Відео

I've got mixed feelings about this whole controversy. While on the one hand I can wholeheartedly agree that adding just a couple few characters of color to a roster that already has many dozens of white skinned characters anyway wouldn't really hurt anyone at first, the sheer toxicity of the people boycotting and demanding Hoyo to do so really makes me rethink this idea so as to avoid feeding on this type of behavior even further. The Western "community" is absolute nuts!

It more of a gay stereotypes things

unrelated but fellow aether user :D

Its because of the community in general no need to explain anything

It doesn't matter. Nothing is canon aside from the archon quests according to hoyo. So say they put an event for two characters in the lore it didn't happen. Nothing optional. that includes world quest and character stories. Events ect. A majority of the genshin cast don't even know each other.

I'm only about 50 seconds in, but I have to stop you; Lumine players are *exponentially* more degenerate.

I was thinking about this the other day. I think they are getting better at it, Cyno's story quest for example. But they still have a long away to go, even more with the old characters

Asian players... That's their problem 😂 Being an asian myself, i know how obsessive people can get when it comes to fictional characters and even real life people... Very similar to Japan with their idol industry.

I'd love to someday see Neuvillette pull up on Zhongli, and we get a Jojo moment. 😅

It's to leave the relationship open ended to the player's imagination. Like Kaveh and Alhaitham. The game never specifically said their relationship wasn't more but I like to think that it is

For obvious reasons. Leaving it up to player's imaginations. I mean why do you think Adolf Hitler never got married right up until he decided to commit self deletion. For the "Cult of Personality" he wanted publicly to be looked upon as available to the women of the country. Imagine that concept applied to a video game, even though they're fake characters, but now it's imagine your own couples/relationships? You decide the coups in your own fantasy mind of the world.

we have some character development in the friendship with navia and clorinde ( at least we didn't met them at the end of their friendship journey )

You know an established relationship that I actually want to SEE on screen?! Chongyun and Shenhe. Seriously, the only interaction I've seen between the two was Shenhe's character demo (and I think one of Shenhe's birthday artwork). It's been 2+ years and I still haven't seen on-screen time for Chongyun with aunt Shenhe. Like imagine Shenhe training with Chongyun and the latter being the bridge to connect Shenhe with her remaining family. Also, I kinda wanna see a friendship between Wanderer and Collei. Collei telling him about her past with Dottore and how Wanderer would respond and even relate.

It's likely had to do with the cn community from what I know.

Soooo I was a Furina hater until Masquerade or the Guilty cuz I swore there was no way to justify her shitty, bratty behaviour. Do I think being mentally isolated and alone for 500 years is justified? Not entirely, but it did allow the plan to work very well until the cracks started showing to lead to the trial. Her being more proactive DEFINITELY would’ve helped fill those cracks, but I can understand she was already under a lot of stress as a human living isolated for 500 years that her mental sanity was already faltering in the stage plays we saw in her mind. It would have been a lot of extra mental strain, but it might’ve made some things smoother. At the very least I can appreciate her. As I recently learned of my autism, I could empathize with the continuous acting without reprieve. I love that Ei recognizes her strength for this. Furina is amazing and gets made fun of in game and infantilized out of game more than her character deserves.

In a lot of rankings of powerful archons, Raiden Shogun is one of the top if not the top. She had a line about Furina about how strong she is to have put up an act that’s not herself for the sake of her nation for 500 years, compared to her fighting for 500 years. Raiden can even recognize strength can be non-literal as well and praises Furina. I read a lot of fanfiction and it’s sad how few fics actually address her as capable. Sure her story quest made a joke of her as not a fighter (where the Traveler was also just being mean), but we still didn’t see her *fight*. She understands fighting well enough to direct a show with two musket-users for heaven’s sake! There’s also the detail that a directors role is to both lead and guide the actors for a vision, and her kit is literally supportive of all characters to be better. So she’s got brains AND independence and doesn’t need to rely on anyone. The main reason I see her leaning on anyone now is because she couldn’t for 500 years and now has the chance for closeness (speaking from experience with approx 14 years).

