Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows
In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.
If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.
So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.
I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?
However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.
Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)
And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.
Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.
It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.
Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?
While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:
She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.
You see where I'm going with this.
When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:
And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD
When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.
MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS
No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.
And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:
Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!
The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.
And, uh
Yeah.
I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.
But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.
Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:
But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.
There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.
After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:
"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.
Kind of like another bird in this show:
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and at the end of the day, people will still hate women.
because beyonce is a terrible songwriter who has a good body and nothing more and she's really nothing compared to olivia rodrigo, that stuck-up bitch who steals other people's music, but taylor swift is an old, bitter nothing who clearly hates other girls. and sabrina carpenter deserves to die because she followed her heart, not her brain, and that's exactly why zendaya will never be good enough for tom holland. don't forget about kylie jenner, who's stealing precious timothee's innocence away and dating her is like committing arthouse cinema suicide, or how we said the same thing about miley cyrus and her disgusting profanity, think of the children, poor liam hemsworth, trapped in a marriage with such a horrible woman. lana del rey was hot until she was big and she made trailerpark sexy until her ass got a little too fat. and ariana grande, talentless homewrecker, and selena gomez, jealous and unreasonable, and hailey bieber, even more boring than the blood drying on the knives you are so quick to pull. sophie turner is a bad mom and megan thee stallion deserved whatever was coming to her.
and amidst all of this, we still don't know these women. we cannot fathom the pain of having a public divorce, one where people choose sides and hurl insults at you until the battery on their phone dies. we don't watch them chase after sweet-cheeked children in tucked-away backyards or play board games with their best friends while their chests heave in laughter. we don't know their marriages and we don't know their solitudes. we don't watch them unravel themselves, time and time again, preparing for the battle that we have made of their lives. they can never make a mistake. they can never cry. they can never be who they believe themselves to be.
and we take all of this and we go to work, we ride the bus, we go grocery shopping, we walk in dappled sunlight, and we let ourselves shrivel. i compare myself to every body i see and i comfort in the fact that i can still encircle my wrists with my fingers. food turns to dust in my mouth when i think about the fact that taylor swift thinks she's fat and people still hate sabrina carpenter for sticking by joshua bassett's side when he almost died, for God's sake, and now the people on my twitter feed are saying GUTS is the worst album they've ever heard. i liked it, the tiny voice in my head cries out. she wrote songs that made me feel noticed. they're calling the song i relate to the most a total skip.
so i close the app. i try not to think about the endless profiles screaming about how much they hate a nineteen/thirty-two/thirty-eight/twenty-three/twenty-six/forty-two year old. i try not to think about how much they would hate me, if they knew anything at all.
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very funny (irritating) to me that everyone whined and yelled about stupid rainbow capitalism and how performative wokeness/allyship is a net bad we should all refuse to support and now like.
tumblr is doing nothing for pride and target isn't selling much (if any) of their pride collection offline except at certain stores (in democratic areas, basically) and build a bear has a much tinier collection than normal and all the actual pride stuff is on their "adult" website (not sure if it's in stores, but pride = adult is a hell of a message)
there are genuinely good criticisms for performative allyship in all its applications. it shouldn't be the only thing we expect from people and companies. but if all the shit I see being called performative stopped tomorrow then in terms of the LGBTQ+ community especially we just. wouldn't talk about queerness or queer issues or celebrate pride or do anything.
open your fucking eyes. we are very close politically to having gay marriage rolled back. now companies are basically being let off the hook to even make a miniscule effort (which matters to the people who don't have access to any other kind of support in their communities! which normalizes the community in public spaces!) because the only reaction they have gotten over the last few years are negative ones from BOTH sides.
we are so entrenched in discourse at all times for the sake of our OWN performance of who is the wokest and who is REALLY an ally or a good community member that we have basically handed over all the work of activists of the last several decades to the other side because we'd rather scream at each other over fucking chicken restaurants and shit than the real life backsliding that's happening.
and this goes for other shit too. feminism, poc rights, all of it.
also. trans rights aren't discourse and aren't just culture war arguments. in case any terfs think they can spin this to be antitrans.
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