#//... except towards a few other European ethnicities

[killianlynch]

Hi Killy , your opinion about germans / germany ?

No opinions on anyone based on ethnicity or race.... except the goddamned colonizing Brits and the fuckin Italians... The damned Italian mafia is like a fuckin nail being hammered up my fuckin cock hole!

[telomeke]

[Video description–

Video posted to TikTok by Sydniehunterphotography:

Two beautiful young women stand on different sides of a building corner. The building looks like it might be a house with timber siding and framing. Because the women stand with their backs to their respective walls, they cannot see each other. However, they are holding hands around the corner.

The woman on the left is shorter, with long dark hair falling in curls framing her face. She appears to be of South Asian descent and is dressed in a beautiful red lehenga with intricate silver thread embroidery. The long scarf pinned to the back of her hair is also red, but it is embroidered with gold thread. She is bedecked with gold jewelry, including bangles, a necklace with a locket, dangly earrings and a large nose-ring. Her arms are decorated with intricate henna mehndi all the way from her fingertips to her elbows. She smiles broadly as she fans her face, as though to dry away happy tears and stop them from mussing her makeup.

The woman on the right is taller and her long dark hair is mostly styled in an updo except for a few stray locks that are allowed to cascade freely. She appears to be of European ethnicity. She is wearing a simple white gown with a long train. Her gown has long lace sleeves. Her jewelry is more understated, with simple dangly earrings and some bejeweled sprays in her hair. Her hands are also covered with henna mehndi.

At a given signal, they both turn past the corner and look at each other. The expressions are of surprise and joy, as though seeing each other dressed up in these outfits for the first time. They embrace. There is a brief shot of them looking lovingly into each other's eyes, arms interlinked, against a backdrop of trees.

Then we see the woman in white walking up a path in what is presumably the garden of the building. There are many mature green trees behind her, while the path is flanked by grass and ground cover planting, including lilies. She is carrying a bouquet of mixed flowers, including white ones that coordinate well with her gown.

The scene shifts, and we see the other woman walking up another path, also with many trees in the background. The scarf pinned to her hair is pulled around her shoulders like a shawl, and it trails to knee length. She is also carrying a mixed bouquet, but hers has a lot more red, which matches the red of her lehenga. The path she is on is flanked by the same grass and ground cover, but it curves to the left and suggests that both women are walking on the same path toward each other.

Next we see them standing on the steps of the building that they were at in the first scene. It appears both their paths have brought them here. In the foreground, half cropped from view, are some formally-dressed people holding flowers. They are seated and appear to be watching the proceedings.

In addition to their gowns and accessories, the women are now also wearing thick garlands around their necks made of alternating bands of red and white flowers. The banisters of the steps they are standing on are also decorated with red and white flowers that match their garlands, and the path in front of the steps is strewn with red and white petals.

The garlands they are wearing look like Indian varamalas/jayamalas, which are traditionally exchanged between a couple at an Indian wedding.

Behind the women, a man in a suit is standing at the top of the steps. He looks like he is officiating at their wedding. The couple stare deeply into each other's eyes as they hold hands and kiss. Everyone else present then claps happily.

End video description.]

[burnedbyshoto]

One last unpopular opinion cause I need to get it out. tell me if I’m wrong pls. Whitewashing POC characters is 100% wrong. Why is it okay to change the race or ethnicity of a POC character? I’m talking about stuff where one of the characters isn’t Japanese anymore and they’re mostly black or occasionally some other race. If they’re making a dark skinned Japanese version I get that. But why change race/ethnicity. Isn’t that wrong too? What’s your opinion on this? Not trying to start shit I swear

I guess... hm, I will try to break down my thoughts and opinions on this. i’m not claiming i’m right, i’m merely stating this as someone who literally over thinks literally everything and anything I can. please let me know if i’ve said anything wrong or offensive as i’d like to correct it because i’m not trying to offend anyone here.

when it comes to anime specifically, westerners have this very quick ability to start saying that these characters are white. as we are all damn well aware, anime is created mostly by asian creators (japanese creators to be exact) and are often depicted to be happening in japan or in some fantasy land where terms like white, black, asian reallt don’t apply. there are some anime that take place in america, & we have anime like yuuri on ice that has multiple different countries represented, but i’d say for the most part all characters are japanese.

issues come into play when, typically seen as white people on twitter who are able to pass easily as anime characters appearance simply due to skin tone color and hair color. personally, I think anime tends to throw in funky hairstyles and hair colors and eye colors not because they’re trying to claim characters as white but because japan is a largely homogeneous country and with that they tend to have similar attributes (in which I mean hair type, eye color, and hair color). the lack of color diversity can lead media to look especially dull, for lack of better words, so mangaka & anime creators make these characters have every colored hair, eyes, and sometimes make them bipoc in the world and hair type to create visual contrast, engagement, and highlight important characters.

however, we westerners are quite self centered & think if a japanese character has blonde hair and blue eyes it makes them white! meaning that should white people cosplay this blonde hair and blue eyes character it’s okay! and due to racism, whenever poc individuals — especially black cosplayers — attempt their own version, they’re attacked with how the character isn’t whatever race the cosplayer is and are overall scum bags. the character isn’t even white the mass majority of the time either so I don’t understand the anger they have over that detail except they’re racist pigs.

now, about the race bending, I think it’s because we westerners want to see ourselves within these characters. they’re like headcanons, if you will. just like you might headcanon bakugou to eventually become hard of hearing or deaf, or how you headcanon that midoriya izuku will lose all his limbs and need a robot arm and legs, these are just personal headcanons that make the character more tuned to how everyone wishes them to be.

now this is a western issue so i speak largely for america.

the underlying issue, I think, is racism. white people, whether they like it or not, have a social advantage over everyone. things will always sort of be for them, look like them, accept them. white people will never have to wonder if the newest movie coming out will have a poc lead because they tend to have it be white people. white people never have to worry about if their foundation color is in stock or even exists in the first place because the system makes it so that it’s there for them, or if not, it’s just two blocks away. white people don’t have to worry about if they will see a face that looks like them on all forms of media because european standards are whats it. we are curated in a society where we should want the lighter hair, the lighter skin, the lighter eyes, the button nose, and thin figure. & I understand that beauty standards and ideas are shifting, but if you’re unable to see that people used to shame, put down, and harass other people for having such traits before (and even still right now harass people for having the features they want as well), I guess you’re one of the naive few.

now, because in western countries, not being able to see yourself in any characters on the tv shows (with real people or animated), some people choose to simply take it into their own hands. so they take their favorite characters and decide that they’ll give it a spin to make it look like them. I don’t think anyone really bends the race and goes “damn they should really be fucking latino, what a waste they’re not!” because I really don’t think anyone’s that...intense???? that’s not the right word, but I can’t seem to find it rn. it’s simply for fun and to show other people who also don’t see themselves in these forms of media a way in!

most importantly, I think, is that when characters are turned into different ethnicities it’s other people who come out and say they’re doing it wrong & taunt them with how they would feel if they turned someone white. if i’m being especially honest, most anime characters could definitely be white in my eyes had I never known it originates from japan simply because of the way they’re drawn. they’re putting down people who are simply expanding their creativity and wanting to see a familiar face because western media continues to fail in serving its largely ethnic population.

personally, I don’t think we westerners have the right to demand more black, latino, arabic, whatever characters in anime because the fact is japan owes us nothing. we should be demanding and continuing to harass america to include poc characters because we aren’t involved in japan. (& i’m not saying that japan should just continue to serve only pure japanese characters because they do have their own intermixed population that isn’t just of japanese decent, but I think if they want us to aid their voices i’m here for it, but I won’t be the one demanding anything from a country that isn’t mine when it comes to this form of media. )

so, to me, the reason why it’s okay for poc to change the race but not white people is because racism in america lol. white people got it good on screen & the fact that it really really bothers some people is a bit scary considering the stats on how many movies and tv shows involve main white casts.

my unpopular opinion to all this, however, is I really dislike latino!sero because the spanglish people use for him makes me think that no one writing him is actually any type of latino & i’m sorta tired and a bit offended by the sexy latin lover thing. plus it sorta seems to me that my fellow latinos only use that trope because white people think it’s hot & since they carry more weight then they think; creators keep it up to seem cool or whatever idk. so it’s not my cup of tea as a mexicana 😗✌🏽

edit:

I also think when people race bend characters to other forms of poc it’s a positive expression and something done to make people happy! but typically when the characters are bent to be “white” it’s done as an attack in a way towards poc people & not done because they want to be included in a world, ya know?

[bluesakura007]

AOS Khan headcanons

I felt the urge to get these ideas I have out into writing because of how little this is delved into in STID, and because the books and comics and things aren’t really canon. I did take some inspiration for his backstory from the Khan comic series and another couple of tiny little bits that I found on Memory Beta though.  ^^ 

Childhood and Origins

- He was born in 1970, his birthday being February the 10th. His mother was Dr. Sarina Kaur, an Indian biochemist living and working in New Delhi, but he has no biological father of any kind because after months of theoretical research, Sarina managed to successfully conceive a child from just one parent. This was because of a project in which she was investigating the possibility of asexual reproduction in human beings like in some species of plants and insects, hence it was dubbed the Chrysalis Project.

- Whilst Khan was still in utero, his mother introduced some adjustments into his DNA such as providing him with the ability to better remember events from the early years of his childhood and adding a few different ethnicities into the mix. The European ethnicity became the dominant one, which is why he has a light skin tone, blue eyes and an English accent despite being born to an Indian parent.

- She named him Khan after one of her grandfathers, gave him his surname after the 15th century poet Singh el Bashir and chose his middle name as Noonien after Noonien Prasad, her boyfriend who died from cancer while she was pregnant with Khan and who would have been a fatherly figure to him.

- Sarina was very caring and benevolent towards Khan, who she would often call her beautiful boy. The fact that her son looked so different to her and that she’d originally conceived him for the purpose of scientific research did nothing to stop her from loving him very dearly.

- She later died when he was four years old due to an accident at her laboratory one day: it started a fire in which she perished as she tried to escape. When the now orphaned little Khan found out about his mother’s death, he felt frightened now that he was alone and ran off into the streets of the city, moving from place to place every night with no other possessions except for his blanket.

- After a few days, he came across a group of half a dozen other street orphans led by an older boy with a heart condition named Tanvir Acharya, who allowed Khan to join them, making him the youngest member. The ragtag seven would go around exploring the city together and would make their days of living homeless feel that little bit less sad, and over the next year Khan and Tanvir became best friends, to the point where they ultimately saw each other as blood brothers.

- After a year, Khan, Tanvir and the others in the group, and several other orphans, were kidnapped off of the streets by men working for a geneticist, Dr. Heisen, and taken to be turned into genetically enhanced “supermen” via DNA-altering experiments.

- Another seven years on, when Khan was twelve years old, he and the others at the facility they were being kept at were now all Augments and were still in the captivity of Heisen and his scientists. Khan and Tanvir hatched a plan for the both of them to escape and then come back to liberate the others later on: they dug their way out of the facility grounds through the floor and fled in separate directions, promising to rendezvous at this time later on when they’d go back for the others, with Khan going off into the Gobi Desert. However, Khan was recaptured five days later thanks to the use of his neural inhibitor implanted in his and the others’ bodies in order to inflict pain at the push of a button. Upon his return to the facility, he found out that Tanvir had also been recaptured, but that he had died due to the use of his own neural inhibitor inadvertently stopping his heart, his condition having “slipped the net” from his enhancements.

- After another three years, the teenage Khan, having become embittered towards Heisen and his scientists, and the others took control of the facility after working together to remove their neural inhibitors, and after Khan killed Heisen by crushing his skull, he and the other Augment children finally escaped and left to see more of the world.

