#because their only reason for any of it is radicalizing others to their level

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Making it onto n*zi tumblr was a trip, but guys: you have to start understanding what dog whistles are and what blatant antisemitism looks like (I'm talking to non-jews here).

The enemy of your enemy is not your friend in this case. You have to start participating in your political spaces with a critical eye, and that means understanding what antisemites are doing to try to radicalize you. If you think n*zis wouldn't pretend to be On Your Side just to radicalize you, you're wrong, and you'll be willingly putting yourself at that risk. Their jew hatred is what keeps them alive, what motivates their existence - they will do anything to ensure that other people are just as hate-filled as them.

I'm making this post with the hopes that someone will read it and it will remind them that not everyone on Their Side is their friend. Educate yourself on jew hatred and what it looks like. Listen to jews. It's never too late to learn, to make the world - to make even a tiny space be a safer place for jews.

[molsno]

I don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying kids shows as an adult per se, like that's obviously fine by itself. however I think the fact that there are so many Queers™ that almost exclusively watch shows made for children, and that most of those shows were produced by disney, is indicative of a broader trend of reactionary ideologies in mainstream queer society. often they praise these shows for having "queer representation" in some form, such as a gay couple, usually comprised of young children given who these shows are usually about. of course even these meager scraps of representation are often enough to get a show canceled, but the fact is that for them to even be on children's television in the first place, they must be extremely sanitized. disney in particular is notorious for scrubbing any and all content that any hypothetical evangelical conservative might take issue with from their shows, but this is a problem inherent to children's tv.

I say this not to disparage people who like these shows, but to point out that these shows serve to impose heterosexual norms onto queerness, and it concerns me how many queer people seem to be completely fine with this. why should disney channel and cartoon network get to define what an acceptable level of queerness is? the most radical thing you can expect to see is a same-sex couple briefly kissing. they are wholly sexless and sanitized, stripped away of any challenges to heterosexuality, cissexism, monogamy, and patriarchy. Straight People get the idea that they don't have to worry about queerness, as long as it conforms to their sensibilities and doesn't threaten their dominance.

but worst of all is that queer people themselves approve of this sanitization. I suspect the reason that so many queer people's media landscape revolves entirely around these shows is because they seek acceptance into Straight society, and must prove that they won't rock the boat too much. in doing so, they seek out only portrayals of queerness they consider "safe", and eagerly distance themselves from any form of "degeneracy". queer sexuality, for instance, must be a wholly private endeavor, as it is something shameful. any form of kink that isn't acceptable under wider heterosexual norms is something they must vehemently abhor, and engaging in it must be responded to with violence, whether social, physical, or both.

to be clear, I'm not saying that exclusively watching children's shows causes queer people to be reactionary. on the contrary, I think it's the other way around. queer people who already hold reactionary beliefs flock to these shows because it allows them to see themselves in media while still being able to gain temporary, limited access to the heterosexual project and the privileges doled out to its participants. this is deeply disgraceful. not only is the queer project of assimilating into straightness an inherently harmful one given that it necessitates intentionally throwing queer people who can't assimilate due to being trans, black, disabled, poor, etc under the bus and subjecting them to violence; it's also a fool's errand, given that straight people ultimately still hate the queer people that do try to assimilate and will discard them the moment they stop being a useful tool.

[breckstonevailskier]

"The End" and "The Beginning"

It's interesting to notice that the first episode of Fallout is called "The End" and the last episode of season 1 is called "The Beginning". But that's because there are a lot of hidden meanings.

"The End":

The reason this episode has this name is because it specifically refers to the big moments going on in Lucy's and the Ghoul's lives.

The "End" of Cooper Howard:

We open on October 23, 2077, with Cooper Howard performing for a kid's birthday party. During the party, the Great War breaks out as the bombs fall on America. This marks the fall of America.

But it also marks the "end" of Cooper Howard. Because the last we see of Cooper, he's riding away on Sugarfoot with Janey as the bombs fall. When we next see him, he's the Ghoul, and he's very much suppressed any attachment to the identity of Cooper Howard. He wears a tattered jacket and a bandolier over his old movie costume, and he's pretty much done everything to disassociate himself from his old identity, right down to using the Southern accent he used in his movies as his main accent.

The "End" of Lucy MacLean the Vault Dweller:

The episode being titled "The End" also fits the fact that we're seeing the final days of Lucy's life as a naive Vault Dweller. After all, a common theme amongst the Fallout games where the player character starts in a Vault is that you're irreversibly changed when you set out into the Wasteland.

And for Lucy, this moment where she passes through the vault door might as well be a metaphorical "death" scene, as demonstrated by how the blown out lighting makes it look like she's stepping "into the light".

"The Beginning":

This episode's title is also about pivotal moments for Lucy and the Ghoul, but also a few others.

The Beginning of the Great War:

This one's technically a bonus. But this episode is where we get to see the exact moment the Great War actually began: in a dimly lit room where Barb and other collaborators from Vault-Tec and other big corporations met.

The New Beginning of Cooper Howard:

Over the episodes that follow the Ghoul's little misadventure with Lucy, we see that her refusal to break despite his efforts to bring her down to his level have instead had the effect of helping him rediscover his old morals.

Here's the notable things the Ghoul does between the Super Duper Mart and when he meets Lucy again:

He takes the heat for Lucy's killing of the organ harvesters and some of the feral ghouls under questioning from Sorrel Booker.

He re-adopts CX404 and renames her Dogmeat, something that's intercut with flashbacks of him with Roosevelt, his pre-War Border Collie.

He shows sympathy for Lucy over her feeling betrayed by her dad, given he went through the same thing.

But the most telling clue that Cooper Howard has found a new beginning is the fact that his last line of the season is said in his own accent, not the Southern twang he's used as the Ghoul or in his movies:

The Beginning of Lucy MacLean the Wastelander:

A common thing we've seen across the Fallout games is that Vault Dwellers who leave their vaults can never go back.

The Vault Dweller from Fallout 1 gets banished from his Vault due to having been radically changed by his experiences in the Wasteland.

The Lone Wanderer of Fallout 3 fled into the Wasteland after nearly being killed by the Overseer. But they can't go back to the Vault for the sake of maintaining piece there following a civil war.

Lucy continues this grand tradition.

When she left Vault 33, she only went out with the intention of rescuing her dad and returning with him to the Vault. But as Wilzig warns her, she'll change, whether she wanted to or not.

