im the sun

thats just the thing: this is about almost every single english language magical girl game i have ever encountered. this is about princess: the hopeful, this is about girl by moonlight, this is about starlight burnout, etc etc etc. just look at these inspiration lists:

there are seven listed inspirations here. of them, two are magical girl shows, in a game purporting to replicate the dynamics of the genre.

nine listed inspirations; two magical girl shows, one magical girl 'deconstruction' fic.

nine inspirations, three magical girl shows. noticing a pattern with which two shows get featured every time?

A lot of people are wistfully nostalgic about Sailor Moon but allergic to touching any other mahou shoujo... especially works actually geared at young girls.

I totally get disliking PreCure, I don't like it either! Only the very first Futari wa Pretty Cure looks appealing to me. But, it's really not the only magical girl anime out there. You loved 90's Sailor Moon? The same cast went on to make the only shoujo demographic adaptation of Cutey Honey, Cutey Honey Flash! It's even in the same art style as Supers and Stars. (The original Cutey Honey of the 70's, while concieved as a girl's show to sell clothes-changing dolls, wound up only securing a late night time slot and was reworked into more of an ecchi show for older male viewers, although some young girls still enjoyed the stories! Go Nagai would later go on to make another mahou shoujo series, Majokko Tickle, for a shoujo demographic.)

You like idol anime and magical girls? Creamy Mami! Magical idol anime are their own genre too.

You mostly liked the filler expanding on the characters in the 90's? You liked the slice of life scenes best of all? You like bittersweet anime with elements that make you cry your heart out? Full Moon o Sagashite, about a 12 year old with terminal cancer who gets to be older with the help of the reapers tasked with claiming her soul in one year, which she learns in the very first episode... the manga a little more than the anime, as it goes more into depth into their lives and the soul reapers' past lives, but the anime expands on her idol career and has a different ending from the original author, so it feels true to the characters and satisfying.

You want to see a magical girl anime that's inspired by Sailor Moon, but Takeuchi Naoko also greatly enjoyed it and made fanart of it? Wedding Peach!

You want those early cute witch magical girls without any big enermies to face? Just dealing with everyday things? Marvelous Melmo (an orphaned girl gets the ability to change her age with the help of red and blue candies from Heaven given to her by her dead mother's spirit, but she also later learns she can shrink back into an undifferentiated zygote and turn into whatever creature she was thinking of beforehand! It's sex education for girls in the 70's, but with a lot of comedy and heart too), Sally the Witch (the original! .... I did not see this one, but it's inspired by the 60's show Bewitched!), Minky Momo (although, Minky Momo can get heavy sometimes, it's usually fun, about a princess from the land of dreams trying to bring her planet back in orbit because it's drifting away due to humans losing faith in their dreams... it's also the one where Shudo Takeshi, head writer of the Pokemon anime, famously gave a toy company that wanted to pull the plug on the successful anime that just wasn't selling toys, by having the first incarnation of Momo KILLED BY A TRUCK FULL OF TOYS... she revives in the same episode, but it sure was a loud and clear message... second Momo stars in her own season and is reborn as the biological daughter of the earth couple the first Momo brainwashed Chibiusa-style into believing they were her family.)

You like cute and colourful characters and care a lot about the environment and endangered animals? Tokyo Mew Mew! I didn't watch this one yet, but I really do wanna see the reboot and it was super popular back in the day. ^^ All the designs look so cute.

If you want more modern magical girl anime that are on the cute and chill side, but actually geared at girls and it's not just PreCure, Cocotama is full of magic and adventure, while being very cute... I caught some fun episodes with witches and dragons and quests, but also some Hamtaro-esque episodes where it's just the cute mascot characters navigating a much bigger world and interacting with each other, it's fun!

I saw this when running newpipe. But wait, it gets deeper. I clicked on the details buttons and it said as of today, we have 83 days left until Google rolls out this new requirement for apps inside and outside of the google play store. If any developer disagrees with their new terms and fees, they will be blocked!

I'll share some of the info below:

Looks like they're trying to nuke the remaining privacy and freedoms we have left on the internet.

What to do?

-Get your developer friends to not comply to their new guides

- Sign the open letter on the site and take action by checking out the full resources list on their website as well!

To summarize, this is all daunting especially when you feel all alone with unfair and inhumane regulations comming out faster than improvements but we got this working together!

