#the tone-deafness is incredible

[grissomesque]

Vulcans: *are vegetarians for ethical reasons*

SNW writers: "Haha, that's stupid. Here, let us hold your Vulcan DNA for a while so you can be free and fun like the humans."

Thanks, I hate it.

[waspgrave]

saw someone on twitter telling people that they don't care about victims when it comes to fictional fandom stuff they enjoy and i gotta be real with you guys.... As an Honorary Victim who also got caught up in that level of discourse once upon a time, I could not care less about what people make barbies do in their spare time. And it is amazing what it does for the mental health. Like I don't care at all. It doesn't matter to me. I'm in my 20s with so many other problems in life to care about. I'm already exhausted. It might be common decency to make an effort, but it's actually not someone else's job to care about my personal woes and triggers and it's not my job to interview them on theirs. I can just block them or the tag if it gets bad enough to actually bother me.

Please try to unshackle your mind and actually be helpful and offer help people in the real world instead of telling ppl online to kill themselves bc of... fiction??? You clearly have passion, time, and energy but don't use it to do anything actually helpful beyond making sure your followers know you have what should be obvious irl morally correct opinions about things that aren't real on the website you're able to freely and easily block people and topics on? Even after living that life for a time, it is simply Bizarre to me now.

[hauntingsofhouses]

Seeing fan discussions about Blue Eye Samurai and especially Mizu's identity is so annoying sometimes. So let me just talk about it real quick.

First off, I have to emphasise that different interpretations of the text are always important when discussing fiction. That's how the whole branch of literary studies came to be, and what literary criticism and analysis is all about: people would each have their own interpretation of what the text is saying, each person applying a different lens or theory through which to approach the text (ie. queer theory, feminist theory, reader response theory, postcolonial theory, etc) when analysing it. And while yes, you can just take everything the authors say as gospel, strictly doing so would leave little room for further analysis and subjective interpretation, and both of these are absolutely necessary when having any meaningful discussion about a piece of media.

With that being said, when discussing Blue Eye Samurai, and Mizu's character in particular, I always see people only ever interpret her through a queer lens. Because when discussing themes of identity, yes, a queer reading can definitely apply, and in Mizu's story, queer themes are definitely present. Mizu has to hide her body and do her best to pass in a cisheteronormative society; she presents as a man 99% of the time and is shown to be more comfortable in men's spaces (sword-fighting) than in female spaces (homemaking). Thus, there's nothing wrong with a queer reading at all. Hell, some queer theorists interpret Jo March from Little Women as transmasc and that's totally valid, because like all analyses, they are subjective and argumentative; you have the choice to agree with an interpretation or you can oppose it and form your own.

To that end, I know many are equally adamant that Mizu is strictly a woman, and that's also also a completely valid reading of the text, and aligns with the canon "Word of God", as the creators' intention was to make her a woman. And certainly, feminist themes in the show are undeniably present and greatly colour the narrative, and Episode 4 & 5 are the clearest demonstrations of this: Mizu's protectiveness of Madame Kaji and her girls, Mizu's trauma after killing Kinuyo, her line to Akemi about how little options women have in life, and the way her husband had scorned her for being more capable than him in battle.

I myself personally fall into the camp of Mizu leaning towards womanhood, so i tend to prefer to use she/her pronouns for her, though I don't think she's strictly a cis woman, so I do still interpret her under the non-binary umbrella. But that's besides my point.

My gripe here, and the thing that spurred me to write this post, is that rarely does this fandom even touch upon the more predominant themes of colonialism and postcolonial identities within the story. So it definitely irks me when people say that the show presenting Mizu being cishet is "boring." While it's completely fine to have your opinion and to want queer rep, a statement like that just feels dismissive of the rest of the representation that the show has to offer. And it's frustrating because I know why this is a prevalent sentiment; because fandom culture is usually very white, so of course a majority of the fandom places greater value on a queer narrative (that aligns only with Western ideas of queerness) over a postcolonial, non-Western narrative.

And that relates to how, I feel, people tend to forget, or perhaps just downplay, that the crux of Mizu's internal conflict and her struggle to survive is due to her being mixed-race.

Because while she can blend in rather seamlessly into male society by binding and dressing in men's clothing and lowering her voice and being the best goddamn swordsman there is, she cannot hide her blue eyes. Even with her glasses, you can still see the colour of her eyes from her side profile, and her glasses are constantly thrown off her face in battle. Her blue eyes are the central point to her marginalisation and Otherness within a hegemonic society. It's why everyone calls her ugly or a monster or a demon or deformed; just because she looks different. She is both white and Japanese but accepted in neither societies. Her deepest hatred of herself stems primarily from this hybridised and alienated identity. It's the whole reason why she's so intent on revenge and started learning the way of the sword in the first place; not to fit in better as a man, but to kill the white men who made her this way. These things are intrinsic to her character and to her arc.