Wilzig: You come from a world of rules, of laws. This place is indifferent to all of that. I do not think you would be willing to do what it takes to survive up here. Lucy: I'm not going back without my dad. Wilzig: If you insist on staying, then you will have to adapt. Question is will you still want the same things... when you have become a different animal altogether?

We see that Lucy does change. She becomes more jaded, cynical, violent, and less trusting of others, though she refuses to compromise her morals.

But once she gets to Moldaver, she ends up learning that all these things she was forced to endure these past two weeks were done on false pretenses: her dad's no saint at all. He's a war criminal responsible for the deaths of over 30,000 people out of petty jealousy because his wife dared to take Lucy and Norm away from him to live on the surface.

She can no longer recognize the man she once idolized and called her dad, because he was never real. She can no longer recognize herself as 'Lucy MacLean, Dutiful Vault Dweller" because that girl died when she stepped out of Vault 33. Her whole life has been nothing but lies.

And that feeling is only reinforced by what the Ghoul says: "You want to know how I know your daddy, don't you? Let's just say that everything about your whole little world was decided over 200 years ago." And while the Ghoul continues talking and tells her that she'll be killed by the Brotherhood if she sticks around, he's blurred out, visually conveying that Lucy has tuned him out and her inquisitive mind is stuck on the last sentence.

She wants answers, and the one who can help her find them is the man who pistol-whipped her, used her as bait for a Gulper, cut off her finger, and sold her organ harvesters.

She can't go back to Vault 33 again. Maybe she returns to rescue Norm and Chet, but there's no way she can ever live there again.

So she does the only thing she can do in this situation: she puts her mom out of her misery, and embraces the identity of "Lucy MacLean, Wastelander".

Ella Purnell said it best: "By killing her mum in a mercy kill, she’s doing exactly what the Ghoul did to Roger [in episode four]. She’s learnt from him. She has turned into him. When she said, “I’ll never be you,” maybe that’s not true. And in that moment, when she shoots her mum, it means so many things. It means, ‘I’m coming with you.’ It means, ‘I’m gonna meet my makers.’ It means, ‘I fucking hate you, but I have turned into you, you were right.’ It means she’s letting go of her golden centre."

The Beginning of Lucy and the Ghoul's partnership:

And of course, "The Beginning" is the start of Lucy and Cooper Howard's partnership.

It's a big shift for them to have gone from Lucy being his hostage...

...to her being his traveling companion.

Now it can truly be a mentor-mentee relationship where they bring each other to a sort of middle level, where Cooper softens and rediscovers his old ideals while Lucy hardens without compromising her morals.

I think Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins described this best in Variety's interview about shooting the Griffith Observatory finale (skip to 17:55):

Purnell’s lightbulb moment hit when she realized it all came back to the Ghoul. “Part of the Wasteland that I carry with me literally is, it’s not the Wasteland; it’s the Ghoul. I’ve turned into him when I said I wasn’t going to do that,” says Purnell. “Most of Lucy hates herself for what she’s turned into, hates him for what he’s turned her into. But she doesn’t have a choice. She can’t stay here. When he says, ‘Do you want to go meet your makers?’ Lucy is never going to say no to that. And so, it’s not a broken ‘okie-dokie.’ It’s an acceptance of what’s happened to her. It’s an, ‘OK, there’s nothing else for me to do except put one foot in front of the other.’” Goggins says the scene was one of the “most fulfilling parts” of the project since it started so brutally and ended slightly softer but not overly sentimental. The actor is glad the co-creators didn’t lean into that sentimentality. “It isn’t father-daughter,” he says. “I think it is a person who has seen the loss of innocence in another person and deeply empathizes with it because he himself went through a similar experience 200 years earlier and is still reeling from the loss of that innocence that his tone changes. And when he says, ‘Are you coming?’ I just think that’s a pretty cool way to go out.”

[saintsenara]

THE AUDIENCE CLAMOURS FOR YOUR VOLMIONE TAKE!!!!!!!!! In all seriousness the curiously is piqued tenfold by the fact that you go hard to bat for the other two voldemort/golden trio ships

i've definitely been putting this one off, anon, but it's hermione's birthday, and since the requests have kept coming...

maybe i have to grit my teeth and get through it.

i am, like my good pal @yorickofyore, broadly a tomione/volmione disliker - which is a spoiler for what follows. there are - obviously - huge numbers of people who are not, and they may sit happily in their ecosystem while i flop around photosynthesising in mine.

and the reason why i don't like tomione/volmione is right there in the last three screenshots: it relies - like several other hermione pairings, snamione and sirimione chief among them - on a portrayal of hermione's intellectual expression which bears absolutely no relation to how this is written in canon.

across all seven books in the series, hermione's intellect primarily manifests itself in a sincerely impressive ability to retain and repeat information [very usually verbatim from the source she got it from]. she is able to use this ability to retain information to understand the theoretical components of magic in a way neither harry nor ron ever manage, and she is then able to apply this retention - that is, to repeat the information she has acquired - of knowledge to the performance of magic which is [often considerably] ahead of her expected level both in terms of the hogwarts curriculum and in terms of what would be seen as the median ability of an adult witch or wizard.

but hermione is never shown - at any point in canon - to be a particularly radical, creative, or experimental thinker.

she places an enormous amount of intellectual trust in disciplinary authority - not only in the respect she has for following textbooks and teachers to the letter [hence why she won't attempt any of the modifications in the half-blood prince's textbook, she thinks it's offensive that they contradict the "official" peer-reviewed and sanctioned instructions] but also in her agreement with the gatekeeping imposed by the state and/or its authorities on academic inquiry.

[hence her disliking the invented spells in the half-blood prince's textbook because they're not ministry approved, or her easing her discomfort at having read the books from which voldemort learned to make a horcrux by insisting - undoubtedly correctly - that dumbledore wanted her to do it and she therefore has the permission of an intellectual authority].

she's immediately mistrustful of anything she can't find [something she regards as] an empirical source for - which is why harry's mental connection with voldemort frightens her so much, or why she thinks that harry's lost his mind when he begins to insist the deathly hallows are real and important, or, most famously, why she thinks divination is bullshit.

she's never shown to be able to synthesise her knowledge [she never answers questions in class in her own words, she always goes massively over word limits], or to use it in ways which are considerably removed from its typical application.

