#for such a complicated history and conflict

[foibles-fables]

What do you think of Cait’s character development in general? And what it means for Caitvi? I’ve seen quite a few people angry and displeased with the fact that she “lost her way” and turned into a “cruel dictator” while others argued that she was easily influenced in a moment of weakness and grief. And that CaitVi is now toxic?

I do think Caitlyn's grief influenced her turn during act 1, yes. A conflict that hadn't really touched her personally (as it had for Vi and so many others from the undercity--a privilege, on her part) finally did, and in the fallout she made inarguably Bad choices starting in 2.01 and culminating in 2.03.

But even though they were choices made in grief, she still made them. Grief is an explanation--not an excuse. She was manipulated, but she was still wrong.

Acts 2 and 3 see her clearer head prevailing--when she doubts Ambessa, when she reencounters Vi.

But simply doubting doesn't absolve her, action does. When she tells Jinx "hating you, I've hated myself," she's doing her part of breaking the cycle. When she conveniently allows Vi to break Jinx out of her cell, she's forsaking the "revenge" she clung to during the months between acts 2 and 3, since it's what she has seen is right. The final montage makes it seem like she's given up the Kiramman seat on the council to Zaun. She learned Ambessa's fourth lesson of sacrifice and took to heart both for herself and both cities.

She was grieving, and she was wrong, and she's shown that she is willing to do the work to try and repair what she damaged. I love that growth for a character who, at the beginning, had no history of choosing badly--or really choosing at all. "What are you shooting for?" She needed to find out how to answer that question, and I think now she has.

Re: your last question--again, I'll say, actions speak louder than words. Hurts can be absolved as long as there's willingness to work and to forgive. Both are complicated people and they've both grown, individually and together alike, and the final scene shows their mutual committment to one another.

[questionablecuttlefish]

Okay Lux primer here we go

Lux is from Demacia, a country that seems like a shining heroic fantasy kingdom on the surface, but is very isolationist and traditionalist, and hates and persecutes mages and anything to do with magic far more than Piltover ever did.

She's a daughter of the (absurdly) powerful Crownguard family who's hiding a secret: she's a mage with powerful and rare Light magic that she increasingly can't control.

In her original story, this led her to trust an imprisoned mage named Sylas to help her control her magic, but when she tried to stop his execution he stole her magic (that was his ability) and escaped to lead a violent mage uprising that spiralled into a civil war.

She also has an older brother, Garen, whom she loves, but their relationship is complicated by him knowing she's a mage and trying to protect her secret clashing with his hidebound duty and honor.

In current timeline events, Lux was last seen acting as the governor and protector of a camp of peaceful refugee mages hold up in the once ruined city of Terbisia.

So Lux...

* Is a young woman struggling with being hated for something she never chose to be and the expectations pushed on her by others

* and destructive potential she can't control

* complicated relationship with an overprotective older sibling

* trusted an older male mentor figure with dark revolutionary ideals who 'betrayed' her.

* her power unintentionally lead to the deaths of others, 'burning her world down'

* her actions indirectly led to a violent civil conflict exposing the wounds at the heart of a society.

She and Jinx seem like total opposites, light and dark, rich and poor, the magic light princess and the crazy skrunkle terrorist, but they actually have so many story parallels and so much in common it's a little nuts.

Lux has a very sharp, witty personality with a lot of hidden strength tempered by deep compassion and insightfulness that matches well with Jinx’s volatility and tenderness.

And she's extremely booksmart, a real nerd, so while she comes from a much less technologically advanced nation, she'd be quick to learn from Jinx and likely fascinated by her genius.

And unlike Vi and Ekko she has no history with "Powder" so she'd be coming at any potential meeting as a clean slate.

So yeah...if they did do Lightcannon and drop Jinx like a wildcard into that Demacia conflict, it could be crazy fun. What do you think?

With the theories about jinx not dying, and with Mel on a boat, and the announcement that there will be shows set in Demacia Ionia and Noxus….

Mel being in a Noxus show is an easy theory

But given how much fan service was in s2…. Do you think…. Lightcannon….

[mamwieleimion]

Somewhat recently I have encountered a person who had the opinion of Feanorians being completely at fault for their crimes (which, I am not going to much object to that, to be clear) and monsters who knew exactly what they were doing and just not caring. Or at least something along those lines because I will not be quoting them here, nor will I say who was it as it is not an attack at this person specifically.

