#thinking about that woman again!

[rowenasgf]

thinking about the character like

[fantasticgothicpeachsludge]

Bernard: i lied. i don’t like sex. put your clothes back on babe and watch my power point presentation about What The Fuck Is Going On Between Batman And Twoface

Tim: …

[loserifer]

i survived another week under capitalism's thumb. w me. anyway, here's some Tension >:)

Page 5/?

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reblogs are appreciated!!! 🕺🕺🕺

[mamawasatesttube]

"the bats could take down supers despite the supers being way more powerful than them because they are weak to kryptonite!!!" oh really? mhm, right, that's nice. hey, do you know what the bats are weak to? here is a brief, nonexhaustive list: bullets, bombs, swords, crossbow bolts, arrows, crowbars, bombs, grenades, being slammed into pavement at high velocities, drowning, asphyxiation, and i haven't even gotten into the frost breath, laser eyes, ttk in one case, etc. ...

[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."

[lizmitches]

i love one (1) delusional dumbass

[intheconfessiondial]

12 Months of 12 - May

[redditreceipts]

Random thought but have you ever noticed that breadtube is...misogynistic? Idk, as someone who used to watch a lot of breadtube (still a leftist, but as I've learned more about leftist politics and movements I find that breadtube often lacks substance - just seems like a lot of rambling without critical thinking/analysis).

Like, I can't help but notice that the lot of them shy away from topics around sex based oppression, male/female socialization, sexploitation etc (and if they're not ignoring it, they're saying that none of it is real and that those are just conservative talking points).

Idk. I just feel like a lot of people would rather watch transwomen talk about how important feminist works are actually bigoted to justify violent, misogynistic feelings toward radical feminists who discuss these things. It feels like they want to intellectualize misogyny and uphold a strawman of radical feminism so that they can validate telling women to shut the fuck up about our oppression. Am I making sense?

yes, you're totally making sense, and I decided to look into that. so I made an Excel list with the most prominent Bread Tubers, the number of their subscribers, their biological sexes and their gender identities:

if you just look at gender identity, the subscribers seem to be quite evenly distributed between men, women and non-binary people:

looks kinda fair, right?

but if we look into biological sex...

it's suddenly clear that biological males gather about 77 percent of the total subscribers, while biological females gather only about 24 percent.

doesn't seem that fair anymore, right?

but it gets even worse when you take into account the male's gender identities...

there are more subscribers to biological males with female or non-binary gender identities than subscribers to biological females???

I guess there is your answer on why bread tube does not cover issues of sexism and sex-based oppression.

...and that is why an analysis based on biological sex is important and trying to erase it will let us believe that we are closer to equality between the sexes than we actually are

[agir1ukn0w]

not that anyone cares but the fact that this is what Nami's face looks like right after Sanji flirts with her is making me very happy

[zorosroronoas]

will never not be super pissed at ppl calling scott a 'bitch' & a 'cheater' at what was essentially sexual assault, considering that emma was acting as his therapist. 'but he looked like he was consenting' she was in a position of power over him ffs.

now you may ask, 'but jess don't you personally love scemma?' yes, i do. i frankly ignore this shit bc fuck grant morrison & their apparent obsession with turning women into rapists (look at talia al ghul) & i love all i've read of scemma afterwards, but holding this shit against scott is also not it.

[alumirp]

luffy gets a girlfriend

He is blissfully unaware of this fact, however. He meets Torao at work, he's a firefighter and she's a doctor. She stitched up a cut on his arm and he gets hungry, spontaneously invites her to eat and she accepts, probably hungry too (or totally thinking that the cute guy with the stupid smile is asking her out).

They go out several times after that, usually with Luffy showing up at the hospital randomly, either injured or bringing in a patient, or simply to bother Torao because he was bored.

Luffy gets a new (girl) friend.

They're weird friends, though, because one day Torao just leaned in and kissed him. On the lips! And he liked it for some reason, so they kissed countless more times.

And sometimes things get too hot when they kiss and one thing leads to another and- well, they had sex. Several times. Which is weird, because Luffy definitely has no desire to kiss, much less have sex, with his other friends. But it works, so he just classifies them as weird friends.

He's pretty sure they're NOT lovers, because neither he nor Torao made fancy proposals, with roses, candles, fancy dinner and fancy rings, like Sanji and most TV shows tell, so, definitely weird friends.

