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starfleetwitch · 1 year

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So... Some things I've descovered about myself since moving to London.

1. If a stranger smiles and says good morning to me, I am sunshine personified for the rest of the day.

2. If I wake up too late to eat breakfast (or straight up forget) before work I will absolutely destroy Jemma Redgrave's characters in a sad/mad haze of hunger fueled typing during my morning commute. (Kate Stewart is currently on the floor with a bloody nose in a 3k+ note on my phone.)

3. I subconsciously tally in my head how many dogs I've seen and the higher the number, the more likely I am to skip home. (I saw 14 in one morning last week. That was a GREAT day)

#One of these things is not like the others #Life in london #jemma redgrave #Kate stewart #Sorry Kate... Things might have been different if I didn't favor more sleep over wheatabix

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joesne · 1 year

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#life in london #relaxingtime #Christmas20

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misslinala · 1 month

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pourlabeaute · 1 year

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healing our hearts on Valentine's Day :)

💌

I know how difficult it can be when Valentine's Day hit, that's what made me change the plans for this video. When I was recording I had no idea of what I'd do with the footage, maybe a vlog? Having all this time to think (excuse for posting this so late???) gave me the space I needed to come up with something sincere that can actually reach and maybe even help others. I hope you like this type of video, I really enjoyed creating it and being more personal. Subscribe to see what I’ll be up to next!

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peacefulandcozy · 4 months

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Instagram credit: chloejg

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galina · 2 months

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It must be spring 🥐🌼

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inklore · 7 months

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THEY HAVE NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG EVER IN THEIR LIFE!!!! THEY ARE PERFECT THEY DESERVE THE UNIVERSE!!

#imagine not being accepted or loved for who you are your whole life and then some crusty old father figure shows you an ounce of love #I CANT TAKE IT #jordan li #gen v #gen v spoilers #derek luh #london thor #THEMM <333 #ʚ laurs art ɞ

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ladycrose · 4 months

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Dress up games: Haha you must have this clothing item to proceed to the next level!

Dress up game lore:

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treasureplcnet · 6 months

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inverness here they come!!!!

#ignoring canon. does everyone know that esther forces her way back into his life even in a world where they don't have to meet #and then they just ditch london and live an oddly quiet life until the end of the war in scotland. they told me that.#more than anything in the world i am always thinking of the incredible force that these two are and how determined they are to survive #please see: esther genuinely trying to shoot him (makes me laugh everytime i see it) and the way karl blends himself into every scenario #not above lying not above running away just trying to get by. 'i treat others the way they treat me'. distrustful by default #and finally the only reason these two stop kicking and clawing is the budding family they accidentally form #AND THEN THE LAST 20 MINUTES OF EP4 HAPPENS.#ep8 gives me a semblance of peace. theyre in inverness to ME.#i do also rly adore their twin rbf. at any given moment they look as though theyre chatting shit (they are)#AND the gun thing is so funny. the gun fails and instead of giving up esther just tries to shoot him again LLOOOLLLL #no thoughts towards the consequences and with no experience with guns as well. she's literally goated #jacob fortune lloyd's interview on this and his thoughts on their relationship also makes me a tiny bit sick so .#anyways. WATCH BODIES #karl weissman #esther jankovsky #bodies netflix #my art #bodies 2023

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ayoedebiris · 6 months

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Derek Luh & London Thor as Jordan Li GEN V | S01E08, Guardians of Godolkin

#gen v #genvedit #gen v spoilers #the boys #jordanliedit #jordan li #derek luh #london thor #userrachel #tusercj #tusermich #userclara #userla #userconstance #usereri #*#light of my entire life 🫶🏼

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theereina · 2 months

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Lady London

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msterpicasso · 1 year

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@yagitwotimes

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joesne · 1 year

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#hot chocolate #christamas #life in london

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misslinala · 8 months

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stromblessed · 5 months

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Mizu's spectacles, and the levels of her disguise

In drafting some more Blue Eye Samurai meta posts, I find myself writing out the comparisons between what Mizu can and cannot hide about herself, and how that affects how she moves through the world.

Like, I get the jokes about Mizu's glasses, if only color contacts had existed back then, etc. etc., and I think (hope) that most viewers don't take the glasses jokes seriously, as in "I don't care about the suspension of disbelief because BES is a cartoon." But I wanted to write these thoughts out anyway without burying them in a text post about something else.

I think the points I'm going to lay out here are viewed very differently by different people, so please feel free to add to this post, reply, or put your thoughts in the tags!

Not only do Mizu's glasses not actually help her that much, there's surely more to Mizu's mixed race appearance than just the color of her eyes.

In my view, this was pointed out in episode 1:

I'm willing to bet most of us were expecting young Taigen to say "blue eyes," not "ROUND eyes."

Obviously this is still about Mizu's eyes, but not even spectacles can hide their shape.

I don't think the show is obligated to point out everything about Mizu's face that isn't quite as Japanese as the people around her expect. Though the creators have said that they specifically designed Mizu - and her clothes - to read both as "white" and as "Japanese," as well as both male and female. I think there's more about Mizu's features that read as "white" than just her eyes.

This is where my own headcanons start entering the picture, but it's my impression that people can just tell that Mizu looks different, whether or not they can put a finger on exactly how.

There's the little girl who looks at Mizu and then hides on the way into Kyoto:

When there's more to your face you'd like to cover up than just your eyes, big hats are a big help!

