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angeart · 21 days ago

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Howwwww did you angst the world tour?? 🎀

this question made me giggle so much oh i'm glad you asked :3c there was so much yummy grian angst in the hc world tour!

it's all about grian and his penchant for destruction. he doesn't even mean to! he's not trying to be pesky; quite the opposite. he's curious but restrained, trying to be good, trying to follow instructions. he's not malicious at all! he's just there to see what people were up to, open and friendly and curious, eager to look and learn and praise. not a bad intention in sight... and yet things seem to break wherever he goes. everything he touches goes wrong.

the guilt churns, acidic and overwhelming, and grian's miserable. why is he like this? he's trying so hard, why is this the only way he can ever be? why can't it stop?

spoilers for grian's world tour video below <3

plantie pointed out to me how, during the tour of scar's train, when grian got rid of scar's arrows—the glitched ones that doc put there—he was so desperate to point it out after scar just glossed over it. as if he wanted to show that he can do something good. he can be helpful, he can fix things instead of just breaking everything.

but then we have all the other things, right? grian can't escape it.

when he was with etho and the mushroom farm exploded, he sums it up in a wretched if confused apology: "i'm so sorry. the two times i tried to use it, i broke it :( and created a water source floating— which i don't know how it happened— and flung the TNT, which i really don't understand—"

they move on, but it's so clear it lingers.

etho isn't blaming him. he's amused and brushes it off and moves along, unbothered, but grian himself can't wrap his head around it. about that propensity to breaking things, even unintentionally. the way nothing is safe around him.

he tells etho: "i can't stop thinking about your mushroom farm. why does everything i touch break, in new and unexpected ways?"

(not to mention when etho's showing him frogger and grian plays, almost instantly etho goes: "uh-oh, the game's broken", with a little huff of laugh. it wasn't exactly tied to anything grian did, but still something i wanted to point out, since grian was there for it <3)

and then grian goes to zedaph, right?

the very first game zedaph shows him. the very first. grian plays the way he was told to, the way he was meant to, and— he breaks it.

zedaph just laughs and moves them on.

(just sprinkling in a side note that zedaph's furnace minigame also didn't seem to work the way it should've—)

by the time grian gets to pearl's, it's starting to be a pattern that's so clearly eating away at him, making him anxious. he doesn't want it to happen again!

and yet.

pearl invites him to play her wordle game, and grian mindlessly goes and pushes the wrong button trying to start it... instantly stepping away with a quiet groan of a dread-filled "...oh-" followed by: "i just— ruined it already."

there's something about the mood switch. the way he seems more restrained and tame, silently upset with himself, trying so hard not to mess things up further. questioning why this is happening again. why he can't stop making it happen.

he walks over to the reset game button and asks, carefully: "can i press reset? is it gonna hurt? 🥺👉👈"

pearl reassures him he can, with a sigh noting that it'll just take a while.

there's an almost hysteric laugh from grian, followed by an exasperated, upset scream. "everything i touch breaks! when i went to e— i broke etho's thing when i went to— not frogger, his— his mushroom farm i— it blew up."

"you blew up his mushroom farm?? how? what did you do?!"

"yeah, i— i broke zed's game, instantly, pretty much, it's—"

"oh my gosh :("

"sorry 🥺"

pearl is quick to reassure him, though. "well, luckily for you, this is— you doing that (pushing the wrong button) does not break the game. it's just, you now have to wait for it to reset."

she makes sure grian knows that he didn't mess up anything terribly here. he didn't break pearl's game. it's okay! it's fine!

and then grian right clicks to open the book, and instead makes bonemeal pop out of a composter.

i think at this point pearl is a little bit taken aback by how wrong everything really seems to be going around grian. she makes sure to say, "it's fine," again, just so grian won't start worrying about it all again. "you're clicking on everything that people do not usually click on today. but it's okay. it's still not broken! it's not broken, it's alright, it's okay— i've got failsaves for people like you."

it's so sweet how she really tries to soothe him— and yet she can't help but let out that last remark.

people like you.

those few words surely lodge in more than all the reassurances. they're like splinter, proving grian right.

eventually, he gets to skizz.

during the tour of skizz's base, skizz shows him a horse statue and starts talking about how he lost his first horse at an event that grian was also a part of. and grian's stomach instantly sinks.

he asks hushedly, a bit confused, trying to remember: "was i there?"

skizz laughs. "you were absolutely there, dude."

which leads grian to ask, uneasily: "did i do it?"

skizz waves his hands, quick to easily reassure that no! that's not it, grian didn't do it!

grian lets out an oh with such palpable relief, and goes on to explain about how, "i remember witnessing it, but sometimes it's hard to disentangle whether i did it or not. coz i tell you what, on this tour i've broken everyone's stuff."

