Tag: racism

Cool Runnings – the Korean Remix

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Korea Herald: South Korea posts third-best time in the Men’s 4×100 meter relay race at the Asian Games, but are ruled disqualified for no clear reason; upon official appeal is Korea correctly awarded the bronze medals

Man, when I came across this story, and I saw the photograph of the Korean relay team in question, I had to throw my head back and laugh heartily at the obviousness of this entire piss-poor optics scenario.  As much as western people love to extol how great certain Asian cultures are, the sad fact of the matter is that a whole lot of Asia is still racist as fuck, especially towards black people.

Perhaps not to the hostile cruelty that of white people and generations of enslavement and torture, but even to this day, there’s a tremendous amount of general ignorance and xenophobia when it comes to those of black skin tones being in Asian countries, regardless of how legally allowed or birthright they might have.

The fact that the organizers of the Asian Games had no clear explanation of why South Korea was disqualified from the 4×100 meter is very obvious and doesn’t need one, because most people with brains can probably figure out the whole story, just by looking at the photograph of the relay team Korea had fielded for the event.

So let’s just get it out of the way, and drop the facts:

Biwesa Daniel Gassama (far left) is born of parents from the Democratic Republic of Congo who came to South Korea as refugees.  He was born in Korea, but that didn’t make him automatically a Korean citizen, he acquired his citizenship when his mother became officially naturalized in 2018.  He went to elementary, middle and high school in Korea and intends on serving out his mandatory two-year stint in the military as all Korean citizens do.

Joel Jin Nwamadi (far right) is Korean by birthright as since he has a Korean mother; dad is Nigerian.  His story is less complicated as one of his parents is Korean, and despite his obvious bi-racial appearance, Asian Games officials only need to see a names like “Nwamadi” and “Biwesa” and it makes them blush.

Obviously, by the rules, Korea had done nothing illegal, or brought in any ringers or expedited expats like France does in the World Cup, but that didn’t stop Asian Games organizers from freaking out at seeing two dudes with dark skin, and just preemptively ringing the bell for a DQ.

Naturally, there’s nothing about this whole scenario that isn’t sad, bothersome and doesn’t cheapen Korea’s success, but at the same time it doesn’t really seem that surprising, given the general propensity of Asian cultures to act embarrassingly when it comes to their inherent xenophobia.  I’m not saying it was in the least bit right or defending their actions, but as an Asian person who is pretty familiar with lots of Asian cultures, I just can’t say that I found this to be at all that surprising.

But hey, at least Korea was actually successful with their appeal and getting the decision corrected, because it would be a real travesty if these sprinters all went home empty handed, in spite of the concrete evidence of their third-place finishing time.  Always proud to hear of Koreans achieving success in anything, especially athletics.

This is basically like a lite-Korean version of Cool Runnings, when the Jamaican bobsled team qualified for advancement into the medal round, but were mysteriously disqualified, with some ambiguous excuse of not having enough competitive experience.  And when John Candy’s character Irv Blitzer confronted the IOC and called them out on their racism, they were reinstated with no real explanation or apology.  This really wasn’t that different of a situation, but it was two black guys instead of four, and instead of bobsleds, they were still track sprinters. 

And in the age of where what’s old can become new again, this would make for a pretty interesting re-make of Cool Runnings.  However, the reality still remains that for whatever reason, Disney doesn’t seem to acknowledge the existence of Korea or its culture, based on how out of the way they remain at avoiding creating anything at all inspired by Korean culture, so there’s probably a fat chance that this happens.  Probably better suited for one of Korea’s film bigwigs like CJ Entertainment to pickup instead, and it would probably end up a better production in their hands anyway.

White people learning Asian languages to create content is omega-level white privilege

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I try to not be envious of too much in my life, but I’m also human, and sometimes we just can’t help those types of feelings when we come across them.  That being said, I often lament when I see talented musicians, artists, or even video gamers, and ponder if I could have become as talented as they are, had I not been such an unambitious shit and strayed away from them.

But if there’s one talent that I often feel what could possibly be construed as envy, it would be polyglots.  Obviously English is my native tongue, but I can speak enough Korean to survive easily in Korea, despite my reading being about as good as a grade schooler, with my writing being even weaker.  I know enough Japanese to probably not be completely dominated in Japan, and I’m almost to a two-year streak in Duolingo, practicing Español at least 30 minutes every single day.

