The Evening World, New York, March 16, 1908

you criticize one milquetoast game with great aesthetics for being all bark and no bite and suddenly u got people in ur inbox talking to you with a straight face about how adult Japanese men are babies who know nothing about the world or even women

That's not what any of us are saying, you're intentionally misconstruing our words so you can keep pretending you don't hate all Japanese people

We're saying "this is a dumb take" and you took it hella personally

This is only kind of a half reply but there's a real problem when it comes to critiquing foreign media where it's assumed that it is unfair to provide criticism about issues deemed "too American" to be fair points of judgement. I think it's important that we check our internal biases and thought processes in these instances; yes, there is an enormous ocean of difference between USAmerican and Japanese culture, but I don't think it is unfair to judge a piece of media that is still written by adult creators with agency who are probably far more worldly than I am.

Anti-black racism is not unique to the USA; it is prevalent in all corners of the world, and that is why it is important to call it out in the first place. To co-opt the language of emancipation to sell your JRPG where one of the main characters eventually becomes a cop is shitty. To use jazz and funk as tenants of your games aesthetic and yet still not have a character with skin darker than whole milk in a game set in one of Japan's most diverse and densely populated areas is shitty. To imply that the very real Adult Japanese Men who made this game can't be aware of this issue because Japanese society is simply too different for awareness to make sense is infantilizing. If the creators behind Persona 5 want to use black culture like that, surely we can assume the same level of intelligence that they can be made aware of the issues that come with it. They are not babies bashing together colored blocks, they are professional adults in a studio making conscious choices, and much like others parts of the game (see: Ann) they want to have their cake and eat it too; usage of a culture without the due respect it is owed is all over in P5 (using the aesthetics of punk and anarchism but a refusal to actually meaningfully challenge the status quo or make queer characters anything but the butt of the joke) and critiquing the anti-black parts is just one part of a larger issue later Persona games have with being both thematically cohesive and giving proper credit and respect to the cultures it co-opts to sells it's millions of copies with.

The people who made this game are adults like you and I, and by saying "oh, they can't have known/these issues are too western/that's just what Japanese society is like" we are both assuming that the Japanese need protection and shielding from criticism as if the entire country is made up of children AND denying ourselves the chance for a better world in some small way through genuine critique. If we can agree there is at least some issue on some level, why should critique of that issue not exist? Do we not want things to improve? Did the game not market itself by asking if you are tired of the current world? I desperately want to enjoy the Persona series; I think there is much to love and I understand why people enjoy it so much. But until we get over this hurdle, the games will continue to be made for heterosexual jewel thieves wearing the skin of anti-authority aesthetics. The games people love are never going to actually get better if we keep making excuses for real adult creators that exist in the same world as you and I.

Any excuse made for Persona falls flat on its face when directly compared to other series like Street Fighter and how they approached a similar topic. Street Fighter 3 and 6 both owe a lot to black culture aesthetically and the developers of the latter not only acknowledged this point openly but paid due attention to better represent black people and ensure they had black staff input on their designs accordingly.

It's so infantilizing and infuriating to act like it's any harder for a Japanese dev to do than it is for an American dev to do, especially when there's so many examples of Japanese devs handling this topic better than Persona does.

(And even Persona has handled some of these topics better in earlier games, specifically in regards to queerness it was actually fairly progressive until Persona 3 came and mucked things up. It seems like they're making a conscious effort to do better now that they've faced such backlash for it, but that's why it's important to allow people to criticize them when they feel they should. They are not exempt.)

me: yeah my feelings towards being transgender are very complex and varied, i would like to share my thoughts with the broader collective so we may discuss this real phenomenon that others experience and understand one another more

someone in my tags: this is soooo transmasc sklimpo crumbler

I’m going to have a fucking breakdown

Y’all I can’t believe the “whistleblower assassination” and “literally falling apart in the sky” company is being represented by a man named Rich White

You could not call a character this in a movie because everyone would say “that’s not realistic” and yet!

got so high I got scared and had to get out of the car to calm down and a coyote immediately sprinted out of the underbrush and stalked towards me

i was like ok im a little too high and immediately there were beasts.

choices made in anger is such a crazy image. if you know what i'm talking about

i'm gonna thrup

Actually forget every other post about “primal” feelings and actions, the most connected to my early hominid ancestors i have ever felt in my LIFE is when slowly following an increasingly panicked sheep. I believe that slowly following ungulates is the most primally human activity in existence

That moment when the sheep has run a few times and visibly realizes that you just keep slowly walking at it and are not going anywhere and you can see it thinking “oh fuck this isn’t how being chased is supposed to work” rockets me back in time several hundred thousand years

Hey quick question OP why are you bullying a sheep

To give it medication

Pursuit predation, pursuit medication, same structural foundation.

in 2015 I needed a job really bad for reasons not worth getting into. i was living in ohio for like 6 months & i just applied at every place within a 30 minute drive from me and i got a call from the local Game Stop mere minutes after submitting the online app, which was obviously a red flag but I wasn’t in the position to be picky.

so they tell me when to show up for orientation & I get there the day-of but the store is closed & locked. i text the manager & he says back “oh yeah. i manage two Game Stops and open them alternate days.”

apparently the Game Stop I originally applied to is open Mondays Wednesdays Fridays and the other one is open Sundays Tuesdays Thursdays Saturdays.

