32, he/him | Trans and fat | Polish | Aroace/demi | gay alterous qpr soulmate bonds || BBC Merlin | Tolkien | Dark | The Good Place | FFXIV | Warframe | Dimension 20 | Medieval stuff || Existentialism | tragedy | courage | time is a circle
Merlin BBC Merlin they could never make me form a solid opinion about you !!! World’s bravest coward. The most loyal traitor. The most honest liar. The gentlest murderer. Destroys everything trying to avoid destruction. What a guy !!!!!!!
Something about Merlin being allegorical to the concept of the “perfect queer person”. A queer person who allies themselves with their oppressors, hides their identity, and does as they’re told. Someone who never allows themselves the things they desire most and always puts the goals of their oppressors over the community they would be readily accepted by. Someone who would go so far as to betray the rest of their community to avoid disrupting the status quo, despite knowing they’ll never be truly accepted, loved or respected. At first it was out of survival, but eventually it’s out of habit, because this is how they learn to live.
“Magic will never have a place in Camelot” was the single line that forever condemned Merlin and every magic user to a lifetime of suffering, and the judge jury and executioner was the boy who was supposed to be their saviour, who forgot how to want to be free.
This is so important though: "You're gonna get in trouble for that" reveals so much. He was planning on nobody doing anything, not because nobody stands up to him, or nobody objecting to what he says. He expects good people to be goody-two-shoes rules followers, and he expects the rules to protect him no matter what he does.
Important lesson to learn from this standing up to fascists means getting into good trouble. Get into trouble if it's worth it. Fascists will never expect it.
Everyone is very angry at everyone about how to see or not see Mizu’s identity; being unable to shut up, and having fixated on the show a bit, i’m excited to finally join my first to-the-death-tumblr-discourse-battle.
I'm going to use mostly he/him for Mizu, but please read the premise below. Read the colored strings of text 😭
The main argument for Mizu being a woman is that which has as its basis the fact that cross-dressing is for Mizu an external need: for one, it is a need for protection from patriarchal bonds; secondly, it is a need for independence - Akemi’s story is one of independence as well, of feminine independence, and we have more than one woman pursuing such thing; we could go on with an analysis of brothels as a feminine space, but, alas - and thirdly, it is a need of obligation: Mizu needs to maintain the masculine identity in order to attain the object of his vow.
I find, however, that while the argument stands as perfectly sound (and as canon) it isn’t exhaustive enough of the layered experience of gender in BES.
The trans coding is simply undeniable to me, whether it was intentional or not. I do not mean to say that Mizu is a binary trans man; that would be an approach as reductionist as confirming she is exclusively a woman. However, I find that some behaviours of Mizu’s are coded as dysphoric reactions.
Most of my justifications for this reasoning come from episodes 2, 5 and 8.
In episode 2,
Ringo is vowing to never reveal Mizu’s secret: “I’ll never tell anybody you’re a g-“; and as soon as he’s about to say girl, Mizu is just as ready to slice his throat. Mizu being worried about someone else hearing or witnessing the interaction doesn’t seem completely plausible to me: they’re alone in snowy woods, and, most likely, Mizu wouldn’t have confirmed time and again how readily he’d kill Ringo.
Then comes episode 5,
which is in my opinion the most layered and the most exhaustive in regards to Mizu’s experience of gender, especially regarding his experience of the feminine. First and foremost, it tells the ultimate teaching: that gender isn’t but a performance, just as the gender roles are portrayed through theatre in the episode. As for the dysphoric reaction, it's the whole thing. Mizu is miserable even when we suppose that the marriage could be a relatively happy time. That's another reason why I suppose the puppet theatre tells Mizu's internal sense of self as well (see paragraph 4).
