#Attempting to be immortal is disrespectful to the real GOD in other culture but in China it is acceptable goddamn it and MDZS
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fengshenjunlang · 1 year ago
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WWX raising the dead is culturally unacceptable, why? Because CQL censored that part due to the current government regulation of even censoring the color of blood or bloody wounds in media.
Also China's current regulation: LGBTQ is not Culturally approved!
Also Chinese real-world orthodox culture: LGBTQ is taboo!
Does that mean those FUcKInN DaMn GAYs WangXian are Culturally and Morally unacceptable??
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fortressofserenity · 2 years ago
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Westerners' Idea of Asianness
While the reverse may not be any better, if Japanese anime cartoons are any indication, but when white people do portray Asian cultures and the like it's usually through a Western lens or bias. Even Avatar the Last Airbender is guilty of this to some extent, as what somebody pointed out, not helped by that the creators/authors in question continued to favour the four elements system (fire, air, earth and water) over the Chinese five elements system (fire, wood, earth, metal and water).
Perhaps out of familiarity, even though it gets stranger still when a good number of the cultures shown in Avatar tend to be based on East Asian ones. Especially China when it comes to not only the Earth Kingdom, but also the martial arts used to inspire the supernatural abilities there. That was considered before, but then again familiarity with Western culture(s) wins over bothering to familiarise oneself with actual East Asian cultural beliefs and philosophies.
Perhaps that proves this author's point of aspects of East Asian cultures being cherrypicked for Western consumption, the Chinese martial arts, hanfu and characters are kept but the Chinese elements got written out. An even stranger one's that out of all the elemental and beliefs systems in both East and South Asia, it's the South Asian version that's closest to the one in Avatar. In Hinduism, the word avatar refers to the different permutations of Vishnu each sent to counteract malevolence in the world.
Vishnu being the preserver and his 10 avatars tend to have their own abilities of sorts, much like in Avatar when you think about it. It was the South Asian beliefs that got the reincarnation ball rolling, since to my knowledge Taoism doesn't place much importance on reincarnation the way South Asian religions do. What it does believe in is the immortality of the soul where it rejoins the universe/heavens after death, which sounds like the Judeo-Christian concept.
Onto the elements system, within Hinduism we have fire, air, earth, space and water. The four others are portrayed as they are, with energybending being analogous to space in a way. The fact that some of the characters have Hindi/Sanskrit names and one of them's briefly shown to have multiple arms the way Hindu gods are portrayed makes me think South Asian cultures might exert a bigger influence on Avatar than one realises.
It's just not openly acknowledged, nor is it respected when it comes to two antagonists having Tripundra (facial markings used to designate one's devotion to the Hindu god Shiva). Most of the people who do suspect ATLA did cultural appropriation are the South Asian Hindus, the ones who've been practising their faith since they were young and would be really familiar with it that they know their beliefs get disrespected when it gets portrayed like this.
Now as for Disney's Mulan and American Dragon, the portrayal of Chinese culture is really weird when you realise that in China dragons are associated with water and weather. Again, for all their attempts at portraying Chinese culture and protagonists they're still married to Western beliefs about firebreathing dragons. (Let's not forget that ATLA has this problem too, where firebenders get their powers from dragons.)
Going by this logic, Mushu should be manipulating water and there ought to be real fun with this where he should've and could've created blizzards to protect Mulan from the Huns. Imagine if he even bothered literally inundating opponents, just so he could save Mulan's life from time to time. Now that involves actual respect for Chinese culture and folklore, or at least bothering to be this deeply influenced by it.
Perhaps in a way the actual staff never considered, since the animal most associated with fire is the Vermillion Bird (one of the Four Heavenly Beasts alongside the Blue Dragon, White Tiger and Black Turtle). The Vermillion Bird's associated with the South, the Blue Dragon with the East, the White Tiger with the West and the Black Turtle with the North. But that makes you wonder whether if the Mulan staff actually knew about Chinese culture.
Sadly it's far more shallow than it should've been since Mulan's Chinese, it should be more believable if they got heavily inspired by Chinese culture almost all the way. But that involves a greater investment in learning about China, far more than they already do and perhaps Mulan should've benefited more from having more Chinese writers and animators around since they know this deeply.
