Anime ALWAYS making Japanese people the victims, the “othered” or oppressed ones of the story. It’s very frustrating because Japan is capable of being racist and xenophobic asf

State of things and moving forward

Here is the remaining collection of posts I intended to make. At some point, I simply lost interest. Small chance of me posting certain ones (especially if they support my case against the series/webnovel). Large chance I’ll make a certain “Tsukimichi is Japanese Imperial Propaganda” post. If you’re wondering, just wait ‘til you get to Lorel in Arc 5.

Will I post other things, though?

Most likely. Some related to isms in anime, manga, and whatnot. Hell, I'm tempted to do a post showing examples of sexism in beast races (The Eminence in Shadow) and racism in dark-skinned characters (fuckin' Bleach) throughout anime. The former's so glaringly obvious that I wonder if it even needs to be pointed out. Then again... 🙄

Now's a good time to just flat out say that I dropped Bleach TYBW because of how awfully it portrayed its dark-skinned (and blatantly African descended) characters. It was racist. Shit's just racist, y'all. Do not defend.

In short

Life's too short. So I'll do what I please when I please. Don't like what I do? Block me and move on.

edit: where it started: The Racial Problem in Tsukimichi (and why I left the subreddit)

Negative & racist depictions, tropes, and Stereotypes regarding Native Americans in Road to El Dorado.

Mayaincatec: The film homogenizes multiple Indigenous cultures cultures into one, specifically and mainly Maya and Nahua cultures, with the story being based on a mythical place set in Colombia.

Mighty Whitey: the basis of the film comes from the Spanish lie and myth that the Indigenous Aztec population worshipped them as gods, with the city of El Dorado doing the same with Miguel and Tulio, who use this to trick Native people to steal gold from them.

Oversexualized Native Woman: Chel’s character has overemphasis on her sex appeal and sexuality, with her character design being very revealing and exageratted on her chest, hips, and thighs. There is little to no exploration of her character outside of her sexuality and servitude towards the White characters. She does not pass the Aila Test and is a near opposite. Chel is a perfect example of how many Native female characters are sexualized

Evil Shaman: The Native religious leader Tzekel-Kan is demonized as evil & plays a heavier role as the main antagonist instead of the famed genocidal colonizer Hernan Cortez. Tzekel-Kan being enslaved by Cortez at the end is depicted as a “good ending”.

Demonized Spiritualiity: connected to the above, all scenes depicting traditional Mesoamerican spirituality/religion or practices are shown as evil, barbaric, savage, scary, and associated with the main antagonist.

White Saviors: El Dorado is saved by the main White protagonists, the idea to destroy the gates to the city is Tulio’s idea, the warriors of El Dorado are portrayed as helpless and no match for the Spanish conquistadors despite Indigenous Mexican warriors going toe to toe with them, and winning against them in various battles in real life.

Whitewashed Colonialism: Cortez, despite being one of the worst colonizers in history, serves as a minor, secondary antagonist & his evilness is only vaguely implied, and never explained why it (his actions) is bad. Cortez has the same goal as Miguel and Tulio (to steal gold from Indigenous people), but the protagonists aren’t shown as bad for doing it. Colonization is essentially excused (& is never explicitly named as harmful) as long as the colonizers are “nice” about it.

There’s likely some other stuff I’m missing but these are some of the big ones that are shown in this film, & its depictions of Indigenous Peoples are extremely harmful. I also don’t wanna see anybody trying to defend any of these with somehow implying “Well it’s not ACTUALLY racist or harmful because-” etc etc save it for a vague post and take our inability to see criticism of racism within a movie you like elsewhere.

“You see, Tintin, Londoners are a particularly miserable subspecies of Englishman. Subterranean, anti-social, you could kill one with eye contact alone-”

“Captain, now is really not the time.”

It’s 1940. London is getting firebombed by Nazis. For the past few years Tintin and Chang have been out of work, having been outed as a couple by the press. They have spent some time travelling around with an ageing Captain Haddock to foil various fascist plots. Upon hearing about the bombing runs on London they go up to check on Chang’s uncle, who has an antique shop in Limehouse.

More story details under the Read More. Let me know if there’s anything you wish for me to tag, cw for mentions of racism:

Chang’s London cousins have since been evacuated to Kent. While trying to get what remains of Mr Wong’s possessions together they run into one of them, the boisterous Wendy Wong. She ran away from her countryside guardians back to London, revealing to have suffered a lot of racial abuse. Being the bravest of her siblings, she and her siblings planned for her to go back to London to find their dad. She’s distraught at her home’s destruction and feels frustrated and powerless. Her father is less than thrilled, and demands Chang take her back up to Kent. 

Tintin is really trying his best to help Mr Wong and get on his good side, knowing full well he doesn’t approve of him and Chang. While searching through rubble Haddock gets talking to some community organisers and learns about locals planning on using the local Underground stations as shelters and agrees to help. One evening he stumbles across a disused service tunnel and overhears some German spies discussing suspicious plans.

