#allusions to xenophobia

[newbornwhumperfly]

ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves…

sorry for this day’s entry being late! i wasn’t happy with it for a while but perfection is the enemy of progress, so! here it is! i promise the next installments will be in quick succession, it’ll be a fun time for all 😈💖😈

whumptober2024 • day 3 • set up for failure • fingerprints | wrongfully arrested | “i warned you”

CW: blood, dehumanization, conditioned whumpee, allusions to xenophobia

title insp. by “ruthlessness” from epic: the musical

~

He knew it. 

He knew it, he knew it, he knew it, he fucking knew it. God fucking damnit. Jorah’s hands are steel-balls, every muscle coiled, spring-loaded, because he’s not fucking shaking. 

He’s not - he’s clear-headed and he has to be, doesn’t he, because nobody else in this goddamn base is. Nobody else is seeing or thinking or using their fucking brains because Morja is not in cuffs already (or, better, with a bullet in his head), just standing, standing, before their Captain’s desk, still soaking wet with Claudia’s blood.

“I warned you.” Jorah breathes, hands planted on Brax’s desk, knuckles bleach-white with holding himself still. “Captain, I asked you not to let him go without me, without a goddamn security expert-“

“There was an expert, Cuthbert.” The Captain breathes, their hands pressed flat on the fine wood grain of their desk, “The expert was Morja.” 

“And you thought- I’m sorry, you thought he’d be good enough?”

Claudia is in surgery, getting head stitches, and what if she dies- 

Jorah clamps down on the chilling twist in his stomach, all that cold going back to his veins. That’s not useful to think about right now, Sarai’s got her, she’ll be fine. She’ll live. She’d better live. 

Or Morja is dead. 

“Yes, Cuthbert, I used my discretion here. Morja was the only one who knew where the training facility would be.”

“And that wasn’t, maybe, suspect to you, did you not think of security, Captain?-“

“He was the best choice to keep everybody safe.”

Jorah reels, chest heaving, the sharp fire of rage pressing down on his lungs. He’s so betrayed. This is such a betrayal because the Captain is standing there, tall and pristine and behind that desk which represents their country, their title, and Jorah can’t believe that someone like them could be so stupid. How could they have made such an error?

“It was my call.” Jorah grits out. “I’m this base’s security liaison, I am second rank, I review all potential security threats, this motherfucker is a security threat-“

“Easy, Commander-“

“Brax, I- how else do you want me to put it, this is a fucking lapse in protocol, those are supposed to be my fucking calls to keep us safe!”

Jorah’s voice rising to a shout, his professionalism unraveling, hands emphasize his point by laying on the desk. It rattles, the trinkets rattling together, a cup in its saucer. Brax’s glasses flash, their glasses pushed up, as they stand fully behind their desk.

“If you are suggesting I had poor judgement, Cuthbert, I trusted everyone on that team.” 

Their voice is cold, sharp, and Jorah has gone maybe too far, he can see that, but they aren’t listening. Jorah can see those dark, sharp eyes keep glancing over Jorah’s shoulder, keep trying to seek out that rat fuck, why does Brax care what comes out of him? Is this balance? Is this trying to be fair, to be measured? Can’t they see the threat?

They aren’t listening. 

“Captain.” Jorah rears back, a stagger of a step, his eyes burning. Throat clicking. He goes to attention in respect for their station, but his head shakes back and forth, jaw spasming as he tries to unclench his jaw. 

“Captain?” His eyes blur as he blinks, frustration choking him, voice pitched soft, shaky. “You- you didn’t trust my judgement? You didn’t trust me?”

That makes Brax seem to remember themself, drawing themself up to full height, their expression, so tight and narrow-eyed, seems to falter. They reach out to him and Jorah pulls away, wounded. 

“Jorah, that isn’t why I didn’t consult you before they left-“

“I just wanted to keep my friends, my unit, safe, Captain.”

“I know that, Jorah, I know that and I would never have let them all go if I had known there would be this much danger.”

“He hurt Claudia.”

Jorah’s voice crests on a pitch of tension, cracks with rage, a frigid ocean storm frothing inside him, and Brax’s jaw tics visibly, sucking in their breath sharply. 

“…You don’t know that, Jorah.”

But they don’t sound so sure anymore, their eyes flicking from the asset, stock still as bloody stone, and him, and Jorah digs in, presses, urgent and hoarse, leans over the desk again to plead.

“Just ask him.”

They both spin but Jorah is watching Brax as their hand comes up to touch the gold wire of their glasses, to steady the frames again, peering at Morja with a look that makes even Jorah go still. Searching, probing, an excavation tool, razor sharp attention all on one object, one singular foci. There is a hardness to their mouth which means disappointment, pondering, doubt. 

“Morja?” 

Asset, Jorah wants to scream, but he bites his cheek somehow as the fucker thuds to his knees, filthy, on their beautiful carpet, whimpering like a dog when he folds, hands (the red blood barely dried, caked and browning) clasped crosswise in front,  playing dead. 

“Stand up, Morja, I’m talking to you.”

“I’msorryCaptain.”

As with their usual platitudes that grate, sugar on a broken tooth, Brax corrects his apology, a that’s alright, Morja, stomach-turning reassurance for a killing machine. The stains of small red fingerprints on the asset’s cheek, bright in the lamplight, make Jorah’s nostrils flare. Claudia’s handprints. 

Did she clutch at Morja before he bashed her over the head? Did she claw at him in self-defense? Jorah imagines Morja and his fucking scar-gnarled hands looming over her and he wants to put his boot against that throat and watch his fucking eyes bug as he crushes and crushes and crushes until he’s no longer playing at going limp.

“Morja, listen to me carefully. Are you responsible for Claudia’s wound?” 

Their icy calm could cut steel and even Jorah feels himself straighten up as the asset wheezes. 

“Y-Yes, Captain.”

Jorah warned them all. 

“Did you…try to harm her, Morja?”

“I’msosorry.”

“Morja, tell me you didn’t hurt her?”

“Yes- y-yes. Yes, Captain, s-sorry, was m-me.”

Brax’s hands slip into their waistcoat and Jorah is close enough to see their fingers clench into fists, rounded knuckles pressing against the silk. 

“What happened, Morja?” 

Their voice is so soft and Morja whines like a dog scratching at the door and Jorah wants to vomit.  The asset sways like he wants to collapse, silence stretching between them, taut and humming. He shakes his head, more a jerk of his chin, and lowers his chin to his chest. 

Look them in the fucking face. 

“I failed.”

His arm wraps around his stomach, head turned away, for all the world like a penitent child confessing his candy theft. Red handed. Sorry for being caught, blood still under his nails. 

“Cap-Captain, I- I am sorry. I am sorry for- for obeying my- the enemy, an- Captain, I didn’t know-“

Poorly trained dog with sharp jaws. 

“I just obeyed, I followed orders, and- I’m sorry, I tried to- I did hurt her, it is my f-fault, and I did try to- I didn’t want to hurt her, I did, I did-“

Rabid.

“Someone on the other side told you to hurt her?”

“Y-Yes, anotéros. Captain, I’m sorry.”

“Morja…who’s side are you on?”

Teeth at all of their throats.

“…Idon’tknow.”

A knock at the door makes them all startle, the silence spiderwebbing from the pressure of intrusion as Cobi steps into the room, Pfeffer still bloody, those big hands trembling, eyes red and swollen, streaming snot and tears that he keeps swiping away. 

Jorah’s chest spasms, cold, no-

Cobi catches his eyes and shakes his head, sniffling hard, using a heel of his palm to scrub at his cheek. 

“Sarai kicked me out, to- to work better.” He croaks. “I- Um. Dunno how she is yet, sorry, J-man. Just dunno yet.”

His lips are trembling, sniffling even harder, and Jorah cannot fucking handle any weakness right now, not from any quarter, spins to Brax, rigid attention and crisp readiness. The only one in this goddamn base who’s prepared to handle a goddamn difficulty. 

“What would you like me to do with him, Captain?”

Three sets of eyes flash to Jorah, the only source of clean and calm in the room. 

Brax tugs at the buttons of their vest, hands smoothing and adjusting, a magnet to Jorah’s lodestone, and when their jaw sets, he feels a surge of pride and relief that they’ve made the right choice.

“First Lieutenant Cuthbert, Private Pfeffer, Morja will be remanded into custody until further testimony from Private Williams i- when she awakes. Morja, please accompany them until further notice. We will get this figured out.”

The asset’s blank eyes go wide as he gasps a little whimper that Jorah and his tools could never wring out of him, face blossoming open in a look that Jorah doesn’t have to guess at: fear.

Good.

Motherfucker should be afraid - he should remember what he is. They should all remember what he is. It might be bittersweetly bought but now they will. Now they know that Jorah is right about him. 

~

oh no, what will happen to morja now, i wonder? 😨👀🥺

taglist: @much-ado-about-whumping @haro-whumps @whump-tr0pes @wolfeyedwitch @suspicious-whumping-egg

@i-eat-worlds @whumpzone @straighttothepain @whump-me-all-night-long @whumping-every-day

@whatgoeswhumpinthenight @stoic-whumpee @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight @whumpthisway @redwingedwhump

@tears-and-lilies @kixngiggles @liliability @whumpsterdraganies @scoundrelwithboba

[goodqueenaly]

I’m rereading F&B and find myself very confused about Jaehaerys’s proposed marriage candidates? They either seem self serving (which, understandable) or utterly nonsensical to the point of harming J’s future rule Rogar’s choice: Archon of Tyrosh’s daughter (unnamed) to forge alliances across the narrow sea Maester Benifer: a daughter of a neutral great house Daemon Velaryon: Elinor costayne (show Maegor’s supporters were forgiven) and adopt her sons (?wut even?) I kind of understand Benifer’s idea, but the other ones seem doomed from the jump.

I don’t know why Tumblr ate this ask but anyway here we go.

