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Improbable-Tori

🌴 tori 🥥🐛
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yooo, still looking to trade/sell characters!

mostly looking for points/usd & art

toyhou.se/improbable-tori/char…


def willing to haggle, Im mostly just trying to get rid of characters
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SO. Like I said in my poll (for those of you who saw) I'm tired. My last journal, while emotionally draining for me, was overall had positive results for me.
A lot people either understand what I'm saying or were willing to give it a chance, but I wanted to take MamaLantiis' and post another journal kind of clearing things up (I'm really glad I calmed down and was able to realize that it was a good idea, btw). I've got 5 major things I want to address, so here we go!


#1 -> Firstly: Diversity

Diverse senshi are awesome. Tokenism, Appropriation, Stereotypes, and general Douchebaggery is not.


What does this mean? Simply put, when I said "racial / ethnic / nationality inspired senshi" what I was referring to are senshi characters that are ONLY those things. Here's an example: If I make a Sailor Mexico and give her a sombrero, make her an illegal immigrant who is a maid, have her only eat tacos, and nothing else? That would be offensive and racist. (And heads up, if you do those things with a character, even if you develop them, it's still racist because those listed things are harmful stereotypes.)
When you make a character you shouldn't make them their ethnicity or race and have that be their defining characteristic. People are so much more than that, and good character development reflects that reality of the world.
Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't include information about your character's racial, ethnic, or national culture! Not at all! In fact, while people are more than just their race, ethnicity, or culture, those things very much help shape who they are! How can you do that? Well if you aren't as familiar as you would like with one of those things, ASK QUESTIONS! This is VERY VERY important and it's also important to carefully phrase your questions. Please do not just go up to someone or message someone and demand they tell you something or just blurt out "So hey, is such-and-such offensive stereotype true?". Also keep in mind that not everyone is going to be willing to answer all or sometimes any of your questions. It's no one's job (regardless of race) to educate you, but there are quite a few people who ARE willing to do so. It's just a matter of taking the first steps to find out! :D
On the topic of appropriation. When I'm talking about appropriation, I'm specifically referring to characters that are one race or ethnicity and have a bunch of jumbled cultural aspects going on. Things like a "Sailor Africa" would be appropriative because Africa is a continent and there are many many MANY different ethnic groups, cultures, and languages there. Another example would be a a scout who might be, say, Irish. She's born and raised in Ireland, culturally Irish, and racially white-Irish. This is the ONLY characteristic you give her. It's appropriative and offensive if you put her in a combination of tradition German and Spanish clothes, give her a marytroshka, and make her fuku be all in tartan. Why? Because with that you're essentially saying "these things are all hers and all the same and there's no difference in where they come from; they have no specific cultural significance, it's ALL Irish". You might not mean it that way, but that's what you're sayings. THIS DOES NOT APPLY IN THE SAME WAY TO MIXED RACE CHARACTERS! As a mixed race individual myself, I'm all for mixed race characters. ANY racial / ethnic combination you can think of is possible. So I don't think it's necessarily appropriative if you have character who is Irish, Spanish, German, and Russian and those things I listed are all cultural aspects that have had a big impact on her life. Is it problematic? I would say yes, only because those are very specific things and if you only add those in, it's questionable and unrealistic. Yes your characters can be mixed, but don't only pick one thing from each culture and ignore everything else.
The bottom line I want to stress here is this:
NEVER MAKE A CHARACTER WHOSE ONLY DEFINING TRAIT IS THEIR RACE, ETHNICITY, SPECIFIC CULTURE, OR NATIONALITY. IT'S RACIST.


#2 -> Moving on and addressing the use of "racist"...

When I use the word "racist" I'm not calling you a racist. I am not saying that your defining trait is racism, I am not saying that you're a terrible person. I'm saying that your action(s), words, opinions, or creations are racist.


