#She makes like travel videos and educational stuff about Japan and he does cooking mostly

[vamptastic]

Need to train Magnolia to do what that Japanese cook YouTuber does with his cats and have her just sit and patiently wait for a piece of food while I cook. She gives up and does that eventually but there is an initial stage where she jumps on the counter with her unhygienic paws and tries to shove her head into the ingredients I'm cutting or just starts trying to drag away pieces of my lunch. It would also be cool if I could teach her to ride in a bicycle basket like that guy...

[ere-the-sun-rises]

Ooooooh this is what makes the internet special. If you can find trustworthy people, youtubers make learning a little bit of everything so much easier and more fun*! I have some recommendations!

*While all of my recommended channels will be good, not all of them will be lighthearted. Some will deal with heavy topics, but all are educational and entertaining (or at least, they are to me).

Casual Geographic - nature and the animal kingdom, usually the more upsetting side. Very dry, sharp sense of humour.

Miniminuteman/Milo Rossi - archaeology and conspiracy theory debunking. Very savage, caustic humour, but very informative.

Lindsay Nikole - nature and animal kingdom, interested a lot in evolution and weird/bizarre/ugly creatures.

Oceanliner Designs/Mike Brady - predominantly discusses oceanliners (a specific class of passenger/cargo ship meant for overseas transit a la Titanic), but also talks a lot about shipwrecks, lost ships and ships in general. Also, he's Australian!

TierZoo - animal facts in the form of video game character stats and talks about the natural world like a MMORPG. Lots of fun and very wholesome.

H Bomberguy - what- what does he do? Everything? Nothing? All I know is he tells me stuff for hours at a time and is quite entertaining.

Ze Frank - nature and animal kingdom. Not for children, or adults who don't act like children. (Though he does have an alternate channel where he has the straight factual videos with the dirty jokes and innuendos left out.)

Legal Eagle - a US lawyer who weighs in on current legal cases and explains law in a down to earth, accessible way. He does talk about political trials/legal issues too, but you can ignore those if you'd prefer.

Adam Something - a Hungarian man who goes over infrastructure and mega projects and discusses if they're viable or stupid. If all life is to become crab, all transit is to become train.

Isabella Lanter - anti-MLM/scam girlie who is just very real and up front. She posts videos about scam products/offerings/opportunities and debunks MLM trainings/propaganda.

Kurzgesagt-In A Nutshell - very, very good and informative videos about a variety of scientific topics from space to animals to disease to physics.

Contrapoints - social justice discussed by a transwoman. She's very funny and witty, as well as open about her trans experiences. Deals with a lot of heavy topics with solid humour but not dismissive.

Casual Navigation - another ship channel, but discusses more how they work and why.

B. Dylan Hollis - teeeeechnically a Tiktoker, BUT he has a youtube channel with longer form content and his compilations are available on youtube so there. He does old timey cooking that turns out as bad as you think it will about half the time.

Bright Sun Films/Bright Sun Travels - videos about abandoned/bankrupt/dead companies and properties mostly in North America. On Travels, he gives honest, thorough reviews of places he's stayed at.

Caitlin Doughty (formerly Ask A Mortician) - cool videos about the funeral industry and dead bodies. Her video on the SS Eastland was fantastic.

Folding Ideas - kinda like H Bomb, but more centralized on film with off-the-rails, well informed videos about random shit from crypto to the Nostalgic Critic.

Lost In The Pond - cultural comparisons from a British man about living in Britain vs the US. Very cute and curious.

Practical Engineering - informational stuff mostly about civil engineering but discussing other stuff. He's such a dad; he makes little demonstration models sometimes.

Real Engineering - he talks more mechanical engineering, but still very good.

Todd In The Shadows - music critic who focuses more on modern pop music, but does retrospectives on failed albums and past music. His early videos rely on "angry" reviews, but his humour gets drier and better the closer to the present he is (though honestly they're all good).

Watercolor by Shibasaki - a little bit different, this is a channel hosted by an elderly Japanese man (english subtitles provided!) who paints and teaches how to paint in watercolours. Think Japanese Mr. Rogers meets Bob Ross.

And then there's a bunch of channels all hosted by the same British man named Simon, who's got a great speaking voice and is very informative.

Biographics - profiling famous and infamous people with an eye away from the scandalous and hyperbolic, focusing more on the historical.

Geographics - Biographics, but for places.

Warographics - has largely non-partisan and historcally oriented descriptions of battles and military units, but also has a current events show hosted weekly that discusses updates on modern battlefields and does not shy away from stories not widely covered (Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, Haiti, Myanmar, etc.).

Casual Criminalist - true crime podcast where Simon cold-reads the script. The show does not focus on the gory details of killings and takes the deaths seriously, but Simon getting upset at the cops for taking so fucking long to fogure shit out is always funny.

