#there’s barely any representation in the west

[dead-loch]

I don’t want to derail the original post but I’m really frustrated right now and need to get this out. Happy to be corrected/educated/whatever. I’m going to try not to be aggressive with any of this.

I’m seeing people in the notes of nearly every single post about Palestine that inevitably includes information about how to spot anti-semitism or how people will use this to push anti-semitism, saying things like “this is why I don’t talk about supporting Palestine”. Or they’ll reblog the post and just put “#antisemitism” like there’s not a single other thing the post could possibly be about (you know, the Palestinians whose land and lives are stolen).

Well, it’d be real nice if supporting Palestinians didn’t constantly get derailed by the threat of being called anti-Semitic (here I reference the orgs and people who insist that anti-semitism includes being critical of the state of Israel and its crimes). Can not a single thing be about the people who are actually suffering right now? Millions of them? I don’t understand why every single post needs to play both sides on this issue. Right now, in this moment, in Palestine, IT’S PALESTINIANS who are suffering. So why are everyone else’s feelings being made the priority?

This is such an unbelievably frustrating place to be. Like I have literally seen an Israeli person- so someone living in Israel and benefitting from the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians- say that they don’t usually talk about what their govt is doing but “this time” they just had to speak up. And all the reblogs are treating this person like a saint for— what? Finally saying something?? People, especially those who live in Palestine and the Middle East or have family there, have been begging for help for decades and I’m supposed to not be upset by a person (and let’s be honest, many people) who just decide to keep quiet until it gets, what, worse somehow?

The government of Israel is committing crimes against humanity. In part due to the threat of being seen as anti-Semitic, we, the world, have done nothing while this continues to happen. We’re literally making one person who suffered feel better by allowing that person to harm others. Except on a massive scale.

[demilypyro]

Is it just me or is anime and manga like centuries ahead in lgbt representation than pretty much any western media? Like, there was a popular series about a trans girl in school that came out in the 80s while in the west we're still barely scraping towards more gay side characters.

Sorry you seem like a good person to ask cause u read a lot of trans and trans adjacent manga

Ehhhh it's complicated. Gender Stuff in manga seems to mostly occupy the same space as yuri and yaoi: unorthodox content for cishets to gawk at. It's not there for us, any appeal we get out of it is generally coincidental. The exceptions are the rare mangas by queer authors writing about their own feelings and experiences: those are the gold in the shitpile, but they may still be compromised by editors trying to make it more appealing to a general audience.

What you gotta keep in mind is that I mostly post about the Good gender content. Not the bad stuff. There is so much bad stuff.

[familyabolisher]

re: this post, where are, for example, ethiopian jews in israel (who are not to my knowledge currently treated well by the israeli government etc, but that may be a different discussion) meant to go if coexistence is not an option? (this is a genuine question—to my knowledge ethiopia is not a safe place for jewish people!)

i was acting on the assumption that the "coexistence" in the post referred to the two-state solution rather than the literal side-by-side existence of 'israeli' jews and palestinians following the decolonisation of palestine;

this is why i balk at people hoping for coexistence. coexistence goes against the very founding strategy of israel. it goes against every principle and long term plan israel has for itself. israelis themselves do not want coexistence, they want gaza flattened and the west bank annexed, they want palestine destroyed and the palestenian people extinct.

^the wording here implies that what's being discussed is a question of 'coexistence' concurrent with the continued existence of so-called 'israel,' hence the noting that 'coexistence' goes against its founding strategy. so what's being refuted seems to be the appeal to 'coexistence' that characterises the two-stater position, or eg. the calls for a ceasefire, both of which call for states by which the colonisation of palestine can continue.

the physical removal of all israelis from palestinian land is not a prerequisite for the decolonisation of palestine, nor is the physical removal of all settlers the prerequisite for the decolonisation of any settler colony. decolonisation is a violent process, yes, and -- as the post notes -- formerly-israeli jews in a decolonised palestine would need to be prepared to accept palestinian sovereignty in a way that many simply are not willing to do at this present moment in time, and i'm not naive enough to believe that the decolonisation of palestine would be a case of peaceful acquiescence on the part of israeli citizens. however, acknowledging the reality of israeli attitudes towards palestinians is v different to regarding all critique of discursive appeals to 'coexistence' as necessarily demanding physical removal, especially when appeals to 'coexistence' tend to discursively communicate a) a reprimanding of palestinians for the 'violence' of their resistance and/or b) the two-stater position. imo it's a critique of a discourse.

from decolonise palestine's piece on the mandate years leading up to the nakba:

This followed a long series of Zionist rejection of overtures by the native Palestinians. In 1928, for example, the Palestinian leadership voted to allow Zionist settlers equal representation in the future bodies of the state, despite them being a minority who had barely just arrived. This was faced with Zionist rejection. Even after this, in 1947 the Palestinians suggested the formation of a unitary state for all those living between the river and the sea to replace the mandate to no avail. There were many attempts at co-existence, but this simply would not have benefited the Zionist leadership who never intended to come to Palestine to live as equals.

obviously, the social conditions of palestine under the british mandate are very different to those today, but i think this contravenes the idea that palestinians are merely braying for jewish blood and seeking to physically remove palestine's jewish population.