However, I’m nowhere near as capable of those people who would be considered actual polyglots, where they can switch languages as easy as a manual transmission driver changing gears, and I’m usually awestruck at how these linguistic masters can hang with just about anyone when they need to.

Lately, I don’t know why The Algorithm is showing me these things, but occasionally I’ve seen videos of white guys who film videos of themselves surprising Chinese people in public places, usually restaurants, when they pretend to be meek shy tourists at their establishments, and after letting a Chinese server struggle to communicate with them in English, they bust out flawless Mandarin or Cantonese, much to their surprise as well as any bystanders in the background.

It was interesting the first time I saw one of these, and dare I say entertaining.  But when it becomes apparent that this is pretty much the only trick that these content creators have, regardless of how many other languages they speak, it becomes obnoxious to me, and I would go as far as to say that it’s also exploitative of, usually Chinese people, because I have yet to see any of these clowns try this schtick with Koreans, Japanese, or any other Asian culture other than Chinese.  I’m not saying they haven’t, and videos don’t exist, but god help me if I ever came across one, especially if it were with Koreans.  It’s bad enough that these polyglots probably speak better Korean than I do, but I’d be incensed to see them pull their schtick on my people.

As the subject of this post says, white guys picking up Asian languages, and then using their talents to farm content on the internet is a level of white privilege that I would say is definitely omega-level.  Because frankly not many other demographics in the world could really get away with this like white guys can, and frankly I’m not entirely sure that any demographic is as attention-starved as white content creators are to even come up with this kind of gimmick.

Just like a black American couldn’t go into Africa and flex some Swahili and expect to surprise some locals, I can’t go into Korea, identify myself as America, and even remotely come close to impress any locals.  Mexicans weren’t at all impressed with my Español on my last time in Mexico, and whenever I’ve been into France, Italy, or Germany, I feel like I’m met more with disdain that I don’t speak their languages.  I highly doubt such would be that different even if I did speak their languages.  It’s like I, or any other Asian person is expected to have learned their languages, based on the educational stereotypes of us.

The thing with all these white polyglots is that they all feel at home and that their bread and butter content is that of tricking and surprising Chinese people.  I don’t seek, but The Algorithm doesn’t bother to feed me any examples of them doing this to any other demographics, and it’s always Chinese people that they film their shitty content with.

And I’m obviously not Chinese, but I am a fellow Asian, and I do take some objection to their exploitation of my Asian brethren in order for them to film content.  What I really want to see is for all these Chinese restauranteurs to start adopting the mindset that everyone who walks into their establishments should be expected to know some Mandarin or Cantonese, and if they do, great, but if they don’t, start unloading the exasperation and passive aggression of disgust, and basically make it so that these white clowns don’t have any ammo to make any further shitty videos.  No-sell the shit out of their reveals and respond with dismissive remarks with rebuttals like “oh good, you do speak Chinese” or better yet, respond in English, like natives tend to do whenever tourists bungle their way them in their native tongues.

WTF is WWE doing #312

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Turnabout is fair play, and I can be just as critical about the WWE as I can about AEW or anyone else when I think they’re doing something stupid and asinine questionable.

And the topic in question is the decision the E made to not air the Worlds Collide show that took place and was taped on September 26, and held it off until September 30.  The originally described rationale was that the E did not want to explicitly go head-to-head against AEW’s All Out show, which happened on the same night, also in the city of Chicago, and that they would save the airing of the show until the following Wednesday, so they could plop it down right on top of a similar time slot to AEW’s weekly Dynamite programming.

In doing so, it’s kind of like they symbolically threw in the towel at remotely even trying to compete with AEW on the 26th, and thought that they could use the content to muck with the ratings game on the 30th, but the issue I had was the fact that the internet has no capability of shutting the fuck up, and that it would be inevitable to make it from the 26th to the 30th, without some, if not all of the results of Worlds Collide being spoiled by then.

It also didn’t help that in the gap between taping and airing, was a live RAW episode, and whether they took it into consideration or not, they basically spoiled another Worlds Collide match when Roxanne Perez was featured on RAW, not carrying the AAA Reina de Reina’s Championship blet, which spoiled the fact that she did not defeat La Catalina, and anyone with a brain paying attention would know that when it airs on the 30th.

This, was extra salty for me, as I’ve grown quite high on Roxanne Perez and her match at Worlds Collide was one that I was really looking forward to watching.