I think there are some logical explanations, at least on a surface level, to a few of the mooted nuptial matches. Alyssa’s proposal to have Jaehaerys marry into one of “the houses who had risen in support of Aegon the Uncrowned in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye” follows her stated desire at the opening of Jaehaerys’ reign for violent vengeance against Maegor’s supporters; if Alyssa truly believed that “[Maegor’s] entire reign was unlawful and those who had supported him were guilty of treason and must needs be put to death”, then the clearest expression of that belief was to reward the supporters of Aegon the Uncrowned with the greatest possible royal marriage. By contrast, Benifer’s idea to appeal to one of the recently neutral Houses underlined his desire to have the regime move on from the factionalism and civil war of Maegor’s reign - particularly understandable on Benifer’s part, considering he himself had served and then abandoned Maegor before being recalled to court by Jaehaerys. Rogar’s choice doesn’t seem particularly related to his, Rogar’s, goals otherwise - we don’t really see him trying to forge alliances with the Tyrosh or any other Free Cities, or understand why he might have wanted to build ties with Tyrosh - though I took this match as something of an authorial wink to both Dany and our Aegon. Alyssa’s point that “[t]he smallfolk of Westeros would never accept a foreign girl with dyed tresses as their queen” recalls the dyed hair our Aegon adopts to disguise his identity (ostensibly, indeed, to honor his supposed Tyroshi mother), which he wished to have rinsed out ahead of his meeting with Golden Company (that is, when he revealed himself to be, allegedly, a Targaryen prince); too, Alyssa’s allusion to the “delightful” Tyroshi accent of the Archon’s daughter may echo Dany’s own apparently Tyroshi accent (and, of course, her ambition to be a queen in Westeros, despite a lifetime spent almost completely in Essos). (This dispute may also be a hint to the xenophobia and alienation experienced by Larra Rogare during the Lysene Spring and her marriage to Prince Viserys.)

Now, yes, some of the matches are less explainable, except (to a limited extent, anyway) outside of blatant personal ambition. Indeed, given that the Tullys and Celtigars barley hid their motives for pushing their familial relations as potential brides for young Jaehaerys, I am more surprised that no other families attempted to shove their pretty daughters in front of the king and/or Rogar. Yet these potential brides pale in comparison to Elinor Costayne, who was for my money the strangest choice. The oddity of her candidacy is heightened by the fact that her sponsor was Daemon Velaryon, a man who did not appear to gain anything by her potential elevation as Jaehaerys’ queen. While the argument that “Queen Elinor’s proven fertility was another point in her favor” might have carried some weight (considering King Jaehaerys, the only male-line male Targaryen left, would presumably needed to father an heir sooner rather than later), and the suggestion that Jaehaerys adopt Elinor's sons by Theo Bolling mirrors Sharra Arryn’s offer to Aegon the Conqueror during the Targaryen Conquest - another king with no offspring or obvious male heir - I am still baffled as to why Lord Daemon, of all people, would have supported the choice of a woman so publicly associated with Maegor’s tyrannical reign for his nephew’s royal bride. Perhaps this was just par for the course with Daemon, considering he had previously suggested that Maegor marry his own niece: just as Daemon had argued that by marrying Rhaena, Maegor would “unite their claims, prevent any fresh rebellions from gathering around her, and acquire a hostage against any plots … [Alyssa Velaryon] might foment”, maybe Daemon believed that a marriage between Elinor and Jaehaerys would link Jaehaerys to the claim of Elinor’s late (second) husband and his own official predecessor, and/or prevent any remaining pro-Maegor factions from rallying around his (unmarried) widowed queen. Still, it’s largely a bizarre notion acceptable only in the brevity with which it is presented; the story barely lingers on it, so neither should we.

The real point, of course, is to present a bunch of equally unpalatable (to Jaehaerys personally, at least) options in order to contrast them with the young king’s “true love”, Alysanne (heavy air quotes here). Since GRRM could not specifically duplicate The Accursed Kings here with the Jaehaerys and Alysanne story (as he does otherwise with Alysanne) - only copying the supposed love match, not the political advantage the marriage brought to the boy’s mother or the revolution against a tyrant king - he instead goes full romance, the sort of love versus duty that the author so enjoys portraying. As any number of his descendants will later - Princess Baela, the future King Aegon V, and indeed his own namesake, the future King Jaehaerys II, among others - the young Jaehaerys I rejects a potential diplomatic or otherwise dutiful marriage arranged by another (or multiple others) in order to wed according to the dictates of his heart.

[decepti-thots]

🔥 - linguistics & fandom (if you've time/enthusiasm)?

Attempts to do fanon worldbuilding around linguistics for eg sci fi/fantasy settings often falls prey to what I call the '1984 problem' (when I call it this I am doing so very facetiously, don't take it too seriously lol, 1984 is wrong about its linguistics at times but it also gets flanderized in the pop cultural perception into something it isn't). This is where a lot of people without more than a passing knowledge of linguistics have a very outdated, unnuanced view of linguistic relativity that veers into simple determinism; so for example, the old 'if people do not have a word for something they are or become literally incapable of understanding it in any context' idea. This gets especially thorny when people move into territory like, say, 'if an fictional culture has a lot of words for aggressive things and none for peaceful things, this will make the people who speak it 'naturally' more aggressive' which. Hm. Let me put it this way: lotta real life xenophobia baggage regarding ethnocentrism in linguistic analysis to be unpacked there. Loooot of it. To put it lightly.

But more broadly, the temptation to make linguistic determinism a part of SFF worldbuilding, where language vaguely 'defines' thought in a very rigid way, is very very strong and it's easy to see why! It's a very easy cultural worldbuilding shortcut that gives you a straightforward way to communicate to your audience, with very little work, both how and why your aliens are so very alien. Not only does giving them some exaggerated quirk in their linguistic systems serve as an extremely easy way to exposit some Underlying Truth TM of their cultures (many works of fiction famously involve a lot of people talking to each other a lot of the time; it will come up), it also lets you explain why without going into complicated social dynamics underpinning your fictional society it might take pages and pages of historical exposition to convey (or, you know, a lot of work throughout to more carefully imply through constant allusion and careful integration into the story and characters' worldviews, which is famously really fucking hard to do).

But uh. it's also a) usually hilariously inaccurate to any and all mainstream knowledge of how languages work, so linguists Will roll their eyes at it, and also b) as above comes with a ton of very real historical-and-present baggage around the way language has been used as 'proof' of the 'inherent nature' of certain cultures, so like. I do not think you should do this, even with a knowing wink about how you are being a little silly. TBH. Anything implying that the language a culture speaks can make them Peaceful or Violent or Better or Worse, no matter how obviously fictional and weird, is saying something about how you think language as a thing works, whether you like it or not. Would prefer if fandoms' attempts to do little linguistic fanon thought exercises stayed far away from that, tbh.

[sailorspica]

thinking about the non-ambassador part of the alliance because of bad boy's framing device and i still don't get the appeal of yelena, but i'm willing to be convinced

my reservations are probably because i empathize really hard with onyankapon, but the premise of the anti-marleyan volunteers is odd even if you're not from paradis. they're non-marleyans conscripted to the marleyan military, similar to eldians—see magath's grumbling that mainland marleyans are numb to war without mandatory enlistment because their foot soldiers are eldians and other former enemy (colonized) combatants—but i just can't imagine yelena successfully rallying soldiers of very disparate nations for such a vague cause. yelena's telling is they were a smaller, looser group until some of them were rescued by zeke (during the mid east war i assume), but what the hell did they talk about before then? have they all given up on their home countries and bet everything on.......... the jaegers? they joined the cause of eldian restoration when in grisha's memoir, the restorationists didn't give a shit about marley's other colonial subjects, possibly because they were eldia's before

so why is onyankapon so surprised by floch's xenophobia? did some of the volunteers believe that after a mini-rumbling they'd have eldia as allies against marley? use titans to liberate their home countries? there might well be people's armies in these colonies that onyankapon and company wouldn't have any contact with, sure. but why not see through their current tour of duty (desert, who cares), go back home, then join anticolonial efforts on the ground with their insider knowledge of marley? yelena probably assembled them from smaller groups of soldiers who might've had more concrete, specific goals, but i don't fuckin get how she unified them besides her allusions to murder of marleyans and dissidents

[stillness-in-green]

On Riots and Resolutions (Part One)

So, I got, unsurprisingly, a lot of asks about the heteromorph riot mini-arc, both in terms of how it was presented in the story and how fandom (my own posts included) responded to it.  In turn, this gave me a lot to research before I started shooting my mouth off about either topic, hence this being as late as it is.  Thanks as always for your patience, everyone.

I had intended to make this one big ask round-up, but I ended up with a few offshoots that didn’t really fit as a response to anyone’s ask in particular, but nonetheless struck me as significant enough to share.  Therefore, rather than having this be an unwieldy ask post/meta mashup, I’m going to split it into two parts.

The first post will use one specific ask, the one that really sent me into the weeds research-wise, as a springboard to talk about what cultural factors might have influenced Horikoshi’s writing decisions about the hospital attack, as well as some discussion of how the Western fanbase talks about heteromorphobia.  I’ll be getting into that past the cut below; there will also be some links at the end for sources and further reading.

The second post—coming soon!—will contain all the rest of the asks, which are somewhat more scattershot in nature.

Both posts skew heavily towards meta analysis: they’ll be about Horikoshi’s context as a Japanese creator writing for Shonen Jump, and about how fans—myself included—have responded to the resulting material.   Obviously there will still be some references to the actual events in the manga, but it isn’t the main focus.  If you want my in-depth opinions on the sequence in question, you can find my very opinionated opinions in my chapter posts.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Discussion of real-life discrimination (racial and otherwise) both in Japan and elsewhere, the historical construction of race, and theoretical considerations about how the idea of race might have been impacted by the appearance of quirks in-universe.  Also, some brief allusions to overwork in Japanese office culture and its impact on people’s ability to engage in/with activism.