[foreverfandomobsessed]

my two cents

the thing that white people don't seem to understand is that white characters often exist without their whiteness being essential to the story while it is a rarity if characters of color ever get that luxury in the stories that they're in. and even then, in the context of real life, it makes no sense to those kinds of characters white because of how little representation that exists for people of color who don't have their own intense 'struggle story'.

for all the disney princesses that they're saying, "so i guess _____ should be white then," they have to realize that their stories don't exist without their racial and ethnic backgrounds. jasmine is an arab girl whose story takes place in the middle east; take away her color, and you have a different story entirely--you are no longer telling the story of 'aladdin'. mulan is a chinese woman in ancient china fighting in the chinese army against the huns. if she was any other ethnicity other than chinese, it would not be the same 'mulan'. pocahantas is a native american girl whose home and safety was being threatened by the *white* colonizers. IF SHE HAD BEEN WHITE, THE STORY WOULD NOT HAVE MADE SENSE!!!

and tiana, who i don't know why she's even being brought up in this conversation (i don't know why any of them were being brought up anyway, but her especially), is a black woman in the jim crow south in the 1920s, whose story was full of jazz music and voodoo, and who had to work all day, every day to barely be able to afford a down payment on the building for her restaurant. at the risk of sounding redundant, IF SHE HAD BEEN WHITE, she would have been lottie. and that's what people don't seem to understand: 'the princess and the frog' already showed us what it would be like if tiana was white. she would have been the princess of nola with a daddy so rich, all she would have had to do was ask for money and he would have bought the building for her and then some. there would have been no need to bargain with naveen, no adventure through the bayou, no character development for tiana. simply put, the movie. would not. exist.

at this point, i've forgotten how i wanted to say what i wanted to say, so i'll say this: casting a person of color in a 'typically white' role does no detriment to your self-worth. it has no impact on your childhood. it does not affect you in any way. but for people of color, who didn't have too much of this representation growing up, opportunties like this are everything for us (i didn't even talk about francesca amewudah-rivers and the west-end romeo and juliet, but the same sentiments still apply, especially because she's also providing nigerian representation in a space that i love but don't feel too represented in). but, if you don't like the idea, don't watch the product.

a lot of you complaining are grown adults who have much bigger issues to worry about, so please quit being immature and shut up about it!! and stop being bullies to actors that are doing nothing but their jobs.

thank you for your time.

[mihrsuri]

20 questions for fic writers

I was tagged by @isagrimorie - thank you darling <3333.

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 234

2. What's your total Ao3 word count? 364,199

3. What fandoms do you write for? Currently: The Tudors (TV), Shadow and Bone/Grishaverse, Tamora Pierce (largely Tortall at the moment but also Emelan), West Wing, Hunger Games (mostly in the form of a lot of Fandom AUs set in the Hunger Games) and Narnia. But I’ve written for a lot of others including Criminal Minds, Pundit RPF, Band of Brothers, Scarlet Pimpernel (1998), Spooks/MI5, The Hour, Doctor Who (Nu!Who) and Star Trek Discovery.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Undertow (co-authored) (Criminal Minds, Rossi/Hotch) - The very short version: Dave gives Aaron a back-rub.

It’s not because of you (it’s because of me) (Ted Lasso, Jamie Tartt) - Brian Symonds was - fuck is one of the best youth talent coaches in the country it’s just he’s also been arrested and all Jamie can think is fuck (one take on Jamie’s backstory)

Five times out of many david rossi realised he was happily doomed (Criminal Minds, Rossi/Hotch) - Basically what it says on the tin. Five ways David Rossi knew that he was totally totally doomed in the best possible way in regards to the way he loved these kids

To dwell in enchantment (Criminal Minds, Rossi/Hotch) - It doesn't make the world any less messy, but it does make a balance, this family he has. David Rossi, coming home from work.

If i could go back (co-authored) (criminal minds/ncis/csi: ny, rossi/hotch) - It's the day of Derek's high school graduation, and Jason Gideon is standing at the bottom of the porch steps, trying not to hope.

5. Do you respond to comments? I do my absolute best (sometimes sadly spoons :/) but I appreciate every single one of my kind comments.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I think it might be Hope Deferred Maketh Something which features Jason Gideon/Toby Ziegler, an apocalypse set in a diner in New York (I actually think the larger world is hopeful but these characters specific corner of the apocalypse is Very Much Not).

Oh no wait also In Pardoning That We Are Pardoned which is a Spooks fic in which a certain episode The Thing Is Real.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Hi Tudors OT3 Verse. Just in general. It’s not that there’s a conflict free path but it’s very very much a happy ending.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Very little but I have, yes and I will be honest it did get to me. And I am still working through it but moderating comments has helped a lot. And it was honestly barely anything compared to what so many people have to deal with.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yes and also kind of no. I used to write it more and then uh, Trauma Brain. I can’t have sex because of CPTSD reasons and apparently writing sex is also triggering except sometimes the fictional people (or the fictional representations of fictional depictions of historical people) still do in fact have sex and so I write it. But it’s Weird (I think I do okay for never having had consensual sex though).

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? I think I actually write more fusion AUs than crossovers in some ways but I have in fact written a Sherlock-L&O: UK-Thick Of It-Pundit RPF-Modern Tudors-Criminal Minds Multiverse cc @bibliothekara

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I was going to say I have but I actually don’t know/recall for sure so I’m going to say no. I have had podfic made of my fic though which is So Cool. (I would be delighted if anyone wanted to translate though).

