#japan one of which being racist and the other thing being even more racist

[our-ensemble]

haiii question,,,, sorry for being kinda dumb here but what would be the point of sending emails to hapiele? the story is written already and akatsuki redebuted (???) so what Will they do then? would they just take back the things that happened in the event? sorry again for the bother! i dont go to twt or social media that much so im lost,,,

Thank you for asking, and this isn't a dumb question at all. Of course, contacting HappyElements has been quite the undertaking, so it's only natural to want to know what we should expect. This is a bit lengthy since I wanted to put as much perspective as possible, and as always, I do not mind if others wish to add to this.

The most important thing to acknowledge is that this is an unprecedented scenario, so we're making estimates about how HappyElements will respond. At best, we hope that HappyElements complies with the requests made in the emails and nothing less, with these requests being a) the removal of Ibuki from AKATSUKI since this plays into the existing discrimination and Japanization of Ryukyuans and b) the careful consideration of how Indigenous characters are written going forward. Other additional goals may be added at individual discretion, but in relation to AKATSUKI and Ibuki, this is our main focus.

There is a chance that Enstars can edit or change the story. For example, in Izumi's event, "One Drop * A Specially Chosen Mad Party in UNDERLAND", fans raised concerns about how Izumi and Leo's backstory was mischaracterized in the story, and the line was later changed. However, when it comes to AKATSUKI and Ibuki, we should acknowledge that our concern is with the story as a whole, not a few lines, and so this is not likely. Should HappyElements decide to edit the story, they would likely be attempts to soften the blows that they dealt - but especially for a subject matter like this, it most certainly does not change the fact that the blow is still being dealt.

Another hope is that, even if it does not change AKATSUKI's event, it will push HappyElements to be more considerate in the future with regards to discrimination and characterization. We know that Enstars has been able to change its trajectory with how it approaches topics. For instance, Arashi's earliest stories contained both homophobic and transphobic stereotypes (specifically, she had many stereotypes associated with gay men, which is why the earliest translations of !-era stories tend to use he/him pronouns exclusively. At the time, her gender was not explained.) However, as years passed, the quality of her stories has noticeably improved, with a greater emphasis on her relationship with her gender. Hopefully, pressure from fans will encourage HappyElements to consider the racist, anti-Indigenous message that its pushing, and reevaluate how to approach Ibuki and other marginalized characters.

Some fans are also taking the angle of focusing on mischaracterization as a sort of "foot-in-the-door" technique. Again, as was the case with Izumi, if we can argue that certain things are out-of-character and that the continuous mischaracterization will be a threat to HappyElements' profits, then we might be able to use that momentum to target the racism in the story, since for AKATSUKI, the mischaracterization has been done to facilitate the discrimination that we see, and thus is not wholly separate from the issue. (Though on that note, fans have been asked to emphasize the treatment of Ibuki, since we must not treat occassional mischaracterization as comparable to active discrimination rooted in prejudices that continue to affect Ryukyuans in the present.)

At the same time, we must acknowledge that HappyElements has not made any efforts of note regarding other concerns raised by fans. Most relevantly, the event "Answer * Matrix of Stars Drawn Towards One Another" contains racist, anti-Indigenous sentiments in its depiction of the Amagi village. Instead of taking inspiration from Ainu culture as has been the case with the Amagis thus far, they made the Ainu village a sci-fi setting. Japanese imperialism has worked tirelessly to erase the culture of the Ainu in order to assimilate them. By making the Amagi village less culturally rooted and more fantastical, Enstars erases the presence of Ainu culture from their world - likely because it wasn't deemed interesting enough, since Enstars does value its shock factor - which is insensitive to the plight that the Ainu face to this day.

With all this in mind, we have to remind ourselves that this situation is still developing. The reaction to fans' emails has been mixed in the past, and the response to concerns of discrimination especially has been disappointing. Though, we also need to acknowledge that this is arguably the strongest, most concentrated reaction of the fans towards HappyElements, and we cannot allow them to intimidate us, nor can we allow them to forget that they are enabling dangerous anti-Ryukyuan sentiments that are not without real-life consequence.

Lastly, as I personally see it... even if "nothing" happens, I still ask that fans continue to pressure HappyElements. If HappyElements cannot treat marginalized people with respect, then at the minimum we should do the opposite and show marginalized fans that we stand with them. As I've mentioned time and time again, what we have seen in Enstars is reflective of real-life prejudices that are actively harming people. Even if HappyElements' mind does not change, other people observing the situation may reevaluate their own biases, and we can counteract whatever harms could occur as a result of HappyElements' lack of care.

[n4n4uu]

King Without a Crown.

Hey y’all, this is my first fanfic on this platform. This story contains drugs, alcohol, violence and is overall not a 💗🌸🌷✨💫 🧸🎀 story if you get what I mean. Reblogs and comments are much appreciated. [Name] is a female with she/her pronounce. There is no real description of her, except her clothes and height. This story will probably contain smut, I still have to decide on that. Idc who reads this, if you aren’t homophobic, racist or ableist you’re very much welcome on my blog. Israel supporters dni.

Chapter 1 >>

One thing you told yourself you'd never do was get romantically and sexually involved with a friend, only to end up doing exactly that and getting your fucking heart broken.

You only did it because of a silly crush you had on him, and you were so naive to think you'd have a chance, to think he’d ever settle down for you, or anyone else, for that matter. He’s not the type to do relationships. He wasn’t the type as a teen, and even now, he doesn’t do them. You’re disappointed in yourself for getting played like that.

But maybe you let it happen because you’ve never had the attention of a boy solely on you. Maybe because you’re that one friend who never gets hit on. Maybe you just liked the feeling of being wanted, even if it was just physical. You’ve told yourself so many times that you don’t care about getting romantic attention, that you don’t care about being single, but you’ve lied to yourself too many times.

You two didn’t have sex, no. You were making out, going out on ‘dates,’ jerking and sucking each other off, and even dry humping, but you never had intercourse.

It felt like love, even if it was only pretend, just for his own pleasure.

But that was nearly six months ago. You keep telling yourself it’s not a big deal, but come on, you’ve been painting more, selling your work, producing a ton of music, and even DJing at a few clubs, all while going to college. How you manage all of this is a mystery to you. Well, not really.

This is what you tell yourself most of the time: ‘Just gotta wait till I’m out of college.‘

Just gotta wait.

You hate that sentence so much, yet you keep repeating it over and over to give yourself some motivation for the ‘freedom’ after college. You don’t want to drop out, your grades are good, and your career chances are better.

You’re in college, studying Art History with Studio Practice. The college offers a variety of programs, but in your opinion, it’s a weird place. The people here don’t really like you, then again, no one seems to like anybody at this college, but it’s mostly the art students who are jealous of your work. You don’t care, though.

Students (many of them gang members) fight in secluded areas of the campus, some girls hook up with teachers to save their grades, and a few boys are trying to join the two major gangs just to gain recognition and respect. Many students smoke blunts, cigarettes, or vapes, while others drink themselves unconscious or take drugs.

You don’t do any of that, not because you despise it, but because you don’t feel the urge to grab a bottle or a blunt. You’d rather stay sober and healthy. No shade to those who do; everyone has their flaws.

The college somehow manages to cover everything up, presenting itself in the media as a reputable institution with goody-two-shoes students. And silly you, you fell for their image. But surprisingly, the lessons are good, which keeps you here.

The two major gangs in your college are Toman and Tenjiku. Funny thing: both of the leaders are brothers. Funny thing: you’re "friends" with both of them. Funny thing: you know their whole family and are friends with their little sister. Funny thing: you’re trying to keep your contact with them low, not wanting to be involved in any of their crimes. Funny thing: their oldest brother is one of the biggest criminals in Japan.

You’re walking down the hall of this massive college. You’re wearing a black windbreaker-style jacket, baggy black jeans, and black Air Jordan 1s. A brown bag is slung over your shoulder, the strap digging between your tits. You like the color black, but you also like pink and brown. Doesn’t matter, though.

College is finally over, and you’re just walking to your dorm to drop off your bag. You’re rarely there anyway, lucky for you, you don’t have a roommate, and you mostly sleep at your own apartment nearby.

‚Fucking hell, lesson is finally over’ you think, walking past the various students in the hallway. Some are in pairs, others in groups, and a few are alone.

You step outside the building and onto the campus. It’s a sunny but chilly day. The grass is still green, and students are lingering nearly everywhere.

After a while, you reach your dorm and pull out your keys, fumbling with them, your hands shaking.

„Why the hell are they always shaking?“ you grumble, not noticing the pinkish-brown-haired, short girl approaching from behind. Her voice startles you. “[Name]!”

You let your keys slip from your fingers, bending down to grab them while cursing under your breath, “Shit.” You turn to the shorter girl standing behind you, Hinata Tachibana, your best friend.

“Fuck, Hinata, you scared me!” you complain, lazily trying to pull her into a hug. But instead, she stretches one hand out, leans closer, and sniffs you.

“What are you doing?” you ask plainly, letting her do her thing.

“You reek of oil paint,” Hinata says, giving you a disappointed look. You raise your brows in surprise.

“Oh, uh, I do?” you respond, unsure of how to react. You lift one arm and bring it up to your nose, sniffing it, and realizing Hinata’s right. “Guess I’ll have to wash my clothes again.”

“[Nickname], you should really be more careful when painting. Look at your hand,” Hinata scolds, but keeps it light-hearted.

‚Bless her heart‘ you think, glancing at your colorful hand before looking back at Hinata. She's wearing a cute white skirt, a yellow sweater, and black ballerinas.

“I know, I’ll be more careful, but that’s part of painting,” you reassure her, fiddling with your keys again. Hinata flushes as she realizes you're right. “Ah, right.”

You turn to the door and unlock it. “Why are you here, though? Your dorm’s on the other side of campus.”

You walk into your dorm, leaving the door open with Hinata following right behind. She makes herself comfortable on the soft cushions of your bed.

"Uh..." Hinata sounded sheepish, letting out a small, nervous, breathless chuckle. You snapped your head toward her.

"Hinata... what did you do?" you asked, feigning fear. You pulled out a few books from your bag, placing them on the desk by the window before turning back to her.

Hinata had her hands on her lap, nervously fiddling with the edge of her skirt.

"I wanted to ask if you could DJ," she said quietly.

"For who?" you inquired, raising your brows at the pinkish-brown-haired girl. You already had a feeling it wasn’t for her, or her little brother Naoto, or her boyfriend Takemichi. If it were any of them, she wouldn’t be this nervous.

"Emma," she answered, and then the realization hit you. Today was Emma’s birthday, November 25th. She is turning 22.

"No," you replied plainly, and Hinata’s face fell. You loved Emma; she was a sweet girl, but you really didn’t want to go. For certain reasons. Reason number one: Manjiro. Reason number two: Izana. Izana was cruel, that much was clear, but he wasn’t holding grudges against you, nor was Manjiro. But you couldn’t help but feel that they were a tad bit weird, even though you’d known them for a long time.

"[Nickname], please... Do it for me, just this once. I know you're not in the best mood, but please. Haitani is not the DJ Izana and Mikey would be pleased with. His music’s more for a club vibe," Hinata pleaded, clearly a bit surprised and sad at your refusal.

"And mine’s not?" you asked, confused, leaning against the desk with your arms crossed over your chest.

"Well, sometimes, but it always depends on how you play your music!" Hinata explained quickly before you cut her off.

"Emma didn’t even invite me. Izana and Mikey didn’t seek me out to ask."

"That’s because she thinks you don’t like... I mean, she was going to, and I think Izana and Mikey were also going to ask you," Hinata stammered, and you furrowed your brows, tilting your head in confusion.

"She thinks I don’t like her?!"

You exclaimed a bit too loudly, slapping a hand over your mouth, the other one stretching out toward Hinata, who was startled.

"Sorry," you said quickly. "I mean, why does she think that?"

Hinata offered a small, nervous smile, avoiding your gaze."Because you haven’t contacted her in a while, and, uh, she thinks you’re avoiding her."

You sighed, a bit annoyed but mostly disappointed in yourself for letting Emma think that. "I’m not avoiding her, and I didn’t contact most of you for a while."

Hinata nodded, agreeing with you before she continued, "I know, I tried to tell her, but she says you’re acting weird around her. And, you know, I couldn’t tell her it’s because of Mikey."

You sighed as you pinched the bridge of your nose. "That dickhead is always there when I’m with Emma." You groaned in annoyance, remembering the many awkward times Mikey had been around whenever you were there for Emma.

Or the one time he opened the door in nothing but a towel hanging loosely on his hips, his v-line, his toned muscles having a few droplets of water from his hair because he’d just showered.

You couldn’t tell what he was thinking, it was always so hard to read him, but you did remember your mouth going dry at the sight.

But then you remembered the asshole he was, toying with you. Luckily, Emma had pushed him away and pulled you into a hug at that moment, completely oblivious to the tension between you two or the thing you had going on. That was one month after Mikey had ��cheated’ on you.

You groaned in annoyance at the thought. "Okay, I’ll be the DJ and celebrate with Emma."

Hinata is beaming at you. She gets up from the bed, runs over to you, and hugs you. "Thank you!"

You pat her back in response. „No need.“

BONUS SCENE:

Hinata walked out of your dorm, humming to herself as she fished her phone out of her pocket. Unlocking it, she navigated to her contacts and tapped on Emma’s chat.

„Successfully guilt-tripped [Nickname] :3!!“

She sent the message with a satisfied grin before slipping her phone back into her pocket and heading off.

[mitigatedchaos]

The Floating Causation of Vulgar Anti-Racism

Post for August 12, 2024 ~7,400 words, 36 minutes

-★-

The late 20th century and the early 21st century were an excellent time for 'catch-up' development in under-developed countries. For example, the GDP per capita of the People's Republic of China rose from $312 in 1980, to $12,720 in 2022, more than a 40x increase. This is despite the People's Republic being nominally communist, 92% Han Chinese, and one of the largest potential geopolitical rivals to the United States. This is not a one-off – exports from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the United States rose from $50 million in 1994 to $114 billion in 2023.