Kavetham is just fujoshi bait. Cynari is friends with romantic potential. 👍

Now that you've mentioned it Are thinking of covering Beidou and Ningguang

Cringe gae Shipping

Both are treated equally by me - both are treated like a huge pile of sh*t created by shippers who don't know about the existence of a simple male friendship. Don't get me wrong, I despise the ships, not the characters. These four are among my most beloved characters, I love the four of them

As someone who ships cynari a lot more than kavehaitham I have to say that the infantilization/toxic masculinity issue IS quite apparent in cynonari content as well (with tighnari being the damsel in distress) however it's limited since the mischaracterization of the pair is more obvious and more called out. Besides the points you mentioned I think it's also because the story puts more focus on the traits that contradict said stereotypes than it does on Kaveh and Alhaitham (from the way i see it ofc maybe I'm missing on some things) Great video!

i do like kaveh and alhaitham's interactions when they appear together (their dynamics in cyno's story quest is a fun one because we get to see them actually work together), but i agree that we should see kaveh interact with other characters. kaveh in his hangout is great; in the limited time quest that came with simulanka we also get to see kaveh interact with a lot of people other than alhaitham and it's so fun to see. i do think the book quest after simulanka shows that kaveh may be impulsive and naive, but he has a lot of merit that we shouldn't brush off and i wish the fandom can see that.

Personally, Hoyo unspoken LGBTQ ships feel less like ships and more like bait. I would rather write fanfiction about Sasaki and Miyano, a ship that feels real than whatever Al Haitham and Kaveh was. Plus, fanon writers would take interactions that are common between best friends and close siblings and proclaim them as romantic interactions when they are not. When they say media literacy is dead, I would agree, especially when it comes to romance. Shipping has become such a bane on certain fandoms. I used to be part of the shipping culture but I checked out after realising how obsessive this culture has become.

There was Ning and Beidou flirting during one of the lantern rights. Whichever one we got Ning's outfit.

Kaveh's hangout quest is so good, just like in the Interdarshan Festival, he DOES interacts with other characters and have dynamic with them (Faruzan, Dori, Cyno, Tighnari, Collei), but yeah it is mostly Alhaitham

Tbh I actually think their body type matter too. Similar to the design, Kaveh and Alhaitham have more the "yaoi appeal" than Cyno and Tignari. Most of the tall body type character ships are way more sexualised anyways. (Kaveh x Alhaitham, Wriothesley x Neuvillette, Thoma x Ayato compared to Wanderer (well, Wanderer is one of the most sexualised characters in the fandom tho) x Kazuha, Cyno x Tignari, Xingqiu x Chongyun). But I could be wrong lol Also gotta say that Hoyo loves to dumb them a bit down during events, to make things easier/to flesh out more important characters. Cyno got reduced to his jokes and Kaveh and Alhaitham are always bickering. But at least every one of them got a fairly good story quest/hangout where non of their "partners" played a role, barely making an appearance or non at all (exception is Cynos second story quest but it didn’t serve to introduce him so it’s fine) I do agree with you Hoyo does love wasting characters potential :(, and unless one of them gets another story quests as doubt they will ever get more fleshed out. And also Hoyo views their relationship differently, they even said that they view Cyno and Tignari more as siblings, (During Windblume festival). And Alhaitham is the stoic, cool guy and Kaveh gets treated like a baby/idiot from almost every character who interacts with him (like Dori or Faruzan, but I do like his interactions with Faruzan tho)

Gosh... I at first thought of haikaveh as nothing much because I haven't seen much more of their dynamics and especially Kaveh's part as a character. I don't mind that Kaveh is introduced as Al Haitham's roommate, but what is annoying is that whenever the game has anything to do with Kaveh, he will be labeled as something akin to "Al Haitham's property" (I know this way of saying is extreme but that is almost pretty much my impression of Kaveh). Just like in his story profile, whenever one has to mention about Kaveh, especially his friends, Al Haitham is likely to be the first thing in their mind. Tbh, when I read about Kaveh's story, I actually started to see why they'd make a good ship and I can see how good written stories can be formed following their dynamic. However, Kaveh lacks a lot of content. I have missed the event where Kaveh is first released as playable, so I don't get to see much of Kaveh. The only content I can access to other than his story would be his hangout, which is locked by Al Haitham's story quest. Other than that, it's been a long while and there's still no new releases of Kaveh. I wish to see more of Kaveh as a character and see more of his genius, one that can truly parallel with Al Haitham as so many characters have mentioned. I think the lack of character content is also what leads to so many people to mischaractarize Kaveh, and in turn mischaractarize Al Haitham because Kaveh is his "property". I love the ships based on its canon, but I just get pissed whenever I have to come across with fanon portrayals. Media literacy is just DEAD in this fandom

