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writingwithcolor · 4 months

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How do I respectfully discuss the topic of diversity with a co-author, as well as assigning a race to an “ambiguous” character?

Anonymous asked:

My co-author and I, for context, are both white and in highschool. For the main cast of our story, each of us ended up creating three characters. All three of her characters were white. Two of mine were white as well, alongside one character who is ambiguously brown-skinned. Do you have any advice on respectfully bringing up the subject of diversity to a co-author, even if it means potentially changing our established characters? Additionally, do you have any advice on retroactively assigning a race/culture to a character? I now understand after reading this blog that “ambiguously brown” characters should be avoided, but I did not when initially creating him. I worry that I could fall into stereotypes— while portrayed positively, he’s somewhat of a “nerd” archetype. But I don’t want to whitewash him either.

“Hey, why’d you think we made a mostly all-white cast?”

In other words: Just be normal about it. As you yourself note, you also didn’t exactly put a great deal of thought into the racial/ ethnic identity for your single brown character either, so it’s not just about your writing partner. This is about how you guys like to create as a team, and what sources of inspiration you both tend to gravitate towards. If a pair of high school students who write together can’t have a chill conversation about the races of the characters they are creating, then I’d worry more for their dynamic as a creative team. Discussions of race are only as weird and awkward as people decide to make them, and that’s often framed by the baggage each person is bringing into the conversation.

Whether or not you change the characters is up to you.

“Diversity is a marathon, not a sprint!”

Write diverse characters when and because you want to. I think the push for diversity is best when it’s self-motivated. Strangers on the internet telling you to do something is definitely not the reason to do it. I’ll note the same applies IRL. Otherwise, you’re changing your behavior for the sake of peer pressure. Writing groups on the internet like our blog do not exist to sit in judgment of your work. These are venues to discuss, critique and receive feedback, but the final choice always rests with you.

There’s not enough info for me to tell if the experience of whiteness is so intrinsic to your characters that changing their race will alter them greatly. I would argue the same for gender and sexual identity. Sometimes, changing dimensions of a character’s identity alters a lot about who they are. Other times, particularly if the character is not thoroughly fleshed out, changing their race only adds to their characterization. Only you can say which scenario applies here.

Other mods have written on how to handle your dilemma of “white as default” in an earlier post available here. Please explore our #POC Profiles for more inspiration.

Your third paragraph can be answered by re-reading all 3 sections of the FAQ and exploring our archives using the tags.

Marika.

#creator responsibility #white #white as default #characters #diversity #asks #representation #writeblr

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fantastic-nonsense · 2 years

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While you are digging into batfam lore, could you perhaps help explain what the batkids' legal names all are? Fanfiction has messed me all up. Did any of them actually legally take Wayne as their last name? I see it most often with Tim (i.e. Timothy Drake-Wayne) and Cass (i.e. Cassandra Wayne) but I haven't read any comics that I recall that actually called them that.

Sure! A quick rundown of who's actually part of the Wayne family:

Wayne family: Dick, Jason, Tim, and Cass were all legally adopted at one point or another in the post-Crisis universe (post-reboot is....complicated. Dick, Jason, and Tim are all once again adopted after a long series of retcons; Cass's status is still unknown). Damian is Bruce's biological son.

NOT Wayne family: Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown, Helena Bertinelli, any members of the Fox family (Luke, Tam, Tiffany, Jace, etc), Harper Row, etc.

Duke is a complicated case; he was Bruce's temporary foster son for a year before moving in with his cousin Jay, who now has custody of him. He's...sort of considered Wayne family, in that at least Jason and Tim consider him to be sort of their brother, but he wasn't adopted and no longer lives with Bruce.

Other: Kate and Bette Kane, who are Bruce's cousins and part of the Kane family.

As for legal last names and who actually calls themselves Waynes:

Damian's legal last name is Wayne. The al Ghuls tend to call him "Damian al Ghul" when he's with them, but legally his last name is Wayne; it's also the name Damian goes by UNLESS he's specifically attempting to leverage the al Ghul name amongst his family or the League of Assassins.

Dick continues to go by and think of himself as "Richard John Grayson" even after being adopted, though he explicitly calls himself Bruce's adopted son in several arcs after his adoption happens. You can take your pick of reasons why this might be (and there's quite a few to choose from, mostly connected to Dick's love for his bio parents and already being an established adult when Bruce adopted him), but Grayson was and remains his legal last name.

Jason canonically remained "Jason Peter Todd" after his adoption, per his death certificate:

Jason's death certificate, naming him as "Jason Peter Todd." -Batman Annual #25 (2006)

He was also "Jason Todd" to the general public; it's what people call him when they talk about him both before and after his death. The Red Hood and the Outlaws Rebirth comic (specifically RHATO #33) confirms that this is the case in the post-Flashpoint universe as well. However, there's a pretty reasonable canon foundation to assume that had Jason's adoption not happened in the 80s and had writers not wanted to complicate things, he probably would have chosen to hyphenate and become Jason Todd-Wayne, based largely on a) Jason's relationship with Willis Todd and b) Bruce and Jason's relationship before his death.

We simply don't know what Cass did. Cass was adopted off-panel in the vague period in between Batman RIP and Final Crisis, but Bruce's death threw everything up into the air; Cass was then promptly put on a bus and shipped out to Hong Kong for the duration of the Reborn era, and since she shows up in a grand total of 8 comics during that time we just don't get enough information to make a judgement call about her last name. Her two appearances in Tim's Red Robin book still call her Cassandra Cain, but it's unclear whether Fabian Nicieza, the writer, even knew her adoption had happened:

"Cassandra Cain, former Batgirl, remains one of the most dangerous fighters on the planet..." /// "Cassandra Cain, aka The Black Bat, Hong Kong operative for Batman, Inc." -Red Robin #17 & #25

Since Cass never had much of a public identity to speak of in the first place (and for a long time didn't even want one), it's super ambiguous what her legal status is and what last name she holds post-adoption. It's pretty reasonable to assume she becomes Cassandra Wayne, though, and it's also my personal preference. Though her relationship with David Cain is complicated, she doesn't hold much attachment to him as a father; likewise, there's really no reason for her not to take on the Wayne name given her attachment to Bruce.

Tim is the complicated one here, mostly because his adoption was such A Production™. Tim was formally adopted about a year in-universe after the events of Identity Crisis (when Tim’s dad was killed by Captain Boomerang). The adoption was pretty high-profile; Tim and Bruce even sat for an interview about it:

From 2007-2011, he's called Tim Drake and Tim Wayne (and occasionally Tim Drake-Wayne) pretty interchangably depending on the writer and situation. His legal name is probably Tim Drake-Wayne, though it's actually ambiguous. He tends to go by Tim Wayne in public while usually referring to himself as Tim Drake in private:

"And by the way, it's Wayne when I want a favor or a table at Bartese, and it's Drake when I look in the mirror." -Red Robin #15

"A question for Mr. Wayne--" /// "Reporting live from the reopening of the Newton Community Gym where Tim Wayne is about to address the crowd." -Red Robin #14 and 15

Post-Flashpoint, that adoption was erased and Bruce and Tim’s relationship was very strained; in the Rebirth era, his adoption was implied to be canon again in both Tynion’s Detective Comics run and King's Batman run, but we didn’t get confirmation until Infinite Frontier and Urban Legends, where Tim is once again explicitly adopted and occasionally called Tim Wayne, though he still mostly goes by and is referred to as Tim Drake:

"But just to be clear--we're not splitting the bill, Tim Wayne." -Urban Legends #4

"...and then Mr. Wayne just adopted you? Awful generous of him." -Urban Legends #4

Tim is also the only one regularly referred to in public as "Bruce's adopted son." Most of the time they're referred to as "Bruce Wayne's wards," so whether the adoptions are public knowledge or not is questionable, but their status as his wards and foster kids is not. Though they largely never lived in the Manor at the same time, they've all attended various public functions as Bruce's kids and acted on Bruce's behalf in various capacities while in the public eye.

tl;dr Tim is canonically the only one who takes the last name "Wayne" upon being adopted; he generally continues to refer to himself as Tim Drake, but canon calls him "Tim Drake," "Tim Drake-Wayne," and "Tim Wayne" pretty interchangably afterwards. Dick doesn't change his name and canonically Jason didn't either, though you could make a case that he might have hyphenated had his adoption been written in the modern era. We don't see Cass enough after her adoption to know either way; however, her existing canon relationships with Bruce and her biological family heavily support and/or imply that she probably became Cassandra Wayne.

#dc comics #batman meta #batfam meta #asks #long post #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #cassandra cain #damian wayne #tim drake meta #cassandra cain meta #dick grayson meta #jason todd meta #bruce wayne #fanon vs canon

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nerves-nebula · 2 months

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I hope this isn't an unwelcome addition re: your vent about race, but it reminds me of my own experiences.

I didn't know I was latino until I was 13. Yeah there were *very* strong "hints", what with the whole "grandparents only speak spanish with limited english", "parents can speak spanish", "we're brown (except for my mum)", & "eat spanish food at grandparents". But like. I had never heard someone say what we actually were and I was afraid it'd be racist if I assumed we were latino if we might not be. For some reason.

Hah, I remember getting kinda mad at people who (rightly) criticized the "ambiguously brown" trope in media, because it was the experience I most related to. That's what *I* was. I wasn't anything specific, I was just ambiguosly brown for most of my life.

So like. I finally asked my dad what we were and he was essentially like "haha what are you stupid or something. We're LATINO obviously, what a silly question!"

So I just went "Oh okay." And pumped the brakes on our conversation. Quickly after I realised that that wasn't enough for me. "Latino" is a rather broad category, I wanted to know what *exactly* we were.

