#free it and give it back to indigenous people

[eff-plays]

I got a party banter between Bellara and Taash about how the Lords of Fortune steal elven artifacts. And then Taash clarifies later that they have a Dalish expert on the team so they can check to make sure the Lords don't sell something culturally important and instead return it to the elves.

Like. I get it. You want the Lords to be fun swashbuckler Disney pirates and Robin Hoods instead of actual pirates who steal and plunder. Because we're only now in Western society realizing that stealing from indigenous groups is, uh, bad. But like. Writing really uninteresting factions for your "dark" fantasy (tho lbr Dragon Age hasn't been dark fantasy since DA2) isn't gonna solve real-world neo-colonialism, ya know? The Lords not stealing priceless elven artifacts and returning them to the elves doesn't signal to me that the Lords are total rascally good guys, it signals to me that BioWare itself is trying really hard to seem morally conscious. "See? We know stealing from other cultures is bad!!!"

And man. Not to be a "political correctness has poisoned media" grifter on main (tbh it's less political correctness itself and more the commodification of real-world activism) but I couldn't help but imagine how this convo would've played out in earlier games, potentially even Inquisition.

You could've so EASILY made this interesting while giving the Lords and Taash and Bellara a lot more depth, while also making it clear that stealing from indigenous groups is wrong.

Just have the Lords, yeah, actually sell those artifacts. But also establish that the Lords take in and help elves from all walks of life. That they free slaves, or collaborate with alienages. Then you could have Taash defend the practice by saying to Bellara that little orphaned elf kids being sold as slaves probably don't give a flying fuck about some artifacts they're never gonna see, but the money from selling those artifacts goes to buying them food. And have Bellara fire back that preserving elven culture is also part of its survival, and that there are Dalish clans that would be willing to pay for them or offer something in return. Or have her say that the Lords are doing charity for the sake of recruitment rather than actual altruism. And then Taash responds that those high and mighty Dalish elves don't do shit to help abandoned city elves, just because those aren't part of their correct elven subculture, and they care more about reclaiming old glory than helping the people that exist here and now.

Then you could have side missions or at least codex entries that describe maybe some Lord recruit being conflicted about what they're doing. Maybe a few of them are collaborating to hijack a deal or steal back an artifact. Have implications that some high-ranking Lords are, in fact, using those artifacts for their own gain, despite claiming otherwise. Have some Lords genuinely trying to help, and believing that gold and trinkets don't matter as much as people's lives, so they sell them in exchange for safety for refugees or slaves or some other helpless group.

But no. Instead it's "hey do you steal from my people?" "nah lmao we have a cultural advisor don't even worry about it" "oh wow so cool and woke of you!" And then that's it. No need for any further discussion. No conflict and no complexity. No bad actors and moral quandaries.

Weh.

[wadesprincessboy]

Again with the "hi im also a Jew in Aotearoa" reblog, ive also noticed a huge rise in antisemitism. Since oct 7 i have felt increasingly unsafe existing as a Jewish person. I also happen to live in an area that is very largely leftist (or at least my circles in the area are) and i honestly feel most unsafe because of the leftists. Ive seen posters that are very clearly antisemitic everywhere, and the ones i saw calling for the freeing of hostages were crossed out and torn down. Ive shared this before but a pride event put in their kaupapa that theyre anti-zionist and my mum wore a hebrew shirt to the event (she went despite the anti-zionist stuff because its pride and she wanted to go) that said pride in rainbow letters. She was going to wear it regardless of the events kaupapa, and it was clearly a pride shirt, but she got disgusted looks from a lot of people.

Ive been using my dads last name out of concern for my safety due to having a very Jewish last name from my mum. I hate my dads name and it makes me feel sick to use it, but its for my safety. I always use my chosen name because its English, and when people ask about my birth name, which is Hebrew, and I tell them its Hebrew they again give disgusted looks. Prior to Oct 7 people would be interested in the story of my mum growing up in Jerusalem and how important being Jewish is to us, but now I just say the name was chosen because of the singer. I dont want to say the truth because im scared ill get hurt.

My mother overshares a lot and cant resist telling people about how she grew up in Israel and how important to her it is to go back some day, and every time she says it I prepare for the worst. The worst that's happened is again, the look, but im always scared.

All the leftists i know love hamas, some are celebrating the Amsterdam pogrom, they all dropped me for saying Jewish people have a right to exist in Israel. Not even saying Im a zionist, just saying Jews are indigenous and have rights. They dropped me. They put out "bewares" on socials.

I go to a yearly drama camp and so many people from there that i considered friends did things like that and i almost didnt apply to go back next year despite how much i love it. When i go back i will be shutting my mouth and keeping my head down because i do not want to ruin the experience.

It is unsafe to be Jewish here. Good friends have been cruel. Strangers are terrifying. I wont ever tell people Im Jewish if they dont already know because im so worried they will hate me.

I wanted to go to university, but the university i want to go to doesnt seem all that safe for me as a Jew anymore.

Ive lost countless friends since Oct 7.

To answer the askers question of "is anyone standing up for your community", no. Theyre doing the opposite. Heck even our own community turns on us (see: the book jewish not zionist, written by a member of my local Jewish community, who says Jews arent oppressed in Aotearoa). I think I know one or two people who arent Jewish who are standing up for us and standing with us at this time.

Also, in my town theres a big event in the city for Hannukah each year. I dont know if it happened last year, because i wasnt in town, but im worried about it this year. Its an event that i love so much. One of the few chances to meet other Jewish people in the area that dont go to the same synagogue. There is always a large police presence around, and i fear this year it will be worse. Hell im willing to bet there will be protests about it! Im worried it wont even happen. I hope it does and i pray we will all be safe, because its such a great event that i look forward to all year.

I would invite my best friend to come along as its a tradition for my family that we bring friends to share our culture with them, but my best friend is so loudly anti-zionist that if she agreed to come (i doubt she would) she would definitely cause issues. I imagine if theres protests shell be on that side.

It fucking sucks to be Jewish right now. Honestly it always has, ive never felt safe as a Jewish person in Aotearoa, but its so much worse now. We are lucky compared to other places, but its still not good.

Sorry for the long rant of a reblog btw, OP. Kinda just wanted to vent my experience since I dont think theres many other Jewish people from Aotearoa on this hellsite.

how bad is it to be jewish in NZ right now? is anyone standing up for your community? where i am antisemitism has gotten pretty bad and it feels like almost no one other than jews or ppl who are part jewish or married to jews is calling it out.

Per data from the community security group, post oct 7th to March, antisemitism increased 600%.

And this is only reported incidents.

There are not really anyone besides jews standing up for us.

The holocaust centre is getting involved with antisemitism at a university just for the sheer fucking amount of it. Leftist circles are practically rife with it.

I'd consider my ex friends to be your average leftist, like not far left but almost there. And they're super antisemitic. Celebrating the Amsterdam pogrom, calling hamas a resistance group, supporting the houthi etc.

The only support I've seen outside of jewish circles is a coworker tearing down antisemitic pro Palestine posters near our office. Like these weren't regular posters, they were antisemitic instead of being just pro Palestine

[11oh1]

[official-boobies-posts]

always was, always will be aboriginal land ❤️💛🖤

[galaxyb1tchsblog]

Israel’s existence is lowkey antisemitic

[timeisacephalopod]

Admittedly I don't know much about the Israel Palestine war but I keep seeing news articles that refer to it as the Israel Hamas war and no it is not. After all Israel has done it gets to be referred to by it's country name and not "terrorists who kill babies and children at the speed of light" but Palestine gets reduced to Hamas?

It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth that the struggle of the Palestinian people keeps getting reduced to the existence of Hamas, but at no point does the ongoing state violence of Israel define its existence when by all means it should when my understanding is that the creation of Israel was stealing land from Palestinians. Why is Israel's violence ignored while Palestine is defined by the admittedly shit group that only arose out of decades of occupation and imperialism? Those two things are not the same and ignoring Israel's violence to act like Hamas came from nowhere just to hurt the poor Israeli government who acts like they've done nothing wrong is ridiculous to me.

[headspace-hotel]

against the logic of the lawn

Imagine a box.

