Joshua Luna Profile picture
Filipino American. Comic book creator. Artist & writer: ULTRA, GIRLS, THE SWORD, & WHISPERS (@ImageComics). Don't repost/edit my art. https://t.co/65sgGuKJQZ
Feb 28, 2023 18 tweets 6 min read
The US and its propaganda arm, Hollywood, have always been anti-Asian. Although opportunities are opening up for Asian actors, the underlying messaging—that divides & hurts Asians—hasn't changed. 1/

(Don't repost my art. RTs appreciated. Support my work patreon.com/joshualuna) Image Not too long ago, AsAms seemed united in outrage against racism & white-washed casting such as Scarlett Johansson in GITS, Tilda Swinton in Dr. Strange, or Netflix’s Deathnote. Yet as more projects with AAPI leads & casts were produced, this so-called unity proved to be a lie. 2/
Jan 30, 2023 20 tweets 6 min read
In 2022, Corinne Tan was announced as the American Girl Doll of the Year & heavily promoted as a way of raising awareness about anti-Asian racism during COVID. But what message did her story send? 1/
(Don't repost my art. RTs appreciated. Support my work👉patreon.com/joshualuna) Image When Corinne Tan debuted, AsAms were offended by the synopsis and how it centered a white man in what's supposed to be a COVID racism story. Once I heard the book had been fast tracked for 2 live-action specials on HBO Max and Cartoon Network, I knew more harm was coming. 2/
Jul 4, 2022 11 tweets 3 min read
Thread: Today marks the anniversary of the Mixed Marriage Policy of Japanese internment camps. The MMP—which granted limited exemptions to leave the camps—reveals the blueprint of white men's violent anti-Asian racism and their creation of a gendered hierarchy to divide AsAms. 1/ When I posted about the Mixed Marriage Policy, there was little info about it online. It seems academics knew about MMP for a long time yet never introduced it to the mainstream. Given how important these documents are to understanding anti-Asian racism, that needs to change. 2/
Jun 20, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
As a follow-up to the Vanity Fair article, I'd like those who thought my critique was "cruel" or "harsh" to take another look at the author's reaction and how quickly she showed her true colors. Just because you missed the signs doesn't mean they weren't there. 1/ It's telling that describing an article as vying for a token position is seen as cruel, but labeling a dissenting Asian man as an incel, MRA, or MRAsian is not. This bigotry is pervasive. Racist hatred of Asian men has been normalized by AsAm media and leadership for years. 2/
Jun 17, 2022 7 tweets 3 min read
Thread: This article protects white men from accountability for being racist to Asian women. The first films the writer mentions (Bridget Jones's Diary & Senior Year)—along with several others—are primarily written by white men. This inaccuracy is harmful & may be intentional. 1/ Image Calling out racist white women is important and necessary. It is precisely because supposedly liberal white women are perceived as progressives that they get invited into marginalized spaces and then are able to cause more damage from the inside. 2/
Jun 5, 2022 14 tweets 6 min read
Thread: There's a PR push to celebrate the new romance between Chelsea Handler and Fil-Am comedian Jo Koy. But Handler has a history of being racist and using her dating life with men of color as a shield from facing repercussions—and Koy seems happy to let her do it again. 1/ ImageImage Handler used this tactic in the Black community. Her response to backlash was to create content that talks around her racism without truly addressing it—& still profit from it. Ironically her "acknowledgement" of anti-Black racism is how I got exposed to her anti-Asian racism. 2/ Image
Apr 27, 2022 20 tweets 8 min read
Thread: Western media downplays anti-Asian racism and manipulates narratives about it in order to reinforce the Model Minority Myth, the Asian gender divide, and geopolitical tensions in Asia. 1/

(Don't repost my art. RTs appreciated. Support my work👉patreon.com/joshualuna) Image Even in so-called progressive outlets, U.S. media invokes Orientalism & even gendered depictions of Asian countries to create a contrast: Evil Misogynist Asia vs. Benevolent White Male West. The goal is to dehumanize Asians, deify whiteness & justify warmongering against Asia. 2/
Oct 11, 2021 18 tweets 7 min read
Thread: As the discovery of court docs from Bad Art Friend reveal, Celeste Ng leveraged her professional power & networks to undermine Dawn Dorland while also encouraging Sonya Larson to profit off Dorland's content. I suspect Celeste Ng has been doing something similar to me. 1/ Unlike Robert Kolker's NYT piece—which I think did a disservice to the truth by not being chronological—I'm going to do a mostly chronological approach here. So Celeste Ng's name won't show up until a few tweets in. First, I'll need to explain an Asian American issue. 2/
Oct 7, 2021 10 tweets 3 min read
Thread: As an AsAm creator, I want to talk about how framing the Bad Art Friend story as a white woman vs. AsAm woman fails to account for the ways power & privilege intersect here, & that the people using this framing are harming the AsAm community & don't care that they are. 1/ Sonya Larson got caught plagiarizing. That's a fact. It doesn't matter what she or anyone else thinks about Dawn Dorland—Larson crossed a professional ethical line, & admitted it herself. But the violation of professional ethics likely goes deeper than what's caught on paper. 2/
Sep 25, 2021 16 tweets 4 min read
After 3 years of getting harassed & blacklisted by bigoted Asians, I've come to understand the motivations of why they treat me this way. It's not because they hate my content—it's because they want to steal it. I want to break down their strategy & how they get away with it. 1/ Many Asians who harass me are aspiring artists & writers (it's often written in their bio) with smaller platforms. These Asians—like Roslyn Talusan three years ago—act as foot soldiers, so established Asians in power like Jenn Fang can deny involvement in harassment & slander. 2/
Sep 24, 2021 9 tweets 3 min read
I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts from a Black perspective. I think it's important for AsAms to acknowledge how the Asian gender divide isn't just an intra-community issue that only affects us, but also affects the Black community & other groups of color. Thread: 1/ It's important to hold Asian men & other MOC accountable for patriarchal misogyny, but not via rhetoric that invites racist white men to weaponize that accountability & justify their violence against MOC. Same thing with critiquing racist women—it should be done w/o misogyny. 2/
Sep 17, 2021 7 tweets 3 min read
Thread: In 2018, I made a comic addressing racism & misogyny in AsAm spaces & asked AsAm men & women to not participate in toxic, bigoted behavior towards each other. Since then, Jenn Fang (Reappropriate) has enabled harassment towards me & helped slander me as an "MRAsian." 1/ ImageImage I don't allow reposts of my comics in part because it's a frequent strategy of Nazis to warp the messaging that implicates them & instead slander me. So to see fellow AsAms do it is disgusting. Yet that's what Jenn Fang & her harasser friends did to my comic Reconciliasian. 2/
Aug 18, 2021 5 tweets 2 min read
For AsAms who feel inclined to defend Roslyn Talusan from white people, she was a primary participant in inciting a harassment campaign against me for making AsAm comics. She helped sabotage my Mulan essay, only to later publish her own on the same topic (and get paid for it). 1/ So not only did she help spread slander against me in order to permanently destroy my career and make sure no one in marginalized spaces would platform me, but she financially benefited from the harm she caused. The irony is she said a Filipino shouldn't write about Mulan. 2/
May 31, 2021 24 tweets 6 min read
#APAHM Thread: #StopAsianHate is meaningless until we acknowledge white men as the architects of anti-Asian racism, & the blueprints they use to divide the Asian community & sabotage progress. 1/