What does that mean?
Well much like you can do a stupid thing or you do something wrong, you are not necessarily a stupid person or a wrong person. When I say "That's racist," or "You're being racist," then that also means that you can correct the behavior. You ALWAYS have the option to learn from that and change the offensive thing. If I was saying that you were a racist, then I would essentially saying that almost everything you do is racist and I have no hope for you. I'd be saying that I'm dismissing you and writing you off as a racist, never to change.
Now I live in the deep South so I'm not saying that it's wrong to call someone a racist if that's what they are, but what I'm saying is that, when I use the word "racist", I try to always give people the benefit of the doubt. Yeah you're wrong for doing a racist thing, but maybe you don't know better or it wasn't intentional or you made a mistake. If you're willing to correct yourself and apologize, then you're not a racist because the major thing that sets racists apart is that they believe the racist things they preach and they don't care if it hurts or offends others.


#3 -> Intent

The reason I say "intent doesn't matter" is because most people who bring up intent use it as an excuse.


If you say "I didn't mean to hurt you with this," then I believe you, but that doesn't mean you didn't hurt someone.
9 times out of 10, the people who talk about intent DON'T APOLOGIZE. 
If you truly didn't mean to offend or hurt feelings, say you're sorry and attempt to change what you did. End of story. If you say "Well I didn't mean to offend so you shouldn't be mad," then you're wrong and invalidating someone's opinion.


#4 -> Anger, Defensiveness, & Apologies

If someone calls you / something you made "wrong", "racist", or "offensive", DO NOT LASH OUT AT THEM. Keep in mind that if they lash out at YOU, it is most likely because they are hurt and angry.


Again, it's very important to apologize in these situations. You getting angry back (even if the person is rude) isn't going to help because the real problem is that something you've done is hurtful.
Your goal should be to find out what you goofed on and try to fix it.
Whether you ask questions, do more research, and definitely apologize if it wasn't your intent to do something offensive. It's much better to know that you've done something wrong so you can fix it, rather than wallowing in your ignorance. You lose out on a lot of life experiences that way.
THIS IS ALSO SOMETHING THAT APPLIES TO PEOPLE OF ALL RACES! Well, all of these things are, but I want to stress that, while I don't think "reverse-racism" is a thing, I do know that POCs can be prejudiced both to white people and other POCs. It's something that EVERYONE goes through, we all have misconceptions and privileges and prejudices but it's important that when we're confronted with them, we work to correct them. (And yes, that includes me. I've done appropriative things and have been prejudiced before without even knowing what I was doing. Once I found out that what I did wrong, I felt bad. But I also accepted that the only thing I could do was to then learn from the situation and try to recognize those behaviors in myself in the future.)
The important thing to do when or if someone calls you out is to try not to be defensive and make an effort to learn / correct what was wrong.


#5 -> "Sailor Moon isn't white!"

While it's true that Sailor Moon and most of the senshi are Japanese, there seems to have been confusion about me saying "Sailor Moon isn't white"