While the ideologically liberal government of the United States did invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and placed strict limits on Iran, in practical terms, the United States was willing to direct hundreds of billions of dollars of demand, for everything from disposable gloves to rice cookers, to countries that were neither majority white nor, officially, capitalist, which allowed these countries to build up their industrial base.

Inside the United States, as of the early 2020s, Americans of Indian descent, Americans of Asian descent, and a number of other non-white groups are outperforming the median household income of white Americans. It's not uncommon to see an Indian-American as the CEO of a major US corporation, such as Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Google's Sundar Pichai, or IBM's Arvind Krishna. And while Americans of Nigerian descent aren't earning quite as much money as Sundar Pichai, they are doing better than the U.S. national average. [1]

The American economy is willing to award non-white Americans and non-white immigrants with average pay higher than that the average pay for white Americans, and American society is willing to award members of these same groups with highly prestigious positions – Google is one of the most famous American companies, and to be its CEO is highly prestigious indeed.

Why is it that vulgar anti-racists aren't content to leave well enough alone on negative racial messaging, and take advantage of this opportunity to focus on personal development, ingroup development, and national development? Why is it that they have a strange totalitarian bent, such as Ibram Kendi proposing to give veto power over all government policy to a body of unappointed race experts, which would de facto end democracy?

Last month, @max1461 wrote a post, attempting to find a balanced compromise between the social justice movement and its critics in the discourses on racism over the past 10 years. Perhaps this was intended to close the books and allow the participants to move to a saner footing going forward. Subsequently, Max flagged the post as unrebloggable in order to prevent it from being beat up like a piñata. Near the end of the initial chain, Max wrote:

I can’t stress enough that, for all the excesses of DEI seminars and modern anti-racist academia and whatnot, for however unhelpful or even regressive these things may often be, what they exist in response to is fundamentally a horror of an entirely different and incomparable scale; something unspeakably evil and destructive. And, after 200 years of such an evil world order, which only really began to melt in 1945, I think it would be incredibly naive to believe that all the wounds are now healed.

It would seem that for the most part, the wounds that Japan suffered from America in World War II have already healed. The country already went through reindustrialization, followed by a boom period (which startled Westerners), and then a subsequent crash and the 'lost decade' of the 1990s. The Japanese have a favorable view of the United States, as perhaps they should – Japan has prospered in the Post-WW2 international order, in which they can simply purchase whatever materials they need on global markets with no need to invade or occupy anyone.

Yet for others, the past lingers on.

Ibram Kendi is one of the most famous contemporary self-identified anti-racists, a New York Times bestselling author (his most famous book was titled "How to Be an Anti-Racist") who was not only platformed by major corporations such as Microsoft (in 2020, an advertisement on the login screen of Windows 10 computers linked to a search for "anti-racism books," with his at the top), but even received funding for his own anti-racism center (now under attack for its ineffectiveness).

At one time, Ibram Kendi thought that white people were aliens. A roommate talked him out of it, asking how it was that white people could have children with everyone else if that were the case. To his credit, Kendi did change his mind.

...but how could anyone have come up with Kendi's conclusion in the first place?

In school in the United States, children are taught that the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. It is true that Spanish military forces brought about the downfall of the Aztec Empire, but often people forget the details of what they learned in school, and often what they learn in school is itself a simplified story, designed to be told to children. Encyclopedia Britannica's summary of the Battle of Tenochtitlan largely agrees with the gist of Wikipedia's more detailed article on the Fall of Tenochtitlan, which is littered with instances of "[citation needed]."

Wikipedia, however, provides more numbers. In particular, Wikipedia's version provides one of the Internet's favorite parts of wiki battle articles, a listing of the balance of opposed forces (with citations):

There is a racist narrative of the conquest of the Americas in which the brave Spanish explorers overcame the savage, human-sacrificing hordes of the Aztecs. There is an inverted, anti-racist narrative of the conquest of the Americas in which the powerful, cruel Spanish showed up to oppress the weak, innocent Aztecs.

And then there is a third narrative - a narrative that politics happened. A number of tributary states had grievances with the Aztecs, and the small number of Spanish probably didn't seem like enough to conquer the whole territory from the perspective of the tributaries, but did seem powerful enough to rally around to fight the Aztecs and win.

Nobody comes out looking good in this third narrative. The Spanish brought about a brutal war with tens of thousands of casualties, and devastating disease followed their arrival. The Aztecs and tributaries combined failed to overcome a foreign invasion due to (relative to the foreigners being from another continent) local infighting. The Aztecs were awful enough that a number of tributaries sided with an army of foreigners against them.

Now, suppose that we delete the 200,000 native allies from the balance of forces above, but still record a victory for the Spanish. The effect of the native allies remains, but the cause of that effect disappears. This creates an effect without a cause – unattributed causation, which is disconnected from what came before, or what we might call, "floating causation."

Some might call overcoming a force of 80,000 with only 1,000 or so men a miracle. For those not so inclined, the 'floating' causation gets attributed to the Spanish soldiers – their equipment, their valor, their tactics, and their discipline. Each of a thousand Spanish infantrymen is now somehow worth 200 native warriors.

In this cartoon version of history, the Spanish are an unstoppable psychic warrior race. Their steadfast will in the face of danger and their unit cohesion are quite nearly inhuman, and their technological advantage is overwhelming. The natives have not merely made a political miscalculation similar to others of the pre-modern era, such as the decisions of states facing Genghis Khan, but are buffoons to the slaughter, incapable of putting up any real defense.

In this cartoon, the Spanish can go anywhere. They can do anything. And because of this, they are the only people with agency in the whole world.

They sound... like aliens.

Trying to rebalance this cartoon only leads to greater absurdities, such as the idea that only Europeans ever meaningfully engaged in conquest (contradicted by Genghis Khan), or that industrial technology and its resulting pollution are "European" in nature (China has been quite aggressive about industrializing), or that only "European" countries waged modern and industrialized wars of conquest (the Empire of Japan used guns, bombs, and tanks as part of its project to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).

All three of the above counter-examples are from Asia, which is usually conspicuously absent from self-identified anti-racist thinking, but none of them are obscure.

-★-

It is my belief that floating causation is a source of distortions across the ideological spectrum.

Ideology is not independent from human beings. Manifestos, one might say, do not print themselves. From the other direction, it is not a piece of paper which murders somebody – it is a human being who pulls the trigger.

There is ideology, which is a system of related rules and beliefs, and there are adherents who adopt ideology, spread beliefs, and put ideological rules into practice.

An ideology can contain taboos which prohibit noticing or explaining the true cause of some outcome, separating the cause from its effect. Practitioners can then attribute that effect to a preferred ideological construct instead, making it seem much more powerful, and often dangerous, than it really is.

The Elephants

Imagine (as this example is entirely made-up) that there is some village in which elephants are considered sacred, but the elephants in the area have a habit of trampling crops in the night. To avoid loss of face, the damage to crops is attributed to "bandits" by an initial group of elders. The young children who do not know better are then taught this explanation. Later, after the death of the elders, the initial truth is lost. Anyone claiming to have seen elephants trampling the fields is denounced as choosing the vile bandits over the virtuous elephants. An outsider who did not realize what was happening might be quite impressed to hear that a bandit in the region ruined a dozen fields in a single night, and assume that the bandit has tremendous physical stamina.

But floating causation is not necessarily the result of an ideological taboo. Someone may be ignorant about the cause of an effect, unable to understand the process by which an effect came about, have powerful emotions about the topic which they are unwilling to confront or may not even be aware of, or may simply have poor judgment. An adherent may be drawn to an ideology for these reasons.

Continuing with our example, a fresh-off-the-boat colonial administrator arriving at the village might be unaware that elephants exist, or trample crops, and conclude that there were ongoing feuds driven by animosity among the villagers, with bandits as the cover-story. Alternatively, the new colonial administrator might love the elephants and hate the villagers, and be unwilling to consider the possibility that the elephants are trampling the crops, including cooking up rather elaborate rationalizations.

Ideology

Issues with not understanding a process are more likely to come up with things like economics – occasionally a worker will post a video to social media complaining that he is not paid the full value of the items he sells or creates, ignoring all the money that went into the construction of the facility, the work from other workers putting together the input materials, and so on.

Liberals in the late 00s and early 2010s had an interest in memetics, which concerns the replication and spread of ideas. (This field is where the term "Internet meme" comes from.) Then, as now, they had a tendency to treat people as too similar to each other, and some of them leaned towards the idea that any person could hold any ideology. Ideologies do (in my judgment) influence behavior – there are far fewer monarchists around these days, and far fewer monarchs with real power, for example – but how a set of beliefs is expressed depend on the emotions, motives, and temperament of the person who holds those beliefs.

So do people choose ideologies, or do ideologies choose people?

One way to view this matter is as a cycle. Someone's social environment is partly a matter of choice, and partly a matter of circumstance. The ideologies that show up in someone's environment are generally going to be ones that spread (as ideologies that don't attract new adherents will die out), but which ideology someone actually chooses and how they practice it will be influenced by what type of person they are.

Another way to view this matter is that emotions, motives, temperament, and beliefs are all things that make certain actions or thoughts either easier (and cheaper) or more difficult (and more expensive). A drug addict who believes in hard work and free market capitalism, but finds himself stealing to feed his habit, may find that the influence of his beliefs is not enough to overcome his addiction. (He is likely to feel miserable.) However, when a religious person is choosing what time of day, or day of the week, to worship, the explicit belief of their religion is likely to have a great deal of influence.

Yet another way to view this matter is to treat things like social relations, ideology, and temperament as interacting layers, and then propose that politics spans multiple layers.

Human Talent

I don't believe that all human beings are equally talented, and I don't believe that they all have identical temperaments. Therefore, one of my beliefs is what might be called the "human capital theory of movements." Ideologies consist of networks of related beliefs which can be used to interpret the world, to guide behavior, or to create arguments. But ideologies do not create beliefs or arguments themselves. Humans do.

When a movement has a lot of talented, virtuous people working for it, these people can create new arguments in order to win debates, and change parts of the ideology, the network of beliefs, to adapt the network to changes in conditions. Without talented people, the ideology of a movement will drift farther from environmental conditions, causing its responses to become more misaligned with conditions on the ground.

Talented people are also needed for the implementation of an ideology. An ideological book is just an inert text. No matter how complex it may be, it is fundamentally limited in its complexity. Applying that text in the environment, bridging the gap between what the text says and what that means in the reality of a specific situation, requires both intelligence and good judgment. Not every person is equally talented, and not every person is equally informed. If someone more talented and with better judgment is around, they can read the situation and come up with some simpler rules or orders for others to follow.

The less talented the adherents of a movement are, the lower the ability of the movement to adapt to conditions over both the short-term and the long-term.

A shift in the distribution of talent can precede other forms of political change. Ideologues may smile as the most disagreeable members are driven out of their movement, but at the same time, the lack of criticism will reduce the movement's ability to respond to change.

There are trade-offs. The use of floating causation may make an ideology less aligned with reality, but it may also be useful for the movement to stoke the emotions of their followers in order to drive action. (This emotional motivation bit is why every election in the United States is "the most important in your lifetime.")

-★-

Beliefs are not intelligence. Nonetheless, a person with a belief may act as though they are smarter (or even wiser) than they actually are. This is just the nature of knowledge (as cached intelligence, wisdom, and observation).

I developed the talent theory in the prior section by observing opposition to racism in the United States prior to 2014. In the United States between 2000 and 2014, there was substantial support for individualist "colorblindness," while at the same time, there was immense social pressure against overt white racial organizing.

Racial organizing takes time and effort. Because white Americans were not subject to racial discrimination, they could simply go out into the market and earn what their work was worth. For talented white Americans, the gains from white racial organizing would be marginal, so the penalties could easily overcome those gains. The less talented would have the most to gain due to the ability to reduce the amount of economic competition they would be up against, but they were also less able to organize. [2]

There was somewhere famous for white racial organizing in the US during this era: prisons.

Racial prison gangs have been particularly noted in the California prison system. Prison gangs offer inmates a credible threat of retaliation if the inmate is harmed, so every inmate has an incentive to join one, and the bigger the gang the better that threat of retaliation is, so every gang has an incentive to recruit. If you're a gang member and a new guy comes in and starts causing trouble, and you don't want to escalate (and thus risk extra charges for your guys or reduced privileges), what are you to do? You would prefer to negotiate with someone that has leverage on him. Race is very visible, even if inmates move around between prisons, so if all inmates get sorted into gangs by race, then someone is responsible for this guy, and by talking to the right people, you can make sure he knows it. (If the troublemaker still doesn't respond, and his own gang cut him loose, then you can punish him without fear of retaliation from other inmates.)

Different incentives produce different results.

Four Options

Glenn Loury is a black man, and an economist at Brown University. He views himself as an American and therefore an inheritor of human rights philosophy of the American founders and their English forebears. He has his own show on YouTube in which he regularly discusses matters with John McWhorter, another black man, who is a linguistics professor at Columbia University. (John strikes me as more liberal, and I heard that he was frightened of Donald Trump, a sentiment shared by many white American culturally liberal Democrats.) Both of these men are quite smart, and if you watch the show, you'll see them easily consider arguments from various perspectives and toss hypotheticals back and forth.

Neither of these men are vulgar anti-racists.

Roland Fryer is a black man, and is an economist at Harvard (although he was suspended for 2 years) who I have discussed previously. He thinks like an economist, and has conducted studies such as paying children to read books. In previous appearances, it seemed that he believes that education gaps can be closed through extremely rigorous selection of teachers and other methods.

Mr. Fryer does not appear to be a vulgar anti-racist.

These men are all relatively prominent voices. If you go looking for the sort of content they produce, they aren't that hard to find. And they're all smart. They might have disagreements with each other and with some of my readers, but smart people can disagree.