Decoding the Unknown - cold-read podcast where he talks about mysteries and things that aren't common knowledge

MegaProjects - discusses megaprojects both planned and completed.

SideProjects - shorter form videos that discuss particular aspects of projects or briefer overviews of them.

Brain Blaze - another cold-read podcast, but just kinda about anything? A lot lighter, not really about anything that matters.

And finally, shoutout to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. It's technically an HBO show, but 20-30 minute segments of the show are available on youtube and are both informative and deeply entertaining.

[diverse-writing]

Pt. 1-Hi! I'm a Black woman writing a Fanfiction for an anime series called Food Wars and I'm creating a sister and brother who are half-Lakota (Itazipcola Band) and half-Black American. They're going to a Japanese Culinary High School, the same school their great-uncle (Kiowa) went to when America was in Japan, post-WWII for a few years as his father was in the army. It's a very competitive school with diverse characters and cooking styles/types. They both want to travel and see a new country.

(continued) They live in Sioux Falls, SD after moving from the Cheyenne River Rez years ago. The family owns a Catering company with Native, African, and American Southern food (Mom is from VA) that does Showcasings, Chef Demos, and feeding the people within both communities while mentoring the youth. Annie (Older sis) wants to be a Pastry Chef as Andrew (little bro) does mostly savory, especially BBQ. Annie was on a kid's baking show as Andrew won kid's BBQ competitions. Both siblings want to help their communities by spreading awareness about poverty, suicide, and other stuff. They are active in their Native heritage. I did research in Natives in Japan, and I found that it's a bit mixed. Some people don't know about Natives, or that they do but only through the news and old western films. There's this one guy who went to a tribe to learn about the culture and he went back to Japan to teach his students about how the Natives truly lived. There's a Native jewelry store in Tokyo So some Japanese do know about Natives, I want to write a few small scenes where the Japanese students ask questions that are stereotypical about Natives and Black people, but they learn from the siblings. Annie begins to have a crush on a boy who is mixed indigenous (Ainu/Saami), but isn't connected to those cultures, because of his Ainu dad dying and Saami mom leaving him. He was adopted by a rich Japanese/Danish family. I want him to learn more about his heritage after falling for Annie and begins to heal from his past through learning about the Saami. Before he didn't want to do anything with them due to his mom. Andrew falls for a Japanese girl who does Medicine Cuisine. He's a expert in Nutrition and tries to help his people's health issues. They have a cute relationship. I thought of these characters just like any other person. I'm Black and I don't like seeing stereotypes. Annie and Andrew love music due to their dad formerly being in a band with only one album. They're both crafty with the Arts due to their grandparents on both sides teaching them. Annie is more outgoing, goofy, and blunt than Andrew but she enjoys the simple stuff in life and loves fashion (Vintage 60s/70s and Punk) Andrew is more quiet and shy, but not antisocial. He just likes doing his own thing while teasing his sis on her shortness and crush. He likes comfy, Punk clothing. I was just wondering what is offensive and not. I want to show their food and aspects of culture, like Powwows (I've been watching videos on Lakota Powwows) and I've been wondering if there's a coming of age ceremony. I don't want to show it just mention it. Is this where people get their Lakota name? I don't want to do religious ceremonies since that's sacred and also I'm not really religious, but what if I want to allude about it? Sorry that this was way too long!

Okay, this is a huge question but I’ll do my best to answer it with the GIANT caveat that I’m not indigenous and am only answering to the best of my knowledge. If any indigenous followers--particularly those with experience in Japan/with Japanese culture, though of course all are welcome--have thoughts or feelings, as always feel free to add more information and/or correct me!

A few observations that jump out, based on your description of your narrative framework:

Their food. Okay, while I know absolutely nothing about the food cultures you describe, I’m a huge fan of connecting with your culture through your food (and your stomach!) so I love this framing. That being said, to my knowledge African American food is fairly distinct from African food, with the former more likely to be in their cultural background given your description (obviously, in this situation you’re the expert on Black culture so feel free to totally ignore me here). 

Andrew’s food interests. Related to the previous bullet point, based on my understanding Medicine Cuisine and Nutrition would be super interesting focuses for him given his cultural background. It’d be super cool to seem him integrate his various cooking specialties and heritages into nourishing food to support his people. 

Knowledge about Native Americans in Japan. I do think it’s likely accurate that unless someone in Japan has personally done research, the average Japanese citizen probably knows very little about indigenous Native Americans in the same way the average American knows very little about Japanese indigenous ethnic groups. 

