#but to say that it doesn't matter or that he's not really indigenous because of his anglo-centric education is. it's cruel

[eowynstwin]

This truly is the last thing I want to say on this blog and then I'm done psych I lived bitch, but given how the fucking catastrophe started it's only appropriate this is how I end it—

You have racist bias whether you like it or not. Particularly if you are US American, racism was baked into your worldview no matter what kind of household, liberal or conservative, you grew up in. Racism is quite often far more covert than it is overt. It is not just a voluntary behavior; it is more often the subconscious ways you organize and hierarchize other cultures and people.

In the case of Gaz—sure, you might actively believe that he deserves to be more included. You think he's a good character and people really should think about him more! But you personally headcanon him a certain way, and really it's not a headcanon you're actually all that into, so that's why you don't talk about him as much. It's not because he's black, it's because he doesn't fit the thing you like talking about the most. The fact that he's black is really just a coincidence, you're not excluding him because of that. In fact, you're sure other people like him for exactly the reason you're not all that into him, and you'll just leave it to them to pick up the slack. Or you'll get to him later! In fact, you have some ideas for him. You just haven't gotten around to them yet.

Take that and multiply it by thousands of white women in fandom—not just this fandom, not just Gaz's character, but every fandom and every character of color. It doesn't matter that there's no active malice behind not personally liking black characters and other characters of color. Non-white characters still take a backseat to their white counterparts, because white women in fandom cannot wrap their heads around black, brown, indigenous, and Asian characters as complex, complicated characters worthy of their interest or frankly, their desire.

They cannot wrap their heads around this because they were conditioned not to by decades of racist culture.

Case in point; plenty of white women in this fandom have fallen head over heels for Makarov and Graves. The sins of these out-and-out villains are totally forgiven by virtue of their sex appeal, and because they are portrayed by attractive, charismatic men who put a lot of passion behind their performances.

But can we say the same for Hadir? Can we say the same for Hassan?

The sins of these two Middle Eastern characters do not outweigh those of their villainous white counterparts, yet how many angsty fix-it fics have been written exploring Hadir's complicated relationship with violence and imperialism? How many enemies-to-lovers or even lovers-to-enemies fics have been written about Hassan, the face of whose homeland has been irrevocably marred by US interference?

No one who points out the racism of this trend is accusing these white women of active, militant white supremacy. I'm not saying any of you even have to like Gaz, Hadir, or Hassan. But your preferences have been tuned for you by a culture shaped by slavery, imperialism, and white supremacy. That is not something you can escape merely because you support the BLM movement or reblog vetted Palestinian gofundmes.

The only way you can truly fight your own racism is to be actively anti-racist. It is about far more than who you give money to or what graphics you pin on your instagram. It is an everyday practice of learning how racism has shaped your worldview for you.

This is not work that is done in a week, a month, or a year. Becoming anti-racist takes as much time as it took to make you racist in the first place. For some of you, the work may turn out to be easy. For others, it may be hard. You must do it either way.

Some good places to start:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Ain't I a Woman? by bell hooks

We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity by bell hooks

A Burst of Light by Audre Lorde

The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Being Palestinian edited by Yasir Suleiman

[utilitycaster]

Whenever people are like "well LIAM'S characters never faced any backlash when HE played characters in the spotlight" and "no one will let WOMEN have negative qualities" when Caleb and Vax and Orym have received pretty constant hate for main character/sadboy/scene stealing and when meta writers outright stopped talking about Imogen because a particularly mindless set of hit dogs are still hollering about how she is so good and kind and how dare you call her selfish, it's really like...in the service of trying to make your failure of a point you've just said something that literally anyone with a memory lasting longer than the apocryphal goldfish length can immediately debunk, which in turn absolutely shreds your credibility going forward, if you had it.

More generally there's something very vile here, because on the surface this statement does look like an attempt, if one ignorant of pretty much any fandom conversation, to defend women. The thing is it's come from a place of defending Dorian and Ashton's plan - a man, and a nb person who would not identify as a woman - that requires a particularly great deal of sacrifice from the women of the party. So of course they just switch tactics. Instead of "how dare the fandom not think women are always best" it's "how dare the fandom disrespect a disabled nb person and a person played by an indigenous actor." And I'm sure they'll switch again. Because pretty much every character in this campaign is on some axis of oppression, and there's a few people in this fandom who, instead of considering these things as important details that inform these characters, seem to largely treat their minority statuses as ammunition. Feminism and antiracism and queer advocacy are all just part of a shell game to them - accuse everyone who disagrees with them of being a bigot, say that their opinions are inviolate because they match that of literally any character who isn't a cis het white man, of which Bells Hells has none. Unsurprisingly, it's that social media purity culture that's just the evangelical church with a gay hat: they are always the victim, and everyone who disagrees is the devil, and being a good person always happens to line up with what you already wanted.

There are several posts from the past day or so accusing people of liking Campaign 3 less than the two previous ones which refused to accept that this might be due to the hurry-up-and-receive-an-infodump pacing, the singular focus without much time spent on backstory, the gaps in party composition, and the fact that the plot manages to combine the weakest elements of each campaign - the fetch quest/NPC guidance heavy nature of C1, and the meandering/slow start of C2. No, it must be the awful, sinful fandom unable to handle the lack of a major M/M ship (false; Dorian and Orym aren't canon, but neither were Vax and Gilmore, and the latter was sunk far sooner) and the fact that a female character is at the center of the story (see above re: how hostile the same people making these accusations have been to anyone who actually wants to discuss Imogen in a way that doesn't fit their specifications). Just to repeat this: many fans have outlined a number of purely narrative and structural reasons why C3 isn't working for them. These people have assumed this is all a lie, because assuming otherwise that would require either addressing these critiques, which in turn would require admitting other people can have valid opinions that oppose their own without being horrible bigots - in favor of throwing out whatever random accusations they think might stick. It doesn't matter what's actually being said; they're not actually listening, and for all they might talk about fans of color they sure all seem to be white; for all they talk about misogyny and queerphobia they sure won't hesitate to immediately assume the worst of queer people and women who say things they don't like. And rarely do they address any of the actual ongoing bigotry that does exist in the fandom; it's all random accusations because you agreed with the white woman instead of the brown man or vice versa; or it's the constant dredging of years past discourse that, as the first paragraph indicates, they will then ignore whenever convenient.

These are all pretty transparent signs of a bad faith actor spreading misinformation. To be clear I don't think this is any kind of conspiracy or has any organization to it. I think it's a just handful of deeply self-absorbed people who either refuse or literally cannot comprehend that someone could disagree with them without being a bad person and who will gleefully cry wolf with these accusations of bigotry. But it's been going on for quite some time and it's been a problem this campaign in a way I at least do not recall it in past ones, and it's had an absolutely devastating effect on the fandom conversation. Ironically, by trying to boost Imogen and Campaign 3 by shutting down any criticism of them, they've shut down far more of the conversation, hopefully not irreversibly, and I think it's time to point that out.

[rainbowsky]

Sorry I've taken so long to address this, I've had a very busy day and didn't have time to finish this post (which I started yesterday).

I'm talking, of course, about the incredibly controversial situation surrounding DD right now. I've gotten some messages about it so I figured I'd give my thoughts in a bigger post so that I don't have to keep repeating myself.

(CW: racism, spoilers FPU)

I know that by now most people are aware of the situation, but I'm going to start from square one for those who are just catching up on the topic.

There is a scene in Formed Police Unit where Chinese UN peacekeeping troops need to rescue a group of citizens who are surrounded by terrorists. In order to accomplish this they disguise themselves as people from the community. This being Africa, the troops were disguised using blackface.

Yes, I am saying that DD and his castmates appear in the film in blackface.

I am not going to post a picture of that here. It's just something I can't post on my blog. I understand that many of you will want to see for yourself so I'll link a clip of the scene, which was posted on Weibo. Please be aware before clicking - this is full-on blackface. Always take care of yourselves, and if you think it might be upsetting to you don't click. You don't need to see it to be a 'good fan'.

Background

For those who may not know, this movie was filmed years ago, in 2021. During those years I have seen many anti attacks against DD, claiming that he is racist and has worn blackface. Here's the photo that was circulating back then.

At the time I thought the makeup that he was wearing was likely anti-reflective black paint or camouflage paint such as is used by snipers (which he played in the film). I assumed that he was wearing his own hoodie over part of a military costume, because he was wearing a cammo shirt and what might have been combat trousers.

I was certainly not expecting full-on blackface from this movie.

There's no getting around it - this is extremely difficult to look at.

Blackface is widely viewed as offensive and racist. It shouldn't be hard to understand why. Putting on another person's ethnicity like a costume is deeply insensitive, particularly when you consider that BIPOC (black, indigenous, and other people of color) are so frequently targeted, exploited and marginalized. For those in positions of privilege and power to put on the appearance of the people who they oppress and exploit... it's just shocking and awful.

Blackface is most frequently talked about in an American context, but it's actually a problem globally - including in China. More on all that here.

The film

I have not actually seen the film, so I don't know much about the context beyond what is being discussed in the fandom. As I said earlier, in the film a group of UN police officers need to infiltrate an area in the community, and they take on disguises in order to do so.

In promotional media this film is being presented as based on true stories from real missions*. It seems the situation in question really happened on a Chinese peacekeeping mission, and the UN troops disguised themselves as black citizens in order to infiltrate and extract the endangered captives.

*I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt on this because it doesn't change how I feel it should have been handled.

This is important context that is being conveniently left out of much of the backlash about this situation. People are outright claiming that DD plays a black person in the movie - that he wore blackface to perform a role that a black actor could have played. This simply isn't true, and people making these claims are antis and liars. There's simply no excuse for not knowing the full context.

