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stil-lindigo · 5 months

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I can't properly put into words the amount of disgust that I feel seeing someone who looks like she could be my cousin fight for a genocidal occupational force like Israel but I will say this.

If you are Chinese, Korean, Japanese or any one of these Asian ethnicities that the West deem "acceptable" and you align yourselves with western-backed racial supremacy, you are making fools of yourselves. You have fallen prey to the myth of the "model minority" and you are suckers for it.

The premise of racial supremacy is based on exclusivity. And here's a dose of reality - the myth of the "model minority" is nothing but a tactic to placate you. To sow divide in the ranks of people of colour. To artificially manufacture another realm of racial supremacy in minorities so that you're distracted from how we all suffer under colonialism.

Did we all forget about the skyrocketing of sinophobia in the wake of the first COVID outbreak? The transformation of Chinese people into fiends with barbaric eating customs, poor hygiene, and mass conspiracy to infect the world with biological weapons?

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What about the hate-crimes? The attacks in the street against anyone visibly asian? The rampant discrimination and ostracisation from society?

In 2020, Donald Trump referred to COVID-19 as "The Chinese Virus", "Kung-flu" at a campaign rally to raucous applause, a chilling echo of the times where fears of the "Yellow Peril" had the western world in a stranglehold.

For all that Chinese people have been lauded as "prodigies" and "well-mannered workers", the moment our existence was incovenient, were were nothing more than another target. And although Chinese suffering then wasn't close to the scale of suffering that Palestinians now endure, we all received a reminder on what it was like to be in the world's crosshairs.

Now, in 2023, Biden dismisses death tolls as unreliable and remains proudly Zionist even after Netanyahu described the genocide Israel is inflicting upon Palestine as the "struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle." At the same time, Palestinians are being compared to fleeing rats in a gesture of dehumanisation that mirrors how the Nazis portrayed Jews during the Holocaust.

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And let's not think Abigail's Jewishness will save her, not when it's been proven that Israel has administered contraceptives to Ethiopian Jewish immigrants without their consent. Racial supremacy is an exclusive club that never stops getting smaller, and there is nothing that you, as a minority, will ever be able to do to fit in. One day, you too will be a target and there'll be nothing you can do but blame yourself. After all - it's already happened.

So shame on Abigail. Truly. With the memory of knowing what it's like to be targeted for factors out of your control fresh in her mind, she happily fights to do the same to others. And that says more about her than I ever will be able to.

#this may be long winded and wordy but i had to get this off my chest #as a chinese-australian woman who does her best to be proud of her chinese heritage #this was a slap in the face #and ive tried lately to not inject my own voice into discussion about palestine bc i know there are people out there #who are more educated and more equipped with voices that need elevating more than mine do #but i think im allowed to talk about how enraged this made me #god.#free palestine #palestine #cw: mentions of sinophobia #colonialism

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kulay-ng-banaag · 5 months

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Filipino* Hetalians are bothered by how vocal people are to criticize the US state but not CN. We only wished for others to be as critical, because Filipino Hetalians have been criticizing the CN state for trespassing — no, literally violating international law that was settled years ago and ineffectively implemented after our former president elected to court the CN state in the name of anti-US imperialism. The coast guard of the CN state rammed the boats of our fisherfolk — one of the, if not the, poorest sectors of the Philippines. It doesn't matter who you are, if you are in their way, they won't hesitate. Why they do this has more to do with capitalism than racism per se (even while racism is ultimately rooted in capitalism).

We're critical because WE DON'T WANT IT TO ESCALATE INTO A CONFLICT THE LIKES OF PALESTINE RIGHT NOW. The White House is literally intervening because the CN state refuses to take accountability. We are forced to invoke a law that most of us did not even exist to protest before. It doesn't help that they have used the military bases they built here as a jumping point for other wars (one example with the keywords: Clark Air Base, Allen Lawrence Pope, 1958 PRRI/Permesta Rebellion). What happens is we end up holding some level of responsibility for something we as a people did not sign up for. Then, we have to pay reparations but our taxes literally get pocketed, so we only further suffer for the sins of capitalist pigs.

But since no children have died yet, I guess it doesn't matter? Our government is debating over the reimplementation of mandatory ROTC for university students. One student was killed years ago for exposing the hazing rituals that have been normalized in the ROTC system. This is the same ROTC that obliges us into military service when the state calls for our specific names, only this time everyone has to go through it, and therefore anyone can be called on. Of course, that is unlikely unless there is war. Now put that next to our West Philippine Sea issue and you see the dots connect.