On that note, if you haven’t seen me say so before, I’m white as white gets, and obviously writing from a U.S. perspective as well.  I’ve done my best to do my reading and be respectful in my wording, and I did run everything past a non-white friend before posting, but please do let me know if you see anything offensive. Some of these topics are ones that I already know people of color have pretty divergent opinions on, though—I was following the fandom response to this arc quite closely!—so do be prepared to encounter some reads that may differ from your own.

Hit the jump!

So, this is the ask that I looked at and immediately thought, “Oh, I’m going to need to do significant reading before I even start thinking about a response to that.”  Most significantly, I wanted to research what Japan, a famously homogenous country, even thinks of the idea of race.  Do Japanese people conceptualize it the same way U.S. Americans do?  If they view it differently, how does that view color what they think about race-based discrimination?  How, in turn, might that have influenced Horikoshi’s writing, and how might a greater understanding of his (potential) lens affect our own interpretations?

Well, let’s take a look.

Horikoshi’s Context: Racism vs. Xenophobia, Protest Culture, and How To Fight Discrimination

Racism vs. Xenophobia

Having now done some reading, here’s a very key thing to keep in mind: the vast, vast majority of Japan does not actually think the country has an issue with race.  Even the people who do talk about the discrimination faced by the country’s various minority groups almost universally do so in terms of xenophobia rather than racism.

For my purposes here, xenophobia can be understood to mean the fear and/or hatred of foreigners and foreign influence/culture.  Racism, conversely, will be discussed mainly in the context of a) the belief in the idea of race as a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities[1] and b) behaviors stemming from that belief, especially the notion of the inherent superiority or inferiority of races in comparison to one another.  Note that this definition is distinct from the idea of ethnicity and ethnic discrimination; I’ll get into what distinguishes race and ethnicity in the Western fandom portion of this post.

Now, of course, outside the realm of analytical essays, all these issues overlap hugely.  I’m going to be talking about them as relatively discrete issues for the purposes of considering the experiences of individual characters within Boku no Hero Academia, but certainly where you find one, you’re frequently likely to find the others.

That all said, let’s return to the idea that Japan doesn’t believe it has a racism problem.

The reason for that is complicated, and intensely historical, but what it boils down to is that there is a lot more to being viewed as “Japanese” than simply being born in Japan.  The majority opinion in Japan is that being Japanese means having Japanese ancestry,[2] speaking the language fluently, understanding the culture, being a citizen, and so on.  This very blurred view of race, ethnicity and nationality means that all sorts of things can “disqualify” someone from, as one researcher I read put it, “Japanese-ness.”  And if one isn’t Japanese (e.g. because they have Korean ancestry or Ainu ethnicity or an American parent or whathaveyou), then, voila!  Discrimination can’t be racism; it’s xenophobia.

Basically, the government’s official stance is that Japan is a homogenous country, so there are no racial minorities for them to be racially biased against.  All those hafu and Zainichi Koreans and Okinawans and so forth?  Well, they’re not really Japanese, so the discrimination they face is about nationality.  Poor Japan is just so insular; its people don’t always know how to deal with outsiders.  But it isn’t racism, because racism would mean Japanese people judging other Japanese people on the basis of race, like white Americans judge Black Americans on the basis of race!  And Japan only has the one race, Japanese, so it just isn’t possible for them to be racist.  Even people who go out of their way to study discrimination in Japan, writing academic papers and news articles, still tend to use this framing.

It took me a while to get my head around that fairly tortured logic, and I sometimes still lose the thread of it.  Now, I can’t read Horikoshi’s mind, so I have no idea what he would say if asked, but let me take Rock Lock as an example.  If he were a real dude living in real Japan, it wouldn’t matter that he has a perfectly standard Japanese name and was born in Tokushima Prefecture, nor that he speaks the language and understands the culture.  He has obviously Black features, which would lead most of the people around him to assume that he has non-Japanese ancestry, and therefore that he isn’t “really” Japanese.[3]  Ergo, the mistreatment would be considered xenophobia, not racism.

Consider, then, how that might impact Japanese heteromorphs.  They speak the language, they’re born in the country, they understand the culture, they have Japanese ancestry, they’re citizens of Japan—it seems like they should check all the boxes, right?  But they still don’t look “Japanese,” which makes it very probable that there are people who don’t think of them as really being Japanese.  Indeed, the real anti-heteromorph hardliners are very explicit in thinking heteromorphs have something wrong with them in their very blood (see the invective spat at Shouji about his “dirty blood”), and as I said above, the wrong kind of blood is one of those things that can easily disqualify one from proper Japanese-ness.

Sidebar: I said I’d talk about this back when it happened, knowing it was going to have to wait for exactly the kind of research this whole post needed, so I’ll address it here: “Folks with human faces just don’t get it!” Regarding the Spinner fans leveling this accusation at Rock Lock, those guys have clearly internalized the view that, despite them being human, their facial features are not human.  That’s a very obvious logical fallacy, but they wouldn’t believe it if they hadn’t been exposed to the view over a significant period of their lives, which in turn speaks to an ongoing issue with dehumanization of those with fully heteromorphic faces. I’ll point to characters that call heteromorphs by epithets like dog, lizard, frog-face, and so on as a clear demonstration of how that sort of rhetoric is widespread even among characters not otherwise portrayed as violent bigots.  Further, while the evidence points to such language being viewed as somewhat rude, it’s not so objectionable that most people raise a stink over it.  Of Shouji, Chief Tsuragamae, Spinner, Hawks, and every heteromorphic classmate that Bakugou has ever used an animal name on, only Spinner has ever protested.  Every other case has featured the heteromorph quietly letting the word pass by.[4] When even Certified Good Boys like Iida and Deku don’t think to say a thing about Shouto and Bakugou’s choices in phrasing, only to protest their surly attitudes, it’s a strong indicator that this kind of language is well entrenched. All that said, is, “Human-faced people wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be judged by their appearances!” a fair thing to yell at a Black guy?  Surely not.  But that kind of intra-minority shortsightedness (however misguided it might be) can be a real thing, especially when peoples’ own circumstances have gotten so dire, so I don’t think it’s an unrealistic accusation for them to be written as making. That, of course, brings us to the matter of Horikoshi’s own intentions in said writing.  Was he consciously writing the Spinner fans (and the rest of the mob by extension) as being blinkered by their own pain and lashing out at someone who probably does understand, better than a great many in his field would?  Or did he think the Spinner fans were right (at least in that specific accusation, if not in the broader act of rioting)? Further, if he did think they were right, did he put Rock Lock in that position to be intentionally ironic, some sort of, “Oh, look, even minorities can discriminate against other minorities, wow, isn’t that such a profound observation?” gotcha?  Or was having the target of the Spinner fans’ ire be Black entirely coincidental, the wince-worthy result of Horikoshi only having so many named Pro Heroes to spread around and Rock Lock being the one whose personality+power fit the needs of the scene best? Those questions come down to a) how aware Horikoshi is of what Takagi Ken would experience in real-life Japan, and b) whether he thinks that kind of racism(/xenophobia) still exists in his fantasy alternate future Japan.  Unfortunately, we just don’t spend enough time with Rock Lock, Mirko, Class B’s Rin, and so forth to be able to gauge that with any accuracy.  Like so much else about this plot, it feels much too specific to be accidental, but so tone-deaf that it’s hard to believe a thoughtful writer would do it on purpose.

Protest Culture in Japan

Something that struck me as I was researching this post and rereading the relevant chapters was that I never seem to hear very much about large-scale protests in Japan.  There were certainly historical ones!  I’ve touched on some examples of those before in my writing for this fandom, and I’ve seen enough anime to be aware of the infamous student protests of the late 60s.  But I don’t see much about protests in modern-day Japan.

That’s not to say they don’t happen—they absolutely do, and I’m sure there are things I miss because it’s not like I have The Mainichi in a daily news feed or anything—but my image of Japan was that it’s not a country that has a very strong “protest culture,” if you will.  I thought I should dig into that some, both to see if the impression was broadly correct, and for how the answers would reflect on this whole plotline.

Lo and behold, what I found was extremely telling.

To give a very brief summary, organized protests—by which I mean people with signs, mass gatherings outside government buildings, marches, that kind of thing—were indeed a bigger thing historically in Japan.  However, a combination of factors meant that they fell drastically out of use and have only started to rebound within the last fifteen years or so.

Specifically, protest in the 60s and 70s had become very specifically associated in the public eye with the New Left, a radical group inspired by the New Left movement in the West to break away from the “Old Left” represented by Japan’s Communist and Socialist parties.  Always prone to factionalism, the New Left eventually suffered several very public, very lethal, internal schisms and splashy scandals, all as they were also moving into terrorism—groups associated with the New Left were responsible for, among other incidents, two airplane hijackings and an airport attack that killed 26 people.[5]

One result of all this was that the people who had deeply believed in the cause were left very disillusioned, and those who had not supported it were left feeling even more justified in not having done so.  In both cases, the idea of protest—which had not even been successful at achieving its aims, on top of everything else!—was left marred by this association.

Add onto that, the Bubble Economy was coming into full swing, so by most metrics, Japan was doing pretty well—there wasn’t much widespread push to change anything when people at large were thriving.  And, yes, there was a measure of good old-fashioned government crackdown on the legality of the kinds of protest the New Left had been doing.

That was pretty much the state of affairs until the early aughts, when counter-culture movements started redefining what organized protest could look like, development that was pushed even farther along after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.  Since then, protests have been gradually becoming more common; it’s still very much a movement in progress, though, and for a lot of people in Japan, old associations die hard.[6]

Notably, however, there are some places where organized protests never went away.  To this day, Okinawa has strong movements calling for the return of Okinawan land that’s currently being used for U.S. military bases.[7]  There was also considerable opposition from rural communities to a number of dam projects through the late 70s and on through the 90s.  The classic anime using those dam protests as plot fodder is, of course, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, though so far as I can tell from some cursory research, the dam opposition group in Higurashi’s backstory was rather more successful than any real-life equivalent.