Having said that, I don't really think it matters how it ended up in the film. I do not think there is such a thing as a palatable or appropriate use of blackface. In this day and age it is nearly universally understood to be racist, and it's extremely controversial.

I can understand if they were trying to be accurate to the mission that they were portraying, but surely there are other ways they could have accomplished this scene (perhaps with the clothing but not the blackface). 'Historical accuracy' isn't as important as cultural sensitivity, not by any stretch of the imagination. In the interest of respecting audiences they could have adapted the scene to make the use of blackface unnecessary.

I really see no excuse for anything like this in 2024.

Audience reactions

Chinese sensibilities around these topics are very different from what we are used to in the West.

According to fan repos audiences initially didn't recognize any of the actors, and once it became apparent that they were in disguise, laughter erupted around the room. In fact, most fans are laughing a lot at the photos and video even on social media (although some Chinese netizens have been upset by it and have voiced complaints to various stakeholders).

It is also being widely discussed on Chinese social media as an exciting scene of heroism in the film.

I feel the need to point out that the laughter and mockery is a huge part of the harm, here. As if it's not bad enough that these actors are performing in blackface and presenting a perversion of black ethnicity, it also becomes an opportunity for audiences to mock and disrespect black people. It's become an opportunity for social media to be filled with racist jokes and mockery.

Roadshow statements

There have been some clips circulating of PR and roadshow moments with black cast members and some black audience members who have spoken up in support of the film and to thank the cast and crew for telling the story. Here's one example.

International fans have been dismissing those statements as ignorant or coerced, which I think is offensive and deeply fucked up. There's no planet on which I'm going to - with a totally straight face - say that a black person's response to the movie is not legitimate just because it doesn't comport with my own view.

This is a complex issue and there are inevitably going to be a lot of different perspectives. I hope people won't exacerbate the problem by supplanting black voices on this issue with their own, no matter what's being said. If there's any manipulation going on, let's assume it was in their choosing supportive black figures to speak for the film rather than claim that the black spokespeople are insincere.

China has a lot of issues with racism, there's no doubt about it. It's a huge part of why so many people try to whiten their skin, or why they mock each other when their skin gets tanned/darker. There is a lot of sinister, fucked up stuff going on in China around race - both in the country and in their dealings with other countries.

But we can't claim to speak for black people in China, particularly when they are speaking for themselves! I would hope this is extremely obvious!

Where's DD in all this?

It's understandable that bystanders will react to what they're seeing and might immediately deem it unacceptable - and DD along with it. Their reactions are valid, but as fans I hope that we can look at him with a bit more empathy. I hope that we can take a moment to try to see things from his perspective.

DD has been interested in and an avid fan of black culture since he was a small child. We've all seen how much he immerses himself in hip hop, street dance and the accompanying music and fashion. And yes, he's been accused of cultural appropriation in the past for wearing locs and durags.

However, I think fans need a bit of perspective here to get a sense of where DD might be coming from. Here's a guy who loves black culture, who has close friends who are black, who regularly works with black artists and who supports black artists, in a culture where racism against black people is prevalent and often extreme.

I think DD would probably be amazed to hear the accusations of racism against him. He likely has very few people in his orbit who are anywhere near as supportive of or as closely connected to black people as he is. He likely stands out in his circle as being particularly into black culture and connected with black artists, and probably regularly faces ignorant questions or digs from people around him about his close association with black artists and culture.

Not just because of racism alone, but also due to the racist parallels the government tends to draw between black culture, street dance, hip hop, etc. and criminality/moral degradation*. It's likely that ignorant people in his orbit have expressed concern or wariness toward him because of these associations.

*That is, until breakdancing became an Olympic sport, then they were suddenly onboard with some of it.

I'm not saying that he doesn't have a lot of learning to do (and if this situation becomes what I think it might become, he'll have a big opportunity to do so), I'm just saying that his ignorance isn't mean-spirited. He's coming at this from a totally different angle than any of us are, and he is immersed in a totally different cultural perspective than our own. In his world, his interest likely makes him a bit of an anomaly.

So those painting him as a horrible racist... it's just not how I see it.

The element of choice

I've heard many people say that DD 'didn't have any choice' about this role, that turning it down would not have been an option or that he would be under some kind of threat if he didn't take this role. I don't agree with that characterization of things. I don't think it's quite as 'gun to the head' as a lot of fans paint it.

I think it's more likely that he simply didn't realize that the role would involve blackface when he accepted it, or that he thought that blackface in this context - to infiltrate a terrorist cell and save civilians - would be fine. We don't need to depict China as forcibly compelling actors to take unwanted roles if we want to make sense of this. There are simpler, more logical explanations.

DD wouldn't have been the one deciding how to depict the scene - he didn't have that power in 2021 - but I also doubt he would have had a major problem with it given everything we know.

We must overcome our Western tendency to see things only from our own perspective. This has a totally different cultural context in China, and the voices we listen to about it should not be issuing exclusively from white faces that are not at ground zero of this situation.

Final thoughts

This film has had me worried from day one. I think most people have been expecting it to be full of offensive portrayals and propagandistic fuckery. There are so many ways in which a Chinese film about the UN is potentially a sticky, tricky mess. This blackface thing is likely just one problem on a towering pile of problems.

However, I'm not going to sugarcoat this - this has the potential to be a real shitshow for DD, and I am concerned. Especially if this film gets an international release.

We need to brace ourselves, because I don't think this is going to just disappear. DD has endorsements with international brands, and this could definitely cause backlash for those brands unless the issue is addressed and the scenes removed. There's no planet on which brands like Chanel and Lacoste can afford to have one of their spokespeople plastered everywhere in blackface.

If this film gets an international release and those scenes are left intact, it's possible he will lose some brands.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but let's face it - things like this have consequences, and that's why it's so important for producers and artists to be sensitive about what they're portraying.

While I think there's some endorsement risk here for DD, and the potential loss of some international fans, I want to be clear about one thing: I don't think this will threaten his career overall. In China this just isn't an issue in the way it is internationally.

I do hope the film team addresses this issue in some way, ideally by removing the scenes. They just finished doing a massive edit to remove ZZH from the film, surely they can handle something like this. But let's not hold our breath...

Everyone has the right to make up their minds about DD. As I've often said, being a turtle isn't for the faint of heart. That's not just because turtles are frequent targets for bullies, or because we have to constantly live with uncertainty and doubt.

Being an international turtle also isn't for the faint of heart because there are a lot of cultural and political minefields to navigate, and many ideological differences to adapt to. There's a huge learning curve and a lot of unknowns, and turtles who want to survive have to make peace with the fact that we and the boys are from different worlds in many ways. We may never know where they really stand on issues that are important to us.

However, in this case I feel confident that I know where DD's heart is on this issue. He simply doesn't hold hatred, disrespect or disdain for black people. Quite the contrary.

I think we'd all just feel a lot better if he had a good grasp on how to be a better ally.

And while we're waiting for that, I think we should put our money where our mouths are and learn more about these issues ourselves, both in China and locally at home. We want DD to be a better person; let's be better people too.

Edit: more on this here.

[invaderhogtwopointohno]

The Acolyte and Stealing Indigenous Children:

If Sol had been White, you would have already made the connection but this is clearly a metaphor for the kidnapping and re-education of Indigenous children that happened for centuries. Sol believes truly in his heart that he is not doing anything wrong because he "cares about Osha" but he doesn't seem to care about the fact that he is ripping her from her home and even after everything happens, continues to believe that what he did was right.

Osha, just wanting to be a normal child and clearly not understanding what being a Jedi meant- did not really have a choice no matter what anyone says. She was taken from her family for no reason and her entire coven was killed for defending themselves. Then the Jedi covered it up and when Osha did not prove to be useful after her "re-education" failed- they threw her away.

Osha says that everything was her choice- but clearly that is a lie that she believes because she was "re-educated" by the Jedi.

Qimir is the only person she actually can relate to because they actually have the same background- going to the Jedi Order where they were "re-educated" and when they could not be "reigned in" they were thrown away. In Qimir's case- it was clear that his Master decided to straight up kill him to save face while Osha was forced out of the Jedi Order "by choice" when it was clearly just then gaslighting her out. The two of them are both victims of the Jedi belief that they are superior and what they do is right, consequences be damned.

[transmutationisms]

speaking of Sophie Lewis have you read her book Abolish the Family? if so I’m curious about your thoughts on the third chapter (“A Potted History of Family Abolitionism”). she makes some big claims (e.g. people have been arguing for variants of family abolitionism for 2000 yrs) but imo doesn’t really tee up good evidence in support & maybe also doesn’t properly historicise the family at some points, though I might be expecting too much from such a short text. anyway would be super interested to hear your thoughts! would also be curious about your favorite/most useful family abolitionist texts! thanks for your insightful writing & suggestions.

that chapter is weak & to be honest i'm not particularly enamoured of Abolish the Family as a theoretical text in general. she doesn't prove her claim about 2000 years even in the slightest (1 quote from plato that doesn't really pertain to the social form we recognise as 'family' since c. the 19th century + extremely vague and broad and homogenising claims about indigenous americans) & even on the sections from fourier onward the analysis is v minimal and at points even conflates opposition to the bourgeois nuclear family specifically with a genuinely anti-family position. as though other family forms can't a) exist, b) be equally awful, or c) defend themselves specifically by positioning themselves as a critique of the nuclear family lol.

i also don't think she's even arguing a point that matters all that much—like, who cares how long people have or haven't been saying something? it doesn't inherently mean the position is good or bad. her critique is much stronger where she focusses on the ways in which the family currently actually really does fail people, and on what it actually exists for, economically speaking. i don't really give a fuck intrinsically what a few canonical 19th-20thc thinkers said about the family: it's incumbent upon you to demonstrate that their positions actually were insightful or meaningful or important. like, even when she talks about marx it's a bit like, well there are things marx said that were wrong or underdeveloped or facile too. i don't automatically lend an argument credence just because he said it lol; just gesturing to the fact that xyz expressed verbally an opposition to bourgeois marriage is not convincing argumentation.

i sound like a huge hater right now & like i said above, i do see value in other aspects of lewis's work; i also frankly just have some respect for the text as a polemic defending an incredibly unpopular position that i obviously think is fundamentally important. but the historical work is shoddy and frankly kind of embarrassing for her imo.

