…..BOO!

A follow up on that vague post/rant about racism in the fandom

Sorry for making a separate post, but the reblogs of the original were getting so clogged I just had to. Please check out this post right here for the necessary context.

Ok moving on to my rant

Crazy how I wasn’t even gonna drop names and bro decides it’s time to be on bullshit. Apology or not, do you know how crazy it is to bypass being blocked?? And to bypass being blocked by a person who

1) does not want to fucking talk to you

2) you were racist towards.

Not even basic or “normal” ignorance but straight 19th century era racism. Who does that. Tf is going on in Russian schools that they’re teaching PHRENOLOGY

Also notice how when they listed out the “different races” they don’t actually use their phrenology era terminology. They don’t say “Australoid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid” they make sure to say “Australian race, European race, Asian race”. Why not say African/black race? But nah “NEGROID NEGROID NEGROID”

Is that not crazy y’all

You can really tell that this apology is less to legitimately apologize and more to quell their own guilt and embarrassment.

1) There were many people involved in this conversation, but they’d only ever reached out to @bakiuwu . Repeatedly too. Why? There was a whole group of people and you ain’t ever apologized to no one else?? Not that the apology would ever be worth it.

2) They had followed me sometime after the incident. I did not realize it was them, so I followed back. After I realized this I had blocked them. So………….if I’m the co owner of the server and had the server pinned to my acc ANNNNNDDDD my bio says that I’m black. You had to have realized who I was. Like there’s no way. Weird asf to go follow a person who you were racist to like how hard is it to just stay away

3) they very clearly behave as if they’re entitled/desperate to see people’s content. They literally admitted it to @bakiuwu in the tiktok screenshots. This is very clearly the motivation behind these “apologies” as opposed to being remorseful. Because if someone were truly remorseful, they wouldn’t have dragged the. convo as far as they did

4) I want to remind everyone that this isn’t us flaming a person for being ignorant. In the initial incident they were given MANY chances and MANY explanations. Honestly, they should’ve been kicked immediately. But there is a nuanced conversation to be had about how alt right sentiments are peddled in the education systems. It’s not their fault that they were taught these things at a point in life where they didn’t know better. But it is their fault that they decided to be bull headed as fuck about it when other people were nice enough to correct them.

5) I know I’m focusing really hard on the old screenshots, so this will be the last thing I say about that point in time. But it’s EGREGIOUS how their white ass decided it would be ok to default to the “ah man these silly Americans are dumb and sensitive” when a whole gaggle of people from different countries and continents were telling them they were wrong. And then it’s like…the two black people explaining why it’s wrong to call them negroids are dumb and sensitive? Might as well have called us monkeys

So circling back to my main point. I don’t want it to sound like I’m saying you shouldn’t apologize when you wrong someone. Especially if you were in some way bigoted. I think many people need to practice discretion and understand when it’s sensible to reach out and when it is not.

Their behavior, their “apology” (again, I believe it’s wildly insincere but I’ll get to that) is so inappropriate because why are you trying so hard to facilitate contact with people who do not want it.

Sometimes it’s best to apologize. Other times to leave people the fuck alone because you’ve done enough

Literally going out of your way to disregard the boundaries of people you’ve caused issues for shows me that they only really reached out cause it was keeping them up at night. Then it’s like. The person asks who you are and to remind them of what you did and you can’t even own up?? They shouldn’t even have had to ask.

Accountability 101 is being able to be immediately honest and transparent even if it causes you embarrassment. Because…..YOU DID IT. And to be like “aw man I’m glad you don’t remember me” like I know I keep saying it but you can tell they’re only reaching out because they’re mortified. Not because they can actually conceptualize just how harmful their behavior was

Kinda a nothing burger post but look at this oc exercise I did! The heads of the assassin family spanning back 12 generations. Our beloved Reiya is the 11th, and his daughter, Haruna, is the 12th

I haven’t really done an established lore drop. (I prolly should) it’s important to note that each head is male!! Excluding Haru of course

Reiya, Haru, and “Chiyo” are the only ones named because……they’re the important ones. Chiyo is the progenitor, the very beginning of it all. Reiya expands the family business by the most ever. Haruna is representative of change and the future

I’m still working on Chiyo’s backstory, but I do wanna talk about what I’ve been workshopping bevause I find it interesting. I’ve been doing some research on the Tokugawa/Edo period and what things were like for the working class. Not just that but researching the history of homosexuality and gender nonconformity in Japan. It’s been fun!

