#she really was just Like That huh?

[nachosncheezies]

Scully really did look at her academy buddy in her third damn case and say "Fuck you what if I wanna be Mrs Spooky?" and then spent 7 years manifesting it.

[remxedmoon]

boo! old woman jumpscare

greyscale vers below!

[cream-and-tea]

what she says: yea i’m fine

what she’s thinking: the story brought both carpenter and faulkner to their inevitable end points that have been foreshadowed from the v first episode of the show ambiguity of carpenters death aside she stood on the banks of the river singing like her nana glass and was gunned down by the military and faulkner was drowned dragged delivered by the god and story he had let devour him but. but. before those things happened right before the narrative reached its end both of them stood up and said no! i want to go forward! i want to find something past this whatever it might be i don’t want it to take me yet im going to keep on walking! and it was too late! the thing is it was too fucking late!!!!!!! the aquifer was already flooding the soldiers were closing in she was to hurt to run he can’t swim. the chance had come and gone at the beginning of the episode for any hope of them reaching each other ever again but even though it was too little too late never ever going to be enough they both looked the site of their doom in the eyes and said i do not accept this. not here. not now. i am staring at you– the thing that will eat me — and resolving to pry open the jaws and choose to use the last moments of my life (whether i know it or not) to run and stumble and crawl and cry and sing in the hopes of reaching the people who matter to me more than being made your meal. and of course they got fucking eaten anyways. of course they did bc they were walking towards it from the beginning. but there is a way out, there is a way forward, there is a land beyond the storm that is possible to reach if you choose to step out of the story that has been built for you to find it. we walk on, with a rough and tarnished hope, and a tangled, ruined love. it can end with love, and it can end with kindness. even as the jaws are closing. ours is a world of miracles.

[saltpepperbeard]

me: UGH stupid ned low. it would have been so nice to see rhys & taika/ed & stede dance :( leslie jones: girl (gn) i got you

[084392]

i like the idea of marcille braiding falin's hair....

[gunstellations]

gentle mornings

[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."

[hood-ex]

"Love" and "proud" and "family" come up so frequently in bat comics now. Bleh. Bring back something I can relate to like emotional constipation and repression.

[yuridovewing]

genuinely embarrassing how blossomfall gets more fandom sympathy than breezepelt. “boohoo my sister is disabled and my mommy is emotionally abusing her paying more attention to her than me and i hate my stupid ass sister for getting herself disabled and wish she died. also im a grown ass woman.” vs “my dad hit and neglected me as a child and isolated me from my clanmates and it left me maladjusted and seeking validation from terrible sources and its implied hes like this because he’s drooling after the one that got away” like how is this not cut and dry. you cant even soak in the shitty “well breezepelt was a shitty kid” excuse because blossomfall was also shitty before and after the incident. tbh, id argue she’s shittier because breezepelt actually did change his behavior while blossomfall is just as bigoted as ever.

[art-is-kayos]

Homeward Bound - Smokey Old Man Outis and Heathcliff

[weirdmageddon]

It's not totally clear here why Dave's dream self appears to be already awake while his real self is also awake. I think we must infer that his dream self is in some sort of "waking trance" where he's technically awake but too preoccupied by certain things to be considered fully awake.

thinking about jade being lonely as hell on her island and going to sleep waking up on prospit and seeing john (not knowing his name yet) asleep plagued with the creepy dersite doll dreams with the scary teeth and just aughhhh

and she’d like overhear the white queen talk about the dark kingdom derse and the prince(sse)s of the moon that are there and trying to attract as little attention as possible jade would fly out there through the medium because shes so lonely. and she’d go to the purple moons’ towers. she’d find a girl is sound asleep in her purple robes and bed. but the other kid on the moon she finds is awake! except… not really. more like in a trance state. awake but not conscious. but she likes to hear whatever garbled stuff this triangle-speced boy has to say

the trip is long but jade visits this boy a few times since he’s the only non-asleep person like her she can interact with face to face. he usually seems lost in his own world, usually listening to music or talking to himself about stuff that doesnt make much sense. when she’s deprived of sapient affection she’ll touch him in small gestures like holding his hand while he listens to his music and he’ll squeeze back instinctually, and it helps her experience a microdose of the human connection. maybe he doesnt get much in the way of sapient affection either. when she hears The Horrors of the furthest ring another dream headset pops into existence for her to listen along with him and they listen to whatever music hes making. who is he

[sleep-deprived-luka]

Gog au niigo for tonights doodle

[hecksupremechips]

Mizuki and Date though like. Imagine being 8 and your parents are filthy rich and going through a bad divorce. Your mom treats you like shit, lashing out at you, hitting you, saying she wishes you were never born all because you were behaving like a child. Your dad is more comforting, but he doesn’t do anything to stop the abuse and he spends his time invested in a completely different family, a girl who you love and look up to but he loves her more than you and it fucking shows. Then your dads new friend, some fucking bachelor in his late 20s, is just like "wow you guys are the worst fucking parents ive ever seen" and next thing you know your dad is sending you off to live with him. And it’s just a massive kick in the head cuz you go from a rich lifestyle to living in some really shitty tiny ass apartment with this guy who’s clearly never been around a child in his entire life and he doesn’t know how to behave and does a really bad job of censoring himself like he has a bunch of dirty magazines that he can’t hide very well cuz it’s literally a studio apartment and also he talks to himself sometimes, it’s really weird. He doesn’t even have the slightest clue what he’s doing

And he’s the best parent you’ve ever had

Because fuck, it all really hurts. You have to cope with having never received any love from anyone, and with the fact that your parents clearly don’t want you and can’t even be bothered to send you with anyone even kinda responsible. And this guy has a scary job with crazy hours and you don’t know anything about him and neither does he. But still, he never once hits you or tells you you’re not allowed to cry. He just gives you space and doesn’t push you to feel any sort of way about him. And sometimes, he’s even kind. He makes you some stew, even though it’s a bit chunky. He lets you sleep in the bed and takes the couch for himself, even though he complains about the massive back pain he’d never trade his spot for a second. He pays attention to events at your school and gives you your favorite stuffed animal when you make good grades, even though you called it ugly. He gets worried sick when you come home with bruises and puts on a goofy voice and trains you to defend yourself and you develop some highly deadly skills and even though it’s really abnormal, he buys you a bench press so you can get stronger. There’s this distance there, and you feel really weird caring about someone who you aren’t related to, but you find yourself wishing it was meant to be like this all along, that maybe, he’s secretly your real dad and he loves you like his real daughter

And when you say "I’m back" he says "welcome home"

[dawnofiight]

Now presenting: Lucid (she/they)

She's a Seer.

Working for the Sodality.

Disguises herself as a dreamwalker.

She speaks in mostly a whisper because she always has a fucking headache.

Headphones are always on her head.

The way she dies is a bit confusing to her and she has yet to understand it so she takes time out of her day to dissect it.

Because why is there fog and why was she on a boat?

[theghoulboysblog]

i think about these pictures from the buzzfeed exorcism video literally every day because even through the uncomfortability and awkwardness that was that video, shane was still right there making ryan laugh, and i think that’s so nice :)

the only besties that matter i fear! :)

[potatobugz]

i was hacked by a very unhappy man!