what he knows. He believes that's what he needs to do to be king, and the lesson learned is that he was mistaken; that he should have tried harder to raise his objections to his dad's impulses, and that he lost Morion because he wasn't true to himself.

Ivy is the same. By secluding herself away from the rest of the aristocracy, she became accustomed to being distant from the things happening within, including Hyacinth's descent into fanatacism. By the time she realized how far he fell, it was too late, and she believed she had to simply follow his orders in an attempt to get things back to how they were. Yet again, that was a mistake; she lost her father by not being decisive, by not making her allegiances clearer, sooner. Losing her father and losing Elusia were the consequences of that.

Hell, even Veyle herself is an example of this! By trying to atone early on in the story by taking out the Corrupted and do everything herself, she gets exhausted, making her actual personality prime to be replaced by her warped one. By not reaching out, by denying her nature and her being, by closing herself off, she ended up inadvertently hurting more people in the long run than she would have had she opened up earlier on.

It all loops back to identity and discovery; learning about oneself and your strengths and weaknesses, making bonds with people who support you because of you, not just because of who you are and where you came from, but because of who you choose to be. That messaging extends to the younger royals and their various complexes towards their siblings; it extends to the stewards and retainers; it extends to characters like Yunaka and Seadall. It even extends to the villains! Zephia wanted to have a family and became the kind of person she thought she needed to be to get one; Griss as well, lived as he wanted. Marni turned around on her allegiances because she wanted to. Sombron became a vile tyrant because he thought he needed ultimate power to see the Zero Emblem again. They all died because the harm you inflict is not easily erased by the pain or desires that you harbor.

Yet even still, the desire is there. The drive to be the person you wish to be is there.

And to cap it off, it's why the Emblems exist: to guide people to their respective pinnacles. When they're corrupted, their service is compulsory; they're no longer guides or beings of wisdom, they're tools of destruction. Because power and knowledge can only lead to peace and prosperity in the hands of those who wish to hear the words wisdom and kindness behind them. Alear embodies what a Divine Dragon should be by being themselves, and eventually becomes an Emblem because they wish to do for others what the Emblems did for them. Serve as a guide and someone to look to for inspiration and reassurance towards becoming who they wish to be.

Overall, it's messaging like that-stuff that's so clear and thought through-that really makes Engage great for me. Any problems I can think of (like the mechanics behind the time crystal or even the time travel near the end of the game, or cutscene pacing) are so very miniscule to how well crafted I think the story structure and themes of the game are.

alright so some pretty important background to all this is that we're all talking about the fact that bananas, grown in the global south, are available year-round at extremely low prices all around europe and the USA. it's not really about bananas per so--the banana in this discourse is a synechdoche for all the economic benefits of imperialism.

so how are cheap bananas a result of imperialism? first of all i want to tackle a common and v. silly counterargument: 'oh, these ridiculous communists think it's imperialist for produce to be shipped internationally'. nah. believing that this is the communist objection requires believing in a deeply naive view of international traide. this view goes something like 'well, if honduras has lots of bananas, and people in the usa want bananas and are willing to pay for them, surely everyone wins when the usa buys bananas!'.

there are of course two key errors here and they are both packed into 'honduras has lots of bananas'. for a start, although the bananas are grown in honduras, honduras doesn't really 'have' them, because the plantations are mostly owned by chiquita (formerly known as united fruit) dole, del monte, and other multinationals--when they're not, those multinationals will usually purchase the bananas from honduran growers and conduct the export themselves. and wouldn't you know it, it's those intervening middleman steps--export, import, and retail, where the vast majority of money is made off bananas! so in the process of a banana making its way from honduras to a 7/11, usamerican multinationals make money selling the bananas to usamerican importers who make money selling them to usamerican retailers who make money selling them to usamerican customers.

when chiquita sells a banana to be sold in walmart, a magic trick is being performed: a banana is disappearing from honduras, and yet somehow an american company is paying a second american company for it! this is economic imperialism, the usamerican multinational extracting resources from a nation while simultaneously pocketing the value of those resources.

