Colonialist Theory

Human. Human. Human. Elf. Human. Spriggan. Human. Weird...blobby thing.

It's first thing in the morning, and Sprite is staking out Shibuya's main gate. Yes, it's a little bit odd to have him hanging around with folded arms. Yes, the local guards have been giving him increasingly suspicious looks. No, he does not appear to care one whit. He simply stays where he is, gaze tracking individuals as they depart. While they're a motley group of folk, he's yet to notice anyone quite as distinctive as the individual he's looking for.

Given the description someone like Uta would have given of Jazz, she'd certainly be considered 'distinctive' by most. While it's perhaps debatable that she's the tweest thing to ever come out of Elder Tales character generation, she certainly fits the 'cutesy' archetype well. Dressed in her black long coat and witch's hat over her maid's dress, Jazuhanzu emerges from the town gates at long last, hands tucked into the pockets on either side of her. Indeed, she *is* smol-and-adorable, with her long hair shrouding her, waving lightly in a breeze as she pushes out and immediately off the road with an intent to go ... somewhere.

Spriteshero is unacknowledged initially. The presence simply didn't register on her, though obviously, that won't last.

Human. Human. Human. Salamander. Human. Pocket-Jellyfish. Human. Sprite. Human. Is that....is that a dragon-toad?

Wait, Jellyfish? There's a startled double-take, a moment of confused uncertainty. Indeed, Jazu's already a good hundred or so feet down the road before Sprites pounds his way after her, booted feet thumping hard into the road-bed and kicking up a mini cloud of dust with each step. "Jazu...han..." he begins. Adventurers and Landers alike snicker. They get a dirty-eyed, if breathless look. "Young miss!" he calls after her, evidently having decided namelessness is a bit less embarrassing.

Human. Human. Human. Salamander. Human. Pocket-Jellyfish. Human. Sprite. Human. Is that....is that a dragon-toad?

Wait, Jellyfish? There's a startled double-take, a moment of confused uncertainty. Indeed, Jazu's already a good hundred or so feet away before Sprites pounds his way after her, booted feet thumping hard first into the road-bed, then the off-road grasses. "Jazu...han..." he yells. Adventurers and Landers alike, distant though they may be on the main road, snicker. They get a dirty-eyed, if breathless look. "Young miss!" he calls after her, evidently having decided namelessness is a bit less embarrassing.

Jazz Hands! Jazz stops and looks towards the call of the name of her character and then lets out a breath, cheeks puffing out adoorably.

"That'd be me," she offers, and oh no, her voice really does go along with her character. It's like there was a casting call for the Cutest Voice Actress We Can Find For You and Jazz won it. Won it outright. Ran away with it, even.

She doesn't really seem to recognize him, but her violet and amber eyes are now locked on their approach.

SpritesHero nearly pitches forward, breathing labored, hands resting upon his knees. It's not that he's unaffected by her general persona. It's more that he's...ahh...been at the desk a bit too long. And sprinted. And can barely hear her at all over the sound of blood rushing in his ears.

"Apologies!" he gasps, desperately attempting to get his request out around his breaths. "Uta said." Breath. "You have great." Breath. "Colonialist." Breath. "Landers. May I." Breath. "Walk with you?" Should he be ashamed at being such a mess in front of such adorableness? Absolutely. Eternally.

Jazuhanzu just sort of winds up staring at him for a long moment, staring at him. "... right. I guess. I'm heading out deep off roads, though, so you'll only want to go so far or you'll probably get lost. I'll give you a minute and then we'll be on our way."

She folds her arms across her chest and ... waits. For him to catch his breath and hten she turns and starts to head off, expecting him to trail after her.

"So what's this about great colonism?"

SpritesHero uses that minute to take a quick swig of water, chokes it down, and is in reasonably tolerable form by the time she heads off. Trail after her he does, thumbs hooked through the straps of his backpack. "I was talking with Uta about the dynamics of Adventurer-Lander interactions," he explains from his position a couple feet behind her, a bit more coherent now that he's managed to catch his breath. Close enough to hear. Not so close as to be generally creepy. At least that appears to be the intent. "She mentioned you had a fascinating take on it as a sort of colonialist interaction, but I have to admit I'm awfully confused about how that might be the case. Could you help me with that?"