And its okay, he likes being weird friends with Torao :D

(They're totally dating and no one believes Luffy when he says they're just friends. Because he shares his meat with Law, he actually, like, listens to her opinion instead of just doing what he wants, he takes her side in arguments no matter how obviously wrong she is, he fights with Ace, physically, when his brother says Law should get out of Luffy's life.They are totally dating, Luffy has a girlfriend, it doesn't matter that he doesn't know it.)

((law is just happy to be here, even if her boyfriend is a little slow))

[cator99]

out of curiosity, would you consider yourself butch?

used to be a blonde underweight twink and now I'm a based jock still got the chanel bag and the sick albeit matured mind of a suckpig to prove it so I'm gonna let you decide whether you wanna call me that word just cuz I got a pussy and short hair. I promise you that there have been enough advancements made in the art of lesbian sexual dynamics in the past 50 years to broaden the vocabulary used to describe the plethora of types of masculine females.

[sualne]

i kind of want to ramble a bit about being underweight and the way people treated me changed as i socially transitioned and aged.

for quick context i was literally born underweight, i'd been starving to death in the womb and needed to get out early, a doctor even said it was too late, that i was already dead, that was not the case.

anyway for as long as i remember people would always comment on how thin i was, as a kid it didn't mean much but approaching puberty the "you need to eat more" turned into "people would kill to have a body like yours" comments about having a wasp waist among more disturbing ones, i socially transitioned as 16, i was getting those comment at 12. i still got remarks about how i should gain weight but it was always accompanied by this "but not too much, you need to stay thin, thin is good." sentiment so gaining weight was never truly seen as an actual emergency, something that should actually happen, it was more of a reflex sort of comment, people didn't mean it too seriously.

that changed when people started seeing me as a man, suddenly i was not so thin and fragile, so feminine and pretty i was visibly weak and unmanly and that pisses the shit out of other (older) men. now people really meant it when they say i should gain weight but unlike before that vaguely "i'm worried for your health (but you look much better like this anyway so don't change it)" sentiment disappeared, it was all about performing masculinity properly, about becoming a muscular big strong manly man. you see it all the time, thinness being associated with femininity, even trans people who should know better keeps on going "wow so gender" to people who are only just being thin and otherwise pretty damn conforming. obviously a lot of this depends where you live.

now this also the moment i need to mention thinphobia isn't a thing, people don't actually care about the fact that you're thin, it's about failing to meet gender role's standards and looking visibly sick which get people Really uncomfortable, they don't want to be reminded disabled & chronically ill people exist. fatphobia is genuinely and purely about hating the fact that fat people exist, they don't actually give the slightest shit about possible health issues they're just dipshits, those are excuses to pretend it's justified so they can feel better about themselves, it's also systemic and get people killed all the time. doctor might tell me gaining some weight couldn't do me any bad but they've never insisted it was the sole and only reason for every single one of my issues, they usually don't even mention it all.

i don't have a point or conclusion for this.

[triptychgardener]

See I don't really believe there are any broader like. Schema of gender in Homestuck in that makes sense. Including Callie's OG gendering of classes but most others don't have a solid "reason" to them. Breath players tend to lean towards transfeminine to me but that doesn't feel like it's because of Breath and so on and so forth.

Basically the only two principles of gender determination in Homestuck I actually abide by are:

Trans characters can be partially determined in certain cases by examine their relationships to other close characters, forming something like a binary (or more) system. Transmasculine Dirk v. Transfeminine Roxy, Femme Transfeminine Gay Jake English v. Butch Transmasc Lesbian Jane Crocker, my Davepeta+ Gender Chart etc. Characters in Homestuck often model themselves in relation to their friends as we do irl.

Space is nigh-exclusively a transfeminine aspect in Homestuck itself. The job of a Space player is to seize and create their own means of creation and species-level reproduction, usually after being deprived of traditional means of womanhood, motherhood, and reproduction.

[child-of-hurin]

Part of what charms and compels me in Jeyne Poole's arc is her reaction to her predicament. All the female POVs in this book are dealing with a lot of gendered violence, and they all deal in different but dignified forms... Jeyne is not a POV character and she is absolutely not dignified lol. She cries and begs, she is utterly helpless. But unlike most women in this book who are utterly helpless, she survives. It's frustrating how fans refuse to celebrate that, simply because there is no glory in it.

[15-lizards]

“Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness” child-woman child-woman child-woman she doesn’t get the innocence and carelessness of youth anymore but she can’t have the agency of an adult either she never had any sort of options at all she was always going to bend to a mans will one way or another