Despair - On Race

 Despair - On Race

I am thinking a lot about how to get people excited about learning and exploring other cultures. Because so far I feel many of my attempts with peers have been generally abysmal.

They are uninterested, their bubbles are too tiny, and the task for them appears daunting.

We are 8 months now into one of my largest undertakings as a creative force, and I feel smothered beneath the weight of their indifference.

Or worse yet, their constant comparisons to Western storytellers, characters or art.

As though anything and everything I reference is only best revealed through the lens of comparison to Tolkien, Rowling, Martin, King, or Jordan.

Always white creators. Always white writers. Always white historical touchpoints, or art, or people.

I think a lot about how their priority for learning about it is a privilege of their position. They don't have to. They don't have to welcome or embrace any other culture that is not their dominant one. They can step back when it is inconvenient. They can walk away until another night, push it off until next week.

My parents had no choice, when they arrived in Canada. They had to learn white cultures, pizza, and mac and cheese. They had to raise children listening to rock concerts, driving cars, staying out late, and all that. They had to raise me and work in and amongst, even worship in a system entirely of Western design.

I had no choice either. I grew up with this colour skin and this black hair, and the name "Lee". I had my attitude and capabilities determined for me before I met people, in every career, vocation, and hobby.

And my friends know none of that. Sympathize with none of it. To be straddling two worlds where you fit in neither. Never shall I actually be accepted. I am too Canadian to be Chinese/Malaysian. I am too Yellow to be White.

They nod with 'empathy'. They say..."Yeah that sucks" and then politely look away until it is appropriate to comment on the weather or what's on TV.

I think my soul is filled with a lonely longing because their silence is deafening.

Thoughts - On Space and Community and Race

Thoughts - On Space and Community and Race

I was thinking about a conversation I had like two weeks ago.

With an old friend, I hadn't talked to in a month or two.

We were talking about the internet and space, and how people form communities and communicate.

It came from a conversation about d&d, having to learn the skills to communicate and express oneself online and to form communities with other people having those skills.

And how there are no hard rules around things like that, they are all learned social interactions.

And she said something about that, about how she doesn't like those spaces because she doesn't want to interact in them, and doesn't need to. So she doesn't have that skill set. She doesn't like communicating that way. She doesn't need to if it isn't part of work.

And I talked about how with a two-year pandemic if I didn't have them, these spaces, this way of communicating, I wouldn't have any friends or anyone to talk to.

And I think I just realized tonight how angry that made me.

Life - Culture and Games

Life - Culture and Games

I've been thinking and writing a lot of late about the intersection of culture and games. It has been a lasting series of thoughts upon which I have many ideas.

I've been working on Wire Run, my latest universe on and off for years. This is our second foray into it for the RPG table. This 'campaign', I have been working on for about 6 months. During my time creating it the first time, I spent a lot of time building my own lore. Basically taking what was existing, and doing my best to both remove problematic parts of what I perceive as being at odds with a modern Sci-Fi, and also laying foundation work for a sandbox world to play in.

That first campaign was set in Vancouver, about 60 years into the future. It was easy. From a design perspective, it was a simple crutch. The players were familiar with the locations, if not the history. They understood the geography, the places, the people. They know what it means to live in a slum section on the lower East Side. They know what the travel time is between Downtown and North Van. They have a cultural appreciation for what it means to live in Surrey, vs Kits.

It was so easy.

Letters - 9 / 15 Dear Best Friend

Letters - 9 / 15 Dear Best Friend

Dear Best Friend,

We have been friends for more than two decades. We’ve gone through some weird patches in life, but you are my brother. I chose you, and you chose me. It would’ve been a lot easier a lot of times for us to just stop talking. In fact, I think we both have a lot of experience doing that, it can be so easy to just let the days and weeks go longer and longer without messaging. For a long time in our lives, we would play every night. Now our schedules are different, and distances feel weird, but we’re talking more.

Sometimes I’m nostalgic for what we had even 5 years ago, but at the same time, we’ve grown up and things change. We occupy space differently now.

Life - Helpless Rage

Life - Helpless Rage

I am alone, standing before a heavy bag. Music I don't remember. There is an acrid smell of chalk and sweat, and the lights are half on, cold, and quiet.

Fists up.

Indigenous - What do you see?

Indigenous - What Do You See?

"A white man and an elderly Native man became pretty good friends, so the white guy decided to ask him: “What do you think about Indian mascots?” The Native elder responded, “Here’s what you’ve got to understand. When you look at black people, you see ghosts of all the slavery and the rapes and the hangings and the chains.

When you look at Jews, you see ghosts of all those bodies piled up in death camps. And those ghosts keep you trying to do the right thing. “But when you look at us you don’t see the ghosts of the little babies with their heads smashed in by rifle butts at the Big Hole, or the old folks dying by the side of the trail on the way to Oklahoma while their families cried and tried to make them comfortable, or the dead mothers at Wounded Knee or the little kids at Sand Creek who were shot for target practice. You don’t see any ghosts at all.

“Instead you see casinos and drunks and junk cars and shacks. “Well, we see those ghosts. And they make our hearts sad and they hurt our little children. And when we try to say something, you tell us, ‘Get over it. This is America. Look at the American dream.’ But as long as you’re calling us Redskins and doing tomahawk chops, we can’t look at the American dream, because those things remind us that we are not real human beings to you. And when people aren’t humans, you can turn them into slaves or kill six million of them or shoot them down with Hotchkiss guns and throw them into mass graves at Wounded Knee. “No, we’re not looking at the American dream. And why should we? We still haven’t woken up from the American nightmare." -Chief Guanikeyu. Jatibonicu Taino