#(maybe just 'cultural imperialism' tbh)

[aeide-thea]

[ID: Screenshots of a conversation between Todd Fernando and Zoë Coombs Marr, subtitled as follows:

How we conceive gender and sexuality today is an import of colonisation. So the evidence that has been passed down orally‚ you know, gives us a clear indication that Aboriginal sexualities were a thing. To unpack what that thing is is very personal and I think very intimate for Aboriginal people. And it’s intimate because it was stripped in such a violent way. Aboriginal forms of sexuality were eroded on this continent while colonial sexuality was evolving. There is evidence of practices of homosexuality, which anthropologists described as barbaric and disgusting and beastly. And that’s the laws coming through of England in, you know, being used as a weapon to describe savages. And so talking about sexuality and gender identity became a closed practice that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people do still to this day.

/end ID]

Todd Fernando, a queer-identified descendant of the Kalarie peoples of the Wiradjuri nation, has been Victoria's Commissioner for the LGBTIQ+ Communities since 2021. He holds a PhD in medical anthropology from the University of Melbourne.

Zoë Coombs Marr, an award-winning comedian and 'professional lesbian,' is the presenter of the Queerstralia documentary series.

QUEERSTRALIA (2022) Episode 1 dir. Stamatia Maroupas

[fatfemmefreaquency]

Europeans criticizing the traditional spiritual practices of non-western cultural groups really be out here saying shit like “no this is my emotional support xenophobia/ racism/ eurocentrism/ orientalism. Let me call the non-westerners ‘primitive thinkers” and ‘anti-science’ as a treat”

maybe don’t? idk.

some of y’all need to learn to critically assess when other cultures’ cultural practices aren’t yours to dispute, interrogate, and/or criticize. (pretty much never. criticize your own culture and criticize white/ European culture—but critiquing the cultural behaviour of a culture that isn’t actively oppressing your own is just cultural imperialism and white saviorism masquerading as “discourse”)

if you’re writing from the west and with a western-centric perspective: perhaps just don’t. let other people—more qualified people with an emic (non-outsider) perspective on those cultures do the work.

[germiyahu]

Maybe an ethnostate is an inherently dangerous and immoral idea. What has happened when other people tried to establish ethnostates?

Well firstly, Israel is not an ethnostate. There is no equivalent policy of Israelification or Judaification as there was (tbh is) with Russification, or historic and contemporary Arabization, Modi's attempts at Hindutva, Erdogan's extreme backsliding into ethnonationalism, etc.

Israel is a liberal democratic state. Some Arabs rejected citizenship, as is their right to do so on principled grounds. But most other groups who are not Israeli Jews have implicitly accepted the Social Contract of a modern liberal democratic state. They receive equal rights under the Law (which is enforceable), and they're aware that they're not the majority and that not every aspect of their culture will cater to them or center them.

Most of the country coming to a standstill on Shabbat could be a sign of an ethnostate, but if municipalities don't want to observe Shabbat, there are no enforceable laws that allow anyone to stop them from ignoring Shabbat. And if there are/were, they were much more frequently levied against other Jews.

Israel has historically not cared if its non Jewish citizens practice their own faiths, speak their own languages, observe their own cultural traditions. Jews do not proselytize. If Israel truly were an ethnostate we'd see a repeat of the Edomites being forcibly converted by John Hyrcanus. The reason this hasn't happened is not because Jews are "disgusted" by Palestinians, for the record. A majority of Israeli Jews look identical to Palestinians and historically spoke Judeo-Arabic. It's simply not necessary for any government to function to pursue an assimilationist policy. It's not a priority among any stream of Judaism or any sub-cultural group of Jews.

People's discomfort with a Jewish majority state, that utterly and thoughtlessly centers Jewish culture (through symbols, the calendar, the weekly/monthly/yearly cycle, holidays, etc.) is rooted in antisemitism. Because it's abhorrent to see Jews running the show. It's new, it's weird, it's even a little insulting. It's not the Natural Order of things. It's unfair. This is a primal Judenhass gene being activated, and it applies to everything related to Jews. There's an inherent hypocrisy in most people when it comes to Jews.

Even in a country like Japan which is considered by fascists to be an Ethnostate, that belies the diversity of the country. An ethnostate is not a state with a majority or supermajority of one ethnicity, nor is it a state that has implicit biases toward that majority ethnic group. An ethnostate must legally uphold the supremacy of the ethnic group in question and at best make no attempt to extend equal rights to any minorities. At worst, it will attempt to assimilate them or exterminate them.

Secondly, what happens in real genuine ethnostates? Well to name a few examples: the Apartheid system of Imperial Russia, with the accompanying pogroms that led to the collapse of the Pale of Settlement which ushered in the largest Jewish migration in history. The effects of this system are still being felt today, not just by Jews. The whole reason Putin and most Russians feel entitled to Ukrainian land and feel threatened by a Ukrainian identity is because Russification considered Russians Belarussians and Ukrainians the same people (which meant Belarussians and Ukrainians were to be forcibly assimilated by Russians).

Here's another example: Kurds in Turkey are still not considered a legally recognized ethnic group. They can't even spell their own names correctly because they have letters in their alphabet that do not occur in Turkish, and Turkish is the only language of state (Turkey as a modern state was heavily influenced by France and it shows). Kurds are routinely suspected of being PKK members and whole towns were bulldozed to make room for Syrian refugees, as a collective punishment against the Kurdish insurgency (which restarted amid the war with ISIS).

Saudi Arabia is an ethnostate, as are most of the Gulf Monarchies. Citizenship is a privilege only enjoyed by the Khaleeji Arabs, even though they're a minority in most of their own countries. Palestine is also an ethnostate, citizenship and rights are only offered to those who are deemed Palestinians. Nobody else is allowed to live there. The Israelis who illegally live in the West Bank have to be propped up by a military occupation and have to have Israeli laws stretched over the border to encompass them, because they would not ever be allowed to even live in the West Bank, much less be afforded any rights or citizenship. This is not just Palestine's fault, this was a precedent set by Jordan. The oldest of all Jewish communities in Palestine were all cleansed by Jordanian troops, banished from their lands and never allowed to return.