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I have! Fantastic experience. Also just tossing AUs/ideas back and forth in general is So Much Fun and one thing I really loved about LJ fandom.

14. What's your all time favorite ship? I mean there’s Faramir/Eowyn my beloveds.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Into The Fire (The Tudors Scarlet Pimpernel AU). It’s going to get so dark and I’m not sure I actually want to go there because a bunch of people are going to die.

16. What are your writing strengths? Characters and like, description and emotion.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Dialogue.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I’d want to double check really carefully with someone who actually speaks the language in question (I’m currently checking about thou/thy formal versus intimate usage and that’s for English which I speak) before I did.

19. First fandom you wrote for? The first fandom I published fic for was The Bill. It was, perhaps not surprisingly angst and whump centric (before I knew what that was but) and may survive somewhere on the internet via the Wayback Machine.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Several:

With Snow Far Below (Band of Brothers, Roe/Renee) - Renee thinks in terms of snow and chocolate

Monuments, Historical & Contemporary (Criminal Minds/Pundit RPF, ensemble) - How they could build statues and memorials and think that by paying homage after the fact, they were doing an honor.

I Am A Princess On The Way To My Throne (Skyfall 2012, Severine) -Severine. And the way it could have been (written because aspects of her story are mine and I unashamedly wanted a different ending for her)

Such A Time As This (Tudors, Anne Boleyn) - "You have come to your royal position for such a time as this" or a retelling of the story of Queen Esther with Anne Boleyn as a Mizrahi Jewish lady.

We Rise Together (TWW, CJ Cregg) - CJ was kidnapped, not Zoey.

Once I Fall In Love (It’s Forever) (Kushiels Legacy, Phedre and Delaunay) - She loved him as she did me. The realisation had come suddenly, a shock [AU mini fic for Kushiel's Dart]

Karma Is My Family (Grishaverse, Inej) - Inej smiles at her friends who are her family, warm and full of love. Smiles at her husband, who has never possessed her or owned her - has never thought of their love that way - only as two hearts shared. [Inej and her power, her kindness, her love and the way karma comes for Tante Heleen]

Rewrite The Stars (Tudors, Anne/Henry/Thomas) - In another world this is how it might have gone between the three of them. The story of how the love between three extraordinary people change the world for the better and made it the kindest. The story of a fight for a fairytale. [An expanded version of the Tudors OT3 verse fic Rewrite The Stars]

Tagging: If you want to (and if you want to do consider yourself tagged): @bessemerprocess @endoftheworldhere @unseenacademic @emilykaldwen @shes-a-voodoo-child @onekisstotakewithme @claudiajcregg @holy-ships-x-red-lips @quillington @theladyelizabeth @naurielrochnur @eidetictelekinetic @dr-dendritic-trees @boleynecklace @nocompromise-noregrets @herawell @sarking

[beardedmrbean]

[Huey zoomer anon]

Due to recent events I been pondering…

Why do the Japanese like hip-hop so much? Sorry I’m African American and such music was usually look down upon in the west…

Okay yes it got popular and you was there during the hip hop boom

Also I barely like modern hip hop music, ugh so commercialize. (Also some fuckers forgot our R&B, Jazz, and yes country roots, no we never left it…as many outkast tracks play with that)

Yes I know hip hop is very mainstream now, and Japan loves American culture. But shocked that Hip Hop was able to get such a footing in Japan given the less than “noble” roots.

They also like jazz too….Im very confused, like any good resources on the culture exchange? I wonder how many 90’s and 00’s was shocked by a lot Asian hip hop fans

Sorry I tend to go “wut” with so many Asian countries like hip hop, rap, jazz, and other heavily black American influences music given my country came from you know slavery, Jim Crow segregation, the ghetto, nothing interesting for cultures that came from kingdoms, clans, empires, and such vs my a little over 400 years old post feudal era culture

Perhaps you can find articles for it? I keeping going “why do these cultures and countries like my culture music? Isn��t black American culture too poor and young for them?”

Very confusing to me

Yes I know hip hop is very mainstream now, and Japan loves American culture. But shocked that Hip Hop was able to get such a footing in Japan given the less than “noble” roots.

It's gone global, if nothing else it's a good way to practice your english which is the basic default language round the world at this point, not sure if that actually plays in at all or not tho.

Sorry I tend to go “wut” with so many Asian countries like hip hop, rap, jazz, and other heavily black American influences music given my country came from you know slavery, Jim Crow segregation, the ghetto, nothing interesting for cultures that came from kingdoms, clans, empires, and such vs my a little over 400 years old post feudal era culture

Spitballing a theory, it was a tightly controlled rigid society with a lot of conformity for centuries, then all of a sudden western culture showed up and folks realized they could do something different.

Perhaps you can find articles for it? I keeping going “why do these cultures and countries like my culture music? Isn’t black American culture too poor and young for them?”

I'll see if I can find anything that goes into this, curious to see if my theories are anywhere near the mark.

There's several of these articles, one of the common themes brought up is cruise ships coming to port there and the bands that were the entertainment might go into town and play a gig or something.

Got seen as a thing that well to do people listened to because they were the ones that could afford to go on cruises too, the Japanese folks were also going on cruises and it was jazz playing on those as well, so they were exposed that way.

Also looks like since the Philippines was a US territory and jazz was spreading there through the US service-members bringing it with them and it started to morph to fit their style there.