For all their good intentions, Disney's Mulan and Avatar the Last Airbender are made by Westerners so it's inevitable that their biases and familiarity with the West still show up in some ways. A truly Eastern ATLA would be something that's made by actual Chinese or Indians, since they know those systems well it's more personal and deeply embedded. Unless if a Westerner does bother deeply immersing themselves in it, they will be forever bound to their beliefs.
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the-fae-folk · 4 years ago
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What is a Fairy?
I suppose they probably need some explanation, especially nowadays. Fairies (Faeries, Fay, Fey, Fae, or even Fair Folk) could be considered a type of mythical being. Some have described them as spirits, others as ghosts of the deceased, some deified ancestors, prehistoric precursors to humans, personifications of nature, pagan deities, or even angels and demons in the way of Christian traditions. Often they encompass a metaphysical aspect, being depicted as spirits or beings who transcend the physical universe and world that we know. Or given features of the Supernatural, such as magic or extrasensory perception, which allow them to violate or go beyond the laws of nature. Even sometimes Preternatural, which something abnormal or strange and explainable but still within the boundaries of the natural laws of the universe (for example I could say someone is a preternaturally good cellist, and mean that they are impossibly good beyond expectations or even belief, but I’m not saying that they are actually magical...just that their apparent abilities and how they gained them are unknown and very strange to me.) But what is a fairy? Well you already know what some of them look like. Many people might immediately picture Tinkerbell from the animated Disney feature film, or even from the original Peter Pan novel by J. M. Barrie. And they would be correct, in part. Tinkerbell is a depiction of a Pixie, a specific type of fairy. But there are lots of fairy types, I don’t actually think there’s a complete list. (I should probably try to make one at some point, but no promises.) During some points in history the label of fairy was used to mean magical beings who had a mostly human shape. Gnomes, leprechauns, goblins, pixies, dwarfs, elfs, etc etc etc. And at other points it also included non humanoid magical creatures such as Unicorns, Dragons, Kelpie, Basilisk, and more (Sometimes these were referred to as Fairy Creatures). So where did they come from? Well the funny thing is that Fairies don’t actually come from only one area or set of myths. They are a strange combination of the folklore from all over Europe (and possibly beyond) and include ideas and stories from Celtic, Scandinavian, Nordic, Germanic, French, and English Folklore and Mythology. As these stories were passed around and intermingled and changed they brought about the collective creatures we know today as the Fae or Fairies. The Renaissance, Romantic Era, Victorian Era, Edwardian Era, and even the Celtic Revival Movement of the 19th and 20th centuries all had their influences on the stories and ideas connected with the Fairy folk, some significantly less helpful than others. Even the Fantasy Literature Genre, with Tolkien at its forefront, has added and changed much about people’s view on these creatures. So lets talk about some basic things you’ll want to know when dealing with Fairies. The first thing you might want to remember is that many people view the Tuatha Dé Danann (Supernatural gods, goddesses, heroes, and kings of Irish Mythology) as being the source for Faeries, or at least one of the strongest influences. Celtic Folklore and culture is easily one of the most visible bits of Faerie lore that you can find these days, but there’s a lot more that starts showing up when you begin to dig. Another thing to note is that the Renaissance, Romantic Era, Victorian Era, Edwardian Era, and the Celtic Revival Movement had a massive influence on how people saw fairies. They would mix folklore from different areas of Europe, attempted to prove the existence of fairies through scientific means, created artistic depictions of fairies, and much more. Often they sanitized and shrunk the fairies until they were mostly harmless or relegated to the outskirts of human life as a curiosity. Which brings me to the next point. In a lot of older folklore, from all over Europe, fairy beings are often depicted as being incredibly dangerous. Kidnapping humans or human babies, causing crops to wither, water to dry up, food to rot. They could lure people in with magic into a fairy ring of mushrooms and make them dance forever or make them forget their life. Sometimes they even played with time itself. A person could dance with the fairies only to find that they’ve been gone a hundred years when they try to go home. And many beliefs have depictions of some kind of Otherworld, a world apart from our own, or layered over it like an extra dimension we are unable to perceive or directly interact with. Sometimes its a land of the dead or a hidden underground kingdom, other times is a strange and fantastical country with its own laws and ways of doing things. As these stories meshed together we got what is known as Fairyland. The land which the fairies dwell in. Though some believe they simply live on Earth, hidden in the wild, or among us. Some reoccurring ideas are often connected with