[jules-ln]

Ok, I've seen too many people bring drama from the bad bad place (Twitter) to the slightly better bad place (tumblr) and at this point my eye is just twitching

So I guess it's time for me to be controversial yet brave again and talk about racism and Jayce

Lemme bring my DEI points out before anything because I guess that what's important with you gringos

I'm Mexican, I was born and raised in Mexico and I've never lived anywhere else but Mexico; I'm brown, my grandfather was an indigenous purepecha man, I don’t identify as indigenous because I don't know anything about the culture, but I do look indigenous and so I've been discriminated because of it, I'm also a trans man

So now, about the racism of making Jayce hypermasculine. I don't think there is any, or at least not a lot that I've seen

Because while yes, that is something that tends to happen with dark skin people in fandom. Jayce doesn't have very dark skin

Now, lemme explain

As someone who is a few shades darker than Jayce; Jayce is light Moreno, Moreno indeed, but light

I was talking the other day with my friend about this, saying that I have the headcanon that because he probably spends all his time inside the lab with Viktor he doesn't tan, so he's pretty much a light Moreno

Why does this matter?

Listen, I know Gringos and Europeans hear people say "Latino" and they immediately imagine brown, it doesn't matter if the Latino in question is the whitest person to ever white (like look at Kevin Alejandro, if I remember correctly, his parents are Mexicans, but my man over there has blue eyes), but in reality, specially in places like Mexico where most of the population could be considered PoC; there's the very big problem of colorism and that plays a role in masculinity

I've seen it every day here in Mexico, where the men who have lighter skin tones are allowed to be more emotional and vulnerable without such harsh consequences and the men with darker skin tones have to be a lot more masculine in a toxic way or they get judged by it

And while I do think that depictions of Jayce within the Fandom suffer from racism, it doesn't show in the same way it would in a character with a darker skin tone; it shows in sexualization and objectification kind of way

Like I've seen many art and posts that make me feel weird as a Latino where gringos make the point that Jayce being Latino is the hot thing about him, like they mention "Oh Viktor likes Jayce because he likes Latinos" and I'm like "how the fuck did you thought of that and didn't find it extremely weird"

Because I'm a Latino, and it's like, "Just for that? You haven't even seen my comic collection"

Or I've also seen MelJay fans (do you think I was going to let you off the hook? No baby, we're calling out eveyoneeee) post things like "I don't really care about Jayce, I just want a dick for Mel smut" how the hell did you think of that and didn't find it racist like, sure let's objectify the Latino man, why don't I just throw myself out of a window arrr arriba y arriba pa adelante Ñ or whatever

And this has a lot to do with colorism, where Jayce is Moreno enough to be "spicy" but not Moreno enough to be "undesirable"

Because people complain a lot about fans making Jayce Hypermasculine, but Jayce does dress and looks traditionally masculine, he has the proportions of a superhero and goes with suits to fight, that is masculine. But I have yet to see somebody making Jayce a typical mexican macho, like most of the time he's vulnerable, emotional, cries, shows his love openly, that isn't something that fits into the category of mexican macho

But you know what character gets the hypermasculinity treatment on top of the adultification treatment? Ekko

That's right, like he's 19 I think, he's still very young, and yet I have seen waaay more fanarts of Jayce being whimsical and having fun than of Ekko

I've also seen like a lot of post calling Jayce cute and almost none of Ekko? C'mon guys Ekko is cute

But, curious curiouser curiousest that this kind of issue only gets brought up with Jayce, a Moreno man that, let's be honest, under the right lighting could pass as a white man with a tan

(And funny that Mel fans only ever bring racism in relation to Mel and let Ekko get the brunt of it, hmmm, I wonder whyyyy)

Also, my hot take about that Tarzan art? I don't think it's racist, like we are talking about the quintessential white savior story where the protagonist gets to be better than than the natives at living in nature and gets all those muscles and locs? The Tarzan story it is racist, but not in the way you are thinking

Besides, hottest take: if you don't find all that art where Jayce gets treated like a dog racist, you shouldn't think of the Tarzan art as racist, just saying

Aaaand, just as the cherry on top? as a trans man, feminine Viktor is such a non issue, like no, it isn't fetishizing trans men, there's not a right way to look like a man or a woman; like what, are you going to start saying that Viktor wouldn't be a trans trender and he would be a trans man in the right™️ way or??

Don't like it? Grow up and learn to block people babyyyy, it's that easy

But yeah, Viktor looked weird in that Tarzan post because his head was way too big, I think that's more a Disney's problem than anything else because that person was tracing over the movie lmao

[v-4-mpmistress]

Kishimoto gave us nothing, so here is my Inuzuka clan rewriting part 11:

Now family.

This people will commit arson against you if you insult their family, or dogs

It is not a joke, they will

They are really loyal (of course) and protective of one another, and yes, they despise anything regardless being unloyal, lying just because or infidelity, they will castrate you or feed you to the wolf's if they see you are unfaithful

There is a roast of all the family at least once a month

They really like to trow water on people trowing bang snaps of fireworks near the clan grounds, they have sensitive hearing enough but the dogs and pup's getting scared it's a whole other thing

The women in that clan are really fertile

Like i know for a fact there is an aunt somewhere that has 5 kids already and currently pregnant again

Also i know everyone there has crazy genetics, have you seen them?, that people do not age like normal ones

They are definitely indigenous

They are really sensitive people but they don't know how to properly show it sometimes, specially sadness, they don't like to show 'weakness' so they turn that sadness into anger most times

They have a really odd yet effective combination of gentle and really aggressive parenting

Like they are not going to dismiss emotions and they are super caring but at the same time they will tell a kid that crying it's for the weak or something and they yell, a lot, but they know what to say

A lot of people think of them as savages or that they are dumb but they are actually really smart, they have to act like detectives in the tracking division at the end of the day

It's a women majority clan

They do not care, someone will point it out to Kiba for example and he will have no idea why it's odd, it's not like they treat him differently

They don't do gender distinction when choosing the next leader, yes it passes down to the main family but it doesn't really matter if its a girl or boy, just that they have to be a good leader

Personal space?, what's that?, seriously, they do not know boundaries, most of them learn them like way older because none of the inuzukas are annoyed by touch, less if it's like the kids so it's not something they think

They are more heart than brain, but they think along the heart

They firmly believe they are inmortal because they had been stabbed like 12 times and they are still alive

They are extremely proud of their clan and marks, do not ask them to cover them up

They get high really easy (smell)

They are pro vengeance

They will not deny human meat eating allegations (they did...way back in the past, but it's fun to mess with people and honestly?, with all the biting at least a small piece they have eaten)

They do not play boardgames, they are banned, they are all competitive level horrible, it will go wrong

Kakashi it's the weird adopted child

[submalevolentgrace]

for pretty much my entire life we have been locking up refugees in UN-certified human-rights-violating "offshore detention" camps for the heinous crime of daring to try and flee from death and worse, often from wars-on-terror we've helped wage, and have very much done highly decorated war crimes in. we hold them in conditions so bad that war-fleeing refugees have sown their mouths shut, tried to starve themselves, even children trying to kill themselves to escape what we're doing to them. WE are doing. because in my boots on the ground activism days i tried to fight the government on this, and the fact is, the australian public on the whole doesn't give a shit about us torturing refugee kids, half the country is in support of it, so the government gets a free pass no matter which side is in power. from howard to rudd to gillard to rudd to abbott to turnbull to morison to albanese, we lock up and torture refugees. the UN anti-torture inspectors aren't allowed to visit. the camps are run by a private USA prison contractor now.

and it's not like we can't organise a protest! we'll barricade MP's offices because of something an ally-in-law country is doing that we condemn, but when the blood is on our hands we don't wanna know, don't wanna fight, don't wanna admit. and albanese gets up there and says those barricades have "crossed a line", "there's no place for violence like this in our democracy", he says. you know where there is an implicit place for violence, apparently? cops beating indigenous kids to death on camera, the australian people are fine with that apparently. happens all the time. better have a curfew so those kids don't get too rowdy about it!

oh and the CIA agents and US soldiers we welcomed here to supposedly defend us, they rape a bunch of women and children, mostly also indigenous? better get ASIO and the AFP to monitor the population for anti-american sentiment, local cops do it plenty too and we can't stand up to the USA, we're about to go to war with our biggest economic trading partner on their behalf, the troop buildup locations have already been announced! sweep it under the rug little aussies, scrub it from your memory, who cares about raped children anyway? not worth protesting, apparently.

we are right in the middle of the asia-pacific, with loosely speaking about a 5th of the population ethnically or culturally asian, and they are absolutely terrified of speaking out about how many hate crimes they suffer constantly, because the other 80% of the population is more culturally invested in american politics than the fact that labor considers pauline hanson an ally. i don't blame the 20% getting hatecrimed for being scared to speak up, i sure as fuck blame the rest of us for not protecting them, and for doing those hate crimes. "wE'rE a MuLtIcUlTuRaL sOcIeTy!! nO rAcIsM hErE!!", but we'll organise citywide marches in the middle of a pandemic if a black american kid gets killed over there, and then tell blak people they're spelling it wrong.

then we flood the region with our white-bleached propaganda and "culture", to control smaller governments and and lure the people of the region here for our economic benefit; the wealthy as fodder to fund the education complex, and the poor to work below-minimum-wage-slavery "jobs programs" on our great proud aussie battler family run farms.

it's all out in the open. the torture, the murder, the rape, the hate crimes, the technically-it's-legally-distinct-from-slavery, it's all known, all reported regularly on the news, endlessly, cyclically, every few months or years, for my whole life. fuck knows what else we're doing and i don't know about because pine gap prevents it from reaching english language news.

i know the internet zeitgeist really only cares about the single latest trending topic to happen, so you're wondering what that is to make me react enraged and ashamed; but it's everything. i haven't even scratched the surface, just ranting off the top of my head.

every day i carry the shame of what a disgusting violent colony nation this is; to the people who consider themselves australian, to the people here before the nation and their descendants, to the people surrounding us now. i carry the guilt of failure to stop it, and casual complicity of having given up the fight because i couldn't handle it. i think that's what most activists do here, give up in shame, because activists aren't fighting the government - we have one of the most free and open democracies in the world, and the spineless cowards in charge absolutely will do what the populace whims of them - activists here are fighting the cruel and apathetic average australian, who either don't care, or active condone it all. we have the blood of this country on our hands.

so.

what has australia done now?

it's fucken wednesday, mates. nothing new.

