FALSE PREM(I)SE
My mom once told me, if I hadn't dried my hair, I would catch a cold.
P. My hair is wet.
P. I would get sick if I didn't dry my hair, according to my mom.
P. Wet hair over time makes you sick.
C. Therefore, there's a correlation between wet hair and sickness.
This is a work of fiction made by wallpapergirl.
Created for the Toxic Yuri Visual Novel Jam 2.
Special thanks to solfo's love letter engine.
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Comments
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really effective in so few words - kind of a punch to the gut, especially with the last screen. the visuals are simple but in a way that really serves the story. excellent little narrative... ty for creating <3
Thank you for reading! :)
She needs to have more of a backbone. ‘Form a new community’ is very difficult and extreme, not unwarranted but about as hopeless to me as saying there’s nothing at all, perhaps more true to someone who has something to go back to. I feel the more apparent solution here is to complain about how shitty it feels to be dated for your race or to be ignored because in the story it seems like such a person doesn’t even hear that kind of thing often, like she doesn’t even think she’s doing anything bad in the first place.
This was sharp! And painful. Thank you for making it.
Something that really disappointed me when I returned to college is that the spaces I had left behind a decade prior were still as white as they had been. And it was clear in a lot of situations that the Asian and black students that were present didn't really feel comfortable participating, and given the environment, why would they?
I completely understand! During my time at university, I especially felt that overwhelming whiteness. My disappointment mostly comes from online spaces being incredibly white and hostile too, to the point racialised people will hide that they're racialised or tokenize themselves for a white crowd. It's horrifying. I want a better world so I will make it for myself.
Thank you for reading!
The 'potted plant' thing is the exact thought that I have thought to myself several times after hanging out in (mostly white) trans spaces, even though I'm mixed and relatively white looking (ish). I feel still that there's a huge difference between how much I get interacted with vs white people and other white people. Anyways, lovely piece, and thank you for making it.
Indeed. Getting treated like a background object in these spaces really is quite common for us. I feel like white people have this weird radar for other white people...? They very quickly filter out those that side with the racialised and are also quite quick to racially profile.
But yes. Thank you for reading!
Absolutely! I'm sometimes a little startled at how quickly and instinctively white people 'clock' me, so to speak. Other racialized ppl are often more hesitant to make a call one way or another.
i have become so guarded about this that i intentionally obscured who i was. thank you for this reminder we're still allowed to talk about it.
I completely understand being guarded about this. Having been a bit involved in online queer spaces myself, it's hard to talk about yourself or anything about your race that indicates you aren't white. Because - to no one's surprise at all - most of the people in online queer spaces are in fact white. And the ones that rise to the top are either white themselves or align themselves with whiteness. The message here is clear and ugly: do not be yourself, do not be Chinese. I'm personally fed up with those sort of spaces so I've decided to head off on my own ways. As the author of 95 Theses has put it, the right move is to no longer engage.
I can't fully recommend talking about it, and I can't truly say there is any space for it in these online "communities". But I will say this: there is a better world out there. You have to make it for yourself.
Thank you for reading!
moved you'd take the time to write a reply like this, thank you and thank you. stepping forward with more hope!
Wow, that final part made me feel ill
I don't think I can say anything that the other commenters haven't already said, but wow, I really like this
Thank you!
I really wanted to succinctly express what it's like for us, so completely intended effect for the final part lol. Thanks again! :)
this was lovely to read. your lineart with no colour gives a sense of intimacy, which goes well with the theme of the story. I'd recommend exploring the theme further through the art, showing more of the isolation. aka, making the audience FEEL it even without reading the text.
I used to joke that I dont go to SWANA community gatherings because of homophobia and transphobia, and don't go to queer events because of racism. The subject is a tough one, and as you can see so many of us relate!!
Amazing work, hope to see more.
Haha, it's sort of intentionally drawn plain because I didn't have much time to make this. Thank you though!
It really is a tough subject. Thanks again for reading!
I’ve been thinking about how the toxic yuri stories that stuck with me are the ones that depict reality as it is: toxic, racist, and fascist. Ever since I read Reading Weird Fiction in an Age of Fascism, I’m more and more convinced that this “mode” of fiction – showing Reality as Weird – is the way to go.
