THE GalGUN OF Games Media Kissdum x DIScourse Reishiki
Games journalism is an incredibly privileged thing. Black people won't spend energy tweeting about VTuber or JRPG discourse, gotta conserve yourself for The Struggle against Setzer, Seifer, and Society.
It's gonna be so cool when in the next SRW OG game they'll get Suzukahime from Mugen no Frontier to dance with her puppet strings in order to control the corpse of the Tales of franchise to make it seem like it hasn't died yet.
Okay we're done with the nonsense だわ intro paragraph.
Asalam Aleikoum how's it going. This is a reishiki/type zero post (I just made up that appellation). It means that some of the points here will be reused in some future articles insha Allah. Anyway don't think too much about the title.
Sometimes I wanna write something interesting but cling to the 0.001% chance an editor will get back to me if I pitch it lol. So I save it for later.
On days when I'm mentally down, I have a hard time finding the motivation to publish things "for free". It's something I already talked about on some Ko-fi posts. I think this is a thing that only fellow game journos would understand for the most part. Note that I said "publish", not "write". It's not a "don't make your hobby your job" problem. Thank God I never felt like that so far, and I regularly write about stuff, just not in public.
But yeah on top of that you also have 愛 Scrapping Princesses roaming the internet nowadays. It all makes it quite hard to write without a paywall.
That's also partly why I don't do simple news posts anymore. Or if I do, I always paywall them. I also avoid translating popular stuff on Bluesky, like "hey today famous JP developer said this interesting thing in this interview". Wouldn't bear it when vultures sites like Dexerto etc would repost (even with credit) as they'd actually make money.
The problem is, if you don't do that to a certain extent, people don't notice you. You can't be a game journalist now. You have to Tweet, Quote Tweet, Dunk Tweet, Chaos Dunk Tweet, Aurora Rising Tweet, constantly, and be an internet personality on social media. You have to permanently Immelman Turn into the same discourses.
I always hated tweeting and microblogging about games I'm playing recently. I've been saying this since my IRC days. I think microblogging sucks. But you're as good as dead if you don't do it. You need to have the mental leeway too. Games journalism is an incredibly privileged thing, extremely White. When you're Black, you're not gonna spend energy tweeting about the latest VTuber or JRPG discourse for internet points when you need to conserve yourself for The Struggle against Setzer, Seifer, and Society.
Social media ruined every thing for everyone, not only journalists. Forcing us to constantly market ourselves and have to be some sort of "voice" or "authority". And I always hated that. That's why I never tried to be that for Pretty Series or Super Robot Wars or anything. I don't want people to think I'm an authority on Dolls Nest and that everything I say is factual, just because I'm one of the sole people talking about it. And I don't want people to take my opinion as an example for the opinion of all black muslim otaku. I'm not talking for anyone but myself.
One thing I hate when it comes to discussion of niche Japanese stuff is that people tend to cling to the first opinion that gets widely shared. And just like with everything else, these opinions tend to be from white people or "white-minded people" who think USA governments have values and that isreal will suddenly stop its 75 years run of genocide apartheid theft once netanyahou is in jail. That's how you end up with so many people parroting that the Lacrosse Arc in Muv Luv Extra is mid when it's actually Skibbidy Peak Absolute Cinema. It's one of the reasons why I can stay motivated when it comes to writing (even mundane) impressions articles on games or anime, because I truly think I can bring something interesting to the table.
Anyway this is all stuff I already talked about on Ko-fi from time to time.
One countermeasure I've found is talking about my ideas but in Japanese. Most notably during my live streams. Allows me to practice, allows me to get it off my chest. And unlike sharing it in English, it greatly reduces the chances of my work and translations being stolen and coincidentally show up on some vulture sites a few days later.
I've been writing as well. I've only published one full JP post on this site so far, but I have many more in the works. Some are pretty long so it's taking a while.
FullMetalFukumi
At least none of these topics of mine are time sensitive so it doesn't matter how many months or even years I wait, it'll still be important and relevant (unless there's suddenly a ton of games with black and muslim and black muslim and black muslim + something else characters getting released). These problems sadly aren't going away anytime soon. Most of these topics ultimately deal with misogyny shaping (japanese) society, racism, and the lack of black people in games industry and games media. Always circling around the same things.
Anyway, if you are stable financially, mentally, and liked this article, consider subscribing on Ko-fi. Maybe inshallah one day I'll get like 150 subs and I'll make "independent games and political journalist" my main job.
Check out my vids too.