I only want to vent out, so here I am.

Because honestly? In my opinion saying that Feanorians were completely at fault and total monsters, enjoying the pain their caused and tralarala, is like saying that WW (One or Two, really) was the fault of one country. It's like ignoring the context of the situation and saying what suits you best.

Because like it or not, at every Kinslaying both sides killed. And sure, the attacked party may have done it in self defense BUT you can not tell me that not a one elf hasn't killed to cause pain.

It was a battle, bloody and chaotic. And emotions ran high.

But even then. Feanorians tried the diplomatic solution! They did not want to commit a kinslaying anymore than the slayed wanted to be dead.

So, call me naive or whatever, but I firmly believe some fault of the situation occurring was at Thingol, Dior and Elwings feet.

I am not saying this to make them look bad or evil or otherwise in a bad light. Eru knows I don't have a problem with them considering Elrond is my favourite character.

But, having the choice to give up a, no matter how beautiful or "precious", shining rock and ensuring the safety of my people? Or even just my family?

The answer is quite easy, I think.

So really, please don't tell me that Feanorians only hold the blame for Third Kinslaying or even the Second. (The First one isn't really my speciality and I honestly don't have an opinion about it).

That's just simplifying thing's for your convenience rather than seeing that it isn't as black and white as we would like.

Once again, this isn't me saying Feanorians are innocent, because they aren't. But remember that every story and conflict has more than one side, and it is almost never an option to say one is right and the other wrong.

[trans-androgyne]

Touching on the history of transmasculinity some more, here are some usually derogatory terms that have historically been used for people considered masculine women (due to gender presentation, sexuality, or both, as sapphism and transmasculinity are conflated):

Tribade: Comes from the Ancient Greek concept of "tribadism" (scissoring/rubbing genitals together), especially descriptive of masculine women who use a dildo to penetrate other women

Tom/Tommy (as early as 1773): "Tom" originally referring to masculine prostitutes and women who prefer to associate with only women; often used for women considered sexually aggressive or otherwise "loose"

(Female) Invert (from 1860s): Based on the pathologizing concept of "sexual inversion," which proposed that there was essentially a continuum of "perverts" with sexual/gender deviants from femmes who prefer women but would also have sex with men to "true inverts" who feel themselves to be men trapped in female bodies; often associated with sexual aggression

Bulldyke/Dyke (from 1920s): Especially describing lesbians considered more masculine in appearance, believed by some scholars to come from a word meaning hermaphrodite

Lezzie/Lesbo (from 1930s): Shortenings of lesbian often used in a derogatory manner and applied to people who "look like lesbians" regardless of their actual sexuality

And of course, slang terms like "carpet muncher," "muff diver," and "bean flicker" have been used to describe lesbian sex, and often applied to anyone seen as a woman who liked women

[juney-blues]

incredibly surreal now that it's completely undeniable israel is doing atrocities that have placed the state among the ranks of history's greatest monsters, to look through media from even a couple years ago that treats the israel/palestine conflict as this vague complicated thing that's controversial and they don't wanna upset anyone about it

like I don't want to imply it was any less tone deaf at the time, but now that it's even more obvious than it *was* it's like

"haha wow we're gonna stay neutral on this apartheid ethnostate, whooopsie we're accidentally doing genocide apologia by lending legitimacy to this horrid thing~"

leaves a very strange and awful taste in your mouth

[whitesunlars]

antisemites really tell on themselves by villainizing people who say the conflict isn’t black and white

[elcucurucho]

no bc again and again qsmp has put players in situations meant to divide them only for them to completely flip the script by coming together as a community the election is no different!

[fireangelsstuff-inactive-2024]

And who's helping to fund it

[wonder-worker]