I hope you can see that ethnostates are not very compatible with liberal democracies, as liberal democracies by definition and by tradition have universal human rights (at least in the West). It is authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that typically strive for an ethnostate. There are shades of ethnostatitude in democracies, such as France, which uses civic identity as the privileged "ethnicity," and that civic identity happens to be French, which means everyone must be culturally French and speak French. Though it's not violently enforced there is a state policy of ignoring all minorities and their cultures. And of course Turkey, which has always been a flawed democracy, but is increasingly becoming dictatorial and wouldn't you know, the more authoritarian it becomes, the more Turkishness is a central component of Erdogan's goals and policies.

Are there Israelis who want Israel to be an ethnostate? Why yes, but are they significant or relevant beyond appointing Ben-Gvir as a token gesture to this radical fringe? Not really, though there's an alarming capacity for them to increase their numbers. Is any of that relevant to the daily functions and moral "core" of Israel as a nation? Not at all. If you don't judge any other state by it's worst most obnoxious most supremacist actors, why judge Israel that way? Is it those Judenhass Genes again?

[thelockedasshole]

Tbh I hate any interpretation of Paul TLT that views their fusion as unhealthy outside of the lens of the text specifically.

Like, what TaMuir is saying about it? Sure. What the narrative is saying about it? Absolutely.

But as a system who has a complex relationship with both temporary and permanent fusion, acting as if two people becoming one is inherently unhealthy and codependent and just... bad - well, it honestly kinda sucks. Also let's be clear moralizing and valorizing health, especially as defined by our current psychiatric system OR cultural/subcultural norms separate from that is not a guarantee of moral rightness or "purity".

(To be very clear, unless it is entirely by choice and absent of pressure or coercion to the fullest extent possible, we are against final fusion, and we're happiest when our system is overall expanding. But smaller fusions in a literal infinite system? A non-issue, that's the individual member's choice.)

Idk it's just like. Why can't the creation of Paul be something to grieve AND celebrate? Why can't Camilla and Palamedes becoming one be about how love is destructive and that's part of its beauty?

For that matter, are we sure that TaMuir or the narrative she's constructed is unequivocally, diagetically or otherwise, condemning the act as unhealthy, destructive, or wrong? Hasn't a recurrent theme of these books been that love at its best intentioned and most balanced is still something that takes? While so much of this is explicitly about hierarchical power structures and colonialism/imperialism, what about the way people change each other indelibly no matter how they try not to, what about you can't take loved away, what about showing how a (found) family can be inherently broken and unhealthy and still be worth it?

What about the complexity of the way the power imbalance between necro and cav essentially gets swapped while Camilla carries Palamedes in her body, where he didn't have much say in being pulled back and kept tethered, where she used them being unable to be present at the same time to lie to him and try to manipulate his actions?

What about that all of this is complex, and the locked tomb constantly looks at the erotic in the profane, treats horror and arousal as two sides of the same kind, takes "romantic" both is the classical and current cultural sense, says "love is erosion and maybe the canyon left by it is not all pure and perfect but maybe it doesn't have to be. Maybe it's okay and maybe it's not and maybe it's both."

Anyway back to my original point if I'm being honest a lot of things in tlt read as plural and I have some personal issues with how a LOT of that is handled but. My flawed and biased interpretations of the text aside I wish we could at LEAST keep discusssions moralization of fusion and other plural-analogues in tlt to examinations of textual/narrative and authorial intent.

[turian]

beloved gamer mutual & comrade @rhubarbspring tagged me to do a video game about me ( tysm for tagging !! truly loved reading all ur game thoughts. <3 ) explanations behind my choices under the cut.

(also, i had to cheat a little bit in the "you love, everyone hates" category, because i don't think people on tumblr hate da2, but one of my best friends despises it because of reused assets and combat designed more for consoles than pcs. and i can't remember any other controversial beloved games right now. the best i can do is games i love that i'm not sure anyone remembers? imagine ubisoft ballet? which, like. do people hate that. i don't think so).

tagging @cowsquirrel @malcriada @sakraya @ansburg @anoramactir + literally anyone i might have missed who wants to do this

favourite game of all time: so, look, i hate her as much as i love her. i always go back to new vegas even though i have a lot of criticisms of it - i had a realization recently after the release of the fallout show that while maybe i was projecting intergenerational trauma onto the game and using it to process some things, there is a lot in the game that is extremely imperialistic, even as it dabbles in anti imperialism. i can't get into all that here - better essays than i'm capable of have already been written on new vegas - but i also have to admit that new vegas taught me to see game writing differently, and helped me a great deal in improving my own writing. it's also just really entertaining playing later games by obsidian and picking out the new vegas elements. i think that new vegas gets praised too readily for being progressive when in reality it's only the most progressive game in the fallout franchise, and i think every time i return to it i'm noticing one more thing that'll kind of be making my eye twitch. but, yeah, i think it would also be dishonest to not include it here, regardless of my mixed feelings, because i keep going back, and because there are so many angles to it, and because i keep catching myself comparing other games to it.