[the protean charm on the da coins, for example - the magic she's using is sophisticated, and is being applied in a way which wouldn't necessarily be classroom-sanctioned, since she's using it to defy umbridge, but the evidence of canon is that it's not magic which is being used in a way which is removed from the spell's original purpose. terry boot is impressed because he's looking at a flawless execution of newt-level magic by a sixteen-year-old, rather than because hermione is using that magic in an unusual way. the same is true of the polyjuice potion - it's impressive because she brews it flawlessly aged thirteen.]

this is a very logical, rational, and scientific approach to learning - and one which the series, which tends to take a dim view of anything which deviates too far from the status quo, views extremely positively - and it is intelligence. i know some people think that when i say this about hermione i'm saying that she isn't clever - or that i'm saying she's less clever than the characters [all of whom are male] that the series permits to be "brilliant" - but that's not the case. hermione is clearly extremely clever - and her logical, empirical, careful approach comes in clutch for the trio throughout the series, right from philosopher's stone. her intellectual expression just isn't the only way intelligence can manifest itself - and it isn't an intellectual expression which will automatically mesh with another very clever person's approach.

which is to say... lord voldemort, both as a teen and an adult, is - intellectually - the complete opposite of hermione.

he is someone - as he tells us - who thinks of magic as a creative force he has every right to shape as he sees fit, something whose boundaries he has the inherent right to smash through. he rejects disciplinary authority [his loathing of dumbledore - as an adult, at least - is because he thinks that dumbledore is a petty-minded gatekeeper who attempts to repress the dark arts - magic, snape tells us, which is inherently ever-changing, unfixed, mutating - because he's afraid of them and their refusal to be neatly contained in disciplinary boxes; his appeal to slughorn's authority is purely a manipulation technique]. he is an adaptor and inventor, and he uses magic in ways which radically deviate from its intended purpose.

and so the common "teen tom riddle and hermione are at school together" trope that they'd both get off on being academic rivals is, in my view, impossible to justify while keeping either of them remotely canon-coherent. she's going to think he's a cunt. he's going to think she's irrelevant.

indeed, i genuinely think the most likely scenario if the two are at school together is that the teen voldemort wouldn't be able to pick hermione out of a line-up - not least because she has very little to offer him when it comes to his plans for world domination.

when it comes to those he's "nice" to, the teenage tom riddle targets the socially prominent, rich, and influential, whom he can use parasitically to his own ends.

he's happy, undoubtedly, to have minions who are less useful to him from a social-advancement perspective, but who come in handy as pawns in his schemes - as dumbledore puts it, "the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty" - but this is the only thing he sees them as. hermione has a capacity for cruelty he would undoubtedly see potential in [even if he would probably be wary of her "run and tell teacher" vibe], but as someone who does his bidding only, rather than anyone for whom he's willing to fake [or, indeed, to actually feel] any degree of mutual affection.

and i do think this - in and of itself - is interesting. hermione is someone - as i've said elsewhere - who has a tendency towards blind loyalty, which often causes her to accept people she likes and/or respects treating her cruelly [something we see in canon particularly in how she reacts to snape's behaviour towards her]. she's also someone who is incredibly deferential to authority, fairly naive, convinced she's always right, convinced she's not irrational, superstitious, or emotionally-driven, and capable of pretty egregious cruelty in pursuit of being rational and correct.

or, in other words, she's very easy for a flesh-and-blood voldemort to manipulate.

[she's not at risk from a horcrux because she's possessed of the empirical fact that they can't hurt you if you don't let them get emotionally close to you, which impacts how she behaves around the locket.]

on the rare occasions when i've enjoyed fics with this pairing, then, they've tended to be ones which actually acknowledge this - and which have hermione completely destroyed by a voldemort [usually in adult form] who has never cared one iota about her, all because she was convinced she'd be far too clever to fall for his tricks.

[my rec: enigma by devdevlin.]

and this is the main way my view of tomione/volmione deviates from my view of tomarrymort or ronmort - i don't think there's any circumstance where it can ever work as something mutual, whereas the entire point of tomarrymort is that the relationship is something voldemort perceives as equal, and ronmort sees the dark lord running headfirst into ron's ability to disarm and confuse him by possessing a crumb of emotional intelligence. i don't think voldemort would hate hermione - or even be particularly irritated by her - but nor do i think he'd find anything about her interesting enough to make him want to keep her around for any longer than she was useful.

but - like so many hermione pairings - the default in tomione/volmione tends to be "omg, hermione is so hot, brilliant, and fascinating that [insert man here] becomes completely obsessed with her". whether the story leads to voldemort becoming a better person or hermione going over to the dark side, the way the pairing is written always assumes that hermione is someone voldemort would consider [often very quickly] important to him [even in circumstances where she is a prisoner]. only very rarely do fics ever explore the much more canon-justifiable - and, in my view, much more interesting - idea that voldemort is somebody hermione could and would consider important, while he wouldn't give a single fuck about her.

[neither of them give a shit about dead rabbits though. it's the only thing they have in common.]

[reasonandempathy]

The weird radical/revolutionary politic larpers on this site are so allergic to political pragmatism I swear lmao. I am definitely left of the Democratic Party and I am certainly voting for Joe Biden in November. Not because I like him (I don’t). He is absolutely horrific on Gaza and that’s only the top (and priority considering there is a genocide going on there) of a list of complaints I have about him. I even voted uncommitted in my state’s presidential primary (the Pennsylvania one; I had to write it in) to protest. However, I’m still thinking pragmatically. Trump has said things that make me credibly think he will be worse on Gaza (insane that being worse on Gaza than Biden is possible but it is unfortunately), and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Project 2025, the potential for him to appoint more deeply conservative justices, more of his aggressively screwing over poor and middle class people with his tax policies. And does anyone else remember the spike in hate crimes after the race was called for him in 2016? Before he was even inaugurated? Whether people vote or not in November we will still have to deal with one of these two men in office come January unless all of the internet ancom larpers overthrow the government by then (doubt), so I’d rather deal with the one who will be marginally less bad and who didn’t try to overthrow the government. Can’t have your revolution if nobody’s alive cause you kept pushing off politically participating because there was no perfect option. 👍

Political pragmatist anon, sorry for ranting in your askbox but I feel like I lose brain cells watching these people talk. The other day I saw someone say Biden is bad because Roe v. Wade fell under his administration… even though the reason for that was Trump appointed justices. 💀 (2/2)

Fucking insane. Sincerely.

It's a completely, flatly binary choice for anyone with a brain stem and sincerity. It's distilled into the two below images:

Where all major third party candidates are even on the ballot

How many electoral votes the largest of those (green party, a.k.a. Jill Stein) would win if they won every single state they're on the ballot for.

