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6/20/2025, 4:57:36 PM
>>528151389
no...
no...
6/19/2025, 6:33:41 PM
>Genshin has good worldbuildi-
"No!"
I'm finally playing through the Collective of Plenty quest and just hit the scene where Iansan has a piece of "graffiti" with the Traveler on it that she had to wait in line for to get, and Varesa mentions that she bought a top with the same design. And I'm so infuriated. If your primary relationship with a piece of art is that it's officially endorsed and you wait in lines or spend money to get it, that's not graffiti. Graffiti is one of the pillars of hip-hop culture, along with rap, breakdancing, turntables, etc. Hip-hop culture is very specifically a black culture, influenced by the experience of blackness (and anti-black racism) in America.
The way that Natlan mines the trappings of hip-hop culture without any real understanding of what it values or how it works, while also rejecting blackness for its actual playable characters, is frankly sickening. And while this isn't the most important thing, it's also bad writing. By dressing their characters in the theme-park version of a culture without actually exploring any underlying social dynamics of the culture in question, they've robbed themselves of the chance to do real worldbuilding. There are so many artistic and other cultural elements that should be enflected by Natlan's weird history; instead of exploring that, Genshin just put on a costume and called it a day.
"No!"
I'm finally playing through the Collective of Plenty quest and just hit the scene where Iansan has a piece of "graffiti" with the Traveler on it that she had to wait in line for to get, and Varesa mentions that she bought a top with the same design. And I'm so infuriated. If your primary relationship with a piece of art is that it's officially endorsed and you wait in lines or spend money to get it, that's not graffiti. Graffiti is one of the pillars of hip-hop culture, along with rap, breakdancing, turntables, etc. Hip-hop culture is very specifically a black culture, influenced by the experience of blackness (and anti-black racism) in America.
The way that Natlan mines the trappings of hip-hop culture without any real understanding of what it values or how it works, while also rejecting blackness for its actual playable characters, is frankly sickening. And while this isn't the most important thing, it's also bad writing. By dressing their characters in the theme-park version of a culture without actually exploring any underlying social dynamics of the culture in question, they've robbed themselves of the chance to do real worldbuilding. There are so many artistic and other cultural elements that should be enflected by Natlan's weird history; instead of exploring that, Genshin just put on a costume and called it a day.
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