#its kind of disappointing

[gattmammon]

So the molecule change is going badly

[fiendishartist2]

redraw of this post from bunnyfarm's release

kofi|instagram

[willowparkfanclub]

this watcher news is so insane to me for lots of reasons but i cant help thinking of starkid. an independent musical theater company that has put all their musical productions on youtube for free for over 15 years. recently, those projects have cost easily over 200k EACH. yet, they keep posting it for free. why? because doing that provides for their fanbase, which supports them monetarily in other ways. they produced 2 musicals back-to-back in summer 2014 to still be able to support the company, and still put them both on youtube. they hit their 250k kickstarter goal in 3 DAYS LAST WEEK. they have tons of prizes and exclusive content that people can get for payment. people willingly give them that money because they are ultimately creating art for all of us to see, for free. it would have made perfect sense for them to stop doing this years ago, but they didn't, because that would go against everything that helped them become as big of a production as they are. imagine if avpm was never released on youtube for free! i guess my point is that there IS a way to make a profit and still release "free" content for the masses. watcher just doesn't seem to want to put the work in for that.

[ruporas]

only human

[ID: Two page comic in color of Vash and Wolfwood from Trigun Maximum. The first page has a black background and the upper half, behind the panels, is splattered with stylized red blood, scattered bullets, and lifeless hands. In the first panel, it focuses on Vash's boots, showing him stepping through the panel and into the bloody scene. The second panel shows his bloody footprints and the third panel shows his face, his down-turned eyes looking downwards. It's a neutral, vague expression with confliction. At the bottom of the page, the back of Wolfwood's head and shoulder is seen, blood dirtying the white color of his shirt and side of his face. Vash's hand reaches out to him from the right side of the page.

The second page shows the entire scene in full, half the page in light and the other in solid black. At the center, Vash leans down onto his knees as he wraps his arms around Wolfwood's shoulders into a hug. Wolfwood's back is turned away from the viewer, his left arm holds onto his bloodied punisher and his right hand sits on his lap. Light casts from the left side of the page, showing the bloodied surrounding, but the held up punisher casts a shadow on the both of them, shielding them from the light. END ID]

[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."

[robotpussy]

sorry im still thinking about how everybody in barbie (2023) is called barbie or ken (apart from midge and allen) and while its disappointing that barbie and ken's friends like christie, teresa, brad and steven haven't appeared i understand why they didn't do that. While we don't actually know if they'll still show up in the movie (doesn't seem likely), i think they did this to appeal to everybody not just people who are really into barbie. like most people/people that don't really pay attention to barbie don't know the names of their friends, they just refer to them as "[defining feature] barbie"

also i think its funny that everybody in that world is called barbera and kenneth. but there could still be hope that barbie's friends do show up if they bothered to put a spotlight on midge and allan (but i still think its all just for comedic purposes, because allan is a forgotten character and midge had controversy surrounding one of her dolls. plus midge and allan will probably have something going on in the movie because canonically allan got midge pregnant and you know, midge is pregnant in the movie)

[lunarhobbits]

i do think the fact that shane is dressed like a supervillain in the announcement is really funny. when he betrays his audience he goes all out at least.

(credit to reddit user Icy_Arrival4510 on r/WatcherSnark for pointing this out)

[swamp-mirage]

I just saw a trailer for Velma and I gotta say, capitalism is truly the end of innovation. The ONLY reason that show has the Scooby gang is because they're recognizable. Every character is completely different than their original. If they made the exact same show without changing anything except the characters it wouldn't change a single thing about it. The connection to Scooby Doo starts and ends with the characters and even then they changed everything about them but their name and basic designs. They're using popular characters to gain viewers while shitting all over the characters themselves. I'm just so tired of every popular piece of media being perverted and twisted just because of brand recognition. MAKE NEW CHARACTERS!!! YOU ALREADY BASICALLY DID JUST CHANGE THEIR NAME AND CLOTHES AND NO ONE WOULD EVEN KNOW THEYRE FROM SCOOBY DOO BECAUSE THEIR NAME AND CLOTHES ARE THE ONLY THING THEY KEPT!

[filmnoirsbian]

Smth so devastating abt someone who you're almost always in sync with not getting smth you genuinely love. Like why can't you just read my mind and understand? I thought we were brothers etc etc

[sardonicheir]

a thing that occurs very often in media is that characters who are not in a relationship get treated as "less important" by the narrative. this is why david j*nkins thinks his show is kind to his queer characters- he regards only the queer characters who are in relationships as *the important queer characters* and yes, they did all get happy endings- but. but. now that con has officially confirmed that izzy goes through a coming out arc this season AND DIES - in a show where none of the other characters go through the same internal turmoil leading to self acceptance of their queer identities its becoming increasingly unclear how the writer himself could think this is a kind ending for queer people. and its becoming increasingly clear why izzy didnt get a love interest this season as well. if he did, could the notion that this isnt "bury ur gays" and kind be maintained so easily? its never explicitly stated in the show that izzy is gay, and im sorry but i think it was left this ambiguous on purpose. at the end he is not a queer disabled elder whos just begun to accept himself dying, he is just a father figure whos dying, plainly said by jenkins, changing the narrative completely - and we all know why

[spacedlexi]

going through the wiki transcripts and finding out clem and vi support each other even more than i already thought......... god.....

[squeakadeeks]

I'm working on making all my flagship OCs into OOAK dolls, so heres a WIP for Sulu! He has draculaura's body since all the male dolls didnt suit his body type. But a consequence of using draculaura as a base is i had to order his head separately and i'm still waiting on it, hence his current headless state!!

[tangledinink]

i dont think i really wanna do anything anymore is the thing.

[merverelli]

just a couple of dirty bean boys!

[faunandfloraas]

well the day started pretty fun, like sure the outfits were boring and the styling was lackluster but it was fun- i was excited for them. Now however hearing how the press was speaking to them I'm officially just pissed and disappointed.

[crispywizardtale]