I felt kind of stupid after that though, and I didn't want to draw attention to how stupid I was by asking a follow up question (nor did I want to talk to my dad), so I just didn't until I was 16.

I got to thinking about it again, and I realised that El Salvador had been mentioned quite a few times in regards to ~parent lore~ (I truly did not know much about my parents. I literally didn't even remember my mum had an older brother. So I'd just try to piece together their stories whenever they ranted to us about like how our other parent had ruined their life or something. Bits and pieces they'd shared with us over the years).

So I texted my dad about it (who I was thankfully far away from by then. Funnily enough this was one of our last conversations before I cut contact with him), and he said we were salvadorians 👍. So yeah.

But like. I feel so disconnected to my culture. I don't even know what our culture IS. And despite now living in a place with many latinos, I feel like I still can't get into it. Firstly because it would involve me interacting with people. But secondly (and most importantly) because I feel like interacting with latinos would just reveal to them how unlatino I am. I can't speak spanish. I know nothing about us.

One thing about it is that I feel like I have to learn Spanish before I'm allowed to try to engage. But learning a whole language takes so much time. And I don't like doing it because it reminds me that I don't already know it! And I *should*!

Oh well. Not like I could've learned it when I was younger, or in that house with my dad. I don't know why they didn't raise us bilingually. But it's not like I could've learned it when I was young either, my dad makes fun of my mum for her spanish (she spoke exclusively Spanish when she was younger, but had to learn English when she moved to the US at 8. She lost a lot of her Spanish since then), which would make me way too nervous to practice spanish and be bad at it at first with him around (he somehow didn't think that would impact us? He ended up wanting us to learn spanish, so good luck with that when you act like *that*).

Also. I keep worrying that I look white. I've always been light skinned, but until 8th grade I thought it was obvious I wasn't white?? But maybe not so. It's not like I can ask people.

In 8th grade the teacher briefly left the room and left me in charge of it (I was seen as the most responsible/trustworthy), so I made a joke about me turning out to be a dictator, to which someone joked about that being racist, to which I said "It's not racist, 'cus I'm not white" (in a manner that I *hoped* conveyed that I was *joking*, and that the joke was that poc can still definitely be racist (I mean c'mon just be around my dad, you'll see)).

And he just stared deadpan at me. I thought he confused me for white, so I kept reiterating that I wasn't, and he just stared and stared at me the whole time.

I realised later that maybe he thought I was being serious, and that was why he wasn't smiling, or maybe he just didn't think the joke was funny.

But like. I couldn't know. "Later" was actually quite a *while* later, so at that point I was already out of school at home all day, under the pretense of "homeschooling" (there was never any schooling).

I don't even know why it matters if I look white. There are plenty of latinos I know of that could pass as white, who I never doubt are latino. Ugh. I don’t know. This is an issue that could be solved by interacting with more latinos. In fact, all of these issues could be solved by hanging out with more latinos. I gotta get over myself sometime and realise that there are PLENTY of latinos who are disconnected from their culture and who don’t know spanish so it's FINE interacting with fellow latinos is FINE there's no way I can fail some sort of latino authenticity test. Whatever. Problems and solutions for later.

because I feel like interacting with latinos would just reveal to them how unlatino I am. I can't speak spanish. I know nothing about us.

hahh. sameee

This is an issue that could be solved by interacting with more latinos.

also same... UNFORTUNATE!

i getcha tho. and i also get the whole "not knowing what we are until i'm a teen" thing. ive always thought it was weird that my mom and dad know a ton about their own family histories but never really made much effort to impress it into us. EH oh well.

#nnstuff #ask

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 7 months

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hurling another enrichment pumpkin at you : any thoughts on how Secrets handles its sociopolitical themes? I haven't had the chance to check the podcast out personally so far but from what I've seen on tumblr it seems to take a much less vague approach to those themes than even Unburied did, and considering how multiple people mentioned that the podcast seems a bit rushed, do you think that affected the handling of this too?

one of the things I did really like was removing any ambiguity as to whether or not we're supposed to interpret this version of the Riddler as a Muslim Indian man, and I think it's fair to assume that by extension that this cements Bruce and Barbara as Black and Latina, respectively. I don't think any of those were really controversial opinions, especially per the fandom I see on our glorious hellsite, but the conformation is cool!

I think exploring the way that Eddie's status as a brown man would contribute to his sense of disenfranchisement and resentment for Society is interesting for sure. it's also used to enable some like... COMPELLING bastard behavior that's very specific to him as a man of color, namely misleading the GCPD to arrest some entirely unrelated Indian man that they can't tell apart from Eddie, and the bit where he's having his little tantrum re: his sister's social climbing and insinuates that she probably has a white husband/boyfriend, which is a thing Asian women are FREQUENTLY attacked for in Asian incel communities. interesting move, I applaud.

I was less impressed by how the series handled its humanization of criminals and incarcerated individuals, which I wrote about a lot on this post about the depiction of Azrael. idk, I like that the rogues look out for each other and we get to see the horrors of realizing that you're so dehumanized by society that your vicious murder becomes a meme, that's a perspective on Gotham's rogues that I feel we don't get a lot! but the series seemed to waffle pretty hard on its own stance on this, Batman seems to be operating a pretty different wavelength than he was at the end of Unburied (he's soooo much more of a cop), and I also genuinely don't know what to do with the reveal that this version of King Tut was running a sex cult, especially since literally the only person who criticized him for that was. you know. also responsible for several brutal murders.

at risk of harping on this too much it feels very strange that a series would be so invested in the humanity of villains and then also have an actual antagonist who's as one note as Azrael is made out to be and gets offed with so little fanfare. the series' other big issue seems to be coming down hard on the side of "we hate violent Christian fundamentalists, they're Bad" and like. yeah, I agree, and that obviously ties in very closely with exploring racism and Islamaphobia that the Riddler has grown up experiencing, but as I said in the other post it's also uuuuuh very weird to make Jean-Paul the narrative scapegoat for far right fundie Christians when, in the comics, that's not his bag at all. he's a dangerous and careless Batman, sure, but he's also very much a victim of the Order of St. Dumas, and it feels like both a sloppy use of the character and a WILDLY missed opportunity to explore the church as a corrupt system akin to Strange's medical abuses in Arkham and everything about the GCPD. idk, it feels like Secrets in the Dark just really jettisoned much more interesting potential stories building on Unburied's themes in favor of a much more black and white narrative.

tl;dr I cannot believe that Secrets in the Dark has forced me to point to David S. Goyer as a comparative paragon of nuance and taste!!! what!!!

#we genuinely don't talk about how insane it is that goyer wrote batman unburied #he's spent years shoveling out shit like batman begins and batman v superman and it turns out he had this in him the whole time #all we had to do was take away the visual component and his budget #ANYWAY #secrets in the dark

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thenixkat · 1 year

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Black Superpower Breakdown Re

Considering redoing that Black Superpower project but a bit more detailed/properly broken down. While it will definitely take *awhile* for listing shit and even longer for crunching the numbers and making graphs I’d like to get suggestions for characters to include.

For the purposes of this project, any Black character from a work of speculative fiction where there are people with supernatural or superscience powers/abilities are in it are viable even if the character in question does not have powers (the absence of powers is also valuable data). And Black means any group racialized as Black which is not limited to people of indigenous African descent. This includes Melanesians, Blackfellas, Torres Straight Islanders, and more folks than just Black Africans and their diaspora.

There will be 4 major categories for characters: Confirmed Black, Ambiguous Brown Bitches, Visibly Nonhuman, Claimed by the Community.

- Confirmed Black- there’s characters are unmistakably visibly Black. Confirmed to be Black by the creator. A openly bigoted white bitch would look at them and go “Nigger!” with zero modifiers.

- Ambiguous Brown Bitches- Characters who are visibly brown but, especially in nonlive action media, are not actually given any specific visibly ethnic features. The kinds of bitches that any medium to darkskin bitch of any race could look at and go ‘That Me!’. Those kinda bitches.

- Visibly Nonhuman- Fuckers who do not look human but ... you know they Black. Whether its b/c the actor wearing the makeup is Black, or the voice actor is Black and gives the character a Black voice, or the design aspects invoke/reference Black stuff.

- Claimed by the Community- those characters that you’d be hard pressed to actually define and defend what makes them Black but a good number of Black folks claim the bitch for the community.

Still working out what specific powers and nonpower abilities will be termed as. But for character suggestions pls include: - Real Name and Code Name if applicable - Media of origin - Their powers and if they don’t have powers what technology/weapons/bonds are they using that makes them stand out from the average joe (ie. supersuits; cybernetics; pet monsters; martial arts; shit tons of money; etc) - Gender - Age/Life stage - Ethnicity if known - Species

#nix meows #black superpowers #black characters #pls suggest characters #i will look through the suggestions #feel free to ask for clarification #black superpower breakdown #for example Black Lightning and Static and Vixen have superpowers #but characters like Cyborg and og Bumblebee and Moongirl do not have powers #all of them are still usable for this project #pretty much any superhero/villain counts for this project automaticly if they Black

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pocketsizedquasar · 2 years

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gonna continue this thread here just because that post is getting very long haha

@puns-and-podcasts

first - no need to apologize ! i just replied bc i saw the question and wanted to answer it. but to the rest of your questions:

But I’m also aware from conversations I’ve had with Black friends for example, that they do want to just see more casual rep and it’s better to have characters at least be allowed to be diverse rather than having the whole fandom just default to seeing people as white and having that be the default standard fanart setting ™.

definitely agree with this as well! casual rep is good and in general, imo describing the characters’ race is better than Not describing it (this is true for white characters too -- if you describe everyone’s race But the white characters then it can read as though whiteness is being treated as default). having diverse, intentional casual rep is a good thing and i definitely don’t mean to take away from teh importance of that, especially when the alternative is everyone being written “aracially” and thus being generally thought of as white-as-default.