Westernization is a big thing in there too.

Big in Japan: A History of Jazz in the Land of the Rising Sun, Part 1

Link to part 2 is at the top of the article this one is much more in depth.

Japanese hip hop - Wikipedia

Although rather informal and small scale, the early days of Japanese hip hop provide the history for the emergence of the cultural movement. Early hip hop was not led by corporate interests, but rather was largely ignored by large record companies and performance venues. In this respect, Japanese hip-hop offers a representation of cultural globalization, as it expanded despite criticism on the part of record companies and major media outlets. The history shows that certain kinds of cultural exchange are not initiated through cultural understanding, but instead from some interaction that can incite a desire to learn, to participate, and to contribute individuality. In Japan, this motivation to represent individuality was breakdancing, which was one of the leading edges of hip-hop at the time. _________________

That's a lot wordier than I would have gone with, but it covers thing better too.

Looks like it caught on for a lot of the same reasons it caught on here.

Most of the other pieces I looked at follow the same reasoning.

Looks like I wasn't totally wrong not seeing anything about the practicing english bit, but that was one I was at least partly joking about.

[pricklypear1997]

Second post about AUs:

Is it just me or did the author of Shadow and Bone, just pick a completely random real world location to adapt her story from? It’s supposed to take place in some alternate version of Russia, but there’s hardly anything Russian about it other than the ethnic descriptions for the characters, but only in the books… there’s some vague political and cultural parallels but it’s so bad that the author didn’t even bother to research something so simple such as Slavic naming conventions… it should be Alina Starkova NOT Starkov. Barely any of the show characters are even Eastern European. I know there’s a Bulgarian actor, but literally everyone else is British, American, and just incredibly racially diverse for no reason at all. I don’t even remember if this school or military training program that Alina and co are in is an international school/organization or whatever, but it literally makes no sense that there’s barely any real Russian or Slavic representation at all, and that it looks more like an urban American population than that of any Eastern European nation. I get the six of crow aren’t tied to any one specific country, so I’m not talking about that. Just the fact that it’s really sad and makes me angry that east euros get really bad and inaccurate representation or we’re just seen as criminals and mafia, nothing more. We should do more to represent ourselves in media and not rely on some ignorant American media company to “represent” us, but regardless, it still pisses me off. Like why even pick countries like ours if the majority of westerners do not even give a rat’s ass about us or deliberately hate us and spread anti Slavic nonsense.

People like what they like, but it just makes me sad that Hollywood has all this money and shit, but they don’t even bother to do proper research about a culture, and on top of that make pointless diversity hires and call it representation while also completely misrepresenting the people that this series is supposed to show in the first place. Hollywood isn’t the only thing at fault here too. Ignorant people like the author who just don’t do any research. I’m so so tired of it. We’re not asking you to try to represent us, literally not a soul is asking the west to represent us but if you do it, have the decency to do it in a respectful manner…

At least with ASOIAF, Martin stayed grounded to what he understands of history. Yes, I genuinely believe the north could be seen as Eastern European, combined with some Celtic ( Scottish) inspirations, but Martin leaves it generally open for the viewer to understand that Westeros is based off of Europe in a more generic but still incredibly relatable way without offending any ethnic group from Europe. Dorne could be seen as Spanish specifically during the Arab invasions, but it’s honestly its own thing, the characters don’t even have Spanish or Arab names. Their clothes aren’t really even described as typical to Spanish or North African cultures. They just have vague surface level similarities, unlike the world of shadow and bone which seems to rely too much on the REAL Russia as a inspiration while at the same time just being incredibly inaccurate which sounds ridiculous and ironic but it’s true. Shadow and bone is nothing but a failed attempt of an alternate reality.

[fakeoldmanfucker]

oh i'd love to hear about the reason why you side with zuck 100% in the whole saverin and zuck story since i don't have access to the book you mentioned too, i know zuck said sth about saverin didn't do his job right and postponed signing papers or sth which harm facebook development and zuck did talk to moskovitz about diluting saverin shares, unlike the film, i haven't read the book ben merzich wrote about facebook with saverin cosultant yet (i have limited english reading comprehension) so idk how much of its content was in the film, but still saverin should thank the film for white-washing his image because people really think zuck was always the bad guy but in reality it just made him (saverin) look like a petty person because without him facebook would still do fine and till today his biggest achievement is still facebook co-founder lol, i think people who really like eduardo in film should not search about what happened irl because yeah it would taint your image of him 😂 i have to distinguish between the film and irl version by using first name (for film) and last name (for irl) sorry for rambling again, thanks in advance if you reply this ask!

"saverin didn't do his job right" oh that is certainly one way of putting it lmao

A more accurate representation would be that Saverin got way too power-hungry for his own good and basically froze Facebook's assets. That scene in The Social Network where Eduardo freezes the account, prompting Mark to call him, implying that the account was only frozen for a little while? In reality, that lasted for months. It was a stand-off between Saverin, who wanted more stake in the company and more power, even though he was barely helping the company and was on the east coast, and Mark, who was working on Facebook 24/7. Saverin didn't just want more power, he wanted to be CEO. This from a man who had only been to the offices a few times, and when he did do something for Facebook, he usually called his dad first to ask what he should do. No I'm not even exaggerating; that's where a lot of the delays came from. I think Mark, and the rest of the team, thought Saverin was immature; they were going all-in on this company, and Saverin was working at an internship (no he didn't quit it like they say in the film) all the way across the country and wouldn't respond to Mark's emails for days or weeks at a time.