(And, about gender being performative, see how kabuki theatre was born in the Edo period and how, before being banned from acting, women cross-dressed to play male characters, and men cross-dressed to play female characters. See “professional transvestites” trained to be prostitutes, Kagema being trained from a young age to „act" like members of the other sex; see how by the beginning of the 18th century AFAB sex workers would try to figure out a way to set themselves apart from wakashu, creating an entirely new space for female crossdressers in the adult entertainment sphere; see ukiyo-e representations - chigo monogatari and yukiyo-zoshi literature; stories by Ihara Saikaku that are full of "transgender behaviours" and more)
Back to ep 5:
1. Theme of performance
The theme of performance, which also is the one of Mizu performing femininity for Mikio (in function of the well-being of Mizu’s mother), but being at once unable to suppress masculinity as the only space in which Mizu seems to be comfortable: e.g., it’s a little detail, but Mizu’s only good in the kitchen when cutting vegetables, because comfortable with blades, certainly not with cooking; again Mizu having to perform femininity is when he does makeup to “make-up”, to soften Mikio’s spirit, who feels invalidated by Mizu’s masculinity when it starts to interfere with his pride, and such other details; I even thought of the sword as a symbol for “learned” masculinity: the first time this thought occurred was when it was characterized by sensuality in the scene where the spouses spar: “Unsheathe it. Let me see your blade;” and I interpreted it as masculinity being the only space that allows intimacy as well; then comes the time where Mizu learns he does not need a sword to fight, meaning to me that she can embody masculinity without having to prove it to others. And then comes the reforging of the sword’s meteorite to include “impurities”, and the rite that Mizu performs. I assume that “a sword too pure” is the symbol of, again, learned hypermasculinity to appease patriarchal expectations, and is too pure because it’s Mizu rejecting part of himself, trying to exclude all “impurities”, whether they are being half white, or being half woman. Taigen himself is the one to tell Mizu he can fight without a sword (ep 7, but done in ep 3 or 4 and ep 6 already), and then the situation starts to bear sexual tension, which I directly link to the sensual connotation of the sparring cited earlier up. Possibly, this particular situation could also mean acceptance of Mizu's lack of a native "sword".
2. Gender roles
But a more sound consideration is (i would like to hope so) the one about the whole marriage being told through puppets, and the puppets themselves. While they are different characters, first of all we see an inversion of gender in the roles: at first Mizu is the Ronin because he performs a masculine role of protection, an “active” role; then, Mizu’s role is reversed in function of his marriage. We see Mizu surrendering (forcibly, being manipulated) to femininity as soon as his mother guilt-trips him into marrying, and the ronin puppet assumes a submissive pose, long before the role reversal.
3. A note:
it yet does not seem to me like the role reversal is, so to say, complete: even after the reversal, the narrator tells details about the ronin that are actually details about Mizu, e.g. when the two marry, and despite the positions of the puppets match the ones of the spouses, it is said that the ronin's loyalty is no more turned towards his "path of revenge," (Mizu's) "but to his bride" - in the perspective explained below, perhaps Mizu's own femininity. Also, i find Mizu might perceive Mikio as the bride, and himself as the husband - as an argument it can't stand alone, or it would bare no strength, but I will use it in correlation with the other points made, until now and later, to argue that Mizu thinks of himself as a guy.
4. Performance of Mizu's sides, assimilable to when she has the vision of killing his white side, shortly before facing the four fangs or whatever their name was
This, and one more tiny detail, bring me to think that not only do we talk about external roles, but about Mizu’s self-perception. I'm referring to when it is said that “for the first time in many years, the ronin felt the storm rage inside him.” The storm is a symbol belonging to Mizu (literally it occurs in the first 2 minutes of the episode), and it is explicit that it isn’t something that happens for the first time, but rather returns. By this point, the gender roles were reversed, and yet it seems to me like it isn’t anymore about the marriage itself, but rather about Mizu’s hatred for and slaughtering of his own femininity, and, of course, the experience of betrayal; with his family (especially his mother, see below), and with his femininity, which wasn’t enough to keep him comfortable or Mikio on his side. (...betrayal which is also about mizu himself betraying akemi, i'd add. Mizu is justified here, but it's important to note the parallels between the two timelines i guess?)