(rest under a cut bc. asdlkfjasdjf i talk a lot)

but I can also see people saying ‘well it’s too complicated to do it well I might get in trouble’ and just not doing it at all. Just using that as an excuse to never have people of colour in their work. And I’m aware that I’m probably going to get it wrong sometimes, and I do think larger creators do have more responsibility to get it right because they have the resources to hire sensitive readers and to pay people to do research etc.

i think generally this is the right attitude. it’s important to acknowledge that as a white creator you are probably going to get something wrong at some point, and that’s okay -- that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try anyways. sometimes you are going to overstep or misstep, and that’s not a reason to just Never try to include things. n yeah, i do think the more resources you have (ie financial, collaborators etc) the more ability you have to do things like hire sensitivity readers etc., but there’s still a lot you can do even as a single person team to consume media by POC, or listen to when we talk about how to write us authentically/respectfully. i’m going to bring up a pretty large resource just in case you may not have heard of them already, so i’m sorry if you have, but i definitely recommend checking out the Tumblr page Writing With Color; they’re full of masterposts and resources and a very extensive backlog of people asking specific questions re: race and diversity in writing, so throwing them out there!

I guess I wanted to understand whether you think it would be better if people didn’t headcanon characters as people of colour or like, that there needs to be more intentional discussion about it, or that it’s better if it’s included textually and as part of the media?

I definitely don’t want to tell people that they can’t headcanon white or “aracial” characters as POC. I do that all the time! i just want people to be intentional about when they do so, and to think about what their specific headcanons are and why they’re having that headcanon. ie are you just making Jon a generic, racially ambiguous brown person because you see everyone drawing him as brown? that’s probably not good.

I also think that highlighting characters of color where they Do exist canonically in the media is important as well. fandoms/etc often have a problem of like...ignoring canon characters of color (this also happens to female characters, disabled characters etc but that’s another topic) in favor of white or white-written counterparts, even when the characters of color are written well/have engaging and interesting arcs or backstories/etc.

Because I can also see the value of not specifying things like race and appearance in an audio medium and allowing people to imagine and project themselves onto the characters more freely

in my opinion, and other ppl may be inclined to disagree with me, i think any value there might be in not specifying race is overshadowed by the harms of aracial writing. oartially because if you don’t specify a character’s race, 99% of the time, people are going to assume they’re white, because whiteness is considered a default. but also because “aracial” doesn’t really exist.

because what does it mean to write a character without a race? most of the main cast of TMA -- Jon, Tim, Martin, Sasha, Georgie, Melanie etc-- never have their race specified in the canon. but does that actually mean they don’t have a race?

what about martin’s repeated surprise when he learns about police corruption? what about tim’s insistence that the solution to jon’s paranoia is institutionalizing him? what about tim and sasha’s conversation regarding the sexism in how sasha wasn’t promoted to Head Archivist, and how sexism is brought up as the only potential limiting factor in her lack of promotion -- and not other forms of oppression? what about georgie’s attitude of not wanting to engage with the oppressive system and backing out of it? melanie’s thoughts on exporting the problems of “our” world into some invisible “other” world? etc etc etc

these attitudes aren’t inherently white in the sense that only white people could have them...but they are very white. all of these characters have countless examples of little things, comments and attitudes and behaviors, that add up so that the characters read as extremely white. the characters are all voiced by white VAs. in certain cases -- like with sasha, like with georgie’s comments about being judged for her class/accent -- we are actually effectively told to infer that these characters aren’t experiecing oppression on the basis of race.

so all of these characters who are written “without” race being specified...are effectively written as white. due to both conscious and unconscious decisions and attitudes implanted on them by a white writer.

but who does get their race described? we know salesa is samoan immediately, we know annabelle is Black immediately, even random side characters mentioned in passing have race specified...unless they’re white (with few exceptions). which leads to the awkward situation that whiteness is default, and we should assume the characters are white unless otherwise specified.

so what this “not specifying race” behavior really leaves us with is a bunch of “aracial” characters who are very white-coded. it says “the default, non-racialized experience is the white experience.” the experience that everyone can supposedly relate to or project on or imagine their own realities onto is a white experience. there is no such thing as a person without race. but because white ppl and creators often don’t see their own whiteness, whiteness as an experience and identity gets de-racialized and universalized, branding other experiences as, well, “other.”

Am I going to say that you should Always all the time in every case specify your character’s race? maybe not; i’m sure there are exceptions. I’m sure there’s examples places where race-blank writing works. but i will say that in my opinion, the vast majority of the time, it is better to Name your characters’ experiences. whiteness-as-default is pervasive, and until it isn’t, i don’t think aracial writing can really work on a broader scale.

#quasartalks #writing #racism #fandom racism #fandom crit #long post #tma crit #sort of #oh boy this got so long #heehoo ghadslfaklejfklejfaskj #gonna take a nap now

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blue-village · 5 months

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The impossibility of fully becoming a white settler - in this case, white referring to an exceptionalized position with assumed rights to invulnerability and legal supremacy - as articulated by minority literature preoccupied with “glass ceilings” and “forever foreign” status and “myth of the model minority”, offers a strong critique of the myth of the democratic nation-state. However, its logical endpoint, the attainment of equal legal and cultural entitlements, is actually an investment in settler colonialism. Indeed, even the ability to be a minority citizen in the settler nation means an option to become a brown settler. For many people of color, becoming a subordinate settler is an option even when becoming white is not. “Following stolen resources” is a phrase that Wayne has encountered, used to describe Filipino overseas labor (over 10% of the population of the Philippines is working abroad) and other migrations from colony to metropole. This phrase is an important anti-colonial framing of a colonial situation. However an anti-colonial critique is not the same as a decolonizing framework; anti-colonial critique often celebrates empowered postcolonial subjects who seize denied privileges from the metropole. This anti-to-post-colonial project doesn’t strive to undo colonialism but rather to remake it and subvert it. Seeking stolen resources is entangled with settler colonialism because those resources were nature/Native first, then enlisted into the service of settlement and thus almost impossible to reclaim without re-occupying Native land. Furthermore, the postcolonial pursuit of resources is fundamentally an anthropocentric model, as land, water, air, animals, and plants are never able to become postcolonial; they remain objects to be exploited by the empowered postcolonial subject. Equivocation is the vague equating of colonialisms that erases the sweeping scope of land as the basis of wealth, power, law in settler nation-states. Vocalizing a ‘muliticultural’ approach to oppressions, or remaining silent on settler colonialism while talking about colonialisms, or tacking on a gesture towards Indigenous people without addressing Indigenous sovereignty or rights, or forwarding a thesis on decolonization without regard to unsettling/deoccupying land, are equivocations. That is, they ambiguously avoid engaging with settler colonialism; they are ambivalent about minority / people of color / colonized Others as settlers; they are cryptic about Indigenous land rights in spaces inhabited by people of color.

- Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization is not a metaphor (2012)

#settler colonialism #land back #decolonization is not a metaphor #lukemisiani #decolonization #decolonisation

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newstfionline · 9 months

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Monday, August 14, 2023

Canadian wildfires could persist for rest of ‘marathon’ summer (Reuters) Record-setting wildfires in Canada could potentially continue burning at an abnormally high rate for several more weeks, though the spread of blazes is likely to start diminishing in September, according to federal projections released on Friday. Forest fires have engulfed parts of nearly all 13 Canadian provinces and territories this year, forcing home evacuations, disrupting energy production, and drawing in federal as well as international firefighting resources. Four firefighters have been killed in the line of duty. So far about 134,000 square kilometers (52,000 square miles) of land have been scorched, more than six times a 10-year average, and nearly 168,000 people have been forced to evacuate at some point this season.

Rent reality (NYT) An enduring image of urban American 20-somethings is one of carefree living with friends in spacious apartments, as depicted in shows like “Friends” or “How I Met Your Mother.” That portrayal, never really all that close to reality, is growing further from it in part because of one factor: high rent. For years, we’ve been told that what you pay for housing shouldn’t exceed 30 percent of your monthly income. But that’s not reality for many people, especially because housing costs have soared in the past few years. Many Gen Z adults are setting aside the pursuit of certain passions or career paths, migrating out of big cities or moving back home with their parents. One 24-year-old, Ives Williams, who lives in Baltimore and spends half of his monthly income on rent, said the only way he could see himself owning a home one day was if he bought one with friends. It’d be like “one big sleepover,” he joked. Savannah Scott, a 23-year-old renter in Reno, Nev., told us that she spends about 75 percent of her monthly income on rent. She limits her driving to once a week and buys only basics at the grocery store (“brown rice and beans”). Kellie Beck, 25, in Brooklyn, spends around 40 percent of her income on rent. She shares a room with her partner in an apartment with two other roommates and said she turns down opportunities to spend time with friends.

Judge warns Trump not to threaten witnesses in 2020 election subversion case (Reuters) A federal judge on Friday granted former U.S. President Donald Trump leeway to publicly share some non-sensitive evidence that will be used in his trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, but she warned him to tread carefully before making inflammatory public statements about the case. “Even arguably ambiguous statements by the parties or their counsel- if they can be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors—can threaten the process,” U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said on Friday. “I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements about this case. I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.” “He is a criminal defendant. He is going to have restrictions like every single other defendant,” Chutkan said. “The fact the defendant is engaged in a political campaign is not going to allow him any greater or lesser latitude than any defendant in a criminal case.”