i think a lot about like........... how so many themes i can relate to exist within the narrative of new vegas, but that doesn't feel entirely intentional. like, benny is so real to me because ! he was forced to assimilate into this culture that was not his to survive. and ulysses as well. and like!!!! yeah idk. going insane. i feel very similarly about dragon age elves tbh i'm like okay i feel seen but also this game is racist! kms :') will be projecting hard and taking so much psychic damage

many such cases tho </3 baldur's gate 3 and their treatment of the gur is always going to be a mix of relatable and uncomfortable to me

favourite series: soulsborne! i like how bleak it is, love the theme of death and rebirth, love how thankless the games can be, and i also love how the combat reminds me of muay thai. had a coach explain something to me using dark souls combat as an example once. i didn't really get these games at first, until i saw my best friend playing - she is ridiculously good at them - and then i sort of realized that they're just combat puzzles, and that like... they're kind of about honing patience, i guess? and after that they really became my favourite.

best soundtrack: honorary mentions: mass effect and dark souls both have some individual tracks i revisit on the daily, and skyrim's secunda is beautiful. but hollow knight doesn't miss, and i love how every track matches its environment.

favourite protagonist: i grew up in a really dysfunctional somewhat criminal family so like... lol. i feel seen when i look at arthur morgan <3 him and charles are both close to my heart. john can stay too ig

favourite villain: SO okay, maybe this is cheating a little, but. the reapers from mass effect. went into that game with zero spoilers, and finding out that they were in fact cosmic horror games was so <3

this would probably have gone to new vegas except benny (and also ulysses + i think he's more narrative foil than antagonist, as is benny) literally did nothing wrong in my eyes and after that point it's like... who is the main antagonist? the ncr and legion both? like yeah they're interesting but...

best story: i haven't actually finished pathologic on my own yet. kind of obsessed, though. just feels responsible to put it here. honorary mentions to new vegas, some fromsoft titles, twd, imagine ubisoft ballet........ (i love her and i miss her).

i feel like a lot of story games i've played actually have garbage stories with good characters, which is why they're not here. baldur's gate 3 and ME, for example. or like... ME has a great story at first but they fuck up the ending so badly that a popular theory i've heard passed around essentially boils down to "it was all a dream!"

have not played but want to: i was actually supposed to apply for a job with the team that made these games !! i didn't because it would have required relocation to the US, but. idk i feel like they keep showing up, always highly recommended, and i think i own one? so yeah, i should really get around to that.

you love, everyone hates: again, i cheated on this one. i don't think people on here hate dragon age 2.

you hate, everyone loves: skyrim, detroit: become human, stardew valley (because it's a weird little cottagecore colonialism game but also because i don't really vibe with the art style and i get stressed as fuck in it because nothing is happening... it is simply not for me), and fallout 3 and 4 (because they're masquerading as games with choices but they fully aren't, they suffer from bethesda writing, and they are super unapologetically racist and imperialist). i mean like... not mad at any of my friends who like these games i just cannot play them. i don't really think any of the games on my list are unimpeachable, tbf.

favourite art style: disco elysium !! it's so <3 like, i also love it for other reasons!! but every time i play it i end up wanting to draw.

favourite ending: new vegas has four endings. i feel differently about them all, but the independent ending is very much shaped by the infrastructure the player assembles during a playthrough, and while it is maybe imperfect and very open ended in some ways i like how it doesn't really reassure the player. also, i really like certain elden ring endings and the dark souls 1 ending. and pathologic.

favourite boss fight: hollow knight has a lot i've really enjoyed (particularly hornet's). for elden ring, malenia is the fave, tho <3 when i defeat her i tend to feel really disappointed. like, get up. let's go again. parrying her is extremely satisfying.

childhood game: we like... found out we had some cousins which is wild because this has been a tiny family since Certain Incidents A Long Time Ago and they also had nintendo ds access and they were not into this game. and like... look, i'm not saying it's great, but it had dark souls ish combat? like, you could lock on? you could roll? and i ended up replaying it as an adult and being like. huh. not that bad.

+ imagine ubisoft ballet ily

relaxing games: distance, injustice 2 (i main red hood & black canary but i like playing robin too. it's super imbalanced and they still haven't nerfed starfire !! and it's incredibly funny like good for her), dark souls 1, and elden ring.

stressful games: again stardew valley because i would play with friends and it was like oh god i need to leave. i do not know what to do, i am useless, i am understimulated

+ red dead online is not a good game to play without substantial backup . so glad i had horse insurance because if i hadn't my only friend in that world would be dead. that said, i did like to hunt in that game + play the fps levels with groups

games you always come back to: new vegas but maybe she'll release me someday. idk. also unfortunately i didn't include it earlier but i keep going back to the sims 4 and baldur's gate 3. and fromsoft titles because i sometimes just crave that combat.

guilty pleasure: new vegas again!!! i guess i kind of talked about my extremely complicated feelings when i first spoke about it, but yeah. there's just so much to unpack and i'm never going to forgive it for a lot of things. the horrors and the joys are both numerous but the joys will never not be tainted by the horrors

tons of hours played: elden ring + bg3 + new vegas + mass effect. i don't have the hours of new vegas and mass effect available tho as they are confined to a now dead xbox 360

[kal-sharok]

Hi!! If you’re willing to talk about it/up for it I’d love to hear more about the slavophobia BioWare has in relation to their dwarves. No pressure at all of course bc I’m sure it’s taxing, I’ve just not seen this before and would love a resource to reblog about it if that’s okay. Thank you love your blog ❤️

hello! im actually glad you asked, i'll try to be as coherent as possible 😅 and no u i love yr blog!!

i'd like to preface by saying i don't think bioware invented anti-slavic sentiment in games or in general and isn't the only company, game or otherwise, perpetuating it. it's found all over the western world, most notably in western europe (where we're still regarded as 2nd class citizens, pairs really well with imperialism towards people outside of europe imo), but it also gained a significant boost thanks to the red scare in usa in particular (and continues to thrive thanks to the absolute chokehold mediocre american media keeps everything else in the world in).

im also no social sciences expert, but i do have first-hand experience on the short end of the stick and a couple of books in my have read list so let's say im qualified to rant on 🤭 it turned out quite lengthy so i've hidden it under the cut below!

