#seen in my life shoutout to the time some people in the USA declared us POC and that one person in that one discord channel who was very

[mishkakagehishka]

about the "They're (shumika) so canonically eastern european" post, you know they're japanese,, right? i'm not trying to accuse you of anything but i've been in some fandom spaces with people heavily insisting japanese characters are british/otherwise white without caring about whitewashing and i just want to be sure you're,,, not doing that

Please never again equate eastern-euro-ness with being British again, you'll give me a heart attack /j

Mm. I don't know how to answer this in a proper way tho. Or rather in a way that won't come across badly(?) bc I do recognise EE/Slavs/myself at the end of the day as white (like, don't worry about it, I unironically clutch my pearls whenever I see people insisting we're not white) so I understand what you mean by whitewashing (and it's something I worried about myself when saying this - "oh, this anime boy is so ee to me", I've always worried it would come across as whitewashing which is obviously not my goal)

It's more like. Half spite and half cultural. Like, you don't have to be white to be eastern european, and you especially don't have to be white to be culturally eastern european, so as far as I'm concerned, characters I've "adopted" into my culture are equally as Japanese as they are eastern european (to me). And the spite is, and this is why I'm a bit miffed at you equating my headcanoning to headcanoning them as British/white in general (and AGAIN bc i don't want people to misunderstand, we are white, i do recognise the problem you're bringing up, i'm not in any way denying this or the fact that we have white privilege), is because uhhhh idk if you've noticed, but eastern europeans don't really get much representation in media, and when we do get it, it's absolutely awful. I made a bingo card once, even, but like, try to remember all the Slavic and eastern euro in general fictional characters you know, and now try to remember one that wasn't either an offensive stereotype for the sake of comedic relief or a villain (or, bonus for female characters, a gold-digger or otherwise ridiculously sexualised but still morally bad or leaning on negative stereotypes). It's not like I care about that stuff anymore, instead I just go "okay, this wasn't made with me (ee viewers) in mind, so i shouldn't bother getting angry", but like. Between that and the fact that eastern europeans are still considered "below" in a lot of western Europe (and... i mean, you know a big reason for why Brexit happened was that they didn't want any more EE (specif. Polish) immigrants? I'm sorry for hyperfocusing on you equating it to British hcs bsabbsjdjs but😭) I just grew kinda. Annoyed. And started going "alright, well, fuck it, your fave is a Slav now".

But, idk, the "they're Japanese" and "they're EE" coexists to me. I don't see why Japanese people wouldn't be able to participate in ee culture, and as far as I'm concerned, anyone can be culturally eastern european. I just like to think about my blorbos participating in my culture, it's not That Deep, and i'll apologise if it came across that badly to make you want to compare it to Br*itsh hcs. Sorry, had to squeeze in one last scandalised gasp at that. I just want to see names like mine, accents like my family and friends' and cultural practises like ours not be villainised or caricatured for once.

Like, the goal isn't "they're white now", my goal is "I'll make my own good rep from already beloved characters", it's not about changing their skin colour, but about projecting my culture onto them, which isn't dependant on skin colour.

I hope this all came across well enough, it's. 6:20, i've slept for a good 4h and english is still only my second language, but lmk if you need anything else clarified