#dragonsweeper

cute simple premise that's also been helping with my brainfog due to all of the little arithmetic and deduction problems...!

it kinda boils down to an exploration game where you try to efficiently expend your health to reveal squares and level up! the win condition is reaching 13 hearts (level ~16?) so you can beat the dragon ofc. attacking/revealing a square with a higher threat level than you have in hearts will kill you, hence you need to solve the board, or make educated guesses, so you can figure out your next move. and you also need to find heart scrolls & xp point items--level ups heal you, but they're not enough on their own to win the game!

I'm not actually good at this but it's free and entertaining even for those of us who can't brain, so people who are better at puzzles should have a good time.

Incredible month. I stepped out of my comfort zone and watched Die Hard on New Year’s to avoid the Reddit allegations. I also perused some anime yaoi on AO3, read someone’s self-insert dating Batman and played a Bejeweled mod. This somehow leaves me with one of the best hit rates this blog has ever seen.

★: Challengers, Speaking in Tongues, Dragonsweeper

So how do we fix it?

Because this issue is one that’s pretty much been ingrained in fandom, there is no easy, quick solution to it.

But I think it can be done. I think the issue is white feminism, particularly white women in the fandom that uphold white feminist values. Especially in regards to fantasy, because the figures they see as empowering (like Galadriel) embody white feminist traits, and they don’t want to denounce those traits because it denounces empowerment.

So I think educating white fans about why their white faves are bad is the first step, while also telling them they can still like these characters, but they need to recognize their faults (as in the racist tropes they fall into). But let’s not pretend that we haven’t been doing this for years, that we haven’t been telling white fans what is racist, only for them to not believe us, or say what and what isn’t racist

So a lot of it has to do with white fans being less racist.

On another side of the coin, I think inclusion of more people of color in fandom can really, really turn the tables. Because now we have more people who actually experience racism talking about racism in fandom. And at this point it’s not whether or not fans will listen to us, it’s more of they have to listen to us because we’re so large in number. And because we’re so large in number and talking about the same thing over and over again, white fans will start to realize that something actually is going on in fandom.

Now again the issue does boil down to majority white fans actually listening, because that’s where the problem lies. I’ve spoken about racism and Tolkien racism so much in the fandom only to find my words on some white woman’s blog being ridiculed because she and her Starbucks gang didn’t agree with me.

They don’t take people of color seriously, at all. I have stories and print screens.

And the thing about the Starbucks gang is they are the “leaders” of the fandom, the leaders of the Tolkien fandom—especially the Silmarillion fandom—and are all  white feminist. White feminist don’t care about people of color. At all. If it’s not for cookie points they don’t care. That’s why their Fingons are black but they don’t give a shit about racism.

So that being said, at this point, unless more people of color start talking about racism in the Tolkien fandom, then things aren’t changing. And because the Tolkien fandom is so racist, I don’t see it happening any time soon. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it’s hard.

So at this point, it’s more about changing how white people, especially white women, view racism, which is also really, really hard.

And yeah I talk about this like it’s just an issue in the Tolkien fandom, but to be fair, all fantasy fandoms have this issue.

@dragonsweeper

Nooo, I was doing so well.. 😭

Guessed wrong and hit the mine.