Maui Blaze Kills at Least 93, Highest Wildfire Death Toll in Over 100 Years (WSJ) The wildfire that reduced the historic center of this island town to an ashy rubble has left at least 93 people dead, officials said, making it America’s deadliest wildfire event in over a century. Residents and tourists who were briefly allowed to re-enter West Maui found a blackened landscape of destroyed homes, burnt-out cars and smoldering embers. It will cost over $5 billion to rebuild from the Lahaina fire, officials estimated. The center of Lahaina remained barricaded. People were warned to avoid the area because of toxic particles in the air and advised to wear masks and gloves. The cause of the Maui County wildfires has yet to be determined. Hawaii fire researchers had warned officials in the past about the risk of extreme wildfires in and around Lahaina.

Argentine farmers back conservatives in election, hoping for freer markets (Reuters) In Argentina’s grains fields and cattle ranches, farmers are hoping upcoming elections will bring political change and an end to years of economic uncertainty, ushering in freer markets with fewer currency controls and export limits. The government, battling an acute shortage of dollars, annual inflation scraping 116%, and a fast declining currency, has imposed strict capital controls, limited some exports, and hiked interest rates to 97%. That has made business difficult in one of the world’s top soyoil and meal exporters and No. 3 corn exporter. Many farmers, or “chacareros”, from the wide Pampean plains, the engine room of Argentina’s economy, say they will get behind the conservative opposition as they did in 2015, when they helped propel former President Mauricio Macri to power.

Wolves, once confined to fairy tales, are back in Germany, stirring debate (Washington Post) At first Nancy Denecke couldn’t figure out why the sheep were panicking. “It took me a moment to realize what was coming out of the forest,” said the 37-year shepherdess, recounting one eventful day last summer in northwest Germany. She was grazing her herd in a treelined field when she saw the wolf pounce. Virtually extinct in Germany for more than a century, wolves are flourishing here once again. Their numbers have increased more than sixfold in the past decade, with Germany now home to as many as 161 packs, or about 1,300 wolves. But accompanying their rebound are attacks on livestock—and an emotional debate. The spread of wolves—through Germany and into Belgium, the Netherlands and beyond—has become an issue at the highest levels of the European Union. Last fall, it touched a personal nerve for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, when a wolf killed her pony outside her home in northwest Germany. She wrote later that the E.U.’s executive body recognizes “that the return of the wolf and its growing numbers lead to conflict.” At a local level, the conflict pits farmers against conservationists. People on both sides have been accused of taking matters into their own hands: Hunting shelters have been burned down and wolves have been illegally shot.

Russia’s new history textbooks (Washington Post) When classes begin next month, Russian high-schoolers will get fresh history textbooks rewritten to carry Kremlin-approved narratives about the “special military operation” in Ukraine and rivalry with the West—part of a wider government effort to shape how young generations of Russians think about the war and Russia’s place in the world. The new manuscript—aimed at graduating 17-year-olds and covering the time-period from 1945 until now—blames the United States for the ongoing war in Ukraine and includes a quote from President Vladimir Putin in which he falsely asserts that: “Russia did not start any military actions but is trying to end them.” It includes telling sections ranging from “confrontation with the West” to “Ukraine is a neo-Nazi state” to “Russia is a country of heroes,” according to scans of the new book posted by Russian state media. History lessons everywhere are rarely spared from national ideology, and other countries are often viewed through the prism of the country printing the books. But the drastic transformation of Russia’s portrayal of Ukraine and the rest of the world illustrates Putin’s fierce determination to sweep aside the dark pages of Russia’s past.

Ukrainian morgues seeing ‘more or less double’ the fatalities since counter-offensive began (Insider) The Ukrainian summer counteroffensive began in June, and, despite Western allies supplying advanced tanks and weaponry, the country’s recent moves against Russian combatants have resulted in only modest gains—and heavy casualties. The New York Times reported morgues in the country are seeing vastly increased fatalities due to the heightened fighting. “There are many more bodies at the moment,” the outlet reported Taras Svystun, a soldier on a six-man crew responsible for recovering and identifying deceased servicemen, said. The total dead in the local morgues is “more or less double since the counteroffensive” started, added. Though Ukraine doesn’t publicly share the total number of casualties it has sustained, Insider reported General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated in February that Ukraine had lost more than 100,000 soldiers since the war began last year.

Americans Held Prisoner in Iran Saw Promise of Better Relations (NYT) When Siamak Namazi traveled to Tehran in the summer of 2015, Iran had just signed a landmark nuclear deal and the government was encouraging expatriates to return home and bring their expertise and dollars. So the 51-year-old Iranian American businessman flew from his home in Dubai to visit his parents and attend a funeral in Iran. But he was arrested and charged with “collaborating with a hostile government”—an allusion to the United States—and eventually became the longest-held American citizen that Iran has acknowledged imprisoning. In January, he went on a hunger strike for seven days to bring attention to his ordeal. On Thursday Mr. Namazi, along with four other dual national Iranian Americans, became part of a prisoner swap deal between Iran and the U.S. “I’ve been a hostage for seven and half years—that’s six times the duration of the hostage crisis,” Mr. Namazi said in an interview from prison in March with CNN, referring to the American embassy staff who were taken hostage in Iran during the 1979 revolution and held for 444 days. In exchange for releasing the Americans, the U.S. agreed to release five Iranians jailed for violating sanctions against Iran, and to release about $6 billion of Iran’s frozen assets being held in South Korea. The money will be transferred to a bank account in Qatar and can only be used by Iran for humanitarian purposes, such as paying for medicine and medical equipment. The ordeal for the Americans being held in Iran is hardly over. Iran’s foreign ministry said the five will be allowed to board a plane out of Iran only when the money lands in the Qatari bank account. For now, they have been released from prison and remain under house arrest at a Tehran hotel.

Growing Segregation by Sex in Israel (NYT) The trains from Tel Aviv were packed one evening last month when Inbal Boxerman, a 40-year-old mother of two, was blocked by a wall of men as she tried to board. One of them told her that women were not allowed on—the car was for men only. Ms. Boxerman was stunned. It was a public train operated by Israel Railways, and segregated seating is illegal in the country. The men stopping her appeared to be protesters going home from a rally supporting the governing coalition, which includes extremist religious and far-right parties pushing for more sex segregation and a return to more traditional gender roles. Public transportation is the latest front of a culture war in Israel over the status of women in a society that is sharply divided between a secular majority and politically powerful minority of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who frown on the mixing of women and men in public. As part of an agreement with ultra-Orthodox allies that underpinned the formation of the coalition, Mr. Netanyahu made several concessions that have unsettled secular Israelis. Among them are proposals to segregate audiences by sex at some public events, to create new religious residential communities, to allow businesses to refuse to provide services based on religious beliefs, and to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts.

#headlines #news

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90calibre · 2 years

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GOD NO i can’t shut up i’m sorry lol as a person of color, especially an asian woman, i cannot shut up

the racism in this is just. there’s so many things like. the anti-immigrant ideology in that asians cannot hail from another country and move to another place is so.

like, for example. consider someone might have lived in idk, europe or america for GENERATIONS due to their ancestors having been immigrants long ago. let’s say, for this example, these people are asian. i’ll say japanese because that’s my expertise. these people become what we call diaspora, who are people whose roots are native to elsewhere but are now scattered around the world due to immigration for whatever reason. for example, in world war two, countless japanese natives, both of the mainland and its indigenous people, were forced to flee, and generations of families have lived in other countries with their children and their children’s children and so on being born and raised in other countries. those diaspora have blood ties with their ethnic and racial origin to the country of their ethnicity, but have no physical ties and if they were to move to japan, they would technically be immigrants in japan even if they are japanese by blood, simply because they were not born there and did not grow up or live there.

characters like kayn are difficult when there’s no canon indication as to what his ethnicity actually is. i personally find his features to be asian-coded, but that could also just be me projecting but i’ve also found that some of my hcs have been on the nose ( re: caitlyn being confirmed mixed asian ) buuuuut since there’s no proof the world is your oyster. you can write a white kayn if you want to, i suppose, because i guess his origins and design are ambiguous enough, but again, i’ve always been on the kayn is asian wagon. noxus is not a wholly white country. there are many poc in noxus, in and out of power. hell, even darius and draven are kind of brown-coded and i personally hc them to be middle eastern. noxus is a melting pot of culture and ethnicity. it’s home to so many different people, for various reasons. conquered lands, willingly allied lands that accepted becoming noxian under its standard, people who chose to find home and settle in noxus, refugees who became noxian citizens whose children may have then born and raised there. i don’t think we know exactly what racial or ethnic background noxus takes after, but regardless of that, it doesn’t change the fact that noxus itself is a huge melting pot of different people of origin, whether they’re born and raised there or not.

the implication that kayn can’t be ionian by blood just because they consider him a foreigner and is from noxus is really? gross. like ... i’m half okinawan, an indigenous japanese person. i was born there, but i’ve lived in america all my life. even though i have japanese citizenship and family there and whatever, i’m still considered a foreigner there because although culturally i’m part of two worlds, i’m still much more american than i am japanese. the same goes for my thai heritage. i know very little about it and although my appearance is very southeast asian outwardly, i’m definitely a foreigner there, even though i’m 1/4 thai.

it’s complicated but it’s also not. just the whole sentiment of all of this is extremely stupid and gross and just the idea of “transracial” is so fucking gross and stupid and insulting in so many different ways and i just cannot believe the ignorance of people like. if you had the sense to go out of your way to dig to determine whether or not someone could be transracial, you’d have seen the countless of other things on top of that that would surely say why that’s fucked up and impossible and not real.

#i am angy #SO. mad #out.