Queen Margaret (of Anjou) had written to the Common Council in November when the news of the Duke of York's coup was proclaimed. The letter from the queen was published in modernised English by M.A.E. Wood in 1846, and she dated it to February 1461 because of its opening sentence: ‘And whereas the late Duke of N [York]...." However the rest of the letter, and that of the prince, is in the present tense and clearly indicates that the Duke of York is still alive. The reference to the ‘late duke’ is not to his demise but to the attainder of 1459 when he was stripped of his titles as well as of his lands. If the queen’s letter dates to November 1460, and not February 1461, it make perfect sense. Margaret declared the Duke of York had ‘upon an untrue pretense, feigned a title to my lord’s crown’ and in so doing had broken his oath of fealty. She thanked the Londoners for their loyalty in rejecting his claim. She knew of the rumours, that we and my lords sayd sone and owrs shuld newly drawe toward yow with an vnsome [uncounted] powere of strangars, disposed to robbe and to dispoyle yow of yowr goods and havours, we will that ye knowe for certeyne that . . . . [y]e, nor none of yow, shalbe robbed, dispoyled nor wronged by any parson that at that tyme we or owr sayd sone shalbe accompanied with She entrusted the king's person to the care of the citizens ‘so that thrwghe malice of his sayde enemye he be no more trowbled vexed ne jeoparded.’ In other words the queen was well informed in November 1460 of the propaganda in London concerning the threat posed by a Lancastrian military challenge to the illegal Yorkist proceedings. Margaret assured the Common Council that no harm would come to the citizenry or to their property. Because the letter was initially misdated, it has been assumed that the queen wrote it after she realised the harm her marauding troops were doing to her cause, and to lull London into a false sense of security. This is not the case, and it is a typical example of historians accepting without question Margaret’s character as depicted in Yorkist propaganda. Margaret’s letter was a true statement of her intentions but it made no impact at the time and has made none since. How many people heard of it? The Yorkist council under the Earl of Warwick, in collusion with the Common Council of the city, was in an ideal position to suppress any wide dissemination of the letter, or of its content.

... When Margaret joined the Lancastrian lords it is unlikely that she had Scottish troops with her. It is possible that Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, sent men from Wales but there was no compelling reason why he should, he needed all the forces at his disposal to face Edward Earl of March, now Duke of York following his father’s death at Wakefield, who, in fact, defeated Pembroke at Mortimer’s Cross on 2 February just as the Lancastrian army was marching south. The oft repeated statement that the Lancastrian army was composed of a motley array of Scots, Welsh, other foreigners (French by implication, for it had not been forgotten that René of Anjou, Queen Margaret’s father, had served with the French forces in Nomandy when the English were expelled from the duchy, nor that King Charles VII was her uncle) as well as northern men is based on a single chronicle, the Brief Notes written mainly in Latin in the monastery of Ely, and ending in 1470. It is a compilation of gossip and rumour, some of it wildly inaccurate, but including information not found in any other contemporary source, which accounts for the credence accorded to it. The Dukes of Somerset and Exeter and the Earl of Devon brought men from the south and west. The Earl of Northumberland was not solely reliant on his northern estates; as Lord Poynings he had extensive holdings in the south. The northerners were tenants and retainers of Northumberland, Clifford, Dacre, the Westmorland Nevilles, and Fitzhugh, and accustomed to the discipline of border defence. The continuator of Gregory’s Chronicle, probably our best witness, is emphatic that the second battle of St Albans was won by the ‘howseholde men and feyd men.” Camp followers and auxiliaries of undesirables there undoubtedly were, as there are on the fringes of any army, but the motley rabble the queen is supposed to have loosed on peaceful England owes more to the imagination of Yorkist propagandists than to the actual composition of the Lancastrian army.

... Two differing accounts of the Lancastrian march on London are generally accepted. One is that a large army, moving down the Great North Road, was made up of such disparate and unruly elements that the queen and her commanders were powerless to control it.” Alternatively, Queen Margaret did not wish to curb her army, but encouraged it to ravage all lands south of the Trent, either from sheet spite or because it was the only way she could pay her troops.” Many epithets have been applied to the queen, few of them complimentary, but no one has as yet called her stupid. It would have been an act of crass stupidity wilfully to encourage her forces to loot the very land she was trying to restore to an acceptance of Lancastrian rule, with her son as heir to the throne. On reaching St Albans, so the story goes, the Lancastrian army suddenly became a disciplined force which, by a series of complicated manoeuvres, including a night march and a flank attack, won the second battle of St Albans, even though the Yorkists were commanded by the redoubtable Earl of Warwick. The explanation offered is that the rabble element, loaded down with plunder, had descended before the battle and only the household men remained. Then the rabble reappeared, and London was threatened. To avert a sack of the city the queen decided to withdraw the army, either on her own initiative or urged by the peace-loving King Henry; as it departed it pillaged the Abbey of St Albans, with the king and queen in residence, and retired north, plundering as it went. Nevertheless, it was sufficiently intact a month later to meet and nearly defeat the Yorkist forces at Towton, the bloodiest and hardest fought battle of the civil war thus far. The ‘facts’ as stated make little sense, because they are seen through the distorting glass of Yorkist propaganda.

