#I think anything can be addressed in a fictional context with sensitivity and proper warning but this isn't the same

[mister13eyond]

I deleted a reblog because I did it when over-exhausted and it felt mean, but I just wanted to say for posterity: I'm begging the Jojo fandom to reconsider making the "He's not even Italian!" joke about Giorno.

Look, I'm not one to say you have to bring real-world morality into a series about a vampire's son taking over the mafia with a magic ghost. I have "problematic" ships, I like writing and reading the crime thriller aspect of the series despite the real-world harm caused by the mafia and organized crime; I like the character with absolutely horrible representation of DID. I think some acceptance that things are okay in fiction that aren't in real life is healthy.

But joking that Giorno- a character who has lived in Italy for 11 years, since he was 4 years old, and who faced racist and xenophobic abuse by his peers precisely BECAUSE he was Japanese - isn't "really Italian" bleeds outside the boundaries of fiction and into real-world microaggressions that real API people face. We've all heard some racist white person ask an Asian peer "where you're REALLY from"; We've all heard the horrendous chant of "go back to your own country" in racist tirades. It's a joke that falls back on old, tired, shitty perspectives- that even though someone has lived in a country since they were a little child, they're never going to be REALLY Italian, because they'll always be Japanese first and foremost.

It's not that it's bad to joke about things we know are bad; it's that the joke seems to fail to acknowledge what's so bad about it in the first place. It's that it conflates ethnicity and country of origin with nationality, citizenship or even just a sense of home. It's that the core of the joke is "Giorno doesn't really belong here; he's Japanese, not Italian, and no matter how long he lives here, he'll never be Italian by blood." It's just... not funny anymore, frankly.

Leave it behind with "MILF hunter Kakyoin" and using the c-slur for Johnny Joestar; we as a fandom can make FAR funnier jokes.