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vampiresuns · 4 years

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Aelius Anatole Radošević De Silva

Anatole has changed a bit as a character since i was around the first time, so he’s getting re introduced. His open to make friends.

art by @elizastarkart

Name: Aelius Anatole Radoševic De Silva. He has two surnames because his mother is latina. He is a mixed Latine-Slav, with family that is all latine, vesuvian, and slavic. People he’s friend’s with call him Anatole (russian/greek pronunciation, he doesn’t acknowledge the French one). Only people he has a strictly professional relationship with, and his uncle call him Aelius.

‘Aelius’ means sun, while ‘Anatole’ means sunrise. He’s fully aware of this, he chose his name himself.

His nicknames are:

‘Nana’ is the most common nickname, and the one most people use.

His mother calls him Lilito, Nana, Nanito, Toly, Tolito, Tortolito.

His father calls him Lily or Lilu.

Toly, Tolytoly or Tolito are nicknames used by his maternal grandmother, his aunt, and his Vesuvian family.

He will not mind if you want to call him Toly, but you cannot call him Lily/Lilu if you’re not his father.

Asra came up with Nanatole, which he doesn’t like but lets Asra call him anyway. Asra also came up with Nana Banana and that is absolutely forbidden.

Family: on his father’s side both the Radošević, who are slavic (yugoslavic, specifically), and the Cassano, a prominent Vesuvian family who has had a hold of the Consulship for years.

On his mother side, the De Silva.

His father’s name is Vladislav, but everyone calls him Vlad, he’s an alchemist, a polymath, and works in what is most similar to biochemical engineering. He has one bother, named Valeriy, who you, however, might now as Valerius. Vlad’s biggest personality trait is being head over heels in love with his wife, and adoring his son more than he thought it was humanly possible to care about someone.

His mother’s name is Louisa De Silva (if you want to add her mother’s surname, it’s Lascal). The L-o-u spelling was a registry mistake she never changed. She moved half across the world while her native country suffer a military-civilian dictatorship to study Medicine. She swore never to go back as long as vestiges of said dictatorship remained in the country. She has two sisters: Paris, who lives in Vesuvia, and Alma, who remained with her parents out of her own choosing. Her medical experience include having been a volunteer war doctor. She didn’t change her surname when she got married.

The Radošević (pronounced Radozheveech) and the Cassano have been entangled families by friendship for generations upon generations, with some marriages between them. Notoriously: Vlad and Val’s father married a Cassano, Matilda, and his bother Mircea, Anatole’s great uncle, also married a Cassano: Florentino. Mircea’s brother and Matilda Cassano died when Vlad and Val were children still, so him and Florentino brought them up.

The Radošević are an overall eccentric family (think the european Addams family), whom are noted for: one, their self-sufficiency/self-preservation, which comes out in a very ‘eccentric people of the world unite’ manner. They appreciate people with character. Two, their leanings towards trades/professions, they do not conceive not doing anything (work hard to play hard). The Cassano, while sharing the quirk, they add the zest for life. It’s like they grabbed the Radošević and told them “you have forgotten how to live and we will remind you how.” Both of them are ridden with racially ambiguous bastard you cannot kill in any way that matters. They simply refuse to. Someone (either the courtiers or Lucio) compared them to roaches, they took it as a compliment.

This will tell you a lot about Anatole’s character.

On a last note, Anatole’s an only child. He has a good relationship with his parents, albeit marked by a sense of distance, solely because he was privately tutored from age 15 and on, which required him to travel a fair share. He was an argumentative teenager, but always cherished whenever he could see his parents. The older he gets, the closer they all become.

Favourite Food: Cake

Favourite drink: Coffee, in general.

Favourite Flower: Iris

Birthday: Nov 1st

Age: 29 (I calculate his age as if he had been born in 1991)

Zodiac:

Sun: Scorpio

Moon: Virgo

Rising: Libra

Mercury & Mars: Scorpio

Venus: Virgo

Patron arcana: Strength & Ace of Swords

Strength

Upright: inner strength, bravery, compassion, focus, Reversed: self doubt, weakness, insecurity

Ace of Swords

Upright: breakthrough, clarity, sharp mind, Reversed: confusion, brutality, chaos

MBTI Type: INTJ-A

Gender: Transmasculine, but Nonbinary. Uses He/Him pronouns only

Orientation: Identifies as NBLM.

LIs: Julian, Muriel, @ilyamatic‘s Andrico, @thelazaretmakesmesad‘s Vishal.

“The sun-like strategist with a solution for everything, and a whole lot of hope in the future.”

More details under the cut!

Physical appearance:

art by @lesbianarcana

5′4. As you can see in the sprite down below, while he’s slim but with muscle, out of doing a moderate to high level of physical activity. The man has a nice waist and inherited his mother’s hips, which he’s very proud of. He likes his legs and his butt the most about himself

Dark brown eyes, long eyelashes. His hair is naturally black, but he dyes it blond.

Has a mole over his right eyebrow, on the left side of the bridge of his nose, and on his left jaw. He has freckles.

An horizontal scar on his nose, which he got by getting hit with a wooden scaffold square in the face. His nose wasn’t broken out of sheer dumb luck. He has a smaller cut on his cheekbone, which was done by a fencing sabre which lacked the proper tip protection/button. It was done onto him by someone else.

The nose scar is how he met Julian before the plague, as he was the doctor which cured his face.

He has several tattoos:

Right arm: A rapier on his inner forearm. Over his elbow he has a black work band, and over it the words ‘THE SUN IS MY UNDOING’ in all caps, circling his arm.

Left arm: a snake wrapped around his forearm, near to the wrist. The Odyssey quote ‘let’s have a toast to the incompetence of our enemies’ under the inner crook of his elbow, and a floral half sleeve.

Chest and Torso: AMOR OMNIA VINCIT over where his heart is supposed to be. He has laurel leaves on the base of his waist.

Legs: ‘o serpent heart hid with a flowering face‘ in his upper, inner thigh, like really up his left inner thigh. A floral anklet on his right ankle.

Languages Spoken: Too many. He speaks nine languages.

Magic Specialities: His magic is connected to both light and languages (it is a play on words with ‘logos’) so he is both adept in photokinesis — he is able to create and manipulate sources of light — and language related magic — which includes incantation and language manipulation. He learns languages as a faster rate than most people, and while he cannot speak or literally understand a language unless he learns it, his magic allows him to intuitively grasp the meaning of words that are being spoken to him.

This capacity also makes him very good at recognising hidden intentions in people. This is not an ability that he broadcasts having, and when he later succeeds Valerius as the Consul, it is something which aids his diplomatic work but he keeps private.

His words tend to carry more weight sometimes because of his magic, something which he can’t always control — it depends on many factors — so he tries to choose his words carefully and with consideration.

His familiar is a Raccoon, named Antu.

Occupation: While he did study magic and is in touch with his magic, he studied politics, diplomacy and international relations. By trade, and out of will to help people, he is a political analyst and, later in life, a Statesman.

Personality/Trivia:

Willpower or Stubbornness? Depends how you look at it. Passionate, generally devoted, hopeful, independent and sometimes defiant. He is a people-oriented introvert. Competitive, but not aggressively so.

Smarter than he gives himself credit for. Overall charming, even debonair.

Curious by nature, hates having his decisions taken for him.

He is proper, sometimes even distinguished, but he is feral. A firm believer in being kind and compassionate with people, until you cross him one too many times, then nothing will make him taint his vindictive wrath.

Is he humble? For the most part. His humbleness comes from knowing his own limits and knowing he’s not infallible. He does have, however, a good deal of pride in himself and trust in what he can do, and he doesn’t like being underestimated.

He’s not particularly loud, though when the chatterbox is on, then it is on, specially if he’s nervous. He is often never still.

He’s known he has ADHD since he was seventeen.

Likes dancing.

He fences, almost every Radošević fences/sword fights, and he will let you know at the slightest chance. Which can be either him simply being hyper-fixated in fencing, him flirting, or him letting you know that if the occasion rises, he’s armed.

Friend shaped, lover shaped if you’re daring enough.

He wrinkles his nose when he doesn’t like something.

Speaking of which: he doesn’t like abuse of power, the Court, injustice, supremacists of any kind, unkind, hurtful and selfish people in general; he doesn’t like red meat (he says it tastes like metal or dirt), narrow minded people, incompetence, specially when displayed by people in positions of power, and purposeful apathy.

A mastermind archetype, but he draws his power from connection. He does not conceive a life not lived with others.

A bit of a bastard, he enjoys a good laugh.

He plays the piano and the harp, he sings, he cannot draw, he’s a lightweight when it comes to alcohol (which doesn’t really stop him), he likes the opera because he likes watching other people’s drama without being dragged into it, and his favourite season is winter. Also likes playing chess, reading, coffee, flowers, a well tailored outfit, learning, languages, the sea, mysteries, winter, a well laid argument, collecting quills, music, winning, knowing he loves and is loved in return.

When he was 7 he bribed his dad for more dessert, and he ate so much he vomited. His sweet tooth hasn’t gone anywhere, it is alive and well.

Perceptive little bastard, will knife cat you for the sake of it. He has a way more present sense of humour than what he comes across.

Would call himself a ‘trans masculine Mary Poppins’.

He is closest to his parents, his uncle, my other ocs Leonore, Medea and Sabine, his cousins Amparo Cassano and Milenko Radošević, Natiqa, Asra, Portia and Nadia.

If he liked women, he would be paired with Nadia. The possibility both terrifies and fascinates me.

@ilyamatic, @viviae, @gaybirdwrites, @arcanaprentiss @apprenticeofcups

#the arcana oc #the arcana mc #aelius anatole

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elfyourmother · 3 years

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this might be kinda out of the blue, but I've been wanting to make a Viera alt because I've always really adored the buns. Would you consider it okay for a lighter skinned/white person like myself to make a darker skinned character?