One thing that nobody could have ever anticipated either, was the unfortunate and untimely sudden passing of Benjamin Satterley AKA Pac AKA Neville on the 27th, because everyone knew that the Dynamite on the 30th was going to immediately pivot into being a tribute show to Pac, and the optics are poor on the WWE to try and run counterprogramming to a tribute show, for a guy that was apparently very well liked, respected and cared for by performers all across the industry, regardless of who they were working for.

Naturally, the WWE didn’t budge, and they still plopped Worlds Collide on the 30th.  Despite how much I wanted to see it, preferably live, I didn’t watch it yet, because like many wrestling fans, I was upset by the passing of Benjamin Satterley, and I had tuned into AEW; a little weird to see the decisions to bring Bryan Danielson and Wardlow back on this specific night, but the Will Ospreay and Ricochet match was amazing, and it was a pretty good night of just pure wrestling and working, in the name of honoring the life of Pac.

But overall, poor form on the WWE and their gradually deteriorating soulless operations.  The choice to not run Worlds Collide live to me, seemed cowardly in not wanting to run in direct opposition to AEW, as well as disrespectful mostly to the AAA talents that were on the card, because they don’t get nearly the same exposure as all of the main roster and NXT talents do, and needlessly manipulating the airing of a show where they were going to get some larger billing, seems disrespectful and inconsiderate to their travel and effort.

I will watch the show when I get a chance, because I’m high on the AAA product, and anything they’re involved in is usually very fun and good quality, but massive egg on the E for handling this the way it was done.  Tf are you bean counting cocksuckers thinking?

But how many colleges will he get accepted into??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fox5Atlanta: 14-year old Fulton County teen scores perfect 1600 on the SAT as a freshman in high school

Just when you think #TRYHARDSZN is over, we have #TRYHARDs still #TRYHARDing over in Fulton County to prove otherwise.  Because if you’re not #TRYHARDing all year round, would you even be a #TRYHARD at all?

Anyway, this is going to be an interesting subject come next #SZN, that is if his fate isn’t already sealed by now, because we have this 14-year old little Doogie prodigy already putting up credentials to dwarf and shame all #TRYHARDs come the 2027 #SZN, what with his perfect 1600 SAT score, and already farming up college-level courses at Harvard and Rice.  I don’t know the approximate number of high school credits required for graduation, but he’s already completed 14.5 while still just a freshman at a fancy applicant-only innovation academy.

The difference is that this #TRYHARD goes to school and presumably lives in the bougie part of town, and not on the hood-ass south end anywhere remotely close to Westlake High, the undisputed champion of farming #TRYHARDs to apply to 117+ schools por gratis and to see how many times they can get their name in the news for having students getting into 89+ of them.

It’ll be an interesting scenario to see how an Indian kid from the nice part of town with at least one ace credential will stack up against underprivileged teens from the hood who leverage quantity over quality, to see which lands in the better collegiate scenario.  It’ll probably be a tale of extremes duking it out, where on one side we have a whiz-kid prodigy who will not only have socio-economic factors working against him, but the obvious (South) Asian Curve to overcome, versus teenagers from the hood who have generations of systemic racism, an unspoken affirmative action and reparative intentions by colleges across the nation on their side.

It may be worth passively following to see where this Doogie ends up versus the top #TRYHARDs of the 2027 #SZN, or whenever he decides to start applying to colleges, because I think it’s going to be interesting on many different accounts.  Primarily because I’d wager that Doogie isn’t going to have his college application fees waived across the board, and it’ll be interesting to see where he ends up deciding to go, versus the top #TRYHARDs of his graduating class.

This was never a matter of if, but when

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYP: Stanford busted for using AI-altered student photograph for advertising, most notably swapping out Hispanic male for black female

If I’ve never put it in writing before, I’m a firm opponent of AI.  I think it serves a purpose for doing monotonous tasks that can save people a lot of time and efficiency, but obviously this was never the objective of the companies and individuals who are hellbent on advancing it, and it’s astounding how many people who work on AI seem blind to the notion that they are expediting the extinction of jobs and careers for people all across the world.

Will we see AI become sentient and ultimately take over the world, enslaving or terminating the human race, a la The Matrix or Terminator?  Probably not in our lifetime, but as all those stories have predicted, it really does seem inevitable that machines will eventually see human behavior as truly redundant and expendable, seeing as how machines are devoid of emotion and well, humanity.

For the time being, AI is primarily being used (publicly) to “inadvertently” kill my line of work, in the creative field, as hundreds of thousands of companies, businesses and individuals are churning out gojiggabytes of AI-generated “artwork” from shitty restaurant menus, billboards and signage, as well as a trillion memes and bad video edits.

