#and how they participated in genocide and murder

[loudtigeryouth]

A few years ago the FInancial Times ran an infographic that ranked political parties around the world, and the Labour Party at the time were slightly left of the Democrats and the Tories slightly right of the Republicans. Of course, Trump has rushed the Republicans to the far right with all haste but how Starmer has scurried along right behind him - I really fell that the current LAbour Party is AT LEAST as far right as the Tories and under Starmer is starting to show all the hallmarks of fascism - witness the recent proscribing of Palestine Action, because they are protesting a Genocidal Holocaust and the brutal murder of CHILDREN, which Starmer, the British government and establishment are not only funding, supporting and arming but are also fully participating in.

Kier Stamer making a speech referencing Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech in 1968 talking about us “becoming strangers in our own country” just confirms that even if the bar is in hell, he’ll find a way to waltz under it.

[raininyourblackeyes]

Today marks 30 years since the beginning of Srebrenica genocide when from 11th July 1995 until the end of the month 8372 men and boys were brutally murdered, buried, unburied, moved, buried again and moved to the tertiary mass graves by the Serb nationalists after the UN soldiers let them walk in into the "safe zone" they were "protecting" full of refugees. Around 15000 men didn't want to wait to be executed embarking on a 100km long ourney through the forests to get to the nearest unocupied area. 8372 were slaughtered.

Today 7 victims will be buried, one of the victims will have only 2 jaw bones laid down in the ground because those 2 bones are the only bones that have been found. Many mothers, sisters, daughters, are still searching, hoping for even one bone to be found.

As some perpetrators rot away in prison serving life sentences, and Srebrenica remains the worst wound in post-WW2 history, as genocide denial keeps coming from certains politicians both in Bosnia and Serbia and denial is a participation in that genocide, and as UN keeps apologizing every year for their failure to protect the people, as thousands survivors, children of the murdered, and people from all around the world gather every year to take a walk through those very forests, walking those same paths to honor the victims on a Peace march, and thousands gather on 11th July in Potočari to honor the victims, I can't help but think how in 30 years the reality of mothers of Srebrenica will also be the reality of people of Gaza.

So please, read about what happened in Srebrenica (it has to be undrestood in the broader context of Bosnian genocide) and try to help in any way you can to the people of Gaza today. The youngest victim in Srebrenica was just a few hours old. We have been watching the same events unfold in Gaza for too long now. Srebrenica massacre wasn't silent either, Europe just didn't want to hear it.

Here is the web page of the Memorial Center where you can read about the timeline of the events in July 1995, about the aftermath, investigations and the trials of the perpetrators.

United Nations also have a page dedicated which is almost a joke considering they abandoned those people... where you can find some useful videos and a very comprehensive timeline of the events with videos from July 1995 and from the trials in Hague.

Another useful website where I recomend reading survivors' stories

Some documentaries are available on youtube, please watch at least the first one: 1 2 3

Last year UN finally adopted a Resultion on Srebrenica Genocide. On the table before, it did not pass because of Russia's veto. Controversial president of Serbia who is fighting tooth and nail to supress students and the whole country really rising against him (as they should) argued and keeps telling his people that the text is calling out their entire nation as being genocidal. It is not. It is directed at those who did commit genocide, but the denial of the text and offense of people in Serbia starting with their politicians can be read as a denial and therefore participation in the genocide. I hope the students protesting the regime, young people like me, are willing to move forward in peace understanding that no one is blaming them for anything but that it is their burden to learn and it is their burden to break out of the spiral of evil and crime of the regime.

Here is what NY Times wrote today, 30 years later.

Finally, every year Srebrenica Inferno is performed at Potočari. Even if the text is in Bosnian language I believe the chilling pain will still reach you. Here is a performance from 2023

Once again, I hope everyone can find a way to think and help the people of Gaza because this will be their reality in 30 years. It is their reality now. It's fascinating that we, meaning human species, haven't yet learned that you can't make a nation on the backs and suffering of another. You can't build a happy future with the blood of thousands.

[blorbofrommyshows]

has Disney ever gotten darker than the owl house?

Like? “I’m starting to think you make those things just to destroy them. You have fun with it. Admit it!” the implications of this line. kind of cannot believe this was in there like holy christ.

[celibat]

and the thing is ppl are saying "yes biden is funding a genocide, but trump would do that AND kill us-americans [meaning white lgbt ppl or whatever]" biden is already doing this. biden is killing black people. black people are being murdered under biden. u just dont care.

[heritageposts]

if you support israel right now, you're supporting the extermination of the palestinian people.

it really is that simple.

this isn't a 'complicated conflict,' it isn't a situation that 'requires nuance,' it's not a 'geopolitical event' that requires us to condemn the 'bad actors' on 'both sides.'

it's a genocide.

there is no 'nuance' to be had here. it's a genocide, committed by the israeli state against the palestinian people, and it's happening right now as we speak. you don't have to infer anything: israel has openly, with next to no pushback from so-called liberal democracies, cut off gaza's access to water, food and electricity. that's more than two million palestinians denied even the basic necessities for life. a million of them, children.

what is that, if not a genocide?

and that's only the latest escalation. we could go all day, listing the atrocities the palestinian people have been subjected to. the killings, the beatings, the children sexually abused in detention center, all the hospitals and ambulances being blown up, videos of palestinians being heckled by settlers as they're driven from their homes, israelis gathering on hilltops to cheer as their military drops bombs on gaza...

but all westerns want to talk about, is hamas.

because the murder of palestinians by the IDF is status quo; it doesn't affect them. what's one more dead palestinian but a statistic? but if hamas has killed a handful of israelis — if they've go as far as to even kill babies — then that justifies the extermination of two million palestinians, children and infants included.

westerns will even say that the palestinians brought it on themselves; that they should have know that a drop of israeli blood requires a river in return.

and just so we're clear, you don't have to like hamas. but when you equate hamas with the IDF, when you derail every conversation by demanding a condemnation of 'both sides,' or when you, god forbid, agree that israel is justified in dismantling hamas — which, as israel themselves have outlined, will involve the complete destruction of gaza and the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians — then either wake up, or own up to the fact that you're a participant in the extermination of the palestinian people.

do you think i'm being harsh? then imagine how it's like living under constant aerial bombardment. with no food, no water, no electricity. constant air-raid sirens. a bomb, dropping every minute. never knowing a moment a peace, always wondering if today is going to be your last day, if you and your family are still going to be here tomorrow.

could you stomach living in gaza, for even a day? i doubt it.

and still, now, on the eve of what might be the ground invasion of gaza — with one million palestinians being told to flee, with nowhere to go — i'm getting messages from people who demand my sympathy... for israel.

well, you're not getting it.

i'm not even humoring your hand-wringing.

if you live in israel, and you're one of the ones who've turned a blind-eye to the suffering of the palestinian people, if you've fought for the IDF or tacitly supported them, if you've callously called upon the memory of the holocaust thinking the death and suffering of your ancestors would wash the blood of your own hands....

then yeah, i think you deserve every single hamas rocket lobbed at you and so much more.