[elkian]

Got LOTR on tape to listen to on my commute, partly because of current events, and good LORD Mr. Jirt never in his life was in the vicinity of fucking around.

Like, the description of the Ring and what it does to people maps so closely to real world problems, right now. The greed and selfishness of those who covet it, the fact that it will always destroy them in service to itself...

What really got me was Gandalf's comment about how those who use it "would not die. They would not grow or gain life," and like, it really puts me in mind of billionaire power grabs and pathetic attempts at appearing important, taking over projects doomed to fail due to their interference, and so much more. Especially that latter part: they don't grow, and they don't gain life. Bilbo left because he was feeling stretched - faded, scraped thin. This is seated in metaphor, but it's easy to see similarities with rich fucks like EM or JKR who've become parodies of themselves, self-perpetuating caricatures who can never produce anything new, only steal and plagiarize and self-refer.

(A friend of mine has told me about the Silmarrillion, and I think it came up in the Hobbit - it's very interesting to me that in this setting, evil and the inability to create anything new are explicitly intertwined so often. Evil is plagiarism, theft, machine generation, uncredited parody, etc.)

It's also fascinating to me how the Ring seizes people: the fact that Bilbo was able to give it up at all is, textually, a genuinely heroic act. Gandalf refuses offers of it and begs the Bagginses to not do that again, because even he is not immune to temptation and he knows his own power does not need to be amplified. He's wise enough to see the ruin that would unfold.

And then the bit with Saruman? "Only one hand can wear it at a time," good god.

This is Jirt saying that evil means cannot produce good results. That some acts, some tools, are so steeped in blood and cruelty and ruin, that you cannot "use it for good", because using it is evil. There's a lot of literature on objects being inherently morally neutral, and I definitely think this is a subject that requires engaging one's brain, but it kind of a rare narrative in my experience. (Completely unrelated side note, the older I get, the more I question my US Education's conclusion that dropping nuclear bombs on civilian targets (including testing sites with Indigenous populations, which my history class incidentally blipped over, somehow,) was "necessary". That's completely unrelated to the matter at hand. Anyways.)

And when this narrative does come up, I tend to see it from NRA types - people with a very particular flavor of agenda. It's important to remember that Tolkein had an agenda, too, even unconsciously - it's impossible to create something untouched by one's experiences and personal bias - but, at least for me, this is a pretty unfamiliar narrative and kind of exciting for it.

Anyways, the bit with Saruman fucking stings because that is happening irl right now in this very country, people we previously thought to be fairly intelligent, perceptive, and on our side deciding they want to "join the winning team". The dismissal of Radagast's importance by him after Gandalf went "hey wait you have the potential to help right now, in small but vital ways", puts me in mind of how current political figures are dismissive of "hippy dippy environmentalist tree-huggers" (hippies, who famously resisted a military draft and protested the Vietnam war,). Radagast doesn't need to come in swinging a sword to be important - and I like that Gandalf recognizes that he is important. I've been talking about it but I've been reading James Bradley's book "Deep Water", which goes into a lot of a directions about how the ocean is innately connected to basically everything. It's a fascinating, engaging read that really helped me conceptualize a lot about nature and my connection to it.

Environmentalists, biologists, scientists - these people are important, their work is important. I'm reminded of people critizing that headline about marine biologists putting shrimp on a treadmill, and, like, the results of that study may never affect me personally but that doesn't make it pointless. I went searching and the study is about water quality and how that affects crustaceans' health. The water in the ocean will eventually become water in the clouds which will become rain which will become groundwater which, eventually, I am going to drink. If there's a high level of, say, mercury in the ocean and it starts affecting shrimps' health (or microplastics, or whatever else), studies like this are important. It also affects predators (a lot of things accumulate in the body higher up the food chain, and eating carnivores or ominvores will increase the chance of that affecting you), which affect other marine life, and so on and so forth.

And those studies often reveal, as mentioned, the effects of pollution and worse - the consequences of lawmaker mismanagement, bribery, oil drilling, cut funding, and so much more.

Scientists and researchers are liable to produce proof that those in power have done wrong. No wonder the first move is to discredit them.

(I can't find it, but there was a post on here a bit back about how the One Ring turning its user invisible isn't a mistaken relay of Hobbit power but rather because the first thing evil in power desires is complete immunity to accountability.)

Anyways, Radagast is literally going to have the animals report to him which really hammers this one home.

Also, very interesting that before the Saruman summons, Gandalf tells Frodo to gather his resources and both he and Frodo admit that Frodo isn't the smartest or strongest, but Gandalf assures him that Frodo can do this thing nonetheless (the tales of the hobbits so frequently are about humble regular people accomplishing great things and I love it). Pretty much immediately moving in to see how Saruman, the brilliant and wise, has decided to change his colors and join Sauron, feels very pointed. Jirt is setting up a narrative here, a heroic journey, and has basically said "you know Frodo is going to accomplish great things, even against people even Gandalf considers powerful" and it's really interesting.

Also, just, the hobbits continue to be great. And I love that Gandalf's response to Frodo's announcement is, "yes, you must go; yes, you must do the difficult thing; and yes, it will be a hard road. But you don't need to do it alone."

I've heard that Tolkein denied that his experiences as a soldier affected/directed the narrative, and I know that evidence to the contrary is woven in nonetheless, so I can't say for sure how intentional everything is, but there are some exceeding good and relevant points in here and I've barely started.

It frustrates me to think about, because fantasy is an undervalued genre; that magic equates whimsy and whimsy equates pointlessness, that because it could never happen then it doesn't really matter. J.R.R. Tolkein is making some extremely good points about fascism and how to resist it, and some people will never accept that because fantasy - even incredibly popular and renowned fantasy - is for entertainment and nothing else.

Edit: oh yeah and I definitely paid attention to Gandalf and Frodo talking about Gollum. I've seen the Jackson movies (I know some stuff was changed or dropped) so I have an idea of how Gandalf's prediction is going to turn out. But I'm also paying attention to how Gandalf talks to Frodo about mercy. It's interesting.

[fdelopera]

Exposing an Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory from TikTok

If I see one more Jew-hating idiot with TikTok brainrot saying shit like, "the Palestinians are descended from the ancient Philistines from the Bible lolol"...

You Jew-haters are exhaustingly stupid. And in this post, I'm going to show you why.

As I said in my post yesterday, there are some really bad actors (both in the conspiracy sense, and in the literal "drama" sense) on TikTok who are trying to erase Jewish history by spreading conspiracy theories that somehow Philistines and Palestinians are "the same".

These idiots are doing this so they can claim that "Jesus was a Palestinian/Philistine."

It gives me a headache even to write something as stupid as that.

No, ya dumb-dumbs. Jesus was not a Philistine. Jesus was a Judaean Jew. He was from Bethlehem. In Judaea.

You know, Judaea. The place where the Jews are from.

It is actually really offensive to a lot of Christians to claim that "Jesus was a Philistine" like this. If you've never read the Bible (and I'm guessing none of these TikTokers have), calling someone a "Philistine" is an insult. In common use, it means an uncultured or crass person.

In Hebrew, the word for Philistine is "Peleshet (Plishtim, plural)". It is related to the Hebrew word, "Polesh". Polesh in Hebrew means "invader".

So by calling Jesus a Philistine, you're calling him an uncultured invader.

And I am here, as a Jew, telling you to stop insulting Jesus like this!

.

Now, saying "Jesus was the same as modern day Palestinians" is also unhistorical.

The region was called Judaea when Jesus was alive. So he was a Judaean Jew.

It would be just as unhistorical to say, "Jesus was a modern-day Israeli".

.

So, why are antisemites spouting this bullshit?

Unfortunately, these Jew-haters think they're "protecting" the Arab Palestinians by spreading conspiracy theories and lies about Jewish history.

They think they're making a "case" for Arab Palestinian indigeneity in Judea by telling these lies.

Because Arabs aren't indigenous to Judea.

And let me tell you, Tumblrinies who went to the Tumblr school of world history are even trying to rewrite Arab history! Some of them have even tried to tell me, "but Canaanites were Arabs lolol!"

Do you want me to show you a map?? No, dumb-dumbs. Canaanites were NOT Arabs. Canaanites are the ancestors of the Jewish People. Not the ancestors of Arabs.

Arabs come from the Arabian Peninsula.

OMG do you guys not even study geography anymore??

These Jew-hating idiots are literally willing to try to rewrite the history of the Arabian Peninsula just so they can fuck with Jewish people. You antisemites are absolutely unhinged!!

.

Okay, deep breath.

.

Here's the other thing. Our educational system is broken. And people don't study history (clearly).

Because if they did study history, they would realize that attaching Jesus to the Philistines doesn't confer ANY indigeneity to the Palestinian people.