This box is sealed with tape or adhesive, which shows you that it has never been opened or re-used. It is in pristine condition. Apart from that, the box could hold anything. It could contain a Star Wars Funko Pop, a printer, a shirt ordered from some sketchy online vendor, a knockoff store-brand cereal, six individually wrapped protein bars.

As a Consumer ("the" Consumer) this is your fundamental right: To purchase a box that is, presumably, identical to every other box like it.

When you Buy Product, it arrives in a box, entire of itself and without context. It has not changed since its creation. If and when Product does change—whether it is broken, spoiled, used up, or eaten—you can Buy Product that is identical in every meaningful way to the original.

It's okay if this doesn't make sense yet. (You can stop imagining the box now.)

Imagine instead a suburban housing development, somewhere in the USA.

Imagine row on row of pristine, newly built houses, each constructed with small, meaningless variations in their aesthetic, all with beige or white vinyl siding and perhaps some decorative brick, all situated on identical rectangles of land covered with freshly unrolled sod. This is the Product that every consumer aspires to Buy.

I am not exactly—qualified, or entitled, to speak on the politics of land ownership in this country. My ancestors benefited directly from the genocide of Native Americans, which allowed Europeans to steal the land they lived on, which is where a lot of wealth comes from in the end, even today. However, I have eyes in my head to see that the act of colonizing a continent, and an economic system that formed as a supporting infrastructure to colonization, have embedded something almost irreparably dysfunctional into the dominant American culture's relationship to land.

This dysfunctional Thing, this Sickness, leads us to consider land to be a Product, and to consider a human upon the land to be a Consumer.

From this point of view, land is either locked into this relationship of control and "use" to varying extents, or it is free of human influence. People trying to reason about how to preserve Earth's biosphere, working within this framework without realizing, decide that we must "set aside" large areas of land for "nature."

This is a naive and, I would reckon, probably itself colonialist way of seeing things. It appears to be well-validated by evidence. Where human population is largest, there is less biodiversity.

But I find the broad conclusions to be strikingly unscientific. The plan of "setting aside part of Earth for nature" displays little curiosity about the mechanisms by which human presence impacts biodiversity. Otherwise intelligent people, perhaps caught up in the "bargaining" phase of climate grief, seem taken in by the idea that the human species gives off a magical anti-biodiversity force field, as if feeling guiltier will fix the problems.

(Never mind that lands managed by indigenous folk actually have MORE biodiversity...almost like our species' relationship to the planet isn't inherently exploitative, but rather, the capitalist and colonialist powers destroying everything.......)

Let's go back to the image of the new housing development. This image could be just about anywhere in the USA, because the American suburban home is made for universal interchangeability, where each little house and yard is static and replaceable with any other.

Others have written about the generic-ification of the interiors of homes, how houses are decorated with the most soul-killing, colorless furnishings to make them into Products more effectively. (I think @mcmansionhell wrote about it.)

This, likewise, is the Earth turned into a Product—razed down into something with no pre-existing context, history, or responsibility. Identical parcels of land, identical houses, where once there was a unique and diverse distribution of life. The American lawn, the American garden, the industry that promotes these aesthetics, is the environmental version of that ghastly, ugly "minimalism" infecting the interiors of homes.

The extremely neat, sparse, manicured look that is so totally inescapable in American yards originated from the estates of European aristocracy, which displayed the owner's wealth by flaunting an abundance of land that was both heavily managed and useless. People defend the lawn on the basis that grass tolerates being walked upon and is good for children to play, but to say this is *the* purpose of a lawn is bullshit—children are far more interested in trees, creeks, sticks, weeds, flowers, and mud than Grass Surface, many people with lawns do not have children, and most people spend more time mowing their lawn than they do doing literally anything else outside. How often do you see Americans outside in their yards doing anything except mowing?

What is there to do, anyway? Why would you want to go outside with nothing but the sun beating down on you and the noise of your neighbors' lawn mowers? American culture tries to make mowing "manly" and emphasizes that it is somehow fulfilling in of itself. Mowing the lawn is something Men enjoy doing—almost a sort of leisure activity.