Share the link with your friends, family and anyone who will listen!

Yes, Asians Are Oppressed

It's shocking how eagerly people will make statements such as "Asians are basically white." Yet I can see why even another person of color might come to the conclusion. Relations between Asian Americans (or Asians of any society in the West) and other communities of color have always been strained. Black and Latino Americans are aware, and correctly, that many Asian American communities have a trait unique to communities of color: racial superiority. Native Americans are hardly acknowledged, if at all, by Asians. Most non-Asian communities of color experience systemic racial oppression far more severe and longer lasting than Asians in the West have endured.

But to see Asian communities solely from that perspective is antithetical to cross-racial solidarity for all people of color. In addition to the erasure of darker-skinned non-East Asians in this train of thought, and in addition to the fact that playing 'Oppression Olympics' has never benefited any categories of minorities, the fact remains that orientalism, or anti-Asian racism, cannot be a footnote in the history of American racism and white supremacy.

The predominant theme running through the history of Asian Americans from the very first arrivals-this is, obviously, 1830s to this day-is the Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome. This sense that we cannot possibly belong is exemplified by the internment of Japanese Americans, 120,000 individuals, two-thirds of them born in this nation and therefore citizens, that we could not be trusted, that blood will tell, that we truly would be actually loyal to the emperor of Japan or to some other sovereignty or that we could never assimilate, that we would not be Christian, could not speak English, could not truly join, did not understand democracy, were inscrutable, would not somehow wish for the same freedoms that others whose forbearers had come on the Mayflower wish for.

-- Frank H. Wu, UC Hastings College of the Law, 2016

Asian Americans, I would argue, are among the predominant cultures regarded as foreign, unknown outsiders. In a 2022 study, Asian Americans were the least likely to feel that they completely belong and are accepted in the United States (29%) compared to Black Americans (33%), Latino Americans (42%), and white Americans (61%). From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the 1922 Supreme Court decision that Asian Americans were not naturalized citizens because they were not Caucasian to the surge in anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, the truth is that Yes. Asians are oppressed.

During World War II, 120,000 Japanese American citizens (citizens, not those on visa- citizens of this country) were uprooted and told to pack bags to internment camps for the simple crime of their ancestral origin, which alone certified their guilt in potentially being a spy. A portion of those interned (known as "Nisei" - second generation immigrant children) could not speak Japanese, and had never been to Japan. This was not done against German Americans, nor Italian Americans. They had to work unlike fellow white Americans to prove their nationality. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team composed of Japanese American Nisei remains the most decorated unit in American military history for their work in WWII Europe. But not Asia. Japanese American troops were not permitted to be sent to Asia.

Lead to the Model Minority

In 1966, a New York Times article by a white author thus lauded the hard work that prevented Japanese Americans from becoming a "problem minority". At the same time, the war on crime and criminalization of Black Americans was beginning. It was in this context that the "model minority" myth emerged, casting Asian Americans as hardworking and quiet, villainizing Black Americans. (It should be said that this does not justify the antiblackness in Asian American communities, only provides contextualization in a systemic lose-lose struggle between two communities fostered by whiteness, who continues to benefit in the end.)

Part of the reason API people avoid it is that they can see the way Blacks and Latinos are positioned… and they don’t want that, so they’ll do something different and hope for a different outcome… Those are the two big ones: a lot of pressure not to talk about it, and then a lot of pressure to disassociate from Blacks and Latinos.

-- Participant in a ChangeLab study about Asian Americans and race

Disclaimers.

Now that we're talking about #StopAsianHate, I see being both Black and Asian — the bridge between both of these communities and how similar they are. And sometimes I just get frustrated, because we're both not seeing each other's humanity and unifying as much as we should.

-- Johnathan Gibbs, Blasian activist

It is, however, crucial to remember that the 'model minority' stereotype in America very heavily focuses on East Asians, namely Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Americans. South and Southeast Asians, especially darker-skinned Asians, rarely feel a connect to the "model minority" stereotype. The demonization of dark skin and skin lightness hierarchy in Asia continues to reflect the effects of antiblackness even as an internalized system for Asians. Another notable element is mixed race Asian and Black American people (mixed race Asians of which many more lessons could be written on alone). As those who face both antiblackness and orientalism, their perspectives are especially important when considering cross-racial solidarity.