5. That random ass baby
There is, at a certain point, a situation of peace, which I think is represented when one of the puppets is holding a blue baby (supposedly a little ronin) in its arms. I want to suppose that the baby represents newborn love between Mizu and Mikio, before it all fell apart. But the love itself is a masculine love, as we see that it is based on masculine exchanges (fighting, doing fieldwork, taming horses, riding together, whatever) and, it seems to me, assimilable to homosexuality between samurai, which was widespread (insert something about Taigen here). Also Mikio wanted to marry a bro lmao. Aside from that, on the level of Mizu’s self-perception, it might represent comfortableness, a sort of congruence, or, rather, a compromise, that Mizu is able to live in, between natural masculinity and performed femininity - opening up to show vulnerability, love fragile as a creature that cannot defend itself, innocent, naive, trusting.
6. About Mizu’s mother.
The puppet used for Mizu’s mother before the role reversal is the same that is supposedly used for Mizu after, but I latch onto a detail: the pattern on the puppet’s kimono is the same as the (real life) Mother’s kimono (see for example minute 12:30). I support this by noting the more obvious parallel between the blue worn by Mizu and the blue of the Ronin puppet, but at the same time I'm forced to note that after a certain point the mother has her own puppet. In any case, I see the mother and the feminine puppet wearing the same kimono as being about femininity, and about the mother’s betrayal of her child, rather than about Mizu herself. For one, manipulating him into marrying and abandoning the vow. But also we learn (ep 8) that the woman isn’t Mizu’s mother at all. One could discuss the reliability of Fowler’s statement, but I feel there are more clues regarding the mother’s betrayal: the episode starts with the Ronin, who feels the storm rage inside him at the killing of his lord (Mizu’s actual mother, perhaps) by the hands of a clan whose crest was the Phoenix (which I suppose are the white men, and the curse of whiteness for Mizu). I’ve thought about the four white men dealing guns (Fowler), flesh, opium (and I’m not sure what role “Violet” has in this, but I think they're the opium dealer), and thought that if Mizu’s “mother” was a substitute, the opium she smokes could point to Mizu’s potential father, perhaps even at the surrogate mother keeping contact, and at the surrogate’s betrayal at the same time. But it’s also true I watched the show while stoned, so I would dismiss this.
7. Onryo (note: characteristic in kabuki)
When the birth of the vengeful spirit occurs, I see very well how plausible it is to say that, actually, the rage that Mizu feels is feminine rage, and I agree with that. Mizu’s femininity is his rage, it is heavily related to the mother-daughter relationship, despite the fact that at a certain point the mother has her own puppet. At the same time, however, it is to me the result of the slaughtering of the performed femininity needed to respect the obligation (we remember the wedding was also to ensure the “surrogate” mother safety, especially financial, as well as to keep Mizu bound), just as accepting you’re able to fight with any tool puts an end to the compensatory movement by which you’re trying to prove masculinity to an observer (which, say, Taigen does as well, wanting to prove to Mizu he can beat him - plus, Taigen himself is the one to reassure Mizu on the complete unimportance of it, see how I read the sword symbol a few paragraphs earlier).
In this perspective, the "dye washing away from her kimono" to me means two things: that being what he is is inevitable, and that the feminine rage sets in; Mizu tries to make up for being a "demon", but in the end rejects the obligation towards his husband, and towards her mother; the pattern is not the same anymore, and Mizu is somehow more like his own person, returning on the path of vengeance, strengthened by the feminine, as the reforged sword will be strengthened by the very ritualistic yaki-ire.