why does the honduran government allow this? if selling bananas is such a bad deal for the nation, why do they continue to export millions of dollars of banans a year? well, obviously, there's the fact that if they didn't, they would face a coup. the united states is more than willing to intervene and cause mass death and war to protect the profits of its multinationals. but the second, more subtle thing keeping honduras bound to this ridiculously unbalanced relationship is the need for dollars. because the US dollar is the global reserve currency, and the de facto currency of international trade, exporting to the USA is a basic necessity for nations like honduras, guatemala, &c. why is the dollar the global reserve currency? because of usamerican military and economic hegemony, of course. imperialism built upon imperialism!

this is unequal exchange, the neoimperialist terms of international trade that make the 'global economy' a tool of siphoning value and resources from the global south to the imperial core. & this is the second flaw to unravel in 'honduras has a lot of bananas' -- honduras only 'has a lot of bananas' because this global economic hegemony has led to vast unsustainable monoculture banana plantations to dominate the agriculture of honduras. it's long-attested how monoculture growth is unsustainable because it destroys soil and leads to easily-wiped-out-by-infection plants.

so, bananas in the USA are cheap because:

the workers that grow them are barely paid, mistreated, prevented from unionizing, and sometimes murdered

the nations in which the bananas are grown accept brutally unfair trade and tariff terms with the USA because they desperately need a supply of US dollars and so have little position to negotiate

shipping is also much cheaper than it should be because sailors are chronically underpaid and often not paid at all or forced to pay to work (!)

bananas are cheap, in conclusion, because they're produced by underpaid and brutalized workers and then imported on extortionate and unfair terms.

so what, should we all give up bananas? no, and it's a sign of total lack of understanding of socialism as a global movement that all the pearl-clutching usamericans have latched onto the scary communists telling them to stop buying bananas. communism does not care about you as a consumer. individual consumptive choices are not a meaningful arena of political action. the socialist position is not "if there was a socialist reovlution in the usa, we would all stop eating bananas like good little boys", but rather, "if there's a socialist revolution in the countries where bananas are grown, then the availability of bananas in the usa is going to drop, and if you want to be an anti-imperialist in the imperial core you have to accept that".

(this is where the second argument i see about this, 'oh what are you catholic you want me to eat dirt like a monk?' reveals itself as a silly fucking solipsistic misunderstanding)

and again, let's note that the case of the banana can very easily be generalised out to coffee, chocolate, sugar, etc, and that it's not about individual consumptive habits, but about global economic systems. if you are donkey fucking kong and you eat 100 bananas a day i don't care and neither does anyone else. it's about trying to illustrate just one tiny mundane way in which economic imperialism makes the lives of people in the global north more convenient and simpler and so of course there is enormous pushback from people who attach moral value to this and therefore feel like the mean commies are personally calling them evil for eating a nutella or whatever which is frankly pretty tiring. Sad!

Now, you see me writing it!! I'm writing the lesson on Black-coded, non-human characters!! Y'all better go tell your friends and reblog, y'all been asking me forever about it!

This one was a bit hard for me to write. It didn't feel… New. It felt like a regurgitation of everything I'd already discussed. I was honestly confused every time people sent me questions; I thought we all understood how it worked. But I realized: that's not a bad thing! We can consider this an application of everything we've learned so far, because that’s all coding is, is an application!

The Definition

Coding (in media): giving a character or a group certain traits (physical or cultural experiences) that are similar to/that of a real-world specific group, without explicitly saying this fictional group is the real-world group. One may or may not mean to do it in their writing (which is where the opportunity for racist stereotype can leak in).

E.g., “queer-coded characters” gets used a lot on Tumblr; whether accurate or not, it is understood to mean that the blogger sees their/a queer identity portrayed by that character, or that the character was written with ‘queer’ traits in mind. Another example; Darwin Watterson is a goldfish in a world with no humans, but Darwin is Black-coded. The Fishmen in the One Piece Live Action are fantastical creatures, but they are Black-coded (of a very specific type of Black person; even!)

Here is a list of a few characters both canonically and Black-fanonically Black-coded:

When Coding Characters as Black

To keep it simple: if the rules apply when designing and writing a Black character, the same rules apply when designing and writing a Black-coded character! The moment you decided that this nonhuman entity was going to resemble a human group of people, you were obligated to be aware of the cultures and stereotypes of those people!

You can’t have a Black-coded character, emphasize a stereotype of Black people, and then say “oh, well, it’s not actually racist because they’re actually a cat-wolf creature!” Yes, it is. You’re still being racist, and upon noticing or being told, there’s no need to be defensive about it- just acknowledge ‘ah yes, I’ve messed up, I'm sorry for my actions’ and then actively work towards a better design or writing that does not include those things.

