#I live in western US

[w0nder-bread]

Sometimes YR Twitter isn’t so bad

[heartshapedbabydolls]

On a sheep farm with Joel 💌🌾

[bottombaron]

you know, i can handle a little bit of fun "Nandor is dumb" talk, but i have a net-zero tolerance for any implication that Nandor is not educated.

Nandor would have been incredibly educated in his lifetime.

even (or especially) as a soldier in the Islamic World. being a soldier was more like getting sent to boarding school that's also a military camp. they weren't just concerned with creating loyal fodder for war. they were building the next government officials, generals, accountants, advisors, etc. it was important that young men knew how to read, write, speak multiple languages, learn philosophy...sometimes even studying art and music was mandatory.

if he was nobility (and its most likely he was), take all that shit and multiply it exponentially. Nandor would have been reading Plato at the same age most people are still potty training. he would have been specifically groomed in such a way to not be just a brilliant strategist and warrior, but also diplomate and ambassador of literally the center of scientific and cultural excellence of the age.

so like yeah, he can be a big dummy sometimes, sure. but that bitch is probably more educated than any of us will ever be.

[sonadowkismesis]

i get the feeling sonic fandom at large isnt fond of big stylistic differences between humans and mobians but i think when done right u can make it look so charming tbh... so whimsical.. like fuckin uh. winnie the pooh

[the-celestial-bitch]

i think what most people fail to understand is that theres no fucking way that israel intelligence community wouldnt know about the attack that happened. they have spies literally everywhere and theyre frighteningly good at their job, just look at some cases of them stealing data from other countries and you will see. so the most likely scenario in my head is that israeli government decided to let the attack happen, let the people die, bc of the greater good of forcing more oppression onto palestinians and deeming any of the activists as terrorists. now they can say "look its not our fault!!! we're doing this for the security of the country, not just israelis, and our laws and legislations are only to control the terrorism" which is a big fat lie.

people need to understand that when oppression gets too suffocating radical groups are born. this is why there are alt right muslim extremists in europe, bc theyre being actively oppressed. but what they do benefits the government (as in, they can now point at the extremists and claim all muslims/middle easterns are like this). so in the end, theres a high chance that the recent hamas attack will benefit the genocide of the palestinian—a truly ironic tragedy, the acts of which we (the middle easterns) already know from memory.

my heart goes out to all of my palestinian siblings. i hope the nightmarish genocidal machine of israel finally dies, and that you can experience peace in the end 🇵🇸

[kaladinkholins]

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.

[catboybiologist]

Alright if I'm confessing my benign sins, one of my toxic traits is that I absolutely fucking refuse to recognize the indo-pacific "leopard shark" as a "leopard shark".

For those of you who don't know, there are two different species of shark that are called leopard sharks. If you hear leopard shark in Australia or other English speaking parts of the indo-pacific, they're referring to this:

Like okay fine. It has spots, spots that look nothing like a leopards spots, but sure. Whatever. Animal naming has been done over worse connections (looking at you, killdeer).

Except, people in other parts of the world, particularly North America, don't call these leopard sharks. They call them zebra sharks. Why? Well, two reasons: one, because their babies look like this:

Which, in addition to being absolutely fucking adorable, is the most zebra like pattern you could ever ask for out of a shark. Like yeah I know they grow out of it but cmon. It's too perfect.

The other reason is because the name leopard shark is ALREADY FUCKING TAKEN, and it's by a shark living off the Pacific coast of North America that has WAY more leopard like markings:

And also, these sharks don't have alternate English names! Whereas zebra sharks are well known the world over as zebra sharks! So the option with the most clarity would be to use leopard shark for the north American ones and zebra shark for the indo Pacific ones!!!!!!!!

Fuck you Australia, there's not many things the US gets right, but this is one of them

[anotherdayforchaosfay]

There are areas that have four seasons, areas that have just monsoon/wet season and dry/fire season, and areas where they get months of light and months of dark. Of the seasons you have experienced, choose one.

If I missed a season, sorry. I'm stoned and sleepy.

[tricoufamily]

while i'm thinking about it, i'm not sure if i'll finish a new edit before horses, so i'm posting old renders again :) a compilation of my beckett and connor western au :))))) this au really does slap i wasn't joking i'm not gonna be humble about it

[kelluinox]

One day I will draw a venn diagram between Russian vatniks and pro hamas supporters

[dionysus-complex]

there's probably no way to phrase this that doesn't sound like a vagueblog, but I keep seeing posts where US Americans are like "shut up about [big coastal metropolis(es)], life is just as good in affordable smaller cities in the Midwest and South" and like I do agree that there is beauty and good art and community anywhere you go in the US and we shouldn't write off entire parts of the country as not being worth visiting or living in. but speaking as someone from an extremely red state who lived in a very rural county in another red state at the height of the Trump era, even setting aside my home state's extremely anti-LGBTQ legal environment and its abortion ban that it's currently fighting out in the courts, there are opportunities that only exist in very large metropolitan areas (esp. for those in creative or academic careers) and if my partner and I had stayed in our home state and attempted to settle there it would have closed off those opportunities for us. this is all to say that I think it's very much a different strokes for different folks situation and dismissing NYC/SF/LA etc. out of hand is just as absurd and ignorant a position as dismissing entire states or regions of the country

[luvelii]

Dungeon meshi has wonderful and thought out world building but the inherent creator bias still shows through sometimes in small funny ways

[mr-orion]

So happy i picked up one of those "How to Draw Anime" books in high-school, went "looks disingenuous" and never gave them another glance. We may have avoided an alternate Orion who's art is stunted by the stale bread of the anime style

[aengelren]

life after seeing people start waking up and stop idolizing elitism and celebrity culture, feeding their pockets while the working class and third world countries suffer..is the human revolution near?

[news4dzhozhar]

[liu-yu-xin]

its literally just photoshop 😭 like an ungodly amount of photoshop