#being asian american

[azuneekun]

i drew my favorite stardew valley mean girl ♥

[sweet-potato-42]

cool fun fact for sunday

East Asia and South of South America are Antipodes meaning that they are in completely opposite points on the globe.

This means that when Acau joins we will have ccs in oppolise places playing together. People who physically could not be further away from each other.

The ones in buenos aires would be the furthest but i doubt Carre will play so I think cellbit or bagi are next. (idk where exactly they live but I'm pretty sure they come from the south of brazil)

Here is a map of the world showing antipodes. The areas in orange are perfectly opposite to each other.

[californiannostalgia]

seems to me like zac oyama is repping some experiences of asian american schoolkids, defined by such hits like 'regulate your anger,' 'communicate clearer to deliberately misunderstanding assholes,' and 'perpetual sense of unbelonging in both the american part and the asian part of your life.'

[liesmyth]

I love it when I'm up past my bedtime and I see pals on the dash who I know for a fact are several hours ahead of me. feeling so much better about my life choices

[betty-bourgeoisie]

I could fix her (American Girl Doll historical collection)

[spocks-kaathyra]

I despise any narrative that positions social progressivism as a western concept. why is every immigrant narrative about escaping from the terrible inherent conservatism of the backwards culture your family comes from and being saved by america's unique progressivism. just this disgusting pinkwashing that is exactly the same as any other narrative claiming that the west invented civilization and all those third world barbarians are only just now beginning to learn it from them. america's enemies do not have a monopoly on social conservatism. white people did not invent queer acceptance or anything else of value. death to america idk

[milkbreadtoast]

(random) ngl before i started learning korean i felt like the worst failure of a korean but now i feel like the best failure of a korean (/j) HAHA

like im struggling to speak but least im speaking..!! I feel like I've restored an essential piece of myself that was missing...

[purecommemasolitude]

Asian Paul is such a fun thing to think about for me because I personally am not secured to one version of him and there’s so little on him in regards to race in canon because he’s written as white. So I am truly out here doing Variations on Asian Paul à la classical music à la ballet. Infinite possibilities baby

[leroibobo]

the paradesi synagogue in kochi, kerala, india. the first synagogue on the site, built by the city's longstanding malabari jewish community, was destroyed by portugese who'd colonized the area in their persecution of locals. it was rebuilt in 1568 by spanish and portugese jews who fled persecution and later expulsion, hence the name "paradesi" ("foreign" in malayalam).

these sephardic jews and a community of jews of mixed african and european descent who were formerly enslaved ("meshuchrarim", "freedmen" in hebrew) joined the malabari jewish community of kochi and somewhat integrated. they were later joined by some iraqi, persian, yemenite, afghan, and dutch sephardic jews. the middle eastern and european jews were considered "white jews" and permitted malabari jews and meshuchrarim to worship in the synagogue. however, in what seems like a combination of local caste dynamics and racism, malabari jews were not allowed full membership. meshuchrarim weren't allowed in at all, but were instead made to sit outside during services and not allowed their own place of worship or other communal rights.

as the "white jews" tended to be rather wealthy from trade, this synagogue contains multiple antiquities. they include belgian glass chandeliers on its walls, hand-painted porcelain tiles from china on its floors, and an oriental rug that was gifted by ethiopian emperor haile selassie.

[peonycats]

did i just see someone hc South Korea to be the child of North Korea and America post-WWII

[amr102]

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez decided to give me massive diaspora feelings. Just the fact that Keema is so so afraid to die, as young men are wont to do, and that the narrator who lives a "a strange life" and ordinary life who is "sometimes" proud to be of their ethnicity. And that that is who is returns the spear into the narrative, and that is what solidifies Keema's determination to save the 'Old Country' despite explicitly stating his creating the mythos of the Daware and joining the quest for personal glory. And then the narrator in turn 'saving' Jun and Keema in the moonlight theater and how that mirrors oral traditions preserve culture.

[nopeferatu]

idc what people are whining abt, i actually really enjoyed the netflix avatar series. the costume and set design was really beautiful, the effects were great, the performances were great. i think people are weirded out about the pacing and i understand that, but at the same time, they're working on netflix's budget and i think they did a great job utilizing the important material in book 1 to tell as well rounded of a story as they possibly could. and like sure, i get that it was jarring to see them start at the VERY beginning instead of starting w katara and sokka finding aang like the original show does for ex, but like. idk! i think they shouldn't feel obligated to hit every plot point beat for beat and i don't think we lost anything by establishing aang's background early on. actually, every single scene with master gyatso made me fucking bawl lol. aang's loss is soooo much more palpable in this show than the original one imo bc it lingers on that pain a lot more. there were a few story choices that kinda made me scratch my head a bit, like the fact that teo wasn't introduced as part of the new Northern Air Temple population and what effects that had on aang, but i'm really not mad about it. anyways i give it two big thumbs up and i hope it gets renewed for another season

[peridot-tears]

While Blue Eye Samurai is about how Edo-era Japan was hostile to women, and highlights the strides Japanese society has made then, let's not fall into the trap of thinking misogyny is in the past.