Global Rule

- Khan and the group of friends and comrades he had by then, some of them being other Augments that had also escaped from their own facilities, took control of the Indian government in 1990 and established The Great Khanate, an Augment government power encompassing India, Nepal, Mongolia, the Western half of Russia and the Middle East. The world was also ruled over by six other Augment powers: Alexander Newton in charge of the Empire of Newtonia and Verity Cheng leading the Cheng Federation - these two being the Great Khanate’s allies and respectively encompassing North America and the Eastern half of Asia - along with Asahf Ferris at the head of the Ferris Dominion in South America, Ama Owusu leading the African Caliphates in the entirety of the African continent, and the Khanate’s enemies allied with each other, respectively the Oceania and European powers led by Bernard Maltuvis and John Ericssen called Maltuvisland and Pax Europa.

- While the Cheng Federation and the Empire of Newtonia adopted the same rules of benevolence towards their subjects that Khan did, with the African Caliphates also doing the same, the Ferris Dominion extorted money from its own, and Pax Europa and Maltuvisland committed many executions of human enemies and expanded their territories the most aggressively.

- Verity, Alexander and Khan all promised to back each other up in the event of a war against John and Bernard, as defensive border skirmishes were shared with these two; these were made more difficult by the start of the Eugenics Wars in 1992, which meant that for the next four years every Augment power had human forces working against them as well. Ama and Asahf preferred to stay neutral during Khan, Verity and Alex’s cold war against Maltuvisland and Pax Europa - they both basically sat back away from the chaos sipping tea and saying “This is fine”.

- While the other four’s identities were public knowledge - Ama and the others in the African Caliphates government were greeted as heroes for freeing the citizens of Africa from the poverty and dictatorships that they were living under - Alex, Verity and Khan all kept their faces and voices as leaders a secret, going by false names in public.

Personality Traits and Interests

- Although Khan has a cold ruthlessness towards his enemies who incur his anger, and even then he can still have a merciful side to some of them, he’s benevolent towards animals and children, as he knows that they’re innocents. He’s still also merciful towards people who aren’t directly involved in the activities of said enemies or don’t know what they’re doing, and as a result tries to avoid killing these non-direct accomplices if he can help it.

- He was taught about Hinduism from an early age, but he doesn’t really follow any religions.

- He likes the feeling of riding a horse, because of the freedom it grants of being able to ride through wide open spaces with nothing holding him back.

- He keeps it locked away underneath the surface and keeps himself cold and aloof around his enemies and strangers, but if you’re a person that he really trusts he can let his emotions shine through. Khan’s got a big heart, it’s just been tainted by his experiences.

- What he’s also got is a hidden fondness for chocolates and a disliking for spicy foods, the latter of which being ironic due to the fact that he grew up in India.

- He has a loathing for the scientists who turned him into an Augment, who took away a normal childhood that he could have had and also ended up taking his best friend away from him, as they and the ones working for the other Augment facilities around the world during the 1970s and 80s effectively dressed up their selfish goals of using supermen as human weapons in a facade of idealism.

- However, Khan bears no ill will to the rest of mankind and this is why he committed no atrocities towards his human subjects while leading the Great Khanate - the fond memories he has of Sarina, of the happy days before she died back when he was four, are a reminder to him that not all non-enhanced humans are selfish and that they’re capable of kindness. Khan loves her very much in return, which means that although he may become ruthless and enraged in the heat of battle, he’ll never take out this rage on the human race in general, as doing so would be an affront to the memory of his mother.

[obeymeshallwedate-latinplayer]

Traditional costumes part 2

Remmember, GN!MC. And stay for a big hollyday surprise!!!

Beel (Chiapas La chiapaneca)

·         Wearing the typical costume of your state, always made your heart expand in your chest, that night wasn´t the exception, using all the elements of nature made you really happy. That night Lord Diavolo prepare a big dinner to celebrate the exchange students, most likely he just wanted to take a break from the exams that you took a week ago. So you prepare yourself with the very best clothes you had.

·         Beel knocked in your door, saying that it was about time to go out, and he only heard one single scream from you that he panicked and with frenetically movements he opened your door. You were almost done, but usually your grandma would do the last touches for you to be ready, that made you sad. And Beel noticed it.

·         With a silent movement and a soft whisper in your ear he asked what was wrong, and how he might help you.

·         “You know Beel, this is my evening dress, not only because it´s beautiful but… It´s all about the story behind it: This costume was created towards the end of the 1920s, (1926-1927), when a highly successful theatrical company from Central America arrived in Chiapas de Corzo. In her first performance within the state, the lead singer performed a song that was called "Las Chiapanecas", in honor of her audience. The most popular story in terms of the traditional clothing of this state is carried by the Chiapas, who year after year parade showing their wonderful dresses. Characterized by its multiple colors and flowers; generally, on a black background, the traditional dress of Chiapas women represents the different ethnic groups that coexist in their region, such as the Tzeltales, the Lacandones, the Jacaltecos, the Choles and the Tojolobales, among others. Likewise, reference is made to the immense variety of botanical species that exist in Chiapas, since it is a state in which all kinds of ecosystems converge, from the mountainous places of the sierra to the coastal towns. In the case of men, allusion is made to elements such as the sun and rain, so necessary for the fertility of the Earth, and protection against the forces of darkness. The men also remember the Spanish conquerors, imitating certain characteristics of Europeans such as their blond hair; through the headdress that they put on their heads.”

·         Beelzebu wasn´t a man of tons of words like his older brothers, he was a man of actions. He hugged you as tight as he could (without harming you of course) after the hug he just smiled at you. “You are the connection in the three realms, but those are some complicated words that Lord Diavolo usually use, you are all of them for me, the flowers and plants, the mountains, the sierras and the ocean, for me. You are all of them and more.”

·         That made your heart “Doki, doki” yes, maybe that was the last thing you needed, like a magical spell just for you.

Belphie ( Traje Mestizo Quintana Roo) 

He was sleeping in your room, nothing out the ordinary, most of his weekly routine was staying in your room sleeping, until he sniffed something different. He might be sleeping under your bed when he found out the costume inside the box under your bed. Was it like a good luck item? Or did you just didn´t wanted to see it again? He approached his left hand until he touched the box, he took it out and opened it.

In that moment he understood why you were hiding it, the costume was so beautiful. If someone else saw it, they would sell it, eat it, or use it, even asked you to use it. When you opened the door, and found him with the costume you screamed with full joy. “OH BELPHIE DARLING, YOU FOUND IT! I thought I lost it!” So you weren´t trying to hide it? You lost it? In your own room? Heh what a weird human.

“You know, my great grand mother made this for the generations after her. She would always be telling us Mestizo clothing is particularly representative clothing of Yucatan, and has been associated with Quintana Roo clothing. This is due to the proximity that exists between both states and of course, because both complement each other as tourist poles in Mexico. Particularly, the mestizo woman's costume is made up of a huipil embroidered in cross stitch, whose motifs go on the collar of the garment, the hem and the skirt. While the man's is much simpler and he only wears a shirt and pants made of a raw blanket, matching with a plaid apron, leather espadrilles and a palm hat.” You said with a big smile in your face. “Maybe we could ask her to make you one of it What do you think?”

He nodded, you looked so excited about it, that he almost forgot one little thing, How old was your great grandmother? He panicked just a little, but he recover the posture and with the nicest smile he could use, he said. “Well… But first how about you showing me the costume and then we could ask your great grandmother about it”

You smiled once again and ran into your bathroom, it was going to be an amazing evening.

Diavolo (Sn. Luis Potosí, “Las huastecas.”)

It was a nice party for you, some of the greatest demons were at the castle, the brothers tried to protect you as much as they could, but they did had their own responsibility’s, being the seven rulers of the Devildom wasn´t a simple task, and you knew it.

Diavolo tried to approach you on multiple times, failing everyone of them. Until a duke actually came and talked to you. It was notorious you were uncomfortable, he was touching your most precious clothing, and making some rude comments about it.

When Diavolo was about to make his intervention, you took the demons hand and with a scary smile, you started. “It might not be as beautiful as you may think, but at least my dressing has a bigger meaning that that tuxedo of yours, my culture is not for you to make fun of, it deserves to have respect.” After that the prince of the Devildom approach to the both of you, as an excuse for you to join him for some drinks.

Both of you went out of the party, the garden was nice and the moon in the Devildom was brighter that night, Diavolo took your hands with his. “You are a brave human.” He started. “And you look delightful tonight, like someone full of dignity that can rule along with me.” He kissed your hands with the respect that he might show to his fiancé.

“You know Diavolo, my culture is a descendant from the Mayas, we use a tangle that reaches a few inches below the knee. It is made of a white blanket or a plain black cloth on the back; the front has four planks. Is held up by a factory-made sash with red and blue speckled stripes and has a braided fringe at both ends. The blouse or loose jacket is made of flowered calico or pink or blue artisela; It has puffed sleeves, high neck and pleated bib, ending at the waist with an olán or loose skirt that covers the girdle. On top of the blouse, we wear a white cotton quechquémel entirely covered with worsted embroidery with cross stitch. I am proud of my culture.”

As soon as you conclude he smiled, and asked you nicely to go for a dance. After that night he will make that duke pay for what he has done.

Barbatos (Oaxaca, Traje de las tehuanas)

After visiting the human realm your grandfather gave him a nice CD full of music, Barbatos wasn´t the musical type of demon, but he accepted it anyways. After a few months the whole devil castle would have music that was just nostalgic for you.

One day you decided to go on your Huasteca outfit, not the casual one, but the gala. If Barbatos wanted to you could dance for him. When you arrived to the castle there he was, his usually stoic face turned into a surprise one when he saw you enter. His eyes started to shine like a small child when they saw a candy store.

He walked as fast as he could to see you, that was the first time he was close enough to listen to his breathing. He even started to say: “This typical costume was born in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, using it both the Tehuanas and the Juchitecas, it is said that it is a living costume, since they use it in any type of celebration, making it current over the years, even with the countless modifications it has undergone. t was in 1853, when the composer Máximo Ramón Ortiz composed the musical theme known as the Sandunga, that is when the Tehuana costume managed to cement its fame and prestige as a characteristic of the Oaxacan culture.”

You looked at him astonished, he even knew the history behind your costume, with a laugh caught in your throat you smiled at him. “It was a present from my family, sometimes I miss going to the river in Oaxaca, or even talking with my family in Zapotec.”

He was clearly impressed about the details in the costume, he even took your hand and ask you if you could dance with him. With a big smile you nodded and enter the castle.

It was a nice dance between the two of you, he even made your favorite  tea.  

Simeon (Yucatán Terno) 

He was researching old cultures for his new book, until he found out something he missed while thinking, you were like an expert of the topic, right? Maybe you could tell him more about it, so he ran into the house of lamentation, hoping you could help him.

And there you were, using a beautiful costume, while talking with Satan, his heart started to beat faster, as he heard your story.

“Its origin dates from the time of colonization; When the Spaniards arrived in Mexican territory, they were surprised by the beauty and high quality of the blankets woven by the indigenous people, so they began to create adaptations taking various elements from both cultures to create what we know today as the suit or gala dress. for women and the mestizo costume for men.”

That would help him develop one of his new characters, but when you saw him in the door threshold, immediately your face became red. He notice it and laugh. He actually took your hand, and asked Satan nicely that he needed a piece of advice from you.

“You look stunning Mc.” He said to you while looking right into your clothes. “I must say, this is the nicest surprise of them all. Is it an important day for you to wear it?”

“Not at all, sometimes I only use it so I feel more at home.” With that say the both of you stayed talkig for a while.

Luke (Baja California Sur. Flor de pitahaya) 

He was with you, watching the nicest video of the whole realms, something about the dance in front him made his heart a happy heart.

“Mc! This is beautiful!!” You looked at him with a warm smile, and told him, it was your mother dancing for a festival.

“You see Luke, my mother is a folkloric dancer, this dance in specific is from our state, and the full outfit has a big meaning and even a history behind it.” When you concluded, he looked at you with those big blue puppy eye of his, you pat his head and started.  “Some people say that this suit was created in 1951 as a result of a summons issued by the government of General Agustín Olachea Avilés, others, that it was in 1955, since there was no suit that represented our state. At that time, "period costumes" were used, since other states had a representative costume since ancient times, that is why this call came out in order to have a "symbol" that represented the roots of the inhabitants of Baja California Sur, being the winner "La Flor de Pitahaya” The Pitahayo is a cactus that grows in Baja California Sur, both on the coast and in the mountains, and when it blooms, it shows an abundance of nutritional wealth with its fruit the Pitahaya that peninsular indigenous people and now inhabitants have enjoyed for years.”