However, during the 2014-2022 era, when it was decided to push a black academic to prominence, political forces settled on Ibram Kendi instead. There must have been dozens of other candidates.

When I think about why that happened, I suspect that the answer is that while the first three men care about the interests of black Americans, all three of them are willing to say, "No." Although I doubt they would phrase it in exactly these terms, I suspect that all three understand human rights as rooted in high-order consequences, limits on information, and human bias.

If you proposed to John McWhorter that we should give veto power to a committee of unelected race experts, he would immediately recognize the problem with just that.

Why Vulgar Anti-Racism?

With all of that said, I believe we can think about vulgar anti-racism by means of comparison.

a. Economics

Loury and Fryer are both economists. They know about gains from trade, prices as a distributed form of economic planning, property rights as enabling investment, specialization of labor, economies of scale, and dozens of other things. They understand where wealth comes from.

The typical vulgar anti-racist that you will encounter on an Internet discussion board has little knowledge of economics, and tends to think of total production as fixed. From their perspective, if someone has more resources than another person, it has nothing to do with production, and is purely the result of hoarding.

The typical vulgar anti-racist also doesn't think in terms of entropy, the tendency of things to break down over time. They tend not to discount temporally-distant advantages. (If a well was built 400 years ago, they treat that advantage as retained today.) They tend to think of capital as fixed and not as something that is constantly being rebuilt and adjusted. They don't understand that the ability to create new capital is generally more important than the initial capital in the long-run.

Thinking about production is probably why we see Fryer focused on educational gains. His theory is likely that if the children have a good base of education, they'll be able to produce more, avoid losses, overcome entropy, and net accumulate wealth. If they don't have a good base of education, then they'll be less productive, and entropy will eat a higher percentage of their earnings, leading to reduced wealth.

If someone doesn't know economics, then the wealth of developed countries is "unexplained," and so are the motives of many people within developed countries.

b. History

I don't know about Fryer specifically, but Loury and McWhorter seem to have a good grasp of history.

A solid understanding of history leads to seeing actions as emerging from their historical contexts. This places a limit on the range of expected behavior.

For example, for most of history up until about the 1900s, the child mortality rate was about 50%. That example is relevant for feminism, as under such brutal conditions, we would expect any society that didn't push for women to have at least 4 children to die out. Gender-based oppression didn't occur for no reason, or because of pure male greed, but was influenced by material circumstances.

If we run this understanding backwards, it follows that 1700s or earlier gender norms would be unlikely to return without 1700s or earlier child mortality rates.

Likewise, some basic historical knowledge would reveal that wars of conquest have happened pretty much everywhere, so it's quite unlikely that Europeans are uniquely conquerors. You end up having to declare everything from feuding Chinese kingdoms, to the Māori, to chimpanzees, be "European" in order to fit the model.

The typical vulgar anti-racist's position is, implicitly, "Everyone lived together in peace and harmony, until one day, for no reason at all, the Europeans became possessed by the spirit of greed, and attacked."

If someone somehow doesn't know that war existed outside of Europe prior to 1492, then the wars of colonialism are "unexplained," and so are the motives of the people who fought them.

When vulgar anti-racists do research history, they generally focus on collecting racial grievances in order to build up a case that the group they favor are poor, oppressed, not responsible for anything bad their group has ever done, and are owed indefinite benefits for incalculable harms. They don't proceed from the idea of, "How does this work?" They don't, say, look at the tremendous economic success of South Korea, and ask, "Based on how South Korea obtained their wealth, how can our group achieve such riches?" (They don't even look at South Korea's birthrate and ask how they can avoid such a fate!)

Even before World War 2, Japan did look afar to ask how they could become rich. That kind of mentality is part of how they were able to become a developed country (who could threaten other people with tanks) in the first place.

Looking to Asia is useful for people making comparisons to figure out how things work, but is not useful for collecting racial grievances in order to build up racial claims to make demands. That's why vulgar anti-racists often don't know basic facts about Asian history, like that state testing to determine government positions was practiced in ancient China. [3]

c. Racial Attachment

Even during the individualist colorblindness of 2000-2014, there were still white Americans with some talent engaged in racial organizing. In general, these were people to whom race was very important, and thus who were out-of-step with the mainstream of white America.

It's my opinion that there is a natural range of tribalism among human beings. Sometimes, the rival tribe on the other side of the mountain just want to trade. Other times, they really are out to kill you. The trait doesn't disappear, because wars still happen, and even if they didn't happen, someone could just reinvent war and start it all back up again.

In my view, this tribalism trait isn't attached to race specifically. It can attach to religion. It can attach to sex. Some of the rhetoric from radical feminists sounds the same as rhetoric from hardcore ethnic nationalists – or at least it would, if we treated men as an ethnicity. In our modern environment in which race is highly legible due to intercontinental travel, for a lot of people, it gets attached to race.

Rather than assigning people a single number on a scale from "moral" to "immoral," it's probably better to think of people as having virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses.

Some level of racial attachment itself is not inherently evil. Based on his research topics, for example, Roland Fryer seems interested in bringing about the success of people with a similar background to himself. His virtue (his interest in truth) and his strength (his intelligence) convert that attachment into something that's beneficial to society.

High levels of racial attachment fly much closer to the wire. A highly racially attached individual might do good work in other domains, but there's a risk that they'll end up routing too much of their sense of self-worth through their race, and become obsessed with guarding their race's self-perceived reputation. For such a person, any information deemed unflattering to the group may be interpreted as an attack on himself (or herself).

The Mayo Clinic (a network of hospitals in the United States) describes narcissism as:

Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.

A number of users on Twitter (now known as X.com) began using the term "ethnic narcissism" to describe this sort of disordered thinking when done on behalf of a racial or ethnic group rather than oneself specifically.

2019 and 2020 were banner years for platforming this sort of behavior, with the nation's leading newspaper arguing, in its own words, that we should make the suffering of a particular racial group the core narrative of American history, that everyone should define their identities around:

The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Obsession with self-perceived ethnic reputation is part of what leads to the "rebalancing the cartoon" behavior I discussed earlier:

Trying to rebalance this cartoon only leads to greater absurdities, such as the idea that only Europeans ever meaningfully engaged in conquest (contradicted by Genghis Khan), or that industrial technology and its resulting pollution are "European" in nature (China has been quite aggressive about industrializing), or that only "European" countries waged modern and industrialized wars of conquest (the Empire of Japan used guns, bombs, and tanks as part of its project to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).

How does someone end up so ignorant that they don't know that Genghis Khan existed? By being the kind of person that doesn't want to know that Genghis Khan existed. They don't look it up. If you tell them, they either forget or they take a conflict theorist approach and think that it's some sort of trick.

Unfortunately, while a fairly accurate description of the behavior at issue, the term "ethnic narcissism" can also be used as an attack by ethnic narcissists themselves, as well as people engaged in ethnic conflict. This makes it of limited utility in practice.

The Mysterious Anglo

Option #1: In general, the right wing would consider the vulgar anti-racists to be liars working to selfishly advance their own personal interests and those of their preferred groups. Left-wingers would tend to take a negative view of this, as they believe that right-wingers are unjustly dismissive in order to 'protect the unearned and unquestioned advantages of the privileged.'

In this version, vulgar anti-racists won't drop the issue and hit the GDP gym because they're bullies who think the particular groups they dislike are easy targets. The appropriate response is to become a harder target by systematically defunding any institution that supports them, putting them on the same footing as conventional racial supremacists in the US.

I tend to agree that many of the vulgar anti-racists are just being selfish. There is a question of just how consciously aware of it they are, however.

Option #2: A left-wing view would be that the vulgar anti-racists are "good people, just a bit misguided." Right-wingers tend to take a negative view of this, because if a right-winger published a book titled "Black Fragility" that was as circular in its reasoning as the "White Fragility" of Robin DiAngelo appeared to be, he would be hounded as a racist.

In this version, vulgar anti-racists just need patient guidance to put their empathy back on the right track.

I tend to believe that a good chunk of the vulgar anti-racists are just low-tier progressives who get their opinions socially. If the social consensus changes among progressives, they'll forget ever fretting about "microaggressions." Arguing with them individually mostly won't work, though, because it doesn't override their social consensus, and it won't make them think harder about the issues.

Many left-wingers would disagree with me on this assessment.

Option #3: A more centrist view would be that vulgar anti-racists are a mix of people with excessively high racial attachment, enthusiastic people who are underinformed, and people who serve their niche of the information and political economy, and that this isn't that different from the lower quality wings of other left and right political movements (look how bad "degrowth" is, for example), except that race feels much more core to people's identities (it's certainly not easy to change one's race), so it evokes more powerful emotions. A centrist would likely say that there are more academically and philosophically serious opponents of racism out there, but because the things they say are more serious, they're less controversial, so they get less coverage. ("You wouldn't expect a textbook in the Sunday paper.")

A person with this perspective would say that the appropriate course of action is mostly just to wait for it to blow over.

I would disagree. If vulgar anti-racism is taught in schools for a generation, it would create an expectation that racial blame is the default course of action. This would create a situation which is much more favorable for racial conflict, so it should be shut down now to prevent that from happening.

However, I feel that this does not adequately explain the totalitarian bent. What about other values society might have? What about trade-offs? [4] I would like to throw a fourth possibility into the ring.

Option #4: Life inside the vulgar anti-racist worldview is anxiety-inducing and subtly terrifying.

I don't fully endorse this view, because I think that vulgar anti-racism is a coalition of multiple groups (see the previous three options).

However, while I learned from school that racism and ethnic conflict are extremely dangerous in general (e.g. they can boil over and result in mass murder), the susceptibility of vulgar anti-racists to, "It's impossible to be racist to white people," which is very obviously racist, strongly implies that what they learned was, "Jews good; Germans bad" – basically just a list of which groups are acceptable, and which groups aren't. [5]

I reverse-engineered a sophisticated moral worldview, and when I was young, I assumed that everyone else had done so, too. And for a little while, society approximated that view closely enough for that misconception to kind-of work.

I think that a significant number of people in the vulgar anti-racist coalition don't understand white people.

In terms of anxiety, a number of them seem to think that Europeans and their descendants think about race as much as the vulgar anti-racists do – that they are silently passing judgment, or saying nasty things when others are not listening.

I've been around middle-class and above white Americans my entire life. I've seen some kids make stupid racist jokes, and I can imagine bullying targeting race if it looks like an axis of vulnerability, but in general, among themselves, they don't talk about race much at all.

A skeptic reading this may say that that's just anecdotal. However, according to surveys, "white conservatives" have about the same "racial/ethnic" "ingroup favorability" as either "hispanic moderates" or "asians." "White liberals" were the only group on the chart to have a "pro-outgroup bias."

If we interpret these ingroup favorability measures as racism (which is a stretch, because a favorability measure is not itself a discriminatory policy), then white conservatives have a "normal" (as in typical of most groups) amount of racism. White liberals (probably in the sense that the label "liberal" is used for the entire left in the US) are the only ones who loop around into what might be called "anti-racism." (Razib Khan has his doubts about the stability of this arrangement of anti-racism as opposed to non-racism.)

A vulgar anti-racist doesn't know this, and doesn't want to know this.

Now, for the "subtly terrifying" part. If someone accepts, for instance, that the British were sincere in sending warships to intercept slave traders, then there are all sorts of explanations that they can come up with for that behavior, such as it being a natural result of industrialization, or maybe a result of rising literacy, or motivated by Christianity in combination with previous political developments in England, and so on.

From Wikipedia, here's a map of the British Empire, a map of the Spanish Empire, and a map of the Portuguese Empire. While from the perspective of Europeans at the time, the European states were in competition with each other, if taken together as a group, they were closer to achieving true world conquest than anyone else in history. (Sure, the Mongol Empire was huge, but they didn't make it over to the Americas.)

If someone believes that the Europeans turned off the slave trade for some sincere or enduring reason, then the 1700s are unlikely to come back. If someone believes that the Europeans turned off the 1700s for no reason, or for a secret reason, then one day, they could just... turn the 1700s back on.

And maybe that thought isn't entirely conscious. Maybe it just sits quietly, at the back of the mind.

And they get stuck, much like people who are still focused on "overpopulation" as birthrates plummet in industrialized countries throughout the world.

-★-

Whether they consciously intend to or not, vulgar anti-racists leverage social taboos to make it difficult to argue for one group's innocence without making another, generally more vulnerable, group, look worse. People don't want to be mean and say mean things about a vulnerable group. Vulgar anti-racists exploit this. (This kind of behavior is immoral, but I'm not sure how much vulgar anti-racists consciously understand that.)

Online Tactics

I've developed tactics to argue with them in online space, but I haven't tried them out in in-person institutional spaces where they have institutional influence (power).

In general, you cannot argue with vulgar anti-racists grievance-for-grievance. Building up an ammunition depot of racial or ethnic grievances on behalf of "overperforming" groups won't work – vulgar anti-racists will dismiss you as irrationally motivated by racial hatred and dismiss your entire collection, and normal people will also think it's weird (even though they still don't think many racial or ethnic minorities collecting grievances is weird). [6]

A better approach is to pick one or two grievances to shut down the idea that the group you're defending are "invulnerable." Morally, you shouldn't have to point to, say, children or minors being mass victimized, because it should be obvious that people of any race can be victimized. But that's just the world we live in.

Collect examples of institutional policy, such as by governments, corporations, or universities, that is racially discriminatory against the group you're defending, in order to show that the intent of vulgar anti-racists is racial discrimination. Use center-left, mainstream sources to prevent dismissals. The goal is not to show major harms; most Democrats who are not social justice critical will initially attempt to deny that racial discrimination is a goal of vulgar anti-racism.

(If necessary, it can be emphasized that not wanting to be racially discriminated against is a normal thing to want.)

Vulgar anti-racists will try to shut you down by reciting their list of grievances. Memorizing racial grievances is something that they are strong at. Redirect the conversation to where they are weak: demand that they show whatever policy it is that they want will actually improve things and permanently close racial outcome gaps.