( I quite frankly feel uncomfortable as hell at the idea of making a pale skinned Viera as they weren't like that at all in original canon. Never really got why SE decided to make a whole white subtype just for ff14.)

you don't have to answer this question if you don't want to! was moreso looking for opinion if you're willing to give it !

tbqh I feel weird about these questions bc ultimately I can’t give you permission to do or tell you that you can’t do anything. to the point that i usually don’t answer these kinds of questions because I’m not trying to be somebody’s permission slip and trump card to be used in future arguments w other Black folk who might take issue (“well, Aurora said it was ok!”). just so we’re on the same page, know I am speaking solely for myself and my own opinions

but I’m answering because this is re: Viera and I am willing to speak my peace on it bc I am so tired of the whitewashing and the erasure of Viera Blackness that has happened in this game (really since FFXII). I keep quiet about it a lot of time because I’m old and too tired to be fighting w people anymore but it’s really Bad and it hurts as a Black femme to see some of the precious little rep we have had in the FF franchise get systematically demolished, so anything that pushes back against it even a little is fine by me regardless of who’s doing it; I don’t love Viera because they’re Black, but it helped!!

so like if you love Viera then make one! there is such a dearth of Black and brown female characters in the game. fortunately the flipside to the snow bunnies running rampant has been way more darker skinned female characters than I saw prior to ShB. So many times I have been the token Black female character in duty roulette. I can count on one actual hand the number of Black Femelezens in particular I’ve seen besides Gisele. But there have been many more Black ladies running around and it’s worth it to me even if I hate the bs.

I would suggest @writingwithcolor as a resource, look through their links and faqs regarding stereotypes to avoid. research like you would any kind of creative thing you’re not familiar with.

also accept that there will be people who straight up have a problem with it and they have a right to feel that way. there is the “brown paper doll” phenomenon of white folks making ambiguously brown characters for The Aesthetic or w/e, getting plaudits and cookies, but Not Too Brown. and fans of color with OCs of color never get the same kind of praise or positive attention. many of us feel pressure to conform with standards of whiteness in fandom. a lot of folks were sharing their experiences with that during pocwolweek last year. you may see people talking about their resentments; don’t be defensive, just acknowledge that comes from a very real place of pain and frustration. do what you can to minimize harm, boost writers and artists and RPers of color w their characters, engage with their work like you would anyone else.

and also realize that your experience as a white person playing a COC will not ever be the same. being raised and socialized as a Black woman there are things in MSQ that absolutely hit different, for bad (Magnai, Zenos calling you a beast all the time), and for good (the DRK questline absolutely Spoke to Me as a Black femme wrt the burdens we shoulder always with a smile and the resentments we’re forced to bury, etc.). I also experienced misogynoiristic sexual harassment in Duty Roulette once where somebody was going on about “gorgeous chocolate bunny” and I felt so degraded that I left after ripping the dude a new one in party chat and was 100% fine with eating the penalty. yes that would be nasty for anyone behind the screen but when it’s a reflection of the fetishization you experience irl it’s a whole other thing

so with all that in mind, You Do You. I have white friends and mutuals with some fantastic OCs of color. it can be done, and well. but do it in a thoughtful manner and try to be cognizant of the pitfalls and your privileges. and don’t do it for the clout, which I don’t think you are--Viera are fuckin awesome.

#the unbearable whiteness of fandom #i'm not upset w you for asking #that's just my tag for race and fandom #sixthmagic #ask bisho

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thistangledbrain · 3 years

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Deliberately lumping 17 & 18 together this time, because 17 isn’t that big of an entry.

Day 17 - “Accommodations”

So from a *personal* standpoint, I need few or no accommodations, as I’ve learned to make my own & have my own coping skills - when you spend most of your life not even knowing you’re autistic, you’re less likely to ask for something to help you with “your weird hangups”.

But younger auties often DO need accommodations- like being allowed to wear headphones/muffs in school, having a quieter testing environment, smaller classes, and so on. And obviously, the more you struggle with certain aspects (like loud noises or crowds), the more accommodations you’ll need.

I admit I don’t have much experience with the kids who truly need the total SPED environments. *Most* (definitely not all) kids I’ve known have all been capable to a degree of adapting to a NT environment. It’s *exhausting*, but possible *most of the time*. So since I’m a child of “suck it UP!”, I’m unfamiliar with this outside of simple accommodations I asked for, for my youngest, when he was in his earlier HS years - like headphones being allowed, and letting him keep his cell phone on him so he could quietly text with me if he was having a rough day & we could walk through it together. As he’s progressed through high school, he’s needed these accommodations less and less. I’ve noticed as my boys have edged through puberty, they leave more and more of their younger struggles behind them.

Your results may vary, of course.

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Day 18 - “Someday”

Hm. Boy, that’s ambiguous. Maybe I’ll take this one on from a couple different angles.

Someday I hope NTs understand autism better. Someday I hope each autistic person can be judged on their OWN PERSONAL strengths and weaknesses, like NTs are, instead of lumping us all together and deciding we can or can’t do something, based on the fact we’re autistic. For example, I know *plenty* of autistic musicians who play in bands ranging from death metal & punk rock, to smooth jazz. “But I thought autistic people couldn’t handle loud sounds!!”, you exclaim. Yeah, and some of us can. Also, not all loud sounds are created equal. Or sounds in general. A good example for me is, I occasionally jump and let out a little scream when the toast pops up 🙄, but I don’t flinch at the sound of gunfire - because I love to target shoot (I do not hunt), and it’s something I’m really good at, so I enjoy it thoroughly. (I’m not going to get started on America’s gun violence problem because it enrages me. I can rant about that allllll day & already deleted two paragraphs doing just that. This was just a convenient example.)

I’ve been thinking about this a LOT lately, actually. We have our own hurdles, without NTs adding to them, anyway. But I think about “what if I knew I was autistic, before I joined the Marines? Would I still have been as determined?” YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT...BUT I would have hit a brick wall, because they wouldn’t have let me (if I was honest about it, anyway - I’m telling you right now, if every applicant was 100% honest about their background, almost NO ONE would be accepted). So what happened? Well - I was a damned good Marine, that’s what happened - because I didn’t let *anybody* tell me I couldn’t do something. And as I mentioned before...for certain types of auties, the military is actually a pretty fucking brilliant, comfortable environment that we literally thrive in. Again - we are all different. So this “someday” one is BIG for me. Someday I hope we are judged individually on our merits, someday I hope we are looked at through the lens of what we CAN do, versus what *someone else* thinks we cannot do. I have YET to meet an Autie who doesn’t go “OH YEAH?!” when we’re told we “can’t” do something because of our autism. (We might not always succeed, granted, but we really hate being told we “can’t” do something, based on what YOU think we can and cannot do.)

Someday I hope autism is actually celebrated, instead of thinking it’s some sort of scourge. I hope to see that happen in my lifetime.

Someday I also hope that people (the doctors and psych folks and whatever) realize there’s actually a *considerable* difference between male and female autistics - which is why females are so often diagnosed late in life, because we “don’t fit the profile”. I also hope they realize that some females are more like males, and some males more like females, as far as the expression of our ASD. In other words - back to HOW ABOUT YOU EVALUATE US INDIVIDUALLY, FFS. I hear all this shit about how “autism is a spectrum”, and it just seems like lip service - if you KNOW it’s a spectrum, then why are you still trying to pigeonhole us into the DSM-5 definition or whatever, and operating inside generic parameters?? Auties are the most complex human beings you will ever meet in your life - and I stand FIRMLY by that - so your attempts to shoehorn us into your basic understanding of it is frustrating as FUCK. Infuriating, even. No wonder we fight you so bad when you try it. How would YOU like it if we decided that every middle class blonde woman is a “Karen”, and treated you as such? Or if we decided everyone with brown eyes are slow and we should treat all of you brown eyed people the same, like infants? You’d be like, “what the FUCK?” Yeah. It’s a lot like that.

Someday, I hope more therapists understand the autistic brain better, so they can be more helpful. Sometimes the same advice you’d give a NT patient struggling with an issue (let’s say, the death of a loved one or executive function) just won’t ...WORK...for an Autie. As it stands now, most therapists I’ve known go straight to ABA, and that gets frustrating when you just need to let it all out so you can re-center and actually have a discussion. Speaking of ABA, someday I hope teachers and doctors and therapists understand the resentment and feelings of being “wrong” or “bad” that result from ABA. SOME of it is necessary I think, but mostly, all it does is teach repression & lets us know loud and clear that the way we are is “wrong”. I desperately hope ABA is reevaluated - with the input from ACTUAL AUTISTICS. Using ABA for to overcome a problem like, say, potty training or something, is often seriously necessary. But potty training isn’t part of *who we are*, if that makes sense. Most ABA is basically like putting your Autie kid in a dog training bootcamp, with little to no thought about “what makes that kid tick”. It’s all about training you to act in a way that NTs find acceptable (and I have lots and lots of cuss words about that........) I don’t even train DOGS like some schools or therapists train auties. Dogs aren’t beings to dominate, control, and condition to act in ways I find pleasing (but I’m also not a “general trainer”...I’m on the behavior side of things). They’re sentient beings who deserve to have their personalities discovered, their traumas and their hangups, and THEN we work inside THAT dog’s parameters until we’re solid...*then* we start working on pushing them outside of comfort zones and such. AFTER that trust and understanding has been laid down as a solid foundation, for *that specific dog*, regardless of my experience with past dogs (though I do rely heavily on past experiences of course; knowledge of what did and didn’t work with some other dog similar to the one I have now - that sort of thing - but every dog is a whole new being to me...because, well, they actually *are*). Nothing is “cookie cutter”. Every dog is a brand new exploration. I understand that’s putting a lot of pressure on SPED teachers. I understand they’re baffled when I tell them ABA sucks as a because they see “positive results”. Sure - you see positive results in your ability to repress that child. Positive results in the fact that they’ve now learned to hide themselves from you and others. It seems the current ABA methods don’t necessarily teach any sort of useful skills for actually adapting to the flow of the NT world for that kid - just how to repress who they are, so they fit in. In other words - ABA is successful for the NT world - not us. It actually depresses the shit out of me to think about how teachers and counselors view the rocking and flapping kid they’ve now trained to sit quietly in class feels like their work is successful. You didn’t help that kid - you BROKE them, you broke their spirit, you broke who they are. That makes me so angry. Same when these so called “star trainers” can force or intimidate any dog to performative good behavior. Same as the difference between how native Americans train their horses versus how Anglo Saxons or others did/do. In the native culture, we call it “gentling”. In AS culture *it is LITERALLY called “breaking”*. I’m not kidding - look it up.)