He was amazed, “You know Mc! I´m just a young angel, but listening to the story makes my heart melt, Is it normal?” with a warm smile, you told him: “Well, of course it´s normal, my stories have that magical power!”

After that day Luke would practice his dancing for you to be proud of him, sometimes he even saw you using the dressing for important parties in the castle of Diavolo. It was so nice!

He even saw your performance once, when he went to visit you at the house of lamentation, and he knew, he needed to work harder if he wanted to have an opportunity to dance with you.

Solomon (Nayarit  traje de los wixárikas)

The both of you went to the Human realm, he needed to know more of you if he wanted to teach you even better, your family actually welcome him with a big surprise and a big meal, your family was known for using the traditional costume almost the whole year, so everybody knew how proud you were with it.

Solomon received  one of the largest lectures you had heard from your father. “The typical costume of Nayarit corresponds to the clothing of the Huichol culture, or as they prefer to be called: wixárikas. Most of these descendants of the Aztecs live in the Sierra Madre Oriental. The female version of the typical Nayarit costume is quite simple, compared to its male counterpart. This includes an embroidered blouse and a skirt, it also includes a cloak embroidered with flowers that serves to cover their heads and a quechquemitl as a complement. The quechquemitl is a triangular garment with a central opening that in pre-Hispanic times was reserved for the goddesses of fertility, or for certain women of the nobility who identified with these deities. Men wear more elaborate garb. All his garments are decorated with beaded embroidery and brightly colored threads: the shirt open on the inside of the sleeves (cuarri), the pants (breeches), the cape (turra), the sashes that hold the cape and the backpack that crosses his chest. They use symmetrical designs loaded with symbolic, mythological and magical elements. For example, a zigzag can represent lightning (associated with rain). These embroideries are, at times, so profuse that they do not reveal the white fabric in the background.” Solomon just stayed astonished when your father finished the lecture, he made it in one breath, that was amazing, and yet he wanted to use the clothing.

After a few days his dream became true, when your grandfather gave him his very own clothing, the old man said that if he was going to teach you, he must use it for now on.

Solomon was a happy little baby, and he would brag about it in front of the demon brothers, and even in front of Diavolo. Maybe the two of you could go into a party with matching clothes, just like your grandma and grandpa do.

After a while he got used to wear the costume your family gave him, and he even have a time record, and if you want to help him, that would make him as happier as a human could be.

He was grateful for the gift and having you in his life.

It is I, the writer behind the headcanons, So! For the hollydays I´m planing to make place for 9 comissions! (Originaly they were 10 but someone won one of the space) So you can ask about culture, romance, comedy etc. Remmember, I usually write for Latin American Mc, but if you have another idea for another MC, we can make that happen! Anyways, thanks for the support! And I will be reading you!!! Happy Hollydays. 

[frithwontdie]

Sorry didn't they didn't steal the Jewish identity. Ngl I very much believed this theory for while. But doing some digging it's false.

The theory that Zionists along with all Ashkenazic Jews descended from white medieval Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic people who founded a powerful polyethnic state in the Caucasus and north to the Caspian, Azov and Black seas. That supposedly spread into now Russia, Eastern Europe and later Western and Northern Europe. The theory was first introduced by a jewish communist, pro Zionist named Arthur Koestler in his book which has been excepted as fact for many years called the Thirteenth Tribe. (which is now a widely debunked book.)

The theory was used to advance the idea that Jewish actions are character are not genetic or racial because the Khazar people adopted the Talmudic values of Shephardic and other Jews who were unrelated to them.

Which himself admitted that he only pushed this theory to help lessen anti-semitism.

”His argument was that if he could persuade people that a non-Jewish “Khazar” heritage formed the basis of modern Jews, then this would be a weapon against European racially-based anti-Semitism.“Should this theory be confirmed, the term ‘anti-Semitism’ would become void of meaning,” he said.According to Scammell, Koestler told French biologist Pierre Debray-Ritzen he“was convinced that if he could prove that the bulk of Eastern European Jews were descended from the Khazars, the racial basis for anti-Semitism would be removed and anti-Semitism itself could disappear.” (Source: Scammell, Michael. Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic, Random House)

While it's true that the Khazar royalty did convert to Judaism. Even dispite not being ethnically jews themselves for political reasons. But the people as a whole did not. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia: "The conversation of the leading Khazar to Judaism perhaps took place toward 740 C.E."

Ashkenazi jews have no Turkic or Central Asian ancestry. They are a unique genetic cluster between the Middle Eastern and European races. The Khazarian culture has completely died out and there are no direct descendants, so genetic testing is not so easy. (plus some debate what race they were) some studies show that the Jewish Khazar stain is less than 6% of all present day jewish dna, and 12% of Ashkenazi Jews.

Employing a variety of standard techniques for the analysis of population-genetic structure, we find that Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations, and among non-Jewish populations, with groups from Europe and the Middle East. No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews with populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly with the populations that most closely represent the Khazar region. Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region. (Behar et al. 2013)

However, if the R-M17 chromosomes in Ashkenazi Jews do indeed represent the vestiges of the mysterious Khazars then, according to our data, this contribution was limited to either a single founder or a few closely related men, and does not exceed ∼12% of the present-day Ashkenazim. (Nebel et al. 2005)

Edit add on:

Demonstrated distinctive Jewish population clusters, each with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, proximity to contemporary Middle Eastern populations, and variable degrees of European and North African admixture. The genetic proximity . . . is incompatible with theories that Ashkenazi Jews are for the most part the direct lineal descendants of converted Khazars or Slavs.

A very important message, the most important part he is saying is the "Khazarian/Zionists stole the Jewish identity."

And throughout history, they have done this so they can conceal their true identity, which are Luciferians.

They are the reason that Babylon fell. 🤔

[eretzyisrael]

Under Biden, Old Mistakes Become New Again

After the Trump Administration presented the first reality-based proposal to end the Israeli-Arab conflict since 1967’s UN Security Council resolution 242, I thought I would never have to write an article like this one again. But thanks to the Biden Administration’s phalanx of pro-Palestinian officials, many of whom are Obama retreads, and its determination to reverse every one of Trump’s initiatives, here I am.

Last week a memo describing the administration’s position by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian affairs Hady Amr was leaked to The National, an English language newspaper published in Abu Dhabi. Suddenly it’s 2009 again, when Barak Obama made his conciliatory speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt.

The memo calls for a two-state solution “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps and agreements on security and refugees.” One wonders if they’ve learned nothing in all this time.

Obama’s people always said their ideas weren’t new, that they represented a continuation of traditional American policy toward the conflict. I’m sure Biden��s team will say the same. But this is incorrect, and it’s worth looking at a few historical facts before taking up the Biden Administration’s policy.

In 1949 Israel signed armistice agreements with Egypt and Jordan. In both cases, the Arabs made it clear that they did not recognize the state of Israel within any boundaries, and that the cease-fire lines were not borders; indeed, they had no political significance. Both agreements contain language like this (from the agreement with Egypt):

It is emphasised that it is not the purpose of this Agreement to establish, to recognise, to strengthen, or to weaken or nullify, in any way, any territorial, custodial or other rights, claims or interests which may be asserted by either Party in the area of Palestine or any part or locality thereof covered by this Agreement…

Fast forward to 1967. After the war, the UN Security Council passed resolution 242, which included this well-known text:

Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

As a Chapter VI resolution, it was nonbinding; but it was accepted by both sides (due to a bit of deliberate ambiguity: it did not specify how much of the territories “occupied” had to be returned). Nevertheless, it was made clear by the British Ambassador to the UN, Lord Caradon, whose draft became the official version, that it did not require an Israeli withdrawal to the armistice lines. Indeed, even the Soviets admitted that this was the case. And the American UN Ambassador, Arthur Goldberg, explained as well that the US position was in accordance with the armistice agreements: the cease-fire lines were not the “secure and recognized boundaries” envisioned in the resolution.

If anything was “traditional American policy” it was the ideas expressed by 242: there would be negotiations between the parties, and the results of those negotiations would determine the borders, as well as obtaining normalization of relations with the State of Israel by its (one hoped) former foes. Peace treaties were indeed signed with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994. Although these treaties established borders between the countries, they did not deal with the armistice lines between the Gaza strip and Judea/Samaria and pre-1967 Israel.

In 1988, after the First Intifada, King Hussein of Jordan recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians and relinquished his claim to Judea/Samaria. From this point on, Jordan was out of the picture. American policy remained the same except that any negotiations over the future of these territories would have to be between Israel and the Palestinians. The Oslo Accords followed in 1994, and again the establishment of borders was considered a “final status issue,” to be settled later by direct negotiations between the parties.

In 2000, Bill Clinton unsuccessfully tried to mediate a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. A few months after the failure of the Camp David Summit, Clinton made a further proposal that included land swaps in which areas beyond the Green Line that would be kept by Israel were balanced by a transfer of land from pre-1967 Israel to the Palestinians. This proposal was not accepted by the PLO.

This seems to be the first introduction of the pernicious idea of land swaps into American policy. Why pernicious? Because underlying it is the assumption that land beyond the armistice lines belonged to the Palestinians, and so they had to be compensated for any of it that Israel received. Keeping in mind the illegitimacy of the Jordanian invasion and occupation of Judea and Samaria, as well as the armistice agreements and resolution 242, the presumption that the Palestinians have prima facie ownership of the territories is a big step away from the even-handed 242 and toward a pro-Palestinian policy.

Of course, for Clinton this was a last-ditch proposal, and the understanding is that proposals are just that, and if there is no final deal then they disappear. Still, the Palestinians always try to insist that future negotiations must start at the high point of previously proposed concessions. Ehud Olmert renewed and expanded the swap idea in 2007-8. But this too was rejected (or simply ignored) by the Palestinians. Various initiatives by the Obama Administration also included the swap idea. No agreement could be reached then either, but swaps have now come to be considered essential to any peace agreement.

What seems to have happened over the years is the reification of the armistice lines. Instead of trying to find a solution that provided “secure and recognized boundaries,” the process now tries to find a way to give the Palestinians all the land they “deserve.” Of course this is impossible because of the physical geography of the region, which would make a pre-1967-size Israel indefensible. So then there needs to be discussion of “security arrangements” to protect Israel against the terrorism that would doubtless flow from a Palestinian state, in addition to the danger of invasion through the Jordan Valley. Fanciful ideas like foreign peacekeepers (something which did not work in Egypt in 1967 or in Lebanon since 2006), or complicated technological Maginot lines are contemplated, in order to obscure the fact that only Israeli military control of strategic territory can protect the state.

The Amr memo also references refugees. The “return” of the millions of descendants of Arab refugees from 1948 is another subject that has been shifted in the direction of Palestinian demands over the years. These descendants are not “refugees” according to international law; only the Palestinians and UNRWA, the UN agency that feeds, clothes, and educates them to believe that they will someday “return” to “their homes” that they have never seen, insist that they are. Even if they were refugees, there is no right of return in international law – just ask the millions of ethnic Germans that were kicked out of Central and Eastern European countries after WWII.

The Biden Administration seems intent on reopening these cans of worms that could have been disposed of if Trump’s “deal of the century” had been implemented. The deal represented a return to the philosophy of UNSC 242 and an end to the coddling of the PLO, which has never renounced terrorism, changed its charter, or seriously intended to be satisfied with a peaceful state alongside Israel, despite insistences to the contrary. The plan could have broken the logjam that has prevented progress toward ending the conflict. Despite warnings to the contrary, the sky didn’t fall when the US finally recognized Israel’s true capital, or its sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and the new policy helped bring about the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab states.