I saw this comment while scrolling, and it really highlighted a sentiment I've seen in a lot of another posts, not just this one:

Yes, we have made incredibly hard-earned gains in women's rights, but if you are a woman athlete or soldier, it would absolutely be turned into a big deal.

In the United States, for instance -- a western country that consistently praises itself for its progressive feminism -- women still see high sexual assault cases in the military. (source, source, source) You can see that I chose three very different types of sources that count the numbers differently, but they all come to the same conclusion. I remember the fucking fit people threw when women were finally allowed to join the infantry unit in the last decade on the basis that women are physically weaker than men and couldn't possibly hold their own in that position, when women had already been serving in non-combat positions that already required a shitton of physical work.

I'm going to fully admit I don't know what Japan's numbers are in the military, but I've always viewed women's rights as similar to here in the US. Anecdotally, my friends from there have told me about how in Japan, when a man and a woman are in a relationship, the woman is expected to be less smart than the man, which I always found similar to the still-lingering attitude here in the US where men are expected to make more than the woman. Not to mention that the whole reason there are women-only cars and buses on Japanese trains is precisely to protect them from perverts.

I'm not writing this post to dunk on the people with the mentality that things are better now, because hell yeah, a lot of things are! I just want us to remember that the reality is that in the US -- where the creators of Blue Eye Samurai are from -- and Japan, where the story is set, women's rights are not perfect, and both countries are still patriarchal societies.

I'm also wary of these kinds of sweeping statements about stories set in East Asia, because I have seen in past fandoms this idea that western progress is the only progress that exists in the world. I remember a particularly icky set of comments and reblogs that insisted that the society of Mo Dao Zu Shi (a Chinese story) would be vastly improved by putting democracy in its place, which is the biggest fucking imperialist dogwhistle I have ever seen.

I haven't seen this similar sentiment in Blue Eye Samurai at all...yet. But you'd be surprised at how easily people come to these conclusions, and how little they question it.

[reineyday]

finished watching netflix atla! i think the hate is unjustified lol like all that hate seems a little too intense for what i think the show missed. it didn't hit all the same notes as the original show, yeah, so i'm not sure it quite succeeds as an adaptation, but as a standalone show it's pretty good. and i might have some gripes with the characterization, but there was love in the casting and in the costumes and the world, and that goes a long way for me.

[crimeronan]

the pro of "crazy dyke" being Your Type (TM) is that it makes you look like you're """One Of The Good Ones (TM)""" or whatever without even trying. you love queer women in fiction & therefore are freed from every fandom conversation about how most people only like the white men. or something. (the truth is you just like women with complex relationships to queerness, womanhood, & oftentimes their cultures as well, for various personal reasons.)

the con of "crazy dyke" being Your Type (TM) is obviously. God Help You if you want to find fandom content exploring your faves with the kind of messy nuance you thrive on.

[daisyachain]

The nature of time is that (culturally) Christian Euro/Anglo colonial consumers (hereafter white ‘people’) fetishize the idea of being ‘close to nature’ or ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’ and latch on to the idea that there are groups of people in the world who are somehow bestial or who have some kind of special powers from holding animist beliefs/beliefs that acknowledge the body as opposed to the Christian belief that the body is a kind of useless appendage to a person. We see this across decades from the 19thC to today in the racist fetishization of indigenous people across the globe, particularly residents of the Americas, Australasia, and southern/eastern Africa.

White consumers use a warped conception of other cultures to live out the fantasies that the Christian soul/body stuff engenders. You keep getting told that your emotions and physical sensations are the devil’s work? You want to get in touch with those physical sensations, but you don’t want it to interfere with your worldview? Simply project them on to a convenient group of people with slightly different conventions from you. Imagine how cool it would be to be 100% physical sensation (especially those pesky violent and/or sexual urges) and no mental burden, then unleash that in a way that causes millions of deaths worldwide via the dehumanization of entire nations of people just trying to live their lives. White consumers love a Proud Warrior Race Guy.

Flash forward to the 2010s, it’s generally considered impolite to spread the same propaganda that justified the genocide and dispossession of many different groups of people. However white culture hasn’t changed that much and normal human activities still need to be explained away to maintain the veneer of white intellectualism that has been used to justify white violence for years and years. You can’t just stomp around and clap your hands and dance badly, you’ve got to project it somewhere else.

But wait! There’s a community of people considered ‘tribal’ and ‘savage’, considered violent and bestial, who were never colonized! It’s…the Norse. Fetishizing early medieval North Sea raiders can’t be cultural appropriation, see, they’re white! It’s not offensive to replace an entire culture with white (male) ideas of what’s cool if that culture is totally unassociated with colonizer stereotypes and is in fact a culture of colonizers!

And that’s my theory on why there are so many Norse-inspired folk bands/video games/tv shows/memes/literally anything in the 2010s. VSaga not counted because that manga has been running since 2003 and is actually well-researched and comes out of a culture with a similar but distinct tradition of racism. The Euro storytelling tendencies of needing some kind of violent avatar have taken on ye anciente Norseman now that people care a little bit about the gallons of blood used to sketch other ethnic stereotypes. Done and dusted. Except the other side is that the fetishization of early medieval Norse culture is literally just white supremacist 101 and a lot of artists don’t step around that nearly as carefully as they should