They're like, "Black Lives Matter and yes, this is happening to us too, but the root is white supremacy. But then you have this sector of the population... that are like, "Well, they don't understand that Black people have been going through this," and then they'll say, "Well, Asian people have gone through the Chinese Exclusion Act." But girl, slavery happened. Then you get into what everybody labels as the "oppression Olympics," and I don't do the oppression Olympics because there's no comparison. I say this as an Asian person, there is no comparison to what Black people have gone through in the United States of America since 1619.

-- Johnathan Gibbs

And the last disclaimer is that though I said we should not play 'Oppression Olympics', in a discussion like this it is vital to acknowledge that Black Americans have been facing significant amounts of systemic racism, and it is not reducing American orientalism to a footnote to say that.

So What's the Solution? Yuri Kochiyama, Malcolm X, and Cross-Racial Solidarity

Yet despite this shared struggle, divergent goals and interests “sets our two communities apart and pits us against each other. […] Racialized disinformation […] sustains white supremacy. It can also be weaponized to disrupt cross-racial solidarity among different communities and ultimately uphold the tenets of white supremacy power structures.

-- Phan, a research analyst with the Asian American Disinformation Table.

But I have spent all this time talking about how these communities are different, oppressed differently, put differently against each other, all while focusing on differences is still not the solution. 

Black-Asian solidarity is not new: Frederick Douglass argued against the Chinese Exclusion Act, political activist Yuri Kochiyama was an ally and friend of Malcolm X, and Jesse Jackson stepped away from his presidential campaign in 1992 to protest the murder of Vincent Chin. Japanese Americans’ push for reparations for internment during World War II was modeled on the civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s.

-- Joseph Williams, The Long History of Black-Asian Solidarity, 2023

Japanese American human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama was the one by Malcom X's side cradling his head in her lap after he’d been fatally shot at Audubon Ballroom. She had directly contributed to the passing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which guaranteed reparations for former internees of the Japanese American camps (including herself). But the majority of Kochiyama’s influence today stems from her work in cross-racial solidarity through grassroots activism.

She helped connect Asian American activism to the larger Civil Rights movement, and formed unity between diverse communities. Based in Harlem at the height of the movement, she worked directly alongside Black and Latino communities, and through her work, Kochiyama demonstrated to all that the fight for justice does not define those by their differences, but by their willingness to stand together.

The same exact playbook is being used against both Black and Asian communities. So if we don’t stick together, the playbook that wins against one of our communities will absolutely win against the other.

I highly recommend watching this testimony from Aliya Rahman, the disabled woman who was dragged out of her car and kidnapped by ICE on her way to a doctor appointment in Minneapolis a few weeks ago.

Thank you members, for taking the time to be here today, and thank you staff for making this happen.

My name is Aliya Rahman, and I am a resident of South Minneapolis. I am a Bangladeshi American born in Northern Wisconsin. And I’m a disabled person with autism and a traumatic brain injury.

Not all autistic brains do this, but mine fixates on sounds, numbers, and patterns. And while what the world saw happen to me exactly three weeks ago today on video was a terrible violation it is still nothing compared to the horrific practices I saw inside the Whipple center.

So I am here today with a duty to the people who have not had the privilege of coming home, and I offer this data because these practices must end now.

On January 13th on the way to my 39th appointment at Hennepin County’s traumatic brain injury center, I encountered a traffic jam caused by ICE vehicles and no signs indicating how to get around it. I had not wanted to pull in to a blocked, chaotic intersection, but verbally agreed to do so and rolled down my window after an agent yelled, “Move! I will break your f-ing window!”

His first instruction.

Agents on all sides of my vehicle yelled conflicting threats and instructions that I could not process while watching for pedestrians.

Then, the glass of the passenger side window flew across my face.

I yelled, “I’m disabled!” at the hands grabbing at me and an agent said, “Too late.”

I felt immersed in a pattern, and I thought of Jenoah Donald, an autistic black man killed by the police during a traffic stop in 2021.

I remembered mister Silverio Villegas González, who was killed by ICE in his vehicle last year.

An agent pulled a large combat knife in front of my face, which I thought was for cutting me, and later learned was used to cut off my seat belt. Shooting pain went through my head, neck, and wrists when I hit the ground face first and people leaned on my back.

I felt the pattern, and I thought of mister George Floyd, who was killed four blocks away.