as someoen who aint a big fan of haikaveh, im not personally bugged by kaveh and alhaitham, also the part where hes introduced as alhaithams roomate does not really bother me with him being introduced this way.

Wow😢

To me colorfulnes is not a problem extreamly low tech is. Especially after Sumeru and Fontain, Natlan feel like tribal peaple with stick and stone. What do i expect something simular to Fontain but in more brutal/waild way like steam/disel-punk city aestetic. Not a tribal people with city covered with tent.

Nobody cares about a "lack of diversity". Its a chinese game and their ideal are white asian people. Damn these woke idiots are annoying.

what’s funny about it is that all the big youtubers that were boycotting it are currently playing the new update and making bank💀 I honestly didn’t care for the boycott since I knew It wasn’t gonna do anything and was gonna keep playing. I do stand behind the message a lot just in reality this wasn’t gonna do much.

@6:30 You kind of just said it yourself “good cultural representation that MiHoyo takes inspiration from”. This is the things inspiration isn’t supposed to be representation because inspiration isn’t representation. This is fiction it isn’t a simulation. It also isn’t culture appropriation. Cultural appropriation isn’t taking something and using it as inspiration. It’s taking something and claiming it as your own. The boycotters are in reality the ones who are culturally appropriating because they fail to understand why colorism exists in Asia, they assume their cultural values are superior and try to force them onto Asian culture and they are culturally appropriating anime by trying to force their cultural values onto it. You kind of had me up until the end when you claimed people actively against the boycott were racists. This is exactly what you had just previously said was bad for the boycott. You yourself are guilty of the same thing. I’m against the boycott because it is a racist movement that is trying to force its superior moral values onto another culture while culturally appropriating it and failing to understand what that culture is. It is literally an act of colonization. These people (you included) believe your cultural and moral values are superior and you expect a Chinese game developer to bend to them. This is a colonialist mentality. Colorism in Asia is a beauty standard tied to economic status. It predates the concept of race by literal centuries. By making this an issue of race you are perpetuating the myth of race and thereby perpetuating racism.

Well that natlan anthem blew me away, although I'm not of indigenous origin, it was very emotional.

I think it's insane how evident it was this was not pushed by people of Latinoamérica, all the edits they spammed of the characters inspired on a native civilization were just blackface making them look African, they were really confused. In latam we care about culture and that we are seeing and having fun, skin colour is a secondary detail

/=/D

Natlan is absolutely beautiful and breathtaking place. Hoyo did amazing job portraying it. But some people think that only thing that matters is skin color, so...

The biggest problem I had was the fact that they didn't bother to tell those who were unaffected or apathetic to the boycott on how the lack of dark skinned characters affected their gameplay. I'm one of those apathetic people who likes the current roster of characters and personally find no harm in them. Now as a boycotter, it is YOUR job to tell me why my gameplay would be affected by not having many dark skinned characters. If you can't do that AND then call the apathetic people "racists", then no wonder this boycott failed. The majority of Genshin players are apathetic and that was put on full display in the weapon web event which garnered 30 million signatures compared to a 100k for the petition. Also, I actually want to know what the VA's were thinking when they said "speak up and make your voices heard". Didn't they realize that the only place where this discourse was happening was on Twitter and that too on English Twitter? The VAs should've been the ones guiding them since they are much older than the boycotters but no, all they did was add fuel to the fire and do nothing to control it. The boycotters should've tried to interact with the CN and JP communities since those people are the ones who can actually control Hoyo but no, they kept continuing it on Twitter and then cried about it once it failed.