Short legs make for slow walking and she's taking her time about it, even if she's purposeful in her direction.

"We're a technologically advanced, foreign culture who suddenly arrived and settled in their land en masse. Let me ask you instead how our impact could be anything but colonial in nature, especially when so many of us see only the 'improvements' we can make?"

"Oh, I'm Robert. Pleased to meet you," Sprites offers, getting the requisite niceties out of the way even if only as an afterthought. There's a moment's pause as he formulates a reply to her question.

"Well," he begins, "I suppose that I would argue the dynamic is fundamentally different. I never thought of colonialism as being intrinsically about resettling and displacing. It's my understanding that any resettlement in colonialism was a means to the ultimate end--namely of resource and wealth extraction."

"American, Robert?" queries Jazz at the introduction, eyebrow arched. "Seems we might both be a long ways from home."

She is silent for a moment and then shakes her head, tentacles draped over her shoulders and lifting slightly away from her to point towareds him.

"Your understanding is flawed, then," she offerws, "because you center the ends of the colonizers rather than the colonized."

"Good old California," Robert confirms, with a distant, if warmly affectionate smile. "Though I suppose at this point distance really only registers in cultural outlook. Where are you from, if I may ask?" If he's thrown off by the fact that her hair-tentacles are possibly prehensile, he gives no indication of it. Though he does observe her hair, now, with not a little interest.

"I suppose that's fair," he agrees at length. "Though if I were to look at it from the colonized perspective, it would then be a case of holier-than-thou foreigners coming to my land, setting up military bases, and looting and pillaging the land for the sake of their distant capital. Which still doesn't seem to be a great fit. What am I missing?"

"Because you're relying on a textbook definition too closely," chides Jazz, gently, as she walks along. "The foreign capital isn't required, just political and economic dominacne by settlers. The United States didn't stop being colonial just because it stopped serving King George's inerests. It's about an economic, cultural, and political system that centers the needs of the Settlers over the Indingeous culture that it's supplanting," she adds, "that's even before you get into nittier-grittier examples of it that are already present. Why the questions, though? Isn't this just a game world you want out of?"

"I'm happy to expand the textbook definition to the spirit, rather than the letter of the definition," Robert answers with an amused upward glance of his eyes--yes, he's still distracted by that hair, "but at some point I do have to wonder if the definition isn't being expanded to the point where it's encompassing nearly any relationship with an inherent power differential. Gentrification comes to mind, for example. And it may just be semantics, but I figure words do matter, and quite a bit." Her second question prompts a bit more silence, and when Robert replies, it is painstaking.

"Colonialism, at least by the narrower definition, fell apart," he answers. "And to my mind, part of why it was able to succeed was the abuses were kept far, far away from the mother nation. We do not have that advantage here. So if the relationship is colonialist, then given the forced proximity it is inherently an unstable relationship. That dynamic potentially poses a substantial threat to getting out of here. I'm aware that there are many tensions; the question is whether failure is, in a sense, pre-ordained."

"The definition I've offered is a valid one by the standards of discussion of political and economic systems. The 'foreign capital' only needs to be a strong enough group that orders the extraction of wealth around itself to accomplish some end -- such as, say, climbing a tower in an effort to get home, where other people bear the brunt of that economic exploitation and consequences of the act."

Jazz glances up towards the sky for a moment, studying the stars.

"The massacares of native people were reported in the press of the day. How many native scalps were collected in bounties were reported. You're underestimating how much brutality the common citizen of the day would accept if it meant he could settle that nice Indian land. Forced proximity isn't going to stop that. What we want here is centered far more than the experiences, thoughts, and cultures of the local peoples."

There's a beat.

"You are right about one thing: we have nowhere to run to, but then, neither did Cortez. All that does is make an ultimately violent and bloody end *more likely*."