You would have known that if you had just listened to Filipino Hetalians from the start, instead of scrambling for excuses and copy-pasting racist rhetoric as a clapback to defend your victim complexes.

Nobody asked for you to explain your trauma. Nobody asked because we're completely aware and SYMPATHIZE with that. That's not our problem. That was never our problem. Your trauma is not our oppression. The problem is a neighboring government refuses to acknowledge and intervene in the aggression of its own resources. Nobody said iT's yOuR fAuLt ThEy'Re DoInG tHiS, it's honestly worrisome how people hear things that were never uttered...

But what are we supposed to expect when you have informants everywhere to keep track of any form of disagreement so you're basically a panopticon over the fandom that nobody wanted in the first place? Do Filipino Hetalians have to go into detail now about how we here are under constant surveillance from the Philippine state because any form of vocal disagreement will get us red-tagged and possibly killed as retaliation for offending the egos of those in power?

You demand we respect your trauma while irrationally labeling someone else's trigger as racism? Did you actually believe that would contribute one step closer to a ceasefire? Be honest with yourselves and think it through realistically: Did you actually believe that your online, inflammatory retaliation will contribute a step towards a ceasefire?

The honest and realistic answer is NO, because you wasted energy that could have been put into organizing on the ground. You wouldn’t have to get snarky about how you spend time helping elsewhere because your lack of training in working with fellow organizers with mental health issues indicates your lack of experience. Your lack of experience indicates you have yet to touch real grass and organize beyond huddling your friends into online harassment campaigns.

You don’t get to sprinkle disclaimers of not harassing people while adding #hater tag. You literally gossiped about me in your circle. You cherry pick receipts in your favor. The worst part is I’m not the first person you’ve done this, and I doubt I will be the last one. You only visibly condemn public harassment in order to wash your hands clean of your private harassment.

And I’m not even white, yet you spit inflammatory statements about me as if I was a white racist. Between us, who’s the Westerner to the other?

This is not about racism from white supremacists anymore. This is elitism, and we Filipino Hetalians have too much of that already. It’s elitism because you constantly enforce your intellectual superiority over us like some evangelizing conqueror holding dominion over the poor, unenlightened savages. It’s elitism because being Asian by blood doesn’t change the fact that you’re entitled to privileges not so within the means of non-migrants. Note that I write “by blood” because tying identities to the state is conclusively dehumanizing. Does my being Filipino automatically make me anti-indigenous? Does someone being American by citizenship make them racist freaks, regardless if they are also black/indigenous/Asian/Pacific Islander?

We’re as upset over the racist-motivated attacks of Chinese people because of the racist framing of the CN state as the source of COVID-19. We’re as ashamed of the lingering sinophobia in SEA. At the same time, we here in SEA are in closer geographical proximity to the CN state puts us in a higher vulnerability to exposure to aggressions on a state level. You could have also learned of our genuine opinions if you had just asked. Instead, you assumed for us. We may both be Asians by blood, but what happened to the whole respecting our nuances because Asians aren’t a monolith? Please understand where the nuances lie.

Elitism is also satisfying your freedom to freely speak of your traumas while policing the traumas of other people not shared by you, because the conditions you have grown under have instilled a hostile and ableist perspective for mental health breaks in general. That is the fault of the normalization of capitalism that every one of us must live under. The good news is that it can be dismantled. The bad news is having a petty fight with someone you dislike because they explained why they disagreed with your fandom opinion on the internet is not going to leave a scratch on the foundation of capitalism we mutually want to destroy.

Lastly, elitism is also the combination of residing in Western countries — all the more in the core of all cores of imperialism today that is the United States of America — and having a significantly larger following, and therefore influence, on social media than most non-migrant SEAsians in the Hetalia fandom. You hold a privilege and leverage over other voices; I mean, just look at how much traction the racebending disk horse received. As far as I can speak for my commentary — though I wasn’t the only one — we only wish for acknowledgement of the nuances alongside the impossibility of total depoliticization of nation-state personifications.

You speak of fighting racism, yet you constantly patronize the people from the communities you demand more representation of. It should not be any harder to realize the unappreciated double standards than the history of racism against diaspora communities in white-majority countries. I hate that it happens. We hate that it happens. But the internet is not restricted to the Western experience alone. The internet is not occupied solely by Westerners. Sheesh, guys, I know the US is even colonizing the digital space but don't give them that validation lmao?