Tintin offers to escort Wendy to Kent. A worried Captain Haddock informs Tintin of what he witnessed last night. Wendy overhears and wants to help, wishing to be a hero like Tintin and Chang, and emboldened by a sense of responsibility for her home. Chang, having previously lost family members to war, is sympathetic to her and believes she should be allowed to help. Tintin is reluctant to let Mr Wong down. Haddock feels like he’s herding cats.

TL;DR: Trains! Anti fascism! A story about finding common ground to fight back against nazis.

(alt included in all images)

Another thread by Senator Ben Ray Luján here.

A book on the subject (haven't read it myself):

One of the sources in another one of Alisa's furiously impassioned twitter threads have been debunked, so I didn't include that. But she claims that her own family was caught in the fallout zone when her mother was a baby, which eventually led to her and large numbers of her community developing cancer. It's human for that kind of grief to be caught up in inaccuracies. People are already being ghastly and racist to Hispanos and Indigenous people criticizing the hype for the movie. They're not attacking Oppenheimer for being Jewish, they're criticising the erasure of the human cost of these bombs and the continued valorisation of the U.S military's actions in World War II as some kind of moral saviourism.

While Oppenheimer himself believed that the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally justified (they had planned to drop them on Germany except they surrendered before they could), he also felt had blood on his hands and regretted his role as the "Father of the Atomic Bomb". He spent the rest of his career vehemently opposing further development of thermonuclear weapons and the hydrogen bomb accurately predicting the concept of mutually assured destruction. This eventually made him a victim of Senator McCarthy's Red Scare and his clearance was revoked. I haven't seen the movie (Christopher Nolan is the kind of casual white racist I avoid on principle) but people who have seen it say that it doesn't glorify nuclear weapons and depicts the man himself with the complex moral nuance that seems to be accurately reflective of his real life.

The backlash to Indigenous and Hispanos people's criticisms and to people pointing out that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were genocides is also frustrating because...both world wars were a clash of genocidal empires. The reason they were world wars is because the countries colonized by Japan, China, the European powers and the US were all dragged into it, whether they wanted to or not. Jews were one of the many colonized peoples that suffered in that time, who were left to die by everyone until they could be used to frame the Allied powers as moral saviours, establishing a revisionist nostalgia for heroism that powers the US military industrial complex to this day.

As early as May 1942, and again in June, the BBC reported the mass murder of Polish Jews by the Nazis. Although both US President, Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, warned the Germans that they would be held to account after the war, privately they agreed to prioritise and to turn their attention and efforts to winning the war. Therefore, all pleas to the Allies to destroy the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau were ignored. The Allies argued that not only would such an operation shift the focus away from winning the war, but it could provoke even worse treatment of the Jews. In June 1944 the Americans had aerial photographs of the Auschwitz complex. The Allies bombed a nearby factory in August, but the gas chambers, crematoria and train tracks used to transport Jewish civilians to their deaths were not targeted.

(Source)

Uncritical consumption of World War II media is the reinforcement of imperialist propaganda, more so when one group of colonized people is used to silence other colonized peoples. Pitting white Jewry against BIPOC is to do the work of white supremacy for imperialist colonizers, and victimizes Jews of colour twice over.

Edit: friends, there's been some doubt cast on the veracity of Alisa's claims. The human cost to the Hispanos population caught downwind of the nuclear tests is very real, as was land seizure without adequate compensation. However, there's no record I can yet find about Los Alamos killing livestock and Hispanos being forced to work for Los Alamos without PPE. There is a separate issue about human testing in the development of said PPE that's not covered here. I'm turning off reblogs until I can find out more. Meanwhile, here's another more legitimate article you can boost instead:

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

In this week's Top 5 we're showcasing stories about:

- Interracial persecution in 1960s Michigan - The cruelty bred into the chickens we eat - How Photo Shuffle helped one man through loss - Navigating life not knowing you’re neurodivergent - The deep craft in forging a handmade knife

All this and the story our audience loved the most. 

Check out the list and learn why our editors recommend these pieces at Longreads.

I almost don't wanna make this post bc I feel like it will be misinterpreted, but I've been thinking about the odd sort of double standard in specifically the danny phantom fandom, where the most popular thing (bafflingly, to me, given canon, but I won't digress) is to write/draw about a 14-year-old boy being mutilated, tortured, dismembered, vivisected, and generally brutalized, BUT,

if people try to ship him with, say, Vlad, suddenly that's a step too far

TO BE CLEAR I AM NOT DEFENDING THE SHIP. I do not like it, it skeeves me out, I've blocked people on sight for shipping it, I've gotten into heated debates with other folks in the fandom about it, you can ask like anyone and they'll back me up on this lol

MY POINT is that I find it so strange that one of these things (shipping a 14-year-old with an adult) is seen as abhorrent and heinous, whole the other thing (brutally torturing, mutilating, and traumatizing a 14-year-old for our Amusement) is A-OK and is in fact the most popular activity in the fandom 👍

and some of this shit is DARK! the few times I've poked into the dark fics in the fandom, especially the more popular/well-known/infamous ones, some of them have made me feel genuinely nauseated (and horror is like, my favorite genre for writing lol!!!!!!!)