(G-d, you conspiracy theory idiots are so dumb!!)

Because, you see, the Philistines were GREEK!!

They weren't indigenous to the Levant AT ALL!!

So in claiming that the Palestinians are the "same as" the Philistines, you have actually WEAKENED the case for Palestinian indigeneity!

And none of this matters!

YES, the Jewish people ARE indigenous to Judea.

And NO the Palestinian Arabs are NOT.

BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER.

IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT ARABS ARE NOT INDIGENOUS TO JUDEA.

BECAUSE THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE DESERVE HUMAN RIGHTS AND SELF-DETERMINATION NO MATTER WHAT!!!

Do you see what spreading conspiracy theories and lies about Jewish history does? All it does is make you look like FOOLS, and it HURTS the Palestinian people!!!

And YES, these conspiracy theories mainly hurt Jews. But I know y'all don't give a single SHIT about Jews. You've proven to us just how antisemitic you are.

So PLEASE for the LOVE OF G-D, STOP spreading these fucking LIES, BECAUSE THEY HURT PALESTINIANS TOO!!

.

Okay. Deep breath. Some history.

The Philistines were ancient Bronze Age Mycenaeans, aka they were Greeks. The Torah is consistent with this. It records them as being from Crete, which during the Late Bronze Age was under Mycenaean control. They also had some genetic admixture from Southern Italy. We know this both from DNA evidence from their skeletons, and also from their pottery, which looks similar to Mycenaean Bronze Age pottery.

And regardless, Israel and Jerusalem are both in the archeological record, and in Egyptian records, LONG BEFORE the Greek Philistine people appeared in Egyptian records. The ancestors of the Jewish people were there long before the Philistines arrived.

And you would know all this if you STUDY JEWISH HISTORY! Here's my Jewish history masterpost. I recommend that everyone read it.

The Philistines were invaders in Canaan, and they clashed often with the native Canaanites, which are the people that Jewish people are descended from. Jews ARE Canaanites. Read my post here on Jewish origins.

The cultural memory of these clashes is recorded in the story of David and Goliath in the Bible. The Israelite David felled the much larger Philistine Goliath with a slingshot, and then chopped off Goliath's head with his own iron sword.

The Greek Philistines were a small people group living in Judea. The last of the Philistines in Judea were slaughtered in 604 BCE by the army of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II when he besieged Jerusalem. This is the same siege that resulted in the Babylonian Exile of the Jewish people. Nebuchadnezzar dragged many of the Judeans (the Jewish population) as captives to Babylon (modern day Iraq). Then in 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the First Jewish Temple and dragged many more of the Jews into captivity in Babylon.

In 539 BCE, the Persian King Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonians in battle, and in 538 BCE, the Persians allowed the Jews to return to Judea. The Jews came back to Jerusalem to build the Second Temple on the site where the First Temple had stood, which they completed in 515 BCE. But when the Jews returned, they found that the Greek Philistine community had been decimated by the Babylonians.

.

So, where did the Philistines come from?

As I stated above, the name "Philistine" is a Greek version of the Hebrew word Peleshet, and the Peleshet were likely the same as the Mycenaean Greek Peleset tribe known to Egypt. The Greek Peleset tribe were part of a people group that are today called the "Sea Peoples."

At the end of the Bronze Age (aka the Late Bronze Age Collapse), the known world was going through a period of terrible drought, famine, and earthquakes. Various people groups from areas that are now part of Italy and Greece, including the Greek Peleset tribe, formed a rough confederation and went around to various cities, sacking and plundering the cities for resources. In 1175 BCE, the Sea Peoples invaded Egypt, and King Ramesses III defeated them in battle. He commemorated their defeat on a wall of his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu.

.

So why is Palestine called Palestine, a name that does derive from the name Philistine?

To find out, you have to fast forward from around 604 BCE (when the Babylonians wiped out the last of the Greek Philistine people) to around 135 CE to get to the next time that the name of the "Philistines" becomes important.

That's a span of around 740 YEARS!

At that point, the Second Temple in Jerusalem had already been destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The Romans were doing ethnic cleansing on the Jews in Judaea, after the Jews tried to get Jerusalem back from Roman control in the Bar Kochba revolt (132 - 135 CE).

After the Roman Empire defeated the Jews in Judaea and squashed the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 CE, the Romans RENAMED the region Syria-Palaestina. It was a vain attempt to remove the Jewish presence in the region. The Romans literally tried to wipe the Jews "off the map."

Guess what, motherfuckers! It didn't work. Jews came back to the region not long after.

The Romans named the region after the GREEK Peleshet/Philistines (who, again, by then were LONG GONE).

So the name "Syria-Palaestina" is basically the Romans trying to erase Jewish identity. Which again, DIDN'T WORK.

WE JEWS ARE STILL HERE.

So tl;dr "Palestine" is NOT the same as the Greek Philistines/Peleshet.

.

The Romans just went through the Hebrew Bible and looked for a name they could call the region that would be painful to the Jewish people. So they named the region after one of the Jewish people's Biblical rivals.

Philistia was also a name that was in use in the Greek world because, again, the Philistines were ancient Greeks.

But there's no actual connection between the region called "Syria-Palaestina" and the Greek people group called the Philistines.

This is why (let's say it all together kids) you need to LEARN JEWISH HISTORY!

.

And here's the worst part of this conspiracy theory.

Again, I know why Jew-haters tell this lie. And by now, so do you.

Jew-haters say this shit in a completely misguided attempt to "protect" the Palestinian people.

But, let's say it all together, the Palestinian people don't need to be backed by LIES in order to defend their human rights and their right to self-determination!

The Palestinian people DESERVE PROTECTION. THEY DESERVE TO HAVE FULL HUMAN RIGHTS.

.

THIS IS NOT A ZERO-SUM GAME, with one "winner" and one "loser."

YOU DON'T NEED TO TELL LIES ABOUT JEWISH HISTORY TO DEFEND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE.

Jews and Palestinians are not "pawns" for you Jew-haters to use in your pretend game of war. You're acting like you're in some sort of video game fantasy.

JEWS AND PALESTINIANS ARE NOT YOUR PLAYTHINGS!

.

If you tell lies about Jewish history in a stupid attempt to "defend" the Palestinian people, you're not helping them at all. You're just being an antisemitic bigot steeped in Jew-hatred.

And taken to its extreme, the real conclusion of your antisemitic LIE is actually a really weird, unhinged blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad!!

.

So if you ACTUALLY want to HELP the Palestinian people, and not just be a Jew-hating bigot, I would recommend that you put your money where your mouth is.

Stop telling easily disprovable LIES about Jewish history, and start donating to organizations and charities that are helping Palestinians. The organizations that I recommend are:

ANERA

Palestine Children's Relief Fund

Doctors Without Borders

Standing Together

[skaruresonic]

Hey, I'm writing a book going over the history of Sonic SatAM (I'm SatAMHistorian on Twitter), and I was curious if you could give me the source on the coverage of Ben Hurst and Pat Allee's Unto These Hills? I feel it'd be a good source for my book, as it's good to acknowledge when I talk about that section that the reaction to their script was negative. Didn't know about that. Will say that I feel both you and the paper was a tad overly negative regarding the duo, as it's possible there were outside factors which led to their script being compromised (such as John Tissue's seemingly kinda shadiness indicating he may have requested certain elements be changed to be more marketable). Will say that Ben and Pat DID work previously on Native America related stuff, contrary to what the paper suggests. They previously worked on a virtual tour CD of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in 1998, and worked on a paper regarding Duane H. King and his work with native american museums and such entitled "Trail of Tears". I don't doubt Pat and Ben were knowledgeable on Native Americans, and I think it's very possible those issues with the script may have been due to the direction they were given. Although the childishness and jokes being eh was probably on them tho.

Will say that I feel both you and the paper was a tad overly negative regarding the duo, as it's possible there were outside factors which led to their script being compromised (such as John Tissue's seemingly kinda shadiness indicating he may have requested certain elements be changed to be more marketable).

1.) No offense, but it kinda sounds like you're trying to excuse Pat and Ben here under the guise of executive meddling. I'm more inclined to believe a paper with sources than conjecture.

2.) Both me and the paper were overly negative? Both me and the paper. Not just me, but the paper specifically describing their rendition as whitewashing and their credentials as dubious.

Too negative. About cultural appropriation. In a paper literally entitled

...........I.

also how can you tell if the paper is being "a tad overly negative" when you haven't even read it.

Okay. Let's break this down, piece by piece.

First: intent doesn't matter when it comes to harm. Even if neither Pat nor Ben intended harm, the fact of the matter remains that they took a job opportunity away from an indigenous person who could have handled the source material with more cultural sensitivity and empathy, and instead used that opportunity to present an unfunny whitewashed version of history.

If they were really dialed-in to Cherokee culture as claimed, they could have recommended another indigenous writer to the CHA rather than take the position themselves. I'm fairly confident in asserting there probably wasn't a dearth of indigenous writers at the time.

Second: more accessible to who? White audiences? The play was originally white-directed; why would it need to be made even more accessible to white audiences? Would an indigenous perspective be considered too alien for general audiences to understand? What does "accessibility" mean in this context, and why do you assume accessibility to a culture that has suffered the appropriation of its history is something to strive for?

I. (rubs temple) I've been having one hell of a time trying to explain to people that not all cultures are up for grabs all the time. Just recently I had to tell a Sonic fan to knock it off with their w****goag AU because those spirits are sacred to the Anishinaabe and should not be treated like fictional playthings, and their defense was a flimsy "free cultural exchange is good."

No. Not always. Not to indigenous people, who have had their stories and beliefs violently ripped away from them and placed in the hands of outsiders who then profit off of them. Sometimes stories Are Not Meant To Be Told By You.