The ravages allegedly committed by the Lancastrian army are extensively documented in the chronicles, written after the event and under a Yorkist king. They are strong on rhetoric but short on detail. The two accounts most often quoted are by the Croyland Chronicle and Abbott Whethamstede. There is no doubting the note of genuine hysterical fear in both. The inhabitants of the abbey of Crowland were thoroughly frightened by what they believed would happen as the Lancastrians swept south. ‘What do you suppose must have been our fears . . . [w]hen every day rumours of this sad nature were reaching our ears.’ Especially alarming was the threat to church property. The northern men ‘irreverently rushed, in their unbridled and frantic rage into churches . . . [a]nd most nefariously plundered them.’ If anyone resisted ‘they cruelly slaughtered them in the very churches or churchyards.’ People sought shelter for themselves and their goods in the abbey,“ but there is not a single report of refugees seeking succour in the wake of the passage of the army after their homes had been burned and their possessions stolen. The Lancastrians were looting, according to the Crowland Chronicle, on a front thirty miles wide ‘like so many locusts.“ Why, then, did they come within six miles but bypass Crowland? The account as a whole makes it obvious that it was written considerably later than the events it so graphically describes.

The claim that Stamford was subject to a sack from which it did not recover is based on the Tudor antiquary John Leland. His attribution of the damage is speculation; by the time he wrote stories of Lancastrian ravages were well established, but outside living memory. His statement was embellished by the romantic historian Francis Peck in the early eighteenth century. Peck gives a spirited account of Wakefield and the Lancastrian march, influenced by Tudor as well as Yorkist historiography. … As late as 12 February when Warwick moved his troops to St Albans it is claimed that he did not know the whereabouts of the Lancastrians, an odd lack of military intelligence about an army that was supposed to be leaving havoc in its wake. The Lancastrians apparently swerved to the west after passing Royston which has puzzled military historians because they accept that it came down the Great North Road, but on the evidence we have it is impossible to affirm this. If it came from York via Grantham, Leicester, Market Harborough, Northampton and Stony Stratford to Dunstable, where the first engagement took place, there was no necessity to make an inexplicable swerve westwards because its line of march brought it to Dunstable and then to St Albans. The Lancastrians defeated Warwick’s army on 17 February 1461 and Warwick fled the field. In an echo of Wakefield there is a suggestion of treachery. An English Chronicle tells the story of one Thomas Lovelace, a captain of Kent in the Yorkist ranks, who also appears in Waurin. Lovelace, it is claimed, was captured at Wakefield and promised Queen Margaret that he would join Warwick and then betray and desert him, in return for his freedom.

Lt. Colonel Bume, in a rare spirit of chivalry, credits Margaret with the tactical plan that won the victory, although only because it was so unorthodox that it must have been devised by a woman. But there is no evidence that Margaret had any military flair, let alone experience. A more likely candidate is the veteran captain Andrew Trolloppe who served with Warwick when the latter was Captain of Calais, but he refused to fight under the Yorkist banner against his king at Ludford in 1459 when Warwick brought over a contingent of Calais men to defy King Henry in the field. It was Trolloppe’s ‘desertion’ at Ludford, it is claimed, that forced the Yorkists to flee. The most objective and detailed account of the battle of St Albans is by the unknown continuator of Gregory’s Chronicle. The chronicle ends in 1469 and by that time it was safe to criticise Warwick, who was then out of favour. The continuator was a London citizen who may have fought in the Yorkist ranks. He had an interest in military matters and recorded the gathering of the Lancastrian army at Hull, before Wakefield, and the detail that the troops wore the Prince of Wales’ colours and ostrich feathers on their livery together with the insignia of their lords. He had heard the rumours of a large ill-disciplined army, but because he saw only the household men he concluded that the northerners ran away before the battle. Abbot Whethamstede wrote a longer though far less circumstantial account, in which he carefully made no mention of the Earl of Warwick. … Margaret of Anjou had won the battle but she proceeded to lose the war. London lay open to her and she made a fatal political blunder in retreating from St Albans instead of taking possession of the capital.' Although mistaken, her reasons for doing so were cogent. The focus of contemporary accounts is the threat to London from the Lancastrian army. This is repeated in all the standard histories, and even those who credit Margaret with deliberately turning away from London do so for the wrong reasons.