when it comes to bioware, the first hurdle is already at their utterly haphazard character naming policy. there's a considerable number of dwarves who bear names that range from mockingly slavic-esque to full-blooded backwater serbian, now in yr local fantasy rpg! examples:

gorim saelac. while i do appreciate they tried to give a dwarf a mountain-y name (gora is basically any kind of steep pile of rocks with trees and dew and wildlife over it), "gorim" is how you would say "i am burning" in multiple slavic languages. this is one of the rare ones that are not hurtful and are hilarious instead (and tbh naming him goran, which is what i assumed they were going for, would probably be more ridiculous in the long run. for example i still can't take jowan seriously despite my love for the mage origin bc someone really yassified jovan and thought nobody would notice. wrong!)

lucjan and myaja. these two (along with maybe wojech "we couldn't spell wojciech" ivo) are the classic example of non-slavs butchering the hell out of slavic names bc it suits them better, which is also something commonly experienced by all non-western cultures and communities and a worldwide sign of disrespect. the in-game pronunciation during the provings gave me a physical rash. "myaja" in particular is still in my top 5 wtf moments in origins bc 1) what kind of stroke induced spelling is that 2) it reminds me of kids speaking dialect A mocking kids' dialects B by adding y sounds (which is what set the dialects apart in the first place) at unnatural spots and 3) maja /ma-ya/ would've sufficed perfectly for ethnic coding if that was the sole purpose of her character. do better! sure it was 2009 but from the little i happen to know about the world beyond the atlantic, you're just bound to run into someone of slavic descent in alberta (maybe not exactly polish but anyone would give you a closer phonetics match than... this). it's kind of amusing how 3 of bioware's founders have very slavic surnames and this keeps happening.

bogdan vasca. we don't know anything about him apart from the fact bianca davri was forced into a marriage with him and that his very dwarven parents considered him to be 'a gift from the god' (which is what his name means. theodore would be an equivalent) when naming him. the same clan of dwarves that preserved castes topside (which is why the marriage was arranged) and thus are likely to either believe in the stone (that they do not worship as a god) or nothing, certainly not a very human god with a very human, quite possibly mage (a completely alien concept from common dwarven pov) prophetess and a very human doctrine of considering anyone not human as lesser. the jokes are writing themselves at this point.

all of this naming business falls more into petty territory rather than being outright offensive, but it does bring us to the more serious manifestation — typecasting. the western media simply cannot fathom slavic people in roles that are not violent, volatile (i.e. berserkers, though there are other influences in there), constantly infighting and better off killing e/o (i.e. the diamond quarter, the merchants' guild, the carta) and relating back to thievery, addictive abusable substances and trafficking (i.e. the carta, but also official channels of lyrium supply from orzammar to the rest of thedas). as a slavic woman, it was exceptionally painful to see bioware join virtually everyone else in depicting us as women whose major purpose seems to be to engage in prostitution and surrogacy lite (i.e. noble hunters, most evident in beraht's grooming of rica brosca into the role of one). while these practices are tied to societies of woman-hating — and orzammar, if not all of thedas very much is one — i just take incredible offence in someone naming them integral (dwarven birth rates and the blight anyone?? i hated every moment of that) for a society that's previously been coded with people like myself in mind. of course im going to relate to how someone who looks like me is treated, that's the very purpose of casting. doesn't help bioware's cause that the bulk of npc's with slavic names tend to be lower-caste or castless - with exceptions such as some minor noble houses (houses ivo and harrowmont, possibly meino too) and branka (who's again smith-born and a whole villain).

by only allowing us to fulfill such roles, we are effectively barred from actually engaging storytelling to spend our eternity on the writers' back-burner. hell, even the witcher has been sanitized for the western eye (despite literally being made in poland) and i am yet to find a piece of modern media that doesn't reduce baba yaga to a quirky chicken-legged aesthetic (while also forgetting she's specific to the eastern slavic people). not to mention that if tevinter and par vollen are truly inspired by byzantine and the ottoman empire respectively, guess which mfs were both their vasals. now guess who built the deep roads and guess what tevene mages need to fuel their magic. if dwarves have already been declared the slavs of thedas, let's at least give them/us some space to be such.

[determinate-negation]

“ people on here r rly like 'attraction to big people is fetishistic, attraction to small people is pedophilic, having sexual thoughts about a real person is objectifying and basically harassment (and having them about fictional people is perverted), kinky sex is immoral, if youre open about your sex life in any way youre a pervert, if youre not open about them you are queerbaiting. basically you should be completely sexless while everything you do is sexualized and up for debate/speculation. this is good for the Igbt community' ”. Saw this post and it reminded me of the somewhat cold take you made the other day about bdsm being rooted in colonialism and militarism… Obviously not everything written in this post but yeah. Did you delete it bc you changed ur mind or? Just curious. Do you think something is “amoral” and should be avoided if its roots are colonial? What about reclamation by oppressed groups? Like historical queer subcultures? Leather daddies etc.