Another thing that strikes me as funny is that, if Saverin had been a little less power-hungry, more willing to compromise and be a team player, he could've succeeded in the company. Chris Hughes went back to Harvard after that first summer, but he still stayed close to the team and, by the time of his senior year, was flying out to the west coast every two weeks. Saverin could've had both, if he'd been a little bit more patient. But instead he went for an unstable grab at CEO (truly, I Truly cannot comprehend what he was thinking, it is so phenomenally stupid), and Mark froze him out. Saverin hadn't been contributing to the company! When Saverin froze the account, Mark (as well as Dustin) had to take out loans just to keep the lights on, literally. During a time when the servers going down would've been instant death for the company...I think Mark's reaction was justified.

The craziest thing to me is...Saverin doesn't even need to rest on his laurels. Sure, Facebook will be the biggest thing he's ever been a part of, but his venture capital firm B Capital isn't doing too badly! They have offices all over the world and they're investing in a ton of different sectors. He doesn't need to keep returning to Facebook, and yet he does.

I love film-Eduardo as much as the next person. He's a really compelling character and Andrew Garfield brings a lot of life to him. I just think the film gives Saverin too much credit.

I will say, however, that Mark has definitely retroactively tried to write out Saverin from having any part in the founding of Facebook, when it's obvious to me that at one point they were really friends and Mark did really trust him. There's an account of someone talking to Zuckerberg and Saverin in the summer of 2003 about a website/company they were planning, which would become Facebook. (Note, this is before facemash or ConnectU/the Winklevii, and before Mark had even met Dustin; Mark had been planning something like Facebook for at least several months before he actively started working on it in early 2004.) I don't think Mark was ever as close to Saverin as he was with, say, Adam D'Angelo or, later, Dustin Moskovitz, but there was a genuine partnership there.

Note: I would say read The Accidental Billionaires with caution; it's almost entirely informed by Saverin's account, and while I think it's good to get that perspective, it is very biased. If you want a personal narrative about Facebook, though one taking place a little bit after the founding, I would point you to The Boy Kings by Katherine Losse. This one still has bias, because Kate worked at Facebook and has her own views on things, but she has a little bit more perspective than someone so closely wrapped up in the dynamics.

[hussyknee]

Being a fan of Harry Potter is not transphobic. Buying merch and giving JKR money is. But simply being a fan of the characters you grew up with and loved and making fanworks for them and pirating the media has nothing whatsoever to do with systemic transphobia, any more than loving any other problematic media means you endorse either the creators or its messages.

I'm not invested in HP anymore but those books fucking saved my life as an abused neurodivergent kid. I know other trans and ND who still love it and write fic and art. My sister-in-law is kind and decent and not terminally online; she has no idea this puritannical push to expunge HP from cultural consciousness exists. She raised her kids on those books because she loved them as a kid, while teaching them to respect trans and gay people in a country where homosexuality is still criminalised and trans people can barely exist in public. My friend is a doctor who meticulously asks for her patients pronouns when it gets her weird looks from her colleagues. She made a Hogwarts letter for her little cousin who managed to escaped her Dad's abuse with her Mum. My trans autistic friend who is actively suicidal finds escape in writing HP fic.

There are millions people in the world like this, and you can't stamp them out and pillory them because they consume media made by a problematic creator. Protestant capitalism and consumerism has given you an especial kind of brainrot to project individual consumption and preference onto systems of oppression. This is what I mean by the suffocating whiteness of current leftism. All children of the Global South grow up on books written by people who supported colonization. Black people have dealt with the West's cultural cop show fixation forever. Native people have had to allow for the genre of Westerns. Western media and its institutions are saturated with racism and ableism; the majority of it completely invisible to you. People of color and disabled people simply have to navigate it how we can, so we can be fans of anything. You got Lin Manuel Miranda uncancelled because y'all loved Encanto; according to you the choices are either robbing Hispanic kids of representation and a story they love or supporting the US colonial violence of Puerto Rico.

You cannot take out your beef with artists and creators out on people who love the art they create. Social justice has absolutely nothing to do with moral policing. It's cruel, destructive and actively counter-productive. You're conditioning yourself to see danger and enemies where there are none, in a world that already isolates the vulnerable. You're just trying to hurt whoever you can reach to make yourself feel better, and whoever you can reach is other marginalized people.

[iholdhandswithcosmicentities]

Mizuki and Ambiguity

i know first hand just how important queer rep is in media, especially in japanese media where its even more rare than it is in the west. transmasc rep is after all, virtually non-existent in almost any media... i know how desperate people can get for that rep as well, with how much shipping and headcanons have burrowed their home within the online queer community.