Indigenous people in particular have suffered a nasty history of being deprived of the right to tell their own stories by the dominant culture, and of having our stories regurgitated back to us in some whitewashed form. Unto These Hills was originally a white-directed morality play about Cherokee removal that the Cherokee then tried to make their own in order to generate revenue for the nation.

That is an act of survival. To take the narratives that hurt us and say "If we cannot stop this from happening, we might as well do it in a way that helps us."

With all due respect, I don't think I'm being "too negative" about cultural appropriation.

If this is what Pat and Ben did to Sequoyah, reducing him to a joke for The Lolz, I can't imagine what they did to the Cherokee museum.

And I'm sorry but frankly, I doubt Pat's credentials in this case when she, allegedly, was an "expert on Native Americans" and had her Wolf Pack do such quintessential Eastern Woodland tribe stuff as: wear togas and live in stone temples. ._.

The Wolf Pack are not based on any specific tribe. They're based on an ignorant view of Native people as a vague pan-Indian monolith.

Source: I'm a Haudenosaunee person and know we didn't wear togas and live in stone temples. Easterm Woodland tribes means our structures were made of wood. Longhouses, wiiigiwaam, etc., are made of wood.

We also do not mess around with fake curses because kačíkačiks (voodoo) isn't something you casually mess around with, even if the intent is to scare off outsiders.

Back to the main point... Sure, Ben could technically say he'd worked for the museum, but what did that actually entail when the CHA's standards were lax under John Tissue? You can't say "executive meddling was the reason they bastardized the play" in one breath and "Pat and Ben's work is legit because the same organization hired them to work on other stuff" in the next.

The problem here is twofold:

1.) Pat Allee and Ben Hurst were given a position that previously belonged to an indigenous man when their own credentials were dubious at best. The play's previous playwright was a Kiowa man, Hanay Geiogamah, who lost the position for petty reasons.

Furthermore, the man who vouched for Pat and Ben's credentials, John Tissue, could not specify why they were a good fit beyond a vague shrug. Especially brow-raising was the fact that they hadn't had a single writing credit to their name since 1999 when they got the job in 2006:

The CHA replaced Geiogamah the following year with Pat Allee and Ben Hurst, who made their living writing cartoons. They decided to replace Geiogamah because of his inability to fulfill the CHA‘s expectations. Though he did not inform the press of the reasons for deciding to fire Geiogamah, executive director John Tissue admitted to Scott Parker that Geiogamah "plagiarized text from the old drama and [had] no second act. "Hanay lifted the second act nearly verbatim from his American Indian Dance theatre shows and we didn‘t get that version until [two] days before opening!" The accusation of plagiarism did not focus on the script, but the series of dances and ―a Cherokee version of the American Indian Dance Theater DRUM CALL which served as the prelude to his removal scene. Because of Geiogamah‘s tardiness, the Association considered cancelling the first week of shows.

Choosing Allee and Hurst to write the new script showed that the CHA sacrificed its desire for a fully Cherokee story, to use 'veteran Hollywood writers.‘ Their credits, however, consisted of mainly children‘s cartoons such as ―Tiny Toon Adventures and two separate ―Sonic the Hedgehog series. Neither one had any writing credits to their name since 1999. Tissue, defending his choice, wrote to Parker that ―"Ben and Pat did write cartoons among many other things including the TV show Taxi but they also have [ten] years experience writing about Cherokee history. I needed that mix." Tissue did not divulge the details of their work on the Cherokee to Parker or strangely enough to newspapers.

I was not saying this to be a dick. You can read it in the paper yourself.

2.) Pat and Ben turned the play, which was originally about Cherokee removal, into glurgy, unfunny, "we're all one race" Christian feelgood schlock:

The main focus of removal here, however, does not occur in Cherokee, but in Nashville, Tennessee. White citizens line the streets to watch the Indians pass through their town. Upset by the occurrences, they bring out blankets, food, and clothing, and some begin crying. Kamama, a small Indian child mentions this to her grandmother, who responds "―never forget, Kamama, there are always good people, no matter what color they are." Throughout the scene, Cherokees sing the hymn Amazing Grace, and ―after a few stanzas, all the whites join in. The orchestrated score swells, filling the house and the song is sung in full harmony to a huge dramatic finish. This picture of harmony between the races took the focus off of the impact removal had on the Cherokee people, and showed how the playwrights imagined whites and Indians interacted. [emphasis mine]

Compare this to Geiogamah’s treatment:

Whereas Hunter [the play's original white author] saw this as the end of the action, Geiogamah chose to place removal as the center of the drama. [emphasis mine]

Even the construction of the scene created a different message then that of Hunter‘s script. The scene has few spoken words. It begins with Major Davis giving the order for the Indians to remove in two weeks, and ends with Kanati singing about removal.

According to the paper, Pat and Ben's rendition reflects a puerile view of history:

Their background in cartoons showed in the very childlike script that played for laughs. The play is more a series of vignettes than a cohesive story with a unifying thread running throughout. Though news reports claimed the second change in the script brought Tsali and Thomas back into the story, the playwrights relegated their part to the end of the play. Whereas Hunter denied the Indians any sense of humor, Allee and Hurst, made the Indians cartoonish, filling the script with bad jokes in English. Instead of using the Kanati and Selu as narrators, Allee and Hurst used a grandmother and grandfather telling bedtime stories to their grandson and granddaughter, an idea more accessible to white audiences.

Native people get opportunities ripped out from under them in favor of white people all the time, so it acts as a double kick in the face when our own stories aren't allowed to be told on our own terms, either.

As I've said earlier in this post, Unto These Hills was originally a white-directed morality play that the Cherokee people eventually tried to make their own.

Losing an indigenous playwright to two white cartoon writers for bullshit reasons is bad enough, but they then produced a cartoon mocking important figures, shelving other significant figures, and having everyone sing Kumbaya around the fire... as if dispossession was just an unfortunate tragedy instead of a calculated act of assimilation forced upon the Cherokee by the federal government.

Yeah.

No.

I didn't have a high opinion of Ben Hurst to begin with, considering his disdain of the Sonic series' core identity, the video games, led him to comment that Sega's vision for the series was "not very creative"; considering his comments on wanting to be "whatever species was compatible with Sally" were creepy (and yet this fanbase that hounds you over "impure" ships let it slid, maybe because they didn't know, but who knows?); and considering that his posts on SatAM seemed to heavily imply he couldn't let go of it decades later. Quite a claim to make that a hypothetical season 3 "wouldn't suck," and, just on a personal note, it's a little sad to think nothing else creatively fulfilled him quite like a cartoon he developed in his youth. Those are all the petty reasons I don't like Hurst.

...However, seeing two white authors take job opportunities from indigenous people and whitewash Native history actively pushed that dislike into upset.

Frankly, I was going to include a disclaimer, after a friend pointed it out, that just because Ben and Pat wrote something racially insensitive doesn't make them bad people. But, you know what, this is 2025 and it should go without saying. And centering their feelings/honor shouldn't be the focus of this post anyhow.

There's someone else here who is also dead, and can no longer defend himself, but that didn't prevent him from being made fun of. Sequoyah.

[fadewalking]

@ anon i am not going to post that ask because you name drop literally every single person even tangentially involved in this and none of those people agreed to be directly mentioned on my blog. I have no interest in facilitating any of my followers to harass anyone involved here, so I think it's best we stop pointing the spotlight at specific people who never willingly stepped forward on my blog.

But i will respond here, and this is the last anonymous message about this im going to respond to because we all really need to move on. So if you want to continue talking about this, you can, again, say it with your whole fucking chest in dms, and not cower behind anon.

"bro, the original post about the vallaslin had you blocked for at least 2 months. he doesn't even know you personally. he did have the decency to block you when you made him uncomfortable months ago too." im not sure how this is relevant to anything being discussed tbh. Of course he doesn't know me personally. that's like... 99% of tumblr mutuals? that's how social media and the internet works. you and i are talking right now and we don't know each other personally. and yeah he had me softblocked since a while ago, im not sure what that has to do with anything. Some friends sent me the og post bc it made them uncomfortable, so I offered my opinion to them in private. Then several more indigenous folk made public comments about it, and i offered an extremely vague, broad opinion that we shouldn't try to force people into agreeing with us. that's all I did lmfao.

"what you're doing to him... and other indigenous folx in the darpc is wrong and i hope you can realize it." Omitted all those names you mentioned. Again, originally all i said was don't try to force people into agreeing with you. A stance which, not for nothing, several other indigenous people endorsed. There is no world in which saying that is doing anyone wrong. That would have been the total end of my statement on the matter btw, had gcldfang not decided it was a good idea to send me anons.

"i saw you support a post from user [name omitted] (now conveniently deleted) that said everyone could do whatever wanted with dalish characters and it would not be racist. to me? that post and your reaction comes off as weaponizing your own identities against other indigenous people to excuse your white friends and make them feel better for participating in racism." So there are two different sentiments at play here. We could say "muns who feel that vallaslin is bad and slave markings are perpetuating racism." and/or we could say "Elves in the game who feel that vallalsin is bad and slave markings are perpetuating racism." both of these statements are kinda problematic but this one is more problematic than the other. It seems like you're saying the latter thing right now, idk whether you would agree with both statements or not, but it seems like right now you're only saying the latter.

But it strikes me as really ironic that you can't see the hypocrisy in saying things like "you can't tell me how to feel about my own culture" and in the same breath saying "your elf cant feel this way about their own culture, or it's racist." there are very clearly at least two canonical perspectives of the Evanuris. One as benevolent creators, and one as tyrannical slavers. It is canon that the Evanuris enslaved people. did some of them willingly serve? Of course. But it's canon, still, that there were slaves, and that perspective is offered by more people than just Solas. It just isn't racist for Elves to feel whatever type of way they feel about learning about that aspect of their culture. It's their culture. You can't tell them how to feel about their own culture.

