Black and fab. 22. Libra. ENFJ.
Bay Area. UC Berkeley Grad: Media Studies.
Writer, artist, illustrator, producer, critic.
Benevolent Media Proprietor in training.

I made PoCentric a word.
It's also my business standard.

#E*TonesOrBust.

albinwonderland:

uninhibitedandunrepentant:

The Creepy Cull of the Female Protagonist.

PREACH!

I’m starting to really really like this guy’s videos. 

jhameia:

[Huh? I’m sorry. I’m having trouble hearing you over this glass ceiling. It’s unbreakable. And all I see up there are a bunch of white penises. - Jessica Williams, Senior Correspondent]

birdbrainblue:

Sony’s conference was absolutely unbelivable, good god. I was extremely skeptical at first - I went in with a deliberately critical mindset because I wasn’t expecting much from it, and 45 minutes in I was ashamed of myself for that. It started out a little shaky, with focus on the Vita (which nobody cares about) and talk of TV, movie, and music apps (which everyone is sick to death of), and I was prepared for the worst.

Then they started showing some games.

Then some more games.

Then some more games.

Sony spent a cursory amount of time on all their other content, then spent at least an hour and a half solely on showcasing a selection of the titles coming to the PS4. The games ranged from long hoped-for new installments of classic series to ports of some fantastic indie PC titles to an array of new and fresh franchises launching with the new console. This conference was actually dedicated to showing new games - games for all tastes - and selling the console not by its own tech capabilities and silly apps but by the amazing games you can play on it.

The important thing about this conference is that Sony did exactly what they needed to do to stomp all over Microsoft and claw their way to the top. Not only did they show consumers that selling games is more important to them than selling apps, but they also shamed Microsoft in one of the most stone-cold smackdowns I’ve ever seen between major corporations - they took time to focus on how the PS4 can do almost all of the things people were mad the Xbone couldn’t. And to top it all off, their console is two hundred goddamn dollars cheaper.

Sony killed it. We don’t know what Nintendo’s got up their sleeves yet, and we don’t have any idea what Valve’s Steambox is like yet, but I think it’s safe to say the console wars aren’t nearly as cut-and-dry this gen as we thought they were going to be.

I’m still concerned about the lack of backwards compatibility, and I’m gonna need some more details on how their cloud computing and multiplayer work, but overall? That was an absolutely spectacular showing and a complete revolution of where we thought the industry was heading, and I know that somewhere right now a Microsoft executive is swearing and hitting things.

Good fucking job, Sony. Color me very impressed.

shitstraightwhiteguyssay:

iphisquandary:

plot twist: the man thinks, ah, she is simply expressing her frustration as a member of an oppressed group, whilst hating the construction of masculinity that was designed to keep her down, not necessarily all individual men such as myself…this is absolutely not the same thing as sexism and not a personal attack on me *keeps scrolling*

hint hint

mistresssam:

theblacksupremacist:eb

stohru:

sad-queer:

I am Japanese and I find the usage of the word “kawaii” by non-Japanese people to be extremely appropriative and damaging. I’ll tell you why:

1. It is not just a word for cute. When non-Japanese people say something is “kawaii,” they are not simply saying something is cute. There are hella connotations and implications that come with the word. Which brings me to…
2. The subtleties of Japanese pop culture, style, street fashion, etc. get completely lost on non-Japanese people. “Kawaii,” the way non-Japanese people use it, is like a 2-d projection of a very complex and multi-faceted subculture. The subversiveness and subtleties of things like Lolita and Harajuku culture are completely erased when taken out of context and away from actual Japanese people. 
3. “Kawaii” as an aesthetic contributes to the commodification and exotification of Japanese people. Japanese pop culture and style is not for your consumption. It is not for you to steal and make money off of. It is not for you to exploit. There is a very thin line between “appreciating” things from other cultures and appropriation. You are allowed to engage in Japanese pop culture, but chances are that your desire to consume it is rooted in some really deep exotification, which also ties into…
4. Japanese people are not your prop or your costume, we are not here to be cute for you. “Kawaii” and its implications contribute to stereotypes about Asian people. We are not cute, quiet, submissive playthings for your enjoyment. The stereotype that all asian people are just docile is really damaging. I am not your asian bitch. I may be cute, but it’s not for you. We are radicals, we are angry, we fight. That shit isn’t “kawaii.”
5. We are so much more than what you take from us.We aren’t just peace-sign loving girls in pigtails and school-girl outfits. We have an entire fucking culture and language that is incredibly rich and beautiful. “Kawaii” as a style just serves to make a caricature out of an entire culture and people.