Now, judging from the memo, the US will go back to funding the PLO – which refuses to stop paying terrorist’s salaries – and UNRWA. It will reopen the PLO embassy in Washington, and the “American Embassy to Palestine” (the US consulate in eastern Jerusalem). It even recommends going back to the policy of requiring that products from Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria not be labeled “made in Israel.”

In short, if the administration carries out these policies, Israel will be faced with the dilemma of choosing between dangerously compromising its security and its sovereignty, or damaging its relationship with an increasingly pro-Palestinian US administration.

Add to this Biden’s Iran policy and you have a recipe for real trouble.

Abu Yehuda

[madtomedgar]

k imma attempt some thoughts on the wen situations through the benadryl haze, bear with me y’all

ok so first, i’m looking at what happened to the wens as being more closely related to pre-modern and ancient systems of blood feuds and total war, where “civilians” wasn’t a coherent concept, that to modern notions of genocide or ethnic cleansing, for a few reasons:

1) modern genocides, i think, as part of the definition, have an ethnic/racial purity component, which doesn’t exist in this fictional setting, and victims aren’t victims because their group did horrible things to the perpetrators. (almost?) always, they have been oppressed by the perpetrators for a while, and this is the final step.

2) there is a long, long history of people massacring cities, villages, or large family groupings like clans as part of warfare. Europeans did it to each other from ancient Greece through the Wars of Religion, Native American groups did it, West African (I haven’t read much about other groups) groups did it, ancient Near East groups did it, and the Mongols did it. Probably others but that’s as far as my reading extends so I’m not going to make more assumptions but the point is, wiping out an enemy city or clan was seen as brutal, often overkill, but acceptable. Especially in cases of taking over another sovereign entity, killing the entire ruling group was pretty common, including the old people and babies. Again, horrifying to a modern audience with a coherent concept of civilians, often seen as excessive and bad by pre-modern people as well, but largely seen as a drastic but available measure. This isn’t to say it was good or fine, and many contemporaries would have recognized it as horrible and bad, but like the death penalty in the US, it was a done thing, if drastic and controversial.

Ok.

So the Lans, who are known for their righteousness do absolutely nothing to stop the massacre and torture of Wen civilians. This is definitely a moral failure on their part. But the Lan were also massacred by the Wen and had their home burned by them. So it would have been better for them to take a firmer stand, but it is also possible that many of them felt that this was a kind of justice, or that while yes, someone should probably speak up, they couldn’t bring themselves to be the ones to do it. By that I mean that, like. So part of the reason I don’t believe the death penalty should be an option is because there are some things where, if I were on a jury, I would want the guilty party to not be alive anymore because of what they did, and the law, in that case, should restrain my worse impulses. None of us are angels, and laws should take certain options way from us so we can’t use them in situations where we feel like they would look like justice. So like. If someone killed a bunch of your family members and burned down your house, even if you don’t believe in the death penalty, you might want to kill them for that. And if it’s up to you whether or not they get executed, that’s not great! All of this is to say, the Lans have some valid reasons to be extremely angry and unsympathetic towards the Wens.

As do the Jiangs. So that archery scene where Jiang Yanli is just happy that her crush and her bro are doing well? I’m going to argue that it’s partially because she is 100% fine with Wen cultivators (they are all wearing cultivator robes) being used as target practice since they, you know. Killed her parents and her entire sect, tortured her baby brother, and burned her house. She also has some valid anger, as do the rest of the Jiang sect. The Yao sect was exterminated except for 3 people by the Wens, so they also have some valid reasons for not being sympathetic.

The Nies on the one hand have been traditional enemies of the Wens, but, at least in CQL, they come through this relatively unscathed. They do not have the same or comparable reasons as the Lans and the Jiangs to be unsymapthetic towards the Wen remnants. Nie Mingjue, in my opinion, has a moral responsibility to speak up precisely because the Lans and the Jiangs can’t and shouldn’t be expected to. Unfortunately, he is the first one we see committing war crimes on civilians. His cultivators are the ones mercilessly driving a group of Wen civilians, including Granny, and beating one to near death and then letting the crows peck out his eyes. I know they killed his dad, but that was a long time ago, and also, the sects that actually have recent wounds (other than the Yao sect) aren’t seen engaging in anything nearly as horrific. 

The Jins had decent relations with the Wens, and suffered almost no casualties, and didn’t get their house burned down. In my opinion it is actually predominantly their place to act as the tempering agent and suggest mercy, since they have the luxury of being merciful without betraying their own pain or spending a decade processing it. But they are run by Jin Fuckface Guangshan.

I think this is a long, rambling, and incoherent way for me to say that what happened to the Wens demonstrates the ways in which systems of tacit responsibility sharing can break down when one or two of the parties have no interest in upholding their responsibility, and that’s why you gotta write that shit down and codify it (like the Geneva Conventions) and have set rules of war.

All of this being said, Jiang Cheng specifically and the Jiang sect in general owed Wen Ning, Wen Qing, and their people a debt beyond life, because Wen Ning risked his life to not only save Jiang Cheng with no benefit to himself, but also to save the bodies of his parents. Wen Qing saved him and his siblings at great risk to herself, her family, and her people, for no possible benefit, and they saved the entire Jiang sect, which would literally not exist anymore without them. So while the Jiang siblings have every right to their lack of sympathy towards the Wens in general, their biggest moral failing by miles was not doing whatever they could for the Dafan Wen, and the Jiang sect will be forever stained by that failure.

[whiterosebrian]

Heritage

I oppose Folkism. I understand Folkism to represent a very ugly parody of the pre-Christian religions that neopagans have been working to revive. I understand neopagan paths to be open. When the old gods call Black or Asian followers, we should let those people answer the gods’ calls.

The reason why I made those statements up-front is that I’m about to delve into a topic whose discussion will require much nuance. I’ve made an effort to write this in such a way as to keep my intentions consistently clear. However, there could still be a possibility of taking many of the following statements out of context, whether by Folkists wanting validation, mainstream people who don’t know much about neopaganism, or Christian-Right propagandists. I’m about to discuss old spiritual heritages of people of European descent.

I may need to touch upon what Folkism is before going on with that discussion. Folkism, in the most basic sense, is the notion that certain old European practices and religions are the sole provinces of their associated cultural groups, whether Celtic or Slavic or, most notoriously, Germanic. It derives from the Volkisch movement which purported to revive Germanic traditions and the people’s connections to their lands. The Thule Society, in particular, laid the groundwork for Nazism. The Nazi regime retained the occultic influences—though I should note they weren’t the dominant strain and the party rose to power by appealing first and foremost to Christian culture (which is yet another historical fact that raises hard questions of what Christianity looks like in the real world).

Today’s adherents of Folkism exploit the discourse around cultural appropriation, though in a mendacious and vulgarized form. Sometimes well-meaning allies do unintentionally vulgarize said discourse as well. One part of appropriation is swiping elements of other people’s cultures willy-nilly—though there are two other key aspects that should be kept in mind. First is the fact that elements of cultures are often taken with little acknowledgement of or gratitude towards the originators. More importantly, there is a context of colonization, marginalization, and erasure.

Even if you haven’t followed me for a while or read my journal entries before, you may be aware of the elements of Asian, African, Native American, and even Jewish spiritualities within the New Age movement. It’s quite clear that a number of people, disenchanted with historic Christian culture for any number of reasons (including extremely serious ones), look elsewhere to find genuine spirituality. Actually, those trends were also present in Europe during the peak of modern imperialism in the nineteenth century, evidently influencing today’s New Age movement.

To my understanding, Buddhists and Hindus are very willing to share elements of their spiritualties—but too often those elements are half-understood, ripped out of context, and watered down anyway. Native Americans have seen their spiritual practices outlawed until fairly recently, which is why they resent those practices being commercialized or taught outside the proper contexts. The Jewish people have faced persecution for many centuries and similarly seen their mysticism suppressed—and they resent mangled or incomplete versions of Kabbalah floating around metaphysical circles.

You may recall the interest that I actually once had in Kabbalah. I did genuinely want to learn from the Jewish people. I had abandoned Catholicism and wanted to learn from its Jewish roots (though I probably underestimated how far Christianity deviated). I was actually ready to start delving more deeply into Kabbalah after reading introductory texts of admittedly varying degrees of quality. I was under the mistaken impression that Kabbalah was now being opened up (though in fact Kabbalah is still considered a closed practice, due mainly to requiring an intensive grounding in Jewish scripture and practice). However, some Jewish users on Tumblr and PillowFort convinced me to rethink my interest. I soon decided that Judaism in general wasn’t for me, much less Jewish mysticism. I didn’t think I could even devote myself to the religious law (however different movements within Judaism interpreted it).

I also had some interest in my own Northern European heritage. That is part of what led me to examine Heathenry in more detail. What finally led me to devote myself to the Heathen path was animism, or a relationship with nature as well as the spirits within and the very powers of life. Sometimes, spiritual practitioners of color heartily exhort white seekers to look into their own ethnic heritages to find their own gods, medicines, rites, and modalities. What ultimately prompted this essay is a video from a healer who goes by “heart of Hamsa” on Instagram; they (I’m using the apparent preferred pronoun) are of Vietnamese and French descent.

They speak of the need for greater respect towards and gratitude for Asian practices. They speak of how they delved into their own heritage. They touch upon the distinctions among cultures and peoples—most certainly not in any exclusionary or purist sense, but in the sense of deepened understanding and appreciation. They speak of a need to give back to the peoples who inspire us, especially in light of colonization, with Vietnam as a prominent example that they cite.

Hamsa goes on to speak of white people who are ashamed or fragile (often understandably, giving rise to the “white guilt” that neo-Nazis maliciously mock) and chase after what they view exotic and foreign, only to fail to do justice to reiki and ayahuasca and the like. They essentially ask people to restart by looking into their own ancestors and uncovering histories. They exhort viewers to set roots and share their own inheritances before looking outside, much less making smorgasbords. Basically, Hamsa asks people to remember who they are and be themselves first and foremost.

How does that apply to a man of Northern European descent born on a land that was stolen from indigenous people? Occasional tweeters will remark that white people have no culture except for banal capitalism and arrogant colonization. Irish, Italian, and German immigrants eventually assimilated into the hegemonic American culture after facing their share of prejudice (my father’s family actually used to be named Koch before becoming Cook during the First World War). The old Christendom may have initially been a union of different Christianized peoples, but at some point (I can’t say exactly when) it became a more-or-less homogenized bloc of Christian colonizers. If even the Irish faced domination at the hands of Englishmen, the Christian European powers were sure to dominate other peoples in worse ways.

Hamsa does speak of “blood” and “bloodline”, which admittedly can raise hackles for good reason. Folkish neopagans also speak of “blood” as in “blood and soil”. Obviously, as you can see from the above context, Hamsa is using “blood” in a subtly though crucially different way. Perhaps, then, Folkism is a distortion of a truth—that truth being a rootedness in personal bloodline and heritage. The kind of “meta-genetics” that people like Stephen McNallen and Stephen Flowers promote is indeed Nazi-leaning bunk—otherwise, learning about the pre-Christian past would not be so difficult or involve so much ambiguity and guesswork. I can accept that white supremacy has influenced the pagan revival to some extent, particularly in its early stages. Did the original Volkisch movement deal with the trauma of enforced Christianization (and the later rise of an increasingly ruthless capitalism) in a very unhealthy way? I don’t have enough historical education to really answer that.

In any case, I’m very pleased to see neopagans seriously work on disentangling that influence. Improved historical scholarship in recent times has been a blessing. Perhaps European-Americans who take the time to learn from such scholarship as well as experienced practitioners might find many boons. It’s possible that the old gods of Northern Europe called me back into their embrace. Indeed, as I began to seriously consider training myself to be a magician working with Odin and Freya, I began to get a sense of a homecoming. My Scandinavian, German blood, and Anglo-Saxon bloodlines ultimately aren’t major factors, but they still are factors in a homecoming. While figuring out a spiritual path, I increasingly wanted to work with divine power as a magician—it turned out that I wouldn’t do so through Kabbalah but through animistic Heathenry.