Honestly is it wrong of me not to boycott genshin impact? Explanation: I support everyone who wants diversity and rep because my culture was already disrespected in sumeru so i know how it feels and i understand why everyone does what they do. But im tired of being forced not to play a game i love in a boring summer for a kid like me because otherwise id be called racist when im not. Even though i would love proper rep for everyone and skintone diversity,I have fun playing genshin. And i dont really mind the skintones in genshin because i dont focus on the character’s appearances alot. So is it wrong that i dont want to quit genshin?

I personally think they're slowly building up Mondstat for endgame. That's at least the reason I believe, and speculating why we haven't gotten a 2nd story quest for Venti (I think it's heavily lore related). Not to mention, Kaeya and Albedo, two characters from Khaenri'ah (the most important region in the game the story connects to). And to shortly list the others, Alice being Klee's mom; Mona's master (both being in the hexenzirkel along with Albedo's mom); Jean, Razor, and Rosaria all having connections to Varka (who has encountered Capitano) etc. -However, I think in a way Lisa is underutilized. I remember her original character background was that: she read a magic book that shortened her life span. But that was in the beta, so I'm pretty sure currently Lisa has, NOTHING at all for her background except her once being offered to join the hexenzirkel along with her past with the Akademiya (though correct me if I'm wrong on that fact). -While I personally believe Collei's story was "finished" in the manga, I do kinda agree with wanting to have seen more of her in the AQ.

Other hypocrisy for me on pro skin color is that they claim representation yet they are so focused in skin color. Forget skin color, any character arent realistic to begin with. People barely have weird eyes and colorful hairs in real world. Liyue and inazuma charas dont have slanted eyes (except zhongli I guess), a physical attributes from east asians. Yet all focus is just on skin color. For against skin color or pro status quo, most of the time they are in your way because its just to make fun of you. Everything from claiming to do boycott to outside factors like failures and controversy of american/western woke entertainment media like cleopatra, AC shadows, dustborn concord etc is pretty much the face for pro skin color for pro statis quo. Its pretty much a joke. I think this getting in your way attittude will always be there. Because the pro skin colors are like people shouting in a party, so everyone is getting in your way to stop you. Ofc in social media you can just scroll to let you voice your concerns, but a lot will always make a fun to you

I guess that makes me a so called racist despite coming from Latin America because I will mock everyone who particpated in the boycott and will continue to do so. I will explain why in a few points. 1st: The people you just labelled racists are just reactionaries who say horrific stuff just to piss off the boycott crowd no one is cheering on how the game is super white that is a straw man the pro boycott side made up and will continue to bring up. You won't find any racist comments at all directed towards any culture before the pro boycott crowd started agressively attacking everyone. Also the pro boycott side started it by calling everyone against it racist so no sympathy for them even if I would never resort to racist slurs myself. 2nd: Funny how not once do you mention how fontaine or Mondo weren't great representations of either French/Anglo and Italian culture or German culture of Mondo because they got those cultures wrong multiple times but the Europeans were just grateful to be represented at all. Proves that the pro boycott side are just people with a black/brown people fetish. Who are fine with white characters being blackwashed in other entertainment complete hypocrites. 3rd: I agree with you on this point not once did they actually ask people from african or Latin American cultures how they feel which is why as someone who is from this culture don't want to be represented by a bunch of out of touch racist Americans or europeans who have savior complexs its extremely insulting. 4th: They never tried to properly boycott as a woman who is against sexist behavior I have boycotted Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft for the last 5 years and not played a single game from them. While I doubt my efforts have done anything to Activision at least Ubisoft is finally being punished for their toxic behavior and might actually be finished as a games publisher. A proper boycott requires both sacrifice and effort. These lying hypocrites make a mockery of people who actually boycott like me. 5th: The final and most important reason Genshin has many other bigger problems that need to be fixed first like how they aren't as generous as their competition, the terrible patches ever since 4.3 as they chose to focus more on ZZZ development and the story of penacony. Also the lack of quality of life updates and how even quest important NPC characters still look awful. Basically a lack of certain skin tones is disappointing at best but not even close to being a reason to boycott a company. Also Hoyo don't treat their employees as badly as western companies do either. Ended up writing more than I wanted to but it should sum up how a lot of the anti-boycott side feel I am sorry but multiple games that have come out in 2024 that catered towards their racist obsession with skin tones and not once did they support any of those games at the end of the day they don't really care.

