#more like a rant but w/e

[sillyprettyfairy]

Things that are bothering me about the Enna racism scandal - 1

No one's going to read this and that's okay. I just wanna write my thoughts out in a formal way while this is still fresh in my mind and in the news in general so I can point to it in future possible situations.

Situation summary: Towards the end of a collab stream between Kyo Kaneko and Enna Alouette, both of Nijisanji EN, Enna spews some serious antiblackness in the form of stereotyping and othering. My thoughts on the situation and response to it by not just Enna but others under the cut. ⚠️ If you are looking to start a fight with me over this or be a weird racist weirdo on this post or in my asks, it literally isn't worth it because I will not engage and will absolutely just block you or clown on you. ⚠️

The circumstances are absolutely poetic in the worst possible way. Enna is the focus of this controversy, as she should be. What I haven't seen enough people bring up though is that Kyo being the other half of the interaction makes this incredibly ironic and even a little darkly comedic. Kyo uses/appropriates aave (African American Vernacular English) as an admitted white man and has cute little blaccent to pair with it. Him being the center of the antiblack comments made by Enna and having to be the one to "educate" her on how what she said was harmful genuinely blows my mind. The argument that Kyo simply grew up in an area with Black people and that is why he speaks the way he does is...a flimsy defense based on past life information I won't share on this blog. All I'll say is that there is evidence supporting that he only started speaking the way he currently does recently and even if that were not the case, there is a discussion to be had about him essentially being a straight-up minstrel show just by being a member of a major vtuber corpo who is not Black, but uses Black vernacular and speech as a part of his brand to entertain a mostly non-Black audience.

2. Enna and Kyo created a perfect storm for this entire situation to occur, unintentionally. Enna constantly makes inflammatory comments on stream and is constantly apologizing, doubling down, or joking about said comments eventually getting her "canceled". This has obviously aged poorly. Kyo, as stated in my feelings towards the first point, is also someone who will never understand the experiences and culture of Black Americans, no matter how much "that's crazy" comes out of his mouth. Despite this, he is perceived by many to be Black. Hell, when I watched his debut live one of my Black girlfriends and I were almost 100% in our automatic assertion that he was Black and that he was likely the first Black member of Nijisanji, which excited us.

The nature of Kyo's performance of Blackness as a white man happening parallel to Enna's constant controversial tongue getting her into mini-scandals and leading up to them becoming a duo with a perceived fun dynamic as a result of their friendship was probably the most unfortunate concoction of circumstances that created this entire scenario. It was inevitable that, on the path she was taking, Enna would say something so foul that it'd be legitimately deeply problematic. It was also inevitable that Kyo would have to engage and contend with the fact that he is a non-Black person who, because of his performance of Blackness, is now perceived as such or at least perceived as having some sort of proximity to that identity. Their becoming friends simply caused both of these things to happen faster and at the same time with the other person's assistance.

3. Why is everyone saying "POC"? This is a BLACK issue. What managed to annoy me the most upon further inspection of the reaction to Enna's comments is that even other Black people, many of which have decently-sized platforms in the vtuber space, are not using the word Black when talking about this and other similar situations. This has nothing to do with people of color in general in terms of who the targets, victims, and affected are. This is about BLACK people.

Enna was not thinking of anything other than Black people when she made comments about Kyo sounding like he listens to Snoop Dogg and eats fried chicken with his friends. She was calling on old and tired stereotypes about Black people that she likely learned from media depictions of Black people and culture as well as the societal normalization of those ideas.

Black should not be a scary or dirty word to use. When we are talking about issues that specifically affect Black people, seeing everyone say that it affects "POC" genuinely ticks me off because it's a term that was made with the purpose of describing the experiences of more than just one particular group of people but is being used now in place of just saying which particular group's issues you are talking about.

What Enna said was anti-BLACK. Vtubers are constantly being exposed for anti-BLACKness. The issue is anti-BLACK racism and not something that applies to all people of color in this particular instance.

I believe that a lot of people are not equipped with the words, knowledge, and information to engage with this discussion in a way that is deeper than acknowledging that it happened and was really shitty for like a week or even a month before we move on to a new vtuber controversy or graduation or what have you. Obviously, Enna is not the first and will not be the last vtuber to say some very anti-Black shit. But I think there needs to be a wider community discussion for both vtubers and fandoms about why this continues to occur and how to get it to not happen nearly as often. Or at the very least when it does happen, there shouldn't be people en masse defending whoever perpetuated harm by calling people "sensitive" and "thin-skinned" for being hurt by literal racism.

The hesitancy of vtuber spaces to discuss "politics" has caused a weird perpetual cycle of something fucked up happening involving a vtuber's words or actions relating to social justice and political issues getting them massive hate and/or being defended by others at the same time with a surface-level discussion of the grievance being had, but ultimately not going any deeper than "this is good/bad and vtubers should remain apolitical beyond saying hate is bad".