nobody was upset with grian when things broke, but here he is, several hermits down, still unable to leave it to rest. because it's him. it's him who did all of that, somehow, and he didn't mean to, but it doesn't matter. it happened anyway.

and now he can't even tell what is and what isn't his fault anymore.

the guilt is deep rooted, leaving anxious assumptions and dark, jagged precipices. how much did he destroy? what else should he be feeling guilty about? how far does this go?

he keeps breaking things, and it's such a blur that he can no longer tell what is and what isn't his fault.

the tour continues, and he delves into skizz's pyramid. and it's just— it's just a tunnel to swim through. nothing to mess up, besides potentially dying to suffocation, right?

and yet you can hear skizz shrilly exclaim: "oh he's going to end up breaking something!!"

and, (plantie's words: ) grian hearing that and just wondering, is that all i'm good for? is that all i'm known for? is that all i am?

there's no room for doubt; not really. that is what grian does, all the time, whether he wants to or not. he breaks stuff. he just— he doesn't mean to. and this tour is one big show of how powerless he is against it. (how everyone expects it from him anyway.)

despite it all, grian perseveres, trying out skizz's game, stubbornly dedicated and trying to win. (to pass; to have something to be proud of, at least—) and he gets to the powdered snow section.

there, he jumps across to a pathway that he was meant to circle to through the snow instead.

it's not breaking anything, not really. not even the rules. it's not cheating! he's just— he just did something skizz did not expect, but that was entirely possible within the game's design, even if not intended. he exploited it to his advantage; a risky, tricky shortcut.

and yet skizz remarks with a laugh: "this is what grian does! he breaks games!"

no matter what grian does... is that all he'll ever be?

is that all they'll see?

he fails getting through skizz's game, is thanked for play-testing, praises it all, they talk it all away, and...

and then grian goes to tour mumbo's base.

and fails to even die properly to his llama—

and then mumbo shows him his archive machine, and instantly panicks when grian gets curious about it, begging him not to touch anything. and grian says: "your stomach just fell through didn't it?" and after mumbo's immediate agreement, he adds: "and rightfully so. coz, almost everything i've touched on this tour has broken."

there's not a sliver of surprise to mumbo's anxious rushed: "yeah, yeah yeah! please stop now." because, of course things have broken. of course what grian touches is bound to go wrong. of course—

and then mumbo very carefully tells grian what to do with the machine.

grian does as he's told.

mumbo looks up and pauses, a frown crossing his face as he takes it in. he notes that grian probably did it too fast—

(something went wrong)

(something broke)

mumbo says: "i can't believe you come along and every single thing in my base starts [going wrong/breaking/malfunctioning]"

and then grian mysteriously ends up with an extra book from mumbo's machine, much to mumbo's dismay. grian's confused, cogs spinning as he tries to figure out what did he mess up this time to result in this.

it's clear mumbo wants grian away from his machine. it's not safe. (grian isn't safe.)

"maybe just give that to me and maybe just step away from the contraption. and then— maybe just leave me to—"

grian's upset and bewildered voice cuts in: "i didn't do anything wrong this time :(("

he's trying so hard.

he's trying so hard to be good and do things right and not mess anything up.

(it isn't working.)

(it's never bound to work, is it?)

mumbo ushers him away, and ends up showing him another cool invention—an elevator. except the second mumbo hits the button, a creeper shows up and explodes it. (it's midday.) (it wasn't even meant to be there.)

this one isn't grian's fault at all, but with everything that's happened— well, it's easy enough to link it to grian's presence. like a bad luck omen.

apprehensively, grian asks if the elevator broke, and mumbo—a bit bewildered by the reality of it—says that no, it seems to still work. "amazingly," he tacks on, disbelieving.

grian's relieved. "ohh, i thought we were in big trouble there!"

besides himself, mumbo anxiously agrees: "augh. i was like, if every single creation that i show breaks in some fashion, i'm just gonna quit."

because this isn't normal. none of this is, least of all everything at once. it simply doesn't happen.

(not when grian isn't there, anyway.)

mumbo notes that he needs to work on his lighting, and grian nods wisely saying it's a perpetual issue, but the anxiety is digging its talons in now, unrelenting. (what else is going to go bad in grian's presence? what else will he mess up? what else will he break? why is he like this?)

another remark that comes after this is mumbo's nervous: "i've actually just built up the automatic sorter which does this—which you're not gonna touch. we're banned from touching any redstone contraptions!"

and what can grian do but oblige? (but he can at least look, right?)

but does it ever change anything?

does it matter?

at the end of the day, the others don't think too much about it.

they all say their part, pass their judgment, wave their hands, dismiss, move on. it doesn't keep them up at night.

