ok so this has been bothering me for like the longest time so sit down and please stop appropriating japanese culture. u may not realize ur doing it, so just take a second to listen. if any other japanese wanna add on to this post, feel free to do so. if u are not japanese, please do not try to defend ur ignorance or racism, rather listen and change ur behavior.
stop saying the word “jap” as a substitute for japanese. jap is a racial slur that was popularized in america after pearl harbor and all through the japanese internment. it’s not a shortened version of the word japanese like brits are to british. we are japanese, not japs.
acknowledge japanese imperialism. do not defend it. what the japanese did in ww2 was horrible, so make sure u know about it and use that knowledge to think critically about any japanese media u may consume.
stop japancore. japan is a country with a deep culture. my culture is not ur aesthetic.
on the same note of japancore, do not use shinto shrines as part of ur moodbaord. that is a religion still practiced to this day in japan. it’s not ur aesthetic. also realize that shintoism has been used as means to empower the emperor during japanese imperialism in ww2. they forced people into that religion and locked up those who didn’t comply. (it’s ok if u practice it ofc, just research and know what u are following)
again with moodboards, this is slightly more forgivable, but please don’t use japanese language for ur aesthetic. while i encourage anyone who wants to learn it to try and learn it, it’s not there for ur aesthetic. i can explain more on this if anyone would like, but i’ll just leave it at that for now.
do not self id as a weeb. being a weeb is incredibly harmful, as it dismisses many of the horrible things japan has done to asia. please read this post for more.
please do not support hetalia or aot. hetalia sort of glorifies japanese imperialism as well as nazism and makes it into this cutesy lil thing that makes u go “awww 🥰” at ww2. aot has anti-semitic themes within it and again glorifies japanese imperialism.
if u are going thru with a name change, do not choose a japanese name that u found online after a google search. names in japan are more than just names, there’s a whole process that involves it that is dependent on ur time of birth as well as stroke count for the written name. additionally, it further appropriates the culture when a non japanese person uses a japanese name simply bc they found it cute. this also applies to online aliases. a name from ur own culture or language is good enough.
do not fetishize us. this goes for every culture and race but just stop. we are not “babies” and we are not here for ur entertainment. we are people too.
do not say “i wish i was japanese.” don’t say that for any culture at all unless u are also prepared to face the years of oppression and racism that comes with it.
do not say we have privilege simply because japanese tend to have lighter skin to other poc. this can be said about many east asians countries as well. asia isn’t just pale skin, it comes in a multitude of shades as well as cultures from other countries. we do not have privilege because we do not benefit from the system like white people do.
i’m just done with racism going unnoticed because of ignorance. if u did/do any of these things, whatever. just realize how ur behavior has added to japanese racism and learn from it. further, please help stop anti-asian violence. i live near where an attack was done to an elder. please use these links to help asian lives.
stop aapi hate
post with resources, petitions, and donation links
news source about anti-asian crimes within recent times
twitter post about anti-asian hate crime with graphics
how to support asians
a post about comparing blm and protect asian lives and why it’s harmful to both movements
google doc with a full list of many resources on aapi
We were together. I forget the rest.
source: annalaura_art
idk what shit-eating truscum needs to hear this, but your rhetoric directly harms people with culturally-specific genders. i’m native and two-spirit, that label describes my gender and my attraction. i use they/them pronouns and your “nonbinaries and cringey stargender trenders aren’t valid” bullshit is getting old. our languages were demonized and erased, our gender and attraction labels along with them. my experiences with dysphoria exist because of colonialist ideas of gender. we have been forced into arbitrary ‘male’ and ‘female’ categories by colonizers for centuries and truscum rhetoric perpetuates racist colonialist violence against natives.
your experiences are not universal, you’re not forwarding justice for trans people, and you’re definitely not an ally to natives or other people of color. you’re just a fucking colonizer.
Remaking this post a 4th and (hopefully) final time as I keep losing traction and I need to reach my goal.
I am 19 years old living in an abusive household. I need donations to afford my food and medication as it is the most safe for me to provide for myself.
learning to stop hating yourself isn’t something that happens overnight.
it’s a series of negotiations you make with yourself over your whole life. it’s making one less self-deprecating joke. it’s looking at yourself in the mirror with a little more generosity. it’s forgiving yourself for that little mistake.
it’s not one thing and then you’re good. it’s many small choices you can make that slowly make your brain and body a little less uncomfortable to live with
⋆。˚ ☁︎ ˚。⋆。˚☽˚。⋆
I am all of the days That you choose to ignore You are all I need
(All I Need - Radiohead)
here is a life hack for throwing up: sniffing isopropyl alcohol (like an alcohol swab or basic bathroom alcohol) often works to prevent vomiting when you are about to barf and do not want to. anxiety nausea, need to keep pills down, motion sickness etc. i learned this in the ICU and it really works, a nurse ripped open an alcohol swab under my nose and suddenly i wasn't about to throw up anymore. it's research supported too!
Thinking about how Kate had a bit of a gap between working at DIA and starting at the FBI, and knowing that she was estranged from Lucy at the time and while she was becoming closer to Tennant at that time, she didn’t seem to have many close friends, it makes me wonder how long it would have taken someone to notice if something happened to her in that period. I’m not sure what it is about Kate that makes me imagine her in sadder and/or lonelier circumstances
She's not supposed to be working right now. She'd tried to schedule so that she'd only have a weekend between jobs—wrap DIA on Friday and start FBI on Monday—but that hadn't worked. She'd been saddled with two full weeks between, and she'd tried to tell herself that it was fine, that she was in Hawai’i and people pay thousands and thousands of dollars for two week vacations in Hawai’i! She should go surfing and hike up a volcano and eat all the poke and moco loco and saimin she can handle and sleep late and use the fucking hot tub on her deck she never remembers she has.
