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Amelia Cook Profile picture
Amelia Cook
@ActuallyAmelia
Founder & CEO @AnimeFeminist | Current obsession: Avatar The Last Airbender | she/her | 特別じゃなくてもOK
Feb 23, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The harassment towards @CDCubed went so far I heard about it on my personal Twitter @AmeliaCook - which I nabbed in 2010 and deliberately didn't attach to my anime work because I knew I might have to burn that account.

That inherent toxicity is why I don't spend much time here. I'll still use this account for anime fandom! No better audience for my thoughts on the SK8 boyfriends (love them!!) or Re:ZERO theorising than right here ❤

But I've watched a ton of anime recently and thinking about tweeting about it stresses me out. So it may not be often.
Dec 19, 2020 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
One of the most frustrating things about #ADHD is that "treatment" = a unique mix of drugs/therapy/organisation systems/self-regulation tactics.

So "getting treatment" is a process:
1. identify problem
2. throw everything at it
3. see what sticks
4. spot gaps
5. repeat

🧵⬇️ And you need to repeat that process WITHIN each sub-category of potential solutions for the problem you've identified.

("Problem you've identified" is a calm euphemism for "trait that most recently caused you to crash and burn and feel hopeless about your future" by the way)

⬇️
Nov 16, 2020 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Spent the weekend finally watching the Daniel Craig Bonds. Got as far as Skyfall, and I desperately want to read a review that discusses what I'm thinking about but I can't find one.

So I'll share and maybe one of you can point such a review out to me.

SKYFALL SPOILERS BELOW SKYFALL SPOILERS:

Pro-establishment themes + tired old tropes (a molesty queer/queer-coded villain, great!) was already making me uncomfortable.

Then replacing Judi Dench with Ralph Fiennes as M brought that "the old ways are best" message far, far too close to home.
Nov 9, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Identity policing of mixed race people always gives me complicated feelings as someone who is mixed race but totally divorced from half their ethnic heritage (thanks colonialism!)

But the biggest feeling is envy. I wish I'd grown up with both cultures, not just the colonisers'. I have one (1) Desi friend who grew up in the US and spent every summer in Delhi. She's an incredible writer, so her posts about India and its culture were an envy-inducing tonic for my internalised racism.

Me? I wore a lehenga for the first time this year and felt like a fraud.
Oct 28, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Spending an unreasonable amount of time this week analysing what exactly makes the Boys Over Flowers love triangle work better in some versions than others, thank you for reserving tickets to my TED talk Still enjoying the Boys Over Flowers K-drama. Now I want to see a pan-Asian adaptation with Lee Min-ho opposite Inoue Mao.

I'll add to that dream cast list as I watch more adaptations. I actually wrote my undergrad dissertation on a J-drama, it's fun to see other East Asian TV!
Oct 22, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
This K-drama adaptation of Boys Over Flowers so far nails Domyoji.

MatsuJun played Domyoji more as a spoilt brat, hard to take seriously as a threat. Korean Domyoji is an entitled, privileged young man with power and influence. This is good, Domyoji's supposed to be dangerous! All these adaptations fail at Tsukushi physically, since they have no interest in allowing women to look truly plain on their screens.

But Korean Tsukushi hams it up enough that you could question why Domyoji would be attracted to her. That's probably as much as we can hope for!
Oct 22, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Watching my first Korean drama - the adaptation of Boys Over Flowers.

And WOW it has really reinforced for me that TV subs should NOT use honorifics. I shouldn't need to google anything to understand subtitles. Find a more natural way to express those relationships in English. I'm actually in favour of using honorifics in comics. It's already a niche outside the mainstream and you can include a glossary.

But TV and film? I think they should be immersive. Most who know the language can hear the honorifics, anyone who doesn't won't be jarred.
Oct 20, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Now my ADHD is more managed, I want to get used to reading books again. Specifically, I want to be better educated on oppression in its many forms, now and through history, around the world.

Starting today: Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble. Photo of the cover of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search E The harmful bias of supposedly neutral technologies and data is a topic I already know a bit about just from following both Black Twitter and tech Twitter.