I'm very curious about this phenomenon because I think it says something interesting about the old 'differentiating between fiction and reality' conversation that comes up every time dark fic/fic that features taboo elements is mentioned. Am I intelligent enough to articulate what that something is? Probably not lol

Although I do think a factor is that one of the situations in question is much less likely to happen to real kids and teens, but again I'm not intelligent enough to put into actual specifics why/how much that might matter.

idk!!!! I'd be interested to hear other people's opinions about this, cause it's def something that's been percolating in my brain

i have a long post about anti blackness in fandom spaces, specifically in anime fandoms cooking in my drafts.

The thing is. Bad/gross food is rarely a DISH - when food is bad it's because it's been badly made, whether because of skills or available ingredients. but a dish p much only exists recognisably and has a name because someone likes at least one version of it.

which is to say. there isn't really a way of naming a dish, school of dishes or specific food culture and going EW ISN'T THIS DISH UNILATERALLY CONCEPTUALLY DISGUSTING without denigrating quite a lot of people.

like you don't have to like it in any form. but it's eaten and shared because it's good to a not insubstantial number of people when cooked right.

(and I don't really understand how you approach that with total incuriosity when it's a dish you haven't tried like. ARE rocky mountain oysters good? Maybe! I would very much eat some to find out!!!!)

this is actually something the British food poll did in a way the American ones I've seen haven't really - they described how the food they're imagining is, specifically, badly prepared (grey meat and veggies; unseasoned shepherd's pie). which is wildly tipping the scales by calling it British Food but. like. that is an on point definition of why that food is gross.

(this also applies to American chocolate, which like. Broad category but I think most of us understand this refers to low-cocoa high-sugar chocolate, probably with bucolic acid. so we are being invited to imagine Badly Made Chocolate not. the concept of chocolate)

personally I just think it's very rarely a good or funny idea to shittalk how gross any given food culture is. partly because food is important and culturally evocative for most people, partly because it's very...alienating? to be like WHO COULD EAT SUCH A THING? just because you wouldn't, and largely because to be frank it says more about you than about the food that you have so little imagination or curiosity that you can't imagine why a food might be enjoyable to folks who aren't you.

yes this includes jello salad, I would like to try it. ONCE. if it wasn't appealing to someone it wouldn't be so widespread.

Helllo i Love your art more than i love donuts and thats ALLOT.but my boy lucifer can have babys,like i dont even know how that works!make it make sense! I just wanna say thank you again for curing are boredom👍🏻

You are SO right that is high praise indeed! I'm honored! =D So here. Have a donut! 🍩🍩🍩 As for Luci, let us turn to the world's favorite 700k+ words old man fanfiction that is The Bible (tm) as according to their lore, it's been canonically stated that angels are genderless for they are beings made of the Pure Holy Spirit and- Holy SHIT! What do you know??? Our dear depressed duck dad was an angel himself and in some depictions Lilith is infertile as was her punishment for her freedom! The more you know! -Bubbly💙

(LMAO. My guy's been traumatized. Once is enough XD)

It hurts to see how normalized whitewashing has become in media and fandom.

People are so caught up in making racism one thing, like slurs or stereotypes, that they forget or intentionally ignore the many layers to racism and it’s casual role in society and media.

Whitewashing pushes Eurocentric standards like beauty or lifestyle as the ideal, and actively harms People of Color by looking down upon or erasing our features, skin tones and culture.

Whitewashing is racist. Whitewashing is a form of racism.

Whitewashing is harmful, whitewashing is degrading, it’s dehumanizing. It makes you feel ashamed. It makes you feel ignored.

It makes you feel ugly.

Yet it’s so normalized that people don’t even recognize it as racist.

A comic book character with dark skin is played by a light skinned actor in live action, but no one blinks because both character and actor are the same race. They ignore the colorism.

An animated show based on a live action media animates an Actor of Color with lightened eyes, a thin nose and lightened skin. But no one blinks because “it’s just animation.”

A character of color’s culture is removed or pushed aside for a more American centric story and plays into the “American Dream” stereotype. This is cultural whitewashing.

This is casual racism in media.

No matter what form or what media, whitewashing is racism.

And it hurts.

Hi. So, I saw Mikey feed Odyn a bottle of (presumably) milk, but what other things do the turtle tots like to eat?