I don't have something against wanting a usable outdoor area that is good for outdoor activities, I do, however, have something against the idea that a lawn is good for outdoor activities. Parents have been bitching for decades about how impossible it is to drag kids outdoors, and there have been a million PSAs about how children need to be outside playing instead of spending their lives on video games. Meanwhile, at the place I work, every kid is ECSTATIC and vibrating with enthusiasm to be in the woods surrounded by trees, sticks, leaves, and mud.

The literal, straightforward historical answer to the lawn is that the American lawn exists to get Americans to spend money on chemicals. The modern lawn ideal was invented to sell a surplus of fertilizer created after WW2 chemical plants that had been used to make explosives were repurposed to produce fertilizer. Now you know! The more analytical, sociological answer is that the purpose of the lawn is to distance you from the lower class. A less strictly maintained space lowers property values, it looks shabby and unkempt, it reflects badly on the neighborhood, it makes you look like a "redneck." And so on. The largest, most lavish McMansions in my area all have the emptiest, most desolate yards, and the lush gardens all belong to tiny, run-down houses.

But the answer that really cuts to the core of it, I think, is that lawns are a technology for making land into a Product for consumers. (This coexists with the above answers.) Turfgrass is a perfectly generic blank slate onto which anything can be projected. It is emptiness. It is stasis.

I worry about the flattening of our imaginations. Illustrations in books generally cover the ground outdoors in a uniform layer of green, sometimes with strokes suggesting individual blades of grass if they want to get fancy. Video games do this. Animated shows and movies do this.

Short, carpet-like turfgrass as the Universal Outdoor Surface is so ubiquitous and intuitive that any alternative is bizarre, socially unacceptable, and for many, completely unimaginable. When I am a passenger in a car, what horrifies me the most to see out the window is not only the turfgrass lawns of individuals, but rather, the turfgrass Surface that the entire inhabited landscape has been rendered into—vacant stretches of land surrounding businesses and churches, separating parking lots, bordering Wal-Marts, apartment complexes, and roadsides.

These spaces are not used, they are almost never walked upon. They do nothing. They are maintained, ceaselessly, by gas-powered machines that are far, far more carbon-emitting than cars per hour of use, emitting in one hour the same amount of pollution as a 500-mile drive. It is an endless effort to keep the land in the same state, never mind that it's a shitty, useless state.

Nature is dynamic. Biodiversity is dynamic. From a business point of view, the lawn care industry has found a brilliant scheme to milk limitless money from people, since trying to put a stop to the dynamism and constant change of nature is a Sisyphean situation, and nature responds with increasingly aggressive and rapid change as disturbance gets more intense.

On r/lawncare, a man posted despairingly that he had spent over $1500 tearing out every inch of sod in his yard, only for the exact same weeds to return. That subreddit strikes horror in my heart that I cannot describe, and the more I learn about ecology, the more terrible it gets. It was common practice for people in r/lawncare to advise others to soak their entire yard in Roundup to kill all plant life and start over from a "blank slate."

Before giving up, I tried to explain over and over that it was 100% impossible to get a "blank slate." Weeds typically spread by wind and their seeds can persist for DECADES in the soil seed bank, waiting for a disastrous event to trigger them to sprout. They will always come back. It's their job.

It was impossible for those guys to understand that they were inherently not just constructing a lawn from scratch, and were contending with another power or entity (Nature) with its own interests.

The logic of the lawn also extends into our gardens. We are encouraged to see the dynamism of nature as something that acts against our interests (and thus requires Buy Product) so much, that we think any unexpected change in our yard is bad. People are sometimes baffled when I see a random plant popping up among my flowers as potentially a good thing.

"That's a weed!" Maybe! Nonetheless, it has a purpose. I don't know who this stranger is, so I would be a fool to kill it!

A good caretaker knows that the place they care for will change on its own, and that this is GOOD and brings blessings or at least messages. I didn't have to buy goldenrod plants—they came by themselves! Several of our trees arrived on their own. The logic that sees all "weeds" as an enemy to be destroyed without even identifying ignores the wisdom of nature's processes.

The other day at work, the ecologist took me to see pink lady's slipper orchids. The forest there was razed and logged about a hundred years ago, and it got into my head to ask how the orchids returned. He only shrugged. "Who knows?"