Genuinely, I feel that my line of work does have an expiration date, and I have experienced multiple instances at my own job, where colleagues and collaborators have leveraged AI to haphazardly try and create rogue content, and having to be gently reminded that it’s not okay… as long as products shown aren’t necessarily from competitors.  And the faster that AI advances and lazier the uneducated and unethical become, the sooner people like me will be out of a job, forcing me to probably go into the trades and improve my life exponentially.

But anyway, this was a highly dramatic cold open to a post where I wanted to write about Stanford University getting busted using AI to create graphics, namely altering a photograph, where a poor Hispanic kid was swapped out for a black girl, presumably so that Stanford could look more diverse in advertising.

There’s a lot of different angles to approach this one, but most of it circulates around the notion that Stanford, being in northern California, simply does not have any diversity, being in Silicon Valley, so they’ve gotten to the point where they’re leveraging AI to make it look like there is, instead of, actually allowing some black students attend their hallowed institution.

But on the other hand, I’m a firm believer of merit, and that the best students should attend schools, regardless of race or gender or any other categorization.  Sure, Stanford is probably racist as fuck I mean come on, just look at them, and have as flagrant of a black people scale as big as they probably have an Asian scale, so it’s hilarious to me that instead of going out and actually recruiting some actual living black students to attend their school, they’re just using AI to pretend like they have some.

Frankly, as the subject of this post implies, this was never an if it would happen situation, it was always a when would it happen, and we’d all be blind and deaf if we believed that this was the first time that this had occurred, but the fact that an institution as reputable as Stanford was the one busted doing it is what makes it news right now.

Honestly, my reaction was similar to the victim of the shitty AI swap, at first glance, it is funny, but when you sit down and really give it some thought, it really is just sad and pitiful and actually malicious, that they’re not only deleting the actual humanity from a photograph, but replacing it with something artificial, false and completely dishonest.  Let’s not even get into the cosmetic modifications to the people that were allowed to stay in the photo.

When the day is over, Stanford, for all their academic praise and reputation globally, is no different than any other shitheads on the planet who are completely okay with the global takeover of AI.  It just sucks for all the Billy Ramirezes of the world who draw the short straw in photos that need to be modified to force in some artificial diversity by dishonest companies who are too chickenshit to accept actual diversity into their holy confines.

Non-Koreans need not apply

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I use my brog to vent out my general frustrations about randos on the internet because I don’t want to comment on social media and possibly risk engaging in interactions I don’t want to get sucked into.

But over the last year or so, there’s a content creator with whom I engage with regularly enough to where theFacebook keeps offering me up a top fan badge which I promptly delete the suggestion because I don’t care nor is it at all important for others to see me as someone who spends more time than is necessary engaging with someone that I don’t know at the end of the day.

I like to keep my interactions generally positive, as this person is also Korean, also a dad, and although I could be jealous of his success at climbing the rope of content creation and the lifestyle it has created for him, I don’t want to be the jealous fatty of Korean person who envies and generally becomes a hater, because I really am happy to see a Korean guy finding success, making wholesome content in such a droll world where everything is an uphill battle.

Mostly I interact with fairly innocuous remarks, primarily positive, but also when he queries other parents, I sometimes share opinions, as another Korean father in America.  But I occasionally sprinkle my commentary with some 한글 every now and then, kind of as a way of directly speaking to him and/or other Korean supporters of his, because sometimes there are just some things in the world that aren’t really relatable to anyone other than to us Korean people.

However, being public forum, this means that the rest of the non-Korean pleebs of the world can see what I’m saying, and worst of all, have the capability to comment and respond when they feel necessary, which is unfortunately to say way more often than I’d like it to be.  Mostly because the overwhelming majority of people in the world are incapable of initiating, which includes on the internet where nobody has the balls to make their own comments but have zero qualms with rebutting and contradicting when they feel the urge (that nobody asked for) to say something.

A lot of the time, my remarks get the “this doesn’t apply to just Koreans” or “I’m also X Asian/minority class and this tracks for us” counters, which in some cases might not be completely invalid.  But my favorites are the responses I get from what are obviously white people who feel that they have absolutely anything to add in any sort of matter that pertains to me pointing out -isms of Koreans and other Asian tropes.