I'm Filipino, and for those who aren't aware, there was this theory a long time ago that Natlan might take inspiration from my country (The Philippines), it didn't get much traction but it did get my hopes up. So when Natlan was revealed to be taking inspiration from Latin America, i wouldn't say it took me by surprise, but i wouldn't say i didn't feel a bit sad either. So i guess what i want to say is, i wouldn't have cared if Natlan did use my culture for inspiration and made all characters pale white. I would have been happy to see my culture represented. So i guess the reason why i was predominantly and vehemently against this boycott is because i don't understand - to have your culture be represented by a popular game with tens of millions of players is only a dream for so many cultures. The way Hoyoverse studies your culture and history and make parallels of it in their archon quest would feel nice. It's extremely shallow to see Natlan and focus on skin color. Anyway, i really like your video and how you explained stuff. 😊

wishing to let yourself be "seen" in a cartoonized fantasy videogame made by chinese devs is just peak delusion im sorry to inform you that none of the genshin characters even look realistic and its not just skin color btw liyue inazuma characters all got big round eyes, and there are blonde haired, blue eyed "east asian" characters in this game do you really think the devs care about appropriate racial representation? if the people who get offended that much by just the shade of skintone they should delete the game and stop letting it bother them and seek for games with rep they like, go play concord then, or overwatch 2 this boycott has turned into a mess because many boycotters not only are hypocrites who never quit the game but also are performative activists who pay no respect to actual cultures that genshin draws inspired from they don't spend time to travel to those regions and learn the cultures and they do not donate a lot of money to any african and latin american organizations related to cultural empowerment they also critisize other poc who like the natlan design and shame people who spend money and do not speak up about it

You don't need to talk about these virtue signalling attention seekers, they are just some loud minorities on twitter, let them cry

its all sad to see. Honestly i get just as peeved at some of the people seeking representation as I am at mihoyo. A lot of the time i see recolors/redesigns or pointing out only to "black" skin tones. Even with people complaining about the music performance i saw people point out just the indigenous Pan Flutist and African decent people. Completely ignoring all of the Latino musicians. I might be a mutt but this irks me to no end. They seem to only see in two colors. (Not even mentioning the bias towards who gets what skin tones kind of playing into iffy territory). I've got more gripes with those but their only a small portion... Sadly with mihoyo all hopes were dashed for more skin tones with sumeru banner sales. Sadly the "darker" skined characters didn't have great banners/reception due to poorly designed, understood or aplicable kits. )': I would wish for better but i understand just how bad it can be for selling darker characters in their primary regions. It has been aparent for a long time and I'm Ok with what we have. They do a decent job past skin tones.

another issue I've seen with the boycotts is that people bring up the same few blatant lies about mihoyo or will take things wildly out of context. Like, they'll go- "All the white/asian nations are based on one country while the nations based on brown people are an amalgamation of cultures" even though literally every nation is some kind of combination of cultures (ex: Liyue has Chinese influence from different time periods and subcultures of china, Mongolian influence, and Indian influence [through the elements of Hinduism].. Fontaine has French, British, Greek, and Irish influence). These are all fictional settings that have influence from irl cultures, but none of them can be equated to irl countries. They also tend to ignore the actual lore of the nations and in game explanations for why multiple cultures will exist in one nation (like with Sumeru essentially being 3 different nations with 3 different gods wrapped in a trench coat). And if they really want to die on the hill of "no fictional setting should combine cultures," they're gonna have to prepare themselves to go after western projects like Avatar The Last Airbender too. and "hi3 had a black character who hated her skin tone so much she bleached her skin" even though that just straight up didn't happen. The character in question (Carole) is a 15/16 y/o half black, half east asian girl who's really into fashion and grew up in an area where no one really looked like her. She used filters when posting pictures of herself to social media, but stops doing that as she gains more confidence in herself throughout the story. and also "Paimon hates food from Sumeru" even though it was only one dish and every character (including the player character) made fun of her for it. I really don't get why they keep acting like Mihoyo wanted us to agree with Paimon on this one. But ya- I think theres a lot to criticize with Genshin and it would be great if there was more skin tone, body shape, and hair texture diversity. If the protesters don't know what the hell they're talking about though, these discussions aren't going to go anywhere.