If you find someone who has memorized a list of successful academic or nutrition interventions, you've likely found a philosophical liberal. In my experience, almost no vulgar anti-racist has any even modestly-successful intervention memorized. If they propose an intervention, demand evidence that it will work.

It's possible that they could propose something scientific, but science is undergoing a replication crisis, and 'race scholars' have come under fire for scientific misconduct. If a vulgar anti-racist does come up with something, the next step is to get a binding commitment to close the racial claims against their target group.

If their political leaders will not agree, in writing, with binding mechanisms (and punishments with teeth if they don't follow through), to close out the racial claims against their target groups, conditional on some social intervention going into effect, then they don't believe that the intervention will work.

A working intervention is win-win. Outcomes improve, and the odds of conflict (over this particular issue) decrease.

IRL Tactics

X user CantonaCorona must live somewhere very different from me, because I never hear vulgar anti-racism from people in real life. His advice?

100%. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve been in a friendly/polite mutual friend gathering, and someone who knows 10% of the room will add “gawd, white people, gross” etc.

The issue is they are also the person lacking social skills to see the room gets uncomfortable

In 2023ish I started responding by asking them very honest seeming questions and leading them into saying really crazy stuff.

Takes a lot of finesse to not sound like a schizo, but if you can pretend to be genuinely curious it works wonders and someone else will call them out

It does, indeed, take a lot of finesse, even online. Because vulgar anti-racists are exploiting taboos, they have a huge terrain advantage in most encounters due to normal people not wanting to touch reputationally-damaging information. Successfully navigating the situation without sounding "schizo," and without sounding cruel, is difficult.

The advantage of the tactics discussed above are that you don't have to attack the reputation of the vulnerable group that vulgar anti-racists are using to justify their own bad behavior. It isn't surprising that, like a successful hostage rescue, it requires being more careful than the hostage-takers.

"Corrective" racial discrimination that does not permanently close racial outcome gaps is not actually a correction, it's just extra harm for no reason, and the motives of people who support it are suspect.

Demobilization

While the online tactics I've discussed above are reasonably effective for an online debate or argument format (and vulgar anti-racists are increasingly retreating to protected contexts where they don't have to engage in open debate), the long-term goal needs to be demobilization. Ethnic conflict interferes with stability and good government.

There are some supporters that don't recognize the logical errors in their positioning, but they can sense, "Wait, this guy isn't like the others," and flee rather than risk being split off from the social approval of their group.

I propose the fear theory for the potential to develop new angles. If the real motivation is fear, then addressing most of the intermediate arguments won't work, as the intermediate arguments are just products of the fear.

Reportedly, black musician Daryl Davis demobilized many Klansmen just by befriending them. [7] I suspect that most vulgar anti-racists already know a number of white people personally, so that tactic probably won't work here.

I have not conducted field experiments (either online or offline) on using the fear theory during encounters, so I can't provide solid information on its tactical use, yet.

-★★★-

[1] Stylistically, I have chosen to capitalize nationality while not capitalizing racial groups. On a quick reading, the tables provided by Wikipedia don't appear to disaggregate between first-generation immigrants, who have foreign nationality of origin and American citizenship, and second-generation immigrants who only have American nationality. All three CEOs listed were born in India.

[2] The ability to buy off competing talent is one of the reasons for the endurance of capitalism. Capitalist systems tend to be extremely productive. They can offer wages from increased productivity that are higher than the wages that other systems offer from rents.

[3] This is one of the reasons I got into writing about politics. It became common to find people whose professed opinions implied they'd never even heard of Genghis Khan, and at that point, I figured the bar was set pretty low.

[4] Positions on migration appear related, but I'll touch on that in another essay.

[5] One reason it wasn't obvious that people were just making an acceptable targets list at the time was that quite a few people from all over the world have a tendency to get wacky about Jewish people specifically, so putting antisemitism off-limits looked like it was backed by more sophisticated reasoning than it actually was. Obviously, people shouldn't hate Jewish people. The problem with the acceptable targets list approach is that it's fragile – since the list is based on social approval rather than deeper philosophical principles, it can end up being "readjusted" later.

[6] I also suspect that continuing to constantly expose yourself to the worst behavior of other groups may be corrosive. Watching a video where a man is shot on some other street, in some other city, may give you a jolt of adrenaline while you sit helplessly in your chair. Reading about atrocities may make you feel helpless and doomed.

[7] This behavior is morally praiseworthy, not morally obligatory.

[bulbabutt]

so im white, lets just get that out of the way, but i wanna talk about the orientalism in windblades design.

this doesnt feel like my place to talk about but if no one brings it up then no ones gonna learn about it or second guess it. im tired of other white people not noticing this problem or thinking its fine. if anyone asian (specifically japanese) has any thoughts or personal input it is SUPER fucking welcome! its hard to find people talking about this.

so transformers has a women problem in general. they set up women in the 80s in one episode and never elaborated on it in that show. they added arcee in the movie. they put a couple in the beast wars era, but outside of blackarachnia (becoming a literal succubus) we dont really get any of those characters adapted (besides arcee) over iterations. never any new ones really.

then the comics get windblade. i havent read the comics, this isnt about anything that happens in them. this is about her design how she comes off as as shes been adapted into cartoons. i wont comment on events from the comics outside of her origin, as i know fuck all about it.

so she was supposedly a fan-voted character, but her 'fan-voted' aspects have nothing to do with the problem (in fact the fan-vote was more of a suggestion because a few things dont end up being true) the voted aspects are as follows:

autobot. jet. fights with swords. red & black. named windblade. female. valiant. telepath. from Kaon.

so here's what that ends up looking like.

so they took some liberties. there was other concepts where she was a european knight etc, but this is where they landed. she has this extremely feminine figure, complete with makeup and sculpted hair. many people immediately mistake this look for a geisha (though supposedly being kabuki) she gets little pump heels, it makes her very human woman shaped. birthing hips and all. thats classic girl robot stuff. its the specifics of it that are an issue.

so thats kind of a lot of japanese motifs. the makeup, the swords, the hair... why does it look like human hair? thats a very specific hairstyle on a character who doesnt have hair...

on its own, having a japanese inspired aesthetic isnt the problem. i mean, coding characters to be from different places is fine. having characters coded as a specific race could be fine. jazz already exists, and despite being taken by racist creators sometimes (cough michael bay cough) its not inherently bad that he is black coded, specifically when in the hands of black creators/voices. thats key.

so having a transformer who landed in japan and took on some culture from there. you could see that happening. that could work if in the hands of people who were japanese.

but thats not even her backstory. shes not even from Kaon (as was voted), instead she's from another planet entirely, a more spiritual one, which narratively makes her alienated from cybertronians. this alienation adds to the problem. "shes not from here." "shes not like us."

you'll see many people look at this design and think "is that geisha transformer?" and as the character isnt from japan and knows nothing about the culture that inspired her, the media itself never corrects anyone. no one in the text goes "no shes not a geisha shes actually based on a kabuki performer", no one says any words about it, its just how she looks, its just aesthetics without explanation or cultural background. shes not literally japanese, she just looks it. its easy to mistake without cultural context from a western perspective, so calling her a geisha becomes a rampant problem. general audiences arent looking at forum posts form 2014 where someone correctly explains what the motifs are. shes made by white people, and white people are largely the ones consuming the media. its unfortunate, and could have been avoided if the culture shes inspired by was relevant to her character.

so she's clearly heavily inspired by japanese aesthetics, which codes her as being an asian woman in this media but written by non japanese people. and then she becomes so popular that she has to start making appearances in shows.

she shows up in robots in disguise first. lets compare her to strongarm (the only other girl in the show)

having this japanese woman be far more thin and feminized than the other girl characters is the problem. strongarm is literally the first non feminized main girl transformer (not counting strika) she is much more in line with the men around her, square and broadshouldered, shes the largest car of the bunch. that was an upgrade finally. and then we get windblade. she has ruby red lipstick, human hair, heels, jewellery. on its own? thats fine. but keep in mind, shes heavily japanese coded already. then shes immediately seen as a romantic conquest for sideswipe (though he never gets anywhere, he literally claims ownership) it leans into tropes of sexualizing asian women because she stands apart from strongarm. shes the flirt, shes the very feminine one. is this on purpose? its not their fault windblade looks like that in the comics and strongarm looks like this. but side by side what is it saying? did they intend to say this about their asian woman? no, probably not intentionally. its kind of unconscious bias that tends to happen when you dont have a diverse writers room. no one notices until it hits the audience.

but lets just jump in here with the other weird problem in RID, because shes not the only one who jumped from the comics.

drift (who while being a samurai in the comics (literal?) doesnt.... LITERALLY wear a suit of samurai armour) shows up. with his two minicons who act as his children (who hes very strict with). theres a heavy overuse of the word honour. he owes a life debt, hes very humourless etc... they also never explain why he wears this armour. he came straight from space. he doesnt even turn into anything big that warrants it, hes just another sports car. bumblebee and sideswipe are sports cars too. but why is drift a sports car? tokyo drifting. drift. you get it.

so drift also is a comics original character. he, however, looks nothing like that

i will assume that drift looks different for one reason....

i mean. i shouldnt have to tell you why that was bad, right? you guys get why michael bay movies are bad? (if you genuinely dont please enjoy this series as a starter) ill just assume you do. knowing that that drift is bad, can we also say windblade is suffering from a similar problem?

this show brings in these FOUR new characters and heres how they look side by side.

so. okay the minicons are raised by drift, they share his aesthetic, okay. we dont know where he got that aesthetic but yeah they share it. windblade.... its unclear in this show if she shares the being from another planet like idw part. shes on a mission from god to be here and thats all we know. but the point is they have no similar origin. yet they all look like they could be from the same place. that they shares a (japanese inspired/coded/stereotyped take your pick) culture. meanwhile our from ep1 mains look like this:

so that feels. specific.

its not inherently bad to code robots as japanese, however its a problem when it seems to be for aesthetics alone. its stereotyping. they look nothing like the rest of the cast, everything like each other, and are from completely different backgrounds. they literally have the same colour palette? theyre not even like that in the comics.

sidenote, if you add sideswipe (who's alt mode has kanji on it and an asian voice actor so we can assume some coding there too) they look like this. yes they all have swords.... no one else does!

yes, windblade is the only character with a white face. makeup. yes sideswipe claims ownership over her to fight off one of the minicons. its not wrong to show windblade being harassed by a man, but it is wrong that no one ever says "leave her alone" you know? like thats just whats to be expected of her. it sucks. but at least her voice actress was asian! that wont happen again.

so. moving on to cyberverse, she becomes a central character. character wise? shes great. she gets to do a lot, no one sexually harasses her here, we're free of that era.

comparing her to the other autobot women, shes more in line now. if thats a good or bad thing overall is less the point (ie theres no autobots built like strongarm was, they are all just as thin and curvy as windblade is) but to me its still very apparent that shes still implying human hair. even with how simplified all these designs are.

like you can see how these red lines around her eyes get lost at a distance, same with the clips in her 'hair'. its clearly just trying to adapt her original design and im not saying thats a wrong choice they made, but i am saying its really busy in comparison

maybe thats a nitpick. but here it seems much more pronounced just how specific her head piece is because we can compare her to chromia, who is from the same place. do these two characters look like they have the same culture? not really. chromia and arcee look more alike. maybe thats just because they were designed later, but its unfortunate none the less.

even comparing her head to the seekers, what she is kind of supposed to be, they get the same old starscream mold. maybe she'd look better if they just did that? or something similar? like, give her a helmet. no one has hair. please stop implying hair. we all know what youre doing.

none of this is me saying i find these shows bad or that i hate windblade, i genuinely love her! and i love both these shows! it just feels hard to love her because of how she was designed. its not a problem with having a japanese coded character, its how stereotyped the look is. how othered it is. it leans into racist tropes. its orientalism, using japanese aesthetics to make her look interesting and different. you can tell she was made by white people.

how is it that despite being around for 10 years now, no ones tried to redesign her?

also look at the toys! look at the god damn toys!

she can take that head piece out to have a FAN. why does she need a fan?? shes got fucking WIND JETS ON HER BACK! its very obvious why they did this. shes a japanese woman, she can fight with a fan to complete the aesthetic! despite her character never having even been there! and no other transformer using a fan weapon! shes so COOL AND DIFFERENT like that isnt she?? holy fucking shit

to go back to those original voted concepts for a second? if we went back to the drawing board?

a telepathic valiant female autobot who can fly, has a red/blue/black colour combo (with yellow accents) uses swords, and maybe even with canonical asian heritage....

could they even do that? is it possible?

...

OH! wait it SUPER IS! who'd have thought!?

im NOT saying "we dont need windblade! we have a better girl with the same concept!" cuz thats stupid. do not misunderstand, theres room for WAYYYY MORE TF GIRLS! the literal 1:13 ratio is FUCKED! i know windblade had to fight to exist too and that sucks!

i just think it's CLEARLY possible to do this better, and it SHOULD be entirely possible to have windblade (who was LITERALLY holding court as the MAIN girl transformer for years) to be, i dont know, not so racistly designed? i think its entirely possible to fix, i just wish they would have tried already.

and this is just what my white ass has thought about since meeting her and not seeing anyone else bring it up. like going hunting for a real take about it just meets you with the rampant misogyny problem in fan spaces. its hard to find people talking about it in a normal way, but if they have before id love to know.

i just wanted to put my thoughts about it down, maybe get people to think about it more or talk about it more. cuz jeez, i would really like them to fix the problem. like they fixed the arcee problem in idw, right? can they fix windblade next?

[800milesisadrive]

Meet Cute

Author's Note: This is my first attempt at playing around with AI co-authoring, with maybe 75% either being my own work or a heavy rewrite of the suggestions. It's a very crude and ugly little bit smut, but felt good enough to share it. Any stories I do share in the future that use AI for more than editing and brainstorming will be noted as such!