... i think it might keep grian up at night.

a cacophonous collection of word snippets, aimed at him or woven around him, digging under his skin until it bleeds. a noose of inescapable fate, a tightening band around his chest that promises he can only ever be one thing:

a vessel for destruction.

it doesn't matter if he wants to be.

shackles and chains and a cosmic inevitability written into his skin, etched into his bones, tangled into his bloodstream. and an ever-rising guilt like stormy sea, far above his head now, drowning him.

(maybe he's not meant to be near other people and their things.)

(maybe he's not meant to touch games that were constructed with so much effort and love and passion poured into them.)

(maybe he shouldn't—)

==========

bonus screenshots from discord DMs (with extra sprinkles of hmtb mentions):

==========

bonus hmtb quotes because i kept thinking about it:

He always destroys the things he loves most, after all.

and:

He destroyed everything he touched, and when there was nothing left, he destroyed the only remaining thing: himself.

#ange answers #ribbon anon #grian angst #i might've gotten a bit rambly - this wasn't meant to be so long it just sort of kept snowballing the further i went. oops #anyway grian's such a good vessel for guilt #because he internalises it and holds on #even if nobody else holds a grudge #even if nobody else blames him #(and yet in all the little remarks - do they really not hold it against him? isn't there proof enough that clearly it matters to them too?)#(so how could he ever be absolved?)#for them these are just some random events #but for him it piles up and piles up and piles up #into an undeniable pattern that stains his hands like blood #and he can't wash his skin free of it #he can't escape it #no matter how hard he tries #(and yes it does tie beautifully into hmtb grian and his own perspective on things and struggles and how he deals with guilt)#(the keyword here is: badly) (he deals with the guilt badly)#i also went to think about other things like the tunnel bore incident and SL mumbo and WL zombie skizz and-#just so many instances of grian guilt you know?#it builds up until it's indisputable and inevitable #and grian is cornered by the reality of it (with nowhere to go)#think about it:#grian feels guilt over things he feels he has no control over (because it doesn't matter how hard he tries)#and we know grian thrives on having control #(just throwing that out there)#something about how grian keeps wretchedly confessing it to everyone - that he already broke many things #like tacking a warning sign on himself so they'd know to step away and save themselves #(and he's so scared it'll happen again. so scared that it'll keep happening. so scared that it'll never stop—)

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hussyknee · 4 months ago

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This article hits a lot of my discomfort around comparing the LTTE to Hamas, or any of the Palestinian resistance.

Do I believe in Tamil self-determination? Yes. Should they have a sovereign state? Yes. Should they have won the North instead of the SL military? Absolutely. Does any indigenous Tamil or Muslim person in the North and East have the right to armed resistance against majoritarian rule? Also yes. Was the LTTE rank and file fighters resisting annihilation and the SL military to a man was committing murder? Yes.

Do I believe the LTTE as an organisation and Prabhakaran as its head actually stood for anything but replacing the Sinhalese ethnostate with a Tamil one of their own choosing? Fucking no.

Navaratnam, after splitting away from the Federal Party, also published a newspaper, Viduthalai. I read the paper in the 1970s, when it often compared Tamils and Jews in terms of cultural character—including a supposed predisposition for intelligence and entrepreneurship—and argued that they were similar. (This line of thinking survives to this day: I know of Tamil nationalists in the diaspora who invoke the establishment of Israel as an example for their own goals, and see similarities in the Tamil and Jewish struggles.) Viduthalai also serialised Exodus, a popular 1958 novel by the American Jewish writer Leon Uris, which was translated by Navaratnam and published in Tamil as Namakkoru Naadu—A Country of Our Own.

Exodus presents a factually inaccurate but heroic account of the Zionist project to establish Israel as a Jewish nation state, and follows a group of Jewish arrivals in Palestine after the Second World War. It makes no mention of the mass dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Zionist forces in 1948. Edward Said, the Palestinian activist and intellectual, has highlighted how the novel dehumanises Arabs. Said has also argued that, when it comes to Israel, “the main narrative model that dominates American thinking still seems to be Leon Uris’ 1958 novel Exodus.” The British journalist Robert Fisk once described the novel as a “racist fictional account of the birth of Israel” in which Arabs are “rarely mentioned without the adjectives ‘dirty’ and ‘stinking’.”

