• <- look at this lil fella

.

-=🤍=-

i do not know when i will be able to walk in the land of the living again, but when i do, i will look back at you with tears in my hollow eyes. even though i may continue to drift endlessly, i will always cherish you for keeping me strong and sending me the right way. every day i spent with you was more beautiful than anything i had been before.

i will love you.
i will miss you.
i will remember you.
thank you.

-=🤍=-

.


nb trans autistic furry plural system of 5-ish. occasionally makes art stuff and game things, but we mostly post dumb shit. ms paint and comic sans haters beware!


Discord (yes really)
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Matrix chat
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If there's anywhere else I forgot,
search for "LeminWedj" and you might find us ;P

renkotsuban
@renkotsuban
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renkotsuban
@renkotsuban
Sorry! This post has been deleted by its original author.

wyverewings
@wyverewings

That reply was in direct response to me, so I’ll give some more context.
They said “No, I really don't see the problem with gibberish in games. When I see English-like gibberish or scribbles in a game or other media set in my country (a real place, with real culture!), it doesn't bother me. I don't feel that my language is being devalued or disrespected.”
And. Huh??
So I replied “You don’t see the difference between butchering the language of people of color and butchering the language of white people?” And they went off on me with… this.
I might have not articulated it perfectly, but I don’t know how they read anything about multilingualism into it, there’s a difference between learning a language, and not bothering to learn a language and instead writing it as nonsense. And I feel the connection between English and whiteness is obvious? Like it’s not the only language originating from a white ethnic group and there are people of color who speak English, but did they just forget England’s long history of colonialism?
I’m bad at explaining things and afraid of confrontation so I didn’t say anything yesterday, but I just wanted to air out my frustrations with how weird this reply was.


AtFruitBat
@AtFruitBat

is you'll come across some people who look like they're going to speak to you, and then they open their mouths, and they say "ching-chong, ching-chong, ching-chong", like it's a made up version of what they think your language sounds like.

This has happened to me. Just random strangers will approach me on the street to do this shit, and they think it's funny, but you know, it's really not.

So when you're presenting a language that's not your own, and you just decide to make up gibberish, to some extent that's the kind of attitude you may end up feeding.

Like, at this point we're back to Toni Morrison (yet again) talking about how the function of racism is distraction.

The function, the very serious function, of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language, so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing. (Toni Morrison 1975)

Somebody says you have no language, so you spend twenty years proving that you do. And then some random white person comes up to you on the street, and it's "ching-chong, ching-chong, ching-chong" again.

We're talking about POWER RELATIONS here, people. Try to understand that. Some people feel that they have the power to walk up you in the street and mock your language as if it can't possibly be a real language. As if you can't possibly be speaking anything understandable or valuable. As if you might as well be making barking noises like a dog, for the sheer amount of intelligence or comprehensibility they associate with your speech.

If you don't feel your language is disrespected or devalued when someone does that kind of thing with you (if they even do! I can't think of a time when I've seen white people randomly subjected to that kind of behaviour), I would suggest that that's because there isn't a power differential in operation. You probably aren't in a position where you're minoritised, or where there's a serious social demand on you and your people to continually prove that you're also equally human, that you also have culture, that your culture also has value, and so on.

Like, to some extent we're at the point here now where some people (and yes, primarily the white people here) need to shut the fuck up when Asians are talking about Orientalism. Because clearly you don't understand anything about whiteness, about white supremacy, about colonialism, about racism. You don't understand the relationship betwen whiteness and Orientalism. So just shut the fuck up. It's free to shut the fuck up. And then you won't embarrass yourself by trotting out these really rancid, ignorant takes - the kind of thing that shows everyone your complete ass on the internet, because it's apparent to anyone who has done even a little bit of thinking or reading about this, or anyone who has lived experience of dealing with these issues in daily life - it's going to be apparent that you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. And yet your lips continue to flap.


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in reply to @renkotsuban's post:

this fucking guy has been shotgunning dogshit takes all throughout the comments of people talking about this like "hmm nothing to examine here about why I feel the need to do this!"

ok i have one thing : i feel like in an alternate timeline they’d have made the connection that “commodification of culture negatively impacts individuals of that culture” in an empathic way rather than whatever this is.

that "people of color" segment.
the only reason why "people of color" is "anyone that is non-white" is because that's exactly how white people are defined ! White people is whatever the current ruling class thinks is white enough, and that has changed a ton through history, as countries that we today perceive as containing mostly white people were poor and immigrants to the US.
irish, spanish, italian people would have all been qualified as "people of color" just a few decades back. This is so stupid

And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted.

  • Good old Ben Franklin Turtle.