I trust it’s not difficult to draw the lines between those perceptions and Horikoshi’s depiction of the attack on the hospital: overly violent, led by extremists with suspect motives, and concerned with an issue that’s very pressing to people in rural communities while being largely invisible to people in big cities.

“Let sleeping dogs lie.”

In the course of my research, aside from all my findings detailed above, I did come across a quote that I wonder if influenced the resolution Horikoshi chose to write.  It’s the Japanese proverb Neta ko wo okosuna, which translates to, “Don’t wake a sleeping baby.”  Colloquially, the meaning is that if a problem is not currently being a problem, you shouldn’t stir it up by poking at it—our English equivalent would be, as the subheader says, “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

Other deployments as an adage aside, the context I’m most concerned with here is the way that it’s applied to burakumin discrimination (and how that, in turn, might reflect what Horikoshi thinks is the “right” way for characters to address heteromorphobia).

Basically, the idea is that if a discriminatory belief/set of practices is dying out, the best way to deal with what problems remain is to just—not talk about them.  Because it’s no longer an everyday fact of life, children today aren’t going to know anything about burakumin or anti-burakumin discrimination unless they’re specifically taught.  And so, the reasoning goes, if you simply don’t teach them, they will never learn.

Thus can discrimination be starved out of existence, or so people hope.  Obviously, it is wildly flawed rhetoric to apply that adage to discrimination, because people who discriminate will teach discrimination to their children.  Nonetheless, it’s a popular view in the mainstream, even one that was long endorsed by one of the biggest burakumin rights organizations, the Zenkairen.[8]

In that light, I wonder if we might consider it a possible influence in Horikoshi’s offered solution of, “Just be a Model Minority until all the problems go away.”  We can see this attitude reflected not only in Shouji’s resolve and his final words to the crowd in Chapter 373, but also in his decision to constantly wear a mask to cover up the proof of his assault.

Shouji knows what people will think if they see a heteromorph covered in scars; the fear he wants to prevent is not only that of small children who might think his face is scary, but also that of adults who would see his wounds and fear that his experience made him vengeful.  And so, it’s a conversation he just chooses to avoid instead.  If people don’t know about it, they won’t believe they need to fear it.

Of course, one can’t help but suspect that the reason, “Don’t wake a sleeping baby,” is popular in the mainstream view is because it conveniently lets the majority culture avoid talking about uncomfortable topics.  Japan notably has a huge cultural stigma about making people uncomfortable, so it’s easy for people who bristle when confronted with discrimination to point to the minority raising a stink as being the ones in the wrong.  That, too, is reflected in Shouji’s horrible accusation that the heteromorphs’ own actions will put their movement back thirty years.

I don’t have a lot of neat conclusions to draw from all this.  After all, you can’t just look at a bunch of polls of what any given group’s majority believes and then immediately assume that all members of the group are equally likely to believe the same.  I do think it speaks well of Horikoshi that he seems to be at least enough aware of discrimination issues in Japan to include a new but eminently predictable form of discrimination in his work.  If he, like many people in Japan, just believed that Japan didn’t have a discrimination problem at all, presumably he just wouldn’t have included heteromorphobia!  The kegare bit in particular feels way too specific for Horikoshi to have tripped his way into it.

That said, all of the ways that he chose to address the problem speak to a woefully outdated viewpoint—that protest is ineffective and prone to violence, and that the best way to deal with discrimination is to starve it with silence.  It’s incredibly striking that at no point in any of those chapters does anyone on the “right” side say that they’ll do anything about the problems facing heteromorphs.  The onus is, apparently, entirely on the oppressed minority to present themselves as such paragons of humanity that the bigots will be too ashamed to try to hurt them—heteromorphs can neither fight back nor count on their government to do anything for them.

Even having read and relayed everything that I now have, I’m still hard-pressed to say that knowing all that context makes me feel any better about BNHA’s “answer” to the characters involved in the hospital attack.

Meanwhile...

The Fandom’s View: Well, Is It Racism?

As far as the wording the Western fanbase uses, I agree that people shouldn’t just call it racism, straight out.  Heteromorphobia is a fictional construct that, for reasons of clarity and sensitivity, should not be conflated with an evil that people in real life, many of them readers of this very comic, suffer today.

That said, my experience is that most people who use the word racism in talking about heteromorphobia tend to add a qualifying adjective: “quirk racism,” “fantasy racism,” things like that.  It’s following the broad TV Tropes-style short-handing of plot elements like heteromorphobia as Fantastic Racism.  And that, unlike just calling it racism without further qualification, doesn’t bother me.  Let me pose a thought exercise to get at why.

Race is a debunked concept insomuch as it refers to the scientific categorization of humans into neat little boxes based on their physical traits.  In actuality, it’s a social construct, changeable based on the needs or biases of the people defining it.[9]

That said, people obviously still mean things when they use the word, particularly when the topic being discussed is racial discrimination.  In that context, race as distinct from ethnicity or nationality refers to the observable, physical qualities a person has—the color of their skin, the color and texture of their hair, the expected range of their eye color, their facial structure, and so on—and what category (codified to justify imperialism and slavery) those traits would lead that person to be sorted into.  A Black guy might be from the U.S. or France or Senegal—or Japan!—but he’s a Black guy, regardless, and any discrimination he faces based on those Black features is likewise going to be racism, regardless.

Conversely, nationality is obviously based in matters of nation—what country was one born in; what country is one a citizen of?  Ethnicity is a much broader term that covers culture, socialization, language, the values one is taught, sometimes things like religion and traditional modes of dress—basically all intangible or, in the case of clothes or language/accent, adoptable things.

Obviously, bigots aren’t always drawing clean lines like that, and society, too, has been moving away from the idea of race as a valid categorizational tool.  Insomuch as the concept still has a distinct meaning, however, that is the distinction: inborn, observable physical commonalities between different peoples that are distinct from other peoples; racism in this context is stereotyping and discrimination based on the belief in those traits.

That all said, how does that conception of race reconcile itself with heteromorphs?  In the understood sense of what is denoted by “Asian,” would someone like Gang Orca be considered Asian?  If he were vacationing in BNHA’s New York City, would anyone there assume he was Asian just by looking at him in a crowd?  Someone like the Sludge Villain, who doesn’t even have a bipedal body arrangement, is an even more extreme case.  Conversely, someone like Iida would still be easy to categorize.[10]

This gets you into questions that mirror discussion about racial discrimination in real life, like the idea of heteromorphs “passing” (the differences between a heteromorph like the Sludge Villain and one like Iida) or the ways in which some racial traits might be viewed as attractively “exotic”—especially in combination with other traits that more resemble those of the majority culture—while others are viewed as “ugly” (like how Hawks’ cool red angel wings have a far broader appeal than Spinner’s full-body scales).

Of course, the problem with saying people like the Sludge Villain and Gang Orca can’t be categorized as Asian because they don’t look Asian is that it begs the question of what race they would be considered.  They don’t look like any existing human race, but they don’t much resemble each other, either: they both have recognizable eyes and teeth, and that’s about it.  So if race is determined by one’s physical features and how much they align with those of a broader group, then how does one go about assigning that to a heteromorph?

Are heteromorphs considered a race entirely of their own, a sort of broad catch-all for anyone in quirk society who has permanent non-baseline[11]-human features?  Or has the idea of “race” been largely cast aside because it’s too difficult to make fit the new humanity?[12]  It’s a pertinent question in determining whether we could rightly call heteromorphobia a form of racism in and of itself, as opposed to a discrimination more like anti-burakumin sentiment (which, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, heteromorphobia also has markers of).

It is a pertinent question, but I don’t think Horikoshi will ever answer it.  Indeed, thanks to the previously described way that Japan tends to conflate race, nationality, and ethnicity, I’d be surprised if he ever thought to raise the question to begin with!

That doesn’t mean that we can’t ask it, though!  Given that race as a social tool stems from the need to justify discrimination and subjugation, how might the idea of race have changed in the BNHA setting as both quirks in general and heteromorphs specifically became more common?  Would such obvious Others have sharpened the lines of division or blurred them?  Is there a checkbox for Heteromorph on official forms that ask about Race/Ethnicity?[13]  How much of a group identity do heteromorphs have, even ones who look very different from one another or hail from different countries?  If it exists, how would that group identity be meaningfully distinguished from the idea of, say, a global Black community?

BNHA depicts a world that is still, over a hundred years later, trying to pick up the pieces from the advent of quirks, and heteromorphic discrimination is simply another aspect of that same ongoing development, so it would be no surprise to find all sorts of different answers to these questions.  They would likely vary depending on a given culture’s view on how race differs or overlaps with ethnicity and nationality.  Even heteromorphs who share a community might disagree; minority groups aren’t monoliths, after all!

Anyway, that’s all deeply suppositional and well beyond the level most readers of the series are likely thinking about re: heteromorphobia, so to reiterate, I don’t think the evidence is there to just call it racism without any further qualifications, so fans should probably not do that—be respectful of the shared community space and all!

Neither do I think the idea is entirely groundless, however, so I don’t begrudge people their “quirk racism”s and “fantasy racism”s.  Plenty of people want to talk about the ways in which heteromorphobia resembles their own experiences with discrimination, so using shorthand that relates to those experiences rather than a made-up word that doesn’t express anything real, feels like a valid choice to me.

Look for Part 2 hopefully within the next 24 hours!

----------------- FOOTNOTES -----------------

1:  Phrasing taken from the Merriam-Webster definition of racism.