As a South American black person, I'm soo amused by some real world cultural representation of the game since I started in 2020. The point is that I really don't get why people are mad because the skin color, since it is a fantasy and fictional world with tradicional anime pale tone. I'm really happy Latin America is at it's peak representation in Natlan, and it would be nice if we got some badass black character, but I really don't care if we'll or not have a full black character, because it's just a game that is not mocking on us, but really doing a very job transcribe some of our cultural aspect. Unfortunately, there as common college sense that everything should be colored represented and included in every media, and if don't do it, you ara called a racist. Gladly it's restricted to a twitter bubble and college bubbles.

To be fair the trailers were finished before the boycott even started and I like the current character designs I’m excited for Natlan

I followed the boycott from the start because I just felt like the choice not to have diverse skintones in Natlan whilst borrowing from cultures known to be very diverse felt like Hoyoverse was saying they simply didn't find darker skin appealing or felt it should be purposefully excluded. That feeling of intentionally omitting it even when it felt natural to include and most other developers would have included it really upset me. It just struck a nerve somehow. But the more I looked into the boycott, and the longer it went on for, the more I realised the people primarily orchestrating it were basically shooting themselves in their own foot and dooming it fail. One of the demands for the boycott literally included a request to change the skintone of the already released Sumeru characters. Which... Probably would have got them in a bunch of trouble? Both from players upset their characters were suddenly changed and potentially legal trouble too. China takes post-release changes to gacha characters super seriously so I was legitimately dumbfounded when I realised the 'official' demands for the boycott were so poorly thought out. And yes, cultural representation in Genshin isn't perfect, but I feel like people lost sight of the fact that Genshin's primary issue is colourism, not racism. They're two separate issues. My best friends are South Asian and I live in a heavily South Asian area (despite being white myself) and when Sumeru rolled around all of us were thrilled. Foods they'd grown up eating were there, and foods I've eaten too. My friends were so eager to tell me all the cultural references they noticed and one of my friends even said Sumeru legitimately reminded them of their visits to South Asia. There are good examples of Genshin's cultural representation, as well as bad examples. But if we only ever talk about the bad stuff whilst trying to encourage them to do better then they're going to assume we don't care or notice when they actually succeed. For a Chinese game they put a lot of love and effort into researching the cultures they depict, even if they do a pretty crap job at representing actual ethnic or racial diversity in their character's appearances. People keep bringing up the good examples of Chinese game representation, but aren't really mentioning the fact that the majority of even really popular Chinese games usually SUCK at cultural rep. It's a relief to an extent that Genshin is as good as it is, in comparison to other big Chinese games like Love/Shining Nikki (which is infamously terrible). We want them to improve sure, but how can we expect them to do so if we don't have anything positive to say when we do provide critical feedback? I am on the side of the boycott for what it stands for. More diversity in the way they design characters and not being afraid of having darker skin or curly/textured hair. We've seen how cool the NPC designs can look when they aren't afraid to use richer skintones or dreadlocks. But the boycott itself was managed so poorly that it probably did more to embolden racists and create an even more unpleasant community in Genshin. Mocking the boycott for how poorly managed it was is already pretty common place, but that mockery absolutely extends into people being actively racist or mocking people for being upset. And that probably will just make the Genshin community feel even more unfriendly to POC or people who aren't pale skinned than it felt before. People will mock passion and persistence regardless of how well managed the boycott had been, but the poor planning I think unintentionally created a scenario where even non-racists who wouldn't normally mock such things started doing so because of how much of a disaster it was, which helped create more a platform for the actually racist comments.