So basically, if you’re not Japanese, don’t say “kawaii.” Just call it fucking cute. That way your words won’t carry racist implications and I won’t think you’re an asshole. 

**This is just what I feel about the matter. My voice should not and does not represent all Japanese people. However, my voice calling this out should be enough for people to stop doing this. It is offensive. It is disrespectful. It is hurtful. 

I

Don’t

Want

To

Hear

Shit!!!

i mean i dont usually bother when i see nonsense like this but i find this particularly interesting bc its a) a mindset thats bcoming incresingly pervasive in tumblr antioppression discourse and b) theres so much fail and so little time

1. i guess i just wanna start with the fact that a japanese person has every right to express discontent w the usage of their language and that this is a general idea thats easy to get behind regardless of what ills go on inside their culture. like, why (actually every question to u from here on out is rhetorical bc i dont expect u to reply with an ounce of intelligence by virtue of u having made this post im reblogging) do you feel like u have to derail a legitimate post about appropriation to talk about ANOTHER LEGITIMATE topic? id like to think that no moron would jump on a post about antiblack racism to cry that black people arent allowed to talk about their marginalization until they address every instance of anti*insert-ethnicity/race-here*. these two topics are both legitimate and can exist on the same plane without one demeaning the other

2. when u do things like this it sort of begs of question of what kind of quota u got goin on, feel me fam? how many anti-black japanese ppl does OP have to collect before theyre allowed to talk about their own oppression/socialization? whats the goal, the set up? dont u see how ridiculous that shit is in and of itself? especially since its not as though the japanese person was targeting black people who use the word kawaii. did u feel targeted? guilty conscience maybe?

3. my nigga, my negro and all my followers who have read this far into this post (i rly aPplaud yall bc u know how much i am against long ass posts)… let us take a look at tumblr user stohru’s about me: “Hey, I’m Bre, I’m 22, from Long Island, and I’m an anime geek, and I loving fangirl to all my fandoms, ships and OTPS.”

LOOOOOOOOOOL ok so u got the willpower and enthusiasm to engage in the consumption of anime but a japanese person asks for you not to use one word and you cant do that? what does that say about u, yung? all that anime fangirl shit but u cant be respectful to a person within that culture

4. if all that wasnt enough, with this last point i am p much done with u. cause where did u get these images my nigga, did u even bother to look at some sources and read some words? or  did it just “look offensive” to your ethnocentric mind and therefore u had to say something. through a simple google image search i found that the second to last image isnt of a girl doing blackface… she’s doing ganguro. since im lazy as shit im gonna copy and paste from wikipedia so u know exactly why youre an asshole: “The Shibuya and Ikebukuro districts of Tokyo were the centers of ganguro fashion and it was started by rebellious youth who contradicted the traditional Japanese concept of beauty; pale skin, dark hair and neutral makeup tones. Ganguro instead tanned their skin, bleached their hair and used a lot of colourful makeup.^[1]”

again: “it was started by rebellious youth who contradicted the traditional Japanese concept of beauty; pale skin, dark hair and neutral makeup tones”

furthermore, the fourth picture from the top is of ANTM contestant jennifer an, a korean-american girl who was participating in a (yes, problematic) photoshoot. u got a problem with what done? take that up w tyra banks no? and likeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, OP’s post was about JAPANESE LINGUISTIC APPROPRIATION and you posted a photo of a KOREAN AMERICAN MODEL DOING A PROBLEMATIC PHOTOSHOOT GIVEN THE GREEN LIGHT BY A BLACK BUSINESS WOMAN.

homogenization of asian cultures/people? what would your ridiculous response be without it right??? :D

idk if ur ever gonna get ur life 

but i got mine

REspectfully no. You are comparing things that are not the same. Kawaii is a word without offensive connotations. ANd the pictures are of Japanese ASian people doing well documented antiblack things. Me or anyone else saying someting Japanese is Kawaii is far less offensive thatn them blatantly taking our cultural markers for “Cool” If korean Pop bands can say nigga and wear locs without anyone gawking at them and thinking they are ghetto trash if Ganguros can walk around tanned to black skin and wearing bright pink blackface makeup then I really do not want ot hear anything about how offensive it is for someone not japanese to say something is kawaii. I know Kawaii has cultural meaning outside of just cute but I think you’re missing the point of the previous post. Cultural appropriation is a complicated thing and WHIle I respect OPs feelings that next post is just as valid while it maybe mildly iritating ot have a word from your culture become a mean for cute things that comefrom it. Asia and Japan especially has a bigger problem of antiblackness where black people are stared at poed and prodded like zoo animals when thye are in the country and treated like animalistic criminals. Yet Japanese women can wear B-style(A fashion based around tanning until you look like a Japanese girl dipped in Nutella. If Big bang can wear corn rows and say Nigga without any asian people caring how offensive it is to their black fans things that have actually gotten us killed and arrested ad not served in Asian establishment.s Yes i have been to Korean and assian markets here in the Us and I was followed around like someone stray dog as they tried to shufle me out of the shop. Yet they can have fifty resteraunts and hair shops to take my money in Ensley.. No! No body was every hurt by some random weaboo white girl saying something is kawaii. SO OP sorry I know it sucks that Kawaii isn;t this great cultural sacred thing from Japan it has been mass marketed to the world and yeah that sucks welcome to a tiny taste of what it is to be black.