Sarah was so deeply focused on her homework, she didn't notice the man sitting across from her until he started talking.

"You know, girls as cute as you shouldn't need to study so hard," his voice cracked as he wheezed out the words.

Sarah could feel her whole body tense up. This guy had been bugging her all week, pestering her with inane chatter about anime and hentai. She just wanted to be left alone. She looked up at him, glaring at the overweight and unbathed lump sitting at seat on the other side of the table. Her almond eyes narrowing into slits, barely able to keep herself from screaming at him.

"I suggest you focus on your own life, buddy," she snapped back, her tone sharper than a knife.

The weeb recoiled slightly, but only for a pause. After a moment of stuttering, he seemed to regain his undeserved confidence. With a slightly unhinged smile, he launched into another speech about some obscure anime series.

"Like in Duko-Duko Magica?" he continued, completely ignoring Sarah's protest. "The One-Chan; doesn't have to worry about school, her master just puts a replica of her in class so no one suspects she's off having adventures!"

His tone was that of a father trying to explain a storybook to a toddler. This man wasn't talking to Sarah, but down to her. Even without his hunched posture, Sarah suspected she'd still be taller than this dork.

Was he wearing the same, sweat-stained anime t-shirt from yesterday, when he first tried to corner her in the library? Sarah was nearly sure of it, but wouldn't put it past this loser to have multiple outfits that were plastered with girls making faces with their tongues out...

"It's an 'Ahegao' pattern," the man said leaning forward. Sarah had unexpectedly zoned out, staring at him. " Though you know that already, being Japanese! It's actually the 'Mind-Break Ahegao' edition," he continued pointing at his chest. "Limited drop!"

Sarah felt lightheaded and frustrated. She couldn't believe how persistent and presumptive this guy was. While her family was from Japan, she'd never been herself and had never watched anime.

"Listen, I don't want to talk about this anymore," Sarah finally said, her voice trembling with impatience. "Can you just leave me alone?"

The man's face contorted into a mask of disbelief. "But we're having such a fun conversation!" he whined.

Sarah was done with this loser and his racist shit. She started to collect her things, packing them up to escape this annoying prick.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she noticed the man shifting in his chair, looking around nervously. His nerves coming back.

"It's not supposed to take this long..." he muttered to himself. "'Instant changes' is what the site said..."

Sarah paused, confused and oddly concerned by his change in demeanor. She hated this guy from the moment she set eyes on him, yet now she felt some irrational empathy.

He seemed like a pathetic loner, desperate for human connection that he would cling onto anything within reach. That desperation reminded her of her own loneliness, amplified by being a minority in an overwhelmingly white campus.

As he mumbled under his breath, she found herself glancing at his shirt again. The lewd drawings were unsettling, especially since they appeared to be moving - pulsing faintly with each heartbeat. Suddenly, a wave of vertigo washed over her. She struggled to sit upright, feeling dizzy and disoriented. Was it the late hour? Or perhaps something in the air?

Maybe it was too close to the radiator and there was something wrong with the heating system, because she suddenly felt incredibly warm and light-headed. Her hands, which moments ago held tightly onto her books, loosened their grip. She stared blankly at the book covers sprawled before her on the table. In that hazy state, she realized that they depicted scenes from Japanese folklore, images that once alien to her were now strangely familiar. It was like she remembered childhood memories of hearing these stories told by her grandmother during bedtime.

Sarah closed her eyes with surprise at the vivid imagery she saw in her mind.

"Hey, are you ok?" The man leaned toward her, concern etched into his previously obnoxious expression. "Maybe you should get some rest."

"No, I'm fine," Sarah assured him, opening her eyes wide. "Just tired, I guess."

The man nodded sympathetically. "You've been working too hard. Exchange students have it the toughest."

"I'm not..." Sarah began to protest and stopped herself. She wasn't an exchange student, was she?

Sarah thought to herself, her grip tightening around her textbooks. But then why do I feel this strange sense of familiarity? She wondered if she had simply forgotten her heritage due to spending her entire life in America. Maybe her mother spoke tales of Japanese myths during her childhood, stories that somehow lodged themselves deep enough inside her brain to surface now.

"Are you sure you're doing alright?" He asked, peering at her intently. Sarah was taken aback by her sudden attraction to his soft brown eyes. They were full of genuine concern, a stark contrast to his previous arrogant attitude.

For a brief moment, Sarah considered sharing her confusion with him. Yet, she hesitated, fearing that he might exploit her vulnerability. Instead, she simply replied, "Yeah, I'm good. Just need to take a break." She stood up abruptly, hoping to end the conversation. However, as she did, a sharp pain coursed through her legs, causing her to stumble. Mark caught her quickly, his firm grip steadying her. Sarah blinked, surprised by his unexpected gentleness.

"Maybe you should sit down. You look exhausted," he suggested softly.

Sarah looked up at him. Just a few moments ago she'd assumed he was about her height but now he towered over her, looking almost manly in spite of his flabby shape.

Something was happening to her. Sarah didn't fully understand it, but if felt like gravity itself had shifted. The whole world seemed a bit taller, and this man's touch felt like a life preserver she needed to cling to.

"This is... This is all wrong." Sarah breathed out, trying to keep from fainting.

A hungry smirk crawled over the man's face, once that filled Sarah with strong revulsion. She yanked herself back.

"What... what are you doing to me?" she stumbled, catching herself on the table. Sarah felt a strange sensation in her head, this was beyond exhaustion. Sarah managed to ask, her voice trembling.

Mark maintained a deceptively calm composure, though beneath his outwardly collected exterior, he felt ecstatic. He had finally found someone who understood his passion for anime and accepted him.

"Nothing much," Mark responded nonchalantly. "Just trying to help you relax, that's all." "Relax?" Sarah scoffed incredulously.

" Relax? What kind of sick game are you playing with me?"

His face fell, his eyes widening innocently. "Sick game? No way, Sarah. You know me, I'm Mark. We bonded over our love for anime..."

"Oh yeah?" Sarah retorted sarcastically. "And what makes you think I'd enjoy something so... so ridiculous?"

Mark faltered for a moment, looking hurt. "Well, you seem pretty stressed out..." Mark trailed off quietly, swallowing the last of his words.

Anger boiled up inside Sarah, threatening to overwhelm her resolve. "Stressed?" she spat, unable to contain her fury. "How dare you insinuate that you can read my mind? That you can even begin to comprehend my feelings?"

Her voice shook with anger, and she took a step backward, away from him. Mark's gaze followed her every movement, his eyes flickering between sadness and determination.

"I-I'm serious..." she couldn't focus on his face. As much as she wanted to scream, looking at him seemed to diffuse the anger. She didn't want to hurt him, she wanted him to be happy. It was her place to make him happy... "You're just becoming more _you_" he comforted her, and Sarah couldn't help but nod in agreement. This tall, sweet man was just trying to help a confused exchange student. How could she ever have been so rude to him?

Sarah felt ashamed and guilty, wishing she could turn back time and apologize. Instead, she stood frozen on the spot, her heart pounding against her chest. "Mark, please forgive me," she whispered, her voice cracking in despair. "I didn't mean to lash out at you. I'm just scared and confused right now..."

Mark gazed at her with tender compassion, silently acknowledging her apology. "Don't worry about it, Sarah," he reassured her gently. "I understand that you're going through a lot right now..." Mark spoke in a soothing voice, reaching out to lightly touch

Sarah's arm. Sarah felt a shockwave of pleasure ripple through her body. "But I promise you, everything will be okay. We'll find a way to make things better."

Sarah swallowed hard, her throat parched and dry. "I just don't... I don't feel like myself anymore," she confessed, her voice breaking. "I feel like I'm losing control. My thoughts are jumbled, and I can't remember..." Sarah said weakly, feeling increasingly vulnerable.

"You're just remembering who you truly are, deep down," Mark murmured, his fingers tracing gentle patterns on her arm. "You're not just a diligent student, Sari-chan."

Sarah tried to resist, but his gentle touch felt too inviting. "What are you talking about?" she whispered hoarsely. "I'm Sarah. I-I don't know you at all. You're doing something to me. You drugged me or something..."

Sarah winced thinking of what he said. "Sari-chan", the nickname feeling alien and foreign on her tongue. Still, she couldn't deny the strange sense of comfort it brought her. It made her want to lean closer to Mark, basking in his warmth and safety.

"Let's just sit here for a moment, shall we?" Mark coaxed, leading Sarah to sit with him on the cold stone floor. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, offering her a comforting embrace.

"Mark-san." Sarah said, her voice seeming oddly light and girly. "What did you do to me?"

Mark's arm wrapped around her, slyly cupping her breast as he comforted her.

"You're just remembering who you truly are, deep down," he murmured, his fingers tracing gentle patterns on her arm.

Sarah gasped, her body jolting involuntarily. "What are you doing?" she cried out, instinctively attempting to push his hand away.

"Shh, Sari-chan," Mark hushed her, tightening his grasp around her waist. "There's nothing to be afraid of." Mark whispered into Sarah's ear, his hot breath sending goosebumps down her spine. "I'm only trying to help you. To bring back your true self."

"My true self?" Sarah repeated, feeling a strange mixture of apprehension and excitement welling up inside her. "Who am I really, Mark?"

With a soft chuckle, Mark pulled Sarah closer, pressing her body against his. "You're Sari-Chan. You're the beautiful Japanese girl who's too in love with me to ever say anything." Mark said, his voice sounding confident and dominant.

Sarah felt a surge of arousal course through her veins. The idea of being a submissive Asian woman enthralled her. She'd spent years suppressing her true desires—the longing for a powerful, protective man to guide her every move. Now, it was like the floodgates had opened, uncovering buried fantasies she'd never allowed herself to explore.

"Why...? Why you want girl like Sari-chan?" Sarah asked, her voice quivering uncontrollably. "Mark-san is big and handsome American..."

Sarah's own brain betrayed her, her memories of home being replaced with fuzzy memories of cherry blossoms and Japanese villages. Images that weren't hers but now seemed to be part of her deepest self swam in her mind.

"Sari-chan, you're ready to show yourself to everyone, aren't you?" Mark whispered seductively, his hot breath tickling Sarah's neck.

"Oh yes, Mark-san," Sarah whimpered, feeling an odd sense of liberation. "I'm ready to be yours forever."

Mark smiled triumphantly, stroking Sarah's silky hair. "That's my girl," he murmured approvingly.

"I knew you could do it. I could see it in your eyes."

[teecupangel]

So I watched the trailer of Assassin's Creed Shadows and I thought I'd give my preliminary thoughts

History-wise

Okay... so Yasuke was Oda Nobunaga's vassal from 1581 to 1582. Historically, he was captured by Akechi's forces after Mitsuhide betrayed Nobunaga which led to Nobunaga's death. Instead of killing him, Mitsuhide ordered he be shipped to the Christians (whether he did it to save Yasuke's life or because he was being racist is still unsure) where he was treated and they sailed out of Japan later on.

Naoe being an Iga shinobi... I have nothing XD Nobunaga did destroy the shinobi clans in Iga (that was a whole 'nother thing) and her last name, Fujibayashi, was one of the ruling families of Iga province. Other than that... uuuhhh... the kanji of her name 名緒絵 sorta gives the impression of an honorable, kind and talented person. 名 is usually seen in words that translate to 'name' or 'distinguished', the first thing I thought of when I saw 緒 was 'beginning' but it can also mean 'strap' or 'cord' and 絵 is a kanji that appears in words that is connected to art and painting.

Possible Storyline

Oda Nobunaga is not a Templar. He was, for a time, an ally of the Brotherhood until he got his hands on a Sword of Eden and everything went downhill from there. So I see 2 possible storylines:

This is set before Oda Nobunaga's death in Honnouji and Yasuke has a redemption arc with Naoe guiding him to the ways of the Brotherhood. They probably act independently from Akechi's forces and the end game is to take away the Sword of Eden from Nobunaga. Yamauchi Taka (who kills Nobunaga in AC canon) would appear as a support character of some capacity. (He might even be Naoe's mentor)

This is set after Oda Nobunaga's death and Yasuke is on a path of vengeance against those who conspired against Oda. He and Naoe would have a more hostile relationship first before it developed into Yasuke finally letting go of his need for vengeance and becoming a blade to save the weak from this endless bloodshed.

Regardless, we'll probably see Hattori Hanzo since he's part of the Japanese Brotherhood.

Plot 1 would end in Honnouji and the retrieval of the Sword of Eden... or the Sword of Eden apparently gets into Akechi's hands and we get to have plot 1 AND 2 where the sword becomes 'pass the baton' kind of deal (this will fight with the current AC canon though)

Plot 2 could end anywhere from Akechi's death during the Battle of Yamazaki OR we get as far as the Battle of Sekigahara which is always fun (I mean... not fun because so many people died there but fun in a video game-y kind of way).

Plot 2 is more broad which could lead to 'too many characters, not enough limelight' while Plot 1 is more centered and could serve to make the character development shine.

(If this Oda Nobunaga gets a laser sword as well, at least we can say Isu bullshit on that one XD)

Gameplay

As far as I know, Assassin's Creed Shadows will follow the open world rpg setup of the Layla trilogy. Considering how Mirage made use of Valhalla's engine, that might be Naoe's gameplay as well. I would suggest to wait for an actual gameplay as Ubisoft sometimes make fancy 'moves' in cinematic trailers that you can't actually do in-game.

I also want to know how they would handle the two main characters setup. Considering we see them together in the trailer, this might be a case of "same missions but who you pick decide how you approach it" kind of deal instead of AC Syndicate's "Jacob and Evie do their own thing most of the time". Same missions also means there's a good chance of wanting to replay it as a different character for a different experience and also... it means they'd be reusing the same assets during development XD

teecup Rambles

Okay, here we go.

