I wasn’t sure what to title this rant

So there’s this actress from Finland named Seela Sella who died recently. A graphic has been going around depicting a bunch of animated characters she voiced in Finnish dubs of American films. Naturally, people don’t bother to read and make comments that it’s inaccurate because other actresses voiced these characters in English. And naturally, people need to explain to them what the post actually said.

There was this one woman I saw who was shockingly stubborn about this. She claimed to be from England after being accused of being American. She said she read the whole post and still insisted repeatedly that it’s wrong because she didn’t ORIGINALLY voice these characters. Nobody fucking said she originally voiced these characters, they said she voiced them in Finland. This woman kept insisting that the post was acting like the original voice actresses never voiced these characters. Absolutely nothing in the post denied that other people voiced these characters first!

Maybe she was just doubling down because she couldn’t handle being wrong. But this fucking attitude that appreciating people who voiced characters in a language other than English somehow takes something away from the English speaking actors is the same attitude that makes people think “black lives matter” means “no other lives matter” and “happy holidays” means “fuck christmas”. INCLUSION OF OTHERS DOESN’T EXCLUDE YOU!

This is the sort of person who might walk into a mall and see seven Christmas trees, three santas, and hear blaring Christmas music but see one fucking menorah and declare Christmas is being taken away! They just see all the Christmas shit as the norm and any deviation as “political”. They see English language films as the only important ones and foreign translations as not mattering.

Maybe she would have understood the point people were trying to make to her if they brought up an example of the reverse. Millions of English speaking children’s experiences with Pokémon were shaped by the cast of the English language dub. These actors are beloved by English speaking pokemon fans. That doesn’t take anything away from the original Japanese actors. Finnish people know this actress as the voice of many beloved characters that shaped their childhood experiences. That doesn’t take away from the original actors.

Now, to be fair, I can see an argument that these types of posts may be intentionally misleading. They know a lot of people aren’t going to bother to read and are going to think this actress voiced the characters in the versions of the films they’re familiar with. Maybe the makers of these graphics are trying to decieve. Or maybe they’re just showing appreciation for hard-working actors that aren’t American because not everything revolves around the Untied States