This is a gallery of every possible way a straight white male could be a dick about it without starring in porn.

youngblackandvegan:

Every part of me and my body is politicized
My skin
My hair
My uterus
My culture
Loving myself and valuing my humanity, in a society that sees me as nothing more than a commodity, is an act of political resistance

And loving those like me is an act of political solidarity.

fantasticallyindifferent:

tragicblessing:

I got lots of hate for my post on wanting to be beautiful. 

You should know I think most Americans are ugly. I feel ugly on a daily basis, because regardless of what I do I will always be considered a white, oppressive, racist, white, fucking, girl.

No matter how much I love other people or cultures I will be considered disrespectful. No matter how much I try to be anything else I will be considered racist and oppressive. 

How is this any more fair to me than it is to others when people are actually like this?

How is fighting hate and disrespect with hate and disrespect logical in any way?

How is expressing yourself only okay if you do it within the confines of the color of your skin, of the origination of your heritage, of the culture you were born into without being asked about?

Isn’t that… exactingly what we’re all fighting against?

Congratulations! This post and that other post you made bothered me so much, I felt the need to personally address you! Let’s talk about this step-by-step.

1: “I got lots of hate for my post on wanting to be beautiful. ” Any hate you got was not for ‘wanting to be beautiful’. Nope, the hate you got was because you decided to hijack a post that wasn’t about you and start spouting ignorant nonsense, whining about ‘not having any culture’ and using that as an excuse to justify cultural appropriation.

2:”You should know I think most Americans are ugly. I feel ugly on a daily basis, because regardless of what I do I will always be considered a white, oppressive, racist, white, fucking, girl.” You do realize that ‘American’ doesn’t equal ‘white’, right? You do realize that there are people that come in all shapes/sizes/colors/races/ethnicities in America, right? You do realize that some of the types of people you romanticize and try to appropriate from live in America, right? You say stuff like that and then whine about being considered ‘oppressive and racist’? Yeah, okay.

3: “No matter how much I love other people or cultures I will be considered disrespectful. No matter how much I try to be anything else I will be considered racist and oppressive.” This isn’t about you loving other cultures. It’s about you taking parts from the cultures, that you probably don’t understand or know the significance of, and wearing them as fashion accessories.

4: “How is expressing yourself only okay if you do it within the confines of the color of your skin, of the origination of your heritage, of the culture you were born into without being asked about?” You mean, besides the spiritual/cultural significance the make-up/jewelry/garmets/etc. hold for the people? White people often get to parade around in hijabs, and at worst people will think they’re ~eccentric~. While an actual Muslim woman wears it and gets death threats if she’s in the wrong neighborhood. If she’s not in the wrong neighborhood, she will probably still have to deal with ignorant assholes telling her how oppressive her religion is and how misogynistic her culture is. If an African woman went in to the office one day wearing whatever traditional garb and markings from her specific culture, people would be all over telling her how unprofessional she looks. Out on the streets, people would be so damn fast to tell her to ‘go back to your own country’. Yet you wanna be able to steal the bits and pieces you deem pretty while people from the actual cultures can’t get away with wearing it.

5: “Isn’t that… exactingly what we’re all fighting against” Wrong again! And if you really think we’re fighting for ‘boring white girls’ to be able to wear whatever they want, from whatever culture they want, while they simultaneously shit on those cultures and benefit from racism, then you have REALLY missed  the point. My suggestion is to sit down and shut up. Perhaps listen to what other people are telling you about how you could actually appreciate and admire other cultures without appropriating from them.

Ahem. I am in no way, shape, or form an expert with this stuff, so if anyone sees something off or offensive in my argument feel free to call me out. This just really bothered me so I felt the need to say something.

abraesive:

you gOTTA DRAW THE LINE SOMEWHERE. YOU GOTTA DRAW THE FUCKING LINE IN THE SAND DUDE.

YOU GOTTA MAKE A STATEMENT. YOU GOTTA LOOK INSIDE YOURSELF AND SAY,”WHAT AM I WILLING TO PUT UP WITH TODAY?” 