Like the impetus of this post stems from this content creator low-key flexing his pockets by showing an itemized e-receipt of some ingredients purchased for a future video.  But instead of being a hater and acknowledging and calling out the humblebrag, I remarked about imagining his or the hypothetical Korean parent seeing this receipt and it’s exorbitant cost, and how they’d probably imagine it would be cheaper to travel to [foreign location] to [acquire] the ingredient, and ignore the whole time and labor cost, in the name of saving money, because the trope is that Koreans are eternally cost-conscious and the only things that matter are those bottom lines.

I get some Chad Borowski responding to me that time and labor is free to one’s self, and that they can get memories and experience out of the hypothetical journey to [foreign location].  Some hippie-dippy white person bullshit, injecting their belief system to a culture that couldn’t give a shit less about such things versus the objective of not paying exorbitant costs for anything.  And then it’s topped off with an umbrella sermon about how Chad wished more people were capable of doing things for themselves and enjoy the process.

 

Normally I don’t re-engage, but this one made me roll my eyes so hard, by the time my eyeballs returned to their sockets, I had already hit send on a response, facetiously saying his remark was cute but [due to his obvious lack of knowledge of Korean parents on account of not being fucking Korean] that the only experience and memories a Korean parent wants to get out of such a hypothetical journey is the ability to humblebrag to their group chat about how much money they saved, and have an unsmiling selfie at the location to prove it.  Because that’s entirely what hypothetical Korean parents of this specified generation are entirely all about, and the exact course of action that would take place.

But my bad for re-engagement, because later in the day, Chad rebuts again because white people are about as other classes when it comes the need to get the last word in, and they accused me of being miserable with a sour world view, which isn’t entirely incorrect, but in the context of this conversation, is completely putting words in my mouth.

I didn’t bother responding again because I had already broken one of my general rules of social media of commenting on comments, and I feel no need to get the last word, but the point of all this is that Chad here, or any other white person need not bother getting involved in this observation that has nothing to do with them.

Unfortunately, I know that tons of white guys out there in the world are incapable of receiving such a memo, so this won’t be the last time Ben Affleck or Jillian Michaels is going to interfere with my knowing commentary of Koreans to another Korean.  But hopefully, it won’t pique my nerves to the point where I feel the need to burn a brog post about it again.

Justice for Johnny Tran

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Whenever there’s any news story about any carjackings or truck heists on social media, often times I always like to drop a photo comment of Johnny Tran accusing Dom Toretto of narc-ing on him from The Fast and the Furious.  Context notwithstanding, it’s always funny (to me) that it’s just a picture of jacked Rick Yune pointing at jacked Vin Diesel captioned with IT WAS YOU.

Anyway, I was sitting in a boring-ass work meeting when I discreetly did this again while dicking around on my phone, but my mind began to wander about Johnny Tran in general.  And the more I thought about his character, in the grand spectrum of the entire Fast Universe, it occurred to me that not only did the series leave a gargantuan boatload of money on the table for not following up with Johnny Tran and his apparent Triad-like syndicate lurking in the shadows behind him, when the day was over Johnny Tran was one of the least-criminal offenders in the series and that he basically died (spoiler alert) for nothing, and there was absolutely no retribution for his murder.

I mean throughout the rest of the series, wars have been started over lesser beefs and conflicts, but somehow in the Fast Universe the story of Johnny Tran is immediately swept under the rug and upon realizing this, I cannot stand for it.

Yes, Johnny Tran wasn’t a squeaky clean boy scout by any means necessary; he liked to roll around with his cousin Lance and his posse in his Honda 2000 or on superbikes, and often seemed to be packing automatic weapons, trying to intimidate opps, but come on, the man was living in Southern California GTA turf war zones, man sometimes has to do what he has to in order to protect himself.

But as the backstory goes, his and Dom’s beef started over “a business deal gone bad” not to mention the fact that Dom had slept with his sister – AKA disrespecting his Family.  Sure, he shot up Brian’s Eclipse and blew it up, but that’s because Dom had neglectfully allowed him and Brian to wander into Tran’s hood, and rules are rules and consequences for breaking them are justifiable.

And then Brian sic’d the feds on Tran and his crew, because the irony was that he was in fact, clouded by Mia and Dom and didn’t want to believe that they were the Civic crew hijacking trucks, and saw them as the best patsies to take the fall.  At this point, Tran had done other than blowing up the Eclipse and some intense coercion to Ted at Harry’s for some SR20 motors a week before Race Wars that should fetch a pretty penny. 