They are literally, legally, incapable of winning the election. They are not on enough state ballots to win and Jill Stein would need to somehow win California and Texas to even "win" all the states they're on the ballot for. Which, again, would still not be enough to win the presidency and throw it to the currently existing Republican House of Representatives. Which would put Trump in office.

It's that straightforward. That simple. That BLARINGLY obvious to literally everyone except these people.

On the one hand you have:

Significant and continuous support for Israel and it's genocide

Record levels of pardons for low-level drug offenses

the gearing up of the strongest anti-trust regime since the early 20th century

the most aggressive NLRB I've seen in my lifetime, with massive wins and institutional changes to help workers

Including getting Rail strike workers a week of sick-leave that gets paid out at the end of the year, which is better than NYC and LA sick leave laws

Millions of people (not enough) getting student debt forgiveness

Some trillion dollars (not enough)of investment in renewable resources and infrastructure

Proposed taxes on unrealized capital gains (a.k.a. how billionaires never have any money but can still buy Kentucky, Iowa, and Twitter)

Effectively an end to overdraft fees

The explicit support of leftist world leaders like Lula de Silva. Who he has explicitly worked with to expand worker rights in South America.

Has capped (some, not enough, only a tiny amount really but it's something) some drug prices, including Insulin.

Reduced disability discrimination in medical treatment

Billions in additional national pre-k funding

Ending federal use of private prisons

Pushing bills to raise Social Security tax thresholds higher to help secure the General Fund

Increasing SSI benefits

and more

vs

Said Israel should just nuke Gaza and "get it over with"

Personally takes pride in and credit for getting Roe v Wade overturned

Is arguing in court that the President should be allowed to assassinate political rivals

Muslim Ban Bullshit, insistently

Actively damages our global standing and diplomatic efforts just by getting obsessed with having a Big Button

Implemented massive tax cuts on ich people, tax hikes on middle class and poor people, and actively wants to do it again

"Only wants to be a dictator for a little bit, guys, what's the big deal"

Is loudly publicly arguing that the US shouldn't honor its military alliances after-the-fact

Tore up an effective and substantial anti-nuclear-proliferation treaty with Iran

Had a DoEd that actively just refused to process student debt forgiveness applications that have been the law of the land for decades now

Has a long record of actively curtailing and weakening the NLRB and labor movement, including allowing managers to retaliate against workers, weakened workplace accommodation requirements for disabled people, and more

Rubber stamped a number of massive mergers building larger, more powerful top companies and increasing monopolistic practices

Fucking COVID Bullshit and hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths

Openly supporting fascists and wannabe-bootlicks ("Very fine people" being only the beginning of it

It's really not fucking close.

[once-in-a-blue-moon-rising]

So you know the 457 bisexual lighting image/speculation/glee that's going around?

I actually have an alternative interpretation of it (and I say this as a VERY enthusiastic deckhand on this ship).

Everyone on the show gets lit a little bit like this because of the blue/red neon in the floor (and the fact that Squid Game's red skews pink most of the time), but it is true that these two really do get lit like this - with this really bright, gorgeous, intentional mix of the two colours - more than the rest of the cast. The others tend to just light up the colour of the button they just pressed.

And the reason for this, I think...... is to demonstrate their internal struggle, and the fact that both of them could still swing either way (hehe, bisexual) in the choice they're making between, essentially, the status quo, and taking a huge, huge gamble for positive change.

(To be totally clear, I think blue / O = a level of cynicism about the world and about humanity that is so entrenched that one can only work within the parameters of the games/society if one wants to make any kind of change - and, obviously, because of that, the impact of that change would be really limited - but it's safer, and it's known. Meanwhile red / X = faith in humanity, forgiveness, idealism, hope - the belief that the games/society can be dismantled, must be dismantled, and that something better is possible. It offers something radically better, but it's also much more uncertain - it's a risk.)

If you look at the show and at the characters of Gi-hun and In-ho on a surface level, it's easy to say that In-ho represents the former, and Gi-hun, the latter. But this lighting (and the development of both characters) tells us something different. It's a visual indicator that the worldviews they express and live by (that were formed by very similar life experiences, let us not forget) are not as set as we thought. Gi-hun, who has witnessed cruelty and horror time and time again, wavers, sometimes, could yet be defeated by the games and fall into that cynicism. And In-ho, who has watched Gi-hun's relentless belief in humanity through two game cycles now, despite everything, could yet be swayed by his kindness and forgiveness.

I've not had a chance to rewatch again since I came up with this, but I would be willing to BET that neither of them are lit this way, so strikingly pink/purple/blue, until after they meet and start to talk (start to influence one another more seriously).

Essentially, it's symbolic of the fact that our protagonist and antagonist are two sides of the same coin, that they are both struggling with the same conflict, and that neither of them has really come down strongly on either side, not yet.

[copperbadge]

I was watching hockey earlier today and it got me wondering what sports are played in Askazer-Shivadlakia. Football & surfing’s been mentioned, what else is played in the country? Does it snow enough in the highlands for there to be any winter sports enthusiasts? What’s the state of women’s professional sports? Does the country compete in anything internationally? The Olympics are awful, but does the Ask send a delegation of athletes anyway?

It's not something I've thought a lot about outside of football, I admit, though thinking about the football program has clarified some aspects of it. Mainly I just am not entirely sure how a lot of sports...work, so I kind of stay hands-off.

Askazer-Shivadlakia has never been a super wealthy country. Jason was a bit of a traditionalist and Michaelis was concerned with modernizing but he wasn't an innovator per se, unless pushed; by the end of his reign the country was reaching a point where it had the kind of money to sustain a university or expand its public services fairly radically, but only just. Gregory is a big part of that because he trained as an economist, and while he's only been king for about two years, he's been working in the administration for much longer. He's been able to institute changes that have led to a comfortable surplus in the budget.

So for example, Michaelis wouldn't let the government fund a professional sports team of any kind because the money it would take was already being spent on the youth sports program. He felt that giving kids the chance to play sport was more important than sustaining a team, and said that their athletes were a gift they gave the world. And now that elite players are returning from playing abroad with money and the intention to spend it on supporting a team, his investment is actually, unexpectedly, paying off. Michaelis just wanted the kids of his country to learn self-discipline and good sportsmanship but in doing so he also ensured that if you leave the Ask to seek your fortune as an athlete, once you've got a fortune, you come back home to spend it. And Gregory's work means the government can help.