2:  When Japan incorporated Western ideas of race into its own understanding of the concept in the back half of the 19th century, it was largely interpreted to mean sharing a common blood, hence the huge importance of family line I have written about elsewhere when talking about e.g. the family registry (koseki) and the country’s chilly view on orphans.  In that period, the concepts of race and nationality were both being refined in order to justify Western imperialism, a threat to which Japan responded by rapidly modernizing into an imperial power in its own right, complete with its own ugly cocktail of ethnonationalism.

3:  And lest anyone think Japan is uniquely awful in this way, think about the way that people ask Asian minorities in the U.S. first where they’re from, and then where they’re “really from.”

4:  There’s also a discussion to be had about Hawks using that language for himself, as well as looping the highly unamused-looking Tokoyami into it.  It’s off-topic for this post, but suffice it to say that I don’t think we can ignore the glaring difference between Hawks’ upbringing and those of the other characters.

5:  The Lod Airport massacre.

6:  Oddly enough, it seems to be young people who are least likely to approve.  Overworked, unable to risk their livelihoods in the current cutthroat job market, and deeply jaded by both of those facts, the younger end of Japan’s adult population seems to be more likely to express their issues online, rather than in person.  One survey I read about suggested that belief in both the effectiveness and acceptability of organized protest increased with every age category, though in no cases was there a commanding majority in favor.

7:  The numbers are telling: the islands of Okinawa Prefecture make up 0.6% of the nation’s landmass, yet 75% of the U.S. bases in Japan are located there.

8:  It’s also fairly in line with a practice you sometimes see talked about in relation to media and big business in Japan when accused of using discriminatory language: word hunts, where the offending language is put on a list of forbidden verbiage so that people will stop complaining, but no further action is taken to address the offensive attitudes behind the words.  Thus, the underlying problems continue to exist, setting the stage for future word hunts.

9:  As, indeed, you saw when a bunch of people in Meiji-era Japan were figuring it out.  They got the idea from Western trade partners, decided they didn’t like what those Western trade partners assumed about “the Asian race, ” and so invented a narrative whereby their race was Japanese, which was like a unique and special kind of Asian, better than all other Asians.  Their Western trade partners, one assumes, went right on ahead with considering them as Asian.

10:  This analysis assumes that if you took Horikoshi’s stylistic “filter” off of the cast, and asked what they would look like in a more realistic depiction, characters like, say, Present Mic would still read as Japanese despite the fact that he’s depicted as blond.  There’s room for argument there, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this post.

11:  “Baseline” is a term you will see me use a lot when I finally get that big Heteromorphobia In BNHA (No, It Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere) essay turned out.

12:  If you think Re-Destro has any kind of point—and obviously I do—then it’d be a fair guess that humanity hasn’t gotten rid of the idea of race just yet. See that bit in Chapter 227 about society conforming to old ways of thinking even as humanity as a species has transcended that idea of normalcy.

13:  Or Origins or Categories or whatever kind of language the local census/tax department/medical facilities/etc. are currently using. Japan does not actually ask this question on its official paperwork, for what it's worth.

------------------ REFERENCES ------------------

1: Sociology Compass, Volume 7 – The Social Construction of Race and Minorities in Japan

2: Vox.com – Japan's blackface problem: the country's bizarre, troubled relationship with race

3: Kana Yamamoto – The myth of “Nihonjinron”, homogeneity of Japan and its influence on the society

4: Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, Volume 45 – The History of Japanese Racism, Japanese American Redress, and the Dangers Associated with Government Regulation of Hate Speech

5: Carl Cassegård, Social Movement Studies – The recovery of protest in Japan: from the ‘ice age’ to the post-2011 movements

6: Nippon.com – Why Are Japanese Youth Distancing Themselves from Social Activism?

7: Thisjapaneselife.org – On Living In the Wrong Neighborhood in Japan

[indigosfindings]

tiff thoughts part 4

escape from the 21st century was, like, riotously fun. it's far from thematically empty (the time travel aspect is not subtle about what it represents), but it's not especially thought-provoking either--it's very "style over substance", but god it's a fucking great style. the action sequences, the stylistic flips & tone shifts, the animated flourishes, the off-the-wall humour--all extremely fun & aesthetically coherent. it's not concerned at all with the scifi stuff being Mechanically Internally Consistent, but frankly it doesnt need to be. the pacing is breakneck, and when it's funny it's hilarious

the shrouds is as mystifying as it is a testament to cronenberg's mastery of tone. the marketing led me to expect a deeply grim, sombre, still film, and nothing could have prepared me for its surprising degree of levity--not to mention mystery-thriller elements--and especially the fact that these things dont make it any less provocative! at first it comes off as structurally incoherent (it doesnt even really seem to be about the shrouds!) but by the end i felt that it was tied together in a deeply satisfying way--the themes of feelings of ownership emerging in grief & the synchronicity of the mysteries of death with the mysteries of both tech & politics were both meaty & toothy imo. the use of ambiguity, while very Pointed, was greatly to the film's benefit, the design of the shroud itself was amazing, & it was well-acted--the biggest stylistic weakness was the repeated sense that the script seems to be written with an expectation that the audience isnt, like, paying attention ("terri, your sister-in-law" "terri, your wife's sister" "terri, the sister of your wife" etc etc etc)

the strange cuts short film compilation was overall extremely strong! my thoughts on the 6 shorts:

gender reveal was fun and had a pretty biting sense of humour, but it was held back by the sort of narrative/structural directionlessness that's unfortunately common in short films--it's one of those things where the "writing prompt" is basically the entire story.

the sunset special 2 was EVERYTHINGGGGG. the audiovisual design is so fucking off the wall that i was barely suppressing the instinct to shriek for the whole runtime. it's creative in its critiques of both advertising & vacation culture, and it manages this with one of the craziest aesthetic sensibilities ive ever seen. i am OBSESSED. the sudden allusion to resident evil drove me insane. a short film crafted with the soul of the bug

the beguiling was tight & sharp. enamoured with the idea of racefaking-as-horror. extremely accurate in its skewering of a specific Kind Of Guy. it's tense, contained, well shot, & well acted. the director apparently has a feature in the works, and im extremely excited

don't fuck with ba was solid. i liked how campy, stylized, & over-the-top the action was, and while the multilingual premise was fun (i LOVED the use of subtitles) it mostly parsed as, like, set dressing. the whole thing felt less like a coherent, self-contained short and more like a pitch or proof of concept for a movie.

stomach bug was pretty good. the body horror element is good, & empty-nest syndrome combined with xenophobia made a really intriguing vector. the sense of boiling tension is palpable

never have i ever was, like, fine? i guess? the entire premise & execution (1st-person POV of a woman being kidnapped and murdered) plays heavily into the sorts of cultural anxieties that orbit the true crime sphere, and those dont really do much for me. before the screening the host warned that the final short of the set was "unrelenting", "extremely scary", etc (and consequently like 20 people walked out before it came on!) but in practice it was so tame and pulled so many punches that it really wasnt that scary at all lol

[fantasyinvader]

I'm watching V, the 1983 miniseries, right now after having finished the book it was based on, It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis.

The book was based on Lewis's wife's experiences in Germany during the rise of Hitler. She saw him come into power and how quickly he changed the nation. She also saw what was happening in Italy and Lewis compared it to some of the things being said in America during the Great Depression. It was written before WWII came about, and was meant to serve as a warning. A warning about the threat of charismatic leaders who use the system to empower themselves, as well as the importance of fighting such figures. President Buzz Windrip manages to win the 1936 election through promises of aid, fixing the economy, and a lot of prejudice against blacks and Jews. His followers are organized into his own militia, and using them he quickly concentrates all power on himself. He betrays his allies, gets people to turn on their neighbours who criticize him, turns people against learning, causes a lot of people to flee to Canada and other countries (where the population begins getting sick of taking in refugees), even sets up work and concentration camps. His supporters even begin arguing that democracy was an old-fashioned system and that America needs to get with the times and have a dictator. Towards the end, his regime begins making moves to conquer Mexico, he believes that the Americas are his by right of manifest destiny and that he'll be their emperor, before his strategist turns on him, leading to America going into another civil war. It also heavily goes into the nature of propaganda and information control.

V is a spiritual successor to the original story, and kinda reads like a wet dream for Edelgard's supporters. Human-looking aliens arrive, make themselves out to be benevolent, really begin taking over in the shadows while making themselves out to be the victims, turns out they're lizard people seeking to enslave/destroy humanity. While the themes of resisting totalitarian forces is still there, the threat switches from an internal one to an external one and brings with it it's own connotations. Rather that the fragility of democracy and how it can be abused to put the wrong people into power, instead it's an alien invasion story but there are also genuinely good aliens as well who help humanity so it's not complete xenophobia. But it's also very on the nose with it's allusions to Hitler. There's the good resistance, and the humans who collaborate with the aliens.

But, if we look at Houses it feels like a spirtiual successor to the original novel as well as a flip on V. As the creators said, the world of Fodlan was made to support Silver Snow's story. The resistance group isn't the humans fighting the alien lizard people, those guys are the imperialists seeking to conquer the entire continent under a flimsy pretense of liberation. Edelgard is charismatic, with symbols tying her to the idea of attraction, yet her victory is supposed to be the one leading Fodlan to tyranny. She's the one collaborating with the shadowy evil group that are really behind the world's problems, and makes use of propaganda. The twist on V, however, is that the game goes the same route as the original story, the threat is not an external invader (except if you play VW or AM, where Imperial forces try to conquer other nations and the player's army has nobles who collaborated with Edelgard's forces for their own benefit). The threat is HUMAN, and the aliens are actually benevolent however they are used as scapegoats, othered by those who view them as lesser animals to themselves, much like how V used scientists as the scapegoats or It Can't Happen Here is not subtle that Windrip will basically reenslave black people while going after the Jewish community.

Of course, you can always be a collaborator yourself in Houses. Buy into the propaganda, side with Edelgard because her path looks attractive, believe her empty promises and ignore the evidence that you've been played. Houses gives you that experience as well, though this was undermined by the translation.