didnt change my mind, i deleted it bc in the comments i was talking about my own personal experiences and tbh i dont feel comfortable having it up publicly. i didnt say people are immoral for their preferences, that would be ignorant of how human sexuality actually functions. tbh i didnt say anything similar to the quoted post you sent me, just pointed out a historical reality. as i said in the post i dont pass judgement or think anyone is problematic for shit, or think they should try to avoid it, because i think its out of peoples control for the most part. even though of course sadism and masochism have been present in human society for centuries so much of it coalesced during specific periods of western history. i think its just stupid to brush past that and see sexual practices as just ahistorical things with no deeper psychic significance. a lot of practices that are part of bdsm now or have influenced themes, cultural icons, etc in bdsm shit today are connected to western culture, and, in non western cases to empires and imperial culture. the namesake of sadism was a french enlightenment writer and the namesake of masochism was an austrian romanticist writer. both of their writing is indicative of the historical context and people have written a lot about the philosophical influence theyve had. back to the colonial thing… what i was more specifically talking about was significance of military academies, colonial troops, and boarding schools- highly stratified social relations with specific relations to violence and control- in influencing the experiences of early s&m writers or artists, and their continued impact on aesthetics and themes of culture today. and also the popularity of sadomasochistic literature in europe during the 1800s, a period of time of heightening of imperial relations and colonial expansion. is it not interesting to you that the majority of older material concerning bdsm originated in france, germany, britain, and austria. still some of the main exporters today probably. can you really say theres no cultural drive sustaining that. so yeah its kind of cringe to me when people are like “bdsm is all about making someone feel loved uwu” like its actually so corny. maybe its just an cultural outgrowth of a psychic phenomenon thats been exacerbated by class society and western obsession with discipline violence control and subjugation. sadomasochism as a psychic phenomenon includes a lot of psychological and sexual behavior and bdsm i guess is one part of it, but cant be separated from the rest of its manifestations. this phenomenon as whole seems to me at least to be obviously a historical product, and a product of childhood experiences and one’s earliest human relations, also characterized by power relations and in the west, western culture ofc. im coming to this from a psychoanalytic perspective so tbh “reclamation by oppressed groups” doesnt really even fit into this. i dont care what people do and thats cool if it works for them. i dont get it though. im sure there are plenty of people for whom its just a fun thing and they compartmentalize whatever but thats not the reality for many other people. if you want to talk to me about this more message off anon because i have a lot of opinions but it honestly is a personal topic and i dont want share details about my life publicly to justify why i think all of this

[stealingpotatoes]

another ask answering post woah

got a few Long asks last night/yesterday so I'm just gonna answer all in a post instead of taking up everyone's dashes or trying to give small answers!!

featuring some skywalkers apart au, rey skywalker-djarin au, timejump au, and random other star war:

@just-prime KEEP THE UNHINGED DINLUKE RAMBLES TO A MAXIMUM ACTUALLY!!!

YOU'RE SO RIGHT i hadn't even thought of it like this!!! partly bc I just think of Luke like... not being too unhealthy abt Jedi stuff bc unlike Disney I wouldn't give him a complete personality transplant loll. BUT YEAH!!! Luke being happier and getting that differing perspective would so help him be a better teacher and give everyone less mental health issues!!

also what i'm hearing overall is they can fix ben with:

@cherrypine6 awww thank you!!! I'm currently not sure, I've got a scene w him written but I really don't know whether I'm keeping it in or not -- guess we're both gonna find out loll!!!

@mydearestblue LETS GOOOOO high praise thank u <3

@aberrations-reality OOHHHHHH!!! unfortunately leia's in her normal outfit and it doesn't go down quite like that but OHHHHHHH at the idea,,,

tbh I don't think Palpatine would oppress Naboo culture loads, but I do think he'd put an insane imperial presence there to protect his homeworld even tho it's ultimately doing more harm than good ): ...and higher imperial presence means he's more likely to catch padme w anakin if he ever visits

@erkhyan I had not!! thank you!! they're eli vanto kinning fr

thanks for the heads up anon!! i dont think i'll block them bc they seem respectful abt it & tag all their discourse/ don't tag it as characters + i think it's fair anakin maybe one of my faves of all time but ya know, he's a bit of a shit person, i get ppl who don't like him lolll <3 but still thank you for telling me!!! nice to know these things

[useless-englandfacts]

sorry for the weird ask and the follow up rn, im just. extremely baffled and experiencing some sort of culture shock. were they the flags of the german empire? or like, regular modern germany? why on earth would that offend anyone? i guess it could be a faux pas to wear the german imperial flag around the families of british ww1 survivors, but uh, come on, not to make this about death tolls but literally ww1 was so much more traumatic to the german soldiers. how do you not feel compassion after 100 years.

maybe its a me problem since i live in a country of which the population got drafted into various armies of opposite sides for ww1, so there is no one side favorised in our historical politics and historiography, but. what the fuck.

Yeah no I get how this is confusing to people who don’t live where I do, especially those in the younger generation.

I live in a small town where the population is a lot older and they have very set views on who were the “goodies and baddies” in the wars. And the baddies to them are always the Germans. Even in regards to ww2 I’ve never spoken to someone who cared about the other Axis countries, but these people fucking HATE Germany.

My coat is a 1960s era khaki jacket with a small modern german flag on either sleeve. This gained me more dirty looks than my funky hair and multiple facial piercings have ever gotten me.

As much as we in the younger generation now understand the nuances of war and who the real victims were, this doesn’t matter to a lot of people in real life. A lot of people don’t use the internet in the way we do, and they don’t have any interest in changing their views on who the aggressors were.

In my area and tbh with a lot of people I’ve met who don’t use the internet a lot, it’s a very simple “Germany bad England good”. No nuance, no conversation.

Also we have a surprising amount of propaganda taught to us in schools without us realising. No one really teaches us about the atrocities we as a nation committed, or about the widespread support for the Nazi party before the holocaust. People cling onto these beliefs very tightly both nationally and in my area specifically.

The truth doesn’t matter, just what people believe, and they believe generally that me wearing my coat accidentally is a personal affront to them and the deceased. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[uldren-sov]

🖊️ + Elora Starwars? 👀

Ms. Elora Starwars, if you're nasty.

Tyty!!!

( art by @artofzofia !! mwah!!)

Some more about the Empire! More Sith culture! Some Sith philosophy!

So have to start this out by saying I don't agree with a lot of the writeups about the Empire not being as bad as it seems, it's worse. Maybe I'm just more sensitive to the subject, but beyond the cartoonishly evil moments, it is smarter and crueler than that as well.