They’re 15 minutes apart. I don’t ask whether it would make sense to just have one store locally that is open daily, bc maybe the guy knows something I don’t.

So I get to the other Game Stop and walk in and it seems like there’s no one working there. There’s just a single woman in there wearing an ankle length leather trench coat. She didn’t greet me when I came in & she’s just browsing.

After ten minutes I ask her if she’s seen any employees and she’s like “oh I’m an employee.” She’s not wearing a name tag on the trench coat.

I tell her I’m here for training and she tells me the manager hasn’t come in yet. “he falls asleep playing xbox all the time but if he’s on live we can try pinging him to wake him up.”

I play Xbox and that absolutely doesn’t sound like a thing you can do in the way she’s describing it but once again maybe she knows something I don’t.

I ask if we have an Xbox that we can use to “ping” him and she says “yeah the one in the back we play on.”

She has an English accent by the way, a very specific & posh one which usually wouldn’t be relevant but we’ll get there.

So before she leads me to the Xbox-in-the-back she goes “oh damn. our internet has actually been down all morning, I forgot. We need to call the provider and have them come out and fix it. Can you do that?”

Can I call an unnamed internet provider and schedule them to come do service at a business where I don’t even technically work yet? Idk. She gives me their number and I call them and they put me on hold.

People are walking in and she’s not greeting them. She keeps browsing and people assume like I did that she’s another customer so they’re coming up to the counter where I’m on hold to ask me for help, and then I have to say I can’t help them and to ask the woman in the trenchcoat, and then she says “we can’t sell you anything. internet’s down.”

this goes on for 30 minutes and every time the store is empty she’s chatting at me and I’m on hold and then a man walks in the door and he says “sorry I fell asleep on live again haahaahaa” so this is the manager and the minute she starts speaking to him she no longer has an English accent which has me confused because it did not sound fake.

It was regionally specific and very natural.

the manager asks what I’m doing and I say I’m on hold with the internet provider and he gives me a thumbs up and walks to the back.

so I ask how long she’s lived in the U.S. and say I’m always interested in the way people can sometimes go in and out of accents and she says “oh I’m American. he asked me to stop doing the accent so I only do it when he’s not here.”

Suddenly I wonder what I’m doing here and I tell her I need to leave and I give no excuse but at this point I don’t feel like I need one? She said okay! See you later.

The manager didn’t contact me and that night I got offered some other retail job I jumped on.

Three months later the Game Stop manager texts me and asks if I can cover a shift in an hour and I say back “I don’t think I work there? I left an hour into my training. And we never spoke again.” And he texts back “hahahaha right on.”

And you may think wow, what a strange experience that all was but recently I have spoken to friends who did work at Game Stop and when I tell them this story they don’t even blink. Nothing I say surprises them. I was at the average Game Stop

writing smut like

how many synonyms for “penis” do I actually know?

and how many of those synonyms am I actually willing to use

tier 1 (most accepted, considered sexy): cock, dick

tier 2 (generally accepted): length, manhood, member, shaft

tier 3 (clinical, too formal, but not cheesy): groin, penis, phallus

tier 4 (cheesy, barely acceptable): [insert name] Jr., dong, junk, knob, prick, rod, tool, wand, wood

tier 5 (ridiculous, unacceptable, pls don’t): anything to do with beer cans, baby-maker, bishop, choad, donger, dragon, fuck wand, fun stick, hog, johnson, jimmy, lap rocket, little [insert name], love muscle/rod/stick, meat stick, one-eyed [anything], piston, private eye, schlong, trouser snake, wiener, winkie

tier 6 (you’re literally a fourth grader): baby arm, baloney pony, beaver basher, beef whistle, custard launcher, dude piston, flesh flute, heat-seeking moisture missile, krull the warrior king, luigi, mayo shooting hotdog gun, meter long king kong dong, pig skin bus, piss weasle, purple-headed yogurt flinger, purple-helmeted warrior of love, schlong dongadoodle, single barreled pump action bollock, spawn hammer, steamin’ semen truck, tan banana, thundersword, wang doodle, whoopie stick, wing wang doodle, yogurt shotgun 

tier 3 (clinical,

too formal, but not cheesy):

groin, penis, phallus

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

its so so important to follow blogs that will put a bit of softcore porn on ur dash. it is not only tasteful but also a key part of the microbiome

#mutual that is horny on main i would protect you with my life as if you were a monarch butterfly #i am planting milkweed for you #tit and ass milkweed #ily (from arborealgargoyle)

they are performing an experiment

Valuable science is being done

Customer: BYE BYE BRO DMV: WHAT THE FUCK. Verdict: DENIED

by next year the message button will be removed entirely and your only form of communication will be gifting nitro