--
Episode 8,
I feel, speaks instead for itself, for the dysphoric reaction is to me extremely clear. Reacting that way to being called a Miss is not a cisgender reaction. You’ll tell me: it’s not a dysphoric reaction! It’s a reaction of disgust to being fetishized for being a woman! And that’s plausible, supported by the “you just keep getting better,” with clear sexual implication, except I think that is also a fundamental trans experience and one cannot limit the way they read the scene to an exclusively feminine experience.
In conclusion,
I don’t think it might be all boiled down Mizu being a masc woman, because of the trans coding. Mizu thinks of himself as a guy. If not a guy, not a woman either. You’ll tell me: “Of course she does, because she’s grown up that way; she was forced to sustain the lie to preserve her life! It's a matter of conditioning!” And while it is true that the initial context points towards crossdressing, and not inherent feelings of gender non conformity or transgenderism, I feel that if Mizu really felt like a woman, he wouldn’t have such exaggerated reactions, and I don’t think they come from his temperament either. And it is disproved that conditioning someone to have a different sexuality or gender identity works in any way - I doubt Edo period Japan or a particular protagonist would make an exception. "But Mizu herself tells Mikio she didn't want to be a man, she had to be one!" Yes, because it is true. But it points to crossdressing. If it were aimed to explain the whole of Mizu's experience of gender in her self, it would invalidate the entirety of episode 5.
In any case, even in situations where he couldn’t be discovered, Mizu does not allow feminine terms or titles, or tries as best to stop them from happening; plus, it’s rather obvious how difficult the relationship with his body is.
While, once again, reading Mizu as a binary trans man is not enough, I feel like reading him as cisgender isn’t, either. As if, in any case, the feminine experience and the transmasculine one didn’t overlap in many aspects, also during the most tumultuous parts of transition, if pursued.
What is funniest above all is that the whole discourse is substantially useless. The layers of the show open to an infinite variety of interpretations, none of them fundamentally wrong. Mizu’s just quite literally Mizu. It’s a queer unlabeled thing and that’s it. If you take the Lacanian concept of the Real as the hole, properly uninteligible, surrounded by the Symbolic, you'll find that "Queer" is exquisitely representative of the Real, and therefore every label (the Symbolic) is reductive of the perceived experience (indeed the Real). The fundamental lesson about gender that you can derive from the show is that gender is a performative construct. What it pushes you to do is deconstruct your principles, especially if you are queer, since we are all entrapped in the modern western white need for strict labelling; that’s where this whole debate comes from, and it is, once again, pointless.
So, instead making fun of other people because of a set of pronouns, perhaps it would be better to imagine that more options can cohabit together, or that there is no need to label at all. Also be careful about accusing others of a complete lack of media literacy - you should thoroughly examine yours first.
Interesting articles i guess:
Japan’s Edo period began in 1603 and ended in 1868. It was a peaceful and prosperous period during which Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa Sho
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Algoso, Teresa A. "'Thoughts on Hermaphroditism': Miyatake Gaikotsu and the Convergence of the Sexes in Taishō Japan." The Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 3 (2006): 555–573.
Algoso, Teresa A. "Not Suitable as a Man? Conscription, Masculinity, and Hermaphroditism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan." Chap. 11 In Recreating Japanese Men, edited by Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, 241–261.
Mostow, Joshua S. “The Gender of Wakashu and the Grammar of Desire.” In Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, and Maribeth Graybill. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press 2003, 49–70.
taken from this post asking about transgender men in the edo period: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p6x4jk/comment/h9ttgv4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
As a final unrelated note, I haven’t seen anyone praise the MASTERFUL sound design
While I support some readers’ headcanons/fanfics of Mizu as a woman, I can’t think of Mizu from the show as a cis woman. The trans or at least dysphoric subtext is just too strong. I found myself at multiple points (esp ep 1 and 8) being like “yeah this isn’t how a cis person would react to this situation,” even accounting for fear of discovery, etc. Memes aside, I think Mizu probably views his own gender as something less important than his purpose, but it seems that he does have some sense of self and gender that doesn’t conform to the identity (not just performance) of womanhood, and in private he doesn’t seem embrace a feminine internal life, as would a cross dressing woman, presumably.
