#it was also scary

[spicyicymeloncat]

I have a story about this too actually.

I used to be on a course studying to be a primary school teacher (teaching kids aged 4-11), and when we learnt about geography, our lecturer made a huge deal about making it about us unlearning racist bias so we wouldn’t pass that over to kids.

Which is amazing right! I thought, wow yeah I’m glad i can be more conscious of all this stuff, bc while I try to be aware, it can be really easy to accidentally perpetuate that bias since you are literally surrounded by it growing up.

Our lecturer had a slide with a technologically advanced city, and rural town and asked us to guess which countries they were from (not out loud tho). It was to show us that we potentially have used bias to guess, that we assume that only white countries can be rich and technologically advanced and vice versa.

A few days later I was sitting on a table where I was the only non white person. There aren’t that many PoC in our class or even our year group. And one of the girls there was our class representative. And they were all pissed as fuck about the geography lecturer. Because she “basically accused them of being racist and thats really hurtful”.

Cue me internally slamming my head against the wall.

There was only one girl i was really friends with, and while i didn’t say anything then, i asked her if she thought it was odd and she didn’t until i explained to her my perspective.

Additionally, our geography lecturer is also visibly a PoC.

So yeah, according to my classmates who do not experience systemic racism or just racism in general, being asked to just check if you’re biased is a horrible thing to do to you. Just the fact that my lecturer never called them racist, my white classmates called themselves racist bc of realising their own beliefs and decided it was my lecturers fault for making them aware of that fact.

Don’t be afraid of being called racist. Hope that someone calls you racist because then you know what to work on. If you want to live in a world where no one calls you out, then you want to live in a world where you can be bigoted and face no consequences. And why would you want to be more bigoted.

This was future teachers. They would teaching, grading, judging the next generation. And they refuse to examine their bias. They will never realise they have undergraded or overgraded kids based on skin tone. They will never realise they’re punishing or rewarding kids based on their families. They will never realise they are teaching hate, mockery, disdain in their syllabus. Bc no one can tell them what’s racist but them, and if that happens they are willing to use any sense of power and leverage to bring that person down.

some of y'all really need to re-examine what the word racist means because it's not always just "loud and proud white supremacist intentionally causing harm". sometimes it's "otherwise 'nice' person acting on internalized racial biases that they refuse to examine".

like my god the second "racist" gets dropped in a conversation some of you completely shut down under the weight of all your white fragility and refuse to listen to or act upon any criticism of your harmful actions, however intentional or unconscious they may be, and it's honestly pathetic. grow the hell up. learn to be uncomfortable in discussions about racism or you're never going to become better.

[itsbrucey]

Big fan of sun motifs in characters not necessarily being about positivity and happiness and how they're so " bright and warm" but instead being about fucking brutal they are.

Radiant. A FORCE of nature that will turn you to ash. That warmth that burns so hot it feels like ice. Piercing yellow and red and white. A character being a Sun because you cannot challenge a Sun without burning alive or taking everything down with them if victorious.

[possamble]

oh they super understood the assignment this time holy shit

[artkaninchenbau]

Crocodile finds a strange stray cat an 11-year old Nico Robin (AU where they met 13 years earlier. Robin's been on the run from the World Government for 3 years. Crocodile's 27 and has not set up base in Alabasta yet)

It seems like I have become possessed. By some sort of demon.

Bonus:

[eydilily]

plateup with tango and pearl i love u

[chloesimaginationthings]

The toy animatronics are the divas of FNAF,,

[frownyalfred]

"Bruce trains so he can always pick up his kids" nah. Bruce trains so that he can throw his kids. sending a 225 lb missile of muscle at his enemies is much more useful than being able to cuddle them, send tweet

[somewhereincairparavel]

"jason is a knockoff watered down percy" NO hear me out, jason actually parallels annabeth immensely, sharing SO many similarities with her personality, not percy, in this essay I will-

edit: my full analysis is out now! here

[lilislegacy]

frank: let me get this straight. thalia and jason’s domain is the sky, percy’s domain is water, and hazel and nico’s domain is basically the underground?

annabeth: yes

frank: but… can’t percy also create storms? that have clouds and lightning and thunder?

annabeth: yes

frank: and… and can’t percy also create earthquakes and make volcanoes erupt?

annabeth: yes

frank: so… in a way, doesn’t that mean everywhere is percy’s domain?

annabeth: yes.

annabeth: but don’t tell him. he hasn’t had that realization yet

[bigfatbreak]

they both got bonked for being silly.

[extravapalooza]

pages from 'a world of plenty', a cyanotyped and handbound artist book using cyborgs to explore transness, gender, nature, technology + their intersections (and my last uni project ever !!!) ... gonna be posting more of the pages soon ^_^

[vonspe]

cleaning up older emmrook doodles ✌️

[lazylittledragon]

they just got to have a sleepover and nothing bad ever happened at all

[herd-reject-arts]

So I'm leaving work and something darts in front of me, maybe 10ft away, too fast for me to see what it is. Peek around the tree blocking my path and I see this

Just like... a whole ass hawk. Dude's gotta be about 1.5ft tall. Massive fucking bird. And it's just staring me straight in my soul like this, even as I try to move ahead. It didn't budge. And there's only this path back to my car unless I want to walk on a busy highway. So I have the option of Death By Raptor or Death By Truck.

So I walk in the poison ivy filled patch off the sidewalk. Guy still isn't moving. Still staring me directly in the eyes. And I do this thing when animals are behaving strangely where I'll talk to them, so I'm just like, "Hey, man. I don't know you. You don't know me. This feels really threatening. I'm just trying to get to my car, dude. Can I get some space please? You're a big fucking bird. I see those claws. You could kill me right now, but I'd appreciate if you didn't, ok?"

It didn't move until I was about 2ft away. Again: I'm as far from it as I can be without walking into the street. It clearly wasn't going to budge. I walk past, thing flies up (silent, btw. Scary) and lands on a brick wall a little further ahead

Anyway. Weird guy. Nearly shit my pants when I noticed a bird big enough to carry off a fully grown cat was just... there, staring me in the face, unwilling to move away from me, a human, something it should see as a threat. I watched behind me the whole rest of the way to my car, just in case this bird decided to help me shed this mortal coil. 10/10 experience. Super cool guy.

[cairafea]

my favourite genre of seventeen is when they're straight up lying

ref:

[stromblessed]

Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows

In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.

If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.

So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.

I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?

However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.

Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)

And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.

Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.

It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.

Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?

While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:

She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.

You see where I'm going with this.

When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:

And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD

When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.

MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS

No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.

And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:

Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!

The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.

And, uh

Yeah.

I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.

But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.

Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:

But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.

There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.

After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:

"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.

Kind of like another bird in this show: