I am a princess. All girls are.

This is officially the best response and a big ass mood right there

XU FENG appreciation 07/∞

requested by @cyborg-cinderella

I don’t know how some of you could watch blu eyed samurai and still debate Mizu’s gender like hello ??? media literacy dead ??? Mizu is a woman, that’s the whole fucking point !!!! That’s her biggest crime !!!

Eiji couldn’t care less about her heritage but he literally cut her off when she tried to confess her gender !!!!

Mikio was fine with her being half white but the moment she dared to show him that -as a woman- she was a greater fighter it was over. His ego was irreparably hurt because a woman defeated him !!!!

And he calls her a monster !!!! He calls her a monster because she’s a woman and she’s strong she’s capable she can fight she isn’t submissive and that’s the point !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Omg yes!!!! I was getting tired of that!!

Y'all see a strong women who isn't stereotypically feminine and then suddenly she can't be a girl anymore.

A big part of her identity is struggling to be a woman in 16 something's Japan. Erasing that seems like a disservice.

For real 🤦🏻‍♀️ I am so tired of this crap. We finally get to see good representation for cis-gender women of color and they (mainly white queers) argue that Mizu isn’t even a woman simply because she’s not traditionally feminine. It’s interesting because nobody argues that Mulan isn’t canonically a cis-gender woman even though plenty of people headcanon that character as nonbinary or trans masc as well. Why is Mizu being treated differently?

Why are women suddenly no longer considered “women” if they’re not stereotypically girly and submissive? Why can’t Mizu be a cis-gender woman AND still be the greatest Samurai ever? Why do y’all think it’s wrong for us (including the show’s creators) to refer to Mizu as she/her, especially when there aren’t many well written stories that center around cis-gender women of color who are morally grey and not traditionally feminine?

White queers need to remember that they are outsiders looking in here. Just because a character resonates with you personally, it doesn’t mean that fictional piece of media is actually about you. Headcanons are still just headcanons. Yes, “Blue Eye Samurai” has plenty of queer elements in it, but that does not make it a queer story. Those of you who keep insisting otherwise are just projecting whatever you want to see in a story that is not about you and was not created for you.

I understand white trans mascs desperately crave good representation, but so do cis-gender women of color. We deserve to feel seen/heard too, and as people who also understand what it’s like to be marginalized, how is it that y’all don’t realize that it’s wrong for you to take away resources from cis-gender women of color? How do y’all not realize that you’re alienating the very people who this show was specifically created by and for?

Like damn. Lots of you in the BES tags are making literally everything about “gender ambiguity” when Mizu’s gender identity isn’t even ambiguous. She IS a woman in canon. Just because she’s not traditionally feminine and has complicated feelings about her gender (and about sex), it doesn’t mean that she’s not still a woman. Cis-gender women can and do still have complicated feelings about sex and their gender. Believe it or not, we are complex human beings as well.

And as someone who is biracial + multicultural, who is not traditionally feminine but is still very much a woman … it’s very disappointing (but not surprising) to see how quickly certain people have decentered this show’s central themes (racism + patriarchy) from fandom discourse. Y’all are here throwing around baseless accusations at anyone who doesn’t accept your headcanons as fact and complaining that this show isn’t “queer enough” for you — saying that Mizu’s storyline would be “so boring” if the character is cis-gender or straight (which they are in canon so far).

Like seriously, just say that you don’t care about women of color (especially ones who aren’t traditionally feminine) and move on. We see your racism + misogyny and we are not surprised at all.

I couldn't have said this better myself.

Ik they just want representation but like, so do I?

This is really interesting cause I used to read a lot of gender bender stories where a girl had to dress up as a man to infiltrate a school/army/club whatever but the audience always knew that the protagonist was a girl.

Sometime recently that has shifted. I get projecting because I do it too but the fandom doesn't own a work. The creators do. And they say she's a woman. Inspired on one of their daughters or something like that. And when an artist tells you clearly that x is x, you don't get to stand up and say that they're wrong. That x is y because clearly x could never be as interesting, complex, intriguing as y.

Every single x I know has complicated feelings about their gender. Not fitting in, not being what our parents wanted us to be, not feminine enough, too feminine to be taken seriously, etc etc.

Women aren't one dimensional. That's why it was so inspiring to see mizu like that.

And honestly I feel like it all falls back on misogyny.

I'm not sure how to put this exactly, but In a lot of people's heads, the normal, neutral gender is male. (Just like the normal ethnicity is white, as opposed to Being asian/native/African). Being female is the "other" option. And we're used to that.

The whole show I was thinking "she isn't written as a woman. She is written as a person."

So my theory is that when people see that, their conclusion is that she can't be a girl anymore because she's just so neutral.

Because female characters are always written to be either flat, or misunderstood. Always distinctly female in one way or another . But here we have a well rounded character who just happens to be female, something I've looked for all my life!

Writers usually make male and female characters really differently but every character in BES were their own person. Can't give enough kudos for that.

Very well said @ira-sairain I really love the comments that you’ve added here.

Many of these people won’t openly admit it but they definitely have a lot of internalized misogyny. Like you said, they see such a well written character that turns out to be female and they still adamantly insist that nobody that cool could ever be a cishet woman. Their minds can’t grasp that cishet women can also be complex individuals who have complicated feelings about sex and their gender too.

Honestly, I feel like many of them just don’t see women (especially women of color) as human beings and they can’t be bothered to even try to emphasize with our own lived experiences unless we’re also queer. They’ll also discount our perspectives as women if we’re not traditionally feminine and if we don’t fit into certain beauty standards, just like they’re doing with Mizu. In their minds, it seems like women are only “women” when they are like Akemi.

They see someone who binds their breasts and automatically assume that person is either trans or nonbinary. They see a woman who isn’t traditionally feminine and automatically decide that she’s a butch lesbian. They see someone who doesn’t have a high sex drive or has other priorities in life beyond sex and they immediately deem that person as asexual. And so on, and so on … it’s just one projection after another.

Again, are there queer elements in Blue Eye Samurai? Yes, absolutely. Does that mean it’s a queer story? No. Sexuality in 1600s, Edo Japan was actually even more open than it is today in the Western world and I love that the creators decided to show as that in canon. However, it’s important for people to understand that Mizu is mainly marginalized for her race and that she hides her true gender identity because she has to, not because she wants to. For her presenting as a man is a necessity, not a desire. In Mizu’s own words, she had to be a man in order to survive and yet some of y’all are actually here acting like she can’t possibly be serious.

Like yeah, of course different people are going to interpret fictional media in different ways, but people should also be able to know how to separate their headcanons from the canon material that they are consuming. And that’s the real problem here. I don’t have any issues with people having headcanons about Mizu — on the contrary, I fully encourage people to have headcanons about all the characters that they love.

However, y’all really need to remember that your headcanons are. just. headcanons. That’s it. That’s all they are unless the show’s creators say otherwise in future seasons. Your personal interpretations are not irrefutable facts that everyone (including apparently the show’s own writers) needs to accept. Demanding such a thing is just completely selfish, ridiculous and unreasonable to me.

And frankly, I’m just tired of us constantly needing to defend ourselves over this particular topic. I don’t think it should be considered controversial to use she/her pronouns for Mizu and I don’t think it’s transphobic at all to simply say this character is canonically a woman.

Women of color (including cishet ones) rarely get to see themselves represented in well written media, especially where we’re not being fetishized or stereotyped somehow. And then on the rare occasions that we actually do great representation like this, there’s always some white folks (including queer ones) who want to take these resources away from us by making everything about themselves as usual.

And again — we understand that they also want to feel seen and heard, but their good representation cannot come at the expense of our own. Our stories matter too. I haven’t even had time to entertain myself with my own personal headcanons about Mizu because I’m still processing all the incredible ways that this show portrayed the lived experiences of a biracial woman. Like seriously, I can’t remember the last time I felt this seen and heard by a show’s canon material and yet certain folks here won’t even let me enjoy it because they’re being so damn loud about their headcanons.

Blue Eye Samurai is about the lived experiences of women (which includes Mizu) in 1600s Edo Japan, who struggle with fitting into their culture’s very strict standards of what being Japanese and what being a woman means in this place/time period. It’s not a metaphor or an allegory for something else, that IS literally the show’s whole narrative and people saying otherwise are simply projecting themselves and what they want to see in a story that is actually not about them at all. 🤷🏻‍♀️

i wanted to give my opinions on blue eye samurai as a genderfluid person who is sometimes trans masc.

sometimes, i do think people tend to project western ideas on non-western shows and you miss out on a lot of critiques on misogyny.

I think that it's important to recognize that Mizu is not a man because she wants to be (as far as this season) she is a man because she has to be. Mizu was extremely, in her own way, empathetic toward women in their various situations but could not allow herself to show it or to even hint of her real identity because she literally sees and understands how women are treated.

Either wives, prostitutes or highborn women, and either have no actual control of their lives. In order to commit to her goal, Mizu cannot fall into either of those roles. In order to stay safe, she has to be a man.

She has to be a man to survive, even if it's highly implied that's not what she wanted, and if things went differently with her husband, she would've been happy being a wife.

There are many perspectives of women in Blue Eye Samurai and Mizu's herself cannot be discounted because she does give us a clear perspective of a woman. And that is the perspective of one who must hide herself to stay alive.

It's not what she wants - her whole NARRATIVE is a critique on the misogyny Japanese women faced during that time. And how in order to survive she must go through extremes.

We saw that even for women like Akemi, as high born as she was, she had little to no control over her life until the very end, and even then, she is still bound by the laws of what women can do . LIKE YES, she IS GREAT she is, But she is still going to be expected to be a dutiful wife and be behind her husband, not in front of him or beside him.

That was also a huge point in conflict that Mizu has to also correct herself on. Just because Akemi is a princess doesn't mean her life is better. Mizu projected a lot of her own jealousy on Akemi because in her mind, Akemi was allowed to exist as a woman and have everything handed to her. She did not realize how similar they were until the end.

think a certain level of understanding about cultural differences and how misogyny plays a part in certain societies needs to be applied to her character. She is miserable with how she is. Having to be forced to be a man is not something she wants to do. She has to conceal herself.

That is why it was significant at the very end, before she fought fowler, that she presented herself as naked, hair down, breast exposed, as a woman. Because part of her probably thought she was going to die and she wanted to embrace her true self, the self she wanted to be, before she did that.

Yeah looking at the tags...maybe white trans mascs shouldn't be speaking on mizu's gender at all because a lot of you are being racist and misogynistic , but that's not new. and I'm just gonna leave it at that. it's very on-brand for you to see a woman of color forced to be a certain way because of misogyny and racism, and make it about yourselves and call people transphobic for pointing out the cultural context.

she literally, in her own words, said she was forced to be a man and you guys are really...with chest...calling people transphobic for rightfully saying that mizu was forced to be a man because of misogyny.

idk imagine making a woman's gender trauma about yourselves

headcanons are fine - in fact have them, i have some about her being genderfluid, but a lot of you are seriously, unironically, calling people transphobes for not seeing those hcs as canon.

addition, i think what i'll say to update this is that, headcanons are fine (like i said before?), and in fact i think we SHOULD have hcs about Mizu, that's fine. There isn't anything wrong with women, trans men, nonbinary people, etc., seeing themselves in Mizu. The issue is people are quite literally, being called TERFS for not adhering to the idea that she's trans mascs. Other trans mascs, are being called terfs and transphobes for using feminine pronouns for her. There are specific people in the tag that keep on insisting that she is canonically a tman and getting mad at people for saying otherwise, and again, calling us terfs. That's not okay, a terf is a heavy accusation and ot all a trans masc person that heavily exposes them to actaul terfs finding and harassing them. I wouldn't have made this post if i didn't see it. HAVE your headcanosn, but leave people alone. stop ignoring cultural and gender context, and stop harassing other trans men for not sharing your hcs. and like that im finished with this fandom.

Blue Eye Samurai is not a queer story.

It is a story about a mixed woman being forced to hide her sex because of race and men being in positions of power over her.

As a white queer, it’s important to know when a story is meant for me or whether I am merely projecting onto someone else’s story. There are so many stories out there that talk about the experience of being a white queer.

BES is not one of those. I will not go into detail about how absurd it is to force western ideas, customs, etc onto characters who just fought the very concept of westernization on screen. But I will say, it is very apparent that many viewers are going into this show looking for westernized queer representation that is simply not there.

Thank you @queer-exp and @foxglovevibes for saying this openly. I hope neither of you are getting too much backlash for speaking up.

Personally (as a women who is biracial, bilingual and multicultural), this show was such a pleasant surprise for me. I never expected it to be as good as it turned out to be. I’m not used to seeing well written (and well researched) representation for people like me, especially representation that is created BY and FOR people who are like myself in many ways. This is rare and we (biracial and/or bicultural Asian women) should be able to celebrate this project openly, especially because it was primarily created by two Asian North American women — one who is biracial and the other is bicultural.

It’s only been two weeks since Blue Eye Samurai came out on Netflix and yet I’m already seeing lots of people on here (mainly White queers) who are angry with the show’s creators and their intended audience simply for referring to Mizu as she/her. I’ve also seen a lot of posts from these same types of people complaining that the show was “queer baiting” or not “queer enough” for them even though this show was never marketed as Queer Representation to begin with.

Today I was accused of lacking “human compassion and reading comprehension skills” simply because I pointed out to them that 1) this is not a queer story and that 2) it doesn’t have to be one in order for it to be enjoyable or even worth telling. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Of course, everyone deserves to feel seen and heard, but not all stories have to represent every marginalized group at the same time. And yes, queer POC deserve good representation too, but this is an excellent show regardless if Mizu is queer or not in canon. Why can’t these people just enjoy the show for what it is? Why can’t they allow biracial women and Asian North Americans to just enjoy this show? Why can’t they understand that some things aren’t made for them, but that they’re still allowed to like it?

White folks (including queer ones) need to stop projecting their modern western ideologies on non-White people — especially those who are from other countries, cultures and time periods. Are there queer elements in Blue Eye Samurai? Absolutely. Is it okay for various queer people to see parts of themselves in Mizu? Absolutely! But that doesn’t change the fact that this show is not a queer story. The main themes in Blue Eye Samurai are about racism and sexism in 1600s, Edo Japan. It’s about a biracial Japanese woman who has to isolate themselves from society due to racism and who has to disguise themselves as a man in order to survive. It’s already an incredible show that deserves more seasons.

I completely understand that Mizu’s character resonates with a lot of different people and I think there’s no wrong way to interpret fictional media. If some people want to headcanon Mizu as nonbinary or even as transgender, as bisexual or asexual, etc … it’s all okay imo. However, it’s also okay for people to view Mizu as a cis-gender woman who is not traditionally feminine and who has mixed feelings about sex due to their belief that they were conceived through sexual violence. All of these (and other) interpretations are completely valid imo. Mizu is a very compelling character who’s story deserves to be told, regardless of what their gender identity or sexual orientation is.