And at the end of the day, this bizarre drama was never about the Chinese identity or the anti-Asian racism or the genocide of Palestinians. It was about a neurodivergent SEAsian expressing that her sudden quiet presence on social media is because she needed to recover from an anxiety attack that was preventing her from functioning, which includes platforming her support for Palestinians and other obligations in her every day life with sincere intentions. Understand that you are enforcing an unwanted power dynamic every time you make everything about you, again and again and again and again.

Understand that in creating a false rumor in mocking someone's trigger, you are establishing that the Hetalia fandom is not a safe space for the neurodivergent.

Understand that in creating a false rumor in mocking someone's trigger, you are establishing that the neurodivergent are useless, and therefore have no right to participate, in the fight for the freedom of Palestine.

UNDERSTAND THAT YOU ARE A VICTIM OF RACISM AS MUCH AS YOU ARE AN ENABLER OF ABLEISM.

THE GOOD NEWS IS THIS: It can be unpacked. Here are some articles on the impact of frequent media exposure to extreme violence. Mental health wellness is as much a part of the peace process.

Media Exposure to Collective Trauma, Mental Health, and Functioning: Does It Matter What You See?

Witnessing images of extreme violence: a psychological study of journalists in the newsroom

Media’s role in broadcasting acute stress following the Boston Marathon bombings

You are free to email the authors to argue about why dedicating time for recovery is morally wrong and a privilege that can never be a right. Don't take it to me or to any other Filipino Hetalian anymore, take it to the specialists in the field. Argue against the foundations of their profession. Shake them to the core, for all we care. Tell them how you think their works supplement racism because you want so desperately to be right about your bad-faith reading. Understand that your stubborn inability to hold others in good faith for once is toxic and destructive.

EDIT (01/09/24): Here are abridged infographics of a webinar addressing mental health and systemic violence, and organized by an advocacy network that works with indigenous communities and environmentalists. To quote them: "mental health must be addressed with collective care that is inseparable from collective action in solidarity with the Palestinian people's national liberation movement." If that still does not humble you, then accept that there are Hetalians — not just the non-migrant Filipinos — who are actually uncomfortable with your constant aggression and you just don't know it because you don't listen when they choose to speak up about it.

Now that that’s all said, take the time to comprehend how our pains now stand as equals in magnitude with respect to our dignities as humans.

*Bluntly, me and my friends and mutuals in the Hetalia fandom who are all non-migrant Filipinos. I don’t want to assume for others not in my circle, but I am extremely tired of all the cop behavior over us. This is not Martial Law.

P.S. Stop using “mainlander” like a slur. Not even as a joke. Stop it before it blows into full-out racism.

#war cw #violence cw #death cw #racism cw #sinophobia cw #ableism cw #mentions of genocide cw #long post

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farginen · 1 year

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moving on with life and trying to heal and just live are all good concepts and i do love that for riza. but it comes at a high price and sometimes it's just hard.

it's not just the memories from war, or the guilt and remorse. all of that too ofc, but also the complete 180 in her life plans. having to find purpose in life and readjust her whole outlook on her objectives and who she is an individual and try to adjust to normalcy and ~ living in a society ~ which she never had the chance to do because she didn't think she would live for it anyways.

even having her son, whom she loves more than anything and brings so much happiness and contentment to her life, riza is still plagued with anxiety and frankly scared. it's not entirely rational, she knows this much. but a lot of her fears are grounded in very real concerns.

what if she's just not a good parent since she didn't have a good childhood? what if something happens to her baby and she has to bury him like the children she buried in ishval? what if someone targets him for what he looks like?

the best she can do is protect him for as long as she can and try to prepare him and give him all the tools to succeed in a world that is often unkind and unjust.

and i think that's also reflective of her work and how much she can realistically do to make amends.

#i don't think we know enough about amestris to determine if sinophobia would be a thing there but #the possibility is there #and even though the conflict with ishval was essentially fabricated there's enough to believe the homunculi picked on them bc they were an #ethnic minority. idk. i'm not set on anything here maybe ppl writing these characters should add their 2 cents.#the point is. healing is good but it's also painful and an never ending difficult process.#and part of that process is for riza to realise there's a lot of stuff she won't be able to 'fix' in the world #stuff that her own child is going to have to deal with and she won't be able to shield him from it forever #idk i feel like thats a pretty clear illustration of how royai trying to make things better is still only two people #i'm sure they do a lot of good. but it's unlikely they would single handedly end racism and xenophobia and all systemic problems that #allowed the war to happen. sure they can still try and that's what matters i guess #that wasnt even what this post was about originally but uh #here we are i guess thank you brain #headcanons.#long post #cw child death mention

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professorcalculusstanaccount · 1 year

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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.

