“For my followers who’ve been in romantic relationships, do you get rid...”
I keep gifts (stuffed animals, toys, clothes, etc.) regardless. Depending on the how we broke up, if it was on good terms or not, decides if I cut all times with them though.
Thanks for sharing shuttersmiley. I really appreciate it. I’m really leaning on returning stuff or at least compensating monetary wise o_o even tho it has been over several months... and perhaps keeping pics & letters for sometime
shuttersmiley replied to your post: bethanyactually replied to your post: ...
You do realize that Spike is Japanese right? Base off an actual Japanese person, right? How is this any different than when people wanted Cucumberbutton to play Spike?
Huh, I didn’t realize he was based off a specific person, no. I’m definitely going to look that up though! That’s cool. As for heritage--and this is likely because I watched it as a teenager, I may pick up different cues if I were to rewatch it 10 years later--I never got that he was assigned a specific ethnicity in the anime. Which isn’t to say he wasn’t, just that if he was I didn’t notice or pick up on it. I thought it was deliberately not given, actually, in comparison to Faye or Ed.
If you are wondering why I didn’t assume his ethnicity was one particular thing, I can go into my thought process from what I recall of it. If you’re not interested, just skip the next two paragraphs because it’s just me trying to remember meta details from the show. All of which are obviously irrelevant now if there’s a real person he was intended to reflect or be homage to.
Spitballing from memory: From what I recall the mafia he worked for in his backstory were Chinese but living Mars, so I had wondered if that was his intended ethnic background, but for some reason I remember thinking that it wasn’t (?). The world of Cowboy Bebop is presented as pretty multinationally diverse, with names that are sometimes ethnic-/nationally- specific and sometimes not specific at all. Some characters are given extremely obvious (and often cartoonish) indicators of belonging to this group or that, and other characters aren’t given hardly any. I don’t remember that in the series he ever stated to have lived in Japan (like Motoko Kusanagi of Ghost in the Shell does, or for that matter like Faye eventually gets in her backstory) or a related group or colony. As a series, the show seemed to be split between yakuza homages, cowboy homages, and spy homages, which are genres that overlap in different national film industries. The world of Mars, Venus, and the moons the characters visit are all filled with collected mix-n-match of cultural symbols, languages, and iconography. The cross-section spill-over and mixing of cultures felt very deliberate to me as a visual, musical, and story decision. But, again, I watched the show more than ten years ago so I’m sure my ability to discern certain messages from the media is probably a lot different now. (hopefully better?)
For most anime I assume the characters are Japanese unless stated otherwise, but there are a few series that are specifically set in multinational environments where I don’t assume assume that immediately (FMA is another one of those, as is Trigun, Monster, and possibly Princess Tutu though maybe not.) In those, if characters are unstated I just go with either not thinking about it at all, contextual guesses/assumptions, or guessing that the vagueness is a deliberate choice on the part of the creators. That’s only a small portion of the anime though, because most anime I’ve seen is set in overtly Japan, either current or future. In the case of Spike, I always thought his cultural background was left deliberately unstated or unmarked (note: not default white) because he represented a nomadic archetype in a futuristic setting where his lack of an overt home, culture, or nation was an intentional part of his characterization, an aspect of his isolation vs. individualism conflict.
But all of that thinking is moot given that he was based on a specific living person, as you said. That’s something that presumably the original audience would be aware of that I wasn’t til just now. So, yeah, I hear you.
