#like its really not that big a deal

[eroticcannibal]

Idk why im reading slang discourse on esl subreddits but as a native English speaker, it is perfectly acceptable to use informal English in "official" communication (work, education) if whoever is higher up does it. In English culture specifically, *not* mirroring informality can be seen as quite arrogant and standoff-ish, which is worse than appearing a bit unproffesional. This is more true the more north/rural you go.

This might not apply in London, because Londoners arent people. Or in America, because america is weird.

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

This is not something I usually talk about, but I feel like in the character writing landscape some people mistake traumatic experiences and elements in a character’s backstory for actual character depth. What I mean is, if you only tell me that a character’s parents died and they suffered at the hands of an abusive authority and their ex stabbed them in the stomach, well, that’s cool, but how does all that reflect on their character? How did all of those experiences and the rest of their numerous life experiences shape them, make them who they are? What sorts of relationships do they have, what do they fear, aspire to be like, love and hate (other than exes stabbing them in the stomach)?? Those are questions that are not answered with what happened in the past. Similarly you could make a character that literally had nothing bad happen to them ever in their whole life and I think you could “still” make them very interesting and extremely fleshed out and feel as real as you want to. There are several ways to make people care about characters!

[just-null]

what’s your favorite clone and why? 😼

I gotta be that guy and say I really like them all. i loVE EACH ARCHETYPE THEY KINDA RESEMBLE

Sekido [in my head] has a mean exterior SO loud it makes you forget he's working with the others to actively protect the main body and has faith in their abilities. He gets annoyed at his younger counterparts cause he knows they're not using their full potential... I also really like how he's both very proper and improper, like a thug in a meeting or something... so cool.... Also, him taking the leader role and everyone going with it has big bro vibes.. oldest bro vibes.

cult leader loves tsundere guys.

Karaku [in my head] is the thrill seeker type who's more than willing to be the most annoying man around for the sake of his entertainment and living in the moment. He plays around rather than disposing of someone immediately like a fucking psychopath. Even if late, he knows when to get serious and when to tone down his antics. he still gets fucked over by playing with his opponents too much.. I like that he's not stupid, he's reckless. mega "cool big bro" aura.

cult leader loves shameless guys.

Urogi [in my head] is obnoxious and loud, boastful even especially when he's either screeching or talking, never entirely silent. While he does fight on his own, he'd drop everything if given an order and try his best to comply. also a troublemaker... like a younger bro who never really has responsibilities but does them when told so he can go back to doing wtv he was doing before. Like he's just there to have a good time. He's also not stupid, just excitable, then he gets cocky, then gets his shit rocked.

cult leader loves arrogant himbo guys.

Aizetsu [in my mind] is extremely sassy and gives passive aggressive vibes and prefers to deal with conflict swiftly because it's bothersome and makes him upset. He might look cute and weak, but he's scary. While he's sensitive, he's no pushover and will also cut pretty deep. He's definitely the younger brother who's trying to constantly get out of trouble by seeming like the angel.... It's also interesting because he never sugarcoats his words. He twists them in a way that makes him sound helpful and you, pitiful.

cult leader loves cute manipulative guys.

Zohakuten [in my mind] is a little hater who's most protective of everyone but, more importantly, the main body. He sees himself as a decent guy going against injustice for a man who's just trying to survive. Like a little bro who's stubbornly wrong about something he doesn't fully grasp. Also he's just so hilarious?? it was not necessary at all to insult your opponents looks then tell tanjiro to get over it cause the dead weren't relevant to him. How can someone so disrespectful come in a small package..

cult leader loves the brat trope.

Urami is pretty similar to hantengu, imo, just angrier 😔😔 not many opinions, but I do find it amusing to imagine he's very passionate 24/7

[gunsatthaphan]

#attaboy.

[jones-friend]

[stromblessed]

Mizu's spectacles, and the levels of her disguise

In drafting some more Blue Eye Samurai meta posts, I find myself writing out the comparisons between what Mizu can and cannot hide about herself, and how that affects how she moves through the world.