[drowsinginspace]

Speaking of boycotting Eurovision, after my latest reblog (linked), I need to express my thoughts, since this morning I've read the worst takes ever.

Some people saying "I just won't watch the Israeli entry" or "Actually boycotting doesn't work, just let us have this fun thing when the world is so awful right now" or "Boycotting from your sofa is just performative activism".

My gosh. Get educated.

The Palestinian Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel asked for a boycott of the whole contest. A quote from the linked article says:

Participating in Eurovision for Israel is “a dream, in particular this year, when it has even more meaning.” Since October 2023, Israel has murdered more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 12,300 children, and injured a further 70,000. Understanding the contest’s propaganda value, particularly in the time of genocide, the Israeli president Isaac Herzog says, “it’s important for Israel to appear in Eurovision.”

So, "just watching anything but the Israeli entry" does not count as boycotting.

"The world is awful right now" because awful people try to make propaganda out of "this fun thing", participating in a grandiose festival while people are still being killed and attacked every day.

This is exactly the right moment to think about Palestinian people! (Or the Armenian people who were killed and displaced by Azerbaijan during the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.)

I am tired too, but I live in a privileged nation, where nobody is trying to actively harm me. I have a choice to watch the fun and the glitter and listen to silly songs or I can try to think of someone else who is getting attacked on the daily.

Mind you, you can still find a way to boycott the contest and listen to the songs, if you can't LIVE without them. Just don't add views or interactions to official channels who make money out of it, and don't use the hashtags. Talk to your buddies in DM and don't make it trend! How is that complicated??

And if this is still too much of a "performative activism", here's something else less passive that you can do, without even standing up from your sofa:

This google doc has a list of Palestinian people who need donations right now:

Donate hygiene kits:

Donate eSims:

Daily clicks:

And now you can block me if my post on your Eurovision tag is clouding your fun.

Please do not be antisemitic or islamophobic in the notes of this post and be respectful.

[gffa]

i'm sorry for the sensitive subject ask, but do you watch andor? i'm curious about your thoughts on the SA scene and the discourse that's followed it regarding vader. i feel like the scene is just more blatantly showing what already been implied throughout various star wars stories/media, and that most people (namely men) getting up in arms about it are clear "empire is cool" folks. but i'm on this weird fence about the discourse that's been dragged into the convo surrounding vader. i feel like anakin clearly is opposed to that sort of violence, given the various implications from the tcw zygerria arc for example, but i find it odd to bring vader into the conversation. vader, to me, is the twisted antithesis of who he used to be as a jedi. i feel like he clearly turns a blind eye to horrors he would have opposed when he still referred to himself as anakin skywalker. what are your thoughts?

I've been thinking about this and my gut reaction remains the same--Darth "willing to murder babies, is fine with reclassifying the Wookies as a non-sapient species so they could be used as slave labor" Vader is not suddenly going to grow a conscience about sexual assault. I don't think he's necessarily in favor of it, but I don't think he would do anything about it, either. This guy is the nightmare monster who rips his way into people's thoughts--a severe and deeply personal invasion of their very being--who tortures people with whatever method, who literally killed children because it got him what he was after. As a Jedi, Anakin was toeing the line on a lot of dark acts, but I don't think he would have used this tactic--though, I suspect part of that is because he just couldn't fathom wanting to have sex with someone that he wasn't in love with. I'm firmly on the "Anakin is demi" train and that informs a lot of how I see him and his reactions to situations in this area. But, no, I can't see that he would have tolerated this as a Jedi. That's why the murdering Jedi younglings scene is put in the movie, it's not just there for shock value, but to show that Anakin has crossed the moral event horizon. He has cemented himself as Darth Vader, who is willing to do literally anything to get what he wants, no matter how heinous or unthinkable, because the dark side is all there is. There can't be sudden exceptions to that rule or that scene loses its meaning. To say that Vader wouldn't have tolerated sexual assault is wild to me, because like. That guy participated literal baby murder, multiple genocides, mind rape, enslavement of entire species, torture, etc. But sexual assault would be a bridge too far for that guy? I love Anakin and I'm willing to give a lot of leeway to that he was deep, deep in the dark side and that twists your mind and soul, it warps you and lies to you and makes you think terrible things. And I think that darkness needs to be that deep, to make the point of just how incredible it was that he clawed his way back to the light. That's so much of why I love Anakin Skywalker, someone who tried so hard to do good, who fell so deep into the darkness, who found his way back out of those impossible depths--trying to soften the edges of that just doesn't feel true to the character for me. The dark side deadens you to compassion and care for others, just because we're uncomfortable with sexual assault, doesn't mean Vader would be. That's kind of the point of the dark side, it makes you fine with things you shouldn't be. As a note to where I'm coming from--I have a lot of personal family baggage with the violent death of a toddler, so I find Vader's murder of children to not just be a meme or a joke, I find it genuinely angering and disturbing. I still feel a visceral, physical reaction when I think about it for long. So, I get why people would have an instinctive reaction to, "Anakin wouldn't accept that!" to an horrific act being depicted in front of us. But I've had to accept that my guy would do that when it comes to my horrific act being depicted in front of me. The violent death of a child is such a defining act of monstrosity that trying to say this other act is somehow A Thing Even He Wouldn't Dare Do, just doesn't wash imo. That guy already crossed the line a long, long time ago. He'll absolutely do the things that make us viscerally uncomfortable to see depicted onscreen.

[maricoelquelolea]

An essential aspect of Rebels that strengthens the web of dynamics the Ghost Crew has with each other is the fact that they're all POC. Yes, Hera and Zeb too can be easily interpreted as such. The thing about every single character in this show is that every single aspect of their lives has been plagued by way and violent subjugation due to external forces that seek to erase or appropriate aspects of their culture; or even their lives themselves.

Ezra is a victim of seeing his planet, home, and people borderline destroyed beyond recognition in the name of "obtaining resources for the Empire". People often joke about his status as "Space Aladdin"; but the subtext of a family of brown people that seem to take basis on a mixture of different Middle Eastern cultures being forcibly separated from their son for daring to speak against a global (or interplanetary) power is quite dire. Lothal is reduced to nothing but an object for imperials.

Zeb is from a race of aliens who experienced genocide and was forced to explain to one of the people who participated in said genocide why murdering an entire group of people based on the actions of one singular individual is, in fact, still a war crime. He literally has to reassert and defend his humanity multiple times; as if he wasn't owed such for simply existing.

Kanan comes from a religious group that was violently wiped out, but most importantly, the destruction of records and information pertaining his culture meant that for a considerable amount of time he felt like a stranger within his own past. They completely stole and denied the right to learn about an aspect of his identity without it being a crime.

Sabine was indoctrinated and turned into a child soldier in order to develop weapons that took aim towards her own people. Independently of what one thinks of mandalorians, it's easy to designate a culture as "violent" when you're coercing their children and culture and leaving them with no other choice but to attack and run to save their own lives.

Hera's planet, and most importantly her people, have experiencied war for so long that many Rylothians don't even know what peace looks like. Twilek women in paritcular are constantly fetishized for their appearance, treated as sexual prizes and objects of trade. Hera's kalikori is deemed worthy of safekeeping, but not her nor the people. The imperials want their culture without them attached to it. They want their bodies without their autonomy.

Every single conflict they have gone through is deeply permeated by how the Imperials attempted to either eradicate or make their culture more palatable for themselves. This is why they understand each other in ways no one else could.

Anyways the point of this short message is that Chopper had the right to kill people and he should've killed even more.

[vermiciousyidreborn]

People like to talk about the lessons Jews should or did learn from the Holocaust, as though that's the only genocide we've been through. They like to say it should make us the nicest, kindest people because we've been through the worst so how could we ever inflict pain on others? How could we ever hold ourselves as more important to us than others, having seen the camps?

The thing is, we did learn a lesson. And it's a lesson we've been taught time and time again. That when it comes down to it, not only will non-Jews look the other way when Jews are slaughtered, they will gleefully participate and cheer it on. From Rome to the Crusades, to Spain, to Germany and all the places in between, we've learned that we're in this alone. We want to all be in this together, but everyone else has made it clear that that's never going to be the case.

So we know we're alone, that other than a very small minority, the only people who will ever object to Jews bieng murdered are other Jews. The Righteous Among the Nations are a tiny minority, and for every person who was a member, there are not hundreds who think they would have been. Some of them think they would have been and are celebrating the largest pogrom since WWII today. They're wrong, of course. If the Nazis came for the Jews, they'd do what they're doing: celebrate it.

Yes, we learned our lesson. We learned you all hate us, and Jewish existence has to be secured by Jews, no one else will do it for us or help us. This combined with our ancient longing to return to where we came from and created the modern state of Israel. Then there were more attempts to wipe out Jews, more attempts to drive us into the sea and destroy us, but this time, Jews took our future into our own hands and survived. Were there excesses? Yes. War crimes? Definitely. Have the past decades included missteps, crimes, and all sorts of horrible things? Yes.

But why would Israel do these things? Survival. Why has the war against Hamas in Gaza been so destructive? Why has it expanded to Yemen, to Lebanon, and potentially to Iran? Survival. In the end, Israel is a country with a single mandate written in stone: the Jewish people will live. And on October 7th, 2023, Hamas made it clear that whatever mellowing they'd appeared to do, whatever potential there had seemed for peace, Hamas finds that mandate to be intolerable. They believe the Jewish people must die. And then they killed as many as they could. Then the Houthis and Hezbollah joined in, firing rockets and drones.

If you're a country whose mandate is "the people of my country must survive" and with the historical understanding of "and no one will come to our aid if things get really serious" then what do you do? You, too, would view this struggle as existential. You, too, would likely accept casualties and destruction to try to root out the groups trying to wipe you off the face of the Earth. And you, too, wouldn't trust the people who seem weirdly obsessed with attacking the country that is going to extreme lengths to ensure that you survive.

What did the Jewish people learn from the Holocaust? We're alone. Help isn't coming. We have to deal with threats by ourselves. And that's why Gaza is in ruins, why Beirut is being bombed, and why Biden is trying to persude Netanyahu not to destroy Iran's oil refineries. And amid all this, you all are taking to the streets, calling for our deaths, and proving that those lessons were right, but might not have gone far enough.

[meanbossart]

Sorry if you’ve already answered this, but I’ve been wondering what would happen if DU Drow and Astarion were the only people in their party. If they never met any of the others and only had each other for company on the way to Baldur’s Gate.

Btw I love your art! I’m obsessed with the way you draw characters and their expressions in your style.

Ohhhhh god. I think that would be disastrous.

My personal belief aside that Astarion is by no means an idiot (not that I'm opposed to participating in the smooth-brained jokes - but, generally speaking, I think I might give his intellect more props than most), he is obviously not at his best at the start of the campaign at all. He is operating out of desperation and it's only halfway through the game that you get to see some of that emotional intelligence that I'm so fond of. And even so, he still requires a successful persuasion check at the end of his quest not to commit undead genocide (and I think he's the only companion who needs a check at all regardless of circumstance or approval).

Then we have DU drow who has no attachments to anyone around him, a penchant for murder, very little skill for self reflection and a proclivity towards latching onto one person and falling obsessively in love, assuming that the person in question knows how to play him - and Astarion would know how to play him.

Lest we forget, Astarion had practically no influence on DU drow's decision to oppose Bhaal. He just kind of goes along for the ride until you hit the point of no return, and only THEN he's like "Oh, uh, maybe this wasn't such a good idea". Shadowheart is the biggest factor on DU drow's decision to oppose Bhaal, with Aylin and Jaheira making for honorable mentions.

Ironically, DU drow's "base" personality (which he has access to thanks to his memory loss) tends to oppose religion, gods, and organized systems as a whole, but I think if it were only him and Astarion alone, they would feed each other's hunger for strength and power enough that DU drow would arrive into act 3 with absolutely no doubt about what he must do. He would very easily revert back to his old, domineering personality and do whatever he thinks he must to establish his status, and most importantly his power over his loved ones, lest what happened with Orin ever repeat itself.

This circumstance would be perfect for the eventual Bhaalist DU Drow + Spawn Astarion scenario. Which just makes it all the worse that Astarion would have had a HEAVY hand in steering him in this direction. And the cherry on top; he has no one else to turn to here.

On the flipside - this could potentially turn into a situation where Astarion keeps DU drow small enough to where he's able to Ascend, while his Bhaalspawn partner either refuses his father out of fear or loses the duel against Orin. I don't know how viable this is, since Astarion very much needs a strong and confident DU drow if he wants Cazador to die - but I guess anything is possible.

The point is, if left to their own devices there would be nothing stopping either of them from pursuing their very single-minded goals, and I don't think there's a scenario they BOTH come out on top either. Between DU drow's obsessive behavior and been-burned-before attitude, and Astarion's distrust and fear of losing control again, they would constantly wrestle for the opportunity to keep the other under their own thumbs.

And hell. All of this assuming they didn't kill each other on night two.

Thank you for the ask and for your kind words! Hopefully this isn't too depressive/disappointing of an answer, LOL.

[cosmicmordecai]

“ Why do people hate things being Jedi critical? It’s okay if they’re flawed.”

There’s flawed and then there’s presenting the idea the in universe religious minority who essentially have to fucking do everything as narratively ‘flawed’ bc they don’t appease everybody essentially. Be it Anakin, be it their philosophy, etc and correlate to the idea of how that leads to their fall. Most ‘Jedi critical’ points just assigns a unusual level of onus on them for simply existing. Jedi are human/human-like so we know they’re flawed to a point but when they’re accessory to slavery, accuse them of child taking, or whatever points and ignore context, it’s not being critical. Y’all just wanna slander.

Whats actually annoying is how this fandom & this franchise can look at this religious minority group (composing a lot of PoCs & allusions to other cultures) who get literally persecuted by a politician who created a entire army called Stormtroopers, which is right on the nose for Nazi allegories, and go “lets craft ideas & stories that suggest they’re at fault for really existing & not being perfect paragons of good.” This is the same fandom to say the Sith made some good “points” despite being a part of the problem, ignore the Mandalorian’s weird ass system of government, and find ways to sympathize with characters who participate in murder & genocide because they’re hot (Anakin, Kallus, Maul).

And to top it all off, the story had them killed via mind control to shoot them in the back by people they bonded with for maximum hurt & efficiency after fabricating a war using OTHERS.

[muffinlance]

Wait, what’s going on with Embers???? That fic has been on my read later list since 2021, what’s happened with it???

Brief overview, then I'm likely never touching this topic again, because this is not a Drama Blog:

Context: Embers is a super old AtLA fic that was written during the early fandom days, read widely at the time, and was the origin of the widely-used fanon name of "Wani" for Zuko's ship (kind of by default that it was one of the first popular fics to give his ship a name, I think?), even though most fic writers don't seem to realize it's from there anymore.

"What's Going On": I used to include a link in all my stories to it, because I believe in crediting other writers for borrowed elements, and I was using "Wani" in all my fics. But BOY did I not want to be sending readers that way anymore, so I've adopted a new name for Zuko's ship, and removed all Embers links.

None of the criticisms about Embers itself are new; I'm assuming they date back to when the fic was being written, because this isn't an "it aged badly" thing, this is an "actually yeah this gets worse the longer you think about it and I shouldn't have ignored my bad feelings just because some of the worldbuilding was interesting" thing.

An Incomplete List of Why I Made the Change:

I don't actually like the story that much anymore, and don't want to rec it

I tried to re-read it recently to see if some things were as bad as I remembered and it turns out they were So Much Worse Oh Yikes. More specifically, the treatment of Katara and Aang and their respective cultures has... rather a lot going on. One example: The Fire Nation and Air Nomads are both given multiple backstory elements in an attempt to make the average Fire Nation soldier's participation in the genocide/war in large part the fault of the Avatar and the Air Nomads themselves, and also fully justified from the Fire Nation perspective. And I do mean fully. One of its core tenants is "People from the Fire Nation (and only people from the Fire Nation) who don't follow orders Literally Die, therefore murdering pacifists and babies and continuing the war (and their regularly scheduled war crimes) is the only thing it is physically possible for them to do". I cannot emphasize enough how literal that is.

Also the name "Wani" means "Alligator" and is... objectively a pretty lame name for Zuko's ship? Where's the personality, where's the deeper meaning, where's the resonance with Zuko's themes? @tuktukpodfics initially thought I was calling the ship "Wanyi", and that's what I've switched to, because it is Objectively So Much Better. In their words: “Wànyī (萬一): Literally ‘one in ten thousand,’ ‘perchance.’ Used grammatically in Chinese to mean ‘what if’ or ‘just in case.’ I think a ship called ‘The Perchance’ is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.”

TL:DR; I don't rec Embers anymore, because I don't actually like the story anymore, and there are things about it that get worse the more I think on them. I've removed links to it and renamed Zuko's ship to "Wanyi" ("The Perchance") because our boy deserves a ship name that reflects his character arc.

[garkgatiss]

The Interstellar Song Content giving us two genocide survivors who respond to their experience either by a) singing in a song contest sponsored by the perpetrators of said genocide or b) plotting to kill one scrillion innocents in a terrorist attack doesn't really cut it when the show not only portrayed but had the Doctor embedded in/participating in an armed resistance movement as recently as The Robot Revolution. These two ludicrous caricatures paper over an entire spectrum of both violent and nonviolent resistance in the most insulting way possible, a spectrum that the show has shown they are absolutely capable of portraying.

Having the Doctor be "triggered" and start torturing Kid, when the Doctor agonized over but ultimately showed mercy to Davros, the inventor of the fucking Daleks of all people in The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar, is just wildly irresponsible. "Sometimes the Doctor goes too far!" well personally I would prefer it if he did that in an episode where it didn't instantly make him a stand-in for the state of Israel, current real world champion of going-too-far in torturing and murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent people it has uniformly smeared as terrorists, and to which people have responded, in part, by protesting, boycotting, and asking they be excluded from a certain international song contest.

And if that's too much to ask, if we need the Doctor to play Israel for a moment, I would at least prefer someone condemn the Doctor's behavior a little more forcefully than 'you scared me! but also you're wonderful!', especially someone who was comfortable scolding him just for scanning her DNA without consent.

Surely you can see how any possible 'murder is wrong' message falls hopelessly flat when the only actual irreversible murders in the episode -- the genocide of an entire planet committed by the Corporation -- result in literally no consequences for the perpetrator, and the few surviving victims we meet are shallow caricatures.

Even the imagery during the final song tribute to Hellia is impersonal -- a pretty green planet on fire and some flowers. No tender moment of Kid with his mom? A flash of Cora's horns being forcibly ground down? A glimpse of Cora and Wynn together on Hellia, or whatever Wynn went through when Cora had to abandon her? Did any human suffering happen on Hellia, or was it just the plants and air quality that suffered? Can I see any attempt to humanize this society, to get intimate with these characters, their past and their grief?

Meanwhile we are shown a whole montage of dozens of the individual people Kid would have killed celebrating being brought back to life so they can watch or perform in the song contest. It's chilling how this echoes the way Israeli victims and hostages are each known by name, while orders of magnitude more Palestinians have been killed in response whose names are barely reported and whose numbers are hardly acknowledged. Slaughter as many people as you need until you feel safe at a music festival again.

But even aside from the real life parallels, the writing of the episode itself is complicit in minimizing the genocide of Hellia. It is tonally insane of them to introduce a genocide of a whole planet with widespread racism against the survivors and then expect the emotional payoff of saving the non-Hellian audience from a Hellian terrorist attack and singing a previously forbidden song about the genocide to be satisfying. It's even crazier to think there's value in posing a choice between Cora singing a song in remembrance and Kid's senseless violence on an unimaginable scale. Like no shit Sherlock. What if you tried asking your audience to think about the choice between disruptive protests or demands for material reparations or proportionate armed resistance and violence against strategic targets or anything with at least a whiff of nuance. What if you tried portraying angry, traumatized, maligned genocide survivors doing something within two standard deviations of actual human behavior. What if you tried meeting the fucking moment.

[gatheringbones]

[“Cisgender conceptualizations of trans bodies further highlight the construction of differential pariah femininities and subordinate masculinities. Pariah femininities contaminate the relations between femininities and masculinities. “Pariah trans femininities” contaminate the relations between masculinities and femininities, are viewed as fundamentally uncomplimentary to hegemonic and dominant masculinities, and are perceived as assaults upon one’s manhood or lesbian identity. This results in cis-het men who are attracted to trans women embodying a “hyper-subordinated masculinity.” Violence against Black trans women becomes the vehicle for cis-het men to recuperate their masculinity and regain their status within a hierarchy of masculinities, and cis-LBQ women become complicit in this violence by rendering trans women as tricksters. Cis-ness, thus, is a necropolitical force. Cis-ness relies upon anti-Black trans violence and the murders of Black trans women to sustain itself.

It is not possible to thoroughly analyze and make sense of cis-ness without attention to the ways in which it was birthed out of the racist and capitalist colonization, enslavement, and genocide of Black and Indigenous Peoples and is simultaneously perpetuated through anti-Black racism. Not only was this evident in cis-het men participants’ ranking the photo of a White, cis-passing trans woman as more desirable than photos of other women, but it was also evident in how they spoke of the range of women presented in the photos with the White, “cis-passing” woman being viewed as warm, kind, non-threatening, and nurturing in comparison to photos of more “visibly trans” women of color which were described with harsher features, such as “sharp” facial structure, strong, mean, and “ratchet.” Race, class, and gender intersected in how women were viewed not only in terms of desire but also in terms of “passability.” The racialization of “passing” as cisgender elucidates, in part, why trans women of color may be more vulnerable to being seen as trans and thus targeted for anti-trans violence.

Western ontologies of “body reasoning” remain prevalent shaping the ways in which individuals are interpreted in society. When individual’s interpretations of other’s bodies do not line up with preconceived notions of sex/gender, they are left without the cultural tools to make sense of the individual in front of them resulting in panic, confusion, and violence. The body and the symbols that attach value to some bodies and not to others are central to cis-ness. Trans bodies are excess or surplus to the binary logic of cis-ness, and, thus, they are not only undesirable but unnecessary. It is this lack of value attached to trans bodies and trans people that allowed many participants to justify, understand, and/or make sense out of the murders of Black trans women.”]

alithia zamantakis, from thinking cis: cisgender heterosexual men, and queer women’s roles in anti-trans violence, 2023

[desaintjustfancam]

Bodies in Nier Replicant

NieR Replicant is a game characterized by a preoccupation with bodies, their failures, their betrayals, and their significance both constructed and inherent. Each of its protagonists enjoys a complicated relationship with their body, its main plot threads revolve around the discrepancy between body and soul, and the game both out of necessity and seemingly some genuine interest engages with sexual politics. An accounting of this ought to be made in an organized and thoughtful fashion, and I believe the best way to proceed with such an account is to discuss how the questions of corporeality touch upon each of our protagonists, painting a picture as we go. It is worth noting that I will from time to time touch upon the question of authorial intent, as Yoko Taro and associates have been vocal and engaged with fan questions. While this may be the case, I am engaging with NieR as a text, of which its creators' interpretations are one of many and do not possess a unique charisma of truth. I also do not wish to make conjecture about authorial intent, but merely about what I regard to be substantive and valid readings of a work of fiction. Spoilers will be unmarked and plentiful.

Kaine is a fairly apparent and explicit case of bodily and sexual politics. Kaine is an intersex woman of uncertain parentage raised in a xenophobic, superstitious, and authoritarian society. Within her society she is a pariah along with her grandmother Kali and is forced to the social margins, often subject to violence and abuse from a young age. Kaine is a creature of contrasts and contradictions: a beautiful woman full of hatred and profanity, a victim who has become a fierce warrior and herself a victimizer, a social outsider who herself participates in genocide and the destruction of the other, a woman ashamed of her body who dresses in an outfit that would make Hugh Heffner blush, a human and a shade, an object of sexual gratification but also one of revulsion.

The issue of Kaine's presentation is a recurring discussion in the game, frequent reference is made to her undress and Weiss refers to her with the increasingly affectionate nickname "hussy", despite the fact that Kaine's sexuality is actually a subject that is not broached in the game – her existence is solitary and lonely, and her only romantic inclinations are rather chastely directed towards Nier himself within the game itself. Indeed, in Ending E, NieR is reincarnated with all his purity in the body of a child, and the pair cling to each other in nudity amid a pure white blossom – a Lunar Tear, which by this point has taken its place as a signifier of pure love (Yonah and Nier, Kali and Kaine, and now Kaine and Nier). As Kaine holds NieR, there does not appear to be a sexual element to her protective embrace. In this sense, we see a glimpse of Kaine the maiden, Kaine the woman.

The audio CD "Lust" depicts Kaine as lustful and fixated on Nier, and engaging in necrophilia by proxy in a fit of madness. Kaine is also a murderer, with a dark passenger in the form of the shade Tyrann who permits her to live only so long as she victimizes others. Kaine is uniquely situated to prevent the wholesale slaughter inflicted by Nier upon the Shades, including innumerable children and infants, yet she remains quiet and does not disclose her understanding of their language. Kaine drips with profanity, threatens to mutilate her enemies often in sexualized fashions. Kaine, in this context, is powerful, violent, lustful – here we have Kaine the monster, the phallic Kaine.

These contradictions are not tolerated well within Kaine. Her duality, reflected in her twin swords, one of which is ultimately destroyed in her conflict with Nier, is the source of a great deal of suffering. She struggles to continue to psychologically steel herself to kill Shades as the apparent evil of her deeds makes itself clear. Even after avenging herself on the shade Hook, Kaine is not satisfied and simply wishes, feeling her purpose exhausted, for death to take her before being, effectively, reanimated by the benevolence and purity of child Nier. Even Tyrann, symbolic of Kaine's evil and masculinity is eventually moved by the experience of love and comes to regard himself and his actions with disgust. Kaine ultimately resolves the struggle between feminine-masculine, good-evil, chastity-sexuality in favor of her womanhood.

However, as in all conflicts there is a unity in opposites. Kaine's phallic aspect is given rise to by her desire to protect her womanhood, her virtue, from the community of hatred that surrounds her, from a society that spurns and rejects her. Kaine is hateful and murderous because she has been given no other recourse, no other communities, no other options. A clear example of this is in Ending E, where when the player attempts to manipulate the camera to obtain the vaunted panty shot, and as the game's achievements frames it, "discover her secret" – a clear reference to her ambiguous genitalia, Kaine assaults and eventually murders the player themselves to defend her chastity and modesty. Rather than an intrinsic quality of her person, her aggression and masculinity are passed onto her by her grandmother as means of self defense. Kaine's greatest acts of evil and murder are all fundamentally acts of love, tribute, and defense to those who have given her life meaning. One might interpret her clothing, which shows clearly a body she hates and despises, as an act of self-sacrifice, a hair shirt, a tribute to the efforts of her grandmother and to those that love her.

Emil is textually homosexual. He expresses his wish during the wedding of Facade's King to Fyra that he might enjoy such a wedding some day and as Nier assures him he will find a bride some day, he is left to awkwardly note in his absence that this is not what he desires. The creators of the game have similarly confirmed their understanding of Emil as a homosexual character who is motivated by an unreciprocated love for Nier. Emil is depicted as pure and essentially omnibenevolent, despite being cursed with a body that destroys everything that he sees and later contains a monstrosity so profound that it exterminates entire communities. His love for Nier is chaste and is held in contradiction to the terror of his condition.

I think, however, equally compelling as a strictly homosexual reading is a reading of Emil as transgender. Wishing to be the bride in a wedding is conducive to such a reading, and NieR is a game with a lot to say about bodies. Emil is first met wearing a blindfold, alone, isolated from the world, unable to see the people he loves or wishes to give himself to, the very act of looking, of desiring, in this regard, becomes violent for Emil. Emil spends more time with Kaine than Nier for his time in the narrative, and they develop a close bond. It is, as well, Kaine who Emil petrifies with his gaze, not Nier. It is to free Kaine from the stone which symbolizes Emil's world that Emil descends into the depths of his home, his past, to confront the monstrosity within, represented by Halua, his twin sister, who has been reduced to a monster.

Emil gives himself to the monstrosity willingly, sublimating himself and being devoured by it with the hope that he might take it similarly into himself. And he does. Emil and his feminine counterpart, twins, exist within each other as anima and animus. Emil is blessed with sight, desire, knowledge, power, but is placed into a monstrous, hideous, ghoulish body, which he despises and which provokes fear and hatred from those who might previously have offered him kindness. It is a body designed to inflict harm, a body which does not suit its contents, a body which Emil himself desperately fears. In joining Kaine within the ranks of monstrous bodies and dysphoria, Emil is able to free her from this self-imposed prison. He is able to enable her to live a normal life. Emil rescues Kaine again in the narrative, saving her in Ending E and in the Shadowlord's Castle. These are tasks Nier is incapable of performing. Nier, despite loving Kaine, does not appear to understand her and might be incapable of understanding her. It is only her peer, someone who truly does empathize with her monstrosity, Emil, that is able to free her.

Emil as a pre-awareness transgender woman, trapped in a rotting, artificial, ghoulish body designed to do harm on her and others, able to free and empathize with those like her, pining after a man who cannot understand her, now free to desire but acutely aware of her own ugliness, inadequacy, and the hatred her desire provokes in others, I argue is extremely compelling. It is worth noting that Emil's bodily monstrosity escalates as the end of the eternal childhood her body had been trapped in, her beatific and cherubic features melting away to bones at crude angles, her hair falling away, at the moment she is meant to be graduating into self assurance and control.

Nier and Weiss are somewhat less involved from the perspective of body politics. Nier is noteworthy in that per associated works he was forced into sex work as an adolescent in order to get by, and that as a result he binds his hair into a ponytail as a response to sexual trauma. As he matures into adulthood he severs this ponytail, wearing his hair loose, representing in ways a growth past this. In doing so, however, Nier steels himself into a warrior, devoted only to recovering Yonah, sacrificing everything in his path to do so. In this sense I am not sure Nier has grown past his trauma so much as he has sublimated it into the acts of brutality which he inflicts upon others and his obsessive, bordering on incestuous, fixation on his sister. Nier is repeatedly prompted to feel empathy for other victims and outsiders and refuses to do so willfully, choosing to remain ignorant and deluded in his quest. Weiss, himself without a body or bodily autonomy, assists Nier in remaining blind and hardening his heart.

Louise forms a mirror to the concerns of bodies that are exhibited by Emil and Kaine. A Gestalt without a corresponding Replicant, Louise is a girl who was born without any options, a cruel product of fate. Able to think, feel, and take a false form as a woman, Louise is unable to speak or sing or perform in human society. She admires the beauty of humanity and desperately wishes to join them, cursing her own hideousness and admiring, desiring, the beauty of the world. She is infatuated with Hans the Postman, who cannot and will not reciprocate her love. She is denied humanity or sympathy by Nier and Weiss – although Kaine and Hans are able to provide it for her posthumously. In this sense Louise is a mirror of Kaine and Emil. This parallel might cast Neir and Hans in somewhat of a Walrus and the Carpenter role – they will both mercilessly eradicate the Other from the world, but one will, at least, cry about it.

Louise, is of course, the pinnacle of the Other. She has no Replicant. No earthly or human attachment. She cannot become anything except herself, her efforts to do so render her even more monstrous, hideous, and terrible than before. The sort of perverse excitement with which Nier and Weiss regard her extraordinarily powerful body feels at times reminiscent of discourse about the physicality of transgender women and athletes. It reminds me of the times one clocks involuntarily a person they encounter. It feels dirty, transgressive, and wrong.

There are innumerable stones left unturned in this brief discussion of how NieR Replicant talks about and shows bodies and people's relationships to them, but I thought it would be interesting to reflect on my own thoughts on the issue, how they made me feel, and what kinds of readings can be made of the work.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Is Eridan’s fake attempt for land dweller genocide just a manifestation of his guilt of orphaning all those trolls? He says he wants to kill them all so they will no longer have to deal the loss of losing their parent to some finned hipster asshole?

So Eridan's life pre-SGRUB is primarily concerned with one thing: it is his Duty as a violet-blood who is close to the Heiress to feed her lusus so that it doesn't throw a tantrum and Kill Everybody. It's a manifestation not of guilt, but of anxiety.

He describes the murder he commits in pursuit of this as "all i evver done practically," and we never see him participate in a hobby he enjoys - we learn he's a hipster because Karkat calls him one, he FLARPs to fill Gl'bgolyb's belly, and people have fought with me before, but I maintain that his "interest" in military history is also just a part of his posturing/something he reads like somebody would doomscroll, as it validates his anxiety, because he only ever talks about history twice, in the vaguest possible terms, and the first time, it's just part of him posturing at Kanaya, and the second time, he's literally just. Wrong? He's just incorrect?

CA: yeah go ahead and kiss us off but therell be blood on your hands CA: you could either play along as our auspistice and do a little mediating like you wwere fuckin hatched to CA: or wwatch she and me devvolvve into fuckin full fledged kismesisses the kind like you dont get once in ten thousand swweeps CA: you knoww thats wwhat it wwould be there wwould be rainboww rivvers runnin through star systems and all nebulizin like liquid firewworks CA: it wwill be beautiful and heartbreaking all at once CA: you should read up on your history instead of poring through that godawwfull sunny rubbish

CC: None of your plots to kill t)(e land dwellers ever work out, and every doomsday device you get your )(ands on turns out to be a piece of junk! CA: so CA: i got to keep tryin thats howw all the great military masterminds became great through upright persevverance

Like I just. Don't believe him when he says he's obsessed with military history when he doesn't seem to be able to name five specific battles, and thinks the main attribute a military leader needs to succeed is "persevverance". We know that Karkat's interest in romance is real because he brings it up more than twice and also starts infodumping about it to Vriska at one point, but Eridan only seems to mention it because he thinks he's supposed to care about it.

Which is pretty much, like, one of the biggest tensions in his character: how he feels he's supposed to act vs. how he actually feels about acting that way. He faces multiple pressures to be a certain person, which run counter to his actual feelings.

He has to be a murderer, because if he isn't one, then Gl'bgolyb will do a genocide on his entire species.

He has to be an unrepentant murderer, because they live in a horrible fascist murder-society where highbloods are supposed to kill lowbloods all the time for literally any reason.

He has to be the one getting his hands bloody because his ancestor, Dualscar, was also the Orphaner, and (especially highblood) trolls need to take up their ancestors' mantles.

He has to be rude and condescending to everybody else because that's how highbloods, and especially sea dwellers, have to act.

He cannot express compassion, sympathy, or pity, because sea dwellers and highbloods aren't supposed to act that way.

Magic has to be fake, because it's for shitty wigglers, and Eridan's not a wiggler anymore!

He has to be in a torrid pitch relationship because that was the most defining one Dualscar had, and he needs to complete Dualscar's unfinished business.

He has to be in a flushed relationship because Dualscar had an unrequited flushcrush on the empress, and he needs to complete Dualscar's unfinished business.

He has to hate the lowbloods because he's a highblood.

He has to hate the land dwellers because he's a sea dweller.

But wait! That's weird. He has to hate the land dwellers and lowbloods, but he's the one responsible for making sure they don't all die by keeping Gl'bgolyb full?

In truth, it would be all too easy to solve the land dweller problem once and for all. You'd just need to lighten up on the feeding schedule for a while. Maybe you'd be a little too busy to bother with that hassle for once? Or maybe you could happen to be off your game for a spell? It happens, even to the best sometimes. But nah. It would make her upset. More emotions. More problems. That's all you need.

And he has to be an unrepentant murderer even though he clearly feels more guilt for it than Feferi?

That should keep her happy for a while. And make a freshly orphaned troll somewhere pretty sad.

And you claim magic is fake idiot stuff for babies but you like it SOOOO much?

You also like MAGIC, even though you know it to be FAKE. Like a made up friend, the way wizards are. Made up make believe FAKEY FAKEY FAKES. It's still fun though.

So we can see that Eridan is basically being pulled two ways at all times.

On one hand, there's everything society says he needs to be: an unrepentant murderer, a military dictator, ruthless bloodthirsty sea-dwelling aristocracy, hater of all low bloods and land dwellers, Orphaner Dualscar's heir.

And on the other hand, there's the guy Eridan actually is: doesn't give a shit about the hemocaste, just wants friends and/or relationship partners, likes magic, like hipster stuff, kind of a tool, guilty and traumatized.

It doesn't help that the people he's surrounded by are the least likely to recognize his distress as distress - Feferi loooooves being a princess, Kanaya has never really voiced any strong opinions on the hemocaste because it largely doesn't concern her since she's a rare jade blood, and Vriska is doing a lot better than Eridan is at fitting the mold they were born into (not that she doesn't have problems, she's just doing better than Eridan, which is a low fucking bar). Even Karkat, because of his own hangups about being a mutant pariah, venerates the society he was born into, because he (wrongly) sees it as a means to gain validation so he can hate himself less. As a result, Eridan winds up with basically 0 support system, because pretty much every aspect of his life reinforces that the thing society says he should be is correct, and that there's something wrong with Eridan for being unable to meet that expectation.

Especially because, for at least all the "murderer" he's supposed to be, if he fails to meet that expectation, everybody dies. So it's not just that he's got a pushy lusus and a shitty society, like Vriska does, but that there's also the added weight that adhering to those expectations is literally, objectively, the correct thing to do, so long as he doesn't want literally everybody to die.

As a result, he's constantly trying to overcorrect his behavior and cognition to line up with what he thinks he's supposed to be. That's why he's constantly saying slurs even though he doesn't actually treat anybody differently for their caste. That's why he's constantly talking about murder and military history, even though he clearly doesn't enjoy doing either of those things. That's why he's always pushing this image of a big bad fascist wannabe, even though he actually wants to be a magic-slinging wizard.

The thing about genocide, for Eridan, is that he's already obsessed with genocide - the prevention of genocide. Keeping his species from being genocided is, without exaggeration, the most time-consuming pursuit in his life. BUT WAIT! He can't say, think, or believe that his actions are for the benefit of the land dwellers, because first of all, he feels kind of guilty about killing them, and second of all, because he's not allowed to express compassion to the people he's keeping safe. So between the stress, the cognitive dissonance, the anxiety, and the fact that Eridan doesn't really do a lot of introspection because he's so overwhelmed by emotion, his existing preoccupation with genocide is transmuted into something that's socially acceptable: "wanting all the land dwellers dead."

"[I]t would be all too easy." Indeed: if he ever slacks in his duties, they will all die. In fact, it's easier for him to let them die than to not. He clearly doesn't like doing all that killing, and it clearly makes him feel bad, and takes up a shitton of his time if nothing else, so it's probably occurred to him over, and over, and over, that maybe he should just... not! What if he just stopped.

Well, then everyone would die. Gl'bgolyb would raise her voice a little and it'd kill all the rust bloods, then the bronzes, the golds, the limes, the olives...

Wait! Is he feeling bad for them? He's not supposed to be feeling bad for the low bloods! Shit, shit, shit. Say a slur and then say something about how you WANT all the low bloods dead. PHEW. OKAY. SAFE. But that means you need to kill all the lowbloods. Because you said it, so it has to be true, and also, this is the way you're supposed to be. So, fuck, well, go commission a doomsday device. Okay, done. PHEW. It probably doesn't work, but nobody can say you didn't try! Hooray, you did it! You have performed a Sea Dweller Action! Oh it's time to go kill some people again. Damnit. Killing people sucks. It makes you feel bad, and it takes up so much of your time. What if you just didn't...

And we can see this with the way his lust for genocide is described. There's no mention of why he hates the land dwellers, no mention of how he believes society will improve with them gone, or even what they're doing that's so bad in the first place. He rambles at Feferi about "keeping the bloodlines pure" at one point, but this is clearly contradicted by him stating he wouldn't kill Kanaya, because what sort of friend would he be? (And the fact that he cares about Kanaya, Vriska, and the anon-blooded Karkat, who could be literally any blood color, at all!)

So yeah, like, the thing is, he doesn't want to kill them all. He even calls himself out for knowing his latest doomsday plot was a bust from the start:

You are almost starting not to care about this stupid doomsday device which probably won't even work. She probably KNOWS you know it won't work. She has probably put all the pieces together and knows it was an elaborate ruse to be in cahoots with her again.

And so does Feferi:

CC: None of your plots to kill t)(e land dwellers ever work out, and every doomsday device you get your )(ands on turns out to be a piece of junk! CA: so CA: i got to keep tryin thats howw all the great military masterminds became great through upright persevverance CC: I t)(ink deep down you stack t)(ese plots against you so you fail because you know it's wrong.

And here he is outright contradicting his stated goal of killing the land dwellers because, jegus, he'd never kill his friends:

CA: but somethin thatll kill all land dwwellers wwhat else wwould i be after GA: Can You Just For A Moment Entertain The Thoughts Of One Untouched By Megalomaniacal Derangement And Tell Me Why Id Want To Assist You With That CA: wwell CA: im not goin to vvery wwell kill you am i that wwould be fuckin unconscionable CA: wwhat kind of friend wwould i be

And a reminder that one of his closest friends at this point in time is Karkat, whose blood color is currently anonymous to his friend group, meaning he could be literally any blood color and Eridan wouldn't want him dead:

CC: You know, I'm not sure w)(y we never talk about our romantic aspirations. CC: We s)(ould more often. It is kind of -EXCITING! CA: shrug CC: Probably because you fill your gossip quota wit)( your nubby )(orned bro.

But Karkat also explicitly lumps himself in with the low bloods, so Eridan can't even use the excuse that Karkat might be nobility (but sea dwellers are still suppose to hate land dwelling nobility so that still wouldn't be a defense EVEN IF it was true):

CG: CHALK IT UP AS ANOTHER INFURIATING VICTORY FOR GUTTER BLOOD OVER ARISTOCRACY.

Because Eridan does not want to genocide the land dwellers. He's just anxious.