... The uncertainties and delays, as well as the hostility of some citizens, served to reinforce Margaret’s belief that entry to London could be dangerous. It was not what London had to fear from her but what she had to fear from London that made her hesitate. Had she made a show of riding in state into the city with her husband and son in a colourful procession she might have accomplished a Lancastrian restoration, but Margaret had never courted popularity with the Londoners, as Warwick had, and she had kept the court away from the capital for several years in the late 1450s, a move that was naturally resented. Warwick’s propaganda had tarnished her image, associating her irrevocably with the dreaded northern men. There was also the danger that if Warwick and Edward of March reached London with a substantial force she could be trapped inside a hostile city, and she cannot have doubted that once she and Prince Edward were taken prisoner the Lancastrian dynasty would come to an end. Understandably, at the critical moment, Margaret lost her nerve. ... Queen Margaret did not march south in 1461 in order to take possession of London, but to recover the person of the king. She underestimated the importance of the capital to her cause." Although she had attempted to establish the court away from London, the Yorkist lords did not oppose her for taking the government out of the capital, but for excluding them from participation in it. Nevertheless London became the natural and lucrative base for the Yorkists, of which they took full advantage. The author of the Annales was in no doubt that it was Margaret’s failure to enter London that ensured the doom of the Lancastrian dynasty. A view shared, of course, by the continuator of Gregory’s Chronicle, a devoted Londoner:

He that had Londyn for sake Wolde no more to hem take The king, queen and prince had been in residence at the Abbey of St Albans since the Lancastrian victory. Abbot Whethamstede, at his most obscure, conveys a strong impression that St Albans was devastated because the Lancastrian leaders, including Queen Margaret, encouraged plundering south of the Trent in lieu of wages. There must have been some pillaging by an army which had been kept in a state of uncertainty for a week, but whether it was as widespread or as devastating as the good abbot, and later chroniclers, assert is by no means certain. Whethamstede is so admirably obtuse that his rhetoric confuses both the chronology and the facts. So convoluted and uncircumstantial is his account that the eighteenth century historian of the abbey, the Reverend Peter Newcome, was trapped into saying: ‘These followers of the Earl of March were looked on as monsters in barbarity.’ He is echoed by Antonia Gransden who has ‘the conflict between the southemers of Henry’s army and the nonherners of Edward’s. The abbey was not pillaged, but Whethamstede blackened Queen Margaret’s reputation by a vague accusation that she appropriated one of the abbey’s valuable possessions before leaving for the north. This is quite likely, not in a spirit of plunder or avarice, but as a contribution to the Lancastrian war effort, just as she had extorted, or so he later claimed, a loan from the prior of Durham earlier in the year. The majority of the chroniclers content themselves with the laconic statement that the queen and her army withdrew to the north, they are more concerned to record in rapturous detail the reception of Edward IV by ‘his’ people. An English Chronicle, hostile to the last, reports that the Lancastrian army plundered its way north as remorselessly as it had on its journey south. One can only assume that it took a different route. The Lancastrian march ended where it began, in the city of York. Edward of March had himself proclaimed King Edward IV in the capital the queen had abandoned, and advanced north to win the battle of Towton on 29 March. The bid to unseat the government of the Yorkist lords had failed, and that failure brought a new dynasty into being. The Duke of York was dead, but his son was King of England whilst King Henry, Queen Margaret and Prince Edward sought shelter at the Scottish court. The Lancastrian march on London had vindicated its stated purpose, to recover the person of the king so that the crown would not continue to be a pawn in the hands of rebels and traitors, but ultimately it had failed because the Lancastrian leaders, including Queen Margaret, simply did not envisage that Edward of March would have the courage or the capacity to declare himself king. Edward IV had all the attributes that King Henry (and Queen Margaret) lacked: he was young, ruthless, charming, and the best general of his day; and in the end he out-thought as well as out-manoeuvred them.

It cannot be argued that no damage was done by the Lancastrian army. It was mid-winter, when supplies of any kind would have been short, so pillaging, petty theft, and unpaid foraging were inevitable. It kept the field for over a month and, and, as it stayed longest at Dunstable and in the environs of St Albans, both towns suffered from its presence. But the army did not indulge in systematic devastation of the countryside, either on its own account or at the behest of the queen. Nor did it contain contingents of England’s enemies, the Scots and the French, as claimed by Yorkist propaganda. Other armies were on the march that winter: a large Yorkist force moved from London to Towton and back again. There are no records of damage done by it, but equally, it cannot be claimed that there was none.