fairies, though not all have stayed the same as the original lore they were born from. The idea that Faeries, for whatever reason, are unable to or will not lie. This is a very important idea because the Folk are also simultaneously depicted as deceptive. Like particularly vicious lawyers they will play with words, never quite lying, but purposefully leading you astray or tricking you into a bad deal. They will often obey an oath, promise, or deal exactly to the letter, but ignore the intent behind it in order to twist it to their own benefit or amusement. Whether or not fairies are immortal depends entirely on where you draw your folklore from. Sometimes they are immortal; deathless, not mortal. Unable to die in spite of starvation, terrible wounds, age, or anything else. They are bound to life for all time. But some stories depict the stranger Fae Folk as being Eternal. Beyond time, always having existed and always existing, sometimes cycling, sometimes directionless and boundless and everything. Some tough concepts to get your head around, but nobody really agrees which one fairies are. In some folklore they’re even depicted as mortal, same as you and I, but a lot longer lived and harder to kill. A reoccurring motif in older Folklore is the need of humans to try and ward off fairies with charms and totems. When they were not depicted as outright malicious and dangerous, sometimes being thought to cause illness and death or bring about disastrous misfortune or steal a person’s name and voice, fairies were still mischievous and valiantly unhelpful. So people had all kinds of lucky charms to protect from them: like four leaf clovers, various plants, or actions like wearing your clothes inside out to confuse them. Iron is said in many beliefs to burn them, and certain herbs they view as sacred and will refrain from touching the bearer. A few more things. Christianity plays an important part in this discussion, though many people don’t like that. In many places myths and legends were wiped out by Christianity, either intentionally or simply by the very fact that it was trying to convert people in Europe and old pagan beliefs were seen as nonsensical. But still stories persisted despite this. Many old Myths and Folkloric beliefs were recorded for posterity by Christians, and some stories were altered and we are unable to see exactly how much (Beowulf). A lot of fairy stories remained too, only Christianity painted them as fallen angels or even demons of a kind, who could be kept away from Holy Ground, or were forced to kidnap humans to pay a tithe to Hell (or be taken themselves if they couldn’t pay). So folk beliefs, though generally discouraged by the church as superstition, remained quite strong all over Europe for a very long time. The last three things you need to know. One, there are many people who still believe in Fairies, though their beliefs often vary, sometimes wildly. Witches who claim to work with them. People who believe in them through their religions (usually pagans and other non christian groups). People who claim to have encountered or been abducted by them. And many others. While I personally do not believe in Fairies (though I like to keep an open mind, just in case), I do believe that the beliefs, cultures, and and rights of these people ought to be respected. Which leads me to other mythical beings that are similar to Fairies but hail from cultures and peoples outside of Europe. It might be tempting to label some of the spirits from various Native North American Tribes or from Chinese Folklore (or many others) as fairies. Don’t do that. If Fairies are real, you have to consider that there might be other mythical beings who fall under different categories and groups. And even if they are not real, it is extremely disrespectful to the people of those cultures to take their stories, myths, beliefs, and folklore and try to mesh it in with European Folklore. (this is exactly what the Victorian and Edwardian Era were guilty of.) And finally... Some people might tell you that they know everything there is to know about Fairies. Don’t believe them. Even I, who have spent years and years studying European Faerie Folklore, find new things about them every day. I have sources I’ve found and haven’t yet had the time to look into, areas of study I’ve had to neglect. There is so much about Fairies to explore that it’s quite literally impossible for any one person to know all of it. Personally I’m doubtful that a single person can even know an eighth of it all, you can hardly imagine how much there is. And while there is a great deal of it buried on the internet, there is even more offline. Books which are out of print or have never had their contents uploaded, cultural stories passed down in various European groups which are saved from oblivion only by the oratory tradition, and the remains of all kinds of long dead or vastly changed civilizations who believed in the Fairies and tried to work with or avoid or appease them. All the misinformation and personal gnoses out there also make it a lot harder to find accurate information about traditional folklore. And that’s not even counting the multitude of inventions and ideas spawned by fictional literature surrounding fairies. There is simply too much. But of course... Since when has something being impossible ever stopped a human from trying anyway? If you’re still interested, then who am I to discourage you? Go, jump right in. There’s so much to learn about the Faerie Folk.
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blog-cosmosuniverse1 · 4 years ago
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Joseph R. Biden was just inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States yesterday. I have nothing further to say about this historical event attended primarily by 26,000 National Guard Troops, FBI, NSA, CIA Operatives.
What Have We Done? By E.P. Unum January 21, 2021
Joseph R. Biden was just inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States yesterday. I have nothing further to say about this historical event attended primarily by 26,000 National Guard Troops, FBI, NSA, CIA Operatives. That fact alone is a very telling story. Apparently, additional security was deemed necessary for a President-Elect who received allegedly 80 million votes, more than any other person in the history of our country. All of the “peaceful riots” throughout the summer and Fall, where stores and businesses were looted and destroyed, monuments toppled and police and citizens were killed, did not require the assistance of armed troops to quell these “activities”. I also will not comment on the 17 Executive Actions signed by our new President on his first afternoon in office. None of these offer any hope or unity nor are they of any benefit to the American people or to America. Indeed, they will drive us further downward. But here are some lessons we can learn from the new change in leadership to the America we know: Perhaps now you understand why there was never any action against the Clintons or Obama, how they destroyed emails and evidence and phones and servers, how they spied and wiretapped, how they lied to the FISA Court, had conversations on the tarmac, sent emails to cover their rears after key meetings, how Comey and Brennan and Clapper never were brought to any justice, how the FBI and CIA lied, how the Steele Dossier, paid for by Hillary Clinton, was passed along, how phones got factory reset, how leak after leak to an accomplice corrupt media went unchecked, why George Soros is always in the shadows, why Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and George Bush and John McCain were all involved, why they screamed Russia and pushed a sham impeachment, why no one ever goes to jail, why no one is ever charged, why nothing ever happens.
Perhaps now you know why there was no wrongdoing in the falsification of the FISA Warrants, why the Durham Report was delayed, why Hunter Biden has not been charged, why the FBI sat on his laptop for almost a year while Trump was being impeached on fictitious charges, why the Bidens' connection to China was overlooked as was unleashed the perfect weapon, a virus that was weaponized politically to bring down the greatest ever economy known to man and at the same time usher in an unverifiable and unnecessary system of mail-in voting that corrupted the very foundation of our democracy. Maybe now you can understand why the media is 24/7 propaganda and lies, why up is down and down is up, right is wrong and wrong is right, why social media can now silence the First Amendment and speak over the President of the United States. This has been the plan by the Deep State all along. They didn’t expect Trump to win in 2016. He messed up their plans, and delayed them a little….four years to be exact. They weren’t about to let it happen again. Covid was like manna from heaven for democrats and the socialist left, it was a tool to inject fear into all Americans and it was weaponized Governors who shut down their states and crumbled their economies out of fear. The media, never to let a good crisis go to waste, helped shame and kill the economy, and the super lucky unverifiable mail-in ballots were just the trick to make sure the 47-year career politician, allegedly with hands in Chinese payrolls, the man that couldn’t finish a sentence or collect a crowd, miraculously became the most popular vote recipient of all time. You have just witnessed a silent, bloodless coup, the overthrow of the US free election system, the end of our Constitutional Republic, and the beginning of the downward slide of capitalism and the free enterprise system into the abyss of socialism and communism. What a remarkable achievement! We have sacrificed the greatest engine of freedom, growth, and prosperity known to man on the altar of ignorance and totalitarianism. What will happen next?  Well, here's a brief list: ·     Expect the borders to open up. Increased immigration. ·     Expect agencies like CBP and INS and Homeland Security to be muzzled or even deleted. ·     Law enforcement will see continued defunding. ·     Elimination of the electoral college will be attempted. ·     History as we know it will be erased. Our children will no longer study the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, II, Korea or Vietnam. These will be replaced with classes on “white priviledge”, “how American racism stole lands from native Indians” and the “need for racial equity” because America is a terrible nation. ·     The Supreme Court will be packed with liberal judges. ·     Your 2nd Amendment will be attacked and there may be a gun confiscation or gun buyback programs enacted and you will find it difficult to own a weapon…and ammunition of any kind. ·     If you have a manufacturing job or oil industry job, get ready to be unemployed. ·     If you own and run a business, brace for the impact of higher taxes and more governmental regulations. ·     Maybe you’ll be on the hook for slavery reparations, or have your suburbs turned into Section 8 housing. ·     Your taxes are going to increase dramatically and businesses will pay more. ·     We will be paying more for gasoline at the pump and we will soon find ourselves once again dependent on foreign oil.