HOWEVER, the way people have been going about the representation that mizuki brings to project sekai is...incredibly questionable. it’s very clear that the whole thing is run by a bunch of teenagers on tiktok and twitter, and that’s quite the opposite of a compliment. They’re clawing at this rep with their bare, grubby little chronically-online fingers, and by doing so COMPLETELY dodging the whole point of mizuki as a character.

mizuki’s gender being unknown is 100% a marketing tactic, almost purely for the debate and excitement that comes with it. they want us to argue about it, they want us to think up ideas for what mizuki’s secret could be. and this is exactly why only gender-neutral language is used for mizuki, and while their only canon pronoun is ‘boku’, they/them is used to replace this neutral language, since the language structure wouldn’t make sense in english without pronouns (any translations of she/her in the english version are mistranslations, some people assume that certain characters misgender mizuki on accident or that mizuki uses they/she pronouns, but this isn’t true) because using he or she would completely ruin the secret from the start. this also causes people to assume mizuki is canonically non-binary, which is also not true. or well, we don’t know. mizuki uses they/them because their gender is unknown, not because they canonically use they/them pronouns.

japanese media has a knack for making accidentally (or sometimes purposely, idk) queer-coded characters without actually making them queer. this is seen most commonly with ‘trap’ characters, which are essentially biological boys, who identify as boys, but who look or appear to be a girl. sometimes a gender-related issue is hinted, but other times it’s just them choosing how they present themselves. this can cause a lot of confusion with exactly who is meant to be queer-coded and who isn’t, especially because some of these characters don’t exactly correct people when they misgender them (Ex. chihiro fujisaki and luka urushibara who are often headcanoned as transfem/MTF do this) and some people get REALLY MAD if you just stick with calling them boys. coding is super finicky in this sense, especially with how fluid and confusing gender tends to be even in real life. these characters could be transfem as much as they could be boys who don’t mind being called girls, an enby who uses all pronouns, or basically any form of individual outside of the stereotypical binary, whether they’re actually queer or not.

and now we come full circle back to mizuki akiyama from project sekai. a character who initially looks like a girl, but has no gendered language used on them, has multiple events focusing them dealing with a mysterious identity related issue that is never outright explained, and some ‘secret’ that they keep from the rest of their groupmates. from backstory cutscenes, which have them appearing more masculine in presentation, its pretty safe to assume that they’re biologically male. this is a widely agreed fact, but the issue arises with their gender identity. the most common headcanon is that mizuki is transfem, either non-binary or MTF, and canonically uses they/them pronouns. the existence of non-binary characters who aren’t some aliens or robots is already VERY rare in anime, even more so than gender-conforming trans characters are; it is highly unlikely that they’d have a transfem character who chooses to use they/them, as the concept of gender ≠ pronouns is fairly new to the public in general. In fact, I’ve only ever seen this ONCE in any form of media, in a manga called Love Me for Who I Am, which is an explicitly queer story surrounding multiple trans characters, including the main love interest, who is transfem, biologically male and presenting completely feminine, AND uses they/them pronouns, insisting multiple times that they don’t feel like they fit either side of the gender binary.

japanese media kind of dances around the idea of trans people, but dips into it just enough for there to be somewhat well-known trans characters in multiple mainstream anime, games or manga. grell from black butler, magne from my hero academia, arashi from ensemble stars, alluka from hunter x hunter etc. now this representation isn’t really good by any means, a lot of it played for a gag type thing or just not really developed, and all of them are misgendered at some point by other characters. so while its not very good representation, transfem rep does very well exist in anime. the common thing to happen with this characters is one of two things. 1. they or others close to them refer to them by their preferred pronouns from the beginning, and we only find out they’re trans because of separate characters misgendering them at some point. or 2. they start out pre-transition and we witness them do some form of ‘coming out’.

mizuki is a very special case, because they don’t actually fit into either of these categories. 1. mizuki isn’t referred to by any pronouns from the beginning (even in their backstory scenes, no gendered-language is used) and 2. if mizuki is trans, they would’ve started out post-transition and in the closet. i’m sure this has happened somewhere but i truthfully have never seen it.

while it is, again, definitely a marketing tactic, i do believe that mizuki does have a purpose. project sekai is a silly little rhythm game, but it goes over a lot of serious topics that surround teenage life. like any other character in project sekai, mizuki is supposed to be relatable. nightcord as a whole is a huuuge progressive step for representation of mental health, which is also a very taboo thing in japan, they even canonically use discord of all things. nightcord represents the mentally ill part of teenagehood, the rep for kids with anxiety, depression, or any other disorders. the part that mizuki plays is for people who are outcasted from society for being different in the way they present. mizuki is for the people who think matching is overrated, mizuki is for the people who can express who they are with the way they dress because they can’t do it with words, mizuki is for the transfems, the transmascs, the enbies, mizuki is for the boys who like dresses and the girls who like suits, mizuki is for the people that refuse to look how society insists they should look.

mizuki’s gender really doesn’t matter that much. whether they end up a girl or a boy or anything in between. like any piece of media, anything can have multiple interpretations from many different, funky little human brains. because that’s the thing with the unknown, is that people will always try to fill that space up with something. and if your conclusion is that mizuki is non-binary? awesome! you think mizuki is MTF? that’s lovely! you think they’re a boy who simply likes being cute? that’s great also! even if you think mizuki is transmasc, feeling masculine on the inside doesn’t always mean being masculine on the outside too! they, he, she? all fine!

mizuki is just mizuki, and i think that’s a wonderful sentiment on its own.

[enemymine2000]

From the little comments I’ve seen on other plattforms, I guess it’s an advantage not to have been into any kind of Batman or DC fandom before Gotham Knights.

I mean, I’ve got a passing familiarity with Gotham and the caped crusader, but my contact always has been limited. I grew up on Adam West’s Batman, the right kind of Batman for a child under ten in the 1980s, before Michael Keaton gave the character his slightly darker spin. Then came the entire neon-Gotham of the 1990s, before it got really dark with Christian Bale. It’s fair to say, that he was not my Batman.