As for my personal “someday”....

Someday I’ll write a book about my adventures & struggles in life and what it was like inside my brain through each one. It’s not that I think I’m anything special, but I’ve been asked to do this, and the reasons were pretty logical. And I do love to write, usually. Or maybe it’ll be a book about how my autism is a HUGE advantage in “my line of work” (the dog thing...being sort of more of a dog/human “guidance counselor” than a trainer - since I hear your voice and feelings, and I also hear your dog’s, I’m less of a trainer and more of a bridge between the two. An interpreter, but also almost like a marriage counselor too LOL). I think that’s my biggest “someday” and the only one worth mentioning, because it’s such a huge goal...most of my other personal “someday” stuff, I eventually kinda go “well fucking why not TODAY, bish?!” and I just...DO it.

But generally, someday I hope it’s understood that no two autistic people are alike - but we share enough commonality that it’s possible to understand we’re basically in a different category of people from “normal”. Someday I hope NTs in general drop their stereotypes and get to know us one on one. Someday I hope people realize and understand that even nonverbals are whole ass human beings, with thoughts and dreams and opinions and a whole complex personality that you missed, because you were too busy judging the fact they can’t speak like you do.

Someday I hope you realize we *enhance* the human experience, we don’t detract from it. Someday I hope you realize we are not BROKEN, we are just different. Someday I wish you’ll stop being so smug and stuck up in your “normally functioning brain”, and stop PITYING us. For fucking what??? Experiencing life in a much more complex and deep way?? Bruh. We pity YOU, too. Your world perception often seems dull and wasteful. Limited. OPEN UP - there’s a whole universe out there that you haven’t even explored. So, someday I hope we can enhance each other’s human experience, like my friends and I do. I’d love to see that on a larger scale.

Someday.

#asd #autism #autistic #acceptance #awareness #actuallyautistic

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bubbebruja · 4 years

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On the Death of Sirius Black and Literary Gay Bashing in Harry Potter

In 2003, I was ten, straight, and positively obsessed with Hermione Granger.

If those last two things sound a little contradictory, it’s because they were. I do not mean I was “obsessed” in the sense that I wanted to dress up like her for Halloween, I mean “obsessed” in the sense that I literally blushed anytime my mom read her name aloud to my sister and I.

Queer. I was queer. I just didn’t know it yet.

Thus, I didn’t notice the Sirius/Remus romantic subtext as a child, drinking hot chocolate propped against my sister’s knees and listening enraptured as my mom read to us from the most recently released Harry Potter book. When Order of the Phoenix came out, I was far more interested in Angsty Harry™ and the evils of Delores Umbridge, and when Sirius died, I was not even all that upset. I didn’t really like him all that much, knew even at that age that he embodied too many of the stereotypically “masculine” traits I had already grown to hate with his pride and brooding and emotional immaturity. I didn’t much care, much less recognize that JK Rowling had done something rather unforgiveable.

But others did.

Seventeen years later, I get it.

By 2003, many older, wiser readers had long since clocked the queer subtext between Sirius and Remus. And, when I picked up the books earlier this year to re-read them for the first time since they were read to me as a child, I saw it too. (Notably, this was prior to JKR’s most recent round of blazing transphobia, after which I stopped reading.) And, okay, yes, I am the type of queer who reads queerness into many things. But y’all, I really didn’t have to try all that hard this time. If I were reading these books for the first time in the context of 2020, I would assume Remus and Sirius were canonically a couple, and JKR just wasn’t bashing us over the head with clear evidence of it. She doesn’t do that most of the time anyway. By Order of the Phoenix, in my opinion, the evidence (as movie Dumbledore says so awkwardly) is incontrovertible. The living together? The joint Christmas present? The “Sirius, sit down” scene early in the book? The confirmed HIV/AIDS metaphor, IN THE 90S?? THEY’RE FUCKING GAY TOGETHER.

And here’s the thing, (and I have no proof of this, so you’re just going to have to roll with it): I think it’s pretty clear that JKR became more conservative as time progressed. Money tends to do that to people, conveniently. What started as a series about the power young people hold to defeat evil and fight injustice eventually devolved into a flaccid epilogue where heterosexual nuclear families abounded and there were (still) no visibly queer characters in sight.

By the time the final book came out, I was a full-fledged teenager, and I, too, had abandoned fantasies of fighting evil and injustice for fantasies of settling down with “my perfect man” (L. O. L.) So, I get it. I get that priorities change for young people. But for adults, especially those recently drunk on the power of infinite amounts of money and fame? Nah. JKR knew what she was doing. JKR laid all the groundwork for a possible relationship between Remus and Sirius and then changed her mind. Or was told to change her mind. Or was forced to change her mind.

I have A Lot Of Feelings™ about Tonks and Remus’s relationship (most of which are about the way their canonical relationship plays into a lot of really awful tropes about disabled people which, no matter how you read him, Remus is). And I have a lot of feelings about Sirius Black as a character. I have a lot of feelings about Dumbledore, some related to his posthumous outing and some not. And, like most of us now, I have a lot of feelings about the entire franchise as a whole. But here’s what I know: It doesn’t actually matter, because JKR didn’t just change the explicit relationship dynamics between Sirius and Remus, she quite literally killed any chances of queer romance.

And she didn’t just kill Sirius. She killed Remus, too. And Tonks (who is a genderqueer butch and I will die on that hill). And Dumbledore. And the cute, squeaky house elf with a love for clothes and an obsession with Harry. And the young Gryffindor boy who followed Harry around, constantly asking for photos and autographs. And – you know what? Fuck it. – the person who lived INSIDE ANOTHER MAN’S BODY before returning to his bodily form, during which time he relied heavily on his male servant who cut off a literal body part to restore his master.

Am I reading too much queer subtext into each of these characters? Maybe. But, as this lovely article states, “close reading is queer culture, always has been.” And I can’t help but notice that the vast majority of the characters JKR didn’t kill off are, well, pretty fucking straight. (Drarry shippers, feel free to come at me. I’m sure there’s plenty of queer subtext there, too). They’re, for the most part, characters with a clear canonical history of heterosexual romance, as if only those with a possible future of a heterosexual, nuclear family are worthy of survival.

And I just don’t think this was an accident. I think it was the intentional plan of someone who started to feel like the world of inclusion she’d created was being read as far too inclusive.

To call this “literary gay bashing” is a pretty serious accusation with a pretty serious use of a very loaded term. But the thing is, I think we too often let people like JKR off the hook without recognizing what her words – both literary and non-literary – have done and can do. We too often dismiss it with statements like, “she’s entitled to her opinion”. Gay bashing is the intentional abuse or assault of someone perceived to be a member of the LGBTQIA2+ community, physically or verbally, that often results in lasting harm or death. And I use this term to describe JKR’s work particularly because it is sensationalizing, because it calls violence what it is: violence. Because, sure, she’s as entitled to her opinion as anyone else. But the second you create a world where anyone, especially children, are going to see themselves, going to feel safe, your “opinion” better do as little violence as possible.

When I saw the first Harry Potter movie, back in 2001, I refused to discuss it for months. I was furious. At the time, I couldn’t quite pinpoint why, but I now realize that I was heartbroken that Hermione Granger didn’t look like me. When JKR described a girl with wild, brown curly hair, I saw me. I saw my hair. And so, as children tend to do, I saw the rest of me, too. I saw tanned skin and dark brown eyes and full lips and high cheekbones (the ones people always told me made me look “Indian”, which I only partially am). I saw the quiet confidence that develops when you’re the brownest kid in your school, ready to strike but only when provoked. The pale, arrogant, racially unambiguous Hermione Granger I saw on the screen made me feel dirty, cast off, unworthy of representation. The self-hatred I felt when White Hermione Granger entered the film alongside White Harry Potter and White Ron Weasley and White Everyone Else was a kind of violence.

And when JKR killed off all of her queer-read characters, she took that violence to another level. Because they were there, we saw them, we did not imagine the romantic undertones between Remus and Sirius, or the way that a shape-shifting young woman with short, spiky hair reads an awful lot like a person uninterested in traditional gender. We saw ourselves in the most beloved franchise of all time. And then, she took away those possibilities, and she took away those characters.

And you know what? People die because they can’t see themselves in media. People die because that’s what they’ve watched everyone like them do on screen and in books. It’s not harmless, and it’s not victimless, and it’s violent.

There’s only one solution to literary gay bashing: To Bash Back. We can and do write ourselves into the stories, into the world, and refuse to settle for explanations that gaslight us into thinking we imagined things that were never there, or ask us to settle for tiny crumbs of useless representation.