Our society has warned about potential Edelgards time and time again. It's nothing new. I mean, ffs we just had a two-movie adaptation of Dune for crying out loud. Yet people think they're punk rock for joining her, not understanding that they've become puppets of the system.

[zinogirl]

I see a lot of the complaints about Fallout 4 and about half of them are nothing complaints

like no, Preston is not that annoying. And a good chunk of the hate he gets is likely cuz he's black.

And settlement building is not that tedious or whatever. If you're playing the game normally you should have almost everything you need.

There's some complaints, and criticisms, that are entirely valid, that i agree and disagree with.

I think retconning lore isn't really lazy. If it's in service to the story, or the setting, then minor details like the fallout divergence, which has always been vague, and is not based on the invention of the transistor, which does exist in Fallout, don't really matter that much, and should be seen as flexible.

Now, the institute is extremely stupid. You create what is supposed to be the future of humanity, what is supposed to redefine what humanity is, and then you treat that creation like a slave, or an appliance.

The brotherhood of steel also is portrayed as a very evil, xenophobic faction. Yeah, that existed xenophobia in previous games, the non-canon Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, and in Fallout 3. I can't remember how the Mojave chapter treated mutants of any kind in New Vegas, so I can't comment there. But there is a precedent for the Brotherhoods xenophobia in Fallout 4. But, there was still nuance within the other games in their presentation. The brotherhood in 4 is an evil, colonialist fascist group. If you are not with them they at best ignore your existence and at worst will extort or murder you for your crops.

I also think fallout 4 leans too heavily into its retro-futuristic, American, 1950s-60s silver age aesthetic. There's also, in my opinion, too many allusions to the great war, or concept of nuclear bombs, especially in the radio songs. I know that's weird to say given the premise, but the other games at least had restraint in verbally shoving the nukes down your throat, they let the setting and visuals do the work for them. It's a nuclear wasteland, we don't need seventeen songs on the radio about bombs, or using bombs as metaphors.

Then there's roleplay. As a Fallout game, a franchise that is first and foremost an RPG setting, Fallout 4 wholly fails in its presentation of the sole survivor being a vehicle for the player to roleplay. An established personality, voice, backstory, make the job of roleplaying extremely difficult. I've seen some argue that the Sole Survivor before and after the bombs are two different people. And I understand that argument. But your trauma, your experiences, do not take away that you are still the same person who went through those things. Seeing your spouse get shot, seeing your baby get kidnapped right in front of you, will change something in you, for sure. But that doesn't evaporate your past, it doesn't make who you were vanish. You will still think, react, talk, based on who you were, and who you are now. So trying to assign original attributes to this character, is next to impossible. And to say nothing of the voice. Nate and Nora's voice actors, i don't know their names, are great, I'm sure. They give a pleasant, passable performance. It's perfectly good, perfectly serviceable, but a fully voiced protagonist in a roleplaying game is incredibly detrimental to the roleplay aspect of that game. It creates an existing voice that will inevitably differ from the imagined voice of the character you want to play. Even if your character would choose a dialogue option presented to you, like the good option, and say the exact line nate or nora says, their speech patterns and tone are going to be different.

That's my rant, later.

[lachaparraa]

Woman

⚠Tw: violence, discrimination, controlling behavior, racism, xenophobia, mentions of femicide, genocide, death, threats, allusions to rape, superiority complex, abuse, manipulation, they should stop romanticizing a man like Muzan⚠

+18

Women in general:

Muzan holds a utilitarian and contemptuous view towards women, primarily seeing them as tools to achieve his objectives. He does not view women as equals, but rather as inferior beings whose main utility lies in their ability to procreate and, in some cases, as a source of sustenance.

Despite this, the man is intelligent. He knows how to use his appearance and charm to manipulate women, taking advantage of his charismatic nature when it suits him. Muzan can present himself as a kind and attractive man to gain the trust of his victims before revealing his true nature.

He feels a certain attraction towards strong and powerful women, but not in a romantic or respectful way. Instead, he sees it as a challenge or something he must dominate and control. He enjoys breaking the spirit of women who show strength or defiance towards him. Therefore, Muzan also shows a guilty pleasure for virgins or "innocent" women, and he wouldn't hesitate to simply take the woman he desires by force; resistance is part of the thrill for him.

Contradictory to the previous point, Muzan finds the vulnerability and weakness of women especially despicable yet endearing (simply due to the biological attraction he feels towards women). Muzan hates any sign of weakness, whether physical or emotional, and tends to punish any display of it severely. Women, unfortunately for them, were considered weak in all aspects in ancient Japan, so yes, Muzan is very likely misogynistic.

Although he can still show a certain degree of favoritism towards women who prove to be useful or loyal to his purposes, this favoritism is fleeting and based solely on their momentary utility, not on genuine respect. This interest is accompanied by Muzan's controlling nature, as he uses fear and intimidation to keep women under his control. This includes explicit threats of violence, using his power to cause pain, or promises of protection that quickly turn into threats of abandonment if his will is not followed.

Feminist women:

(The Feminism has many branches so I will only write about Muzan's behavior regarding radical feminism 🤓)

Muzan deeply despises women who are radical feminists, viewing their pursuit of equality and female emancipation as direct threats to his authority and dominance, shaped by the era in which he grew up and lives. He believes that radical feminists challenge the established order that he seeks to maintain. Instead of seeking to understand the motivations behind feminist activism, Muzan uses his power to manipulate and punish women who defy him (femicide). He may emotionally manipulate them, promising support or leniency before harshly "punishing" them for their actions.

Given this, Muzan responds to manifestations or acts of radical feminist protest with disproportionate violence. He does not tolerate challenges to his authority and believes any form of rebellion must be brutally crushed to maintain his control (femicide or genocide).

While Muzan may be drawn to strong women in general, this changes somewhat when rebellion or strength is directed against him. He finds women who display strength and determination in their fight for equality particularly irritating. This reflects his own insecurity and fear of losing his position of power to individuals he considers inferior.

Foreign women

Muzan is a racist; overall, he views women as inferior beings, but adding that these women were foreign would lower their value even more. Muzan has a nationalist and patriarchal outlook in general, so he considers foreign women to be much more inferior and useless compared to Japanese women.

As mentioned, it's highly likely that he feels a fascination for women, but this would be more morbid or twisted towards foreign women (also depending a lot on the country they come from). He would probably be much more controlling and brutal towards foreign women, taking advantage of their cultural naivety.

Among the countries whose women Muzan would likely have more contempt for, the United States would probably be one. This is due to its culture and values being very different from those of Japan during the Taisho era. Muzan might see American women as representatives of a society that he perceives as decadent, vulgar, and morally corrupt from his traditionalist perspective.

Also included are countries like France, Germany, or the United Kingdom, which during that time had more liberalized and progressive societies in terms of women's rights and gender equality. Muzan might view these places as where women have too much freedom and individual power, which could threaten his patriarchal and authoritarian views, thus earning his disdain.

Even within Asia, countries like China during that time, influenced by revolutionary movements and social changes, could represent a source of disdain for Muzan due to women's emancipation and equality movements that may have emerged there.

By other side, Muzan would likely treat women from countries like South Korea, and certain specific aspects of China and Taiwan, more favorably. In these places, traditional gender norms and family structures play significant roles, which could be viewed favorably by Muzan due to their emphasis on preserving traditional gender roles.

Also, certain countries in the Middle East and parts of Africa and Latin America that maintain more conservative and patriarchal social structures could be seen as "decent" by Muzan. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, or Venezuela reflect traditional values of female submission and strict family hierarchies.

Conclusion

Muzan is a misogynistic, racist, and in summary, dangerous "man". He has no consideration for anyone, and someone's gender will not change that; it simply makes it worse.

Hi! I hope you liked these headcanons about Muzan and his behavior towards women. I aimed to make them as realistic and faithful to the anime as possible.

Gracias por leer!😸🤍

[mmmmalo]

The list so far, which mostly consists of jokes. Some are stronger reads than others, most are in development

The "pr0n0unced h0ll0wness" of Aradia's vowel-replacing zeroes might refer to how most vowels go unwritten in the Arabic writing system (and other Semitic abjads). The "hollowness" between consonants are literally "pronounced". Bonus points for how you can flip the "d" in her name to get Arabia

Tavros's quirk might refer to how Arabic represents glottal stops. He speaks "IN A SORT OF, uHH, fALTERING MANNER," and is later randomly revealed to have a secret quirk where he replaces the letter "i" with the number "1". If you superimpose a quirk that visualizes vocal pauses and one that draws attention to long glyphs, you could surmise that the comic is riffing on the alif أ, which is used to represent glottal stops at the beginning of words? This is honestly the weakest among these imo

Sollux's Gemini theming with the 2's and double-ii's seem to function as allusions to the destruction of the "Twin" Towers on 9/11 -- he destroys his sky-scraper looking computer with a flying weapon and stares at the "blood" (honey) on his hands. Echoing this architectural terrorism > lament progression, Sollux deletes all of his viruses/bombs in a fit of shame after he blows up Karkat's house. (Of course his LISP is still a programming joke, just as Mituna's 4chan quirk is a reference to Fortran. There's a lot going on)

Nepeta's is a little abstract: she begins all of her messages with a severed head :33, giving all of her blood-colored messages an aesthetic of threat, of coercion, that complements the authoritative aesthetic of her bestie Equius's command arrow D-- >. The first time we meet Nepeta, she sends this severed head while blowing a kiss to Terezi -- a vaguely threatening mode of romantic overture later repeated by the other Heart player Dirk, on two separate occasions. When he sends the robotic head to Jake, it has two main outcomes: Jake will henceforth be Terrorized whenever he goes outside, and Jake now has a psychic duplicate of Dirk living in his head. These two outcomes intersect under the banner of “psychic colonialism”, ie terrorism, violence as a mean of implanting oneself upon another’s mind. This aspect of Dirk was already implicit in Nepeta's quirk.