In addition to the scenes you dissected, I also think of the brothel scene in Ep 4, where Mizu has his kind of sexual awakening moment when he witnesses the MMF threesome. He thinks of Taigen only when the two men start to kiss. It was such a gay baby trans moment, and I feel like it opened up Mizu to the idea that he could have a sexual dynamic like that. The type of intimacy we saw between the MF and MM parts of the threesome were essentially the same— it wasn’t about gender performance/sexual roles, then— so I feel like the fact that Mizu saw himself in the MM part of it was telling. (Also Taizukemi for the win, or whatever their ship name is!)
Thank you for your insightful analysis, and I agree that there are so many ways that Mizu’s character and gender can be read. I feel like as long as the complexity of gender and gender dynamics is acknowledged, it doesn’t really matter what pronouns are used for Mizu. And death of the author, all that— I’m not interested in authorial intent— the subtext of a trans/trans-ish experience is clearly present.
Something that annoys me in discussions about gender (and to be clear, this time it was prompted by how people gender Mizu from Blue Eye Samurai) is I think we've lost the plot on what I means to be trans
See, when I was coming up trans it was very common to see "trans" as an umbrella term thar explicitly included GNC people, crossdressers, and a bunch of other people most people in even queer intracommunity discussions don't call trans.
There was this graphic, as slightly problematic as it was. And it left a big impact on how i still regard gender. The reason for all this was that people understood being trans not purely as a "what you want to be" but "how you are viewed and how you behave". (And to be clear this was still debated at the time- I came up during the truscum, anti-SJW years of tumblr, and there was criticism from them of this graphic and from people who though it should instead be the "gnc umbrella" because they recoiled at the idea of "trans" being this expansive). Note that the definition at the bottom says nothing about identity and focuses on actions and behaviors.
When we talk about debated trans characters or historical figures, it's very commonly said "they didn't call themselves trans/they didn't say they wished they were this gender", which is ludicrous as those are beside the point. Yes, those two things are important to some trans people. How you feel is part of what it means to be transgender, but that's because it's part of the /lived experience of being trans/. Even if you're closeted, the act of closeting is a lived experience. Transness is not mere abstract desire, it is living. (And note how we rarely talk about how "cis people want to be their gender", instead it is commonly "cis people are their gender")
So like. I don't care about if Mizu says "I wanted to be a man" vs "I have/had to be a man". By being someone who lives as a man, full time, for YEARS, who is not /supposed/ to be doing that, Mizu is trans. The eyes of their broader society will not make much of a distinction between "really trans" and "pragmatic crossdresser" if Mizu is ever outed. And frankly the show does not do much to counter this view, given that Mizu is metatextually both an archetypal man and archetypal woman in "the Ronin and the Bride", and that Mizu experiences sexual desire upon seeing two men kiss, making them think of Taigen. In sexual contexts, Mizu sometimes identifies themself as a man. That is the most obvious reading of that juxtaposition in shots. Word of god may be that Mizu is a woman, but the show does not present a clear case for that in its current form.
This short story by Junji Ito is about a fault that appears in Amigara mountain after an earthquake. The earthquake exposes countless human-shaped holes in the mountain which seem to have been made about a thousand years ago. People, intrigued by these silhouettes, gather at the site and that’s when things get creepy.
It’s about a 15-20 min read, but if you haven’t read this before, you’re in for a treat. Link above.
i mean it’s not like i can just NOT reblog amigara fault. what if one of my followers is one of the lucky ten thousand who HASN’T been unutturably altered for life by it yet? go read it! it’s creepy, but trust me, it was made for you.
Reblog and put in the tags: What’s your evil, alternate timeline self? Mine’s the one where I didn’t bail on my forensic psych degree and actually became an FBI profiler.