This has pretty much been my and everyone else's point. Saying "if you think this way, that's racist." is not a good thing to say when it blatantly dismisses both in-game character's valid feeling about their own culture, and other irl cultural perspectives from real people. It's been mentioned by multiple people that facial tattoos have been used for a variety of purposes in other real cultures that were also used to inspire the portrayal of Elves in the game. I'm going to quote someone who sent me a message about this, who has already said it: "no one disagreed that the devs using the vallaslin the way they did was a poor choice. while it's true there have been cultures in history that did use facial tattoos for slaves, it's still an insensitive decision! and NO ONE disagreed with that! but from what I saw, you and roughly 4-5 other indigenous people, as well as several other writers, some white, some white and Otherwise marginalized, and some poc of other sorts were saying: 'hey. we get what you're trying to say here, but saying that your culture's perspective is the only correct/non-racist one is not good and not okay. it silences people of other cultures who see their cultures in these characters. yes the devs were racist and careless but that doesn't mean that erasing the other cultures that contributed is ok, and doesn't mean that you get to tell people of those cultures that their interpretations are inherently Less than yours'. Because that is how that original post read."

What that person pointed out is the "railroading" that i've been talking about. It's one thing to say something like "I and my characters all feel that the evanuris were actually gods and that Vallaslin is a good thing because im upset with the bastardization/villanization of how my culture was used to inspire these things in the elves." and it's a different thing to say "And if you and your characters don't agree with my perspective then you're racist/perpetuating racism, too." because that one cultural perspective isn't the only one that exists. Other cultures have their own perspectives and experiences with facial markings, and those matter, too. And yet even still, we have only ever acknowledged and agreed that the choice for Vallaslin to be used as a symbol for enslavement in the game is racially problematic.

"It feels like you punching down on other indigenous people for protesting their mistreatment. that is why people are blocking you. you are vagueposting about a vaguepost." my criticism of other indigenous people, as an indigenous person, is not punching down. That's not what it means to punch down. Nor did I ever say that they can't or shouldn't protest their mistreatment.

"i understand you like solas. i enjoy the egg too but equating the vallaslin with slave markings is racist. speaking from experience: the stigma against indigenous facial tattooing is a product of systemic racism and colonialism. what the characters say in dragon age is sadly impacted by the writers being racist: this is a fact. also people are allowed to be uncomfortable with your fave being a vessel for developer bias." I think it's a mistake to involve Solas in this conversation, honestly. but alright. Given Solas' experiences, and his own personal perspective, he is justified to feel the way he does about his own culture. That isn't racist. Especially considering that, in canon, the Evanuris did enslave people. But that's the fiction. In real life, again, as it's been pointed out, facial tattooing has been used for a variety of different purposes across multiple different cultures. Some were positive, some weren't. I agree that in western society, as a whole, there is stigma against indigenous facial tattooing that is a product of systemic racism and colonialism.

The characters in dragon age exist within the context of the fiction of their world, which has been influenced by a multicultural mix of real world identities. There is no one correct interpretation of their facial tattoos. Neither in the game or irl, because of the fact that multiple cultures were used as inspo for the Elves. You can't insinuate that the perspective of other real world cultures is racist, which is what it seems like you're doing. The world isn't black and white. Indigenous people are not a monolith. People are allowed to be uncomfortable with vallaslin based both on what it represents within in the fictional context of the game and how facial markings have been used within their own real world cultures. Every character in the game, not just Solas, is a vessel for developer bias. That's how bias works, it's inescapable. I've never said that people aren't allowed to dislike him. But it's curious to me how it's only ever Solas who gets hounded for his perspective and not anyone else who is equally as guilty of developer bias or blatant bigotry.

"coming from a tattooed inuit: don't you dare tell me how to feel about my culture being portrayed in a bad light." I'm not. Nowhere did I ever try to say you or anyone else can't how you feel. In fact, i've only ever said the exact opposite of this. We are all allowed to feel how we feel.

"don't tell me not to be pissed off at the way bioware handled things regarding vallaslin. the discrimination the dalish receive is exactly what i deal with everyday." I'm not. I have only ever agreed that it was wrong of bioware to handle Vallaslin the way they did.

And i've said that blatantly more times than I care to count atp. You and everyone else are right to feel whatever you feel about it, and Vallaslin should never have been used as a symbol of oppression in the game. But you just can't tell other people how to feel about it. It really is simply just that.

[wathanism]

Your ideals are going to kill people. The only thing refusing to vote is going to do is ensure that the republicans win and their project 2025 gets enacted. This is not a conspiracy theory. They want a theocracy. They want authoritarianism. They want fascism. You and everyone you convince to not vote is letting that happen.

I don't know who convinced you that its impossible to care about two things at once, but abandoning the vulnerable here in the states because you care so deeply about the vulnerable on the other side of the world doesn't make you more righteous.

Refusing to vote for him is a foolish act that will do nothing to stop what is happening. Even if he finally pulls back all aid for Israel at the eleventh hour, no one will vote for him now, which means the vulnerable right here at home are fucked. Thanks.

i was really close to not answering you at all because i have a hard rule about not talking with selfish cunts who are commited to misunderstanding everything a non-white person says to them. but since you had the good sense to realize that you were being an ass right then, i'm going to assume that you're worth engaging with, and i'm going to hope you'll talk with me in good faith and read everything i have to say rather than blow up at me again. if nothing else, i'm going to use this as an opportunity to say all the things i've been wanting to say since i made that post. that said, i'm real pissed and i'm not gonna be all nice and palatable in my answer.

first of all, no i'm not a US citizen. i live in west asia. y'know, where all the wars are? gaza is five hours away from my hometown of damascus, which is also being bombed with your tax dollars, by the way! in fact, i grew up living under a textbook authoritarian theocracy. so don't sit there and talk to me like i don't know what it's like to be afraid of your own government. we're in this shithole world together, and you and i are a hell of a lot more like each other than the politicians putting our lives on the line.

second of all, i should have been more clear about what i actually would like for US voters to do. contrary to small-minded liberals' assumptions, i'm not republican nor am i anti-voting. i'm saying people should vote third party. i even have a preferred candidate in mind, jasmine sherman. they even have strict and well-defined policies to protect trans rights and provide universal healthcare that includes gender affirming care and reproductive care.

this is usually the point when usamericans talk down to me like it's my first day on earth, so let me be clear. i know about the electoral college. i know about the flaws of the first-past-the-post voting system. i know about ranked-choice voting and why that's a better system in almost every way. i know that until there's drastic changes to the US voting system, there is no chance a third party candidate could even win. i'm not delusional about that. and i'm asking you to protest-vote anyway. which, yes, i realize is a big ask, but consider that this is a big fucking problem that requires pretty drastic actions.

several absolute dumbasses who i refuse to engage with said some very interesting stuff that made me realize why so many people are quick to dismiss the idea of refusing to vote for either major party. some examples:

they describe the push to vote third party as us lashing out at biden. in their eyes, we're not politically aware adults with a righteous passion for justice. no, we're petulant children causing problems for everyone whose rights actually matter. maybe a nicer person than me can give them the benefit of the doubt, but i find it extremely suspect that they truly seem to believe that non-white people are irrational, easily-angered, thoughtless creatures with no understanding of the complexities of the situation. there's a complete refusal to consider that there might be an actual coherent strategy behind the activism of indigenous and black people.

and again, because this is not my first day on earth, i know about the "but trump!!" argument. i honestly am BAFFLED that liberals seem to genuinely believe they're offering anything novel or valuable to the discussion at hand when they parrot talking points that we've been hearing since 2016 with quite literally nothing to show for it.

but i digress. the important thing is: yes, i fucking know. i know trump would have a near identical policy on gaza. he'd also have an identical policy on the police, on covid, on immigration, and on most other issues. you worry about project 2025, and you're right to! but the thing is, and you'll forgive me for quoting imani here but she is the most correct person ever always, "everything in project 2025 relies on biden doing exactly what he's fucking doing right now. the more successful this genocide is, the more likely project 2025 is to happen." because at the end of the day, it doesn't require a republican president. it requires a CONSERVATIVE president. and that's what biden is.

i don't know if you're missing it or if you don't care, but democrats benefit from you being terrified, and that's exactly why they'll never keep you safe. you will always be one election away from being killed by the system because that's what keeps you complicit. democrats won't shoot the gun, but they will ALWAYS make sure it's loaded and that you're trapped in a room with the person who'll shoot you. don't forget that roe v. wade was overturned on biden's watch. trans rights were rolled back on biden's watch. covid deaths skyrocketed and protections were dismantled on biden's watch. he'll find every loophole in the book to funnel weapons to israel's military but he'll never lift a finger to fix the problems ruining your life, because he needs you to be as scared as you are. that's exactly what's keeping you from showing an ounce of compassion or solidarity to palestinians right now. and no, your fucking lip service and crocodile tears don't count as solidarity.

liberals have managed to completely forget the most important lesson about social justice: none of us are free until all of us are free. you've been so busy yelling at arabs to even realize that this moment in time is one of the greatest pushes against the two-party system. do you not get how important that is? right now, when damn near everyone who's even mildly left leaning (and many who are right leaning) is so deeply unsatisfied with both major candidates, is the perfect time to be thinking of ways to break out of this system. to organize, to advocate for your mystical fucking ranked choice voting!

palestinians aren't asking you to lay down your life and throw away your human rights so they can mildly spite joe biden. they're asking you to grow a fucking spine and stand on principle and god damn DO SOMETHING to tear apart the two-party system. make people realize that a third party candidate IS a viable one, so that one day they can be.

you're framing this as a matter of pitting palestinians versus americans, which couldn't be further from the truth. maybe instead of directing your hate towards palestinians and their allies, show some gratitude. palestinians are uncovering the veil of all the atrocities and all the corruption in the world, and they're giving the people of the earth a banner to unite under. there have never been so many people (afaik, at least) pushing against the systems of corruption in america. that kind of thing ripples out. standing with palestine isn't easy, but all of our lives will be better for it, including and especially the lives of minorities living in the US.

there is so, SO much more i can say about palestine, and it will inevitably turn into a very spiritual rant about the uniting force of the holy land. but i'm instead just gonna leave you with this tweet that i think sums up everything about this.