The question of what a settler is supposed to do among the many settler communities on a continent stolen from its original inhabitants remains. I most certainly have a responsibility to those who lack what privileges I have. I hope to find stronger opportunities to aid the indigenous communities, especially those within the Great Lakes, the region of Turtle Island where I live. For that matter, I hope to find stronger opportunities to aid other communities.

In general, I understand a need to participate in the work of decolonization in some manner. I understand a need to take part in breaking down what has become whiteness. Those who think that they are being broad-minded in taking from so many cultures (and I would have also thought so even a few years ago), it seems, unintentionally contribute to colonization and white privilege. Maybe I will start learning from other peoples after gaining a very firm grounding in a revived Germanic magic, though maybe they will tell me to keep up with that. There are indeed many different paths for people to take to the divine. Some of them are closed (or at least require formal initiation) for very good reasons. Kabbalists and Jewish mages deny that Judaism is for everyone—they might speak of other gods who call to their peoples while the presence of the supreme Godhead remains with the gentiles. People like Hamsa speak of honoring and reinvigorating diversity among the human shards of divinity within today’s world. Thus, demagogues who fearmonger over the One World Religion for the New World Order show themselves to be paranoid fools. There certainly isn’t a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world!

I will take my time in building relations with Freya and Odin, contemplating the runes, training myself to connect to Yggdrasil, and looking forward to meeting elves and various ancestors who have walked my path before. I hope to be of great service as a Germanic magician among the Great Lakes. I also wish to gradually build up stories of diverse people seeking truth, goodness, beauty, joy, and spirituality as a novelist (and possible comic artist). I struggle with lethargy and a troubled heart, but I do believe that I have a calling. You are all welcome to support me and, perhaps better, find your own mystic paths.

[herald-divine-hell]

The Failure Toward Islam in Dragon Age

This is a response to @shimmrgloom. He asked to go into detail about why I consider the Qunari a poor representation of historical Islam.

Warning: this will be a long post.

-

Let us start off the bat with most likely the most superficial reasoning why the Qunari and the Qun are meant to represent Islam. First and foremost, the world: “Qunari” is merely a switch around of the world “Qu’ran”, the holy book of Islam, just with an added “i” at the end. But you may be wondering: Herald, surely that was so coincidence? Not particularly, I say, no. BioWare does not accidentally name things - Templar is not coincidentally a term that they used to describe violent oppressors who serve the Thedas’ most religious and centralized body. Something so similar, describing a people who come from a land that is foreign to the rest of Thedas, a foreign way of life, and who are - to the minds of the Thedosians - quintessentially different that it leads to contempt and distrust almost automatically in their first meetings.

Background:

Now, some history over Islam. Islam, as most people know, was founded in the 7th century by the Prophet Muhammad, who revolutionized the societal framework of the Arabian Peninsula. Once a sandy land filled with bickering tribes that fought each other more and less than the outside the great powers of their heyday, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Persian Empire. What Muhammad did, and not only did he start the world’s second largest religion, was unthinkable at the time. Instead of unifying the tribes in a manner of merely just conquest, though Muhammad was indeed a fearsome warrior and tactian, Muhammad utilized religion, and bounded everyone under the idea of the Ummah - the community of Islam - which thoroughly demolished any idea that kinship was greater than religion (though the idea would continue on to the modern age, with the rise of nationalism, to muddy the waters even further.) Now, it was near impossible for any one tribe to claim superiority over the other. All were equal in the eyes of God, and so the community should see each other as equals. (Again, the idea was there, but slavery was, and still is, prevalent, though Muhammad was known to have freed many of slaves throughout his life, with one of the first converts in Islam to have been an African slave.)

During the time of the Prophet, and the later successors to him after his death, known as the Caliphs, raids were conducted against the warring Romans and Persians at their Arabian border. It was only after a while did the Arabs commit a full offensive attack, utterly demolishing and annexing the Persians, and conquering large swaths of North Africa, including one of the Eastern Romans’ most prized provinces, Egypt. In only a few short decades, the Rashidun Caliphs - those who were companions and close friends and were, actually, elected by a council to be the successors, akin to a weaker sense of democracy - crafted an administrated dominion that was larger than Rome during its height. Most commonly, a lot of Westerners believe that the Arabs actively sought to convert their newly conquered subjects to Islam, and while there is a law that says a non-Muslim may not take a high ruling position in the government, (which would later change, as many religions and ethnics became the second highest positions in some islamic states) and that they must pay a higher tax, known as the jizyah, most of Islam’s converts came from the people’s own free will (if they lived under the Caliphate, most likely paying less in taxes was a large incentive) or from trade, as the Mali Empire and others showed, or it came from other governing powers, like the Turks or the Mongolians, adopting the religion of their subjects. Though, it primarily came from trade.

After the fall of the Rashidun Caliphate under Caliph Ali (and I’m not even going to get into the First Fitna, or the First Islamic Civil War, nor am I going to get into the Sunni-Shia split that occurred during the rule of the first Caliph, Abu Bakr.) the Umayyad family rose to power and claimed the Caliphate for themselves. Now, the Umayyads were different then the Rashidun - all five Caliphs were elected - but the new Caliphs were hereditary, adopted with even more practices from the more sophisticated Byzantines and Persians. During their rule, the first contacts between Islam and the West properly. (Prior to this, the only real meetings were between the Eastern Romans and the Caliphates, with a few incursions into Sicily.) The Umayyds swept up into the Iberian Peninsula, where Spain and Porturgal, and a little bit of the United Kingdom through Gibraltar, now resides, and moved into a little of southern France - though it was merely a tiny raid, Western History would compare it to a major victory for Christendom. (It did stop Islamic movement into Western Europe, but the Ottomans would show that Islam did not leave Europe entirely. The Umayyads would not continue heading into France for numerous reasons. Number one being that there was a massive rebellion occurring in the central part of the Caliphate, and two, their power would be extremely diminished.)

Now, after the Umayyads, come the Abbassids, the new Islamic Caliphate - and though not the largest, it was considered to be the greatest in terms of cultural and scientific importance for Islam. For under the Abbassids, Islam would begin its golden age. In this time, men like Ibn Sina, the Father of early medicine, or ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, the Father of algebra, or ibn Hayyan, the father of modern pharmacy, would live in thrive. The Islamic Marco Polo, ibn Battuta, who traveled across Asia and Africa more times that one would consider necessary, would be born. The House of Wisdom, created by Caliph Harun al-Rashid, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians would work side by side, peacefully. (And even in Islamic Iberia, under the rule of the overthrown Umayyads, intellect bloomed, especially for the Jewish people.) And one of the first modern university in Islam, and the known world at the time, the University of al-Qarawiyyin, by Fatima al-Fihri, was also established during its time, and is still open to this day. 

Why am I harking on and on about the glories of men and women long dead? What does this have to do with the Qunari? Well, everything.

The Qunari:

As I mentioned before, the Qunari are meant to be the historical counterparts of the Islamic caliphates during its time. Why, you may ask? Well, for starters, their entire relationship with Thedas (Europe) is identical to Islam...from a European perspective.

The Qunari are invaders, fanatics about spreading their philosophy/religion/way of life to all the world who does not follow it. Now, out of everything I just explain, surely it has no connection to Islam? But it does. To Europe, their safety was in constant threat by Islam, especially the Byzantiums. Which was not unwarranted to be believed - the Arabs had tried to siege down Constantinople twice, and the Seljuk Turks, whom overwhelmed the Caliphate to establish their own nation over the Middle East, while allowing the Caliph to remain nominally head of Islam, had pushed deep into Anatolia, nearly to Constantinople, which sparked the Crusades.

What we got from the Qunari wasn’t not Islam as we noted, not totally at least. (which is fair. You typically don’t want to take everything from real life in your fantasy world) But it is the way Europe has viewed Islam for over one thousand and four hundred years. But unlike Europe being wrong, from what we get of the Qunari, from actual interactions, especially from the Iron Bull, of the Qun, we can assume that the Thedosian xenophobia is seemingly justified. Islam is foreign, and the West has always perceived the Near East as foreign, mystical, animistic. (This goes way back to Ancient Greece and Rome) And unlike our world, the Qunari is all of that, and more.

Instead of getting intellectual growth and cultural prosperity, we get what the modern West considers the Islamic fanatics, but as the entirety of the group. The Qunari wants to subsequent Thedosian and Andrastian doctrine to the philosophy of the Qun (Sha’ria) Instead of wearing armor, they wear tight ropes that show off skin that is alien in color, and have horns that are exotic. (Just like how Europe saw Muslim women as seductresses, with near-translucent cloths for clothing) Instead of being tolerant to other peoples religions - which the early Muslims were very much were, especially during their times - the Qun would take no one else, but Qunari. All will have to convert, or risk death, imprisonment in a mine, or worse. They are “reeducated” by the Qun, to follow orders and to die for their philosophy. Where do we see that? ISIL, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban - contemporary fanatics, but they are the near closet to Islam as the Qunari get.  What we see is a mockery to beliefs that Islam had stood for over a thousand years.

We do not get the Qunari preserving ancient Tevinter documents. We do not get ibn Sina, and other Islamic philosophers and investors that changed the world - for better, or for worse. We get nothing that shows Islam during the time period that Thedas is meant to take place, but the rest of the Thedas easily can pass for their historical time period, except with fantastical creatures. Even with the Ottomans, sure they took boys to make them guards and an elite infantry, and thats the fairest you can say that looks like the Qunari during that time period, but thats it. 

All in all, the Qunari is meant to take the place of Islam, while demolishing everything Islam was and is, instead propping forth centuries old propaganda and stereotypes and fears.

I do acknowledge that the Qunari are not entirely Islamic in society - they have large aspects from Communism and Confucianism - but their historical and geopolitical placement in Thedas, alongside their foreign policy toward Thedas is merely Islamophobia in its entirety. And that hurts to say, because the Qunari could had been something more, but BioWare did not even try to recon it. Sure, they are technologically advance, but at what cost? Slavery? Conquest? Everything that I have learned since I was a child about the terror of Islam? It’s true for the Qunari, and its hurt. Don’t get me wrong, I find the Qunari fascinating, and I can’t (hopefully) wait to learn more about them in DA4, but it still hurts to see my history so tarnished by BioWare’s lack of even proper research.

[talesbytaylor]

When characters don’t have last names.

I don’t think this is common for most fandoms but in SaGa Frontier, none of the protagonists nor the supporting characters (except for Red Okonogi) were given surnames. When you love a character so much, you can’t help but wonder about the littlest details about them, including their family names xD

Although, in Romancing Saga; Re;universe, Gen’s full name was revealed to be Genjiro Nobushige. But can we really count spinoff games as “canon” with the original game series?

Here’s another example: the whole love triangle between Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith from Final Fantasy 7. Although most recent production seems to veer towards the whole CloudxTifa ship, there are some works out there that support CloudxAerith (ahem... Benny Matsuyama’s book... ).

So many questions to consider xD Now... I know this isn’t really a big deal. Fanfiction exists because while we love the original creators’ work, we can’t help but want (crave) more, even though we can’t get anymore xD Also, too many fans mean too many different desires to fulfill. You can provide fan service to only so many fans xD

Which brings me to my own devices when it comes to the surnames of SaGa Frontier characters. I’ll list a few what I believe is their actual full names (first and last). 

(And like many crazed fangirls... I lowkey wish my prediction of these last names are correct, or at least would be used in some official capacity by other SaGa fans one day until it becomes “canon” in that sense xD sigh...)

SaGa Frontier characters:

Red Okonogi is already set in stone, officially

Genjiro Nobushige is sort of official ...?

Fuse: Hugh Roster His last name is official, but I imagine that his first name is something that sounds similar to his nickname “Fuse” hehe. Interesingly, Roster (the German last name) means “blacksmith”. And Hugh means something along the lines of “mind” and “spirit” in Old English. Doesn’t that fit Fuse so well!? 

