#anti-repression

[ailedhoo]

In light of the recent presidential election in the United States of America and the potential problems of living under the 2nd Trump Administration for folk there, I would take opportunity to link the following by It's Going Down. This was written before the results came forth on the election.

This provide guidance on organising. From empowering existing projects to building regional capacity, from mutual aid to anti-repression defense, moves will need to be taken to ensure people will be able to resist the coming storm.

Survival is a basic, yet vital, means of resitance.

[akkoeln]

Hallo an alle! Wir gehen mit dem Kölner Tattoo Circus in die zweite Runde und laden euch dazu herzlich ein. Das Datum steht: 12. bis 14. Mai 2023! Es wird wieder tätowiert, sich ausgetauscht, gegessen und getanzt. Inhaltliche Veranstaltungen zum Thema Knast und Antirepression sind natürlich Programm. Denn darum geht es beim Tattoo Circus. Also folgt uns hier und haltet euch auf dem Laufenden. Sagt allen euren Friends Bescheid! Wenn ihr wen kennt oder selbst Lust habt zu tättowieren, schreibt uns gerne an die Mailadresse: tattoo-circus-koeln@posteo.de Wenn ihr Bock habt euch anders einzubringen könnt ihr euch auch gerne hier bei uns melden. Wir freuen uns auf euch und die nächste Runde Tattoo Circus Köln.

[nando161mando]

This is happening in Louisiana.

[makorragal-312]

*Gerrard existing*

Buck: I'm gonna fucking kill this guy.

Eddie: DON'T. He's not even worth it.

*Gerrard gerrards in his general direction*

Eddie:

[folklorespring]

When I was a teenager, I used to be in a lot of internet spaces with russians and every time I look back on that I think to myself wow they never saw me and other Ukrainians as actual human beings, let alone equals to them. Even in so-called progressive communities where they condemn state's policies, while actively benefiting from them and having the same imperial mindset. It's so embarrassing to remember the interactions from that period. I remember fake laughing at jokes at my expense and feel disgusted. I remember seeing performative hate for putin while they go on vacations in occupied territories, their usage of ethnic slurs "as a joke", the constant mocking of Ukrainian language, forcing the "we're brotherly nations" notion, claiming art, culture and cuisine from colonised countries as their own and then saying "you all are uncultured, where are your famous artists?", being nice-ish to you when you stay in line, but once you point out the wrongs their country is doing they turn to belittling you and your struggles. All I feel from those memories is humiliation.

[kinardsboy]

I have something controversial to say.

For shippers who claim they want the “best for Buck” it sure is weird to ship him with someone who’s never treated a romantic partner fairly in his life lol

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

so i see a few toh fans complaining that toh made willow a damsel in distress in the last season and ruined her character, just so that hunter can comfort her. now i don’t ship huntlow but i also don’t agree with this take. i think it’s fine for a strong character to be vulnerable or depend on someone else once in a while. they don’t have to be an independent girlboss all the time. and if done correctly, it can be a powerful message to people who repress their feelings for the sake of appearing strong.

what i do hate about this scene is that they give willow a chance to be vulnerable AT THE COST OF HUNTER’S TRAUMA. they basically push aside hunter’s feelings RIGHT AFTER he got possessed by his abuser and his best friend got killed, just so that he can help willow feel a little less insecure. they already worked through willow’s insecurities in s1, why did they have to bring it back again?

and sure, realistically, people may still feel insecure from time to time, even if they are working on it. but this was such an unnecessary addition to a show that has already been cut short. willow deserves to feel vulnerable, she deserves to express her emotions, but this entire subplot came out of nowhere when there were more serious issues that they needed to focus on.

[khattikeri]

maybe a controversial opinion but while i really love jiang cheng as a character he is deeply self-centered as a person. and seeing people fight tooth and nail claiming he isn't, or is just misunderstood, or that he has genuine valid reasons to be selfish when plenty of other characters make the difficult choice to forego status and opportunities for what they believe is genuinely right to do (read: wei wuxian, wen ning, wen qing, lan wangji, jiang yanli, mianmian, etc.)

it's just odd to me. especially if they're talking about the novels.

mxtx didn't give jiang cheng the name "sandu shengshou" as a quirky coincidence. there's a REASON she named him & his sword after the 3 poisons of Buddhism (specifically ignorance, greed, and hatred). it's crucial to the story that jiang cheng is NOT selfless and that wei wuxian IS.

it's important to accept that wei wuxian is, by their society's standards, not morally gray; he represents several Buddhist ideals in direct contrast of jiang cheng and multiple people attest to wei wuxian's strong moral character, which is a lot of why jiang cheng even feels bitter about him to begin with.

it's crucial, because by the end of the novel jiang cheng realizes the extent of this and begins to let go!

the twin prides thing wasn't jiang cheng wanting them to 100% mirror the twin jades. he does care about wei wuxian, but he wanted wei wuxian to stay his right hand man, in part the way wei changze was for jiang fengmian.

and if there's one thing you can notice about wei changze in the novels, it's that literally nobody talks about him. he is only ever mentioned when his cool mysterious mountain sect wife cangse-sanren is mentioned, or (even more rarely) when they discuss him as a servant to jiang fengmian. regardless of jiang fengmian's own feelings, wei changze was considered lesser to him and didn't seem to outdo him, since nobody's out there years later still waxing poetry about wei changze's skills.

it may not be the only thing jiang cheng wants out of a twin pride dynamic, but it is a big part of it. regardless of his parents' intentions in taking wei wuxian in and treating him certain ways, this twin pride right-hand man thing is what jiang cheng has felt owed since childhood. he gave up his dogs for wei wuxian, people gossip about his sect heir position with wei wuxian there... jiang cheng wants the reciprocation of what he views as personal sacrifices.

he is ignorant to the depth of what wei wuxian must've suffered for over 6 years as a malnourished orphan child on the streets. he hates how wei wuxian's intelligence, witty charm, and cultivation abilities are naturally stronger than his own. he does care about wei wuxian a lot and want them to be together as sort of-brothers, sort of-friends, sort of-young master and sect servant...

...but if it's between that unclear (yet still caring) relationship and being able to save himself just a little bit more, jiang cheng nearly always manages to clam up in the face of danger and choose the latter, which ultimately benefits himself most. maybe it's a stretch to call that sort of thing greed, but it certainly isn't selfless.

there are of course plenty of justifications for this. it's his duty as sect heir. his home and sect was severely damaged by the wen attack and subsequent war; he had to protect himself, etc.

but doesn't that prove the point?

wei wuxian may be charming, but in terms of pure social standing, he is lower and far more susceptible to being punished or placed in harm's way by people who have more power and money. to protect wei wuxian, yunmeng jiang's long-term head disciple and semi-family member, even in the face of backlash and public scrutiny would've been the selfless thing to do. this is what wei wuxian does for the wen remnants in the burial mounds.

jiang cheng does not choose this. it's not even an unreasonable choice for him to make! nobody else in the great clans is doing such a thing, stepping out of line to take on a burden that could weaken them in the long-run. wei wuxian himself doesn't hate jiang cheng for it; he lets go of these things and focuses on what good he can do in the present.

jiang cheng thinks further into the future - what would happen to him if he continued vouching for wei wuxian and taking his side? what about jiang cheng's face, his sect's face? would wei wuxian even care to reciprocate somehow? everyone expects him to cut off wei wuxian for being dangerous, for threatening his position, for...

do you see what i mean? to call jiang cheng selfless for falling in line with exactly what people expected him to do after the war is not only wrong, it's foolish.

"but they faked their falling-out!" okay. why fake it to begin with, except to protect jiang cheng and the jiang sect's own face? is that selfless? who does it ultimately serve to protect? wei wuxian canonically internalizes the idea that he stains all that he touches, including lan wangji, and agrees to the fake fight because he doesn't want to cause the jiang sect harm. regardless, it eventually slides into a true falling-out, and in the end jiang cheng is more or less unscathed reputation-wise while wei wuxian falls.

that isn't selfless. it's many things! it's respecting his clan and his ancestors, it's making a good plan for the future of his sect and cultivation... but it isn't a truly selfless in the interest of what's right rather than in the interest of duty and what's good for him and his family lineage.

that brings me to my next point: even though wei wuxian hid the truth of the golden core transfer, jiang cheng spent nearly 20 years believing that the golden core "renewal" he was given was a birthright gift of wei wuxian's from baoshan-sanren, an immortal sect teacher of wei wuxian's mother's and a martial elder to wei wuxian.

of course we all know that's a big fat lie, but jiang cheng believed that wei wuxian gave up a critical emergency use gift to him for decades! he was lied to, yes, but jiang cheng immediately agreed without even needing to be convinced. the light in his dead eyes came back with hope the moment wei wuxian even said baoshan-sanren's name. he accepted wei wuxian's offer to give that up to him and take it via identity theft without missing a beat.

with how mysterious and revered baoshan-sanren is, that's obviously not a light sacrifice to just give up to anyone, no matter how close they might be to you. pretending to be wei wuxian to take the gift could even be considered dangerous. what if she found out and got offended? could wei wuxian be hurt by that?

jiang cheng doesn't even hesitate. wei wuxian is the one who mentions that if jiang cheng doesn't pretend to be him, the immortal master could get angry and they'd both be goners. and funnily enough, the day they do go to "the mountain", jiang cheng is the one worried and suspiciously wondering if wei wuxian was lying to him or had misremembered.

of course they've both been traumatized like hell prior to this point. but still: it speaks to how broken he was at the moment as well as to his character overall.

i digress: jiang cheng "gets his golden core back" via what he believed was a gift that should've been wei wuxian's to use in serious emergencies. rather than use it for himself, wei wuxian risked his own safety and gave it to jiang cheng... and jiang cheng still ends up embittered and angry, believing that wei wuxian is arrogant and selfish.

if he truly views them as 100% brothers and equals with no caveats, why would he think that way? it's not like he needs to grovel before wei wuxian for doing that, or to reciprocate... but this is what i mean when i say jiang cheng feels he is owed things by wei wuxian. wei wuxian's actions hold a very different weight in jiang cheng's mind, and jiang cheng himself doesn't ever act the same way, except once.

is it wrong for him to feel like he is owed something? it depends. many asian cultures, including my own, feel that a person owes their family in ways that may not make sense to westerners. for example, it's considered normal for a child to owe their parents for giving birth to them, or to other caretakers for feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating them, etc.

however, something like verbally saying "thank you" or "i'm sorry" to family is considered crazy- why would you owe that? you're supposed to inconvenience your family; saying thank you or sorry is the sort of thing you say to a stranger or acquaintance. i get half-seriously lectured by my elders on this a lot even now, even though they know such phrases are just considered good manners in the US.

this muddies up the idea of wei wuxian being jiang cheng's family vs his family's charge or servant even more. jiang cheng wants wei wuxian to be close... but ultimately doesn't really choose to use what power he DOES have to protect wei wuxian. he considers himself still owed something that in his mind wei wuxian flagrantly never repays.

this isn't even getting into how despite spending a majority of his time with the yiling patriarch he never once noticed that wei wuxian stopped using any spiritual power-based cultivation. even lan wangji, who met them far more rarely, realized that something was wrong and that wei wuxian had taken some sort of spiritual damage, hence the "come with me to gusu".

of course manpain is fun and i'm not immune to the juicy idea of them reconciling and talking things out... but jiang cheng is deeply mired in his own desire to be "above" wei wuxian in multiple ways, and doesn't realize the extent of wei wuxian's actions, the intentions behind them, and the consequences wei wuxian knowingly faced for them.

to not recognize this about jiang cheng, especially in the novels, is really revisionist if you ask me. i reiterate that i really do like him a lot. he's flawed, angry, traumatized and has poor coping mechanisms, an overall fascinating character... but he is not selfless nor ideal, and i seriously draw the line at people saying he is.

wen ning shoves this all into his face at lotus pier to disastrous results. it is the reason why jiang cheng's a total mess at guanyin temple, and the reason jiang cheng ultimately doesn't tell wei wuxian about the fact that he ran towards the wens on purpose.

for that one last act of his to have really been selfless, he needs to not seek anything in return. he did it purely because it was right to do to protect someone else. if that means wei wuxian never finds out about it, so be it.

that moment that ended up causing jiang cheng irreversible harm is not a debt that wei wuxian owes him. it hurts, but no matter how bitter it is, that realization is so important to him changing in the future.

[alwaysbewoke]

[antianakin]

The constant pervasive ideas about the Jedi, that they're repressed and bad at relationships and isolated from the world and its realities and stuck in their ways, is actually just... Anakin.

Like people looked at Anakin Skywalker and assumed that because he was the protagonist that the way he acted was somehow a symptom of the Jedi's teachings or upbringing instead of just... Anakin's personality?

Anakin is repressed, more than almost literally any other character in the entire franchise. Anakin chronically refuses to really acknowledge how he's feeling and pretends he ISN'T feeling it while multiple other people might be begging him to do the opposite.

Anakin is bad at relationships, he pressures Padme into a relationship by constantly ignoring her stated boundaries and disrespecting her. He complains about his OTHER relationships to Padme and Palpatine, particularly his relationship to Obi-Wan. He's awkward and overly melodramatic, incapable of truly expressing himself in a way that isn't immediately off-putting to normal people or being able to express his more positive feelings towards someone in a way they might recognize or accept.

Anakin isolates himself from the world and its realities, refusing to see nuance anywhere, and preferring to view things from an entirely black and white perspective, particularly in order to make himself out to be the hero of any situation (the Tuskens are animals, the Separatists are evil, the Jedi are evil, etc).

Anakin is stuck in his ways. Similar to the last point, Anakin refuses to accept that any way but his own could possibly work or be worth considering. He thinks he's extra special and therefore people like Obi-Wan have literally nothing to teach him of any worth. Anakin doesn't WANT to think differently about the Separatists even when Padme tells him otherwise. Anakin does things in a certain specific way and refuses to change even if it might be better to do so.

I dare someone to try to come up with an accusation made about the Jedi's culture and lifestyle that "needs to change" that isn't literally just ANAKIN'S personality flaws projected onto the Jedi at large.

Maybe the Jedi don't need to change at all and Anakin just as an unhealthy toxic personality that even the Jedi couldn't fix.

[aleksanderscult]

Alina is not like the other girls

Alina is the personification of the girls that try hard to be everything their man wants them to be to the point that they lose themselves and don't know what their desires are outside of that relationship.

Which is very sad. And even sadder is the fact that this side of her character is not addressed by the narrative. It's treated as normal.

[adorawasright]

thoughts on this post?

Do not harass the OP if you find this post.

This would've been cool if...

... Catra and Adora weren't raised as sisters

... Catra weren't abusive towards Adora

... they (canon + fandom) didn't oversimplify Adora's character entirely

... they didn't erase all the platonic relationships that were actually important (especially the Best Friends Squad)

Also, I'm almost sure the Horde that Hordak created isn't a cult. At least I never had that impression. The Horde is more of a military than the cult Horde Prime presented to us in s5.

[nando161mando]

Exploited Worker Discontent...

[flintandfuss]

this started as tags for an analysis post about buck's desire for love & his mismanagement of relationships in pursuit of it (read it it's excellent), but my tags veered wildly off topic and took a life of their own, so i figured i'd do the polite thing and stick them in their own overlooked post instead of spinning brain salad in someone else's reblogs

The Breakup™ rubbed me the wrong way because tommy framed it as like, "here is my interpretation of your feelings/actions both current and future and that's all there is to it"

and he was RIGHT is the thing. buck continues to buck in ways that aren't healthy or self-reflective & it would've eventually torpedoed their relationship. but he didn't need Gay Mentor (Ex) Boyfriend to tell him his own feelings and then bounce. he needed someone he cared about to open a discussion so he could work through his feelings on his terms. whether it ended in a breakup or moving forward with more caution, he deserved a say. because his partners keep up and leaving out of the blue & he's left reeling and blaming himself

and okay, tommy thought the relationship wasn't serious, but by his own admission he wanted it to be. so he said to this guy he supposedly cares about enough to get his heart broken, "you're going to ruin our relationship, but not on purpose, so i'm getting out before you can." idk, i'm processing as i type, but it did not leave a pleasant taste in my mouth. there's a level of guilt he's hoisting onto buck by blaming the breakup on actions buck hasn't even taken. and not even giving him any opportunity to defend himself because, as always, Tommy Knows Best

i realize that it was a necessity of the plot and not particularly out of character (in fact, it was pretty much an exact replica of their first date). and that, in the long run, the framing of the bt breakup means only good things for buddie

but idk, i just want our little bruised-heart romantic to be given space to become an equal partner. to be trusted with his own mind. to be able to speak for himself. i hope buck can learn that his newness to dating men doesn't mean he can't think for himself, just like his himbo history didn't make it okay for people to write off his feelings in relationships. i hope tptb realize that it's a realization he needs to make. to let him self-reflect, and put in the work, and learn to trust himself. to finally, finally find equal footing in a romantic relationship

[jessescatorccio]

literally i cannot take the greens seriously at all. aemond w that same horrible bleach blonde wig hbo has been using for a decade plus. aegon whose actor seems like he’s kind of doing a roman roy impression and thinks his rapist character is sensitive and misunderstood. alicent looking shocked and appalled at the consequences of her actions in every episode for some stupid reason. need i even elaborate on the incel crispy cole

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

what bothers me about horde prime, more than his lazy characterization or his lack of impact on the narrative, is the fact that he is such a bad representation of a cult leader. like,, this is not how cults work. they don’t just insert a chip into you and make you follow their every directive like a robot. real life cults are a lot more terrifying because they use manipulation as a tactic to convince people to join them. it’s not a digital chip that you can remove from your system and suddenly you’re in complete control of yourself. cult survivors have talked about how hard it is to actually unlearn that mindset and start thinking for themselves, how many years it takes to stop feeling guilty for leaving their cult or seeing the toxicity in the leaders they so religiously followed.

sure, hordak and catra have some trauma tied to their experience with horde prime, but most of that is because of the physical torture they went through, rather than their experience of being brainwashed. and it’s fine if horde prime was just some villain and not a genocidal cult leader. but it’s clear that he was written to be a religious authority figure, the execution is just so off.

i know he’s a character in a fantasy world, so he had to use his powers for something. but instead of turning people into robots, he could have shown them a “better world” through his tech, talked them into joining him and forgetting about all their current worries, and then used them as weapons against etheria.

it would have been a lot more impactful and angsty if catra had willingly joined horde prime’s cult so that she could repress her guilt. in fact, it would have been really interesting if horde prime had convinced catra that he would help her repend for all that she did, if she joined his cult. this would have been a lot more comparable to religious guilt and trauma in real life, and it would show that catra actually felt bad for what she did, instead of just looking sad for a while and then continuing to be a shitty person anyway.