And your work is one of the best examples of that. It reveals the idealistic ironies of the lives we live in today. It’s also heartwarming to see another Southeast Asian game like my title and Full Fathom 500 talk about similar subject matter.
Thank you for making the game.
that seems like an interesting article, thanks for sharing!! I;m so curious now
I'm unsure if this is a work that is "showing Reality as Weird". I sort of just wrote what reality is to me. Mundane and painful. I also don't write to engage with weird or normalising discourses in mind, because I centre experiential framing.
I also don't think this is an idealistic irony. I live my life without idealism or irony. This is a story without idealism. I'm glad you're also writing about Southeast Asian struggles, as with the writer of Full Fathom 500.
Thanks for reading.
Thank you for the insightful response. I think framing your experiences is a good way to explain the game and why I like it a lot. Again, thank you for making the game!
Thank you
Thank you!
short, but so, so haunting
southeast asian tgirl here. there's definitely a huge racism issue in online queer spaces that are left unreckoned with by white tgirls specifically because there is a subconscious premise that due to their own oppression, they are unable to inflict that same oppression onto other people, yet this is very much not the case. it's so fucking jarring whenever i see people say "i'm in a chinese time of my life right now" unironically because it goes to show just how Dense people can be especially while thinking that the culture and lived experiences of a marginalised demographic (like themselves!) are simply traits or quirks they can co-opt. which is insane, especially with regards to just how alienated and idealised asian culture has been made in recent times. what a fucking gut punch. today i will celebrate by not drying my hair, and getting a cold, like usual
it's the first time ever in my life that i have hair this long! time to get sick to a no longer false premise!
i am reminded of another vn (96 theses) but this hits so much harder because of its brevity
Oh, 95 Theses! After seeing that game last year, I was greatly inspired to make this one. That game had a lot to say, but it was missing the most important aspect of all: what did the Outsider think of all this?
With that in mind, I made this game with a Chinese protagonist and her perspective on western queer spaces. As I've replied to another comment earlier: online and offline, there is just so much racism within these spaces. Having been extremely alienated myself in real life due to a myriad of reasons, I was saddened to see it happen again online. I decided I wanted to do my bit by being direct as possible about racism against Asians within queer spaces, and the cultural molestation we experience.
Thank you for reading!
oops! i was one number off!
but yeah, thank you for the vn... it's beautiful. i've heard time and time again about how horridly asian women are treated in western countries (in person) and also online! so thank you for not sugarcoating it ^^
take care!!! and no problem for reading
god... this hits. my mom said the same thing to me (korean trans queer here). Thank You for sharing, i felt a lot of resonance with this little visual novel.
Glad to hear that! Thank you for reading :)
wow this was super well done and really emotional, especially for how short it was. great work! :)
Thank you!
really love this. i started uni recently and it was pretty immediately suffocating going into spaces which felt so implicitly segregated. i'd go into what would be some of the queer spaces and there'd maybe be like one or two other asians occasionally (always east asian except for like one other filipino i knew and they were likely to get read as east asian anyways) and could never feel properly comfortable because of it. there'd always be some sort of undertone of them knowing what was best or some sort of weird fetishistic comment on asian-ness like them talking about how 'the vibes' of japan are so great or whatever (you've never lived there. you don't know any history or culture of the place what vibes are you going off?) and since i'm mixed and white passing if i were to mention that i was asian and that it made me uncomfortable they'd backtrack and be like 'no we aren't actually like that we aren't weird' and it's just like. sure. whatever. sorry if i rambled unwarrantedly, i liked this a lot.
Omg yeah. I'm fully Chinese (the SEA variant that can 'pass' as East Asian) and I had no idea what was about to happen to me as I entered queer spaces at university. God. It is so dire out there; both online and offline. Don't worry about the ramble! I completely get it. Thank you so much for reading!
OH LOVE. i am going to be echoing the thoughts of all the other queer and trans asians in the comments but it's really meaningful to be able to engage with it like this. the thing that struck me the most is the through line of something your mom tells you... existing in two cultural contexts that you are meant to straddle and even learn to reject one while being paraded around by the other as something to stare at. really great. esp the bit abt names. its so odd. how do you reconcile heritage with the freedom only afforded by those that exotify? really fun imagery as well, my favorite is an early one of the main character sleeping going from a young to older version with the same composition. simple and yet really effective!!