This cycle is going to continue for as long as everyone wants to pretend their oshi doesn't have or shouldn't have any sort of political opinions, ideas, or beliefs. But instead of any sort of effort being made to address the inherent issues with this way of looking at content creators especially, we talk about it as though we care for a bit and then go hee and haw about Vox getting hate for saying water tastes like piss on Twitter or something. It's incredibly frustrating and I know the same thing is gonna happen here, which just makes me feel tired.

---

I honestly have a lot more thoughts but this post is already an essay so I'll probably make another post later about my other thoughts because I have Many.

[u3pxx]

ok starting to recover slowly from illness so im really hoping to get some progress done on a few work stuff grarghhh orz (also school just started again for me but im not feeling the stress yet, i probably will once i have to actually go to my uni lol)

[super-paper]

Not "AFO being the final boss undoes all of Tomura's development," or "the body snatching plot line was a last minute decision," but a secret third fourth fifth sixth and seventh thing....

3. ("Weekly manga is an inherently flawed storytelling medium when it comes to telling cohesive stories, and authors are often required to stretch their main plot points thin over hundreds of chapters/several years. When you sit down to analyze or critique MHA, I sincerely feel you need to take the restriction of its medium/genre as well as the restrictions on the artist into consideration. One must also consider that this is a story that has been written over the course of a decade-- A certain degree of "mutation" between the story's beginning and its ending is both acceptable & anticipated within this medium.")

4. ("That being said, Hori does consistently do a much better job of telling a coherent story with consistent themes than people give him credit for, and credit should be given where it's due-- while there are some poorly/hastily implemented narrative elements and plot points where it can be argued that Hori decided to change gears, they are not the story-breaking sins that people make them out to be. And ultimately, Tomura's possession does work as a natural progression of the story Hori is attempting to tell and as something that builds off and solidifies the themes established throughout MHA.")

5. ("Tomura's arc is that of a victim trapped in the cycle of abuse told through a lens of fantasy. He was always a victim of AFO and always someone who had his identity abused out of him, and the body-snatch plotline is just a variation of telling that story in a way that leaves no room for argument. Tomura's arc and Izuku's arc also foil and build off each other, and a lot of the misunderstandings I've seen re: MHA's trajectory come from fans who either disregard Izuku's arc in favor of fixating on Tomura's arc (or vice versa) instead of reading these arcs as two parts of a whole-- both arcs grapple with "identity" and how you define yourself vs how others try to define you, the romanticization of self-destructive traits and how it's necessary to have good social support and people who are willing to step in and stop you from hurting yourself, systemic and individual dehumanization, adults failing to protect them when they need it, valid anger and an intolerance for injustice being taken advantage of a twisted into something intensely self-destructive, etc. Ignoring Izuku's arc and how it both reflects and intertwines with Tomura's (& vice versa) means missing out on understanding the core of both characters and what their respective roles in this narrative is. TL;DR Tomura being a victim in need of saving and Izuku being the one in a position to save him is something that has been cooking since Tomura's debut at USJ *more on this later*")

6. ("Hori started off not wanting to give his villains any humanizing qualities because he wanted them to remain "scary" to his readers-- but it's fairly clear that he developed a sense of appreciation and sympathy for his villains as his story progressed and his ability as a writer developed. As a direct result of this, his story eventually grew beyond treating the LOV as hollow tools to "scare" the readers. Hori grew, and so did MHA. The trajectory of the story changing to reflect Hori's growth should not be treated as a bad thing bc, again, this change/growth does not actually violate the initial premise of MHA in an unforgiveable way-- it actually services the natural progression of the story and its characters.")

7. ("Saving Tomura and the LOV is the ultimate goal of the series, and that goal is built off of literally everything Hori has established up to this point. You will never find inner peace or enjoy the manga's good qualities if you keep agonizing over what could have been. Reacting to the manga as a whole on a week-to-week basis will only skew your understanding of the story as a whole. Et cetera Et cetera Et cetera.")

[deus-ex-mona]

series i’m gatekeeping from my family vs series i’m ✨ok✨ with my family knowing i’m into:

[imjustheretofangirl003]

HOT TRENDY CHALLENGE

LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE

I have blocked this scam 4,198 times too many

I have do not beg for money ON MY BLOG DESCRIPTION BECAUSE OF SCAMS LIKE YOU

F U C K O F F

[weezerlvr228]

flippin boobahs!

[surreal-duck]

honestly now that i think abt it each year i rly do end up making a new batch of ocs that i proceed to rarely do anything about... theres really too much like my masked double life idol girl and then the fantasy cast and the magical girls circa 2017-2020. then i started to think of normaller(?) school settings like rival neighboring schools being forced to merge into one huge one due to the way too heated rivalries between its students but that one is a collab w my good friend bc i talked abt my mom telling me an irl story of exactly that and we just kept adding onto it. and the recent four r also just a group of normal high school girls struggling. not to mention the aroace + lesbian comic i had in the works for fun. and dont get me started on the random ones i imagine amvs to

[aego-philautia]

I am AWAKE and STILL THINKING of that WOMAN

One of my fave moment of her god wtf is wrong with her💕💕

ok ok simping over moots I hope yall are feeling very poggers or whatever the kids say this morning^.^