I really want to see Assassin's Creed version of Nobunaga Oichi because she's my favorite character in these kinds of stories. She's usually portrayed as the kind beautiful younger sister of Oda Nobunaga that he once said could have been a fine warrior if she had been born a man. Also, her daughters would later marry (or become a concubine) to prominent historical figures. Her relationship with Nobunaga after the death of her first husband is also vague so she can support Yasuke regardless if he's trying to avenge Nobunaga's death or if he betrayed him.

Other than that, I think the final battle being Sekigahara would be epic. Just waves and waves of enemies to fight as Yasuke while Naoe stealth her way to the big battlefield to assassinate their actual target. Although, historically, it would make sense for the story to end with Nobunaga's death or Akechi's death since that's around the last time we hear of Yasuke.

... then again, he would just return after being shipped off and that starts the main game too.

Yeah, that's about it. I really just wanted to talk about Ichi but I couldn't add it elsewhere.

Oh and Yasuke is in Samurai Warriors 5 if you want to have an idea of how Ubisoft can handle him... also in Nobunaga's Ambition. It would be awesome if his Isu armor's helmet would look something like Nagoriyuki's (who is inspired by the historical figure Yasuke) from Guilty Gear as a reference to a reference but I highly doubt it.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

https://www.tumblr.com/burst-of-iridescent/740787422094376960/i-love-how-aangs-fans-want-so-badly-to-defend-and

Your thoughts?

Let's go through it by parts

"Aang is a monk, he shouldn't date/get married/have kids"

Aang is the LAST airbender. The LAST air-nomad. Even if he had made some vow of celibacy/not having kids/not getting married (which was never confirmed or even hinted at by the show), he made it under the assumption that this would affect solely his life, not result in the death of his entire culture once he passed away.

Much like he was given a pass to kill Ozai, he would also be given a pass to break his celibacy vow - which the show never says he made in the first place.

"The Air-nomads are not one to one with Tibetan monks, it makes no sense to get hung up on the pacism"

They are not one-to-one, much the other nations. But the Water Tribes are still indigenous people living in the poles, the Earth Kingdom is known for a great wall and there's a "made in Earth Kingdom joke", the Fire Nation has sun imagery everywhere, and air nomads are even meant to visually resemble tibetan monks.

More importantly, the show made sure to highlight that, to the nomads, pacifism IS a big part of their culture and belief system, and that Aang feels very conflicted over wanting to save the world but not liking the way he's expected to just disregard everything he was taught his whole life.

Comparing "Aang is a (tibetan) monk, therefore he is a pacifist so killing would be against his beliefs" to "Aang is a (tibetan) monk, therefore he shouldn't be dating" is absurd because, yes, Avatar did choose what parts of tibetan culture would be carried over to the story, and only ONE of these made the cut.

When people complay about "People are disgarding the fact that Aang was raised to be a pacifist when they expect him to just be cool with killing Ozai" they are not saying that because "Well, a tibetan monk wouldn't do that", they are saying it because CANONICALLY, Aang's air-nomad culture would be against it.

"Being critical of the air-nomad culture is not the same as disrespecting Tibet's culture"

This one is only truth depending on the circumstance.

Obviously being critical of something the air-nomads do, but the tibetan monks don't, is not racist against real people, nor is it racist in the first place if the criticism isn't fully based on "That's not how MY culture does things, therefore it's bad."

Being critical of something both air-nomads and real life tibetan monks do is automatically being critical of both, though obviously there's a difference between "I don't agree with this belief" and "I hate this entire group of people" (for exemple, saying "I hate the Fire Nation's imperialism because of all the suffering it caused, which was clearly inspired by Japan's imperialistic past that was also attrocious" is very different from saying "I hate japanese people").

Being "critical" of something both air-nomads and real life tibetan monks do because you're going out of your way to misrespresent their beliefs, and you talk about the air-nomads the way people who are prejudiced against Tibetan culture talk about them (which a lot of people in this fandom do without even realizing) IS very fucking racist against a real life group of people.

Again, to make the distinction clear, there's a difference between "I dislike this character who happens to be black" or even "I dislike this black character because the writers were racist, intentionally or accidentally, and thus made him an objectively poorly written character that I don't like seeing on screen" and "I hate this character because he is (insert racist belief against black people here)."

So yeah, A LOT of the hate towards Aang, especifically regarding his pacifism, comes from people being genuinely racist, and pointing that out is not absurd just because "Well, he technically isn't a Tibetan monk. He just looks like one, has plenty of the beliefs and traditions of one, the narrative largely treats him as one, and the audience is clearly excected to see him as such."

[teaspoon-of-salt]

imo part of contemporary racist attitudes (from any side of the political spectrum tbh) towards east asia are a lineage from older orientalist beliefs that easia (particularly china and japan) is ancient and unchanging. orientalists of the 19th century saw our countries as places that were stuck in time, decaying through inertia and opposition to "progress" (which, of course, would be brought to them by opening themselves to the west).

modern-day east asia... enthusiasts [polite smile] i'd argue cultivate a descendent of that thought. those who don't assume easia is just like their home country instead treat easia like it's insular from history and the rest of the world, as though our countries have not been historically imperialised and are not bombarded (like the rest of the world) with western viewpoints and american mass media. as though we don't go through societal change through our own efforts and of our own accord.

but no - east asia is a holdout against the tide of modernity. culture is not the background and context against which we move, but traits of each individual's character. an unruly child isn't just upset because his parents aren't buying him candy, he is rebelling against confucianism, and his parents disciplining him is bringing him back in line with confucian teachings. we are defined by rules, philosophy, and tradition—the more ancient these things are, the more intriguing for our onlookers.

better yet, to be untouched by modernity is to be untouched by its discourses. you know, "japanese people don't care about political correctness, they just write what they want" and "actual japanese women don't mind being sexually harassed" and "japan is homogenous so you can't possibly expect them to be sensitive towards other races." japan is presented as static and unchanging—people don't care because this is how things always were, and this is how things will be forever. it's their tradition. it's their culture.

meanwhile china's rapid societal modernization post wwii is largely regarded in every aspect to have been brutal and barbaric. whether change yields positive or negative results it's viewed negatively, as though it doesn't matter how many years pass or how many steps are taken, chinese people are still backwards and regressive, always socially lagging behind the west. because that is apparently our culture.

and yes this comes from all sides of the political spectrum. the right-wing fanbase which idealizes the unchanging nature of japan, a "progressive" fanbase that assumes japanese people are so tied to tradition and an imagined culture that everything goes back to rigidity and long-established practices, often justifying harmful things in the name of respecting japanese culture. nothing and no one in china can't be explained by saving face and confucianism, which is at all times oppressive, evil, and a source of mystical guidance for chinese people.

being considerate and acknowledging that you might not immediately understand every cultural nuance is good, acknowledging that not every story needs to be personally relatable is good, acknowledging that people are influenced by cultures different from your own is good. but at some point it becomes ignoring the fact that asians are humans who are influenced by our culture in addition to personal experiences, feelings, traumas, ambitions, politics. like just think about how everyone around you interacts with culture and to what degree that informs their actual personality and deepest desires and assume that asians are the same as you in that respect please.

being an asian among easia "enthusiasts" is like there's always this interminable search for authenticity, for what is "traditional," for the "real" japan untarnished by these modern western ideas of feminism, and meanwhile many societal advancements for china are just... ignored (don't you know regressive china is so homophobic that disney can't even portray gay affection?). everyone wants to pull us back through time and explain us through adherence to culture and tradition, as though the modern day and just... simple human experiences don't matter or contribute to our lives. we just gotta be explained by something else, something that makes us other from the west.

[princeasimdiya12]

Bucchigiri Finale Thoughts

So I watched Episode 12 earlier today and had some time to think things over. And unfortunately, I realized that I didn't like this episode very much. Granted there are a good amount of moments that I did enjoy and contributed well to the main themes of the series. But there were too many moments that I felt undercut my enjoyment of the show. So fair warning, a lot of what I have to say is fairly critical and kinda negative. If you agree or disagree with anything I've said here, feel free to reblog this with your own comments. And if you're not into negativity, feel free to ignore this.

But I will start by mentioning the things I did like.

Just like everyone and their gyoza-making mothers, I loved the final fight scenes. The choreography was well executed and I thought the animation was top notch, both when it came to Senya vs Ichiya and Arajin vs Matakara. I really liked how in depth they went with the fighting sequences and the dark colors fit really well with the tone of the drama of the scene. The emotional range between the fighters felt incredible; the actors truly gave it their all when going about their fights.

And the part with Arajin mustering the power to save Matakara was beautifully done. I was in awe when Arajin brought up how Matakara became the very monster he tried desperately to destroy which really got a crack on his defenses. The sequence of Arajin reaching out to Matakara's inner child to help him out of his despair was gorgeous. Especially since Ara-chan used the Friendship Stone both to help the inner child and later when telling his old friend that he's not alone anymore. That was really great and genuine character growth, especially since Arajin accepted that he was in the wrong for leaving him all the time.

And as I mentioned in an earlier post, I did love the first scene with Arajin meeting Matakara for the first time. But as a twist, it was Arajin who was inspired by Matakara's dedication to being a Honki Person and volunteered himself to train alongside his new friend. That was a great twist and it adds new depths to how Arajin was actually inspiried by his old friend and not the other way around like we believed for so long.

So those were the parts that I genuinely enjoyed. Now for the parts I didn't really like..

On one hand, while it is nice that Zabu wasn't brutally beaten to subconsciousness, I do kiinda wish that he did have to be hospitalized. It just feels so off-putting how he's relatively okay despite being brutally mauled by Matakara only a few hours ago. Especially since Marito and Kenichirou wound up in the hospital after losing to Matakara. Plus I feel like it undercuts the drama and severity of the situation by having Zabu be fine enough to look for Matakara. It doesn't help that he and Komao don't really do much apart from running around trying to find their friend.

Also, I hope I'm not the only one but did anyone else feel uncomfortable with this scene?

I understand that Mahoro did it in a desperate bid to bring her brother back but the way she described Kenichirou here was just... gross.

Not insane, not weird, not quirky, not even ridiculous.

It was just gross for me to see her dehumanize one of the few dark skinned characters on the show. Even if he's not black/black coded, it still rubs me the wrong way that she would say those things so casually. Especially since Japan can be really casual when it comes to making racist/offensive remarks to brown skinned people in it's media. Plus there are tons of other ways she could have referred to him without calling him a gorilla. Like meathead, blockhead, oaf, ogre. Any other insult could have worked and been more acceptable than the ape insult. And it's unfortunately consistent since she did call him a gorilla during the Gang War Arc.

And then there's this part...

I don't know if it was Mahoro's doing or if that's what the original nurses did, but it was just uncalled for. Both for the unspoken racism and for how it doesn't even apply to Kenichirou's character. Out of the three banchos, he's always been the least violent and was always shown to be tranquil and easy to work with, unlike Marito and Akutaro who were more unhinged, wild and violent in comparison. There shouldn't be any reason for him to behave so violently that the staff would resort to shackling him like an animal. Especially given how defeated he looked when Matakara beat him in a fight.

Another reason why I dislike this scene is because the characters involved (Mahoro, Marito, Kenichirou) do nothing to contribute to the final duel between Arajin and Matakara. None of these characters actually show up until the end when Matakara apologizes to everyone. You could have made it so that during the apology scenes, the two gang leaders could have shown up while covered in bandages or crutches. There really isn't a need to show us Marito waking up since we could get that later on in the end with Matakara apologizing to Siguma Squad.

The same can be argued for Zabu, Komao, Outa, Jabashiri and Hagure. Even though they spend most of their time hunting down Matakara and Arajin, they don't exactly contribute to the final duel or offer any words to the main heroes. They just show up and the duo resolve their problem like nothing.

Regarding Ichiya's secret of him dying, while it's not the worst reason for him to be so insistent on fighting Senya, I do wish there was more build up or at least some hints to it. It just feels like a random reason for why Ichiya developed his grudge against Senya. It's not the worst reason and it does make sense for why he wanted to die like a Honki Person instead of to a random illness, it just leaves a bad taste to how it happened to him out of randomness.

And wow, Arajin is never going to overcome the internet hating him for being a perverted simp mc.

In a way, it makes some sense since Arajin's character arc was never about respecting women or learning that there's other ways to be a man apart from stealing a girl's virginity. That was never the focus as the story wanted him to confront his mistake of abandoning his old friend and not running away from his problems. That said, this still won't look good for him since fans are going to be turned off of Bucchigiri because of his perversions and how the show doesn't encourage him to change.

And as I've come to realize, the show itself doesn't seem to mind with the characters not growing out of their negative vices. A critique I have is that the show doesn't go out of it's way to challenge the beliefs of these characters or push them to grow into better people. Arajin is perfectly okay with being rude to everyone while pursuing a girl just so he can lose his virginity to her, Mahoro continues to lust over her older brother and has no interest in anything else, Marito is still a bloodthirsty bad boy who lives and breathes fighting, Kenichirou doesn't mind repeating high school as long as he gets to run Minato Kai, even Yayako prefers to act like a bubbly airhead rather then act like a responsible and respectful adult. And even with Matakara's corruption arc, he doesn't really recognize how harmful his idolization of Arajin was since the focus was more on his loneliness and trauma of being alone. Maybe because I'm spoiled by Mob Psycho 100, but it saddens me to see how these characters don't grow into better people or make an effort to change themselves. Especially since there can be potential for all of them.

And while I'm glad that Arajin and Matakara were able to become friends again, it feels like a letdown that there's no build up to it. It just rushes straight to them becoming friends again without acknowledging their negative attributes. Th same with puppy boy getting everyone to just accept him with no repercussions or consequences. It feels like letdown as there were no serious consequences for his actions. Like he could just go on a despair-induced rampage again and they'll just keep accepting him. On paper it's rather wholesome, but it does feel contrived if everything just works out without problems or how Matakara doesn't need to work hard to earn their forgiveness. That would have been for a greater character moment and to show Matakara taking responsibility for his actions. But we never see Matakara doing that and him being accepted by the gang feels rather hollow. It's technically nice that he has his friends back and that SS won't have his heart on a stick, but it feels hollow.