When I said that Sailor Moon and the senshi aren't white and that when you draw them as white it's racebending, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I genuinely appreciate most racebending (when it's not white-washing, but that's completely different and you should look it up if you don't know what it is), it pisses me off when people insist that XYZ character is white and treat it as canon.
That's it. That's the issue. If you want to draw Usagi with big blue eyes and blonde hair and pale skin, go for it! THAT'S CANON FOR HER DESIGN!
(Not to mention that anime in general isn't the best style for representing race.)
But the unfortunate and angering thing is that if someone wants to take a more "realistic" approach to their art and works to make Usagi have more Asian features (and I'm talking about physical and facial features done tastefully), I've seen people ask "Well why did you make her look so Asian? That's not what she looks like in the anime/manga,"
Saying something like that is racist because first of all, you're implying that her "looking Asian" is bad. Racist for obvious reasons. But secondly, you're implying that she isn't Asian, that because of her design she can't be, despite the fact that she has a Japanese name, the story is set in Japan with various unignorable (and not out of place) references specific to Japanese culture, and that it's canon that she was born and raised in Japan. That can not only be construed as racist, but it's just blatantly ignoring huge aspects of the show / story.
On racebending: Yes. Good. Do it. No really, I'm all for racebending when done tastefully. What that means is: Don't use stereotypes, appropriation, tokenism, etc. (GASP! Sound familiar?) So hey, you want to draw XYZ character as African-American? Cool! Do it! But for the love of god, DO NOT draw her with a bucket of fried chicken and watermelon. That's an example of racist and hurtful stereotypes guys. Now if you want to draw a character as white? Cool! Do it! Same thing though, don't use stereotypes. In addition to that, if you're doing a group shot or a series of characters, DO NOT GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO MAKE THEM ALL WHITE. What you'd be doing in that case is generally called "white-washing" and it's not a cute look. (Again, please look up the term if you are unfamiliar, I'm quite sure I won't be able to explain it well. >_<)
Another note on racebending? DO NOT POST A COMMENT JUST SAYING "Why are they XYZ race?" or "I wouldn't have made them XYZ ethnicity." IT IS RUDE. IT IS OFFENSIVE. It makes it sound like "Eww, why are they that?" Again, it might not be you intent, but that's how it comes off. If you're curious about their choices or interpretation, please say that. Phrase it more like, "Oh, I find that interesting! I'm curious as to why you made the choice to have XYZ be XYZ, is there a particular reason?"
You don't have to use those exact words by any means, but do try to let the artist know that you're genuinely interested in the choices they made and that you respect them.
Well what about cosplaying? 
So this came up branched off of the misunderstanding of "Sailor Moon isn't white". I am completely fine with a person of one race cosplaying as a character of another race PROVIDED THEY DON'T DO IT IN A TASTELESS AND RACIST WAY. Examples of that include: any sort of yellow-face, red-face, or black-face; using props unrelated to the character to help "portray race"; using tape on your eyes to make them overly slanted in an attempt to "look Asian"; etc.
I have seen people do some of these things. Not. Cute. :|
And again I will stress: DO NOT ASK COSPLAYERS RACIST QUESTIONS LIKE "You know such-and-such character is XYZ race, right?" OR "Why didn't you dress up as this other character? You look more like them."
IT IS RUDE. IT IS OFFENSIVE.
Seriously. Why do you think they cosplayed as the character they did?
I WILL GIVE YOU A HINT, IT IS GENERALLY BECAUSE THEY LIKE THEM.


That's about it!
So that's all I can really think of now! If you have questions for me, feel free to ask. I'll do my best to answer them patiently (and I'll try my best to wait and cool off if your question pisses me off, lol).

❤ Skin CSS © Nesmaty

Thanks for reading!
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SAILOR MOON PSA

5 min read



:new: I posted a follow-up clarification journal here. It may or may not help some of you see where I'm coming from and what I was trying to say, but eh. It's there if you wanna read it. :new:


You know what? I'm really fucking sick of seeing these racial / ethnic / nationality inspired senshi.

It's bullshit. It's appropriative. It's racist.


Groups like Cultural-Sailor-Moon? I'm okay with that. It's primarily about racebending and promoting interpretations of canon senshi as other ethnicities. But my main problem with it and the fandom on a whole is that for some reason many white Sailor Moon fans can't seem to understand this:

SAILOR MOON IS NOT WHITE. NONE OF THE SAILOR SENSHI ARE WHITE. THEY ARE ALL JAPANESE. WHICH, GUESS WHAT, ISN'T WHITE.

Do I give a flying fuck if Usagi's hair is blonde? NO, HER FUCKING DAUGHTER'S HAIR IS PINK. HER BLONDE HAIR DOESN'T MAKE HER WHITE. When you draw Usagi or ANY OF THE OTHER CHARACTERS as racially white, then YOU ARE RACEBENDING TOO.

Now, that's not to say there aren't other good groups in the fandom. Spectrum-Senshi is particularly good as it promotes diverse senshi in several senses. NOTE THAT IT DOESN'T PROMOTE ETHNIC OR RACIAL "THEMED" SENSHI. 
You wanna know why?

BECAUSE YOUR ETHNIC & RACIAL THEMED SENSHI AREN'T CUTE.

THEY'RE RACIST AND IF YOU MAKE THEM OR OWN/ADOPT THEM, THEN YOU'RE RACIST.





Skin by CherieNoir
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-to be updated-

3 min read


-to be updated-




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