Blue and Rouge Magnussen - the magician twins! From Google - “ The surname Magnussen derived from the given name Magnus, which means "great" in Latin and means "power" in Swedish. The name was made famous by St. Magnus and Magnus, the son of St. Olaf of Sweden. “ Um ... self-explanatory, yes? xD

Asellus Mori Mori is both an Italian and Japanese last name. Since race (as we know in OUR IRL universe) is not categorized the same in the SaGa Frontier universe but DOES have some influence from our world (i.e: Red’s Japanese last name, Roufas’ Italian restaurant, etc), I’d imagine that the Humans (and Mystics) have what we’d perceive as a mixed-ethnic appearance. Which is why I had trouble deciding on whether Asellus is more European or Asian. So I thought “Mori” would be a fitting name.  In Japanese, it means ‘forest’. The term ‘Mori girl’ is a fashion aesthetic that usually includes nymph/dryad/fairy-like clothes. I think it suits her xD

In Italian, it is apparently a patronymic name based on the Latin name Maurus, which means “moor” or “North African”. But this is not what I was thinking about at first! Morbidly enough... “mori” means “died” in the Italian language x_x And as we all know, Asellus (at least her human form) is very much dead ... 

Emelia Conrad From Google: “ It is derived from the Proto-Germanic name Konrad, from conja meaning "bold" and rad "counsel". It was the name of a 10th-century bishop of Constance, and became popular in post-medieval English and post-medieval French. “ I think this suits Emelia perfectly. 

Annie Ferro It’s an italian word for “iron”. Annie’s tough life growing up only made her stronger as she works to financially support her little sister and brother. I bet this is their last name, despite their hardships :3

Liza La Volpe Basically means “the fox” in Italian. Foxes are generally a symbol for being cunning and clever ... and no doubt that Liza (including every other member of Gradius) is also just that! But the reason why I chose “fox” for her name is because of her loyalty to Roufas. I suspect they were romantically involved at some point in their lives. Whatever their relationship status is like now, Liza remains at Roufas’ side, just like how foxes mate together for life. Did you know that if a fox’s mate died, the surviving fox stays single for the rest of their life? I feel like Roufas and Liza would be the same way.

Roufas D’Amico This one is a common Italian name. It means “of friend.” I just thought that Roufas is sort of like a “caporegime” for Gradius. Also, he has an Italian restaurant that is most likely a front to launder some of Gradius’ money xD Despite Roufas’ own reputation for being a clever, cunning man, he has a slightly friendly history with IRPO agent Fuse (they were in training together, whereafter Fuse got hired by the IRPO and Roufas chose to join Gradius instead). He is both a “criminal” but also a friend. Doesn’t that remind you of the classic Italian mafia? xD

Anyway, this is as far as I went with surnames of SaGa Frontier characters. I will post more when I develop more.

[dyscrasia-eucrasia]

<<Prev | Next>>

Part 18

"Are you sure I can't help with any of that?" Angel asked. 

"Would you let someone who doesn't know anything about your culture's food help make it?" Demie said, looking over his shoulder to where Angel sat at the kitchen table. 

"Dude, my parents both worked sixty hour weeks," Angel said with a shrug. "I grew up on Kraft mac and cheese and Bagel Bites." 

"Ew," Demie said, wrinkling his nose. He had no idea what Bagel Bites were, but he'd seen Elaine make mac and cheese out of those bright blue boxes. The stuff looked positively radioactive. 

He turned back to what he'd been doing. He had very much wanted to make dolma - it felt befitting for having a guest over for the first time in his entire life - but Elaine had been very firm when he gave her the shopping list that she was not going to drive to Charleson in search of grape leaves and pine nuts. So he had to make due with tomatokeftedes and patzaria. 

Currently, he had the fritters chilling in the freezer and the potatoes mashed, and was in the process of peeling cucumbers for tzatziki. He had had the good sense to make the beets a day before. 

"So, you're like… really into food, huh?" Angel asked. 

"I'm Greek, of course I'm into food," Demie said absent-mindedly as he pulled a knife and the sharpening rod out of the knife block on the counter. 

"No, I mean like…" Angel paused as Demie swiftly drew the blade along the steel before dropping the rod back into the knife block. He sliced the cucumber down the center lengthwise and then chopped the vegetable with the speed and skill of a trained chef. 

"Like you said you have a garden, and you clearly made those goat treats yourself, and you can do that with a knife…" 

"I make my own cheese, too," Demie said.

"Omigod, really? Are we having some with all this?" 

"None of these recipes really use feta…" Demie said. He was loath to do anything in the recipes that hadn't been taught to him by his grandmother. Angel made a noise of disappointment, though, and Demie looked over his shoulder at him. "Why, do you really like feta that much?" 

"I don't think I've ever actually had any, I just really want to try homemade cheese," Angel said. "Especially if it's made by you." 

Demie felt the tips of his ears get hot, but he couldn't really figure out why. No one had ever been impressed by his cooking before. Then again, the only people he'd ever cooked for were Marius and Elaine. Marius would always compare Demie's cooking to their grandmother's, and Elaine had the most garbage tastes in food he'd ever seen, so neither of them were particularly enthusiastic about what he made. 

"Uh… I mean, if you really want some, there's some in the fridge," Demie said, nodding over his other shoulder at the fridge. 

He saw Angel start to stand up out of the corner of his eye, but right at the same time, the front door opened. Both he and Angel stopped and turned towards it, to see Elaine step inside. Her hair and arms were covered in sawdust, no doubt from trimming lumber at the hardware store, and she looked even more pissed than usual. 

"Oh, hi!" Angel said. His voice was bright and chipper, and felt entirely out of place in the trailer. No one was ever that happy in this place. 

"I'm Angel," he said, holding out his hand. 

Elaine narrowed her eyes, looking at the hand offered to her. "I know," she said, and stopped off towards her bedroom. 

"Did I say something wrong?" Angel asked, turning to look at Demie. 

"Nah, Elaine's just a huge bitch," he replied. He swept the ingredients on the cutting board into the blender and blitzed it on high. The vintage machine complained loudly, the blade sputtering as the engine tried to generate enough power to move. Demie felt extremely self-conscious. The blender, along with everything else in the trailer, needed to be replaced, but there was no money for it. Most of the time he just put up with it, but having an outsider see how he lived made him feel deeply inadequate. 

Finally the blender managed to work the cucumbers into a chunky paste, and he set it aside, turning his attention to the stove. 

"What's that?" Angel asked as Demie poured oil from a large plastic jug into a large pan. 

"Uh, peanut oil," Demie said, lifting up the jug and looking at the label. "It's supposed to be healthier than canola oil." 

"No, I mean, what were you humming just now?" 

The heat spread from Demie's ears across his face. He hadn't even noticed that he'd been humming. It just sort of came naturally. Music was just ingrained into his life - it had been, ever since he was a kid. Cooking, gardening, herding… basically anything that required any sort of care towards another living thing, his family would hum or sing to. There was no proof their voices affected food or plants or animals like it did people, but there was always the possibility that maybe they could make the food taste a bit better, or the plants grow a bit fuller, or the animals act a bit more tame. 

He didn't really know how to explain that to Angel, though, so he just mumbled something that he wasn't even sure were words. 

When the oil started shimmering, the tomato fritters came out of the freezer and went into the pan. They sizzled and splattered, and Demie had to jump back just a little. Most things in the kitchen didn't bother him, but the stove was just about at crotch height for him, and he'd splattered hot oil on his balls enough times to know it wasn't pleasant. 

That was another thing he was self conscious about - he was technically naked from the waist down around another dude. Of course, he was always naked from the waist down. He didn't see the point in wearing pants; they just seemed constricting, especially since his knees and ankles were anatomically in different places than a human's. But he did technically just have his ass and balls out around a gay guy, and that was kind of weird. 

He didn't have too much time to think about that, though. He had to keep an eye on the tomatokeftedes so that they didn't get too dark, fishing them out of the pan and laying them to dry on a piece of paper towel. Next he got the beets out of the fridge and got two clean, but mismatched, plates out of the cabinet to serve the food. 

"This smells amazing," Angel said as Demie set the plate down on the table in front of him. "I don't think I've ever had Greek food before. Except gyros, are gyros Greek?" 

"It's pronounced yee-rohs," Demie said as he sat down in the other chair. "But I've never had food from wherever you're from, so whatever." Was that racist to say? He wasn't sure. Angel was Asian, and Demie thought he could remember him saying something about his ethnicity, but he couldn't remember what it was. 

"You've never had pho?" Angel asked. 

"I don't exactly eat out," Demie said. 

"You don't even get delivery?" 

"Delivery from where? Billy Brook has like one shitty diner." 

"Oh, right." Angel looked a little bit embarrassed, and quickly took a bite of food. "This is amazing," he said after he swallowed. 

"It's alright," Demie responded, picking at his plate. 

"You don't really take compliments well, do you?" Angel asked. 

Demie had to stop and think about it. Did he? "I guess I'm just not used to getting any," he said. 

"Aww," Angel made a sad noise. Demie looked up to see him pouting. He couldn't help but snort. 

"Dude, what the fuck?" 

Angel's face broke into a smile. The corners of Demie's mouth reflexively lifted in response. He felt weird - he didn't smile a lot, but seeing Angel smile wanted him to do so, as well. It was kind of like how performing made him feel less anxious and empty inside, but multiplied by ten.

"Can I ask you something?" Demie said. 

"Sure." 

"Do you actually listen to heavy metal? No offense, you just don't seem very… hardcore." 

"Yes, I listen to heavy metal," Angel replied. His tone was a little strained, a little annoyed. 

"What bands?" 

"Is this a test?" Angel narrowed his eyes at Demie. 

"Huh? No? I just… just wanna know, I guess." 

"Well," Angel said with a dramatic sigh, "back in middle school, I knew this kid, he was a few years older than me… he was a total metalhead - a lot like you, actually. With the hair and the beard, at least, not a goatman, I mean. But no one would really hang out with him, because he wore a trenchcoat and stuff. But no one would hang out with me, either, because I was the one Asian kid in school. So we just kinda wound up hanging out together, since there was no one else to hang out with. And he turned me on to Korn and Slipknot and from there I just fell down a rabbithole, y'know?" 

Demie furrowed his brow. "Seriously?" 

"What?" 

"Korn? Slipknot?" 

"What's wrong with them?" Angel asked. 

"Nothing," Demie said. He wasn't really sure how to word it. They just weren't… great. 

"Oh? So who do you listen to, then?" Angel asked, aggressively pointing his fork at Demie. 

"Uh, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Slayer…" 

"Oh, and you're going to judge my tastes in metal, when you listen to the most basic metal bands ever?" 

"Hey, no, I listen to other stuff. Like… Blind Guardian, Labyrinth, Rhapsody of Fire…" 

"Yeah, you would listen to Blind Guardian," Angel muttered. 

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

"It means you definitely seem like the kinda guy who'd listen to nerd metal." 

"What!? Blind Guardian aren't for nerds, they're like one of the most influential European power metal bands--" 

"Yeah, who sing about their LARP campaigns." 

 "They aren't for nerds!" 

"WILL YOU TWO SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU'RE BOTH FUCKING LOSERS THAT I'D BEAT UP FOR LUNCH MONEY," Elaine bellowed from her room. 

Angel glanced over his shoulder, then back to Demie. They were both silent for a minute, but then Angel's face cracked into a smile and he wheezed, and all of a sudden they were both laughing.

[girlactionfigure]

"Magneto’s Jewishness is central to his character

His experience as a Jew – as a survivor of the Nazi death camps and a member of one of the most despised ethnic groups on Earth (not just in the United States, but in the entire world) – is the main impetus for Magneto’s actions. It’s why he is who he is." - Dani Ishai Behan

According to recent rumors, Marvel intends to give Magneto – the iconic Jewish supervillain – a fresh coat of paint. But what exactly is meant by “fresh coat of paint” here?

Put simply, it is alleged that they intend to cast a “POC” actor – or actors – as Magneto in any future appearances.