Thank you so much!
Yeah, straddling between two cultures is really difficult. As an Asian obviously it's difficult to be queer within our communities, but then within queer communities it's difficult to be Asian. You really can't win.
Regardless, I'd like to build a better world by talking about these problems. Thanks again for reading!
awesome. there are so many types of white racism but one i've really been thinking about recently is this orientalist conception of asia (all of asia, from the middle east to the pacific islands) as a fantasy place populated by different kinds of aliens. like aliens from outer space. sometimes, to white people, it's cool and trendy to want to be an alien, and sometimes,
Yeah, I've been thinking about it a lot as well. If you're interested, this visual novel was heavily inspired by Orientalism and the Paisley Pattern, which a friend brought up to me while this was in development. More than being cool and trendy to be alien, it's more like they want to rip aspects from this "fantasy place" and claim it as their own. The article I linked above goes on to say how even the most common person in the UK can participate in imperialism by wearing paisley shawls.
Thanks for reading!
Banger, very impressive work, really struck a chord with me as a black trans girl
Thank you! Glad to hear it resonated with you :)
Hello, my name is Lisa and I'm a French student passionate about english and indie games. I played your game and I found it really moving. I would love to help translate the game into French so more players can discover it. I don’t have professional experience yet, but I’m very motivated and I’m available to work this summer. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to contribute.
I've been digesting this for a while but just, God. Yeah. It's like that. This is so poignant, excellent work!!!
It really is like that... Thank you for reading!
Awesome work!
Thank you!
this was really great...i don't often see works about being asian and queer, so this was nice to see and read. thank you
Thank you! :)
I really loved this and as a viet-american who has spent a lot of time in queer/trans centric communities (after being obviously cast out by visually and socially conservative asian communities, since I "wasn't the right kind of expensive and proper looking heterosexual cisgender asian,") I ostensibly ended up searching in queer/trans grounds that I didn't immediately notice were all-white exclusionary with an implication no one speaks that "white is right" but that everyone silently knows to be true can be suffocating in a way you can't see when you're in it.
and, an issue that's really degrading and grating is that so much of queer/trans communities that are white-dominated also have a weird orientalist air that's hard to pin down but can be explained by bizarre and fetishistic notions about japanese media where the notion of japanese people's humanity is some kind of spectacle, fascination, or used as "evidence of elite education and being cultured." this also extends to attitudes about all asians, since to whites there's not much difference between japanese people and chinese people and korean people, and also no distinguishing or discernment between the difference from east to southeast asia.
I think you did an incredible succinct and poignant job capturing some of the frustrations of orientalism and anti-asian racism. really good work
I totally get it!!! I'm a Chinese person who's spent a lot of time in western queer/trans spaces as well, and I completely did not understand the overwhelming whiteness in all of those, until I slowly realized nobody wanted to talk to me. Just by existing I sort of rocked the boat in those spaces, since with me around they couldn't make crass or insensitive jokes about Asians anymore, despite the fact they shouldn't be doing so to begin with. It was so bizarre, I agree.
The thing with Japanese media in particular -- a lot of it is 'palpable' to a white audience in the way that Chinese and Korean media isn't. It's sort of easy to cling to if you're white because fundamentally Japanese values and imperialism are very similar to the west. At the same time, a lot of white people don't like to acknowledge the humanity of Japanese people, like you've said, so it turns into something that's nearly wholly fetishistic and orientalist. I still think about the white trans woman I met at a party once who called herself by a Japanese name.