Thus, to refuse to engage with these themes and dismiss the importance of how the representation of her racial Otherness speaks to themes of colonialism and racial oppression just feels tone-deaf to the show's message. Because even if Mizu is a cishet woman in canon, that doesn't make her story any less important, because while you as a white queer person living in the West may feel unrepresented, it is still giving a voice to the stories of people of colour, mixed-race folks, and the myriad of marginalised racial/ethnic/cultural groups in non-Western societies.

[karuma-meii]

I feel like some ace attorney fans could stand to think about how many of the most beloved characters are at least cop adjacent, if not cops outright. Even a big part of what phoenix does is finding (and thus incarcerating) the real culprit (= the appropriate person to punish under the legal system). Like even if you enjoy the prosecutors (and I do! all my favs are on the prosecution) you should be aware of what system and values are depicted here. Real-life prosecutors ruin people's lives every day.

Just something to keep in mind I guess, especially with the aai port coming soon.

[leeenuu]

by god, it’s kaja kallas with a javelin, going after switzerland

[kazhanko-art]

It’s fun watching other North Americans freak out about WW3 (again) like it’s actually gonna be fought on our soil and not in other countries (such as the ones currently at war) like the previous two world wars.

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

fgo players can be so misogynistic sometimes it's crazy

[br1ghtestlight]

I always want to learn the keyboard and whenever i see a keyboard for sale somewhere like a thirft store etc I think about it for a solid five minutes. but I simply cannot justify bringing another insturment into my home only to never learn how to play it and let it gather dust. we can't keep doing this

gene playing a keyboard has obviously made this like 500x worse

[dykeogenes]

it is very very frustrating to see people across the political board abuse the word antisemitism for their own purposes, because it means that when legitimate antisemitism does happen— which it does, often, on the left— it becomes impossible to point it out. there’s an MPP in ontario who was censured for quote-unquote antisemitism because, as it’s being framed, she ‘spoke out in support of palestinians.’ she objects to the idea that that can ever be antisemitic, which looks fine prima facie. what is missing from that story is that she made her statement— which asserted that the only appropriate response to 10/7 was to “end all occupation of Palestinian land”— on October 10th.

calling for the dissolution of israel as a state is one thing (with some very important caveats, you can argue that that’s not an inherently antisemitic thing to say). even saying that violence in israel/palestine will continue until israel is dissolved, there’s a fairly solid case to be made that that’s not any kind of threat but rather a statement of fact— given that israeli violence in palestine has been a constant for as long as israel has existed, and the way israel presently operates relies largely on that violence. so sure, devoid of context, both those things are reasonable to say.

but calling for the dissolution of israel, and saying that violence will continue until that dissolution is achieved, less than 72 hours after the worst mass killing of jewish civilians since the holocaust took place there? come on. come ON. come the fuck on. imagine if she’d said “the only way to end violence against american civilians is to dissolve the united states” three days after 9/11, when hospitals were still overflowing and manhattan was being evacuated en masse, when there weren’t even accurate counts of the dead.

there wouldn’t be a question of whether that was acceptable. but somehow, there IS a question here. it’s almost like there’s some kind of millennia-old history of oppression that created a pervasive subconscious bias, influencing how we think and talk about israeli civilians and how people calculate the value of their lives. shame we don’t have a word for that.

[minscofrashemen]

🧍‍♂️

[girlbob-boypants]

One of my friends keeps talking about how much they love DT and how silly goofy it is and the entire time I just think about how we went from genuine and earnestly serious storytelling to near disrespectful levels of jokes at the expense of the content itself.

[nevoadecaipora]

.

[chaos-in-one]

People who say “but what if the roles were reversed?” when any oppressed group says anything bad about their oppressors are so fucking annoying

[seventeendeer]

finally got around to giving carol and the end of the world a try and this is definitely the meanest possible takeaway from only having watched one episode, but christ it's really serving "chubby introvert brunettes are the most oppressed people in the world" right out the gate huh

[lunaroceanic]

Discrimination is when people hate you because you’re a genocidal bigot

[hirazuki]

I ran out of things to watch while drawing, again, so I decided (against all better judgment) to check out TDP season 4...

... I’m not done yet, but. what the fuck??