With Noble's book, I hope to gain a thorough understanding of the infrastructure that defends and protects that bias.
Oct 19, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Sai is very graciously now encouraging people to RT this since it's out there, but don't out things like this by publishing evidence without consent, jfc

It's important to expose broken stairs... but there are ways to do so without re-traumatising those already caught in it. My recommendation to expose broken stairs in the anime community is to contact trained journalists like @ANN_Lynzee and @laureninspace whose education required a strong foundation in ethics, plus I know their personal ethics are to prioritise supporting and protecting survivors.
Oct 8, 2020 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
My first thought on "Should translations be done by translators of the same gender as the author?" was of the many threads by LGBTQ+ people on how the experience of being closeted informed their creation and interpretation of media. They see significance I don't always catch. 🧵 One example is the "Utena turns into a car" scene from Adolescence of Utena. I recall mainstream discussion of that scene being dominated by "Wow, Japanese animators can do whatever quirky thing they want!" for ages. The queer reading seems obvious now, thanks to queer viewers.
Oct 7, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The A-I-U-E-O song from Japanese wartime propaganda and first anime feature ever made, "Momotaro: Sacred Sailors" (1945). It's a uniquely disturbing and fascinating film that inspired a generation of animators (most obviously Osamu Tezuka, who referenced it in Jungle Emperor). It's fascinating to see what Japanese animation looked like when animators were trying to make their style distinctly and identifiably Japanese.

It's disturbing to see these children and their cute singing animal companions go from learning hiragana to polishing guns.
Oct 6, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
For this list I wrote on:

1. Panda and the Magic Serpent
2. Astro Boy
3. Space Battleship Yamato
4. Heidi, Girl of the Alps
5. Super Dimension Fortress Macross
6. Pokemon
7. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
8. Devilman Crybaby

I think I was the only one to nominate 6 of these. The editors made a concerted effort to bring in a diverse group of nominators, both generalists and specialists who could fill in gaps as I did here. That's why the first shortlist was so comprehensive, and why this final list is getting such positive feedback from most.
Sep 18, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Funny story: when AniFem launched and GG swarmed, a prominent Gater DM'd me and offered to audit my online security so I wouldn't get doxxed more than I already had (messages to RL workplaces asking that I be fired). I was terrified and cautious, but they were true to their word. Their reasoning was something like "It looks like you're going to get hurt if this carries on. That would make The Movement look bad, so it's in my interests to make sure you stay physically safe."

Yeah. When I went to US cons the next year, I truly thought I might get killed.
Sep 18, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Best self care I ever found was booking into CBT and learning the skill of self-compassion. That cost me money, but you can find many of the same exercises that transformed my thinking in Google for free, no therapist required. My inner bootcamp bully has never been quieter. I use the word "skill" deliberately. We're programmed to believe we're not enough, and not doing enough to compensate for that. It takes support and effort to reprogram yourself.

But it can be done, even from a place where you truly believe you deserve no compassion at all.
Aug 5, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Recently I questioned if I'M white passing. Apparently not being othered for months did a number on me!

Seriously though. I struggled with this for WEEKS.

It took seeing old pictures of myself to shake that off. Not felt racial cognitive dissonance like that since I was a kid. For reference, here is me from April last year. I'm about this colour now (but haven't taken presentable selfies in forever because why would I)

But somehow I don't think white people who spray on this exact level of tan get called "exotic" or asked where they're "really from". Forward facing selfie of me in neutral makeup. I'm mixed rac
Jul 28, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I've been on ADHD medication for about a week now, gradually increasing my dose, and it's been an... unsatisfying experience. I've read what people (both ADHD and non-ADHD) have written about their experiences (both medical and recreational) of my medication.

I've also watched videos of doctors talking about what to realistically expect from these drugs.

I don't feel like I'm experiencing any of it.
Jul 22, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
I want to emphasise that anime is THE reason I went to uni for Japanese.

There's still this idea that people who learn Japanese because of anime aren't serious and won't do well.

It's a myth. All you need is passion enough to get you through the hard parts of language learning. My story: Dropped out of sixth form at 18. Worked at Blockbuster, fell in love with anime.

Looked up Japanese courses in UK universities - there were 6. Went back to school at 20 to get the A levels I needed. Made it to uni at 21.

My motivation: to understand anime without subs
Jul 21, 2020 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
Did a survey at uni of Japanese folks on how they felt about recent releases The Last Samurai, Lost in Translation, and Memoirs of a Geisha.

Most: "Happy to see our small island nation get attention! Tom Cruise is cool!"

Few: "Disgusted that Chinese actors play Japanese." This was my early 20s and social media didn't exist yet, so I was baffled. I didn't care that Zhang Ziyi was Chinese, I cared that she wasn't Japanese. I cared that Tom Cruise wasn't either. Why didn't they?

Because Japanese nationalism is inextricably linked to white supremacy.