#asks #fanart #tintin #adventures of tintin #chang #tinchang #gif #animation #2d animation #comic #racism cw #biphobia cw #i am Absolutely overthinking this whole thing but i will not stop #tldr chang falls in love easily #he has a small crush on tintin from the blue lotus #gets his heart broken #meets tintin again and they rebuild their friendship #and he falls for him again #the blue lotus

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pocasu · 3 years

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(Preface before I start: I know what I'm talking about. I was in the APH cesspool for three years when I was young and impressionable, and I'm so glad I had someone in my life to set me straight. Also I'm Korean so white people do not speak over me kthxbye ♡)

I genuinely do believe Hetalia/APH is more dangerous and effective in indoctrinating younger children into far-right ideologies than other prominent JP imperialist-romanticizing media like AOT/SNK because consumers are able to fall back onto a cushion of, "It's just satirical humor!"

Himaruya (the APH mangaka) does so much to feed into that defense: harmless stereotypes like "Americans eat burgers and believe in aliens" are displayed right alongside horribly racist statements like "S.Koreans lay unrightful claim onto Japanese territory,"* and "Chinese people have noticeable accents when speaking Japanese,"** among many, many others. These are all supposed to be viewed as equally hilarious and ridiculous.

By making his audience more tolerant and receptive to these subtle slights against the countries Japan has colonized and brutalized, Himaruya makes their minds open to further right views that align with the messages of Hetalia.

Criticizing these "small" offenses are how we nip a new generation of growing right-wingers and imperialist JP sympathizers in the bud. I want to believe pairing this with better historical education will lead to a brighter future where we don't forget and bury the past, but learn and grow from it.

Footnotes from the second paragraph and additional readings are in the cut below. (CW: imperialism, sinophobia, sexual assault, CSA, death)

*APH's portrayal of S.Korea regularly gropes Japan's chest as a running gag, and claims they are his property. In Hetalia, each country's body part corresponds to a real life location, and Japan's "breasts" are implied to be Dokdo (or Takeshima, if you will). Dokdo is a small island in Korean waters that Japan has attempted to claim for only the past 3 or so decades to increase their ocean proximity. The groping itself is an obvious attempt at historical revision of comfort women: during WWII, Japan kidnapped thousands of young women and children as young as 12 from Korea, China, the Philippines, and (primarily) other Asian countries to place them in sex slave camps where soldiers would regularly come in to "release their stress" and "find comfort" by raping these victims. The JP government has yet to apologize for their country's crimes almost 80 years later, and still maintain the stance that the comfort women were "paid prostitutes who had a right to consent." Here's my question to them: can you call it consent when the women feared death if they were to push their rapists away, retaliate, or say anything other than "Yes?"

**Characters of Chinese diaspora in Japanese media having "the Chinese accent" is nothing unique to Hetalia, and many other famous media such as Gintama also have characters known for it (hello, Kagura). But just because it's commonplace doesn't negate that it is still deeply problematic. When you see Japan's history of brutal violence against China (Nanjing Massacre) and compare it to how Japanese pop culture fetishizes and sexualizes traditional Chinese clothing (commonly in the form of qipaos with breast cutouts and impractically high leg slits or a miniskirt cut, or all three at once) while simultaneously portraying the Japanese spoken by Chinese people as unintelligent and mockable, you can clearly see the issue.

These footnotes are here to guide you, but I highly encourage you to research on your own. I'll give you some places to start:

Recently, a Harvard professor came under fire for alleging that Korean sex slaves had chosen to work as prostitutes. (Source: AP) Over many decades, the Japanese government has consistently attempted to minimize and eradicate any mentions of their crimes towards neighboring countries, even to the protest of their own citizens. (Source: BBC article written by a Japanese woman) Most recently, they lay unrightful claim to Dokdo again in nationwide textbook revisions scheduled for 2022. (Source: Korea JoongAng Daily)

If you made it until here, thank you for reading until the end. My final request is that when consulting reports about comfort women, please take care to check that the author clearly condemns the JP war crimes. It is unfortunate, but the JP government pays massive amounts of sponsorship money to major educational institutions and news outlets to speak favorably of them.

#ok to reblog. in fact i encourage it #needed to get this out of my system bc i'm still fuming tbqh #poca chat #imperialism #important #anti hetalia #this turned from a hetalia rant to another history lesson go giana go #actually you know what i tries to avoid using main tags until now out of some sense of courtesy but now that i'm thinking.#what kind of courtesy did i owe fans trying to blindly enjoy their imperialist bootlicker series anyways #aph #hetalia

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