I intended to finish my most recent story, “Come Healing”, with an ambiguous ending that left the possibility of Sirius’s death open to reader interpretation. But then, JKR kept going, and talking, and kept creating violence, and I got mad. And so, like so many queers before me, I rewrote the story and changed the ending, and created love and security and peace and life where the canonical author had created hopelessness and death. And in the world we live in right now, that is radical. It is bashing back.

It’s tiny, but it’s something. Every time we write a happy ending for a queer character, we create the possibilities of happy endings for queer people everywhere. And no one – no matter how hard she may try – can take that away.

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ultraericthered · 3 years

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Anime Update 77

Charlotte - The twists and turns in these two episodes were....pretty bananas. Turns out that Yu and Ayumi really did have a forgotten third sibling, an older brother with the super ability of "Time Jump", meaning he can rewind time back to an earlier point and create a different reality from it, like it came right out of Future Diary, and he's actually the leader of the Syndicate that Tomori and the rest work for. But it turns out that the last time he did it in order to save himself, his friends and his siblings from a terrible fate in a research facility really was the last time he could use it, and he's now gone completely blind. But since Otosaka's Plunder ability goes beyond just possessing others and can actually steal abilities for himself, his brother has him meet with him in the current present day so that he can take the Time Jump and use it to go back to when Ayumi's Collapse ability was about to awaken so that he can keep her from dying this time, which is exactly what he does. Oh, and that one guy with the long brown hair who's always wet and locating ability users is actually the elder Otosaka brother's best friend who he calls "Pooh", specifically citing Winnie the Pooh as why, which I'm not sure what that's about but who cares, we got Ayumi back with us! Yay!

Dragon Ball - Was mostly just the aftermath of King Piccolo's defeat, which was good...until it wasn't. Not only was the filler stuff with Oolong impersonating Goku in order to score with a lady reporter not very fun, but even the main story comes up lacking here - the thing Korin says about Krillin, Roshi, Chiaotzu and the rest being stuck in limbo for eternity unless they're wished back to life with the Dragon Balls made no sense and later canon never shows us anything of the sort happening to dead characters. Does it only happen when a demon like Piccolo kills people? But Piccolo turns out to not be a demon, so OOPS! The reveal that God himself created the Dragon Balls and that Goku needs to go speak with him about creating them anew is dumbed down in the dub to being that Goku needs to go see some guy named Kami. And then Goku sidetracks himself to go get his missing power pole so that he can reach the Heavens from the top of Korin's tower, but when he reaches there he has to face Mr. Popo, who looks like a racist caricature. I don't really like this character. The Abridged Series making him out to be a creepy, horrifying, threatening figure wasn't just a joke reinterpretation - it's exactly what he is like here, and giving Goku such a hard time fighting him kind of diminishes his effort against Piccolo. Speaking of, I don’t remember any of the scenes with Piccolo Jr. in the manga, but they were probably the most interesting parts of this whole viewing.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - Got to wrap up the initial story arc with its final episode, where Haruhi got so dispassionate, bitter, frustrated and even jealous that she subconsciously decided she was ready to wipe the slate clean on reality and start over. What transpires from that is a battle of wills between Haruhi and Kyon, but it's not depicted in a straightforward or traditional matter, which I love. The two of them flee from the Shinjin as it wrecks the school building and then starts to multiply itself in order to bring the rest of the universe down too, and as Kyon starts to re-evaluate his outlook on the reality he lives in, that he doesn't want to lose it. Haruhi, however, protests that a bigger, grander existence is worth sacrificing everything in the world for. So Kyon finally figures out the way to sway Haruhi away from that position and escape the enclosed space - he takes her out with a kiss! The resolution is appropriately strange and ambiguous. Was Haruhi’s destructive reconstruction of reality cancelled out by the kiss? Or did it go through and everyone is now living in a new world that’s an exact replication of the old one as per Kyon’s feelings? We’ll never know for sure, but what we do know is that life goes on as usually unusual for the SOS Brigade from here.

Your Lie In April - Since Haruhi will now be a more casually recurring show, it’s place was taken by the appropriately timed Your Lie In April. Hoooh boy. I can’t say I’d been much looking forward to this one based on the things I’ve heard about it. While I might find those problems myself later down the line, it honestly has a pretty alright start. I like the main character well enough and feel real bad for what his abusive mother put him through in his piano recital career, and I like his friends, particularly Tsubaki. But of course, the character who steals all the attention whenever she’s on screen is Kaori, who is very whimsical, kind-hearted and good with children one minute, a raging nightmare the next. Clearly something special about her and some angle she’s working, but what could it be?

Date A Live - Oh my God, she totally WAS creeping on Origami! Well, good to know that Origami will be Kurumi’s next obsession after she’s done with Shido, I guess? But aside from that, the main action this time was Kotori putting Shido up to a triple-timer date with Tohka, Origami, and Kurumi at around the same vicinity on the same day. Which was amusing up until it took a dark turn with Kurumi dropping her friendly civilian act and outright murdering some guys with her Nightmare powers (though to be fair, they had it coming - they were torturing a poor, defenseless kitty!) and attempting to turn those powers against Shido to torture him and ultimately devour him as a way of expressing her “love” for him. Bitch be all kinds of creepy! Thankfully, Shiro’s bio sis Mana shows up in the nick of time and kills Kurumi. Again. Farewell, Kurumi, we hardly knew ye. I’m sure the death will totally stick this time and I won’t be seeing you next time.

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion - So a faction of the Japan Liberation Front goes rogue, takes a hotel building and its Britannian occupants hostage, which includes Lelouch's schoolmates and an incognito Euphemia, and not even Cornelia can take much drastic action or the lives of the hostages will be forfeit, so that makes things convenient for Lelouch, as Zero, to direct his newly appointed “Black Knights” (what Ougi’s rebel faction is now) to go make the save for all of Britannia to see. Lelouch derails any rescue efforts by the army just so he can claim all the credit for himself and broadcast on live TV that he and his Black Knights are the allies of justice who will protect the weak from those with power, including the Britannian Empire!

When They Cry: Umineko - Where...did this...go wrong? This arc was doing a good job at keeping me with it and then suddenly it spirals into utter nonsense that makes it end even worse than Arc 1 did! Early on, things were still fine: in-game Battler actually accepts Beatrice as a witch in a very kind of touching but kind of sad scene shared with Maria. Rosa shifting back and forth between reasonable skepticism and outright paranoia was interesting. Shannon and George getting murdered by Beato in such an amazingly cruel way was just great! And when the Zaheer Butler guy brings Battler to Kinzo’s room where he gets to have a one-on-one with the Golden Witch herself? The tension in the set-up is so thick and palpable. But then comes the final act, where Rosa and Maria get ambushed by the goat furniture, Battler is suddenly stripped naked and chained as needless humiliation from Beato before she has the goats devour both him and Kinzo (which was admittedly pretty sweet and satisfying to watch), Rosa makes a heroic stand to gun down some goats while apologizing profusely to Maria for what a horrible mother she’s been (we never really got to look inside Rosa’s head this whole time, so where the fuck did THIS come from? What was the incentive for this?) only for them to get ripped apart to, leading to an absurdly abrupt transition to the Meta World where we’re treated to a scene that’s trying so hard to be nightmarish and horrific but ends up being downright comical where Beato is tormenting Rosa by forcing her to eat her dead family members, culminating with Maria’s severed head forcing itself into Rosa’s mouth while Beato gloats and goes “IT’SU PERFECTO!” And if it couldn’t get any funnier, Meta Battler then comes and demands that Beato “slice off your cow tits and make me a sandwich!” and makes an innuendo callback to Maria’s Head. My GOD, he is so ridiculously awful, I can’t even. After the game is back on between Beato and Battler, Beato confronts Bernkastel about her interference…but I’m honestly not sure what interference she means and what it even entails since we only saw Bern among the goats earlier and not much was made of it. And then, to top it all off, Lambdadelta, the Witch of Certainty, makes her unceremonious debut by just popping in there to say hi and establish she exists and is Bern’s nemesis, and then it just ends without more discussion between the Witches, which is a thing I would’ve really liked to see!

This adaptation really fails. I don’t know how much more I can take.

Magic Knight Rayearth - Hikaru and Lantis got to go out on patrol together in the decayed outlands of Cephiro and even had something of a bonding experience...which might’ve gone deeper had Lantis not had an aggressively territorial and jealous Tinkerbell Expy following him around all the time and getting into skirmishes with Makona, but a sort of bond has been established all the same. But even aside from the various monsters that they have to slay, trouble finds the two in the form of Eagle Vision appearing in his mech suit, intent on putting the data on the Magic Knights and Rune Gods he gathered last time to good use by challenging Hikaru to a fight. Lantis tries to discourage this but then mostly stays out of the way, with him and Eagle clearly having some shared history from all the time Lantis spent in Autozam. Despite Eagle being put at a disadvantage, he’s able to gain the upper hand and abduct Hikaru, and Lantis can’t rescue her because Alcyone had to go and choose that time to launch another attack! Guess Hikaru’s headed for Autozam now!

AMC: Yuki Yuna Is A Hero - Finally watched the first episode of this. Normally, Seiji Kishi’s style for his work is very recognizable, but here it’s not typical Seiji Kishi that stands out to me - it’s Angel Beats! Seiji Kishi. The animation budget, friend group interaction, and even next episode previews are more like Angel Beats! than Kishi’s other work like Danganronpa or Assassination Classroom. While the exact nature of the magical girl plot and how Fuu knew that all this was coming all that time but kept it secret from her friends and sister until now had me a bit confused, but I liked the otherworldly spectacle and the action sequences, and I very quickly warmed up to the four girls in the Heroes Club - Yuna herself, Fuu, Itsuki, and....uh...the girl in the wheelchair. They’re all great, and I will await more from them.

#Anime Update

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