There's an awful trend in reading that's this CinemaSins kind of rejection of abstract concepts and suspension of disbelief, that makes people say it's bad writing when authors use descriptions that aren't immediately one to one with physical reality.
Like it's bad when a "tattoo is undulating" (as opposed to... "drawn in a wave like pattern on the skin"?), or when hair is "wet wheat from a late Summer field" (as opposed to "sort of brownish light yellow that dries lighter, but is not actual wheat stalks growing on someone's head but kind of reminiscent of the color and texture"?), or when when ice cream tastes like midnight at the fair" (as opposed to "ice cream flavour bringing back memories of undefined ice cream flavours that are individually popular but always tied to a memory of late evening at the fair ground and probably smelling vaguely like popcorn and sugar"?).
Please. We have to get back to understanding abstract descriptions that evoke feelings and memories and mental images or things we haven't experienced yet. This hyper utilitarian way of reading and judging text is killing fiction. it's robbing you of experiencing things you haven't actually personally experienced.
please note that while progenitor, guardian, spawnpoint etc are all respected titles, they are more the equivalent of mother/father than an affectionate nickname you would scream through the house multiple times a day. gimme something we can use people
i was going to add something else to this but instead i got to thinking and i was like huh. what could you use.
in most languages the word for ‘mother’ usually starts with an M, because phonetically [m] is one of the easiest sounds for a newborn to make when they start babbling, and mothers tend to be the one most around the child. so in my mind that crosses M off the list, because it’s automatically associated with a feminine figure
similarly, ‘father’ tends to start with D, T, P, or B. (phonetically these sounds are very close together; [p, b] and [d, t] are all only different because of being voiced or unvoiced.) these are also phonetically easy letters and ones kids pick up on earlier.
now the hard sounds for kids are the following: [ɹ, d͡ʒ, tʃ, θ, ð] or in normal speak: the English R, the “j” or “dge” sound in “judge,” the “th” sound in “thigh” and the “th” sound in “the.” and we don’t want kids unable to say their parent’s name for years, so those are also off the list.
additionally, it’s easiest for young kids to just repeat the same sound twice rather than figuring out the tongue gymnastics of putting different sounds together, which is why kids will say Ma-Ma or Da-Da and not Ma-Mo or Da-Po. and we’ll want to stick with low back vowels like “ah” and avoid ones like the hard “i” or “ee.”
so what does that leave us? when we want a sound kids can learn easily and early but don’t want to just put a funky spin on “mama” or “dada”?
my suggestions: G, K, W, L. i personally lean towards W and L. they’re called liquids, since they’re the consonants that kind of aren’t consonants, and kids (and ESL learners) will tend to swap out the English R for a W or L until they can learn the R.
if i ever have a child, they’ll start calling me Wawa. then when they get older, they’ll call me Wala, or maybe even Wally.
and then, once they’re finally phonetically developed, they can call me by my true title as their nonbinary guardian for their 18+ years:
Okay, but on an actually serious note, Baba is used in several different languages, but the meaning changes between mother, father, or grandparent. However, it is not used in English afaik, so it could be a good English option.
wait wait wait, do babies try to latch on to the nipples of non-lactating parents too? is this a thing? do babies just automatically zero in on any nipple in the vicinity, regardless of the presence of breasts or breast milk? is this an experience cis men deal with I need to KNOW
UPDATE: based on the notes the answer is a resounding YES!!!
I can’t speak to cis men’s experience, but my house has this kind of lamp, and my progeny were both very fascinated by it whenever I would carry them under one of them.
The lamp thing is legit, I’ve discussed it with so many fellow breastfeeding parents. The weirdest one for me was when my son latched onto the tied knot of a balloon.
Enter the WISE AND GAUDY SLIME, attendants, clowns, and wizards, with DOGGONLO the SEER
GAUDY SLIME
Again I come to you, my followers,
To ask a question near my goopy heart:
When speaking to a parent, gender - none,
What name am I to give them when I call?