My goal for the backstory is to take the character “Chiyo” and another character, “Ume” and bring them together. I don’t talk about the family a lot, but understand that they’re not just a business but a DYNASTY. They’re not just renowned in the underworld, but also the high class underworld. But yeah, gotta figure out an origin story for a family like that.

Chiyo is kinda meant to be like.. the boy who never had anything, subjugated to abuse on the basis of his birth sex (unfortunately, at the time, the predation upon young boys was very popular) . Ume is supposed to be the girl that had everything and had it taken away on the basis of her birth sex (married off). This is an oversimplification— I want the narrative to focus on a variety of topics:

- perception of children (and women) as possessions rather than people

- what pushes someone to murder

- the fluidity of sexuality and gender

- gender nonconformity as a form of self preservation as opposed to identity

- the weaponization of femininity

- the big Baki topic of it all. Strength. In this case it’s strength forged in blood. At its heart it’s about the reclamation of autonomy. Being able to be strong

Pretty basic but this is stuff I care about so I wanna go deep with it. To put a long story short however. This is about two tainted kids. Chiyo and Ume’s separate circumstances send them towards a life of killing for survival. This eventually evolves into organized assassination. As it becomes more of a job and reclamation of power, they eventually encounter one another. They bond over their shared experiences and perceived “taintedness” and this sets off a domino effect that ultimately results in the creation of this massively known “business”.

……..and keep in mind these aren’t the Baki relevant characters. This is just the pre story! I needed to explain reiya’s existence somehow!

I am crazy but I am free

Drew this last night. You can kinda see where I ran outta steam because the best thing here is the rendering on that bald ass baby

I hate hate HATE to be the mf that vagueposts about something serious but with the way fandoms have been moving recently when discussing racism…I’m not in the mood to invite klansmen to my doorstep. With that being said tho, this has been on the back of my mind, and I really need to rant about it .

To sum this up the best I can. A little over a year ago, not quite going on two, there was a racism incident in a (now private) Baki server. A Russian artist (their nationality is important, as they used it to justify their behavior) decided it would be appropriate to start a conversation about “blackwashing”. This conversation quickly devolved, as one would expect, and they:

- kept asking why they can’t draw characters of color white

- Began to parrot phrenologist talking points

- said the word “negroid” multiple times

- said the word “negro” multiple times

The conversation mainly went on for as long as they did because they led with the whole “oh I’m foreign, I’m Russian, this is what I’m taught in school and I don’t understand why it’s wrong 🥺🥺🥺” bit, and there was a presumed language barrier, so initially people engaged with them in good faith whilst explaining that the points they were making were antiblack and they needed to change how they spoke/thought about race.

This quickly fell apart because they chose to debate people on if those slurs were slurs, doubled down on the phrenology shit despite being warned, and chose to argue with the black members of said server. (I would know, I was one of them!) They were promptly kicked. They only “apologized” upon their removal. And Despite being blocked, they decided that it would be ok to find and follow those same black artists across platforms because they “still wanted to see their content”.

The whole thing was never brought to public attention because: it happened privately, ended when they were blocked again, and as a BIPOC you lowkey gotta pick and choose what you bring to your doorstep because people lowkey dgaf. And idk it just wasn’t worth it, I don’t like to do the whole “call out post” thing anyways. So please don’t consider this to be that

But idk it’s all just so??? Crazy to me. Insanely crazy, I still think about it from time to time. Because white people just get to be racist and still expect you to engage with them, especially in fandom spaces. They get to say “it was just a phase” or “they didn’t know any better” or in some cases “it was a different time” and move on with their lives. Not having to make any real changes to themselves while black people are still impacted by their actions

I see their posts from time to time. See people interacting with them, because they don’t know— how would they know?? I wonder if it would even be worth it to say something. Personally, I think there’s no expiry on racism….and I’d consider 1-2 years to be very recent. But the truth is a lot of people don’t see it that way if they’re not personally affected. I mean, not the same fandom but look at how people have been reacting to the TADC situation!

Not to mention how people behave when the perpetrator “apologizes”. Like everythings magically ok after that.

Would people even care??? Long ass rant but what do y’all think. I don’t want this to read as “GO HARASS THIS PERSON NOW!!!!”, which is why I’ve omitted their name. I can’t lie I do have a lot of feelings about this because it’s really weird. That whole thing was weird. I’m in a weird spot cuz god forbid I say something and then everyones like: