#pnthsmp

alright, fair enough. here's as comprehensive a breakdown as we can muster. a disclaimer: when we call this outfit Orientalist, we are referring the usage of the term popularized by Edward Said in his book on the same topic; which is to say, a reductive combination of of Asian, Middle Eastern, and generally "non-Western" cultural signifiers used to denote a group as "other" or "exotic".

"that's a Greek pottery pattern": no, it is not. that pattern is pretty clearly visually referencing Xiangyun, a traditional Chinese design motif often used in ceramics. if it is meant to be Greek, it's either very poorly conveying that fact, or someone was severely misled.

the corset itself, pattern aside: …well, it's certainly not Greek either. it does loosely resemble a fabric sash like you'd see in Turkish dress, or a somewhat Western-stylized obi sash, but we'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's just a generic anachronism. technically it could be considered a cummerbund, which does show up in some forms of South Asian formal dress, but we didn't know that until checking the Wikipedia page for it so, again, benefit of the doubt, generic choice but still deeply strange.

the skirt: is not a skirt. there's a seam down the middle indicating they're pants. these specifically -- where the fabric is tighter around the waist, flows out towards the bottom, and then is gathered again at the ankle -- are known as harem pants, and are a Western fashion trend explicitly based on Middle Eastern traditional dress.

the translucent pants fabric: our good friend Loudn has identified this as being very visually similar to muslin fabric, especially as depicted in Bengali dress. worth noting that the particular painting linked there is alternately called Muslim Lady Reclining or Indian Girl with a Hookah, because this is an emblematic example of the equation of two very different cultures under the broad Orientalist "desert" trope.

the cloak/shawl: we're. genuinely having trouble figuring out what this thing is even called (other than being a shawl worn like a stole specifically) but it is definitely not Greek in origin. it seems like Kashmir shawls are often worn similarly, but those are classified based on their weave and country of origin rather than outfit stylings. it kinda resembles the "bag of winds" the Japanese wind god Fūjin carries, which would be a neat nod to Greco-Buddhist syncretism if it wasn't for the literally everything else about this outfit. one friend brought up that it could be a sbai, another says it looks like a pibo, it's worn very similarly to some modern dupatta stylings, it almost seems like it could be a khata if not for those generally not being worn in the first place, oh gods was Greco-Buddhism even much of a thing we are going to have an aneurysm we cannot keep thinking about this. it's nothing. the shawl is nothing. it is a generic amalgamation of a whole swath of different forms of cultural dress, none of which are Greek.

the sleeveless top: another thing we are struggling to trace. the closest we can come to identifying it would be that it looks kind of like a non-crop-top version of the Gerudo Top from the Zelda series, which, if so, yikes, the Gerudo are notoriously an Orientalist stereotype. otherwise we're having a great deal of trouble pinning down where it's coming from because tight sleeveless tops are... somewhat ahistorical. the closest visual match we could find is the sadri, which is not worn as a sleeveless top but instead as a vest and is yet again South Asian instead of Greek.

the open-toed tights: shrugs. open-toed pantyhose exist in modern day. not Orientalist in and of itself, just ahistorical and a deeply strange design choice in general. swagever.

the outfit overall: also bears resemblance to a "belly dancer" sort of outfit. now, there is some historical precedent for Greek culture to have been one of the originators of this style of dress with the existence of the Tsifteteli style being potentially tied back to the older, less well-cited Cordax. it's still questionable, though, because belly dance is also historically used in extremely Orientalist contexts, and also if you google "Tsifteteli dance" you will very quickly run directly into the G-slur referring to the Romani people. yikes.

okay, so how is any of this a problem? well...

Pantheon Scott is for a series based on Classical/Greco-Roman mythology, with a heavy focus on Greek myth specifically. Despite this, his outfit (when not generically anachronistic) consists almost entirely of Asian, Middle Eastern, and Indian design motifs, often in a way that cannot be traced back to any actual form of cultural dress besides generic "exotic" signifiers. Because this outfit consists entirely of these articles of cultural dress used interchangeably, it consists to a view of non-Western cultures as similarly broadly interchangeable. It is reductive, it is completely unjustifiable given the context the server is supposed to take place in, and it is racist. We do not care if it's "based on the version of Aeolus in the Epic musical series." Cool. That's also a racist and Orientalist design. Do better.

Oh, and the real kicker -- Scott has also described his character as sexually promiscuous, an extremely loaded comment considering the way "exotic" Orientalist design tropes are used to similarly denote promiscuity and sexual availability (especially in French Orientalism specifically). Fucking yikes.

In conclusion, what part of Scott's design is Orientalist? All of it. The entire design. Throw it out, get a new one, we literally do not care whose idea this was, fix your shit.

I will say that it's very unlikely that the design will change (unfortunately) seeing as one episode has already been recorded and edited. I could maybe see them changing for ep 2 and then retconning episode 1 hopefully, I pray, but chances aren't looking good :[

I will play devil's advocate for the 'whore' thing and say it's definitely still bad but also unintentional 😭😭 a majority of his characters are already flirty or promiscuous and he seems to have just upped the dial on that. still Bad with a capital b, I do not want to minimize how bad it is, but it is another HOPEFULLY non-intentional thing

you don't have to respond to this at all, I just wanted to drop in with my own thoughts and say, again, thank you for making that post. as a fan of him it's very easy to fully lean into the 'oohhhh he didn't know any better so let's just move on!!' when, no, he may not have known better immediately but he was still, like. racist. he did a racist thing. and that is something that should be addressed by him. so I appreciate you guys for doing so much research and shining light on the subject /genuine

yeah, it's a weird one. Orientalism in particular is extremely baked into a lot of Western cultural signifiers -- that's kind of what the book Said wrote is about -- to the extent where it is often just sort of de facto present unless people are actively willing to push back against it, which often people are not. especially in fandom spaces, people tend to prioritize their own comfort, and white people are especially bad when it comes to this kind of thing (gods, the amount of friends we have had harassed out of MCYT fandom for pointing out issues way milder than this...)

it's a case where, while each individual element in a vacuum can be understood as coming from a seemingly non-racist place, the whole together paints a very ugly picture. it doesn't have to be intentional; it's ingrained cultural bias that it takes active work and effort to unpack and unlearn. we're particularly disgruntled at the moment because of how egregious this specific incident is (Scott does often play characters who are extremely flirty, but the conflation of that behavior with these design tropes is still shitty and could have been avoided), but... whatever. we do not think it's intentional, we do think its unintentional nature is a problem in and of itself. We Live In A Society and all that.

ultimately, we'd rather the issue get fixed than it be addressed as a public controversy and moved on from. people need to be able to confront their own biases and work to undo harm more than they need to manage their own image by remaining purely unproblematic and uncontroversial in the eyes of the public. we do appreciate that we were at least able to help a few people understand some of the baseline issues at play; that is genuinely worth whatever pushback we receive from this, even if things get as nasty as they possibly could.

but Scott's Pantheon SMP design? genuinely Orientalist as fuck, negative definition not vague-also-bad field of study definition, borderline straight up racist, what the FUCK WAS ANYONE THINKING. were they even thinking. how in the fucking hell do you let that design pass. it is actually so bad it is not even remotely funny, it is infuriatingly horrid. PLEASE go back to the drawing board, holy SHIT this is a bad look

pantheon predictions + some rudimentary reasoning. ID in alt text.

didn't give enough credit to the commonly-used Aeolus design, actually, it is very specifically drawing from the aesthetic look of a clown and is meant to evoke a lot of "childlike whimsy" type visuals. the baggy pants in that specific design are likely meant to be a combination of the clown look with a far more generalized "flowy wind" look than the specific pattern used

we think the other big design inspiration miiiiiight have, and please take this with so many grains of salt, been Gear 5 Luffy? the specific cloud motif is replicated a lot more there and it also has the odd wind-sash thing that the Aeolus design doesn't. this design is also meant to evoke whimsy (in a more cartoonish sense) and carefree spirit. this is complete conjecture, but it is an intentionally super good-faith guess since One Piece is ridiculously popular

combining these two designs for a character that "is not young at all" causes a little bit of an issue because it is removing a lot of the previous visual and cultural signifiers that made those designs work. character design is all about context!

in regards to context, diaphanous/translucent muslin fabric is used a lot in Orientalist art as a signifier of seductiveness/promiscuity/exotic appeal. therefore, removing other visual signifiers but adding this specific fabric to the specific pants design would relay that same coding, especially when the character is also referred to as being promiscuous.

this can be done completely on accident and at no point did we attempt to claim it was intentional, just that nobody was able to catch what it was accidentally signifying.

the problem was not the intent behind the linkage of these different images (baggy pants+translucent fabric+promiscuity), but that the link was being made and therefore reinforcing held beliefs about that link that, for lack of better phrasing, was relaying a narrative in which this correlation is seen as a factual representation of SWANA cultures.

combined with a lack of clarity from the previous visual signifiers (and with many other elements being similarly unclear/vague), this led to a design where one of the clearest ideas being conveyed was this particularly Orientalist one.

this was not done on purpose. people do this accidentally all the time. what matters is what people do with it when it is pointed out.

He said he was inspired by fantasy without researching the origins of those tropes, that he's sincerely sorry for using orientalist tropes and that he's going to be reworking the design to do better and lean more into actual greek aesthetic.

If anything this tells me that despite the many people who went about this the wrong way that bringing it up in the end was a good thing. That at least he is receptive to this kind of criticism.

we apologize for the delay on any further elaboration, but we aren't in the mood to play defense, we do want to approach this topic with the nuance and thought it deserves to be treated with, and there is a lot of basic ground we potentially need to cover so we can get people up to speed on the relevant aspects of hundreds of years of academic discourse without them taking an entire college lecture or four first.

we also apologize for promising Chicago citations earlier. Tumblr really does not lend itself to the footnote style we prefer and we may have to resort to in-text citations via MLA. which, cannot stress this enough, genuinely pains us, the citation format for Art History as a topic is Chicago specifically, but we'll adapt one way or another.

design still needs to be changed and ultimately that's a relatively easy fix for a minecraft skin and character art for an extremely popular mcyter, but like. there is a small amount of this that may have been even more accidental and unintentional than we were already very open about presuming it to be in the first place.