Velupillai Prabhakaran, who established the LTTE in 1976, was a supporter of the Self-Rule Party as a young man. He would also have been a Viduthalai reader, and was inspired by Exodus. I was informed by a former LTTE member that the organisation also separately translated Exodus in full in the mid-1980s, and that it was widely distributed among LTTE cadres and supporters. Two prominent members of the organisation told me separately that the film adaptation of Exodus was also screened to LTTE cadres at camps in both Sri Lanka and the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Following long-term disillusionment with the LTTE, and seeing no democratic space to raise my concerns with the organisation’s autocratic leader, Prabhakaran, I quit the LTTE for good in April 1984. Many others also left, both before and after me, with the same concerns – among them the one-man leadership and complete intolerance for political discussion or difference. Some of them were murdered by the LTTE for leaving. One tragic example is Patkunam, one of the group’s founding members, who was murdered by Prabhakaran sometime in or around 1977 with the agreement of the appointed central committee of the LTTE. Prabhakaran suspected that Patkunam had been influenced by EROS’s leftist ideas and wanted to leave the LTTE. The LTTE had a policy that those who wanted to leave and join another group or establish another organisation would face capital punishment.

...

As it increasingly gained control of the North and East of Sri Lanka, the LTTE arbitrarily declared itself the “sole representative” of the Sri Lankan Tamil people. On this basis, it targeted Tamil activists from leftist and progressive organisations, killing or otherwise silencing them. The leadership of the TULF, the Tamil parliamentary party, was also wiped out. From as far back as the mid 1980s, the LTTE also suppressed other Tamil militant organisations such as TELO, PLOTE and the EPRLF. Eventually this meant targeted killings and massacres of both cadres and leaders from rival groups. Sections of EROS were forcibly absorbed into LTTE ranks. The LTTE also killed numerous EPRLF and PLOTE cadres who had received training from the PFLP in Syria.

...

In 1990, the LTTE executed a plan to ethnically cleanse Muslims from territories under its control in the North of Sri Lanka. The entire Muslim population of the Jaffna, Vavuniya, Mullaitivu, Mannar and Kilinochchi districts, numbering approximately 75,000 people, was evicted at gunpoint. This demonstrated the LTTE’s desire to establish an ethnically exclusive Tamil state, much like the Jewish state of Israel envisioned by the Zionists. The LTTE’s entire ideology was based on exclusive Tamil nationalism; its idea of a homeland and a nation meant treating Muslims and other minority communities in Tamil-dominated areas as second-class citizens at best. In this, it had uncomfortable similarities with the Zionist outlook on Palestinians and Muslims.

...

The LTTE was a right-wing organisation, with a statist approach to popular struggles. Prabhakaran made it clear that the LTTE would not interfere with “domestic issues” in other countries. I know this because, while I was with the organisation, he did not want to have any links with Marxist-Leninist parties in India as he did not want to antagonise the Indian state. The LTTE’s international network consistently aligned with Western governments and lobbied for their support. Although the LTTE was deemed a terrorist organisation and proscribed by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, these governments’ notices stated clearly that the LTTE had no intention of targeting Western interests.

The LTTE leadership was a corrupt bunch of autocrats that ethnically cleansed and killed anyone that got in their way, including their own people, having solidarity with no one and led by a personality cult not so different from MR's. Nurturing Karuna and Pillayan at their breast while they massacred Muslims, conscripted children and killed and disappeared Tamil activists and journalists, and then crying foul when they defected to get away with their loot? Nah son. Just like the SL government, the LTTE didn't care what they were doing as long as they didn't do it to them. Because in their ego-driven ideology, Tamil self-determination began and ended with them. Even now, it continues to obstruct the Tamil struggle because, since the LTTE made itself and its own nationalist project the sole representative of Tamil freedom, their defeat in 2009 makes the Tamil resistance itself look like it's dead in the water. Tamil Eelam's generational legacy of varied ideologies, factions, alternative enterprises and coalitions that preceded them all erased by this one failed cadre.

Hamas is far from perfect, but there's a continuity to its evolution, a devolution of power within their ranks, a willingness to work as a coalition with other resistance groups, and a generational network of anti-imperialist, anti-colonial solidarity and diplomacy behind them. The LTTE was just cut from the same post-colonial ethnonationalist cloth as the Sinhalese majoritarian state. Freire spoke truly when he said that the oppressed see their model of manhood in their oppressor. As long as we continue to identify with the powerful instead of the powerless, we will never be anything but pawns in the imperial project of coloniality.

*I do wish the author hadn't just...glossed over the horror that was the Indian Peace Keeping Force. Those freaks somehow managed to commit worse massacres and rapes than the Sri Lankan military. Absolutely heartbreaking because so many Tamil people believed they would be their allies. It says a lot that both the government and LTTE had enough of their shit within two years that they came together to kick them out. This alliance also came in useful because it allowed the government to crush the JVP's Marxist insurrection in the South without having to fight a war on two fronts. By that I mean Premadasa was grand chums with the LTTE while his forces killed over 60,000 innocent people in the rest of the country. At least right up until the LTTE killed him. Lol. The late '80s was their trollface era.

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