The Empire is a massive machine that has worked thus far because it grew bloated in isolation while the Republic thrived. Even that kind of beginning will show just how the emergence back into the galaxy at whole should frame a lot of perspectives. It was and continues to be an insular society that prides itself on the ubiquitous homogeneity of who is given power. (Apparently both the Mirialan and Cathar home planets are a part of the Empire, you don't see a lot of them in DK do you?)

So, given this frame of mind! And the fact that it is Dromund Kaas is the capital planet of the Empire, not Ziost, I think she does feel ostracized from the start of her exile (around 13 ish years old), by being from Ziost which has more of the cultural heritage of the Sith Empire from ancient times that was then reclaimed. Further, it had New Adasta, which was the gateway to the Empire as well as where you go to trade with the Empire. So as she grows up, she already had more access to cultural history, that does not exist in DK outside of stories and the ability to interact with other people in this very tailored exposure to the rest of the galaxy, that doesn't exist in DK.

She's spent most of her life angry and frustrated at the Empire due to the restraints placed upon her by Sith and Imperial society in Dromund Kaas versus Ziost given, in some way, Ziost had to give the facsimile of being open to the rest of the galaxy, and could not be as earnest in its invidiousness as it is in DK.

So given this emphasis on actual Imperial history and ancient Sith artifacts, teachings, etc. She felt a connection to that aspect of the Empire more than anything. It's why she had her tattoos done in traditional way, scarification, venom, and all!!!

So then with that gone, so too was so much of the history and left her once again kind of listless and apart from DK. Thankfully hatred, rage, and spite are typical of Sith, because one of her biggest complications now is, how can she have a home -- or save her home!!! -- when she feels once more separated from what is forced to be her home again. It's a complicated relationship where she hates what the Emperor did to her home and by extension hates the Empire for essentially letting it happen, hates most of the people in charge of the Empire still, but is loyal enough to it to want to try and make it better. She has no home but her family, her friends, and the amorphous idea of the Empire that will be undone if the Republic wins.

Also I've always liked how she's played with the Sith Code. Ideally it results in freedom and there are understandably many interpretations on how to achieve freedom through power beyond the obvious one. I enjoy an interpretation that is more personal to the Sith, gaining a kind of self assurance and power and confidence in oneself will set them free. And to a point it does! Imagine living without such self doubt! She subscribes to it a bit as well as how it plays into how the Empire is a "meritocracy". She uses assets more than she destroys them, she's converted Jedi rather than killing them, and all of it still add to her power which leads more often than not, to victory. And at least by now she has proof of concept! Through those victories she's broken some of the chains that the most hated parts of the Empire had kept her down with.

But some chains just aren't broken like that :)

Also thought of having her apprentice be a fallen Jedi but honestly what Sith in their right mind wants a teenager (or anyone tbh) around who's planning on killing them?

tiresome!!!!!!!!

so she's trained some of her friends and colleague's apprentices

and her first real apprentice is her dottir Cosima!

[ancat-dubh]

also i just saw the witchcraft ask meme so: 3, 27, 29 ✨

Ok slow on the uptake bc health flare but better late than never!

3. Opinions on fantasy depictions of witchcraft/paganism? Needs more perverts, hot werewolves, and state-toppling always, also absolutely a formative place for me finding my way into magic as a kid to the present tbh. And I think a useful gauge generally for how magic works in ostensibly ~secular cultures (e.g. Harry Potter isn't good art, but the magic system/culture imo is v revealing about the spiritual culture of British imperialism and class hierarchy).

My longtime favourites have been real deep political and spiritual teachers for me and I think it's good and healthy (for me at least, maybe for you too) to weave into our practice – I do ritual watches/reads of Princess Mononoke, Lord of the Rings, Parable of the Sower, and The Wickerman, recently loved N.K. Jemisin's Great Cities books as a way to articulate better how I understand urban magic, etc. Always vibed with 'negative' depictions of witchcraft/paganism that are queer, camp, horror, and/or S/M coded (The Devils (1971), The Love Witch, Midsommar, The VVitch, The Craft), tho I think those all really vary about how much they actually depict full-fledged magical/spiritual systems? so I think we limit ourselves only imagining magical practice within those genres, since they're so centred around (upholding, critiquing, or both) white, usually Christian Westernness. I deliberately wouldn't call most of these fantasy and absolutely none of these about 'witchcraft/paganism' since they're about non-white, culturally specific spiritual/religious/magical systems I'm not part of, but think I'd feel remiss in this question not acknowledging the debt I owe to media like Reservation Dogs, Rita Indiana's Tentacle, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and Hayao Miyazaki's canons in general, and Eloghosa Osunde's Vagabonds! in starting to develop my understandings of ancestral and spirit work, animism, magical power, and spiritual ethics/responsibility.

27. Are you confident in your beliefs? I think increasingly confident in the why and the who, increasingly overwhelmed by the what and the how, lmao. My practice is mostly DIY and only like, four years old-proper! So v content with letting things cook, and confident that that's good for me, that the spirits/deities I work with are real and need to be treated as such, that I have a good set of tools I'll keep refining and developing. I suspect I'll have less frequent? maybe? paradigm shifts in 5-10 years but especially since I'm not joining an existing tradition, who's to say!

29. Why are you a witch? What need does it serve? I resonate a lot with what you said both about it bringing me fully into conversation with the world, and also about it being just a true thing about me, similar to how some people just know they're trans. Maybe similar to how I think about transness, I think I understood it at a gut level early on, have lived many versions of it, and chose to step into it more actively and intentionally as I got older; it also feels like a natural tool and response, a necessary undertaking, to surviving and being in the world and in complete, full community with people, spirits, ancestors, land. Also I do just think it's very chic of us!