Don’t get me wrong I loved The Dark Knight, because who didn’t. But I watched it for Heath Ledger not for Christian Bale.

I haven’t seen anything DC since, to my knowledge. Just not my sandbox to play in.

But now I consciously made the choice to watch Gotham Knights. For Misha Collins. Because well, that’s what you do.

And I liked it. Unlike the DC fanboys in aforementioned comments. Maybe it’s because I don’t know the source material. Maybe it’s because I barely care about all things DC. Maybe because I actually watched the acting, the setting, the story, instead of hoping for some copy and paste from some comics or a small screen version of something big screen.

Yes, the wig of Joker’s daughter was weird at first. But then she’s Joker’s daughter and I believe her to be.

Turner was too slick at first, but wasn’t he supposed to be?

Oh, there was too much representation for your liking? Too bad, get over it. We’re here, we’re queer, and all representation matters.

So, what I’m trying to say, I will keep watching. And I will hate to have to hate Misha’s Harvey Dent eventually. But I will, because damn he made me forget all about Castiel with the first broken uttering of “Bruce”.

[synapticabyss]

(this)

"I was kidnapped by a space monster giant today."

Sara, usually the chipper and very active girl, sounded matter-of-fact. Like she was stating something as true as the sky being blue.

She was ignoring the plate of meatballs and potatoes placed in front of her. Typically her favorite dish, but now being given less than zero amounts of attention as she stared at her friend, waiting for a reaction.

"Oh yeah?" Came the only response from her friend, sitting opposite to Sara. He'd never heard her yap about something like this before. The only "monsters" Sara ever yapped about were butterflies and centipedes. The rare frog or two at times. All quite terrestrial and decidedly not gigantic.

Immediately after the friend showed even slightest interest in what Sara had just stated, she pulled out a somewhat crude drawing like she was a cowboy doing the fastest draw in the west, and placed it on the table for showcase. The drawing illustrated a small representation of Sara being held by a massive, yellow-toothed creature with black eyes, two dots of bright green acting as pupils. The thing must've been too big to draw on the paper since it cut off at the shoulders.

Yeah... definitely not any kind of typical insect Sara would yap about.

Perhaps one of the stranger parts was that the friend got the feeling that this creature was humanoid. Sara had even drawn it with five fingers, and a tone of skin on those bare hands that you'd see on any average stranger you'd walk by on the streets.

Maybe this had something to do with that giant disembodied hand attack that had happened down a few blocks.

[cuchufletapl]

One of these days I'd like to write about the experience of growing up queer in the West as an otaku and a fan of Japanese BL/GL, as opposed to growing up queer in the West and having barely any contact with queer media until late teenage years/young adulthood (because that's when queer characters started entering the mainstream in western productions).

I just see a difference in the way that some of my peers talk about queer representation in media — and in particular about feeling unseen by media throughout most of their lives — to what my own experience was. And I get the feeling this is may be the key difference.

[dadoodler25]

You know I kinda now realise how badly the PS5 flopped

Not only due to scalpers, but also because holy shit this thing has no games

The PS5's main library, consists of just remakes and remasters, very few original games. See, this wouldn't be that much of a problem, if it wasn't for two things:

A: Most of these games are remakes/remasters of games that recent like the The Last Of Us 2 and 1

B: THE PS5 IS BACKWARDS COMPATABLE WITH THE PS4. There's no reason to buy these remasters if you have the game on PS4, and can just play it on PS5 without spending anymore.

Plus with how most games on PS5 can also be played on PS4, the same problem, you don't need a PS5 if you want to play Sackboy: A New Adventure, of Horizon Forbidden West. Just use the PS4 you already have!

And is there really much of a reason to buy the PS5 now? Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart is an excellent game that took advantage of the PS5 tech, but now that it's on PC, there's no point, just buy it on your gaming PC. Same with Forbidden West, and God Of War. If Sony kept these exclusive to PS5, then maybe the sales could've been better, but no.

Plus, it feels like Sony barely has any other franchises now. God Of War, Horizon, Last Of Us, good franchises, but the reason why the Nintendo Switch is so successful is because it has several other franchises.

Mario, the Legend Of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Pikmin, Pokemon, Smash Bros, all the other Mario-eccentric games, Arms, Splatoon, Kirby, Animal Crossing, Metroid and Fire Emblem, all getting excellent games on the Switch, that stayed on the Switch only. Even if some franchises got less representation then others, the sheer amount of variety of Nintendo-Exclusive games is far more appealing then anything the PS5 had.

Alright, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 had massive hype, but nowhere comparable to The Legend Of Zelda Tears of Kingdom and Breath Of Wild, or Super Mario Bros Wonder, or Smash Brothers, Kirby and the Forgotten Land.

All PS5 games feel the same, with no distinct style besides Astro's Playroom, Sackboy, Ratchet and Clank, with the last two being playable on other platforms.

[ramblingdrunkenknight]

[ A continuation/answer to this post by dear @emmondsokolov ] // In an undisclosed part of the Black Shroud //

It had been a few days since old Godefroy sent Ryker out to find his pen pal, he was slowly but surely growing impatient, even suspecting that Ryker had simply ignored the task he was given and went back to his regular duty, suffice to say, Mephiston was relieved to find a letter smelling of lavender at the drop off point when he visited it during his early morning walk.