-B.M Cron, "Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian March on London, 1461"

[mythosphere]

The current geopolitical state of the world has said a lot of things, but one thing it is whispering is that the slow death of the humanities has been catastrophic, and the effects of it will last like a nuclear fallout

[maramahan]

Very strange feeling to have an interesting dream that ends with a post-narrative critique

Like. The ‘story’ ended and the dream shifted from “all of this is Currently Happening” to ‘actually you just watched a movie premiere?’

and as I was leaving the weird subterranean dream-theater with the other protagonists, we were all chatting like —

‘yeah, this project was a lot of fun to work on and a lot of fun to watch, but the story was a little cliche and the ending didn’t make much sense. Like — we started out so strong, but then that third-act twist… I mean — if you think about it for more than a minute, it totally undermined the themes the rest of the story seemed to be setting up! Almost like the studio got scared of making an audience potentially question our current status quo.

Heck. Part of me actually wonders if that’s what happened & the writers retaliated by making it weak on purpose — I mean, having the heroes foil the villain’s plan to terraform the deathworld for capitalistic exploitation only to then contrive a disaster that forces them to abandon their traditional alien way of life in favor of an earthlike environment anyway? The execs get their ‘happy ending’ in which everyone walks out into the sunshine — but it feels empty enough that maybe that’s the point. Maybe they want you to find the ending dissatisfying and then have to sit and think about why that is.

I know, I know — it’s a kids movie; I’m probably overthinking… but still: it’s just kind of a shame that we had all this fun and put all this passion into it, but because of that ending it’ll probably be forgotten by the end of the year.

Oh well. At least it was fun. I hope we all get the chance to work together again someday :)”

…..and then I woke up.

[pao-of-the-stars]

I'm sorry, but this is the most pro-ethnic cleansing thing I've ever seen

For a brief context :

[curious-kat]

wanted to emphasize this quoted paragraph from the above linked article.

Don't attribute responsibility to abstract concepts--for example "occupation," "terror," or "Zionism." People cannot organize or take action against ideas, but they can take concrete steps to alter the behaviors of decision makers in power.

apart from the fact that a lot of pro-Palestinian activism that I've seen online reads to me as quite surface level and performative, even when I believe the posters mean it sincerely, I've also watched the tenor of the discourse slide away from concrete goals into "we must fight against these oppressive/colonial ideas." Which is perhaps an important philosophical discussion, but as activism goes it's even more superficial.

I don't have experience dealing with activism on an international scale like this, but in my local political and union work we've never gotten anything done without an extremely specific list of goals and targeted individuals to help us achieve those goals. I just... don't see a lot of that around.

but seriously if you are at all blogging about the i/p conflict you NEED to read that standing together article from that post i just reblogged. please. please please please please please. these are the people who are actually doing something about freeing palestine and have been for years. And here's the thing:

IF YOU WANT PEACE IN ISRAEL, IN PALESTINE, THESE ARE THE PEOPLE IT'S GOING TO COME FROM.

Because yeah. The way this site is spreading around uncritical posts is a huge issue (and a reason I haven't been around since October). Standing Together is doing a hell of a lot more than blogging about it. They're on the ground putting in the work. Nine days before the October 7 attack, they were in Tel Aviv publicly protesting about the systematic oppression of Arabs (not just Palestinians) in Israel.

"The global left has to be synced with what we need." Trust me, the right is. Boy HOWDY is the right synced. I have gotten more support about my Judaism from the far right than the left and it's??? kinda fucked up??? Someone who worked for Pat Robertson should not feel safer than someone dedicated to activism, but here we are. I can feel how easy it would be to be radicalized towards the right, and I'm actively fighting against it. Now imagine that multiplied by millions of people, plenty of whom don't have the same desire to do so, or feel like they don't have the luxury of safety to do so.

Seeing Hamas being portrayed as sympathetic and talked about like they had a right to commit all of the atrocities that they have is making me lose my MIND. They're a group run by corrupt billionaires who actively started this conflict with the intent of silencing the Palestinian people who have been protesting their tyranny. They have been siphoning money from Palestinians for years and this entire attack is them deliberately throwing Palestinians into the path of slaughter to distract from that fact, the same way that Netanyahu absolutely took advantage of the threat and tragedy to try and get himself off the hook for his own corruption.