Example: Hair

Let’s say you want to draw hair on a fish-like Mer species, and you want them to be Black-coded. It would still be racist to give that Mer-woman pickaninny hair, even if "well they're not really Black!" You could find fancy fish scales or seaweed or something fish related to draw ‘Black hair textures’, so that we understand what it’s visually supposed to represent while still being fantastical. Or a robot! Someone mentioned tubes for locs, and you could do curly wires for twists. It's possible! Get creative!

I’ve been asked numerous times about Black hair on furries. Not that I’m the most educated on furries or furry culture- I am not- but they’re already anthropomorphic animals that talk, have human hobbies and habits, and often have pretty rainbow colors. It should not, then, warrant a complaint of “unrealistic” if you respectfully add Black hairstyles to them.

Example: Species

The point about furries actually brings up another good point. Watch out when you're coding Black characters on animals or animal-like species. Often people will have the “dark-skinned, struggling with balancing their humanity monster” Black/Black-coded, and the “pale skinned monster that somehow understands this battle more than them and can save them from themselves”. This is rooted in racist imagery.

I have mentioned it before in response to an ask, but if the only people you find yourself coding as your ‘monkey/animal/monster/beast’ creations are Black and/or dark-skinned, you are- however intentional it is or isn’t- replicating a racist, dehumanizing pattern in league with King Kong and ‘ravishing the white woman/body’. I’m not inherently ‘rugged and masculine’ as a queer Black woman, thus meant to be pushed into the werewolf role. Black men aren’t beasts that can’t control their violent impulses, thus meant to be pushed into the animalistic role. Why do you think Black bodies being beast-like is sexy? Why do you think we are not physically capable of delicacy? Of gentility?

This doesn’t mean that Black characters can’t be werewolves or those sorts of creatures- but you need to be writing/designing with intent, and that means recognizing when you just ‘thought it looked cool’, and that thought turned out to be a racist belief upon further reflection.

Example: Skin

Let’s say your demon species has dark grey skin because they're rock people or something- yes, the grey skin is because it's a demon species, we recognize that it's not desaturated brown skin. Fine. But God forbid that this grey-skinned ashen group of Black-coded characters are the unequivocal villains? And everyone else that isn’t Black-coded are the ‘good guys’? But ‘it’s okay, because they’re not Black, they’re grey!’? Yes, this is still racism. There’s no getting out of it.

Example: Intelligence

If your Black-coded species is the one that is ‘less cultured’, ‘talks funny’, supposed to be ‘stupid’, or in need of some good (white) character to ‘change their ways and become better people’… Just don't do that. I should not have to say this. Black people are not less intelligent, or ‘more inclined to brawn over brain’, 'more likely to act out of instinct', ‘in need of more education/direction’, or every other reason that was used to justify our enslavement and now, present arrest and imprisonment rates.

Example: Culture

This segues from my last point on intelligence. There’s arguments on coding species that are meant to be "savage" or "inhuman", giving them stereotypical loin cloths or tattered clothes and having them "need to be saved". Now, I'm not informed enough about D&D to make valuable commentary on the existence and history of orcs. However, if you've decided to create an Orc culture, and it's clear that your imagery is taken from Black and/or Indigenous cultures, in addition to the language of savagery and white saviorism itself… That's extremely racist. And if you're thinking "Ice, of course no one would do that in 2024", Yes. Yes, they would. The bar is low, but don't ever assume people can't, don't, and won’t find a way to limbo under it.

Black and Brown people don’t need to be ‘saved’ from our own cultures or ‘introduced’ to anything. We don't need to be 'made better'. If that’s the narrative that you find yourself buying into while you write your story, Black or Black-coded characters, you need to step back and evaluate.

How This Imagery Lasts

Jim Crow Museum- Racist Cartoons and Anti-Black Imagery

This is obviously not everything I could put here as a example, but I wanted to offer a small example of how heinously racist imagery has made its way into the present. From depicting Serena Williams as an overgrown, childish, large-lipped Black woman (and whitewashing Afro-Japanese woman Naomi Osaka into the ideal, victimized blonde white woman), to Lebron James’ Vogue photo (this Black, married man now suddenly slave to the intensity of ball and white women for this cover), to the entirety of the Black Pete festival in the Netherlands.