Football and F1 racing are the two big passion sports the Shivadh follow, though F1 is a fandom, not a pastime. There's decent surfing but that's more a tourist thing. Definitely there are regions that get cold enough for winter sports, but like surfing most of the ski/board sites are tourist-focused, places that ranch dairy cattle in the summer and then host tourists in the winter when the cows are in the warmer lowland pastures. Undoubtedly there are Shivadh snow sport enthusiasts and the country supports them if they compete internationally (both in terms of cheering them on and financially) but there's no program or deep tradition of it. If I ever actually write about those areas extensively that might change, though.

Women's sport has equal support to men's generally, whatever level that might be -- Askazer-Shivadlakia has always been relatively progressive but when Michaelis was elected, Miranda made it her business to push legislation that explicitly protected things like equal funding for women's sport and education and access to birth control and abortion. (She's also the reason weed is legal and Gerald can get Adderall in Europe, where it's banned in a lot of places; there's something to be said for the scion of old conservative nobility who is simply ready to wreck shit.)

There is no golf. Michaelis detests it personally and there's no room for it anyway. If they ever build Askazarama Amusement Park, they might get a mini-golf course.

I don't really know how the Olympics and other international competitions work. If there are talented athletes who want to compete and seem capable of qualifying, there's state funding for them, but there's no formal program where like, the MPs sit down every two years and pick out the top athletes they want to send. Likely most people interested in elite sport competition have to leave the country to train, and represent other countries as a result -- like Paolo in the football novel, who left when he was a young teen to attend a junior academy in France and entered professional play from there.

Shivadh still feel ownership of them, mind you. For example, Felix (the love interest in the football novel) played on the Italian national team and kicked a winning goal in a World Cup for Italy, but Askazer-Shivadlakia consider that cup theirs. A Shivadh did it, ergo it is a Shivadh victory. If an athlete were to say, represent France in an Olympic decathlon and take the gold, they would consider that to be a gold medal for Askazer-Shivadlakia.

The country is very excited about finally having a football team of their own. Shivadh Royal Football Club could lose every game it ever plays and still nobody would let a word be said against them. Fons-Askaz on match day is just a sea of hideous orange Shivadh RFC jerseys that say NARAN JUICE on the front. (Their major sponsor is local juice box and sports drink maker Naran Juice Box Co.)

[velvetvexations]

I feel like a lot of the trans women saying that masculinity/manhood is always rewarded in everyone because patriarchy often forget that the opposite is true, actually, for people who are seen as women/put in the "woman" category.

Because yes, trans women are usually forced into manhood and "rewarded" for being men, and punished for being women. But that's not because manhood is universally rewarded in everyone, but because partriarchy sees having been born with a penis as "man".

It also sees being born with a vagina as "woman", and every deviation from that is *also* punished.

Yes, people who are seen as women/girls may have more freedom in expression of gender (depending on where they are from. I hate when ppl act like people afab everywhere can just dress like men without punishment. There are so many countries with laws on what "women" (and those treated as women because of their agab) can wear, and if anyone believes for one second that breaking these laws is REWARDED in any way, they're so fucking deep in their own head and need to talk to someone from these countries) but that freedom was fought for by feminists! Feminists have fought to be simply just allowed to wear pants. It's ridiculous to look at how it is now (in the western world) and make conclusions on that without looking at *why* it is that way now and how it was before.

And people are usually expected to grow out of their tomboy-"phase" by the time they reach their late teens, or early twenties at latest, and become a feminine woman, wife, and mother. If you don't do that, your masculinity gets punished.

And the masculinity of people afab is also only (begrudgingly) accepted (in SOME places in the world) as long as they're still visible as women or girls and their masculinity is hot and serves cishet men. As soon as they step "too far" out of these roles (by being non-binary or men, or being "ugly", fat, or anything that would make them "undesirable"), their masculinity gets punished. Horribly.

It's really infuriating when (trans)radfem trans women try to act like their experiences are universal and whenever someone says something that disagrees with them, they must be lying or "delusional" (yay, ableism! so progressive /s) for thinking that they were, in fact, punished for their masculinity or manhood...

Sorry for unloading this on you, didn't know where else to put it. And thank you so much for listening.

I think a major issue here is that no matter how much we try to reason things out and work through why they act the way they do, radical feminism, trans or cis, ultimately comes down, at some point, to a deliberate decision to prioritize egocentrism and their own desires over seeing other people as real, actual people - not even other transfems, who they just sexualize and try to control, or call a TERF if they can't. And it's hard to reason with that.

Like, they have to know on some level that they hyperinflate trans women in particular being "socially murdered"* to use as social capital and terrorize younger** transfems into isolating themselves. Maybe a very long time ago for some of them it came from the distress they felt from the legitimately immense danger transfems face in a variety of contexts, but they've shot far beyond that now and just don't really care. They've built a cage of unreality around themselves that makes me feel like I'm talking to aliens.

Like the other day, I was talking to one who insisted that the tee-em-ees will not show up for me. Like, I said they did, and she said they won't, and I was like, but they DO! They have! Always! I've seen it with my own eyes, directly for me specifically! But it was just "who hurt you," "let yourself be angry," "don't settle for just scraps," "they won't treat you better if you throw yourself at their feet," "social murder," and it's like WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? ARE YOU HAVING A STROKE? WAS THIS A DREAM YOU HAD?

And what about the deliberately cruel fuckery, the constant derision of the most petty things like forcemasc? What the fuck do they get out of wrongly asserting that women are never punished for masculinity and never have a problem with being viewed as masculine, like why are they doing that, what is their goal? Because it seems like it's literally just "mock and invalidate the sexual interests of others and deem it an inferior copy of our thing."

What do they get out of misgendering cis and trans men for forcefem funsies and telling them to suck it up? They don't really believe that their forcefem joke is the only thing that might make an egg crack. That's extremely obviously a lie. They're doing it because they want to, because it's their kink, because they don't care about the feelings of other people, and they can use transmisogyny as a convenient defense when people ask them to moderate literally any of their behavior for the comfort of everyone else to literally any extent while demanding everyone else shut up and defer to them on every single topic in every single situation.

And this stuff with D20 and Ophiuchus and the transmasc character being treated better? A lie. Just fully making it up. Inventing it. Fabricating it. For attention.

I've never had one acknowledge it when I've tried to explain that I first learned about all of this from transmasc friends bringing it to me so they could defer to my opinion.