That reply was in direct response to me, so I’ll give some additional context.
They said “No, I really don't see the problem with gibberish in games. When I see English-like gibberish or scribbles in a game or other media set in my country (a real place, with real culture!), it doesn't bother me. I don't feel that my language is being devalued or disrespected.”
And. Huh??
So I replied “You don’t see the difference between butchering the language of people of color and butchering the language of white people?” And they went off on me with… this.
I might have not articulated it perfectly, but I don’t know how they read anything about multilingualism into it, there’s a difference between learning a language, and not bothering to learn a language and instead writing it as nonsense. And I feel the connection between English and whiteness is obvious? Like it’s not the only language originating from a white ethnic group and there are people of color who speak English, but did they just forget England’s long history of colonialism?
I’m bad at explaining things and afraid of confrontation so I didn’t say anything yesterday, but I just wanted to air out my frustrations with how weird this reply was.

This reply from them does read like a massive defensive pushback against your attempt to challenge their belief. I am having a flashback to the time I tried to explain to an internet stranger (for 2 hours!!) why they as a non-Japanese person shouldn't use a Japanese honorific to refer to their white partner.

It is a kind of fundamental disrespect to a language to use it simply as gibberish set dressing and it's alienating to the people who speak it. It's a symptom of the othering that has come with centuries of white hegemony, and people who refuse to grasp that (or at least believe us when we say it feels shitty) are some of the most frustrating people I've ever had to talk to.

oh wow, we've gone full circle back to "nintendo is trying to brainwash your children" crap from the late 80s (I mean for that matter the idea of "civ cultural victory" belies a certain 'end of history' implicit argument here too. as in something happened, maybe this guy thinks it's the manufacturing of VCRs as a commodity, who knows, and Japan won game over. hrmmmmmmm)

in reply to @renkotsuban's post:

I don't understand having a special interest in a place and being completely incurious about their history outside of 'cartoon i want to consume'. You can just watch and enjoy cartoon without feeling a need to spew paragraphs justifying dehumanizing art choices.

I'd say "wow I can't believe the gentlest and most patient explanation that some western-made games have pretty tired tropes in them and maybe we should reconsider the way we use those got this exhausting and outrageous level of pushback", but no I fully believe it because it happens. Every. Single. Time.

I'm really sorry that this is happening. It's bullshit on every level.

wow, classic "actually you're the racist!" move... I'm so sorry that anyone has to deal with such asinine comments. this person seems to approach conversations to prove themselves right in particular 😵

in reply to @wyverewings's post:

in reply to @AtFruitBat's post:

This, 100%.

The weirdest variation of the "ching chong" thing that has happened to me was a stranger asking the "where are you from" question, me replying "from here" to get him to go away, and him replying "oh, from the way you were slouching I thought you were Asian." Language is one of the very visible ways this power relation plays out, but that comment made me realize that there was a caricature of everything about me in that guy's head. Something like weird fake kana looks "small" on its own, but it's hard not to see it as a tendril that eventually traces back to the bigger monster.

Yeah. I feel like it's often more revealing of the other person than it is about me. Because it's also very impersonal; it's about what they project onto me, a lot more than it's about anything I am, or do, or say. After all, I am a stranger! They really don't know anything about me or my life.

So I have that weird feeling of being seen a very specific way (filed away as "Asian" in their head), while also not being seen at all (plastered over with whatever cliches they apply to Asians in their head.)

Sometimes if I get the "where are you from" question, I reply with: "why do you want to know?" That fairly often disrupts whatever back-and-forth they were anticipating in their own head. But also I usually wish that they wouldn't even ask in the first place. 😂

It's pretty interesting. 😂 A sample of responses I've had to that:

"I've recently been on holiday to Mongolia, so I was wondering if you were from there."
So they made me take my headphones off in the train, because they wanted to use me to replay holiday memories, like I am a blank screen to project holiday snaps onto.
Me: "I'm not from Mongolia." Headphones back on.
Awkward silence.

"We saw about the tsunami in the news and we were wondering if you were from there."
Morbid curiosity and wanted to enjoy the thrill of replaying someone else's trauma.
Me: "I'm not."
Awkward silence, because I am the "wrong" type of Asian for them.

"I know many languages and I wanted to greet you in your own language."
I was in a queue to the checkout after them. They had been bragging about their language acquisition to the person manning the till in the shop, and wanted to show off to them by using me as a prop.
Me: I was raised speaking English.
Awkward silence.
Then they turn to the shop assistant and defensively blurt, "I was only asking!"

Etc, etc.

I have to be able to tolerate uncomfortable silences and some defensiveness, so I wouldn't ask "why do you want to know" or "why are you asking" if I didn't feel safe or fairly robust on that occasion. Sometimes I don't feel like that, and so I don't make that response at the time.

But when I do, asking them that can mean their awkwardness is suddenly out there, rather than me containing it on my own, or smoothing it over for them socially. And I am often more OK than them at just standing/sitting there afterwards, and letting the awkwardness sink in. Because they haven't had to experience self awareness much before (majorities usually aren't as aware of how they impact minorities), or sit with social discomfort much before.

Whereas I have to field uncomfortable Othering and weird projections all the time from white strangers like that, who see an Asian face and immediately want to use me for something that really doesn't have a lot to do with who I am. 😂