Karkat doesn't seem to have Arabic-tinted speech affectations, but there's a one-two gag implying he's doesn't understand the local language: his sylladex (his syllable index, ie dictionary) encrypts an object and renders it totally inaccessible (ie incomprehensible), whereupon he turns around and is likewise befuddled by a book of the local programming language. I'm inclined to think his position as troll Jegus is responsible for his incomprehension -- the story is playing with American xenophobia, so the almost quirkless "normal" voice is Christian-coded.

Kanaya doesn't seem to have Arabic-tinted speech affectations either, but the remark "You Tend To Enunciate Each Word You Speak Very Clearly And Carefully" almost sounds like a passive-aggressive jab at everyone else's quirks -- she even takes a moment to make fun of the accents of Feferi and Eridan when they talk, thereby asserting her relative "normality". As the Virgin Mary troll, this likely serves a role akin to Karkat's

Entering the heresy zone: Terezi writing in the "NUM3R4LS OF THE BL1ND PROPH3TS" works as a simple statement of her writing in Arabic numerals, by way of implying the visions of the prophet Muhammad were false. In line with John's pithy description of Jegus as "bearded male human, who was magic" we find early references to Islam in a book of magic tricks: Harry Anderson's playing cards have a Rub el Hizb on the back, and the author's assertion that Anderson should climb in a tree and bake some cookies is a reference to the "Keebler" elves that puns on Qibla, the orientation of oneself towards Mecca for prayer. These references draws Islam into orbit of the comic's periodic assertion that magic is fake as shit.

Vriska's "black oracles" are a synonym of Terezi's "blind prophets", hence the "PUZZLING GUARANTEED INACCURACY of their predictions" -- it's another jab at the prophet Muhammad. Having the Virgin Maryam (who is asserts herself via her quirk as a Normative Voice) chastise Vriska for her 8-ball based superstitions (wouldn't your "bad luck" go down if your cleaned your room) strikes me as veiled religious condescension -- the surface depicts a Rational repudiation of vague Superstition, but implicitly we have a Christian figure chastising a Muslim figure.

Equius's 100 quirk, widely understood as a reference to the "cent" in "centaur", is also a pictograph of a camel. The first hint was Hearts Boxcars, whose fetish for the "humps" and "tail" of the heart symbol implicitly sexualizes camels. Diamonds Droog's grayscale sexual fantasies are fulfilled when Cans punches him into a black-and-white supermarket, and HB is accordingly sent to a horse calendar adorned with a quote from an "Arabian proverb" to signal the horse's camel inflection. This overlay of horse/camel perhaps explains why wild musclebeasts stalk the desert surrounding Kanaya's oasis. At any rate, Equius's horse fetish seems to function as a way of politically neutralizing the epithet "camel fucker", a slur against Middle Easterners. (Lil Hal makes another joke on this theme that is too long to reproduce here)

Gamzee's quirk doesn't have an obvious analogue. At best I might surmise that the WhImSiCaLiTy of his text suggests that melismatic, wavering tone common to Middle Eastern music, but the closest example of that in Homestuck is the Gregorian chant for the Warhammer of Zillyhoo? though admittedly Gamzee features in that flash... There's a more robust association between clowns, weed, and Islam that draws Gamzee into its orbit, but its difficult to summarize. Read these two posts about turbans and "stoning", please.

The resemblance of Eridan's quirk to a certain feature of Arabic was noted above, and his obsession with wizards and the question of whether magic/miracles are real fold neatly into the above discussions of "male bearded humans" that are religious figures.

Feferi is quirk is proving slippery -- as best I can figure, the trident in her quirk serves a purpose analogous to Nepeta's severed heads: embedding "Poseidon's Entente" (a reference to Sleuth Diplomacy, which simply guns people down) creates an aesthetic of threat. Her embedded Pisces symbol ) ( may also draw attention its counterpart on her forehead, which again suggests "psychic colonialism" by way of mind control? All while being vaguely Orientalist through its invocation of the third eye

To the growing list of feasible Arabic origins for troll quirks: learned from Duolingo a moment ago that the name David can be rendered as دوود or Dawwud, which seems vvery Eridan.

[aristotels]

im gonna go ahead and say it.

discrimination of slavs isnt xenophobia. its straight up racism.

there’s apparently a character in craig of the creek who is slavic and - the joke is - that he’s a dumb slav! ha ha ha! speaks about himself in third person and is a bully, which is so slavic, isn’t it? its hilarious. especially when you consider the history of slavic people, which i’ll shortly summarize here, with some quotes.

xenophobia is thinking someones national costumes are funny, or that their dish smells foul. in slav case, its different. slavs have always been racially discriminated, murdered, enslaved, and whichever history period you take, youll see it.

in fact, its so prominent that word “slave” literally comes from “Slav”. you can read about the root of the word here: American Heritage Dictionary

whatever period you take, you’ll find discrimination of slavic people. especially in nazis and fascists cases. prosecuted on the same level as jews, back then. the difference was that slavs were “too stupid and barbaric” and preys to “masonic jew machine”, and that they needed to be exterminated. here’s more text from wikipedia.

Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son in law, and the Foreign Minister of Fascist Italy who was later executed by Mussolini, wrote the following entry in his diary:[9]

Vidussoni comes to see me. After having spoken about a few casual things, he makes some political allusions and announces savage plans against the Slovenes. He wants to kill them all. I take the liberty of observing that there are a million of them. "That does not matter," he answers firmly.

(slovenes in this case not refering to only slovenes from slovenia, but also all slavs.)

one of fascists politics was also forcefully italianizing croatian names during 1920es when a part of croatia was under italian control. yes. people went to prison for not wanting to change their names. ive heard plenty of stories about grandfathers from older people being taken away to camps because they refused to change their names. during that reign, hundreds of croatian schools were shut, and teaching our language was forbidden.

“When dealing with such a race as Slavic – inferior and barbaric – we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. We should not be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps. I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.”

— 

Benito Mussolini

nazis had exactly the same stance, with policy of exterminating slavs so germans could inhabit the slavic lands.

from wikipedia:

The Nazis' policy towards Slavs was to exterminate or enslave the vast majority of the Slavic population and repopulate their lands with millions of ethnic Germans and other Germanic peoples.

of course, slav people were also targeted by KKK:

In Canada, many xenophobic white supremacists were deeply tied to their nation's "Anglo-Saxon" culture, specifically from the early 1900s to the end of World War II. The Ku Klux Klan in Canada was prominent in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, both of which have a relatively high Eastern European ethnic population. Immigrants from Ukraine, Russia and Poland were frequently denounced and targeted.[10]

During World War I, thousands of Ukrainian Canadians were seen as "enemy aliens" as Canadian nativists saw them as a "threat" to Canada's Western European heritage. Due to this, many of them were interned in concentration camps. There was constant discrimination towards Ukrainians who recently immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[11]

and even though this is too far away for the western europe to understand, macedonians in greece are still struggling today, with greece not recognizing macedonia as an independent state.

Today, the Greek state does not recognize its ethnic Macedonian and other Slavic minorities, claiming that they do not exist, with Greece therefore having the right not to grant them any of the rights that are guaranteed to them by human rights treaties.

yes. you read that correctly. greece does not recognize macedonian or other slav minorities and can choose not to grant them any rights guaranteed by human rights treaties. read that again. and again.

slavic people are rarely shown in media. because we are not important enough. to the west, we are some silly little people living in the balkans and arguing with each other and going to wars over silly things. the only times slavs appear in media is russian spies or other villains. which you know; slavs are a much more diverse race than just “russia”. and in fact, russia has controlled and exploited many slavic countries.

and when we ARE shown in media, its not much better. i have never seen a proper slavic representation. in literally all the cases of slavs appearing on the screen, they are illiterate, stupid, and cannot speak language.

casa de papel. viktor krum.

craig of the creek.

in every single piece of media ive ever seen, slavs have been portrayed as barbaric idiots. the way weve been portrayed for hundreds of years. in fact, craig goes so far to basically show a slav person being a lapdog to a white american. with the character speaking in third person and being dumb.

we dont fucking speak in the third person. it doesnt make sense in our language. its a racist and stereotypical portrayal, and the best thing is that nobody seems to care. the media has made good progress with stopping to make fun of black, latino and asian people, but you know who you can always make fun of?

slavs.

because you know.

its just some silly little dumb people.

living far away.

and not a race which has historically been undermined, hunted, placed in concentration camps, attacked, and enslaved.

im getting kinda fucking sick of it. yall should reblog this.

[travelling-on-the-octopath]

Hello! Since you are a Claude fan I wanted to ask something that maybe you could better explain from your own perspective. When I first played VW, I was confused by Claude saying he felt like an outsider because he doesn't belong in either Fodlan or Almyra. Like, I get that life sucked in Almyra cuz he's mixed race. But, like, nobody in Fodlan is capable of realizing that he's half Almyran. And he doesn't face any prejudice against him in Fodlan because nobody thinks of him as Almyran. (1/2)

Because the game treats his Almyran prince status as this huge, stupid secret, it robs Claude of the opportunity to actually face, well, any negative reaction in Fodlan at all. Only Lorenz and his dad don't trust Claude, but that's because he's the heir of house Riegan. The Golden Deer love Claude and never show prejudice or bias at him. And Claude never suffers prejudice like Dedue, Petra, Cyril and even Shamir discuss from being known foreigners. It feels like a dissonance for Claude (2/2)

I've been knighted as a Claude fan fkdhskal. My day has come! But on to the ask:

I think it's important to remember one very crucial thing: in Fódlan (and the real world, but sometimes fantasy games are Bad), race ≠ nationality. Claude doesn't get flack for being of a mixed heritage, or Almyran, because no one...knows he is. He doesn't face the same hardships as the other foreign students/occupants of the monastery because he just looks different than the majority, rather than admitting to being from over yonder.