Speaking of taking non-responsibilities and being accepted by the gangs, Akutaro is now back with the NG Boys and they're accepting of him?

I really do wish we could have had a scene that explains how the heck he was able to win back his old gang despite them professing that they weren't going to let him beat them around like before. It just feels offputting that Akutaro is back in charge and has their respect with zero explanation or even any build up to it. He spent all his time trying out different jobs and activities but nothing to suggest that he wants to go back to his old club again.

Not to mention that this is still bad news for Minato Kai since Akutaro still has his hatred for Kenichirou and still longs to destroy him. And given how he also hasn't grown out of his negative vices, it's more than likely he'll come up with a new plan to destroy them albeit a different approach. Though the other gangs will be aware of him trying to wreak havoc on them again, I sincerely doubt that that'll stop Akutaro from having his revenge. And with the NG Boys and Girls behind his back, he definitely has a shot at it.

Then there's the resolution with the Nyan Nyaight Love segment. While it was endearing with the Receptionist wanting to help out the Customer, I'm just trying to wrap around the logic behind the Receptionist accepting him again.

It doesn't make sense to me how he'd be accepting of the guy who abducted one of your prized cats, lose her, and then just welcome him back with another cat. It's setting up a cycle for the Customer to fall in love with a new cat only for him to become obsessed with her and then try to steal the cat out of "love". And while the show focuses on him learning to lose his shame of visiting NNL, it doesn't try to challenge his dependency on cats for company along with his hostile jealousy.

Is the Receptionist aware of this potential problem and how it can happen again to another cat? Is the manager of NNL willing to accept the Customer again along with the risk of jeopardizing his business? I can't imagine how difficult it must be to promote a cat only to lose it because of a depressed nutjob.

Also, to the anon who was grossed out by Arajin's mom, I'd like to give a complete apology to you for refuting your claims. Because this...

This was not necessary.

I mean, it is interesting to know that Marito shows attraction to girls/women which gives more depth to his character. And while it is weird for him to hit on an older women, it's still technically okay since it is normal for teens/youth to show attraction to adults that catch their interest.

But what isn't okay is Yayako's reaction to his attention.

Again, she is a grown woman getting over excited because a teenage boy is trying to hit on her. And she's okay with this? Like ma'am, not only is that concerning because of the blatant age differences but you're also a married woman (according to the additional info). How are you so lenient with being hit on by a guy who could pass for your son? Like really? I used to think of Yayako as a quirky, wholesome woman who needed to not let her son treat her like trash. But now I'm seriously questioning her values and how she treats everything in her life like a soap opera.

In regards to Mitsukuni being in a coma and waking up, it was... okay. Like I'm happy that Matakara will get his big brother back and they'll be able to move into an apartment like they wanted to. But I feel that the reveal of him being in a coma undercut alot of the emotional turmoil Matakara went through. I don't know, it just feels rather hollow knowing that Mitsukuni was always there and was going to make it out alive while his little brother was running around like a war machine. It's conflicting in all honesty.

But what isn't conflicting was how much I really didn't care much for Senya returning in the last shot. I wasn't moved by Senya showing up in the last scene or how Arajin secretly missed him. Maybe it's because of how Arajin constantly yelled at him or acted like he didn't care. And while he does care in his own way, I just felt disinterested in the reunion and I had no strong emotions of Senya returning. It doesn't help that the part with Senya and Ichiya "leaving" didn't really have alot of emotional depth to make the reunion more impactful. Senya not coming back would not have me upset.

And those would be my thoughts on the final episode. For those who stuck around to read all of this, I thank you for doing so. And to those that stuck around, I apologize for the excessive negativity. And like I mentioned above, you're more than welcome to reblog this with your thoughts and whether you agreed, disagreed or have something to say regarding my post.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this along with my other posts for this ridiculous show. Your feedback means alot to me and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Nana na na, Nana na na, Nana na na na na...

[mesetacadre]

ok big geography question what is in your opinion the proper split of the americas by continent

Okay I'm going to be using this map as a reference so people who don't have a very clear mental image of the geography can follow along. Thanks to Bigstock for sponsoring this tumblr post

I think to properly answer this question you have to first figure out what you want the continent classification to be for. I talked about this in the old blog but continents are a really inconsistent thing with no actual rigurous definition that can be stretched or changed depending on your goals. Personally, I don't think it's useful because of this nebulousness and that at the root of some of these problems is the fact that maybe not every piece of land above the ocean should be classified into a continent. For the sake of this ask I'm going to pretend that I don't believe this and play along.

In my opinion, if it had to all be classified, I'd just make it all a single continent, named America, and make any other divisions just regions of the continent. Basically every other continent is also divided internally like this: South East Asia, East Africa, Central Europe, Southwest Asia / Middle East (colonizer name but I'm including it for the sake of example), North Africa. These are just some examples of popular divisions of continents that can have their utility. Nobody asks that eastern Europe be its own continent, despite the differences with the west, or that North Africa be separated from the rest of Africa. Why should the Americas be different? (it's so canadians and usamericans don't feel icky being grouped in with the Poors to the south, but don't tell them that. Why else would some people include Mexico in Central or even South America?). We already have the same kind of division with the same naming convention as in other continents.

As to defining the subdivisions of America, I think an interesting place to start is Greenland. Geographically it's closer to something which we can all agree could be classified as part of the Americas, that being Canada. It's part of the north American plate, but historically it has more ties with European colonizers. So Greenland is I think a good example of why we have to keep our intentions clear with classifying the continents. A purely geographical criteria is much more straightforward but maybe less useful when talking about broad groups of people. However, a definition that's more rooted in "cultural" and historical similarities can easily turn into Huntington's clash of civilizations theory, see his division below

I find it very funny how he places Japan into its own civilization while at the same time he groups vast regions into one. It's also extremely racist. Moving on.

Personally I'd put Greenland in America not just because of geographical criteria but also because the indigenous people of Greenland have closer ties to those of the Canadian islands, Labrador and such.

I do not think Central America should be its own continent, even if we're making North and South America their own continents, but it is interesting as a region within America. I'll get to it last.

I find myself agreeing with the Panama Isthmus / Darién gap / Panama-Colombia border as the northern border of South America, simply because there is no better place to put it. I guess the part of the Andes that cuts Colombia in half could be an option, but it feels wrong to make any part of Colombia not South America. Again, continents are not a coherent classification so it often does just come down to feel. You could argue the Guatemala-Belize-Mexico border is another option, which it can be, but there isn't a good geographical feature to divide it. With the Panama region, you get a really clear divide because of the sudden change in width, and it roughly aligns with the plates as well.

But what is there here?

There is no major river and the mountain ranges all go in a different direction to the intended division. Look at the northern part of the border, it's literally just a straight line going through jungle that's identical on both sides. This is not the place to divide a continent in half, I'm sorry. I guess the Caribbean plate does roughly meet the north american plate here, but to me the plates can just be a reinforcing argument, not a deciding factor. Using only country borders to decide the continents is very sloppy IMO, especially if those country borders were decided by defining straight lines between rivers and latitudes.

So that's where I think the North-South America border should lie, somewhere in the Darién gap between Panama and Colombia. I wouldn't use the Panama Canal because that's manmade. By the same metric we don't consider canals rivers, I wouldn't consider canals a worthy feature to divide things at.

About the Caribbean, most maps place the north/south divide at the last island chain in the lesser Antilles and make everything else North America, but to me it makes a bit more sense to place the border between the greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Bahamas, Haiti, Dominican republic, and Puerto Rico) and the lesser Antilles (the chain of smaller islands that go from Puerto Rico to Venezuela). Again, the ambiguity of continents forces for some decisions to be vibe based. And to me, putting Trinidad and Tobago and Granada in North America is wrong. The difference in size between the two Antilles and the presence of a US Colony Territory makes a good enough justification even if it's iffy.

This is why a Central America in the context of a single American continent is better than making it its own continent or a region of either a South or North American continent. I am a bit more orthodox in what I'd consider to be Central America, the entire Caribbean island chain/cluster plus the traditional central american countries. This time I'm kinder to a border on the southern border of Mexico, because it's not as significant a limit as The North-South divide, and Central America ending in Guatemala has a historical precedent in the form of the short lived Federal Republic of Central America. Cuba feels much more comfortable in the same category as, say, Honduras but different from like. Miami. It also does alleviate the where-does-the-Antilles-fit issue.

So yeah, that's my answer, if you force me to put everything into a continent. If it were up to me there would be three continents, America, Afro-Eurasia and Antarctica, leave every island out of it and permanently kill the continent as a category.

As a side note, while looking for a map of the Americas, I found this godawful one and I had to share

The shading, the apparent Alaskan independence from a US-Canada union, Mexico stretches to Panama. I think this would be a good candidate for EmperorTigerstar's (now defunct) youtube series on bad maps

[chiisana-sukima]

follow up to the question you just answered (tho I'm a different anon), when did you first get into fandom? what was it like back in the day?

I read what I would now consider my first fic when I was thirteen. It was split into two traditionally published Star Trek novels, but they were whumptastic, barely sanitized Spirk (no sex, but omg the "Ill die for you, give up everything for you, endure horrible torture, etc" vibes were off the charts). And while I can't say they awakened something in me per se--because I had already read a bunch of other raunchy queer scifi by other authors--they were certainly my first taste of transformative works, and I've been in fandom on and off since I became old enough to drive to cons a few years later.

Why is that romulan chick there when this is sanitized gay porn? No idea, its been years since I read these.

I went to Star Trek cons when I was in my twenties and still know some of the con runners from that time. There were, to put it bluntly, a lot of raves and a lot of sex lol. It was a more open time period in some ways, or at least it was open enough my whole friend group basically all banged.

Otoh though, there wasn't nearly as much language to think and talk about identity. I think The Youth TM have really stepped up around issues of gender and sexuality in ways that are net huge positives, including for older queers who can now identify ourselves in ways that may always have been central to us, but which we didnt have language to express (I still call myself bi and queer but can now also say I'm nonbinary/genderqueer and aro--both of which I have been for as long as I can remember but only have words to discuss now). We banged a lot back then (which was great! no regrets!) but didn't know ourselves very well.

I didn't become what I'd call active in fandom on a regular basis though until the 1990s. I was a manga translator in the late nineties/early 2000s and ran a small scanlation team. There wasn't as much Discourse about what kinds of content are acceptable then as there is now, but Discourse springs eternal, so there were a bunch of other kinds of wank instead. My team was international, and we ended up splitting over a weird mix of factors that included one of the members being incredibly racist due to childhood trauma during the Yugoslav wars, my own anxiety over customs opening all my packages from Japan, and an attempt by a traditional publishing company to co-opt all the scanlators as contractors for shit wages and no benefits.

I took a long break and then came back into fandom on the fic reading/writing side in 2015, and I love it here a lot. AO3 is the best thing since sliced bread. Even though I worry about purity wank and the panopticon and how that's all affecting people growing up now, I think overall fandom is a better place for the togetherness that the internet has bred. It's much more accessible now compared to when I was young, and it's easier to find your own little tribe of weirdos who match your freak pretty exactly.

[alpaca-clouds]

DnD's World Problem - It's a bit of a waste

Okay, let me talk about the main world of DnD: Toril. And about the thing that it mostly gets reduced to Faerûn - which is in fact a continent - and specifically the Sword Coast, so the western coast of Faerûn.

And that is exactly what I want to talk about: There is an entire world there - but DnD has barely done anything with it in 4th edition and nothing with it in 5th edition. And I absolutely understand why, but I also think that ignoring these parts of the world is not the best way to go about it.

A World filled with Clichés

Now, anyone who knows a bit about the worldbuilding of DnD, will be able to tell you that this worldbuilding is not exactly creatives in the regard of the different continents. We basically have the following:

Faerûn = Fantasy-Europe

Anchorome = Fantasy-North America

Maztika = Fantasy-Meso America

Katashaka = Fantasy-Africa

Zakhara = Fantasy-Arabia

Kara-Tur = Fantasy-Asia (let's face it: Mostly Fantasy-China and Fantasy-Japan)

Osse = Fantasy-Australia

Faerûn has a lot more worldbuilding to it than any of the other continents. More than that: Faerûn is the one continent that is not based mostly on (racist) clichés of some non-white culture. Duh. Because Faerûn is obviously the European part of the world, and the mostly white people constructing this world were able to imagine a "European world" with a lot more details than they were able to imagine any non-white fantasy world.

And let's make this pretty darn clear: These other continents are not only fairly loose in terms of worldbuilding - a lot of it really is just "this is Fantasy-China, so just... uhm, imagine China but as fantasy!!!" Anchorome and Osse are probably the parts of the world that are most underdeveloped, with nearly no information available that goes past "Oh, this is pre-columbian North America with tribes living on the land" and "Yeah, Australia, uhm, yeah, that's it!"

And yes, this is very much "these parts of the world as imagined by white people in the 90s", as the 80s and 90s were the time when most of this was being created. And yes, that means all the problematic stuff that you imagine now about it... Yeah, that's true.

Let me tell you...

Racist Stereotypes

Okay, fellow white person. When I say "Africa", what do you imagine? I will take a guess: Savana, animals like lions and elephants, people living in mud huts and dressing in like, animal pelts or something. The typical racist "Africa is a country" thing that we saw in a lot of media and still see today, even though recently it has gotten a bit better with some own voices getting to create this media.

Meanwhile Kara-Tur is basically the boiled down version of the China and Japan popularized in Western Kung Fu movies - with maybe a bit of the Jackie Chan stuff thrown into it. It is really just the kind of western stuff, that if you grew up with Marvel comics for example you can find there, too.

Like, Katashaka is basically that Africa that some of the older Black Panther stuff displayed. And Kara-Tur is the kind of Asia that once upon a time Dr. Strange travelled to - and that the Mandarin came from. Like, it really is that bad.