She pauses a moment and produces a small, black sheaf of papers, flipping it open and going through page after page of detailed maps until she finds a specific one. Whatever she's looking for is local, since that's definitely a map she's drawn of Shibuya's immediate environs.

"You should want to be wable to escape this game and be able to face yourself in the mirror when you get back. I know I do."

"I don't think any of us are going to avoid exploitation and resource-extraction in general," Robert opines, his tones mild. "That has been a fundamental of human society ever since the day the first tribes formed." As she pauses, so too does he, though his attentions are less on local fauna and flora, and more on the heavens. He remains there, chin tilted upwards, hands on his hips.

"Which is not to minimize the very real atrocities that did occur--and I have little doubt are occurring here, right now, in this world, though I suppose the moral impact of that might depend on what one thinks a Lander is in the first place," he continues. "But no, I agree with your conclusion, and I suppose I did not express my view adequately the first time. When I said colonialism fell apart due to proximity, I did not mean it fell apart due to improved understanding of each other as fellow men. Rather, that proximity brought the threat home. And so, as you say, the forced proximity here is very likely to bring matters to a head." A faint pause, followed by an amused, self-deprecating smile. "I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that escaping requires abhorrent actions, or will necessarily result in the destruction of the world. But I do wonder where your personal threshold is, with regards to what is acceptable to further our escape."

"I understand the impulse," Robert concedes, lowering his gaze to Jazu once more. "behind wanting to disrupt existing structures--especially when they seem to be working rather well and one does not fully understand their purpose--as little as possible. What I don't understand is how this vision is going to be practical. Setting aside superiority, inferiority, or lifting up for a moment, I would suggest that there will be tremendous Lander appetite for the numerous inventions that will be coming down the pipeline. Toilets are convenient. Indoor plumbing is convenient. Ships and planes and computers are convenient. More to the point, the kingdoms that fail to adopt those technologies will almost invariably be run over by the kingdoms that do. But you and I both know how disruptive that technological advancement will be to existing industries."

He pauses, then, lifting his hands in an expression of surrender. "But maybe that's setting up moving goal-coasts." Beat. "I'm terribly sorry if I'm being rude, but I've been thinking about this for a while now, and it's been bothering me dreadfully. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Miss JazuHanzu?"

"I'm not suggesting restraining their desires. I'm suggesting being wary of how we channel them. We'll always have a solution to their problems, but we can't be their solution. We can and should support them, integrate with them, work with them. Even if you don't believe they're full people, treat them like that anyway because the alternative is unthinkable, or should be. We should not be so insistent on our own conenience, but rather, focus on ensuring their culture, personhood, and development centers *them first*. Landers first. These are their lives, thier cultires, their kingdoms. Integration is key. Integration means we'll change each other, but it also means taking care with how we develop and introduce things. Holding back too much can create difficulties assuredly as reckless development can too. I'm not suggesting we do *nothing*, but rather, carefully considering how we integrate instead and what we bring to the table with us each step of the way."

There's a pause as she concludes her little speech. She looks over at him. "Ask, I guess."

"Yes," Robert agrees, tones dry. "I've been desperately trying not to think of Landers as the fingernails and skin of an all-controlling, malevolent AI. That's a thought that leads to some unfortunate places, though I find I can never quite shake the thought entirely."

He trails off for a moment, gaze downcast. "Well, Miss, I couldn't help noticing that your hair seems to be a bit tentacle-y, and you've got this absolutely gorgeous, diaphenous look going on that reminds me of jellyfish gracefully floating along ocean currents. Let me tell you, ma'am, I don't think I've ever seen anything quite so lovely in this world. But I couldn't help wondering, and I apologize again if I'm being too forward-my wife was always telling me I never know when to leave off when I should. But when you go out into the sun, do you...uh, you know...evaporate?"

Jazuhanzu listens for a moment. There's a look oin her face as he continues talking that is akin to someone having their fingernails pulled out very slowly.

"Okay that's enough," she tells him, and then there's a very powerful blast of water thgat strikes him in the chest and carries him off into the trees.

"DO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF," she can be heard yelling over it. It won't hurt.

Much.