[birchbow]

I’m trying to envision Halore “social interactions are not my strongpoint” Travye navigating drone season - especially immediately after his breakup with Kurloz - and I cannot for the life of me see how it would happen unless there’s a cultural mechanism or tradition of playing drone season matchmaker for socially awkward, anxious, and depressed trolls - like, “sorry your relationship with Makara didn’t work out, but like, since you’re available . . . you wanna partner with my moirail whose matesprit died last sweep?”

Also also, since it is kind of a variant of the fuck-or-die trope, I can see so many troll dramas incorporating drone season as some major plot point. Although, maybe not with too much angst? Since I guess if a movie made you feel sad or angry enough about the whole situation, it would technically be seditious?

This is true, it's not his proudest season. But as with every other challenge he ends up facing, he stoically puts up with it lol. Present day as of PoF I'd imagine he mostly just kind of gets by in flush with somebody he finds tolerably attractive, and manages pitch by way of being very blunt baseline and then also a snarky bitch.

Right after he broke up with Kurloz he presumably was even less happy about it! But "hot, young, strong troll who's transparently broken up about losing somebody they cared about" seems like pretty good pity bait, so I could imagine that he managed to limp along on that until he started to get his feet back under him and got back his classic "Well Giving Up Isn't An Option So Let's Do The Damn Thing" personality lol.

RE: drone season in media, and seditious presentation of it, I've been going back and forth! I made mention real early on of drones and drone season and have never delivered on it because I've been percolating how I want to approach it sociologically, so here are I guess some drone thoughts.

As brutal and wild a system as it is to be like "there are drones that come and demand that you fuck", I am intrigued by the concept that those are just like, a natural part of the troll life-cycle. That the Mother Grub and her drones and the trolls are just all parts of the same species, who like insects can have wildly differing appearances and biological functions! And that in that way, drone season is actually like, outside the empire's control, and tbh super inconvenient for a powerful space-faring empire, since I'm of the assumption that the drones head out to trolls throughout the galaxy and continue to gather genetic material fairly regularly, showing up whenever they show up and triggering every troll in the area to contribute. Which means that like, sometimes the drones show up and if your soldiers don't have mates, they die? That could be real bad for your military!

Ofc it's possible and in fact almost inevitable for it to be politicized, and I'm sure there's some amount of spin RE: when you fuck you fuck for the empire, etc etc. But also if it's not actually the empire's doing, this is just how trolls work as a species (even on Beforus! a fascinating thought) the options for media rep of drone season get wider, I feel like.

If your characters don't want to contribute because "wahh, but contributing slurry to the meat grinder of the war machine BAD" then it wouldn't be acceptable, but it seems like a pretty reasonable point of drama to be like "oh man if I don't fuck I die, that's pretty upsetting" without having to be overtly seditious, as long as the drones are only sort of imperial in nature!

As with most of my xeno headcanons this is ofc subject to change with every different fic I write lol. But those are the thoughts I've been mulling around, at least as they pertain to the question!

[ivi-prism]

Is it bad that Netflix is adapting that book? Its a /gen question. You seem very interested in the book and mildly hostile to it being adapted

YES ITS BAD /j

Nah. I mean. Hm. Like. Objectively? Not bad!

Gabriel Garcia Marquez declined making a movie about One Hundred Years of Solitude and if it was up to him he would have liked a show more which makes perfect sense since its such a dense and long book there is no way to make it a movie. (The guy was a cinephile and wrote many movie screenplays so for him to go “I belive a show is better” is not a small thing).

Maybe there was/ is a way to make it a movie(s) but Gabo at the time was most likely avoiding that the book would receive the Hollywood treatment tm. Which makes perfect sense since the story themes and plot is so aggressively latine and specifically caribbean that if the story got adapted for Hollywood (usamericanized) it would have been a travesty.

And i mean that seriously. Book is not just very aggressively latine but it is very loudly anti usa imperialism and I’m not very confident that particular aspect would have survived back then. (Not fully confident it would survive today tbh)

Now! Netflix and the current media landscape we are in make it so a show can be produced in a way that it is in “terms” I find more agreeable to tackle a work like this. (Well kinda. If it’s short seasons then that will suck) It is an internationally produced show working with latine writers and directors, recording in Colombia and with Colombian actors.

That I like. But that alone won’t guarantee a good adaptation.

Am I opposed to an adaptation? No! It is great to have such a monumental work be adapted to a new medium so more people may be introduced to it! And I’m intrigued as to how they will do it. What changes to fit the new medium and what stays. It is a great creative excersie.

Still I am nervous over it X3

It could be a bad adaptation. Not because it may not be an exact copy but because on its attempts to translate the book to a show, it could lose very important things if the adaptation is badly done. And I care about the book greatly. Leaving aside it is a Nobel winning book, very important to the Spanish language, monumental to latinamerican literature, super mega important to Colombian culture. I, ivi “ivory” prism simply care about the book deeply and want the adaptation to succeed.

Even if its a great adaptation I would still sink my nails on the show and dissect it because I just would like to compare and see why it succeeded. Or maybe why it failed in case it is not a good adaptation.

Also regardless of if its good or bad I’d use the opportunity to talk more about the book and latinamerican literature and culture because is a hyper-fixation and I’d love to share and for more people to learn and maybe enjoy more (and even be more critical of the book) cause they have more context.

So yeah! Not opposed to the book being adapted. Nervous and excited over it X3

[jyndor]

I'm so sorry you've become the blog for andor discourse 😬 can I just say it's surprising nobody is talking about how white this cast and crew is? yea diego is the lead and there are still some poc in the cast (and as you've said a lot of the black characters die) my issues with the show can be blamed on the creative team. for example maarva is something a lot of people have said they have problems with and I think an indigenous, latinx, or black writer might have taken a different route or chosen to keep cassian with his birth family.

lmao anon naur I am definitely not Theee Blog for Andor Discourse there are plenty of people blogging about it.

but yeah I 10000000% agree. Andor is INCREDIBLY white. On screen and off screen.