They're determined to stay like this. It sucks.

*truly a phrase that makes me livid to even think about now, they reduce it to about the same level of seriousness as forcefem jokes, every single time it's so thoughtlessly hollow and self-obsessed but you could guess that from it being a fair description of every thought they externalize

**let me make this clear, I'm referring to young adults, I am not accusing anyone of being predatory towards minors nor am I saying the motivations are necessarily sexual anyway, although clearly transradfems don't care about the effect their hyperbole will have on the mental health of minors exposed to it and trained from a young age to never trust anyone, so underage transfems are very much a concern here, but not in the sense that they're being directly and personally abused in any way

[uhgood-girl]

if you're unfamiliar, anton is a korean to english translator who actually did the english translation for bts' book beyond the story. from what i understand, he has been on pretty good terms with army since and has not fallen into any of the traps a lot of other people who find themselves in the army spotlight usually do? but feel free to correct me if i'm wrong. though, even if i am, i don't think it detracts from his statements above.

i felt the need to highlight this opinion over here because i maintain the (unpopular, i guess?) position of if you're not being radicalized by this experience even just a little bit, then you need to widen your overall focus.

i do not want to be the bearer of only doom and gloom and please cope as you see fit within reason, but i have seen enough romantic takes on this whole situation that i kind of wish i could shake a few people.

the risk level here for the boys isn't zero. what happened to seokjin already proved that. all of them being strong both physically and mentally doesn't negate people's valid concern for their well being. it is not a lack of confidence in them or some form of "coddling grown men" to express distress over a situation that can go sideways at a moment's notice.

if you don't believe me, by all means, don't take my word for it and go find your own sources, that is something i will always encourage. but here's a freebie for you to start with.

[boreal-sea]

I will say solely bc you say anyone who picks bear is radfem-poisoned- there is another, albeit probably less common reason to pick the bear. I'd pick the bear, and not bc I hate or am afraid of men, but bc im autistic as fuck with a special interest in biology and genuinely understand animals better than people lmao. A chill man and a (albeit unlikely) chill bear would be fine either way, but if either was aggressive? I'd know more about how to escape the bear than I would having to escape any human trying to hurt me, bears have protocols to escapethat tend to work on any bear of that type, with exceptions, people don't lmao

To reference the original argument: to assume there is any level of comparable risk between bears and human men is fucking bonkers. It is illogical to compare the threat level of a human man and a bear. The bear is much more dangerous, hands-down. The same goes with any other human being. A bear is much more of a threat to you.

The ONLY reason to believe men and bears pose the same level of risk is to believe all the poison you've been taught about how evil and dangerous men are. There are two sources of this propaganda: 1: the patriarchy itself, because the idea of a hyper-aggressive man benefits the patriarchy's vision of men as the superior sex, and 2: radical feminists, who want all women so terrified of men that the only escape is separatism.

---

Ok, so now, let's operate off the new assumption that the gender of the human doesn't matter:

Honestly "I would rather be in mortal danger and have to run through all the protocols I know on how to survive a bear attack and potentially die rather than see another person" seems really, really... really illogical.

It doesn't matter how much you love animals or how much you know, if the bear tries to kill you it would be way better at it than a human. The bad part about nature is that it does not in fact follow protocol. I know a lot about how to escape bears too. It's advice, but bears do not have to follow that advice. You have a much higher chance of survival running away from a person.

And the fact is, 99.9% of people you meet (including men) are perfectly normal human beings who do not wish you harm. Hell, some of them are probably autistic with a special interest in bears. The human is probably just chilling with you. You don't even have to talk to them. You could just walk away.

Everyone keeps going "well what IF the person tried to attack me?" ignoring that such a situation is in fact very unlikely.

[roxannepolice]

The thing about Ricky September rising to the top of the chart as the most controversial aspect of Dot and Bubble is interesting, because... welp, as many people have pointed out, he's the surface level white twinky manic pixie nuwho Doctor at their most op on steroids. I've seen people comparing him to s6 Eleven specifically, but the offhand remarks about how much he knows, the interest in history, and most importantly, the proper introduction as the handsome guy who leads our protagonist away from cheap looking monsters and then runs hand in hand with her... that's Rose, the episode. The reason people took a liking to him is because he literally echoes the main character of the show we're watching. He's the Doctor doll in this sci fi dollhouse. That's why it's so shocking when Lindy uses him as cannon fodder.

So the fact that he's no less racist than everyone else in Finetime fits into the general concept of this episode as unpacking the naturalised racism of Shakespeare's Tempest/Forbidden Planet sf conventions, that Doctor Who, and the Doctor themself has been guilty of (welp this is what you get for thinking it's a good idea to turn a brown guy over to WWII villains or not filtering for racism when you random generate a time and space you will hide in with a black companion - you watch aryan bubble folks go to their deaths you bent ass over tits to prevent; not for many people this would have been karma doing its job, but for the Doctor it is).

But I don't think... the show wants us to hate itself, or its main character. Like, there are reviewers clutching their pearls over another cult text getting written by people who hate it, but. criticism isn't hatred, it's often an expression of love, and perhaps one of the highest forms of self-love. Which is why it caught my attention Ncuti Gatwa looks extra-doctorish in the last scene. Yes, clothes are surface, but in a visual medium they're a message too. Fifteen has been the most clothes changing Doctor we've seen so far, and he spends most of the episode in a more everyday casual shirt, but he dons the extravagant yet stylish tartan knee length suit for the end. And he does a Speech(tm), too, and helpless shouting, and finally a stern face (which ironically enough reminded me of fury of a Time Lord Ten). And like, he's not ignorant of why Finetimers look at him this way. They always knew, just never were on the practical not abstract side of the deal.

So Ricky the Doctor Doll works not only as a meta textual self reflexive parody, but also a contrast. Not so much as a "but see, this show, or even this era is not like other girls" masturbation, but more as a reflection on what makes this protagonist who they are. Yes, maybe s6 Eleven was op-ed too much, but that's not what made any Doctor, including this one, who they are. From this perspective the concept that Ricky would not have helped anyone from outside the in-group is... ironic considering how much of a separate chaff from grain sentiment there comes about in response to the Doctor's radical - and often pragmatically wrong! - kindness. Yes, the rationales for when they "should" be less merciful are more solid than skin colour, but I think this element of "this guy is what you WANT the Doctor to be, and not just visually" is there. Can't help thinking of how the destruction of Gallifrey - both in s1 and s12 - gets hailed as "yes, that's what the show is telling us is the RIGHT thing to do, just in general, not to prevent a specific outcome!". Meanwhile Fifteen keeps calling it genocide and remains wistful.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

Noticed something about zutarians: for people who claim to be "THE femist ship" they spend too much time praising Zuko for doing chores, being empathetic, supporting women and other stuff he didn't really do in canon all that much.