Like, I get the jokes about Mizu's glasses, if only color contacts had existed back then, etc. etc., and I think (hope) that most viewers don't take the glasses jokes seriously, as in "I don't care about the suspension of disbelief because BES is a cartoon." But I wanted to write these thoughts out anyway without burying them in a text post about something else.

I think the points I'm going to lay out here are viewed very differently by different people, so please feel free to add to this post, reply, or put your thoughts in the tags!

Not only do Mizu's glasses not actually help her that much, there's surely more to Mizu's mixed race appearance than just the color of her eyes.

In my view, this was pointed out in episode 1:

I'm willing to bet most of us were expecting young Taigen to say "blue eyes," not "ROUND eyes."

Obviously this is still about Mizu's eyes, but not even spectacles can hide their shape.

I don't think the show is obligated to point out everything about Mizu's face that isn't quite as Japanese as the people around her expect. Though the creators have said that they specifically designed Mizu - and her clothes - to read both as "white" and as "Japanese," as well as both male and female. I think there's more about Mizu's features that read as "white" than just her eyes.

This is where my own headcanons start entering the picture, but it's my impression that people can just tell that Mizu looks different, whether or not they can put a finger on exactly how.

There's the little girl who looks at Mizu and then hides on the way into Kyoto:

When there's more to your face you'd like to cover up than just your eyes, big hats are a big help!

By the way, most of these examples have to come from the first half of the season, since by the second half, either Mizu is too preoccupied with fighting henchmen, or everyone Mizu is facing knows who she is already, and she therefore has no reason to hide her mixed race identity.

It's worth mentioning that the mere fact that Mizu has to hide multiple aspects of her identity - her mixed race and her sex - results in her having to choose clothes that really, really cover her up, which doesn't win her any favors either:

(Zatoichi reference, anyone?)

If it were as easy as, for example, tying her glasses to her head and wa-lah, nobody would ever know she was half-white - then (1) Mizu would've just done that long ago, and (2) Mizu wouldn't be so on guard and on tenterhooks 100% of the time the way she's depicted in the show, even when her glasses are on.

Her spectacles sure don't help her in the brothel, which is full of observant women who are trying to seduce her, meaning they get good long looks at her:

Mizu never takes her glasses off, but they still send a woman to her who has light eyes, thinking that must be what will interest a blue-eyed man:

No wonder Mizu gets mad after this, lol

So Mizu never takes her spectacles off in the brothel, it's dimly lit inside, and the women can still tell that she has blue eyes. I'm getting the sense that Mizu putting on her spectacles isn't a guarantee that people suddenly can't tell that she looks different.

And yet no one spots that she's female.

Mizu can hide her breasts, can wear her hair in the right style, can hide what's between her legs, can walk and talk and behave like a man - and she's been doing it for almost her entire life, to the point that not only is she very good at it, but the threat of being found out as female is deadly, but isn't presented in the show as omnipresent.

Let me explain.

She threatens Ringo for nearly saying the word "girl" out loud, because while she's constantly ostracized for being mixed race, being a woman traveling without a chaperone, carrying a sword, and disguised as a man will get her killed or flogged or arrested or some combination of these things.

But in addition, it's been drilled into her since she was a child that if she is discovered as female, the combination of her being mixed race and female will identify her as someone extremely specific, someone known to some bad people, and she will be killed:

I think of it as Mizu thinking to herself, "Being found out as mixed race means I'm treated badly. Being found out as mixed race and a woman means I'm dead."

Mizu's hair is cut as a child. But she isn't made to wear a big hat, or cover her eyes somehow, or anything like that. Because hiding her sex is a more successful endeavor than hiding her race.