Why is this a bad thing? Well, it’s not. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that Magneto is a Jewish Holocaust survivor. He is already a POC, at least insofar as indigenous Middle Eastern populations are considered to be such (which Marvel undoubtedly does), and they arguably should have been using Jewish (or other Middle Eastern) actors from the get-go. However, since it’s highly unlikely that Marvel actually considers diaspora Jews like Magneto to be Middle Eastern (even though they are Middle Eastern, by definition), and since there are no other notable anti-Jewish genocides in the past 50 years to draw inspiration from, the implications of this rumor could not be more clear: they may very well end up erasing Magneto’s Jewish origins.

I’m deeply bothered that Marvel is even considering this – that the thought of it has even entered their heads, let alone their board room discussions. And I’m even more bothered that it’s being framed as a bid for “diversity”, as if this is really “no different” than changing Ariel’s race. It absolutely is different. In fact, these scenarios couldn’t be any more different if they tried to be.

There are many reasons why changing Magneto’s origins would be damaging and oppressive to Jews, especially in light of anti-Semitism’s meteoric rise and resurgence in mainstream culture. For starters…

Magneto’s Jewishness is central to his character

His experience as a Jew – as a survivor of the Nazi death camps and a member of one of the most despised ethnic groups on Earth (not just in the United States, but in the entire world) – is the main impetus for Magneto’s actions. It’s why he is who he is. Magneto is an extremist because he sees the way mutants are treated as parallel to the way Jews are treated. His realization that humans will never accept mutants also parallels Herzl’s realization that Europeans would never accept Jews. And Magneto’s proposed solution, while certainly 100x more extreme than Herzl’s (whose solution was to repatriate Jewish exiles to their indigenous homeland, to liberate it from foreign rule, and to regain sovereignty therein), is borne of a similar distrust and cynicism towards those who hate his kind.

Magneto is a Jew. That’s who he is to most fans, especially to Jewish fans who grew up with him and identified with him for much of their lives. Why take that away from us? Especially now?

Magneto embodies Jewish anger, fear, trauma, and pain like no other character, before or since. You can’t just treat that as if it’s some trivial thing, or if it’s just “white” people crying about their “privilege” (which, it must be emphasized, Jews do not have). Changing him now would be horrifically insensitive and immensely disrespectful to Jewish fans, especially to children/grandchildren of Holocaust survivors.

If it’s Magneto’s age people are worried about, I’m certain Marvel could come up with something. If they can prolong Wolverine’s life for as long as they have, there’s no reason why they can’t do so for Magneto.

And if there’s another minority out there whom they feel is “more deserving” of representation, they can simply create a new character. Problem solved.

Jews deserve representation too

Like it or not, we’re minorities too. And we don’t exactly have stellar representation, contrary to common belief.

We’re all but invisible outside of some very stereotypical characters. I mean, what else do we have besides lonely nerds, gold diggers, terrorists, bankers, and eccentric rabbis?

We have this…

Yup, that’s right. Gargamel, the main villain of the Smurfs, is supposed to be Jewish. And if his Levantine features didn’t make that painfully obvious, he also had a mezuzah in his house in his first few appearances.

There are exceptions to this rule (e.g. Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman), but that’s all they really are: exceptions.

I know what people are going to say next… “But what about these Jewish actors who’ve done characters like Indiana Jones and Jackie Kennedy? They even did blackface back in the day.” Well, here’s the thing: they weren’t Jewish actors playing Jewish characters. They were white-passing Jewish actors (and usually only half or even 1/4 Jewish, like myself) playing white characters. That’s not representation, and referring to it as such is essentially tantamount to whitewashing. It is every bit as absurd as saying Indians are “white”/”well-represented” because Ben Kingsley played Adolf Eichmann (yes, that Adolf Eichmann), or that Arabs* are because Lebanese actor Danny Thomas (to name one example) did blackface and other white roles, or that Latinos are because Cesar Romero did The Joker.

*Speaking of Arabs, Jewish actors who are more obviously/visibly Jewish (particularly those who aren’t half or 3/4 non-Jewish) are very frequently cast in Arab roles. And no one even notices. Why is that?

It’s because…

Ashkenazi Jews are not white people

Non-Ashkenazi Jews exist, of course. That is undeniable. But since Magneto was born in the Jewish diaspora communities of Central Europe, it is quite obvious that he is Ashkenazi.

And Marvel’s assertion that they intend to rebrand Magneto as a “POC” is a pretty clear indication that they have a piss-poor understanding of (if not utter contempt for) who Jews are.

Magneto isn’t white. He’s a Jewish Holocaust survivor. Jews are an indigenous ethnic group and nation of the Levant, so it makes little sense to refer to Magneto as white unless A ) he is a convert (which he’s not) or B ) one views all indigenous Levantines as white, which is highly unlikely (at least in Marvel’s case). Ergo, Magneto has always been a POC.

However, all of his live-action portrayals were done by white actors, and this suggests that whoever was responsible for their casting sees Jews as nothing more than a religion. And for someone whose view is that Magneto is an “ethnic Pole” or “ethnic German” whose family “just so happened to practice Judaism”, it’s not too far of a leap (or even a leap at all) to cast white actors in that role. This view is, of course, patently absurd.

This popular narrative that Ashkenazim are “white”, and that we are therefore already “over-represented” and don’t “need” characters like Magneto, is the reason why things like this keep happening. Were it not for that, the idea of replacing Erik Lensherr with a “real” minority would have never entered their heads.

Just because we’re not black, doesn’t mean we’re white. And you can’t treat this as if it’s somehow akin to rebranding Ariel as a black woman. It’s just not comparable.

It indicates that Marvel does not see Jews as a “real” minority group

Marvel is a politically progressive company. And the progressive left has been infected with its own form of Jew-hate – distinct from its right-wing counterpart, but similar in many ways. One thing they both have in common is that they both feel Jews are “hyper-powerful” and absolutely swimming in “privilege”, and are therefore not oppressed or marginalized in any meaningful way – and that if anything, we’re the oppressors. And for this reason, it is argued that we do not “deserve” the same respect or consideration that other oppressed outgroups do, and this argument naturally extends to representation in media. After all, this isn’t the first time Marvel whitewashed a character’s Jewishness (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver), and it likely won’t be the last.

And it is precisely this line of thinking that facilitates antisemitism and contributes to its growth.

Bottom line: Magneto is Jewish. He is a Holocaust survivor. He is an ethnic Middle Easterner. And despite his (typically) villainous portrayal, he has done more to give Jews a human face than any other character. And if there’s anything we need right now, it’s for people to see our humanity.

Source

[southeastasianists]

Immediately to the north-west of Australia, occupying an area somewhat larger than our island-continent, are the heartlands of the pre-modern world’s most accomplished and farthest-ranging oceanic explorers, migrant settlers and traders. Today they occupy much of Southeast Asia, while their outlying settlements stretch from Madagascar to Easter Island and Hawai’i. Active and afloat across the Asian and Indian Ocean region for millennia, their maritime mercantile ventures reached northern Australia in pre-colonial centuries.

They are the diverse but culturally and linguistically related people who are collectively called Austronesians.

Both the term ‘Austronesian’ and these people’s identity as a distinct grouping are, it’s safe to say, very little recognised by most Australians or the wider world, except among specialist historians, archaeologists, ethnographers and linguists. Author Philip Bowring wants to change that with this book that is a detailed, multidisciplinary account of these quintessential seafaring and trading societies, from their prehistoric origins until now.

In particular Bowring wants the ‘general reader and public’, at whom this book is aimed, to appreciate their dynamic role in the networks of oceanic trading that stretched from Asia across the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean for thousands of years… networks that led directly to the last half millennium of European expansion, and that were the forerunners of today’s globalised economy.

Austronesians comprise most of the populations of modern Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, speaking hundreds of different but related languages. There are also minority Austronesian populations in Indochina, Burma, Thailand and Taiwan. Ethnic Thais, Cambodians, Laos, Vietnamese and Burmese of mainland South-East Asia are not Austronesians, nor were they primarily seafaring societies – the thing that most defines deep Austronesian heritage.

So to avoid confusion Bowring has coined a new term, Nusantaria, to describe Austronesian homelands on the islands and coasts of South-East Asia, from where they sailed and traded much more widely. The term comes from the Sanskrit-derived, Malay-Indonesian nusantara (‘the islands between’), referring to the archipelagos that stretch from China and South-East Asia towards Australasia. (In English this was sometimes ‘the Malay archipelago’, the title of Alfred Russell Wallace’s magnificent magnum opus published precisely 150 years ago.)

The Nusantaria concept keeps the focus on this vital maritime mercantile heartland, whereas some of the Austronesian family sailed so far away – to Micronesia, Polynesia and Madagascar – that they eventually lost contact with the ancestral sail-trading network.

The major defining feature of Nusantarian societies was their mastery of navigation with ingenious vessel technologies, which included outriggers, unique fore-and-aft sailing rigs and hull-construction techniques that distinguished them from the Arab, Persian, Indian, Chinese and (much later) European ships that also plied these seas. This was the key to their expansion and settlement of maritime Southeast Asia over the last four or five millennia, displacing or absorbing earlier migrants. Other original features of Nusantarian societies included ancestral cults and shamanism, headhunting, and the independence and high standing of their women.

Bowring takes an even-handed approach to the fascinating question of Nusantarian origins. He acknowledges the well-accepted ‘out of China via Taiwan’, north-to-south thesis of Peter Bellwood et.al., but seemingly gives equal credence to alternative, south-to-north theories of migrations that were forced by the last inter-glacial flooding of the Sundaland basin (Stephen Oppenheimer, William Sondheim).

From ancient times the islands of Nusantaria supplied key trade commodities including the rarest and most costly spices – cloves, nutmeg and mace – exported in its own ocean-going ships. But more crucially, these home waters were the cross-roads of all the extensive sea trade between East Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Controlling these sea lanes led to the rise of diverse Nusantarian trading centres and entrepôts, kingdoms and empires in Sumatra, Java, Malaya and elsewhere in their region. Bowring vividly depicts a cosmopolitan trading world exchanging ceramics, metals, gems, silks and other textiles, spices, forest products, slaves – the vast majority shipped by sea.

‘A Persian writing in Arabic in the tenth century,’ he tells us, ‘noted that parrots in Palembang [the Sumatran centre of the Srivijaya empire] could speak many languages including Arabic, Persian and Greek.’ Those polylingual parrots would certainly also have spoken Malay, the Austronesian language native to both shores of the Straits of Malacca – the narrow funnel through which most of this trade passed. It became the lingua-franca of the region’s sailors and traders well over a thousand years ago, and is the basis of the modern Indonesian national language.

The major religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam entered the region from the Indian Ocean, spread peaceably by maritime trade and adopted through influence and prestige. Nusantarian societies transformed these religions, as much as they transformed Nusantaria. Rare seaborne invasions such as that of the Tamil-Indian Cholas in 1025, and later Mongol and Ming interventions, made no lasting impacts due to the dispersal of the islands and the skills of its sailors and traders.

European and Christian incursions began more forcibly five centuries ago, lured by the fabulous wealth of the ‘Spice Islands’ and advantaged by the superior gunnery of these aggressive newcomers. The shock is well expressed in the famous words of 17th-century Makassan Sultan Alauddin, refusing monopolist Dutch demands to exclude their rivals: ‘God made the land and the sea. The land he divided among men and the sea he gave in common. It has never been heard that anyone should be forbidden to sail the seas.’

This new era would lead eventually to a severe downturn of Nusantarian fortunes and a loss of common identity as they were fragmented into the post-colonial states we know today. Bowring makes the valuable point, however, that it’s easy to exaggerate the effect of the first few centuries of European activity, as disruptive as it was. It was not until ‘a final land-grabbing spasm around the turn of the 20th century that European imperialism reached its final apogee’, drawing Nusantaria’s modern borders.

Journalist, author and yachtsman Philip Bowring has lived in Asia for decades as a correspondent for leading financial and international newspapers, and was editor of the prestigious Far Eastern Economic Review. His earlier history book was about a distant ancestor, Sir John Bowring, who as Plenipotentiary in China in 1856 precipitated the Second Opium War, and who negotiated a key trade treaty between Britain and King Mongkut of Anna and the King of Siam fame.