But all of that only occupies her mind for a couple of days. She finishes at DIA on Friday, by Tuesday she's bored, and by Thursday she's breaking rules and wandering the Pearl offices, running into Lucy and making jokes that fall flat, sneaking info to Tennant about the Maggie Shaw hearing like she still has a job.
She gets slightly busted, though. Not majorly, but Dale from DIA sees her and says something about "hey, aren't you off the clock these days, Whistler?" with something like a smirk because he’s always hated her—most men do, when you're better at the job than they are and take less time to do it—and she'd had to back off.
No more field trips to Pearl, no more Lucy sightings. She spends one night drinking with Tennant but then the next week and a half are in front of her, bleak and empty, nothing to do but torture herself with memories of good times with Lucy and bad times with Cara and every single opportunity she had but passed up to make things right and get herself free and clear before it all blew up in her face.
She's usually fine on her own, not overly prone to loneliness. Or, well, maybe her usual baseline of loneliness is so high that it's hard for it to get to a level that feels significantly worse. She's not sure. But anyway, usually she's fine with being alone, and this week she's not. This week it hurts.
So of course this is the week she wakes up on her bathroom floor in a small pool of blood.
She's not sure how she got there. She's not sure why she's in the bathroom or how long she's been there. Her hand is sticky with blood. Once she can do anything other than just stare at it, her logical mind starts to slowly move forward. She takes in what she’s seeing. The blood is still kind of warm and wet, so she can't have been out that long. She finds her phone near her on the ground, the screen protector cracked. She hadn't sent anyone a text or made any calls, no indication of what happened.
She unsteadily climbs to her feet and looks in the mirror. From the floor she hadn't been able to tell where the blood had come from, but now she can see it's from her head. Or it must be from her head, because her hair is crimson and matted with it, on her right side just below and behind her ear. She looks down at the floor, and yes, there. An impact mark.
She’d fallen and hit her head on the ground.
In way this makes her feel better—head wounds notoriously bleed a lot. They always look worse than they are. In another way, this makes her feel worse. What the fuck happened? It’s seems like the falling happened before her head was hit, probably, based on what she’s seeing around her, so does that mean she passed out and then hit her head? And if so, what the fuck? Why? She’s never done that before.
She takes a few pictures with a shaking hand—of herself in the mirror, the floor, the scene, and then she washes her hands and shakily orders an uber.
It feels weird to get into a stranger’s car when she’s this vulnerable, not sure what happened or if it’ll happen again, literally bleeding from a head wound, but she doesn’t have other options. She’s not about to drive and endanger other people, and there’s no one she can call.
She thinks for a second about calling Tennant, but it’s late and Tennant has kids and just because they drank together once doesn’t mean she wants Tennant to see her like this. She thinks for five seconds about calling Lucy. If this happened to Lucy, if Lucy woke up five minutes ago covered in her own blood, shaking and confused, Kate would want to be called. She would want to get that call, to race over to Lucy’s apartment and take her to the hospital and wait for her and take her home and make her comfortable and take care of her, even if Lucy still hates her.
If she found out this happened to Lucy and Lucy ordered a fucking uber to the hospital, she’d be pissed as fuck.
But she’s not Lucy, and Lucy isn’t her, and Lucy won’t talk to her. Lucy still hates her, and Kate deserves it.
So Kate calls an uber.
She changes her bloody shirt, puts on a baseball hat and a jacket with a popped collar, and doesn’t give the driver a good look at the right side of her head. The drive isn’t long, but the waiting room at the hospital is full. She’d have thought that bleeding out of her head would get her seen quickly, but everyone seems pretty blasé about it. She waits for hours, her head aching and her vision swimming.
Other people go up to the charge nurse, saying things like, “My mother has been here for two hours, how long until she’s seen,” and “When will my daughter’s discharge papers be ready,” and “My husband is having trouble breathing.”
She wonders if she’s the only person there alone. The girl next to her doesn’t have anyone with her but Kate can see her phone, and she’s texting someone who is asking her for regular updates.
Kate doesn’t text anyone.
It’s five hours before she’s seen. She gets asked the same questions four times—nurse, other nurse, intern, resident—and gets a few tests before she gets four stitches and she’s sent on her way. What happened? They couldn’t possibly speculate. All her tests are normal. Go home.
If she had someone to text, she’d say, “Jesus I should have stitched myself up at home. What a waste of time,” or “Our tax dollars hard at work!” but instead she calls herself another uber and she goes home.
She cleans the blood off her bathroom floor and her sink.
It’s the early morning now, but she puts on pajamas and climbs into bed, wondering with every step if she’s about to pass out again, to fall again and hurt herself again. To wake up in another pool of her blood.
She thinks about texting Lucy something like, “if you don’t hear from me in the next 12 hours, can you please send a wellness check to my apartment, I need to make sure I wake up,” but that seems excessive and worrying and extreme and like something you might text a friend. Or, well, no. If she isn’t close enough to have told Lucy this happened, she’s not close enough to ask Lucy to make sure she’s okay now. She’s relied on herself up until now, and that’s how it’s going to have to be.
She sets alarms for herself for every two hours—the doctors didn’t tell her to but better safe than sorry, and she lies down on her left side.
Her head hurts. Her body aches. She’s cold and shaky and afraid. She pictures her blood sinking into her pillows, pictures someone finding her decaying body in a week and a half when she hasn’t reported in for work.
She doesn’t sleep well.
The next time she sees Lucy and Tennant, she doesn’t mention it. Tennant says, “how are you, how was your time off,” and she says, “it was fine.” Lucy doesn’t say anything at all.
[if you want a lucy part 2, lmk]