[owenthetokencishet]

I am getting really fucking tired of the discourse around current Canadian nationalism. Because I don't think you understand that EVERYTHING has changed.

This is going to be a rant.

Before Trump began threatening Canada, this last election was going to be a Conservative supermajority. Pierre Poilievre was going to take Canada and make us Daddy Donny's bestest little buddy because the Liberals were the party in power during COVID and the party in power during COVID has lost just about every election in every country in the world that's had one.

Then Trump said 51st state. And Poilievre lost the election he had been planning for since he became party leader. Pierre Poilievre was going to be the first step in bringing Trump-style fascism to Canada. And we just rejected him. It was close, worryingly close, but Canada said no.

Much of the modern Canadian far-right is funded by the United States. Hell half the grassroots donations raised by the Trucker Convoy came from Americans. The US had a hand in the 2025 election, making massive donations to Poilievre's Conservatives.

Now that the right-wing Canadian nationalists have to reject the US to not COMPLETELY destroy their minds with cognitive dissonance, they have to lose much of their power and influence.

Canada's current surge in nationalism is a REJECTION of Donald Trump and of American influence. Now that the people we were parroting all those christofascist talking points from are banging at our doors, their ideas are going to become (and already are) much harder to swallow.

We're not Weimar Germany, we're Ukraine circa 2021. Our nationalism right now is surging in defiance of a VERY REAL external threat.

"But Canada is bad!!! We-" Yes. Canada is a shitty country. We have our issues and things that we as canadians should be ashamed of.

Yes. Our country is built on the corpses of entire civilizations. Good luck finding a country that isn't. Yes, We need to improve living conditions in Indigenous communities. Yes, we need to properly investigate the MMIWG cases. Yes, we need to do more than just embarassingly bad land acknowledgements at the opening of every play.

But we can't do any of that shit while we're under an American boot.

"the settler colonies all deserve to die anyway so-" Okay if you're using that specific phrase "settler colonies" I'm automatically assuming you live either here or in the states. MAYBE Australia. All I can say in that case is Y'KNOW THAT'S *YOU* RIGHT? There goes your healthcare system. There goes your supply chain. There go your defenses against the Americans. You can't just wish the last 500 years away. Whether or not Canada *deserves* to exist doesn't fucking matter. It's there. And unless you've got enough guns, guillotines, and militants ready to storm parliament hill and kill every last cabinemt member, it's not going anywhere.

Canada exists whether you believe it should or not.

Does Canada have its problems? Absolutely. But you can still love something in spite of its flaws. Nationalism is not, at its core, fascistic. It is simply the belief that nation is a part of your identity, just like race, gender, and sexuality. And nation is not the same as state. Palestine is (currently) a nation without a state, as is the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

Looking at the history of nationalism and nationalist movements, "left-wing" and "right-wing" become kind of useless terms to describe the core concept. Black nationalism is historically seen as pretty left-wing and anticolonial but then you've got Marcus Garvey talking about collaborating with the KKK to deport Black people back to Africa in a plan that sounds awfully similar to Zionism. Asking "is Irish nationalism right-wing?" Is a good way to get an Irishman to beat the shit out of you. Indian nationalism used to be about forming a united front to get the British Empire out. Now it's about exterminating Sikhs and Muslims. GESTURES WILDLY AT ISRAEL AND PALESTINE.

Canada is not the greatest country in the world. But I DO like it here. I like winter. I like universal healthcare (such as it is THANKS DOUG) and legal weed. I love Algonquin Park. I listen to Rush and grew up on Mister Dressup. I ADORE the Stratford festival and PRAY to work in their prop shop someday. I love poutine and am currently eating a butter tart while covered head-to-toe in buffalo check plaid. I am PROUD that we consistently rank as one of the safest countries in the world for LGBT+ people. And I am proud of Operation Yellow Ribbon and to be going to the school that birthed a musical based on its events THAT WENT ALL THE WAY TO BROADWAY AND BACK.

This is my home. There are cracks in the drywall and skeletons in the closet but it's MY home. And I don't want some red-hat jackass paving it over.

Elbows up, people

[tittyinfinity]

i can't shut up i'm sorry I'm ranting about Biden again

I'm starting to think Trump's presidency really wasn't any worse than what we have going on now, he was just targeting different people.

Bear with me.

The thing is, Biden has been the president for most of the pandemic and he hasn't been doing anything to stop the spread of it, so when people say "but Trump would kill US here!!" I wanna mention that Biden is already killing people of all parts of the political spectrum with his passiveness on covid

Biden is smarter than Trump. He's been in politics longer. He has had decades of learning how to maneuver politics. He has agreed with a lot of bad policies, many more than Trump even had the ability to do w his only 4 years of presidency. Trump is more interested in his image than anything else. Which is also dangerous! But it's much easier to convince people that Trump, a guy who is loud about his prejudices and caused a lot of damage because of that, is worse than a guy who pretends to agree with you on issues and then commits literal genocide.

Like I said, it just changes who is targeted instead. But is that really the case? We're already being targeted in different ways. A few good things have passed under Biden! But we also lost more bodily autonomy rights as far as abortion and trans rights go (not everywhere, but many states have become dangerous to live in). "That's not completely his fault" sure! Well then if the president doesn't have the power to change things truly for the better themselves, then worrying about who the president will be doesn't really matter. Also, presidents in the US have the ability to make executive orders.

And maybe he has spoken up on these things more and I just haven't heard about them - but Biden does not take the time to speak out about the anti-abortion, anti-trans, or healthcare related issues, except for the occasional quip here and there before he goes right back to not giving a shit. And I'm only using those as an example because a lot of "vote blue no matter who" people apparently only care about what happens to people here instead of in other countries.

And it's just really shitty to say "well what about the people who COULD die under a republican presidency instead of the real people dying from Biden's incitement of genocide right now!"

Trump incited a LOT of hatred in our country, yes. It pushed people to be more loud and open about their prejudices. But the deaths caused by hate crimes and COVID here in America were not on near of a large and deadly scale as what Biden is doing right now. We didn't watch our entire cities get destroyed and have our entire families wiped out.

So it seems, again, like the "vote blue no matter who" crowd only cares about politics when it comes to how THEY will (or MIGHT) be affected.

Am I saying vote for Trump or DeSantis? Fuck no. I'm saying prevent the next election from happening and burn this imperialistic genocidal government to the ground. The US has caused enough death, well into the millions, ever since it was created, and hasn't ever stopped committing genocide. But it only seems to matter when it (COULD) happen to white Americans.

Mexican people are still being put in cages and having their children stolen, too.

Indigenous people are still being murdered.

Disabled people are still dying from lack of accessible healthcare.

And the prices of everything have SKYROCKETED since Biden became president.

People are already suffering under a democratic president. You just won't care until it happens to you.

[thegreatimpersonator]

Genuine question. What do you think about all of the political pundits and news anchors and other celebrities praising Taylor for the endorsement? They’re all saying she made such an eloquent statement but it wasn’t that good…?

I feel like both 'sides' of this are missing the point because it's the internet and all nuance is lost. Taylor finally endorsed Kamala and took an actual political stance for the first time in 4 years, and that's great. That act is gonna do wonders for the election and really helped move eyes and ears toward Kamala, Tim, and their campaign. There's no doubt it'll make a huge impact. So the reporters who are saying she made an 'eloquent statement' are correct, she did. So people who are looking to hate on that have no reason to hate on that aspect. She did a good thing by endorsing Kamala.

However, that's not what the issue was that people were talking about for years prior that hit a peak a few days ago- it's a part but not the whole picture. Her statement about the election missed the big picture, it never once condemned what people have seen her tolerate personally. Taylor, for the past 3-4 years has repeatedly surrounded herself with close-minded, ignorant, and actively bigoted people. From the people she's voluntarily chosen to work with (i.e David O Russell; a known abuser) to people she chooses to publicly be friends with (Brittany Mahomes, Lena Dunham, Zoe Kravitz, etc) and even repeatedly defended dating vocal bigot Matty Healy. She has repeatedly surrounded herself with people who actively go against everything she says she believes, and actions speak louder than words. How can you say you're an ally to the LGBTQ+ community and publicly be besties and lend your spotlight to someone who doesn't believe trans women are women and shouldn't be in women's sports (Brittany Mahomes). How can you support victims of SA/DV when you're friends/work with abuse apologists and actual abusers? How can you be an ally towards POC when you defended dating a man who publicly said he gets off to porn of black women getting beaten, or while you wear jerseys and support your current partner's team- a team that has made a mockery of Indigenous people who have repeatedly begged for them to stop? How can you be an ally for women when you haven't spoken up for Palestine, where women are being treated in unimaginable ways due to the ongoing genocide. That's the issue, her actions vs. her words.

She can say she believes in these subjects, and that's good it's better than nothing, but we all know the words are pretty empty and for show. A show is good but it always ends and you're left with nothing afterwards. She probably won't say much else about the election because in her mind she did her duty, and that to her is the bare minimum. Half-baked activism is applauded because we are so used to getting nothing. Endorse a candidate and go back to being friends with people who don't see certain groups as human beings. Tell people to vote but don't condemn their hatred, because then you'd also be condemning some of your friends. Enable that behavior and live in that privilege, it'll work out for her and that's what matters the most.