Having read history at Cambridge and, during his working life, absorbed himself in the history and economy of maritime Asia, Philip Bowring is well placed to attempt this ambitious synthesis of vast amounts of scholarship and primary sources for a non-specialist readership. Its magnitude is attested by a nine-page bibliography. Given the breadth and depth of material consulted, errors (in this reviewer’s fields, at least) were few and minor.

At times the work suffers from the formidable weight of historical detail that it encompasses. There are occasions where condensing complex events and multiple players creates sentences that are rather too opaque, unless you’re already well-versed in that history. Places, people or processes can sometimes flash by, for the first and last time, unexplained.

This is less criticism than acknowledgement of the dilemma of treating an intricate subject encompassing so very many cultures, eras and episodes in a single volume – as best I know, for the first time. You could push the book out by an extra hundred or two pages – but then, good luck finding a publisher. Or do you simplify the story by sacrificing some of the richness and texture of complex events and processes? Any reader finding themselves a bit lost in the detail might return to the contents list, which has been well constructed with snappy chapter titles and a clever 30-word synopsis for each. This can usefully be returned to as a summary or a road map.

The attractive illustrations in both colour and mono have been very well selected for variety and quality, with many outstanding works of art, artefacts or historical sources. It might have been helpful to reference them more in the text, however, to make their relevance clearer to readers unfamiliar with the subject.

This hardcover book is handsomely produced with a beautiful dust jacket showing fine Nusantarian galleys in the Moluccas, recorded during the Louis de Freycinet expedition of 1817–20. It’s a volume that offers readers a deeper understanding of the vibrant maritime peoples and events that unfolded literally on Australia’s tropical northern doorstep, to better appreciate the complex development of the human, political and economic region that we inhabit.

[surveyspubxs-blog]

Publix survey answers

As a component of Publix's general reaction to COVID-19, the organization has executed an elevated purification program concentrating on high-contact surfaces like touch cushions, entryway and cabinet handles, telephones and PCs," chief of correspondence Maria Brous said in an announcement to NBC 6. Publix didn't give some other insights concerning the worker who tried positive. The market mammoth in Florida has made strides lately to address the emergency, incorporating shutting publix survey down stores prior with an end goal to spotless and stock things required just as opening stores on Tuesday and Wednesday only for individuals from the old network. Publix declared a week ago it was introducing plexiglass at specific regions, including registers, with an end goal to restrain the measure of contact with clients during the pandemic. Publix Super Markets, Inc. is a Florida-based basic food item chain which has more than 120,000 representatives and yearly deals in 2005 of $20.7 billion. 

Directly, Publix serves more than one million clients consistently and is one of the biggest representative claimed organizations on the planet. Publix is one of Florida's chief stores and has reacted to most social patterns in the basic food item advertise natural nourishments; normal nourishments, wellbeing nourishments, ethnic fixings, arranged suppers, and so on. Publix has delighted in incredible achievement in the basic food item industry and has extended in numerous states. With the coming of globalization influencing pretty much every industry, the general store/food retailing industry has joined the pattern. Local and universal food retailers over the globe have started to internationalize at a quick rate and open tasks far and wide. Be that as it may, as you will see, the development of grocery store chains past their nations of origin has been done generally by European and Asian organizations. Except for Wal-Mart, few U.S. food retailers have extended abroad. At present there are no designs for Publix to grow universally however this case tries to look at the potential outcomes of Publix making a stage toward traveling to another country and features the different factors in the worldwide condition that may straightforwardly or in a roundabout way influence the company.

 Publix was established in 1930 when 22-year-old George W. Jenkins left his situation as supervisor of a Piggly Wiggly store and opened his own little market in Winter Haven, Florida. With five workers, the store made generally $500.00 during its first year of activity. Jenkins included a second Publix store in 1935. After five years, he supplanted his two littler stores with a bigger Publix Market. With an end goal to grow, Jenkins bought a 19-unit market chain from a Lakeland agent hoping to resign in the mid-1940s. Subsequent to moving base camp to Lakeland, the organization developed a 70,000-square-foot store there in 1950. With an end goal to draw in more clients, Publix set up a S and H Green Stamp assortment program, permitting customers to exchange finished stamp books for limits. Development proceeded in the late 1950s with the acquisition of seven stores close to Miami and encompassing zones. The firm likewise started offering its stock to representatives.

[buzzdixonwriter]

Yellowface, You’ve Got The Cutest Li’l Yellowface…

Yellowface -- and its illegitimate cousins black-, brown-, and redface -- carts a long and dishonorable history.

Too often racial impersonation is at the service of racism:  Minority actors simply rejected sight unseen by audiences and casting directors.

Occasionally it is a little less offensive; there’s at least an attempt to portray the minority character benignly.

Charlie Chan is the most notable example, with the four actors playing him in the sound era all being whites using tinted skin and eyefold appliances.

Chan was intended as a positive role model, and watched in that context the movies are not consciously insulting.

But in a wider context, casting against ethnic or racial type is fraught with danger.

On stage, where a multi-ethnic cast may play the Scots of MacBeth or the Thais of The King And I or the Ozark hillbillies of Li’l Abner, the sheer artifice of theatricality allows audiences to overlook casting against ethnicity.

Patrick Stewart famously played Othello against an all African-American supporting cast, and stage productions where multi-ethnic casts play biological family members are readily accepted.

But film and TV impersonations (with the exception of comedy skits that play towards theatrical tropes) are supposed to be real and convincing.  Trying to pass off any performer as a different ethnicity, particularly a significantly different one physically, risks alienating a huge portion of one’s audience.

But…it can be done…if one earns it…and The 7 Faces Of Dr. Lao earns it.

It is not a universally loved film:  It’s corny and derivative and producer / director George Pal steers the production with an unsteady hand, but it also possesses heart and soul and more than a little philosophy that turns out to be surprisingly profound.

If you love it, you’re going to really love it.  If you’re going to stub your toe on the clunky parts, there’s a lot of clunky parts for a lot of toes.

So, is Tony Randall’s turn as Dr. Lao + 6 other characters an acceptable case of cultural appropriation / ethnic impersonation or not?

Well, consider…

In the context of the story Dr. Lao is a quintessential Trickster come to a remote American West town to teach the good -- and not-so-good -- citizens a thing or two.  As a Trickster, he employs a variety of methods to divert attention and deflect questions, including a grab bag of voices, accents, and dialects.  He speaks most often in refined, flawless, unaccented English, but switches to sing-song “Chinee” pidgin when people start getting too inquisitive.  Exactly who he is could be anyone’s guess since most of his cultural references are European and Greek while his few Asian references are dismissed as lies and fabrications.  So for an Asian character to be portrayed by an Anglo-looking Jewish-American actor works in the story itself since Dr. Lao as a character is shown to be a fictional construct overlaying the real yet still hidden persona.

In the context of the film, Randall the actor plays a wide variety of human and non-human characters:  Dr. Lao (presumably Asian, not necessarily human), Merlin (Anglo, human), Apollonius (Greek, human with disability), Pan (Greek, non-human), Medusa (Greek, non-human female), The Abominable Snowman (Asian, non-human), and the voice of The Great Serpent (Biblical, presumably Middle-Eastern, non-human).  (Randall also appears in a one-shot cameo sans make-up as a spectator at Dr. Lao’s circus.)  So the film sets itself up as the kind of movie where part of the deliberate artifice is that one actor will play multiple characters and actively invites the audience to search for him among the rest of the cast (the irony being that The Abominable Snowman in the film was played by a bodybuilder made up to look like Tony Randall wearing Snowman make-up; Randall only donned the make-up for publicity photos).  From that perspective, Randall could have been replaced by any comparable actor of any ethnicity or gender and the end result would have been the same.

In the context of theme, transformation and illusion are crucial foundations upon which the story is built, with several characters loaning their appearance to others (including a sea monster that sprouts 6 extra heads, all of them characters Randall played).  And this does not touch on transformations of heart and soul and mind and body that also take place, nor does it take into consideration that Dr. Lao never appears in the same shot with any of the other characters, suggesting all of them are really him (in fact, except for the Abominable Snowman pulling The Great Serpent’s cage in the parade and the aforementioned sea monster scene, none of the characters played by Randall appear together).  The possibility that anything and everything is either malleable or an illusion permeates the film and calls into question whether Randall’s various performances themselves are self-referential to this theme.

The 7 Faces Of Dr. Lao is based on Charles G. Finney’s novel The Circus Of Dr. Lao and bears the same relationship to its source as the film L.A. Confidential shares with James Elroy’s novel (i.e., same theme, and several characters and plot points port over, but otherwise totally different).

The screenplay is credited to Charles Beaumont but how much he actually contributed is in doubt. Beaumont, a prolific short story and TV writer in the 1950s, suffered a severe physiological and cognitive decline in the early 1960s.  Many of his post 1963 credits were actually written in part or in total by writer friends who wanted to ensure his wife and children received health care and residuals after his death.

Most of the script is probably the work of Ben Hecht, the incredibly prolific Chicago crime reporter turned novelist / playwright / movie producer.  Hecht, well known for 1930s gangster films and screwball comedies, also possessed a taste for the fantastic and macabre (read his novel Fantazius Mallare for a sample of his imaginative writing).  He died in 1964, shortly after The 7 Faces Of Dr. Lao’s release, but screenplays he’d written or worked on continued being produced for decades after that.

When work on the screenplay started is unclear.  Hecht’s style seems more in tune with Finney’s than Beaumont’s, but Beaumont in his prime would have been an excellent choice as an adaptor. 

The 7 Faces Of Dr. Lao addresses the issue of racial prejudice quite directly, and while all three writers involved are known for their firm stands in favor of racial equality, to me the final flourishes belong to Hecht.  Early in the film one grizzled old Western character wonders if Dr. Lao is “a Jap” and is immediately corrected by one of his friends who correctly identifies Dr. Lao (or at least the clothes he is wearing) as Chinese. When asked how he knows this, the friend replies:  “Because I ain’t stupid.”

Through out the film there are examples of racism and racial prejudices being confronted and confounded, and by the end even the chief antagonist has come to change his ways.

Producer / director George Pal holds a venerated place in the history of fantastic cinema, but his own career was dotted with racially problematic works.  Pal, a Hungarian animator who brought his Puppetoon films to Hollywood, did not harbor the racial animosity of many white Americans, but his visual style was influenced by American stereotypes.

Pal made several short films featuring a character named Jasper, based on African-American culture as seen through white eyes.  One can look at those films and tell Pal did not make them with malicious intent, but unintended stereotypes sting just as badly as deliberate ones.

To his credit, Pal responded to criticisms of the Jasper shorts by making John Henry and the Inky Poo, using more physiologically accurate puppets to depict the legendary African-American folk hero.

When Pal segued into live action feature films, he tended to avoid racial issues by avoiding racial minorities.  Conquest Of Space featured a Japanese astronaut but When Worlds Collide shows only white people surviving the end of the world.  The Naked Jungle’s white plantation owner browbeats native workers into fighting off a massive swarm of army ants, and Pal’s last film Doc Savage tried to recapture the feel of 1930s pulp adventures but unfortunately dredged up native stereotypes of that era as well.

Pal’s feature career is rather uneven:   When he made a good film it was really good, when he misfired it was a resounding dud. The 7 Faces Of Dr. Lao marks the beginning of the end of his active career.  It faltered at the box office and while it shows he clearly wanted to move into more mature, more thoughtful films, his family friendly reputation trapped him.  It took him four years to produce his next film, The Power, an edgy for the era sci-fi thriller, then seven years after that for his last movie, the remarkably unappealing Doc Savage, a kiddee matinee pastiche.

Back to the issue of racial impersonation.

As stated above, it’s very, very difficult to justify racial or ethnic impersonations today.  The 7 Faces Of Dr. Lao is one of the extremely rare cases where it can be excused, if not justified, based on the particular (if not downright peculiar) elements of the story and the intent behind them. 

 © Buzz Dixon