I was carried face down through the street by my cuffed arms and legs while yelling that I had a brain injury and was disabled. I now cannot lift my arms normally.

I was never asked for ID.

Never told I was under arrest.

Never read my rights.

And never charged with a crime.

Approaching the Whipple center, I saw black and brown bodies shackled together, chained together, being marched by yelling agents outdoors. I continued to hear the word “bodies”, because that is how agents referred to us:

“We’re bringing in a body.”

“They’re bringing in bodies 7, 8 at a time, where do I put ‘em?”

“We can’t use that room, there’s already a body in there.”

You have no reason to believe you will make it out alive if you’re already being called a body.

Agents repeatedly had to stop and ask how to do tasks. I received no medical screening, phone call, or access to a lawyer. I was denied a communication navigator when my speech began to slur. Agents laughed as I tried to immobilize my own neck. I asked for my cane and was told no, pulled up by my arms and prodded forward in leg irons by agents laughing and saying, “Walk! You can do it, walk.”

Agents did not know if the facility had a wheelchair.

When I was finally placed in one to be taken to interrogation an agent taunted, “You were driving, right? So your legs do work.”

I pleaded for emergency medical care for over an hour after my vision had become blurry, my heart rate went through the roof, and the pain in my neck and head became unbearable.

It was denied.

When I became unable to speak my cellmate pleaded for me.

The last sounds I remember before I blacked out on the cell floor were my cellmate banging on the door, pleading for a medic, and a voice outside saying, “We don’t wanna step on ICE’s toes.”

When I opened my eyes at Hennepin County’s emergency room, I learned I was brought there to be treated for assault.

The impacts of DHS detention on my physical, mental and financial well-being and safety have been very severe, but I do not deserve more humane treatment than anyone else, US citizen or not. And I am here today with a strong spirit and a duty to the many people who haven’t had the privilege to tell their stories or see their loved ones come home. I am extremely distressed by the pattern that violence from law enforcement has been happening to black and indigenous communities for centuries, and to DHS survivors for over 20 years.

We call ourselves a civilized nation, but we lack rules and accountability around what a person claiming to be law enforcement is permitted to do to another human being.

so i wanted to throw in some suggestions that, whenever I’m trying to find a character reference or otherwise draw very interesting-looking yet regular-looking people, which i usually have to do for bit characters in @ikroah​ or something, I tend to look for references in the following places. these are far from the only reliable way to get inspiration, this is just a non-exhaustive list of places i’ve looked before for visual inspiration when needing to create a character, whether starring characters or background ones:

pre-2000s television (The Sopranos and Twin Peaks especially having incredible character design)

extras in comedy sketch shows

esports players

real photos (not staged stock photos) of line cooks

70s baseball players

athletes from more obscure olympic sports like the javelin toss or greco-roman wrestling, especially if you’re looking for a specific body type

ska, jazz, and blues musicians

firefighters

improv troupes

for teenagers, searching “high school english class project” on youtube and sorting by Upload Date

state senators, small-town mayors, and generally obscure local government positions like comptroller or treasurer (yes i know politicians can be bad sometimes but smaller elections especially don’t really depend on looks)

people who walk by your window (if you live in a city like I do)

Like I recall back when my disabilities got bad enough I had bought my first mobility aid, a rollator, and I went out with friends after to a family thing, and one of their parents just...god. He just would not stop asking me questions about my health and then going "wow that's such a shame, just a real tragedy, it sucks so much that this has happened you must be miserable" and I knew at that moment I was never ever going to let myself think of my disabilities like that because I have never felt so dehumanized in my life. Same guy made fun of me in a room full of people a few days later so bad it made me cry so that was really fun. My pride in my disability was forged in the fires of my rage at people for treating me like that.

Ketsım qasom aasus taluutl’ taas

Kete.sım qa.som aas.us talu.utl’ taa.s

This.ACC knife.ACC is.HAB time.ALL sharp.NOM

/ke.ˈt͡sɪm qa.ˈsɔm ˈaː.sus ta.ˈluːtɬ’ taːs/

...and then finished with "but then of course the occupation bombed the restaurant with the entire family inside and they were all killed".

She's now working on a site dedicated to showing all the important little local places in Gaza that no longer exist—partly so that her own children can know them, and partly so they cannot be completely erased by the occupiers.