NOT FUCKING THIS

kyrax2:

matthewbogart:

I recently posted a link on Facebook to this petition regarding the redesign of Merida from “Brave” that Disney is reportedly doing to include her in the Disney Princess line and I got this response.

> “I don’t get the hoopla over this. Apart from wearing a different outfit and being drawn by a different artist, I don’t really see a difference. Is it that a woman without a weapon is weak?”

Character design matters.

If there’s one thing the character design class I took in college stressed more than anything else it’s that a good character design informs the viewer who the character is, what they are like. What they wear, how they stand, how they do their hair, the shape of their face, their standard expressions, what they carry with them, these are all vital decisions in a good design.

Few have embraced this philosophy more wholeheartedly than Disney. Take a look at some of these designs and think about how well the designer conveys the basic concepts of the character through the design alone.

(source)

Disney knows how to do this and their choices are deliberate. A misstep in the design of a character can make the difference between one that is marketable and one that is not. That’s extremely important to Disney, and a task that they do not treat cavalierly. If you have to sum up the character in just one image, like you often have to do with marketing materials or toys, qualities like the ones listed above are the only tools you have.

Artistic Interpretations

(source)

The argument that a character always looks somewhat different when a different artist draws them doesn’t apply when your’e talking about Disney. If you think I’m wrong, think of how many drawings you’ve seen Disney publish of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Aladdin, or Woody that look exactly like they did in the movies. While things like comics have some leeway to veer off model a bit, marketing materials need to match as closely as possible to key images and are scrutinized by Disney for inaccuracies. I’ve had friends who have drawn licensed properties professionally and, in general, if you aren’t able to keep your drawing “on model” you aren’t going to keep working on the project.

An Experiment

Think about the choices that were made in designing the original Merida and the ones that were made in the redesign.

If you were asked to design a character that was a beautiful, rough and tumble, scottish adventurer who was technically a princess but rebelled against the frill, pomp, and sexisim that came with her post, what are some good choices you could make?

• You could dress her in a plain green wool dress that fits with her earthy surroundings.
• You could give her a wide, plain face, and the expressions of a normal attractive girl; likely avoiding the full red lips, thick eyelashes, or pointed jaw that you might find on a princesses such as, say, Cinderella.
• You could make her standard postures and facial expressions defiant, strong, and powerful.
• You could give her a weapon and you could make it one of her defining characteristics. If you really wanted to drive the point home, you could make her weapon a defining element of the plot and marketing of the film.

Now, let’s say you were given the task of taking the established Merida design from the film and re-imagining her to more closely resemble the typical damsel in distress that the Disney princess line seems to champion. What choices could you make given that she still needs to be recognizable as the character from the movie?

• Perhaps you could take her plain wool dress and make it a beautiful gown. You could take the earthy green color and change it to a shimmering turquoise, cover it with sparkles, and drop the neckline over the shoulders.
• You could add intricate gold embellishment wherever possible including an elaborate foot wide band around the hem of her dress.
• You could drastically thin her waist and face and thicken her eyelashes.
• You would have to remove her bow and pouch full of arrows, replacing the strap that held the arrows in place with a wide belt and giant gold belt buckle.
• Attached to the buckle you could put a shimmering turquoise scarf.
• You could change her standard postures and facial expressions from aggressive, assertive, and defiant to sassy, cute, and submissive.

Do the above descriptions sound like something the character from the film would be excited about?

Who would win in a fight, Bruce Wayne or Disney Princess Merida?

Now, you could point out that the redesign isn’t that much of a stretch. Merida does wear a more glamorous gown in the movie that does, with the help of an excruciatingly painful corset, make her appear much thinner. She is sometimes sassy. Both points are true and a good choice for the filmmakers to have made. Allowing a character to have multiple different qualities, sometimes contradictory, can make a story better, but we’re not talking about a story in this circumstance. We’re talking about marketing.

When you market a character you have to boil them down to their essential elements. Take Batman for example. Bruce Wayne can sometimes be dressed to the nines; handsome and glamorous, but when you choose the images you’re going to use to market Batman those qualities don’t come up so much. You want Batman to be strong, heroic, aggressive, adventurous, and sometimes menacing. That’s why the children’s section at Walmart has a lot of things that look like this:

and less that look like this:

Merida was originally marketed similarly. She was depicted in trailers and posters as strong, determined, adventurous, beautiful, and heroic.

This redesign de-emphasizes those qualities and pushes for a Merida that is more glamorous, sassy, and passive.

I drew a brief sketch of a corresponding version of Batman:

Here’s a link to that petition again.

This is FANTASTIC, especially that comparison with Batman at the end.  Brilliant.