Relatedly, I think it makes sense for their Japanese classmates to ask stereotypical questions, but you should steer clear of just plain offensive questions. As you likely know, answering stereotypical questions about your identity and heritage is exhausting and should be treated as such within the narrative. Your characters are in school to educate themselves, not to educate their classmates, so while the latter may occur sometimes I don’t think it should be their focus. So while the intent of the questioning scene may partially be to help answer readers’ questions about Annie and Andrew’s heritage (and Black and Lakota culture to an extent), remember that the ultimate goal of representation is not to educate others but to help people within those demographics see themselves on the page. And more likely than not, Black and Lakota readers won’t want to see characters representing themselves having to answer the same repetitive questions they face down all the time.

I know you only mentioned him in passing, but I have a lot more thoughts specifically about Annie’s mixed Ainu/Saami crush. I don’t want to tell you *not* to write him but I do think there are several pitfalls you need to carefully avoid moving forward.

His Saami mother. There’s a big stereotype around POC abandoning their children, being absent or flighty parents, or otherwise just failing to properly nuture their children. While I’m unaware of any specific stereotype regarding indigenous  parents, I would tentatively say that doesn’t mean those stereotypes don’t exist, so tread carefully. That being said, I do know there’s a stereotype about indigenous people being alcoholics, so you should absolutely avoid characterizing his mother as such because as an outsider, you don’t have the power to subvert that stereotype. 

His relationship with his heritage. I would also be very cautious while writing his arc of reconnecting to his heritage. While reconnecting is unfortunately a very real (and very under represented) process for indigenous people, it’s an extremely difficult and personal process that I don’t think outsiders are qualified to write in-depth about. Though I don’t think you should necessarily gloss over his reconnecting process, I do think it should perhaps be a side character arc, rather than his defining character arc. For example, he might mention to Annie that her passion for her heritage has inspired him to research his own family, or else maybe he’s pictured buying a book on the Saami language. (The current discussion around Rick Riordan’s portrayal of Piper’s imperfect reconnection to her Cherokee heritage makes some really good points, so I’d check that out if you’re familiar with his books. I’d be happy to link you if you’re curious.)

His adopted family. I have to admit--as the daughter of a transracial adoptee in a family full of transracial adoptees, this framing makes me very wary. While I know transracial adoption parents likely have only the best intentions, the adopted child themselves often end up hugely disconnected from their birth cultures. It’s often an extremely stressful and traumatic event, especially in cases where the adopted parents don’t learn about their child’s birth culture themselves and/or only teach the child their own cultures (in this case, Japanese and Dutch). Honestly, with all due respect, I have yet to see any fictional narratives that properly address the trauma of transracial adoptions and given everything else going on in your writing, I’m not sure how well you would be able to write about it. More in the next bullet point.

His extremely mixed heritage. While I don’t want to come across as rude, I do have to ask: what’s your intention behind making a single side character with four different cultural backgrounds, especially backgrounds that you the author don’t share? The reality is that, no matter how much research you may do, these four cultures--Ainu, Saami, Japanese, and Dutch--are very rarely found in combination, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find any #ownvoices accounts from similar scenarios that you could hypothetically draw on to write more accurately. As a result, you’d know very little about how these different cultures meld together, and you’d have almost nothing to go on to write about his mixed multicultural background and the tensions that come with it. While I understand you may be attached to his parental setup and his backstory, I would highly advise simplification to avoid straying into territory you neither understand or are qualified to write about. Given your focus on his reconnecting, I would probably recommend keeping his Ainu father alive and cutting his adopted family. That way, you cut the number of unknown cultures in half and you can truly dedicate yourself to writing his Ainu heritage and his reconnecting process well.

With regards to your actual question about Lakota religious ceremonies, as a non-indigenous person I’m definitely not qualified to answer specifics about Lakota coming of age and naming ceremonies. That being said, I know this: Native American ceremonies, rituals, traditions, and lore are often closely guarded and not shared with outsiders. And I don’t just mean outsiders don’t share in the ceremonies themselves--outsiders often can’t even learn about the ceremonies because the knowledge itself is guarded. (This information is secondhand from my Blackfoot professor last year. If I’m wrong or if any indigenous followers have more accurate information, as always I’m open to critiques and suggestions!) As you continue researching this, I’d definitely be mindful of the source; if it comes from an official Lakota or indigenous source, it’s likely okay to share or discuss, but if all you can find about Lakota religious ceremonies is from, like, someone’s blog or Facebook post or something, then that information likely wasn’t approved to share and you shouldn’t write it into your story. Given that this seems to only be a character detail mentioned briefly, you may be able to simply mention the characters’ Lakota names in passing without referencing the ceremony itself.

Sorry for the long response, and I hope at least some of this information helps!

(Also, if you read this post, this is a good example of a really well researched and thought out ISO Sensitivity Reader question. Obviously, I’ve provided what information I can and this individual seems to have done lots of research, but the execution comes down to... well, the actual execution.)