As with south east asia, there's a complete non-acknowledgement of that region by the west due to their lack of 'oriental value' beyond maybe food. I remember at school people didn't know where Indonesia was, despite how big it was across the map. Since I have family in Singapore and the surrounding countries, it only made it even more crazy as I realized growing up that nobody outside of south east asia likes to talk about it. And those that do? Well... it's sometimes hard to discern intentions. For example, there's a Japanese singer that bases off a lot of her songs with words from south east asian languages, and despite the obvious marketing tactic of catering to south east asia doing this, she gets away with it due to those within south east asia happy there's people interested in our culture. It's a greater problem of racism and imperial powers against those that have been robbed. One of my friends worded it quite well: you're either the colonized or the colonizer.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting! I'm very happy to see another south east asian around :) I'll check out your work some time as well!
everything you said is so true!! I couldn't put it all together before but you're right that japanese media has an underlying implication of an imperialism that is very palatable to the west especially compared to chinese media...(not very familiar with korean media!) like, way more white people are willing and comfortable to engage with anime than ever read a danmei novel, and the ones that do read danmei often have kind of... I can't put my finger on it, but Weird Attitudes...
it's the kind of Weird Attitude that's like, the assumption chinese takeout 🥡 places serve Authentic Chinese Cuisine™️ as if the fortune cookie isn't a california invention 🥠 (also how much of a monolith do they think china is!! there's so much regional cuisine...)
I read a ton of (translated) chinese danmei webnovels and it's just an incredibly vivid and irreplicable landscape even within the singular genre of "danmei" that can't be captured just by what's been cunningly licensed by the english publishing industry to appeal to (white) americans because there's definitely a phenomenon where white americans can self-insert into anime protagonists in a way they can't fudge the default with chinese characters who are in every way shape and form "unforgettably and unerringly chinese."
something something the game honor of kings (which mainly features characters from the romance of the three kingdoms, ex. kongming and zhou yu and other chinese lore like daji) dominates the moba landscape across every country in the world Except for usa, where there's silently a vague discomfort about it being "too chinese to forget" unlike the dominant moba, league of legends and related games
I think one of the roots of sinophobia in usa is the racial discomfort of threatening your position as an american of being "the center of the world" ie the ultimate colonizer. it's related to the decentralization when english monolingual americans become extremely defensive and uncomfortable when you delocate them from the assumption "to speak at all is to of course speak english" by the description of "english speakers" because of english language imperialism preferring to imply english is the most superior (and most human) language and naturally is the tongue all humans should speak, and it's pitiful and disgusting when non-white immigrants open their filthy mouths to speak "bad english" as if bad english makes you a bad person, not even to mention the vast majority of native english speakers remain monolingual their entire lives.
in my toxic yuri game prince swallow contains a lot of the chinese idioms I've picked up over time and the (summarized) statement that "over 1000 years the intrinsic nature of empire hasn't changed, they've just changed the names" ie. they're have always been kings.
it's really great to hear your insights
Oh this was pretty interesting. Sometimes, personally, it felt like to me the white people of the world can't figure out how to normally interact with people from other cultures, especially if they come from a background of xenophobia and racism, it can definitely get weird sometimes. For me I usually see people being unwilling to engage at all.
I'm rambling. I really liked reading about your perspective, though. In such a prompt and succinct format. Two thumbs up!
Oh, I've totally seen that too. Both are incredibly bad. Like wearing stuff from other cultures as decorations or just straight up being unable to engage with it at all. It's really disappointing to see, so I'm trying my best to change this as much as I personally can.
Thank you for reading and commenting! It means a lot to me :)
this is a wonderful game, thank you for sharing your perspective. i didn't know if i'd see any other games about being asian and queer in this jam, i'm so happy i found one right away.
Thank you! Always nice to see another queer Asian :)
Glad you enjoyed!
oh!! my game for this jam (prince swallow) is also about being a queer asian, though in a capsule of an asian fantasy palace politics setting
that sounds so sick i will definitely be playing your game!!!
ty!! I hope you enjoy!!
Oh, definitely check out Full Fathom 500 in this jam (not mine) and Born Again from Daydrinking Jam (shameless plug)!
I find this to be almost haunting.
I've seen too many white trans women with this kind of behavior. Ones that use chinese names and talk about being in their "chinese era" as if those are just... normal things to say.
I hope this work gives at least one person some pause about their behavior and lowers the tolerance others have for it.
thanks for sharing this
Thank you for playing!
I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, since my real life friends and I have been affected to a large extent by things similar to this game. Obviously, it's not a one to one to anything that's actually happened, though the "It's time to get more Chinese" is something I did actually see recently. I got quite upset seeing that, haha...
I also hope so too ^^ thank you again for playing and commenting! It means a lot to me :)