Claude feels like an outsider because to maintain his status as Just Your Average Fódlan Denizen, he can't be honest about who he is. His secrets, in this case the ones that are keeping him alive, exacerbate his difference from others. It's like--have you ever been a part of a conversation where you don't really know what's being discussed, but you stick around and play along as if you do, because you don't want to admit you don't know? It's along the lines of the isolation that's wrought from that; you certainly know you don't fit with this discussion, and sooner or later everyone else is going to catch on too. Maybe a better example, and one I can personally speak to, is sexual orientation. I can pretend just fine that I'm only attracted to men, and if I Behave Accordingly, no one will ever be the wiser as to my bisexuality. I won't earn a side eye or face any displeasure brought on by my existence. But it would still be a lie. I'm still one wrong move from garnering the reaction I would have gotten if I'd just flat-out admitted to being queer. I'm not free from prejudice; I'm lying to evade it. And the latter is fucking exhausting, and isolating, and awful.

Claude is much the same. It's less that he doesn't face the same hardships as others and more that he's been put in the (un)fortunate position to lie about it. Because there is nothing good to be had about hiding away certain parts of you in a corner, knowing if someone peeks around your shoulder, they'll see something they might not like. And seeing as things like that are the very fabric of one's existence, that's easier said than done.

We end the game (sans epilogue/ending cards) without Claude being able to admit to who he is and where he comes from, because Fódlan isn't quite ready for that yet. Because he's pedalled as hard as he could on this side of the border, and it wasn't enough; his ideal world of no prejudice/xenophobia is still out of reach, which means he can't be completely honest yet. He calls on the Almyran army easily enough in two routes, but that's just a step up from his usual allusions to Not Being From These Parts; there is no room for him yet, and that takes a toll on a person.

TL;DR: Claude's lack of obstacles created by prejudice is a result not of dissonance/his uniqueness, but rather his creating a whole new path paved with untruths, to the detriment of his feeling like he belongs. To anyone who could make his life here hard, he's not an Almyran that gets special treatment; he's a quirky Fódlan noble who has his finger in several pies, and one of them seems to be Almyran.

[duchess-of-mandalore]

Let's talk about Bo-Katan and that scene with Boba Fett in The Mandalorian.

(After all, I've spent most of my time as a Star Wars fan defending one Kryze sister from charges of racism and elitism ... what's one more?)

A lot of people like to think that this scene complicates the conversation that we’ve already had regarding Almec saying that Jango Fett wasn’t a Mandalorian. That maybe Bo is elitist the way he was (though she certainly does not consider herself a New Mandalorian). I have some thoughts on that here and why Almec’s xenophobia and potential elitism should not be taken as reflective of the rest of the New Mandalorian views on the matter. However, this is a very different conversation.

This conversation, regarding Jango’s son, Boba, does not concern itself with the idea of foundlings and adoption into the culture. It’s not Bo expressing an elitist view. Instead it’s a very Star Wars related topic: clones. Bo knows that Boba is a clone. She does not recognize him by his armor, but only by his voice, which is when she says “you are not a Mandalorian.” Boba tells her that he never said he was. 

Now this is interesting. In my mind this issue issue should be cleared up. Boba does not consider himself a Mandalorian and he has not claimed to be. His father was, but Mandalorianism is not an inherently hereditary thing. Though it hasn’t been confirmed in the new canon yet, it’s likely that FIloni and Favreau are still working off the idea that to be a Mandalorian means that you have to swear the Resol’nare, the six tenets of Mandalorian culture. To do so is a person’s confirmation into the Mandalorian culture. However, it’s very unlikely that Boba ever would have done that. 

Inclusivity is an important topic and something to be praised. However, exclusivity is not inherently a prejudiced quality. To have any identity, you must fulfill certain requirements. A couple of years ago, I wanted to be a librarian. My mother was a librarian, I worked in a library, and I even took one class on library sciences. But if I showed up at an event hosted by the American Library Association and said “I’m a librarian,” they could say “No, you are not” since I don’t have any of the certifications to back that up.

Boba likely does not meet the requirements to be a Mandalorian. But the fact that he doesn’t claim to be one says that he actually knows and respects that. Almec was not a reliable narrator on the topic of whether Jango was a Mandalorian, but Boba should be taken as a reliable narrator in his own story and that of his father.

Further, like his eight million clone brothers, Boba has never lived in the context of the Mandalorian people. He lived with his Mandalorian father, but after that, he led a relatively solitary life as a bounty hunter and then alone on Tatooine. He has not served the greater good of Mandalore, and that doesn’t seem to be even something on his mind, given that he has written off Mandalore the planet as unworthy of reclamation (which is what drives Bo’s indignant “You are a disgrace to your armor”) and that he seems to be more interested in pursuing his own notoriety as a . . . crime boss, I guess?

But again, Bo doesn’t see him as Boba, the clone-son of Jango; she sees him as a common clone trooper. And Bo certainly has a reason to hold a grudge against them. Yes, they did help her take back Mandalore in Season 7 of The Clone Wars, however, Order 66 happened almost immediately afterwards, and we know that Bo only held the throne for a short time (likely weeks or months) before Palpatine and his armies -- made up of the same clones that helped her retake Mandalore -- descended on her once again for not capitulating to his rule. 

Bo would have “heard that voice thousands of times” in the clones that infiltrate Mandalore on behalf of the Empire (I’m also willing to bet this is an allusion to something we will see in The Bad Batch, which Bo-Katan is heavily rumored to be in). We can assume that she was either forced into exile or that she escaped the planet before she could be killed. But this shows that Bo does have an understandable reason for holding such a grudge against the clones. In fact, this must have been even harder because it’s likely that Bo does know that Jango was a Mandalorian. 

That makes it all the worse because the clones do all have a connection to Mandalore, and yet, they cause the exile of the Mandalorians from their homeworld, and likely contributed to the “glassing” of the planet that Boba mentions as well as the Great Purge, which we know happens after Bo’s second attempt to reunite the tribes. but they turn against what could be seen as their planet all the same.

In Bo’s mind, it’s likely that she does recognize that the clones have a connection to Mandalore . . . and yet they turn on Mandalore all the same. When she hears Boba’s voice, that animosity all comes out, but it has nothing to do with Boba, who Jango was, or whether Boba’s the son of a foundling.

Edit: Also, none of this is meant to deny that in this scene Bo-Katan is still a condescending and snotty brat. Not at all. But to be fair, Boba’s not a plaster saint either. They’re both complicated characters with complex motivations. That’s what makes them both interesting, and it’s possible to like both of them at the same time, while calling out their faults and recognizing what has led them to be the way that they are.

[captainadwen]

Thoughts:

- Luna was very mobile for someone stabbed in the solar plexus, but I'm willing to give that a pass

- noctis super sayan mode was super cool until it got boring -- the fight was just hit attack button with mild dodging, no real boss mechanics or strategy

- tangential: did he like low key die or something for Luna to give him that power up? Like he was at least vaguely conscious but looking rough tbh

- time to play episode ignis to find our what happened...

- immediately train time and fighting in front of everyone?? Aren't they in nilfheim don't go calling him a king NOW of all times

- I think the big issue with ffxv is that it tries tries do so much it doesn't know what the game narrative is

Like it's a story about a prince coming into his inheritance -- except that is never reflected in the sidequests. It's about four friends taking a bachelor road trip before one of them gets married, except the main plot involves the destruction of their homeland like 1 week in, max.

So it's a story about rebuilding your kingdom and becoming king amidst the end of the world -- but no, the first is only a mobile game set in an alternate universe and while the second is sort of the plot, noctis being king exists ONLY in the main plot

It could be a story about xenophobia, refugee identity, and struggling to survive amidst imperialism. At least, that's what the movie wants to be when it isn't doing mostly generic magic fighting sequences that last for ten+ minutes each. The game only has a few minor allusions to taxes to reflect how the empire is affecting citizens. Where are the refugees? When does noctis ever express concern for the people?

So in trying to be about noctis being king, coming into his inheritance, the end of the world, a casual road trip, imperialism, and who knows what else (I am. As stated. On ch9) it ultimately is.... about none of the above

Taken separately each part is stronger than the whole, yet because they are all only shallowly related at best, if you actually try and see how the separate parts combine you realize very quickly that they do not

Well ch 9 happened

[queerryan]

book recommendation.

The black tides of Heaven, by Neon Yang (they/them). It's about Asian non-binaries who do magic and join a machinist's rebellion to defeat their mother's dictatorship.

Book Synopsis: Mokoya and Akeha, the twin children of the Protector, were sold to the Grand Monastery as infants. While Mokoya developed her strange prophetic gift, Akeha was always the one who could see the strings that moved adults to action. While Mokoya received visions of what would be, Akeha realized what could be. What's more, they saw the sickness at the heart of their mother's Protectorate.

A rebellion is growing. The Machinists discover new levers to move the world every day, while the Tensors fight to put them down and preserve the power of the state. Unwilling to continue as a pawn in their mother's twisted schemes, Akeha leaves the Tensorate behind and falls in with the rebels. But every step Akeha takes towards the Machinists is a step away from Mokoya. Can Akeha find peace without shattering the bond they share with their twin?

The Tensorate Series

Book 1: The Black Tides of Heaven

Book 2: The Red Threads of Fortune

Book 3: The Descent of Monsters

Book 4: The Ascent to Godhood

Tw: Maternal abandonment; blood; violence; allusion to ethnic persecution, racism and xenophobia; Discussion about cultural and religious differences. (No transphobia in this universe)

[compelleddual]

Hey everybody, content warnings for We've Been Waiting (3.18) are up. As with most of our heavier episodes, we recommend checking the warnings before listening to the episode, and we'd like to remind you that we post them on wednesdays! Stay safe.