Thread by @Bitanees

🧵 a thread on things wrong about the character designs of sumeru because I need to get this out of my system
I will touch on Nilou specifically because it's what I am familiar
(I love her but smt needs to be said)
#nilou #dori #sumeru #GenshinImapct #sumerutwt #genshintwt

MENA in general barely have any representation in media and when it is done
It's the same old stereotype
Hear middle east and you think Alladin
And Alladin itself is extremely problematic and is a perfect example of orientalism
So let me trail off to explain a little about it

Orientalism in short terms is when a non western culture is depicted as exotic, stereotypical, strange and generally backwards and was mostly used to justify western imperialism

One tactic used in orientalist art is generalizing several cultures and mixing them no matter how separated and distinct they are.
Imagine spanish matadors in tutus yodeling while a song named "polish days" is playing and it never stops raining
That is Alladin my friends

The original story of Alladin comes from One thousand and one nights which is a collection of indian,persian and arabic tales. But it does not originally belong to the book or those cultures. It was added to the collection by a french translator and in general it's questionable?

Yes back to that the movie Alladin is set in Agrabah, a fictional city inspired by Baghdad. While the castle is clearly inspired by taj mahal, women are only depicted with the stereotypical belly dancer clothing that originated from Egypt and turkish clothes can

Be seen on other characters also
And the only environment we see is desert. Which is just not right specially when big cities are formed around rivers and fertile land(exotic and nonsensical, checked) and other than the two main characters everybody else are racist caricatures

And so many many other things. I recommend you search further yourself.
I recommend watching this video

So what about genshin?
First we have dori which is heavily inspired Alladin. And is just again...kind of a caricature. And I'm counting out the skin tone. Just the clothing and source of inspiration
But I better leave that for people more familiar with arab culture

Okay now what bothers me most
Nilou
I was so excited when I first heard her name. Because that indicated that she is persian and my culture would be seen for once in any media. Even the name "Nazaafarin" in that event sent joy to my representation depraved heart

Then it came out that she is a dancer
THAT is a big thing. Because traditional persian dances are in no other word, dying. You can't find so much about them and because of censorship and sexist laws we can't see them even in our own media
So a persian dancer in a mainstream game

Is very important. And from what we seen her moves are accurate and beautiful and she is lovely and has a big part in the story
So what's wrong?
Her outfit.
I can't stress this enough but this stereotype
IS FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY
Every form of traditional clothing is changed

For in game designs and that's okay
You still can see that where the inspiration comes from and even in the more modern clothed characters like zhongli there are tiny tidbits and hits of Chinese elements
The problem with Nilou is that source of inspiration for outfit is obvious

And it is again from the wrong place
You see belly dancing is originally from Egypt and VERY different from Nilou's persian dance and they have very different outfits
Almost all persian dancing clothes cover the stomach and in Nilou's type of dance, dancers wear

Flowy skirts and dance moves take advantage of that. +they normally wear a coat type upper piece that is embroidered with catching details

So why is Nilou wearing stereotypical Egyptian clothes while representing important art of another culture while having her entire character is centered around it?
Can you imagine yunjin wearing a kimono inspired outfit? These two are pretty similar

And I really want to enjoy her dance but I can't not look at her outfit and I feel mocked and It just reminds me that it's probably be the only thing persian dancers get and people will have this outfit in their head thinking of this or just mistake her for a belly dancer

And the issue is not like that "skirts are had to animate" we have ayaka, yunjun barbara, noelle and more their silhouette would be enough or "they just wanted to make her sexy" we have a lot of highly sexualized characters and only shinobu and yanfei have their bellies exposed

While 3 out of 5 sumeru female characters are looking like this hyv proved that this not the only way they can make their characters look appealing they just intentionally turned blind and stole from so many cultures while not actually take the responsibility to respect them

I love Nilou she is basically only Iranian related character I've seen so I will stick to her till the day of die but my heart belongs to the artists that try to depict her in correct clothes and I will draw her like that and I hope people acknowledge this about her character

This turned unnecessary long and will probably be seen by no one but I needed to say something even to the void because our expectations were bare minimum. Not good, authentic, representation. just "not racist stereotypes" and hyv disappointed us so badly. Except for the music

I wish they put half as much as effort in music into the designs. In that alternate reality we are all in our knees praising genshin for being the only thing that did it good.or at least, tolerable

Also I need to add that her main outfit is the problem. Her veil, horns and back tatto and shoes(+her dance moves) are very neat refrences to persian culture and traditional clothing but again
The main thing is what misleads a LOT of people

I am so sorry this has so many mistakes my english is not that bad autocorrect and shaky fingers killed me

Again adding to this if it wasn't clear
Not ALL of her design is orientalist
Her headdress,dance,moves,tatto are pretty on point
And her skin tone?We can dismiss it kinda,lot of gingers exist here
Iranians still love her but we wished she represented us more with her main outfit

Specially women because there is a lot of history in women being condemned for pursuing...anything they like tbh and to this day it still stands(remember dances being forgotten?)
They could just not give her clothing of another country and dance and we'd die of pure joy

Please read this for further insight specially for other characters +more pictures for refrence and explanation

https://twitter.com/little88bird/status/1545476403155664897?t=-0lTlLQkAdKnqpnNZNMNhg&s=19

Okay now that this is pupolar I feel bad because there were so many points I forgot to make because this was written in a rush on a car ride
Would there be interest in another more expensive one with visuals or a whole longass yt video?

Are there any SWANA or south asian people willing to help me in research for my next thread +video? I don't want to miss anything or accidentally spread wrong information

This iceberg just goes down and down and it gets so much darker
Please anyone that reads this watch out for the next thread I would make bc with this new information this is not even addressing one tenth of the problem
Like this,the bellydancer stereotype never existed