#arab representation

Just discovered this upcoming Arabian-RPG game called "Luminous Nights" by Iraqi game-developer Yahya Danboos.

The fact that its (mostly) being made by one person is so crazy considering how good it looks and you can tell from Yahya's social media that he's very passionate about videogames and Arab representation, so I highly recommend that everyone check this project out when its available on Steam (especially if you like Kingdom Hearts, which he has cited as the main inspiration for this game.)

For the meanwhile, you can support the creator on Patreon:

This video discusses the role of the game industry in military recruitment and funding, Orientalism, and Anti-Arab sentiment and engages with the military/genocide complex from the perspective of people who work in game development. It does some fantastic coverage.

If you liked my video on Zelda and Orientalism you'll definitely appreciate this.

Where were all these Arab people hiding?

Left pic is his Civilian Form, Right pic is my art aka his Linked Form.

Here’s another one of my Linkers- that being Atif Mannan from Cookie Run Sugar Linkage!

He and his family are wealthy yet are very kind and giving towards those who are less fortunate.

Plus, he hosts parties alongside his fellow Linkers, and every night is a hit!

@professorlehnsherr-almashy @princesssarisa @themousefromfantasyland @lord-antihero @gravedangerahead

@tamisdava2 @faintingheroine

So, as many brazilians, I grew up with telenovelas as the main source of national enternainment.

An interesting characteristic of brazilian telenovelas (specially the ones produced by the channel Rede Globo, the most powerfull TV channel in the country) is that, besides the extra production value that can go to cinematic levels, above the usual budget of other latin american telenovelas or british and US american soap operas, is that they experiment with mixing the escapist love story with discussions of serious real life topics in the side plots: politics, street crime, drugs, mental ilness,domestic violence, sexuality, etc. are themes frequently explored in brazilian telenovelas.

In recent years, there were also international real life topics incorporated to telenovela plots, besides the brazilian reality, including, more recently, two attempts of exploring the Israel x Palestine in love stories between born in imigrant families from those two regions.

One a late night telenovela, the other an evening telenovela.

I would like to present the resume of them here, and how they were received by audiences at the time:

Pérsio and Rebeca (Amor a Vida, 2013-14)

2013's Amor a Vida (Love for Life) included the subplot of the romance between medicine doctors Pérsio (Mouhamed Harfouch), of palestinian origin, and Rebeca (Paula Braum), of jewish origin. The two originally entered in frequent verbal fights before becoming a couple, and when they did, it started as a secret to Rebeca's family, and there was a period they expent broken up because the character of Pérsio revealed that he had a past as a member of a terrorist cell and considered being a bomb man before coming to work in Brazil as a doctor.

But eventually they reunited.

When it camed to reception of this subplot, the average brazilian viewer wasn't much involved because there were already a lot of other subplots to be invested in (particularlly the romance two male character that became the first kiss between two man in a mainstream telenovela), and some leftist groups who were acompanying this story interested in how it would explore this real life conflict were left disapointed, repudiating the reveal of Pérsio as a former terrorist as stereotypical and feeling that it simplified too much the complexity of the real conflict between Israel x Palestine.

Ali and Sara (Órfãos da Terra, 2019)

2019's Órfãos da Terra (Orphans of the Earth) was a telenovela of the 18:00 p.m time spot that experimented in exploring the theme of refugees who were coming in mass to Brazil (particularly from Siria, during the height of the US x Siria warn news) and their descendants. One the plots included inside in this theme was the love story between Ali (also played by Mouhamed Harfouch), the owner of a restaurant, and Sara (Verônica Debom), a customer who learns belly dance with Ali's sister Muna (Lola Fanucci).

Ali was the grandson of the palestinian imigrant Mamede (Flávio Migliaccio), who had lost his home in Gaza during the destruction caused by the Israeli Army.

Sara was the granddaughter of the jewish imigrant Boris (Osmar Prado), daughter of the flower shop owner Eva (Betty Gofman) and sister of Davi (Vitor Thiré), a young woman who was serving in the israeli army due to the encouragement of his grandfather, and against the will of his mother and sister.

The old patriarchs Boris and Mamede were neighbors, and started the story hating each other so much that they wouldn't bear the interactions between their dogs, even less so the romance between their grandchildren.

Sara at first pretended to be a gentile, thinking that Ali would reject her if he knew she was jewish, but that didn't happened: the two kept the relationship strong after she told the truth, and had the support of Sara's mother and Sara's and Ali's siblings to be together.

Despite their grandparents schemes to separate the two and make marry people of shared cultural background (which provided a light hearted comedy), Sara and Ali fortunally got happily married.

The two families ended supporting each other trough sad moments, like Davi's death while serving in the Israeli Army and Mamede's development of Alzheimer's when, and had happy moments like Ali and Sara welcoming twin children.

People of Color

Arabs (das me)

Possibly Muslim? (Idk the character has beef bc of Spain's hatred of the Jews and Muslims in ye old days)

And like anyone that isn't white, Caucasian, Christian, Atheist/non-relegious etc is lottery reduced to this character

I for context am a Lebanese American Muslim so a Arab American Muslim and to see my culture represented through a man that believed women are sub human and thinks of them as just satisfying his disires which is a trope used for Arabs and Muslims which is so wrong and is a horrible stereotype that is used so often that shows Arab/Muslim women as oppressed which as a proud Hijabi is UGHHGH

Also I hate it when men try to write strong female characters and don't even try (Rick Riordan) there's also a trope that makes a huge deal out of infertility and it's so weird

But anyway I just hate it because there's like this weird like white savior complex bc there's a point where the female lead (fl) who is a Italian women is about to be raped by the. Arab-possibly-Muslim-only-person-of-color and the ml (male lead) comes in and saves her and the scene is so weird bc she immediately jumps in his arm after killing the rapist dude

Also I'm not defending the rapist in any way I just don't like seeing my culture represented this way

But yeah that's my rant about Dan brown and white men not being able to write anything other than white men

Sorry for the bad spelling.

It’s already bad enough how MENA people are excluded from movies about the Roman Empire, even though most estimates say that there were more MENA people in the Roman Empire than Europeans (but that’s a rant for another day). Yet when they do make movies about ancient empires or kingdoms in the Middle East, whether it was about Egyptian pharaohs or Biblical stories, they make these whitewashed as fuck movies with a “mysterious” desert aesthetic with exotic looking building and clothes, with absolutely zero Arab/MENA actors/actress.

I'm sick of this, we are portrayed as terrorists and backward-minded people 97% of the time in every single movie and show (and 97% isn’t an exaggerated percentage, studies have literally estimated that we are casted in antagonist roles 97% of the time), but when they have to do movies like Aladdin, Assassin Creed, Prince of Persia, every single movie about Jesus+other Biblical characters and every single movie about ancient Egyptians (including the upcoming Cleopatra movie with G*l Gadot’s Zionist ass) we are suddenly no where to be seen and instead you only get white people with a tan and to appear inclusive, a few PoC who are not even Arab/MENA.