The DVD players that Brian saw in his garage were legit, and the reality was that the only dirt on Tran and his crew were petty weapons charges and some speeding tickets, yet the response to Brian’s bullshit intel were humiliating raids on Little Saigon to bust Lance while he’s just trying to enjoy some pho with his homies, and the feds breaking and entering Johnny Tran’s home to falsely arrest him, culminating with the ultimate indignity for any self-respecting Asian child, getting the taste slapped out of him by their own father.

I mean, watch the clip; Asian dads rarely show urgency or rush any form of punishing, knowing that the anticipation and the wait for punishment is almost as bad as the physical act.  But Johnny Tran’s dad fucking ran to the front door in order to get in that denigrating slap, all while Johnny Tran is being fucking held by the cops. 

I don’t care what anyone else says, Johnny Tran getting shot and murdered is the second worst thing to happen to him, behind getting slapped by his own dad.  The fact that it was completely unwarranted and under false pretenses is irrelevant; had Johnny Tran actually lived, this is irreversible lifetime trauma that wouldn’t ever have gone away, and in fact it’s probably for the best that he died, because this moment right here is the impetus for Johnny Tran to become the villain the franchise wanted to him to become, and he would have overpowered every fucking sheik, corrupt Brazilian, Charlize Theron, Jason Momoa and God’s Eye with the fury of all of communist China* behind him.

*yes I know the character was Vietnamese, but the actor is Korean, driving a Japanese car, may as well muck up the entire Asian pool at this point, not like it hasn’t already been done to this point

Make no mistake, none of this happens if Brian doesn’t narc on Johnny Tran, because he’s too clouded by Mia’s hoo-hah, and it’s actually incredible that retribution doesn’t come more immediately, and that JT doesn’t boil over until everyone’s at Race Wars.

Of course, speaking of Race Wars, this is really the catalyst for the culmination of Johnny Tran’s demise; after Johnny Tran easily defeats Jesse and his shitty Jetta, Jesse should have manned up, handed over the pink slip and everything is finished.  Instead, Jesse reneges on a gentleman’s agreement, flees the desert, forcing Johnny Tran to get up in his master’s face, which led to the accusations that Dom was a narc, triggering him into a violent rage, and looking back at the film, it’s hilarious that of all the different ways that Domonic Toretto is antagonized by other characters throughout the series, it’s accusing him of being a narc that gets him to flip out in such a maniacal manner.

And we all know what happens next; Dom’s crew biffs a hijacking, Vince nearly dies, Brian blows his cover, they all show back up at the Toretto house, where a terrified Jesse shows back up like the pussy we all know he is.  Johnny Tran and his cousin Lance show up and light everyone up, Jesse dies, Brian chases, Dom commits vehicular manslaughter** when he PITs Lance into a ravine, and Brian murders Johnny Tran when he shoots him in the back while he’s trying to flee on his bike, causing him to crash and expire on the streets, right outside of a homeless camp under a bridge.

**An easy plot twist that Lance didn’t die, since Fast characters have demonstrated the ability to survive way worse physical traumas than wiping out off of a cliff, but that just feeds the Johnny Tran (and his family) are victims narrative

It’s astounding to me that in spite of all of the callbacks throughout the entire Fast series, some stretching even harder than the litany of callbacks in Cobra Kai, there isn’t the slightest attempt to reach back to Johnny Tran, or his apparent syndicate of discreet criminals.  I mean Momoa’s flamboyant character is directly related to the events of Fast Five, and when the series pivoted to this Italian Job like heist genre, it’s been Dom’s Family versus, well the rest of the fucking world at this point, but at no point have they even tried to go back to Johnny Tran.

Considering the huge reach they did for the resurrection of Han, I like to think it would be hilarious if in Fast XV, they pulled the same shit and suddenly Johnny Tran never died after all.  But he, and possibly his cousin Lance, have been laying low in the weeds over the last quarter century, waiting for the best time to strike Dom and the Family.

But considering they haven’t tried at all in 25 years, it’s probably wishful thinking that we’ll ever see Johnny Tran ever again.

In an alternate world, Tran has his own Family, along with Lance and probably a diverse cast of equivalents to Letty, Mia (who Dom fucked), Vince, Jesse and Leon and later on revealed that Ja Rule was the Tej Parker equivalent, DK was his overseas colleague, and maybe like Batista and Clive Owen could have been his Hobbs and Shaw equivalents.

But we’ll never know for sure, because we live in a fucked up unfair world, and Johnny Tran did not get to have his story ever finished much less told. 

Johnny Tran was innocent.  Johnny Tran was murdered.  Johnny Tran was the victim all along.

Justice for Johnny Tran.