Ringo finds out she's female by accident, but once Mizu accepts the fact that he won't rat her out, she relaxes pretty early on in the season. Because the threat of being found out as female is mitigated pretty much 99.9%, since Mizu has gotten so good at being a man. And also, because most of the time, people see what they want to see. Even if Mizu's face makes her stand out as "not 100% Japanese," no one in the world of BES looks at Mizu's clothes, her bearing, her sword, hears her voice, and will ever in a million years conclude that she is a woman, because expectations around gender roles in the Edo period were so rigid and so widely enforced.

One detail that proved this to me is after the Four Fangs fight:

Ringo takes off Mizu's clothes so he can stitch her up, then leaves her clothes off even after he's done. He doesn't even throw her cloak over her as a blanket or anything. There's a little a straw (pallet?) as a divider there on the left, but anyone could just peek around it and see Mizu and her chest bindings. (I think it's mostly there as a windbreaker.)

And Taigen is right there, but he doesn't give a shit:

Opinions probably vary hugely on this, but my impression is that because the show doesn't make any kind of deal about Taigen being in the room with Mizu here, my guess is that Mizu isn't in any danger of Taigen thinking she's female. Even when I watched the show for the first time, I assumed that Taigen had seen Mizu out of her clothes here, and that he thought nothing of it.

Eat your heart out, Li Shang (Mulan 1998). I actually do think that this scene is a direct and purposeful side-eye to that movie, lol

There's obviously some nuance to how "severe" being mixed race is compared to how "severe" being a woman is for Mizu:

After all, Swordfather can't bear to listen to Mizu confess to being a woman.

So a Japanese man can go wherever he wants, whenever he wants in BES. A Japanese woman has limited options: marriage, religion, or a brothel. A mixed-race man is an eyesore in this story. A mixed-race woman is a death sentence.

May as well eliminate the female aspect, and do what you can about the mixed-race aspect. Because that's just realistic.

Meaning Mizu can avoid the strictures Edo society places on women. But she can't avoid the repercussions that come with being mixed race. And I truly don't think that it's just because "there's no brown contacts yet."

[hellspawnmotel]

I finished wild arms yesterday! what a great game

[casualavocados]

What happened to you? [...] None of your business.

KISEKI: DEAR TO ME Ep. 10

[marblerose-rue]

braixen

(request)

[chainsawworld]

I started thinking about girlbriel

[blamemma]

there’s so many things that daniel paved the way for in this sport that he does not get credited or appreciated for and it’s just interesting to me.....fun helmets....the reveal videos....youtube vlogs....bright and fun and different merchandise...the reserve driver role being something big and something needing fanfare...he truly is the blueprint.

[untamedsinning]

face sitting is so hot but 90% of the content for it is for the sake of eating someone out. which is something i enjoy, don't get me wrong, but the face sitting i'm really looking for is the. y'know. huffing ass kind.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

❗❗Official Class Swap Sorcerer!Kristen Post Alert❗❗ you can: look at her

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

Got an itch to play Sunless Sea again and it's always such an odd experience because. Like.

I know this game. Any other game, the level if knowledge and research I have put into this would make me a confident fucking master. And yet.

I can be reading text I've read dozens of times before and i still feel...not clueless, but absolutely off the mark. It all feels so familiar and yet I've never seen a victory condition. I've at least started pretty much every storyline but I'll still see something new each time I sink some time into it. I have a fucking JOURNAL of TRADE ROUTES and REQUIRED ITEMS and somehow that's only mildly helpful

That and the fact Fallen London's lore is so fucking batshit and honestly kind of hard to research (thr wiki's are frustratingly structured for me and the browser game is just. A bit inaccessible for me) means I can have a pretty solid understanding of what's going on in each port and what each faction is about and still ZERO FUCKING GRASP ON LITERALLY ANY PLOT

[frobby]

rin 1000000% has a list somewhere of things hes good at that yukio is bad at

[ominous-horse-noises]

watching misfits and magic 2 after skipping season 1 (harry potter rip off stories dont super appeal to me but taking them out of the school setting made it 100x more entertaining) and....... listen... why are sam and evan kind of. hm. hmm.