President Trump made us energy independent. For the first time in our history, the USA became an oil-exporting nation. Biden’s illogical and corrupt dismantling of the Keystone Pipeline not only displaced 42,000 high-paying union jobs but now Canada will sell the oil in Alberta BC to China while we search for new supplies at higher prices. Well done Joe! In a couple of years, we will see the onslaught of inflation, high unemployment, less productivity as more and more people become dependent on the government for subsistence, all of which is the natural course of socialist economies The dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency and America will no longer be the bastion of freedom it once was. America will be overtaken by China as the largest economy in the world and, because we have become so complacent, we will find ourselves in the middle of great turmoil and upheaval with lots of civil strife that will make 2020 look like a walk in the park. I could go on and on. There is no real recovery from this. The national elections from here on will be decided by New York City, Chicago, and California. The Constitutional Republic we created will be dead. Mob rule and appeasement will run rampant. The candidate who offers the most from the Treasury will get the most votes. But the votes cast won’t matter, just the ones received and counted. That precedent has been set. Benjamin Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when someone shouted out, “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?’” Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Ladies and gentlemen, we have now lost the Republic our forefathers bequeathed to us, the Republic we fought and bled for these past two hundred and forty-five years.  Some of you are wondering how this came to pass. The answers are indeed quite simple. We did it to ourselves: ·     We turned from God. We erased God from our halls of Justice and the Town Square. ·     We turned from family. ·     We turned from our country, our Flag, our Monuments to our leaders who paved the way. We denigrated all of these with revisionist history and the tearing down of monuments to our civilization and way of life. ·     We replaced achievement and recognition by embracing “participation trophies” so that our children can all feel a sense of accomplishment even when there was none. ·     We embraced degeneracy culture, inviting pornography into our laptops and living rooms. ·     We became some infatuated with technology that we lost the human touch…we found it easier to send emails or Facebook or twitter posts to a friend or co-worker ten feet away from us rather than walking over to chat with them. We have, in essence, become too high tech and low touch. It sort of begs the question…what does it matter if we wire the entire world if we lose our immortal souls? ·     We celebrated and looked to fools as our heroes, comedians whose idea of a joke is holding up a bloody head of our President. That’s not funny. It’s sad. ·     We worshipped ourselves selfishly and took for granted what brave men and women fought and died to give us. Their sacrifices are no longer valued, replaced instead with scorn because they may have committed “transgressions measured by today’s standards, not theirs”.
We disregarded history and all it teaches. On our watch, America just died a little. It’s likely she’ll never be the same again. Not until the 74 million Americans who voted for President Trump stand up and shout “we will no longer tolerate this and we want our country back” and do something about it
For starters, get off Twitter and Facebook and refuse to be a part of their efforts to disrespect the First Amendment. I did. And I don’t miss it at all. If companies want to insult all the people who supported President Trump by denying them jobs, fight back. Don’t buy their products. Shun them. Until we take those steps, they will continue to wield their power, but the ultimate power is in your hands…the power of the consumer. We did this to ourselves. We made our bed, now we have to sleep in it….until we get off our asses and remake it. Some of you have no idea what you’ve done. You know now. It is time to do something about it. Sadly, some of you do know what you have done. To them, I say…if you kick a dog long enough, pretty soon he’s gonna bite. I am tired of being kicked and insulted and disregarded as if I don’t matter. We do matter. We are Americans
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