I mean Diego is a white Latino, even if that means he's racialized weirdly in the US for Racialization Works Differently In Different Places reasons - I mean I am not equipped to delve into this and I don't think anyone needs to hear it from me LOL. But he is Cassian so lol I mean I doubt anyones gonna be mad at him for playing Cassian since he plays him in Rogue One 🤣 although there were idiots saying he was miscast bc he's idk too old which ... LOL he PLAYED CASSIAN IN ROGUE ONE.

But they could have easily fixed how white the show feels by A) not focusing so much on Mon Mothma and like idk the wealthy Coruscanti upper class, B) keeping Cassian's old backstory lbr lol but even if they wanted to change Fest to Kenari (😡)... let Cassian have his birth family, write an indigenous mother and father* who they are clearly trying to represent to some extent, and maybe even still tell the immigrant's story with the use of diaspora - have Cassian and his family move away from home. Instead of writing his mother as a white woman coded as being from the Global North who has STOLEN an indigenous child. Idk I'm really not the person to come up with that story, it's not for me.

As for Clem, that gets to what you're saying about how like all of the Black characters die. I've talked about how it seems like all of the dark skinned Black men die in violent ways but with relatively little fanfare in comparison to white characters. Clem has the most time spent in his death, but even then he is fucking hanged (and thank God they barely showed it jfc) and it's in service of a non-Black character's story. Darker skinned characters in general get less dialogue, less screen time and experience more direct trauma than lighter skinned characters. I know, I know - something something that's the point that's how fascism and racism works. Yeah but does anyone really think these white guy writers are the ones who should be telling that story?

Idk I think there's a good argument for showing how the harm done by imperialism and fascism differs for different people but again it's also like... yeah Black people should have been in the room in order to prevent anti-Blackness. Indigenous people - especially Nahuatl people and Sami (for Aldhani) people should have been in the room to make sure the show handles the characters who are clearly inspired by their cultures well.

And yeah I can't help it, Bix's treatment was not great imo. I get the point of it, but I wonder about how much it would have helped to have a diverse writers room. Maybe she would have still been tortured, and frankly I don't need the empire's crimes sanitized? but something about that scene rubs me wrong - probably because her s1 arc does revolve around the men in her life. not like some bullshit "cassian is to blame for her getting tortured" take but it isn't about her story. It's about his.

Anyway I think many times the show does things really well but yeah their treatment of Black characters especially? Rancid.

*this is still Messy as fuck want to clarify that. Diego isnt indigenous so like ??? but whatever lmfao just bring back fest tbh

[tyrannuspitch]

idk i just really like the version of odin in the alt death scene. i think it's so much better at the "deconstruction" TR was meant to be going for.

so many of odin's status markers are transformed into marks of poverty: long hair and beard unkempt, war-wounds hidden under a dirty bandage instead of a gold eyepatch, clothes layered against the cold instead of armour, a discarded bottle in his hand instead of a drinking horn...

i think it's pretty likely this is representative, in some way, of where asgard started. asgardians are space vikings - pirates, thieves, scavengers. they may have ended up a major imperial power, but it's not hard to imagine that their theft might have started with desperation. asgard itself is stated to be an artificial planet - suggesting that wherever the asgardians originally came from wasn't worth staying.

so at the end of TR, when asgard is reduced to a ragged band of refugees with nothing but a stolen spaceship, it's not a totally new state for them. it's more like they've been reset, maybe even only a few generations back, and given a second chance. i just wish they'd used that to get rid of that damn monarchy.

back to the point - this odin is also an interesting parallel to where thor ends up in EG. it's not entirely clear what's going on with odin's mental state - old age, the effects of loki's magic, manic despair at approaching doom? - but drunkenness is almost certainly on the list. i wonder what odin's relationship to alcohol before that point was... i imagine asgardian drinking culture is umm. Not Great. i don't think either odin or thor, pre-ragnarok, could get away with being (or seem like they are) constantly drunk like EG!thor is, but problem drinking starts a long time before it reaches that stage... tbh i wonder to what extent EG!thor is imitating odin, even as he tells himself he's utterly failed to match up to odin :(

[beardedmrbean]

Hi about “Wakanda became AA’s false Jerusalem” someone mention Liberia and the mess that cause

Tbh I think the issue that African Americans don’t realize we develop a culture largely different from Africans.

Also…did I say it already, I’m not going to have spiritual awakening if I ever found out I got distant relatives in central Africa, but more to document why my community have diaspora and such

I just want my community to stop being the biggest circus beside Congress in America 🤡

Also probably will do another anon, and I been reading early black panther stories…yeah there a MOUNTAINS of different when Kirby and Lee was fleshing Wakanda out vs the pan Africans writers later on

Try Sierra Leone, just north of Liberia. It's the British version of the same thing.

Mixed results same as Liberia.

Saw a video clip last night with well Tweet Tweet

This is the guy that owns "blackwater" American version of the Russian Wagner group

Here's the article

Highlight from the whole thing

If so many of these countries around the world are incapable of governing themselves, it’s time for us to just put the imperial hat back on, to say, we’re going to govern those countries … ’cause enough is enough, we’re done being invaded. … You can say that about pretty much all of Africa, they’re incapable of governing themselves.

I bet he's super popular online right about now. Oddly enough he sounds like lots of online leftists if you tweak the wording a bit.

All kinds of excitement there, also he needs to go ahead and shut up, maybe step in traffic for a bit.

As for 'spiritual awakenings' you never know so I wouldn't count anything out, Jerusalem syndrome is a thing, but that's closer to psychosis and not terribly common. Also not limited to any particular branch of the Abrahamic faiths.

Looking forward to the Jack Kirby rundown, comics were never really my thing so it's all a learning thing for me at this point and I do like to learn.