For, while “progenitor” is accurate,
‘Tis not a quip to call across the town.
FIRST CLOWN
The word that comes to mind at first is “dom”.
FIRST WIZARD
‘Tis true, but if revers’d thy message is,
A “moderator” comes to mind, with “mod”.
SECOND WIZARD
Why, “op” would work when paired with “admin” ‘tis.
GAUDY SLIME
Say “admin” when respect and love thou needst,
Say “op” when meant derogatorily.
DOGGONLO
At first, hearing thy words, I was to jest;
But then, at second thought, I pondered it.
What could one use when not a “ma” or “pa”?
So, “ma”, the word, comes from a babe’s outcry,
Since “em” and “ah” are easy to pronounce.
And “da” and “pa” are also simply said.
So what for gender-null? What for our Slime?
Well, “ja” and “tha” and “tsa” are none a fit,
As “ja-tha-tsa” are difficult to say -
No babe could speak them while still in its youth.
And in addition, repetition’s key,
For “ma-ma” is to “pa-ma” pref'rable.
We’ll stay with low and back-held vowels, too,
For “ee” and “eye” are too complex for babes,
So to the “ah” and “ooh” we keep our sound.
Remaining still available to us,
Good “ga”, kind “ka”, wise “wa”, and, lastly, “la”.
Of these fine gents I point to “la” and “wa”
As consonants that almost vowels be
And make for ease of song for baby voice.
If ever I a child take to me
(For man or woman, neither one am I)
A “wawa” or a “lala” will I be.
And as they grow, their speech will strong become
Till finally my true name’s in their grasp:
‘Tis Waluigi.
FIRST ATTENDANT
Spite! O, I am hit!
I thought I was to learn the lore of words
But struck by cruel and slapstick strike am I!
THIRD WIZARD
Uh, “baba” works, it’s used in other tongues.
SECOND ATTENDANT
Yes, “baba” is the one I use, i'faith.
But still - o Seer, why must thou attack?
SECOND CLOWN
It seems to me that “tata” is the one
For babes to “tatas” cling, no matter what.
GAUDY SLIME
Wait, clown, dost thou speak truth to me? Real truth?
Will babes reach for a breast devoid of milk?
CLOWNS and ATTENDANTS cheer in affirmation.
O never had I thought this day would come.
Enter the gay mothers, THOUGHTFUL and SUZLOUA.
THOUGHTFUL
I cannot of a milkless breast inform,
But lights shaped like a breast will draw the babe.
SUZLOUA
I’ve heard the same by others said before.
My son’s reached out for tied balloons in past.
GAUDY SLIME
In gratitude I share with you a tale
‘Twas whisper’d to my ear a moment since:
One said, when baptised, he then look’d about
And tried to eat the “milk” of candles lit.
THIRD CLOWN
This scene has all that ever I could want,
The milk of human kindness shows itself,
The gender-neutral words are brought along,
And finally, our Waluigi’s here.
GAUDY SLIME
Before we go, one final note to say:
A friend has lately told that, as a child,
They’d call for “maud” to come, for ‘twas
A combination “ma” and “dad” in brief.
Merriment and rejoicing. The SHAKESPEAREIFIER lurks in the corner, taking notes.
I really hope attenborough just keeps going, I hope he hits 200 but everyone is too nervous to like bring it up or study him or whatever cuz it's david attenborough
Come to think of it, it really is insane that my entire country is burning alive and literally no one in the rest of the world cares. Thousands of Indians are dying every day from the heat, it's 45+ degrees in multiple areas, the government couldn't give two fucks, we're getting severe warnings and red alerts, and not a soul outside of South Asia is speaking about it because why would you ever care about brown people
USA folks, that is a consistent temperature range hitting 113°. Death Valley temperatures. In Banda, it hovered between 116°-118° (47°-48° C) for a week straight.
This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:
