This is a grassroots bundle by indie devs who want to help Palestinians.
All profit from this bundle will be donated to the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency. The UNRWA has provided food assistance for over
one million Palestinians, and continues to do so in the territories
with heavy destruction. They also provide emergency mental and physical
health protection for those in the region. https://www.unrwa.org/gaza-emergency
Indie games are unique in that they can tell stories not seen in AAA
or other games. We pour our life experiences into our games and share a
piece of ourselves with the world. Palestinian game developers are no
different in this aspect, but have the added challenges of limited
access to basic services, like clean water, electricity, medical care,
and food security. They live under Israeli authority that discriminates
and subjugates Palestinians to the point of persecution and apartheid,
simply for being Palestinian. Furthermore, they develop games without
all the resources that come with being in a western hub for game
development.
Palestinian game developer Rasheed Abueideh did exactly that when he
made Liyla and the Shadows of War, which tells a story of a little girl
who lives in Gaza during the 2014 war, in which 30% of civilian
casualties were children. Liyla and the Shadows of War was showcased at
IndieCade and A MAZE and earned numerous award nominations, including a
win in Excellence in Storytelling at the International Mobile Gaming
Awards Middle East/North Africa.
This bundle is pay-what-you-want (above $5 U.S. dollars) for Liyla
and the Shadows of War, and you will receive hundreds of additional
games, assets, and soundtracks graciously donated by game developers and
media creators around the world for free. The bundle will run through
Friday, June 11th. Together, we can raise funds for UNRWA for food and
medical assistance for Palestinians AND highlight a game developer who
is directly affected by the cause we are rallying behind.
Anyway this Twitter thread by NK Jemisin is all I care about
[id: a twitter thread by N. K. Jemisin @ nkjemisin.
“A late-afternoon revision-mode thought. People ask me sometimes why I’m so *blatant* re racism and other bigotries, in my fiction. Wouldn’t a more subtle approach work?
Answer: No. A more subtle approach wouldn’t work.
SFF does subtle coverage of bigotry all the time, actually. Allegories all over the place, especially in secondary worlds. And probably because of that, readers who are fluent in SFF are used to separating real-world bigotry from its fantastic (or futuristic) counterpart.
Which is precisely how we ended up with a genre that, for most of my life, thought of itself as anti-racist. Look at all the allegories! Meanwhile no black characters. Few writers, editors, etc, of color. Open bigots everywhere.
Allegory does not reinforce reality. It obscures it.
That is, allegory allows readers who are uncomfortable with a topic to engage with that topic in a more comfortable space – away from reality. Scared of black people? Maybe you’ll empathize with these green people on Mars. Freaked out by the mentally ill? Make ‘em psychic.
And as a first step in desensitization, for people who’ve developed a pathological level of discomfort – which our racist, classist, sexist etc society encourages – that’s great! Except… most people stop there. Pat themselves on the back for coming so far. Go no farther.
Like, it’s awesome that you also think Dragon Age 2, a game about a penniless refugee who beomces a heroine, is the best game writing out there! Me, too! But you voted Trump or Brexit because fuck refugees/immigrants?
[A photo of a cat staring at the camera intensely]
But because it was the Done Thing for so long, allegorical engagement became standard in the genre… obscuring the reality that SFF had become nearly as old, white and male as a GOP convention, and just as defensive re its privilege. Overt engagement was, is, treated as gauche.
This isn’t just a genre thing. American society *loves* to pull this shit. Cf. Our media’s endless list of words to use instead of racism – racial tension, race-based bias, etc. Can’t say racism! That’s too far. How uncivil.
Reminder: calls for civility reinforce the status quo. They are a way of saying “Mm yeah you can mention X, but don’t you dare press for actual change!” Which *is* what anyone who mentions (say) the existence of racism, in a racist society, is doing. Naming it helps shame it.
Writing prominent characters who are members of marginalized groups, describing realistic examples of bigotry, and *calling* it bigotry when it appears, all can serve the same purpose, in fiction. But it’s going to feel uncivilized to some readers.
(This is apart from the matter of how to do it *well*. When just mentioning a topic, or a group, feels like a slap in the face to some readers – which it will, bc civility – then how do you slap gracefully? A little backhand, just a twist of the wrist? Practice your swing.)
Sometimes you gotta be uncivilized, when you live and write within a civilization built on bigotry. If it helps, remember that *you* weren’t the one who created this civilization… but you can help fix it.
So include green people…but also include black people. Make your character a refugee, and give them an indigenous Mexican name. Flex pronouns for your NB characters. When your characters are bigots, have somebody or the narrative *call* them bigots.
You cannot trust your audience to just figure that ish out. Some of them will, because they’ve lived it or learned better. Many will not, because they have been trained, by life and by fiction, to see only the “polite” obscuration, and to regard realism as separate and vulgar.
Nothing can fix that except us writers. Only way to move the Overton Window on what feels normal in fiction is to set your feet and shove. Rudely, if you must.
mythbusters was so good because it wasn’t a killjoy show. they didn’t just say “see, it doesn’t work” and leave it there
whenever they find that the stunt doesn’t work as portrayed in the movie, they immediately ask “what would it take to make this happen?”
“we know it takes this amount of explosives to work, but what if we doubled it anyway?”
Some myths I’ll always remember:
* Are elephants scared of mice? (They only did that because they were in Africa and had access to elephants.)
* Will a bull run amok in a china shop?
* Is it better to run zig-zag or straight when chased by an alligator?
I love these because NONE of them turned out the way they expected. They went into all three with pre-conceived ideas of how it would go, and each time they “failed.” Elephants WILL cower from mice. A bull moves very gingerly through a china shop. It doesn’t matter how you run because ALLIGATORS WON’T CHASE YOU.
And each time, they reacted with just… pure glee. “Holy shit, we were wrong! Oh my god! This is great! We were so wrong!”
And that, to me, is what science is. Being excited about being wrong because either way it’s information.
👏 let 👏 people 👏 get 👏 sloppy 👏 on 👏 company 👏 time 👏
interesting how they didn’t share this instead where study show that productivity has actually increased, almost as if people tend to do their jobs more efficiently when they’re not miserable