Like, feminists would consider these a basic level that any normal person, man or woman, should do for their own's sake without any praise. Oohing and aahing "look, he spends time with his own child!", "oh, you washed the dishes, my hero!", "where would I have been if you didn't do the laundry, my knight in shining armor, you really are a savior!" is... very sexist, actually! And zutarians do just that. It’s not enough for them to write him doing chores, they have to emphasize this, compare him to Aang/Sokka/anyone else who of course doesn’t do chores (because no one except Katara and Zuko ever does anything chorelike in these fics it seems), or just outright praise him for that.

Of course, zutara never was a feminist ship, so my observation doesn't add anything new. I understand that zutara kinda fits "female gaze" or whatever, though, it's a women's dream about a perfect partner, which is totally fine by itself – it just has nothing to do with Zuko (and, dare I say, Katara – I doubt she would be so ecstatic about a guy doing "women's chores", she is used to dividing the work around camp and takes it for granted). And that's why I cannot read even relatively harmless zutara fluff – it very often is very focused on this exact subject. I like Zuko for who he is and the truth is 1) he's flawed even after his redemption and 2) a huge part of how he sees himself is his prince title. Nothing of it matches zutara fantasy of a male housewife, so they have a whole other character named Zuko to fit into their imagination land, and I just have no interest in that.

I'm still impressed by that one fic (not in English) where Fantara was 100% sure that Fanfic-Firelord-Zuko will never ever "force any hapless woman" to take care of his newborn daughter (as opposed to her awful, awful husband, Fanfic-Aang who can't even feed his son, who's still eating only breast milk, for several days while Fantara decided to be away). Sure, girl, he's a fucking ruler, he has a whole country to think about, tons of very important shit to do every single day, a full palace of servants, of course he will always personally change diapers, no doubt. I bet he'll even do all the breastfeeding by himself, since his wife died at childbirth and forcing other women is out of the question.

I'm bitter now, and maybe taking it too far but what if – just "what if" – there are very few people who actually ship Katara and Zuko? Because it seems that most content creators in zutara fandom actually ship their two OCs who are very loosely based on these two characters (but don't I dare tell it to their faces, haha, they are under impression that their image of Zuko and Katara is somehow the only correct one).

Just one little disagreement: Zutara doesn't fit the Female Gaze because there's no such thing in the first place. There's not a single trope, way to direct a scene, or romance formula that universally appeals to women, and the same thing can appeal to different women for radically different reasons.

"Male Gaze" and "Female Gaze" were supposed to be a way to point out sexism (and sometimes straight up abuse) in film-making, but it honest God became some bullshit gender-essentialism nonsense REALLY fast. We gotta let that "That is for boys, this is for girls" mentality die.

Aang does chores with Katara. That is completely irrelevant to me shipping Kataang. Aang is not sexist. That doesn't even reach my top 50 reasons to love him as a character. Aang does a lot of things that don't match the idea I was raised to have of a "manly man" and I could not give less of fuck about it. It doesn't bother me, but doesn't particularly appeal to me either.

But for lots of people that is HUGE and some of the main reasons why they love his character and his romance with Katara. And notice I said people, not women.

I like plenty of enemies-to-lovers ships - I don't relate to a single meta/analysis I've ever seen of "Why women like bad boys/enemies to lovers/redeemed villains so much." It all rang hollow to me. But to plenty of women it hits the nail right on the head.

Hell, 50 Shades of Grey is a "romance/erotica" full of accidental misogyny, abuse-apologism, and slut-shaming yet the fanbase is 90% women from all kinds of demographics, and the main thing they praise about these goddamn books/movies is that it did NOT make them feel like they should be ashamed of wanting to have kinky sex with a hot guy.

The Female Gaze isn't real.

[batboyblog]

In regards to the climate change thing, the market might have been more willing to push towards green energy sources if fossil fuel industries hadn’t purposefully hid research that climate change was a thing for decades, and still find misinformation campaigns to thus day, and lobby ejected officials to not just says radical changes

You are right that the answer isn’t as simple as “kill these ten people and everything is fixed” and that the average citizen might have to affect their lives somewhat to truly address it but to act like all the oil billionaires where doing was supplying a demand feels like an attempt to shift the blame,

the world is complex and often more than one thing is true at the same time.

which is to say, we all did climate change together, and we're still doing now.

but it is also true some people took intentional action, and are still taking intentional action to make it worse, for example Republicans in Wyoming want to phase out and ban electric cars by 2035

the one I was trying to make was that I hear too many people decry that there's nothing they can do, that its all the fault of a handful of people and so climate change is hopeless and this air that the only thing to do is to punish the guilty while the world burns, but there is things we can do and are doing as a country

"The Biden Administration Has Taken More Climate Action Than Any Other in History"

the sharp dip there is Covid btw, you can see how even the brief Trump Presidency we went up over where we would have been under Obama.

and this is the hard part because more than using reusable water bottles or buying an EV for your next car the biggest climate change fighting tool any one has is a vote. We can choose to fix this, or not. And on some level all this focus on "you can't fix it" "these people over there are the reason" I feel like on some level and some time intentionally all that is about getting you to not vote, to not look at Democrats in power=we fix it Republicans in power=at best we don't improve at all, at worst it actually gets worse.

when they were projecting in 2010, they feared between 4.5-3.2 degrees, so we're making progress and you can see, so do people want us to do everything we said we would and pressure other countries not to flake out so we can hit 1.7? and then keep going and do more at get under the 1.5? or do we want to say "oh we can't do anything, just shoot an Oil CEO" and get 2.4 or more?

[uncle-fruity]

I think part of the issue is that when I say that men have issues that also need to be talked about, I am talking about the full system of oppression and the role the patriarchy plays within that system of oppression, and how those things impact men & boys for better or worse.

When I say that men & boys need a place within feminism to focus on their issues from a feminist perspective, I am saying so because understanding the full picture is vital to defeating the Patriarchy, not because I think men need to be centered in every conversation. Even if we went to the extreme point of view that men aren't suffering in any way from our current system, we would need to listen to the experiences of men & boys and include their needs when we work to reform the structure of our society. Any failure to consider half the population while building a safer, fairer, more compassionate society is not just a minor fuck up, but rather a massive oversight that *will* lead to the failure of that goal.