By the way, most of these examples have to come from the first half of the season, since by the second half, either Mizu is too preoccupied with fighting henchmen, or everyone Mizu is facing knows who she is already, and she therefore has no reason to hide her mixed race identity.

It's worth mentioning that the mere fact that Mizu has to hide multiple aspects of her identity - her mixed race and her sex - results in her having to choose clothes that really, really cover her up, which doesn't win her any favors either:

(Zatoichi reference, anyone?)

If it were as easy as, for example, tying her glasses to her head and wa-lah, nobody would ever know she was half-white - then (1) Mizu would've just done that long ago, and (2) Mizu wouldn't be so on guard and on tenterhooks 100% of the time the way she's depicted in the show, even when her glasses are on.

Her spectacles sure don't help her in the brothel, which is full of observant women who are trying to seduce her, meaning they get good long looks at her:

Mizu never takes her glasses off, but they still send a woman to her who has light eyes, thinking that must be what will interest a blue-eyed man:

No wonder Mizu gets mad after this, lol

So Mizu never takes her spectacles off in the brothel, it's dimly lit inside, and the women can still tell that she has blue eyes. I'm getting the sense that Mizu putting on her spectacles isn't a guarantee that people suddenly can't tell that she looks different.

And yet no one spots that she's female.

Mizu can hide her breasts, can wear her hair in the right style, can hide what's between her legs, can walk and talk and behave like a man - and she's been doing it for almost her entire life, to the point that not only is she very good at it, but the threat of being found out as female is deadly, but isn't presented in the show as omnipresent.

Let me explain.

She threatens Ringo for nearly saying the word "girl" out loud, because while she's constantly ostracized for being mixed race, being a woman traveling without a chaperone, carrying a sword, and disguised as a man will get her killed or flogged or arrested or some combination of these things.

But in addition, it's been drilled into her since she was a child that if she is discovered as female, the combination of her being mixed race and female will identify her as someone extremely specific, someone known to some bad people, and she will be killed:

I think of it as Mizu thinking to herself, "Being found out as mixed race means I'm treated badly. Being found out as mixed race and a woman means I'm dead."

Mizu's hair is cut as a child. But she isn't made to wear a big hat, or cover her eyes somehow, or anything like that. Because hiding her sex is a more successful endeavor than hiding her race.

Ringo finds out she's female by accident, but once Mizu accepts the fact that he won't rat her out, she relaxes pretty early on in the season. Because the threat of being found out as female is mitigated pretty much 99.9%, since Mizu has gotten so good at being a man. And also, because most of the time, people see what they want to see. Even if Mizu's face makes her stand out as "not 100% Japanese," no one in the world of BES looks at Mizu's clothes, her bearing, her sword, hears her voice, and will ever in a million years conclude that she is a woman, because expectations around gender roles in the Edo period were so rigid and so widely enforced.

One detail that proved this to me is after the Four Fangs fight:

Ringo takes off Mizu's clothes so he can stitch her up, then leaves her clothes off even after he's done. He doesn't even throw her cloak over her as a blanket or anything. There's a little a straw (pallet?) as a divider there on the left, but anyone could just peek around it and see Mizu and her chest bindings. (I think it's mostly there as a windbreaker.)

And Taigen is right there, but he doesn't give a shit:

Opinions probably vary hugely on this, but my impression is that because the show doesn't make any kind of deal about Taigen being in the room with Mizu here, my guess is that Mizu isn't in any danger of Taigen thinking she's female. Even when I watched the show for the first time, I assumed that Taigen had seen Mizu out of her clothes here, and that he thought nothing of it.

Eat your heart out, Li Shang (Mulan 1998). I actually do think that this scene is a direct and purposeful side-eye to that movie, lol

There's obviously some nuance to how "severe" being mixed race is compared to how "severe" being a woman is for Mizu:

After all, Swordfather can't bear to listen to Mizu confess to being a woman.

So a Japanese man can go wherever he wants, whenever he wants in BES. A Japanese woman has limited options: marriage, religion, or a brothel. A mixed-race man is an eyesore in this story. A mixed-race woman is a death sentence.

May as well eliminate the female aspect, and do what you can about the mixed-race aspect. Because that's just realistic.

Meaning Mizu can avoid the strictures Edo society places on women. But she can't avoid the repercussions that come with being mixed race. And I truly don't think that it's just because "there's no brown contacts yet."

#blue eye samurai #mizu #racism #bes #I am truly disappointed that we didnt get absolute confirmation that Taigen saw Mizus bound chest and just didnt think it was a big deal #but I still think that scene is making a point #again I dont think most people take the glasses jokes seriously #but its been bothering me ever since I first saw them #I really dont think Mizu just looks like a 100 percent Japanese person...... with blue eyes #and I bet that will be made even more obvious when she goes to London where Im sure she will meet plenty of people #who are more than happy to point out their observations to her #also I ran out of room in this post to go into it but this is also what made Mizus marriage an absolutely doomed prospect #Mikio talks about wanting to find the right creature for his lord and well... a mixed race woman is the right creature huh #he just needed a little push imo #getting kind of sad at the thought that Ringo is the only person in Mizus life who knows her whole identity AND accepts it wholly

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thegreatyin · 8 months

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im glad fallen london lets you have the true writing experience of needing to wait twenty minutes to attempt a 50% shot at getting work done or not. very realistic

#yin-thoughts #fallen london #in an odd way im appreciative of the action limit. treat it as a life sim where you open it every 3 hours to check on your british guy

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