[practically-an-x-man]

still can't get over the fact that my mother went to see Little Shop, read my actor bio (that switches pronouns every line), and even SAID TO MY FACE AFTERWARDS "oh yeah I saw your pronouns in your bio- he, they, she, that thing you did there"

and yet continues to be all like "my daughters" "my girls" "you girls should know..." and she/her pronouns and all that as if nothing has happened

[barkjunhee]

me: preserving my fertility isn't a priority for me

dr: but it's a priority for us

[cassarson]

Do any of y'all have adhd and bipolar or know of any good accounts of what having both is like? I've noticed that I've been having some seriously abnormal moods recently, and the more I look into it, the more I think that it looks a lot like bipolar, but I'm not sure how it would interact with my adhd, or even if there's anything other than my adhd going on at all. Feel free to DM me if you don't want to talk about it publicly

[cboffshore]

my prophecy came true. the [REDACTED BC SPOILERS IYKYK] thing has already slowed down my dash with the sheer volume of people losing their shit in advance. I'm gonna ramble in the tags so be advised: nothing is NAMED but the hints are Quite Obvious

[wild-at-mind]

Listened to the podcast series 'Eight years hard Labour' which is about the Corbyn years of Labour, and they talk a lot about the Labour party internal divide- there was the internal right wing, who were more like centrists, and the internal left wing, which was the Corbyn side. To tell you where I stand on this man: I voted for Labour, and therefore Corbyn, in both the 2017 and 2019 elections but was absolutely not part of his cult of personality, and I found it disturbing how devoted people got so quickly. Mainly the leftist queer people section of my social circle were doing a LOT of facebook meme posting in the run up to particularly the 2019 election. I could literally look down my feed and see a very long, very detailed defense of how Corbyn could not possibly be even the teeniest bit antisemitic, and below that a different Corbyn devotee would be proclaiming that the only reason Jewish Brits would not vote for Corbyn was because they were all too wealthy. I mean....what more conclusion could I possibly draw from that?? I do not care to get caught in the weeds of whether Corbyn knew what was in the fucking mural or not before saying it shouldn't have been removed, and I know the tabloids really did do plenty of smear jobs on him, but the fact that I could see his devoted supporters becoming antisemitic before my eyes was incredibly damning and was all I needed really. Anyway, obviously Corbyn lost the 2019 election by a massive amount and it was a surprise to literally no one except Corbyn's fans who had been in social media meme echo chambers the whole time. Corbyn left the Labour party and now we have Starmer who leaves a lot to be desired, but is still the head of the most left wing mainstream party. But it made me think- what hope is there for left wing politics in the UK? Can we ever hope for a hard left of the left leaning party that doesn't go off in these weird antisemitic, Putin defending directions? (Oh god...imagine Corbyn being PM during the Ukraine war. :S) Do we always have to settle for centrism just to be on the left of the Tories? We have had leftist governments in our history that brought in genuine social change, the formation of the NHS being the biggest example, so it is possible, but why are things so right wing now, and for so long, especially while things are so objectively shitty for so many people? I don't expect anyone has any answers but I want to hope for better. There are massive limitations to party politics, but I'm not an anarchist and I do think running the country is a job someone has to do. I don't know how to make things better, I just know that genuine compassion for all people is needed in order to do it, not just some people, and I don't know if hard left conspiracy types can ever feel that for people they consider their enemy.

[zenmai--jikake--no--komoriuta]

hrlfnsdfcndsbl I don't want to go to work today..... "enjoy your quiet week" they said on christmas eve, sike, it's been really fucking busy ever since and the store's a complete mess and we're out of everything and there's no time to restock or do dishes or even have a fucking drink of water............. I stayed back half an hour on boxing day because we were getting overrun during shift handover, came in an hour early on tuesday to cover a sick teammate, lost my fucking day off and had to work the evening shift last night because of another sick teammate (in the 3 customer-facing hours I had I think I got a combined total of <5 minutes to do anything except serve a literally endless stream of people), back in again tonight with a worse team on and then again tomorrow morning, meanwhile the rest of out staff have all gotten to have at least one day off in all of this and I'm the only dumbass stuck working it all... and then I have one day of rest on sunday and then back in again new years' day and the next...

[xumoonhao]

no bc i literally do hate it when ppl draw link but they draw him as tall or buff or super masculine like im sorry but have u ever seen that boy

[galwaygremlin]

I’m just gonna complain for a second since there’s no one irl I can really talk to about this-

It makes me so uncomfortable when guys tell me they wish I wasn’t a lesbian, or that “we would be perfect for each other if only” or whatever. The worst is when they say it’s a shame I’m gay.

This has happened to me in three friendships I’ve had since I’ve been in Houston and one back home. I love my guy friends, but I don’t love them that way, and it sucks to feel guilty that it’s not enough for them. I shouldn’t feel guilty for not being attracted to someone. I’m not responsible for their feelings, and I haven’t led anyone on.

I’ve gotten good at ignoring the feelings and not making it awkward for my friends, but it makes me want to scream sometimes when they make comments like that.

It’s not a shame I’m gay. I should not ever have to feel ashamed of that.