"Hah, I still can not believe I didn't figure it out until I was already gone." he chuckled to himself, no one but a small Antelope around to hear it. Any other day he would continue his walk after having checked the drop off point, but this was not any other day, the thought of finally returning made him rush back to the hideout so he could set his plans into motion.

It had only been a week since he decided it was time for him to stop running and make up with all the people he left behind so recklessly, for Mephiston though, it felt like an eternity.

Arriving back at the hideout, the old geezer threw off his coat, one of the few things he took with him as he left home, and sat down on the pieces of cloth he called a bed, lighting up a candle to brighten up the area as he was settling down, having lost his glasses at some point within the last few months, he needed all the light he could get to read and write comfortably.

"Now then, dear Marloix, let's see if you're the kind of man I hope you to be." he said while opening up the letter, almost expecting someone to answer. Having gone ahead to read the letter with a kind of excitement he hadn't felt for a long time, Mephiston had fully expected his pen pal to ask for some kind of proof that he was really the old geezer, and Marloix did not disappoint, after all Ryker never tended to give off a feeling of trustworthiness.

Godefroy didn't plan on delaying it any further though, so he took out his notebook, feather and ink pot, adjusted the light, and got to writing.

'My dearest Patron,

indeed it has been what feels like ages, I couldn't blame you if you forgot your dear old barkeep altogether. Now, I cannot overstate enough how much I would love to have the good old pen pal exchanges we used to have once again, but I am afraid business will have to come first, before we can once again indulge in such pleasantries.

I remember the line all to clearly, though I must confess that before I concluded you to be my partner in crime, the crime being exchanging letters, I had set my eyes on Harlowe Hornbeam and may have let that oh so poetic line come his way, I apologize if that caused any trouble for you.

"Deep waters invite a thousand deaths."

I hope that is enough proof for you my friend, I'm putting a lot of faith in you here. Though the Shroud is a lovely place, I do miss Coerthas, I will move my camp into the Central Highlands, when you are ready to meet up with me, find me on the cliff overlooking the city to the west of Steel Vigil, I will draw a crude representation on how you would find it on a map on the back of this letter.

If you decide not to help me, I wish you the best of luck with whatever troubles you have found yourself in, dear friend. However if you do decide to help me, well, see you in Coerthas.

Signed, Mephiston Godefroy'

/ Upon turning the letter around, a drawing can be found /

As he put the feather down, he sighed, Mephiston barely knew Marloix and was unsure if this entire ordeal was a good idea, but something told him that choosing Sir Beraskia to help with this was the right choice, and afterall, he had nothing to lose. After the ink had dried, he started gathering everything he needed for his journey, he could send off the letter somewhere along the way to waste as little time as possible, and perhaps dear old Mephiston was also in a hurry because he was excited to finally go back to Coerthas, to finally go back home.

[leam1983]

On Wallpaper Engine

Or, as I like to call it, the premier hub for would-be creators who care more about their XML and their RGB integration than they do for content laws.

Ye Gods, the art theft that's on there is insane! I've been going through my old wallpaper rotation favorites with a more critical eye, and most, if not all of them involve art ripped from someplace else. What doesn't is the newer crop of Midjourney-sourced wallpapers. I've found one where someone looked at the dodgiest representation of Lovecraft's Herbert West to ever be conceived, went "Eh, s'good enough!" and went nuts adding flickering lighting effects and deformation-based animations.

I managed to find the creator of said wallpaper on Steam, who barely speaks English, and mentioned that he'd probably be better off adding a Creative Commons license attributing the original art to Midjourney, so artists whose work Midjourney's content actually derives from know that no-one who's factually alive or able to seek profit is claiming ownership of it.

As to how I could tell; Midjourney probably received a prompt seed that went something along the lines of "Doctor Herbert West in his laboratory, with a heated plate and vials and syringes full of glowing green liquid" and added the usual superlatives. Featured on Artstation, yadda yadda.

Welp, the end result consists of:

West's single visible hand sporting six fingers;

His glasses being unevenly shaped;

His hair is an unidentifiable glob;

None of the labels on his lab coat or his specimen jars are even remotely legible, and Midjourney spawned several more than was strictly necessary;

West's heated table has gobs of... something resting onto it, but no amount of upscaling actually brings it close to what you'd imagine, which is likely to be twitching gobbets of human flesh;

He's inexplicably wearing both a necktie and bowtie.

In other offenders, someone's ripped Dan Luvisi's Last Man Standing project and blown out their character art for HEX, some sort of in-universe demiurge, into a full-screen animated wallpaper. While it's an awesome piece in its own right, I don't have any certainty that anyone's asked Luvisi for any permission to do so.

There's stills from movies re-animated, paintings sourced from DeviantART and then given a cheap do-over with bokeh effects, unspecified 4K footage compressed and rendered into a loop - all sorts of fun things that both speak to a desire to have our wallpapers not be so bland as they usually are, but at the least amount of legal effort possible.

I've tried to find wallpaper creators that do go the tiniest of extra mile and that do indeed use legal redistributables or duty-free content, but there's absolutely nothing on offer.

Oh, but if you're looking for a Lolicon waifu, however, then you've got oodles of content to parse.

It's somewhat disheartening, to be honest.