Which probably is why they have not used any of these settings outside of Faerûn since 2000 with very few exceptions. Because by now people actually interacting with this, would rightfully call them out for the racism in it.

So, basically what they are doing right now is, to just act as if those settings do not exist. But... I actually do think that is in a way a bad thing for several reasons.

First and foremost it is obviously a bit iffy that the world got now reduced onto only the "European" part of the world. And sure, Faerûn is supposed to be quite diverse ethnically diverse, but that does not change the fact that it is "medieval Europe, with some Rennaissance stuff thrown in" for the most part.

Because it basically also implies that any non-white cultures are... unimportant for the world.

WotC, take a page out of Marvel's book

Okay, so, what should WotC/Hasbro do, if they actually cared about the franchise (which they clearly do not do, but that's beside the point)?

Well, simple: Do, what Marvel at some point did.

There is a reason I took the Marvel stuff as a reference above, because Marvel at some point realized that what they had done in the way they depicted basically anything that was not mainstream western culture was not okay. So... They hired people from the respective cultures to write about these non-western cultures, do the art and so on.

With all the criticism I have on the MCU, this did show there as well. With Black Panther being the most obvious example of course. A movie that went ahead to actually honor and even celebrate different African cultures.

And... well, DnD could do the same thing. It could not only help to actually worldbuild the entire world of Toril some more, but it also would create super interesting campaign settings for it as well.

Because I could absolutely imagine some interesting campaigns that could take place within an Africa-inspired setting, or some Indigenous-American-inspired setting. That could be very, very fun to play in, if the cultures were created by people from the real-world equivalent of those cultures.

And yes, this brings us back to the issue of: "For fuck's sake, let's just do a bit more with the lore?! Please!"

*sighs* Of course I know that this will probably not happen under Hasbro, because Hasbro mostly thinks about how to implement micro transactions into DnD... Yeah...

[cerberus253]

okay, what if it was for the eight demon sorcerers meet other cultures and discover that humans can actually have a varienty of skin color, and also the cases of people with albinism or vitilige! And honestly, i feel like some of them could be surprised or curious, especially with the fact that also heterochromia exists too! And it would be cool they discovering how some of the countries are noawadays! Such as brazil, america, mexico, china, russia, and also england! It could be pretty cool, especially at they reaction to afro people aswell!^^

Well, according to mine and another Questioner's research, the Eight Demon Sorcerers must have existed at least before 220 BC (last Dynasty of Ancient China). With that being said, even during the first recorded Dynasty of China (the "Semi-Legendary" Xia Dynasty) at around 2070 BC, humans were all over the world. Not as plentiful like today, but still present on almost every continent.

("Overview map of the world at the end of the 2nd millennium BC," Wikipedia)

Now, according to the cartoon, these were the locations of their kingdoms: - Tso Lan- The Moon - Shendu- China - Po Kong- Japan - Bai Tza- Southeastern coast of Europe (Atlantis, the Mediterranean Sea) - Dai Gui- Western coast of Europe (Spain?) - Tchang Zu- Western coast of the USA - Hsi Wu- Eastern coast of the USA - Xiao Fung- Latin America

This means they had the closest interactions with people in America (USA and Mexico area), southern Europe, and Far East Asia when they were on the Earth. However, we don't know how long their ruling was, so we cannot say if they took part in the Silk Road or even made contact with those who have migrated to South America (from the Bering Strait or form the Pacific) or even Australia. I have been looking into Lo Pei's apparel for a couple hours now and I cannot find anything matching his "Ling Dynasty" outfit, which is, in fact, not an actual Dynasty. Therefore, the Demon banishment date is still a mystery.

Anyway, seeing as how they are extremely racist and believe humans are here to serve them, I think they would be curious on their variety of skin color, but not in the way you probably want. For example, they probably noticed people with darker colored skin can work under the Sun more than those with lighter skin, therefore, depending on the Demons and their domain, they would probably prefer one skin tone over the other for labor. Although, as seen with Hsi Wu and Shendu, some Demons may keep humans for entertainment purposes that do not require practicality, meaning they may go with what looks the best for the job. Every human is a slave to them, no matter what they look like.

If you want my honest thoughts about the Demons' thoughts on albinism and vitiligo, it's not going to be nice. Don't get me wrong, I personally do not think there's anything wrong with either skin, but to the Demons it would most likely be laughed at. Being so drained of color even the light hurts you? That's pathetic. Being patchy like a filthy farm animal? That's funny.

Don't even get me started on Po Kong and her eating habits. She probably wants to taste every single human of all cultures/ethnicity and skin colors to see if they taste different, which tastes the best, and what they go good with. She could easily wipe out an entire group of people if not careful.

Anyway, how they would react to the modern day. Well, we already saw some of it during Season 2 when they were released one by one. They seem pretty chill about it, nothing too over-reactive like, "Wow! Humans did this?! That's unbelievable!" If anything, they would say, "Huh, impressive. Anyway, this is mine now and I want 20 more." This comes off to me as the Demons know humans are great at making and building things, even believing they can make extravagant buildings on their own, but they don't care. Demons just want them to use this power for their own wants. Heck, they probably expect humans to always make great things, so the stuff that we have today probably won't phase them that much, just, "Hey, why didn't you make this for us way back when?!"

If anything, the Demons might be so impressed/inspired by what humans have made that they want their entire kingdom to look like it and then claim it as their own idea. Like, 'yeah, humans have made these widely unique structures/details, but it was I who designed this kingdom! What they did was a waste of ability!'

Remember, EVERYTHING human-wise goes back to the Demons and how they are better and humans are just things to control and make serve. Humans are only tools/pets for the masters to use and none should not put a single human over demon-kind. They are, like I said, straight up racist towards humans, and a lot of people forget that crucial detail when making fan stuff about them.

I think the only Demon out of the Eight that could possibly make a genuine, "Great job!" comment to a human would be Xiao Fung. He seems to be the most down-to-earth one and is actually seen to get along with humans. However, like I said, I'm pretty sure he still views himself higher than them, but I think Xiao Fung is more low-key "appreciative" if you do the right thing for him.

[longjiaojiao]

yeah when China and Russia vote for Palestinian rights they are like "don't actually care about human rights they just want to fuck America" and when any other country vote for Palestinian rights it's like "thank you so much you are amazing you are the best" TBH I find it funny how naive people are that you really think there is ANY government in the world that care about individual human rights... The secret is thinking and learning is actually important dude, when you really learn about history, when you look at the world from a historical perspective, when you leave behind all your contemporary morals and capitalist worldview, you find that it's all about money, yes there is no such thing as human rights for the government, there is only money. Under capitalist I mean America, political power are only an adjunct to economic power. In fact one of the greatest advantages of being a Chinese is to see the world from a perspective that is completely unconstrained by Western values. You will see that the spread of Christianity is what forced the Jews to wander in Europe. In fact after the dissolution of Rome it was the Arabs who peacefully shared the land with the wandering Jews in Europe.

There is only one country's people in the world that is protected from being discrimination due to the loss of national honor, and that is America, because obviously when the Anglo-Saxon first arrived on this land it became a nation of immigrants. I don't know what moral superiority makes some people think that "fuck Israel" and "fuck Russia" is going to do any good, this sound only makes innocent Israelis and innocent Russians suffer from more racism, and by the way makes racists more racist, more extreme and more stupid, thus the new Nazis appear, endless loop! People will only hate each other more and more if you keep saying fuck something.

People just didn't fuck the right one. The arms dealers and rich persons are the ultimate winners. Jews are not bad, but the people who make the most money in America happen to be Jews. Sometimes the religion you hold dear is just an identity in the hands of others, a tool to get more resources.

The reason why Japan government is not apologizing for their actions in WWII is that their economy is not blocked by the world after all these shit. Germany was shunned by the whole Europe and could not make money without some apology. Don't think of politics as morality, or even expect it to be humane.

I have no morality myself actually, no one will force me agree on anything I haven't learn and think about, I only have what everyone else has: the lessons of history. The protection of minors that you attach great importance to came after the animal protection, and the concept of minors was formed because of the popularity of typewriters and printing presses. The concept of minors is so new and fragile that I think that now the Internet and video have replaced typewriters and printing presses, maybe the age of minors needs to be changed. So you see morality is inherently vague, which means being careful when enforcing it too, not to be deceived by anger and hate.

Everyone go watch Princess Mononoke ten times.

在西方待久了实在受不了客体化的东方世界和低语境的伪善了…喜欢中国也不是喜欢中国的政府，而是喜欢中国的文化和历史。中国和美国这两个词就是两个极端，一个偏向文化代指，一个偏向政权代指。但非要说的话，墓志铭也得是『中国饭很好吃，死而无憾了』。

[imustbenuts]

How do you handle how low key racist toward Japan a lot of fandom is in favor of shoving only American cultural viewpoints into things? I'm so tired...

hm.... a loaded question. short answer for how i handle this:

I don't.

i just. don't. i don't even try to process what i know for sure is a bad take at all, and i make it a point to curate my online spaces as much as possible.

(or at least, i do on very very rare occasions if i feel arsed enough to hop on my keyboard to smashing out a more educated post about it based on my own understanding. more on this in a bit.)

if i go into a fandom tag and i see rampant nonsense, such as during the 1st two months of fire emblem engage's release or some incredible pumpkin spice latte takes, and i feel like it's just too much bc im getting angry, i just disengage. i might read if i feel like it, but if its too hostile i don't add to the conversation. i leave. i don't pass go bc i have waaaay better things to do than potentially engage in a conversation im already not happy to have.

in some occasions i even block. if i feel like someone is being a dipshit in the posts i make with their tags even, i block.

and i suspect im not the only one. how often do you see asians who reside outside of the west actively partake in fandom discussions? its such a drain of energy when it goes bad. most asians are working faaaaar longer hours than the average westerner in the average office setting. i mean, fuck, man. if i want to have fun, im not coming to a place i know i wont be having much. (ofc we are all having it bad. the point is: limited energy is a big factor for why going against the general set consensus is a bad idea)

i've been dealing with this for the past 10 years. minimum. it has always been like this. it has ever always been like this everywhere.

soooome fandoms are chiller than others for sure. but i dont actively participate in fandoms bc: im tired and my attention hops all over the place.

im ALSO gonna drag proship antis DNI into this ramble bc i believe strongly this culture is an evolution of the old 'your fave is problematic' culture mixed with puritanism culture and i hate it. i hate it bc it gets applied to everywhere, even in a japanese/asian culture space where people in fandoms are generally more "you stay in your lane i stay in mine, we're all freaks, just dont break any laws or be terrible". understand that east asian society in general is collective compared to western's more individualistic one, which reinforces that lane thinking. so all these high moral showing-off is just a big pissing contest to me.

in fact its such a pissing contest i actively refuse to follow people who have DNIs in their profiles. id have more respect for those who can say 'i dont like xyz, its not my cup of tea'. its a normal response, i think.

and im done ranting about my personal feelings :v. some practical advice from my dumb of ass:

a person knows what they know

a person doesnt know what they dont know (ignorance)

a person cannot be taught what they dont want to know (willful ignorance)

a willfully ignorant person is not anyone's job to directly fix. only they can check themselves.

hostility begets more hostility. anger is an addictive emotion. block and move on if someone is consistently being annoying/a pos online, its not worth the mental bandwidth

a person wants to know what they know they don't know (curiosity)

if theres something educational worth sharing that can be communicated in a digestible way, it is sometimes worth it. people like reading, but more importantly, communicating. be that with the OP or their own group.

and also, im not immune to any of the behaviors i dont like above myself. there are also limits in what i know. :v hypocritical of me lmao

[sissa-arrows]

Hi your post about Garrido reminds me about a Cambodian ""friend"" that one day dare to say to me that non SWANA people (like europeans and some asians) deserve more their place in France because they're not "cassos" unlike SWANA people and he really thinks Muslim only dream about shariah and cannot get along with democracy. And he doesn't think himself as a racist because he's poc, his parents were immigrants, and he has NA and black friends....

I was so horrified and disgusted and wanted to punch his face so badly. Like those kind of people love using their friends and background as a "I cannot be racist you're the one who being racist actually" shield

Fuck him, fuck Garrido and fuck everyone who think like them and vote right/far right

Anti Asian racism in France is a thing but because it’s different than anti SWANA and anti Black racism it’s unfortunately not super rare for east and south east Asians to be hella racists against us. The French also encourage that with the whole “Asians are good immigrants they work hard unlike Black and Arab people”. There’s also very little of them compared to North Africans and Black people so they are not the main targets and some of them feel like when they are targets they are “collateral damages because Arabs give a bad name to people of color in the country” (between quotation marks because I’m quoting a Laotian coworker… we were talking about an old Asian man who had been killed by the police in front of his children and she said it wasn’t the police fault but Arab’s fault for making the police think PoC are violents)

The history is also different. The majority of the 200000 Asians in France are from Laos, Cambodge and Vietnam which formed the “Indochina” colony, the rest are mostly Chinese and a bit from South Korea and Japan. Even those who are from the former “Indochina” are not here because France is still destabilizing their home countries and looting the land. Because of that Asians in France have a different relationship with France. They are more likely to see France as the country who welcomed them and don’t really care about them being Asians. While we are more likely to see France as the country who forced our parents/grandparents into exile and is still destabilizing our continent making it harder for us to leave but will forever consider us as second class citizens. (For the record Vietnamese people who represents the majority of the former indochina in France tends to be on our side rather than on the side of white supremacists. I think it’s because of the shared history between Algeria and Vietnam)

That being said the amount of people who think that being a PoC yourself or having friends of different races means you cannot be racist is crazy. Like Tanguy David and Zemmour exist? One of them is Black the other is a North African Jew and they are both disgusting in their racism.

Anyway tomorrow is going to be a rough day. Political campaigns are illegal since yesterday night so I’m not going to say for whom you should vote but there’s one and only one vote that will keep the country from breaking and falling into full fascism.