The reason I am so adamant about not dehumanizing *any* group of people for *any* reason *ever* is because that becomes a very dangerous tool for the actual oppressors who cannot let us form unified communities against them. The more we know about each other, the more we care about each other, the more we see each other as humans -- the more the oppressors struggle to keep us fighting amongst ourselves and not fighting them. This was one of the major motivators behind the assassination of Fred Hampton, who did incredible work in bringing gay liberation and civil rights groups together, and made each of those movements stronger for it. One reason the internet is such an effective tool for radicalization is that it already has a layer of dehumanization built in, in that it's easy to forget you're speaking to another real human, especially when emotions are running high. So it is critical that we are vigilant about our own ability to dehumanize people (especially on the internet), our personal biases that can provide targets for that dehumanizing, and then work against those tendencies even when they only manifest in small ways (for example, as a joke).

This is not a pissing contest to me. I'm not concerned with being The Most Oppressed Ever, and I am not interested in diluting or misrepresenting the pain and systemic issues of any other group of people. I want everyone to have their say, to speak for themselves and to be believed that they are experts about their own experiences & lives. If anything, I believe in radical inclusion, and only draw the line at bad faith, hateful rhetoric meant to further the exclusion and abuse of other people. And even then, I think people who are hateful and hurting and trying to blame it on other people still need a place to talk through those emotions -- just, in a different, more targeted & personalized conversation. The broader social justice movement is not the appropriate place to publicly work through hate & anger & bigotry on a personal level.

All in all, we are ALL part of this system whether you like it or not. Everyone who exists is impacted in one way or another by the systems we have in place. And if we want to be serious about working against abusive systems, we need to start by listening and speaking in good faith, and by rejecting abusive patterns within our communities.

[lemonhemlock]

i just think it's ironic how critical stark fans are of the targaryens like robb and dany are veryyy similar and the first men are colonizers too lol

i think robb should be criticised more for his lack of policies and political foresight and planning when it comes to his independence project, but robb did not resort to sacrificing people to acquire fire-breathing monsters or to torturing people to get his way. he didn't set out to conquer lands. he became king in the north and king of the trident not because he conquered the north or the riverlands, but because they pledged themselves to him. there IS a difference between them

you can agree with northern independence or not but the reason robb called his banners and rose up in the first place was because the de-facto monarch was unjustly imprisoning his father, then executed him without a fair trial, thus breaking the feudal contract (coincidentally, the same reason the targaryens were rightfully deposed). then ofc came stannis' letter casting doubt on joffrey's paternity

honestly a fair line of questioning that might even betray authorial bias is, in a series that puts so much emphasis on the dangers of magic and the HIGH price associated with it, why does robb (and the rest of the starks) get the luxury of being soul-bonded to a magical fierce beast (that comes to them without making any nefarious trade), but dany can only access dragons via committing horrifying acts? imo this could very well be a weak point in the thematic consistency of the series

as for the first men, yes, they were colonizers. so were the andals. they are also dead. the process of ethnogenesis (an often violent process, yes) resulted in the westerosi people. what are they to do about it now? they're just regular people living their lives, not wanting to be brutalized, too, by other foreign invaders like dany will bring, not wanting to fight in any more pointless wars.

is that not a valid request or desire they might have for themselves or do they have to pay indefinitely for the crimes of their ancestors by having the same thing done to them?* does it just go from invasion to invasion until the end of time? is colonization or conquest ok to do indefinitely because they have historical precedent? when does it stop?

from the westerosi point of view, the children of the forest don't even exist anymore, so even paying reparations is out of the question. though, who knows, maybe the series finale will address the issue of reconciliation, since WE know the children of the forest are still out and about

*and, before targstans come out of the woodwork, no, i do not hold dany accountable for things her ancestors did, i hold her accountable for the things SHE did. is it her fault her father became a tyrant? no. but her dynasty got rightfully deposed and that's that (see this post for a more in-depth answer: yes, even ~medieval political theorists believed there are conditions in which a population can rightfully rid themselves of tyrannical rule).

is that fair for dany on an individual level? well, how do you define 'fair'? is it fair that feudal lords own all the land and hoard the resources? or, better yet, why do you define "fair" only in relation to nobles, their wants and desires, the real or perceived injustices visited upon them. i understand that the series is high-born-focused escapism, ultimately, and that it won't end in this radical re-ordering of society or in a leveling of privileges across social spheres, but, for real, sometimes what's "good" for your favourite high-born character isn't good for the smallfolk! that's a basic enough idea we can stick to

[septembriseur]

...

Posting this without a real ending because I’m feeling extremely exhausted tonight:

I've been stewing over this. I saw someone I worked with in AFG, who now has a high level admin position in Iraq, posting on LinkedIn about "This is why I gave up my comfort and security... for my students!"

The same woman not only once stormed out of a meeting because I was talking about decolonization issues on campus, but also continually complained about the fact that she was required to sometimes leave the compound (in an armored car with full security escort) in order to visit the secondary campus, as she felt this was unreasonably dangerous and she shouldn't have to leave the compound at all.

The thing is that I don't doubt her feelings are genuine, just as a (different) white American professor was being genuine when she said (in an experience that I have written about elsewhere) that she did not think of herself as a Westerner because she had taught in the Middle East and Asia for more than fifteen years. At times I question whether my reaction is insane or naive. Am I crazy? Is it those people whose behavior is reasonable, and mine that's not?

After the meeting that the woman above stormed out of, the Afghan man who worked as the office secretary just outside the door to the room thanked me. But I have never been entirely sure if he was doing so out of pity, or if he was being sarcastic, or if he was sincere then why he was sincere.

I was listening to a podcast about Roger Casement the other day, and a historian (whose area is LGBT history) identified Casement's cruising for sex in Africa as one of the factors that led to his becoming enlightened/radicalized. One the one hand, that seems very dubious (see: twentieth century Morocco). On the other hand, I do think that that one of the most notable characteristics of many Westerners in the Global South is their lack of intimate relationships with local people. They cannot imagine a genuine relationship of any kind that crosses the boundary between local/international. I think that they find something inherently inappropriate about the idea. (Jennifer Fluri has written some interesting articles about social and sexual relationships of internationals in Kabul.)