It was indeed milk!

We don't truly know how exactly ronin Mikey grew up but I'm assuming that in like most iterations of the turtles, food and a place to stay were hard to come by when growing up, specially when Mikey and his brothers were babies. Because of this, Mikey knows what is like growing hungry and not letting any food they had the luck of having go to waste.

In the comic Mikey is shown growing his own crops and harvesting them So in the au Mikey grows his own vegetables and fruits making it easier for him to prepare food for the babies. He tries his best to make a large variety of dishes for them because he wants them to try as much they want and never go hungry. Since Mikey is a turtle mutant himself he tries to makes dishes that would appeal to their turtle cravings too, like algae! In addition to this, in the au Mikey sells his harvest to nearby towns to manage with money or stuff he and the babies need for the house! (like ingredients to make homemade pizza :] )The people from the towns he usually visits don't really mind him or the babies because they are aware they are Hamato clan members and the people from the towns actually like having the little turtle family around! (Since Mikey can't really leave the babies on their own yet (not like he wants to either), the towns knows of their existance and they love them)

yknow i gotta say. lex luthor can be a really fun and interesting villain, but sometimes it does just take me aback the way some people talk about him when trying to make him funny and cool, as if his biggest and most infamous shtick is not extreme, violent xenophobia.

i still hate how the onus was on zon and his people to "prove" that orcs were capable of more than violence meanwhile marcille didn't do a goddamn thing to change their minds about elves being raging bigots. funny how she thinks elves (a long-lived race with powerful magic) and orcs (a short-lived race with no magic as far as we can see) are on a level playing field when it comes to securing land and resources!

and having bahai, zon's child, be the one to go "why can't we all just get along" like ooh ryoko kui some crimes cannot be forgiven

hi! loving your art. I was watching your awesome stories/gifs and I was wondering: how did Chang develop his feelings for Tintin? Did he discover them before or after him? How did he react and why? (English is not my first language so if you see a grammatical mistake, I'm sorry. Also, sorry if so many questions made you feel like you were in a philosophy exam)

Thank you so much! As a contrast to the rest of the Marlinspike team I'm writing Chang as someone who makes friends and develops crushes pretty easily!

I imagine he's had a crush on Tintin for some time, possibly from when they first met. He's been at the mercy of his circumstances for most of his life until that point - Tintin basically makes him feel capable of doing stuff.

He's pretty heartbroken after the Blue Lotus. Tintin doesn't contact him for years. Chang is struggling to adjust to his new family and is failing at school, having missed out on a good education for a few years prior. Until Tibet he feels pretty hopeless, he will never live up to the time when he took down a drug ring.

His near death experience in Tibet shakes him out of this rut. He starts to travel and take up hobbies like dance and photography. Didi trains him in some basic martial arts. Tintin makes an effort to actually stay in touch this time. Chang has some abandonment issues as he's frequently lost people throughout his life, so he's someone who's willing to give people second chances, even if they've hurt him badly. Chang thinks he's well over his crush on Tintin when he comes around to Belgium for his studies, but falls for him again very quickly!

Unlike Tintin, Chang is a lot more comfortable with who he is. He's used to being the odd one out and has generally low expectations for himself, so just goes with the flow.

Below I talk a little with how I'm going about writing him and the historical context surrounding this, cw for mentions of racism (sinophobia) and queerphobia:

I'm writing Chang as bi, I thought it would be interesting to explore as Asian men were perceived differently in the 30s compared to today. While Asian men in the West are currently heavily desexualised in the early 20th century they were stereotyped as predatory and deviant. In London a lot of Chinese immigrants were male dockworkers, so when they married white women there was a lot of fearmongering about predatory and disloyal Chinese men.

A lot of depictions of Asian men in Western media reflected these stereotypes (and often used queercoding to push the idea of Asian men being animalistic seducers - General Henry Chang in Shanghai Express (1932) was written to be bisexual while posing as a threat to the white leads). Some examples off the top of my head include Hishuru Tori from The Cheat (1915) and The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). Novels frequently depicted Chinese drug lords with borderline supernatural powers in manipulation.

On the other hand I've noticed how fans frequently depict Chang as someone who's submissive, demure and soft, which ignores how ridiculously brave and proactive he is in canon (stealing documents from police officers, charging into a man immediately after getting shot at by a machine gun, I could go on!). It's a common example of Fandom Racism (not accusing anyone specifically, it's just a trend I've noticed.)

When writing Chang I'm kinda reckoning with two different eras. From a contemporary angle I'm writing him as a love interest, which as an Asian guy I rarely see in media today. I also gotta consider his own time and context, how he would navigate being a queer Chinese guy, and how that would affect his relationship with others and himself.

the fact that people consistently forget/don't acknowledge the fact that vivienne medrano has been proven to be abusive and shitty towards her animators multiple times infuriates me to no end