Also check out the google doc linked in the article. It's not just a good way to learn how to communicate, but a very good resource for finding out if something you're sharing is worthwhile. In fact, it does a really god job of breaking down why I've felt so uncomfortable about a bunch of the posts on my dash. Some excerpts:

This got way longer than I had intended, but hopefully does its job. Go read the article and, yes, if you need to, reevaluate your activism. Because if it's not what people involved actually want or need, then it's just for you. And that's kinda fucked up.

[gingerswagfreckles]

I think people need to understand that when someone says the situation in Israel/Palestine is complicated they are not necessarily saying that the discussion of who the oppressor vs oppressed is complicated. The Israeli government has been oppressing the Palestinians for a very long time, that is clear, and it is not complicated to understand that at least since the 80s they have had dramatically more financial and military power to keep control of the territory in the way they like.

However, it is reductive and dismissive to insist that there is no complexity in the potential ways to move forward to bring peace to the region. Despite what people on tumblr.edu like to believe, "Israel should never have been created" is not a practical solution to an incredibly heated geopolitical situation in the present day. Israel was created and it does exist. 10 million people live there. 74% of the population is native born and the country has existed for 75 years. Hand waving these fact away with the opinion that "they should move back to where they came from" may make you feel good about being a Radical Leftist, but it does not give anyone a road map for how exactly millions of people without dual citizenship are supposed to just up and evaporate. Nor does it acknowledge the reality that 21% of Israelis are Arabs, the very people you are claiming to want to give the land back to.

Insisting that there's nothing complicated about expecting an entire country's population to willingly dissappear with no consequences is not a productive way to think about this conflict. It ignores the many massive superpowers that have an interest in proping up different states in the region, the power dynamics involved in any land back movements, and the inevitably negative consequences of totally dissolving an established state without a plan. It is also completely and almost comically unrealistic, so much so that it makes it hard to believe that anyone who's opinion starts and ends with this idea really gives a shit about anyone who lives in the area as much as they care about their online leftist clout.

There's nothing complicated in understanding that the Israeli government is and has been maintaining an oppressive apartheid state for decades. It is, however, very complicated to come up with a realistic way to resolve some of the most intricately entangled land disputes on the planet without plunging the region into total chaos. Not everyone has to be deeply educated on every geopolitical situation, but it is very hard to take people seriously when they know nothing about the politics or history of a region and yet insist that there is nothing complicated about it at all.

There's a lot of people on this website who are getting dangerously smug about their own ignorance, and are starting to go down Qanon type anti-intellectual paths in the name of being sufficiently radical. Not knowing the details of a very convoluted land dispute isn't something to brag about online as you call for intentionally reductive solutions. You can support the Palestinian cause and be aware of the oppression they have faced while also holding off on calling people trying to do real analysis and de-escalation work bootlickers. We need to get control of the urge to fit every global issue into a simplistic YA novel narrative structure that appeals to Western revolutionary fantasies.

[alullinchaos]

i know wwii was a beyond major geopolitical event but it still surprises me how often i come across something that says "and things are this way because WW2"

[prokopetz]

Ten inessential worldbuilding features for local communities in your fantasy RPG:

A grievance or conflict of interest with a neighbouring community which the community's members feel much more strongly about than the issue's magnitude really warrants

A substance or commodity important to everyday life with no local source, and the complicated and inconvenient arrangement the community has made to obtain it from outside sources

A local practice or custom whose original motivation has been rendered obsolete by changing circumstances, and which is now carried forward out of tradition

Something that's technically illegal, but everyone does it on the sly anyway, with enforcement of its illegality being reserved for people the community's leaders want to mess with for unrelated reasons

An obscure piece of trivia or local history which the community's members regard as obvious and widely known, to the extent of treating outsiders with contempt for revealing their ignorance of it

Some undertaking or realm of achievement in which the community isn't particularly exceptional, but which the community's members believe they're the best around at as a point of civic pride

A mostly harmless thing that nobody talks about because its existence or some facet of its historical context is regarded as an embarrassment to the community

A particular prank that's become traditional to play on visitors to the community, and which occasionally gets taken further than is strictly appropriate

A specific area of the setting's history where what the community's members insist really happened is wildly at odds with the accepted version of events

A genuinely dangerous circumstance that everyone treats with casual disregard because it's always been there, and only a damn fool would actually get hurt by it anyway