(Don't repost my art. RTs appreciated. Support my work👉patreon.com/joshualuna) Understanding anti-Asian racism means connecting its history in the US with its history in Asia, instead of treating them separately. US imperialism, war, & colonization abroad directly informs the racism AsAms experience because the goal is the same: divide, conquer, & kill. 2/
Apr 5, 2021 11 tweets 3 min read
Thread: When you think of Mormons, you probably think of whiteness—and you'd be correct, since 93% are white. What you don't think of is Filipinx.

And yet, for two years, I was a Mormon. 1/

(Don't repost my art. Retweets are appreciated. Support my work patreon.com/joshualuna) Before this, I grew up in a loosely Catholic upbringing and rarely went to church. But after my dad left the U.S. Navy and our family, we moved back to the U.S. and lived with cousins who were Mormons. There, we were regularly visited by missionaries, and eventually converted. 2/
Feb 17, 2021 14 tweets 5 min read
Thread: For Fil-Ams & other people of color, the "American Dream" often means toiling away just to obtain a small piece of the spoils that were violently ripped away from your community. 1/

(Don't repost my art. Retweets are appreciated. Support my work👉patreon.com/joshualuna) Second-gen AsAms like me grow up oblivious about our own histories because the US education system purposely withholds info about it, & our parents try to outrun their trauma by never sharing their experiences, instead pushing their children toward an assimilation sleepwalk. 2/
Oct 8, 2020 12 tweets 4 min read
Thread: The reason America hates wearing a mask is because it prefers showing its true face. 1/

(Don't repost my art. Retweets are appreciated. Support my work👉patreon.com/joshualuna) For some, this spike in anti-Asian racism comes as a surprise or seems like it's the first time it's happening. But that's because the Model Minority Myth—created by white people—tricked both white people and POC into thinking Asianness is a privilege. 2/
Jun 25, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read
Is the message we want to send to Asian & Black communities: "It's okay to partner with a violent white racist & anyone who criticizes that is a bad person"? Everyone involved in this article should feel ashamed for absolving Kellie Chauvin & minimizing George Floyd's death. 1/ If you're POC & elect to partner with a white person, regardless of gender, you are burdened with the fact that your partner is racist by default & you will have to push them out of it—otherwise they will suck you into their racism & use you to shield them from accountability. 2/
Jun 18, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read
While we're on the subject of Megan Amram's anti-Asian tweets & how those views shaped her writing of Fil-Am characters in The Good Place, let's talk about anti-Asian racism in the 2012 film Hit & Run starring Kristen Bell & written by her husband Dax Shepard. 1/
CW: Rape, racism It says a lot that the dialogue about the Filipino rapist & this scene—where Bradley Cooper nearly lynches a Black man with a leash & feeds him dog food—are presented as comedy. Although the story & its characters are fictional, these portrayals tell us how Shepard views MOC. 2/
May 27, 2020 11 tweets 4 min read
I've been quarantine-binging vampire shows & wondered why Asian guys are rarely vampires. Then I realized that since modern vampires are “heroes” meant to uphold whiteness, we don't fit that role. 1/
(Don't repost my art. RTs appreciated. Support my work👉patreon.com/joshualuna) Vampires weren't always depicted positively. The origins of vampire lore are steeped in a sort of Orientalism, where Eastern Europe was othered as barbaric & dangerous to Western Christian values. The earlier depictions were more visibly monstrous & less human, like Nosferatu. 2/
Mar 17, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read
So in trying to prove they didn't ghost me after I pitched my Mulan essay, @kimmythepooh & @JessicaProis are now claiming Kimmy wasn't actually an editor at HP AV—even though that's how she introduced herself to me in 2017—& ignoring everything else I said. Gaslighting 101. 1/ Remember how @NBCAsianAmerica published the "Decade in Asian America" article that didn't include Fil-Ams/SEA & NBC didn't apologize or even acknowledge the erasure? Kimmy & Jessica are on that NBC team. There's a pattern of treating Fil-Ams as lesser. 2/