Garden centers put plants out for sale when they are blooming. People buy trees from Fast Growing Trees dot com. The quick, final results that are standard with Buy Product, which are so completely opposite the constant slow chaos of nature, have become so standard in the gardening world that the hideous black mulch sold at garden centers is severed from the very purpose of mulch, and instead serves to visually emphasize small, lonely plants against its dark background. (For the record, once your plants mature, you should not be able to SEE the mulch.)

Landscapers regularly place shrubs, bushes, trees and flowers in places where they have no room to reach maturity. It's standard—landscapers seem to plan with the expectation that everything will be ripped out within 5-10 years. The average person has no clue how big trees and bushes get because their entire surroundings, which are made of living things (which do in fact feel and communicate) are treated as disposable.

Because in ten years, this building won't be an orthodontists' office, in ten years, this old lady will be dead, in ten years, the kids will have grown, and capitalism is incapable of preparing for a future, only for the next buyer.

The logic of the lawn is that gardens and ecosystems that take time to build are not to be valued, because a lush, biodiverse garden is not easily sold, easily bought, easily maintained, easily owned, or easily treated with indifference. An ecosystem requires wisdom from the caretaker. That runs contrary to the Consumer identity.

And it's this disposable-ness, this indifference, that I am ultimately so strongly against, not grass, or low turf that you can step on.

What if we saw buying land as implying a responsibility to be its caretaker? To respect the inhabitants, whether or not we are personally pleased by them or think they look pretty? What creature could deserve to be killed just because it didn't make a person happy?

But the Consumer identity gives you something else...a sense of entitlement. "This is MY yard, and that possum doesn't get to live there." "This is MY yard, and I don't want bugs in it." "This is MY yard, and I can kill the spiders if I want to."

Meanwhile there is no responsibility to build the soil up for the next gardener. No responsibility to plant oaks that will grow mighty and life-giving. No responsibility to plant fruit-producing trees, brambles, and bushes. None of these things, any of which could have fulfilled a responsibility to the future. Rather, just to do whatever you damn well please, and leave those that come after with depleted, compacted soil and the aftermath of years of constant damage. It took my Meadow ten years to recover from being the garden patch of the guy that lived here before us. Who knows what he did to it.

The loss of topsoil in all our farmland is a bigger example, and explains how this is directly connected to colonialism. The Dust Bowl, the unsustainable farming practices that followed, the disappearance of the lush fertile prairie topsoil because of greed and colonizer mindset, and simple refusal to learn from what could be observed in nature. The colonizing peoples envisioned the continent as an "Empty" place, a Blank Slate that could be used and exploited however.

THAT is what's killing the planet, this idea that the planet is to be used and abused and bought and sold, that the power given by wealth gives you entitlement to do whatever you want. That "Land" is just another Product, and our strategies for taking care of Earth should be whatever causes the most Buy Product.

It's like I always write..."You are not a consumer! You are a caretaker!"

[stil-lindigo]

Hello, very confused and overwhelmed outsider here. Looking at posts here and on news sites I see such pradoxical views, one saying to not support Palestine is to support genocide and the other saying to not support Israel is to be antisemitic. I wonder, and I am going around asking people on different sides of the war, do you believe it is possible to support both the lives of Palestinian people and the lives of Jewish people?

Feel free to ignore this ask or to point out any ignorance on my part. I hope you have some peace in your day/night, I can only imagine how stressful it is to have so many people asking so many serious questions.

hi anon. I’m gonna try to make this is as concise as possible, since I’m technically writing this on my lunch break. Yes, it is possible and in fact very easy to support the lives of Palestinian and Jewish people because - and this is the important part - Israel and Zionism is not Judaism. Depending on who you may ask, Zionism began as a pure-hearted desire for Jewish people post-WW2 to create a place that would always unequivocally be safe for Jews, but as I am not Jewish myself I feel like any description I might give comes off as insincere and not fully grasping the scope of that mission. But no matter what Zionism once was, it is now the belief that Jewish people have the right to commit genocide against indigenous population so that they can establish their ethno-state. And you can split hairs all you like, but after the past four months, my belief in that has only solidified.

Perhaps the strongest opposition to Israel comes from Jewish people themselves, who’ve popularized “not in my name” as a protest chant. Holocaust survivors have come out in droves to protest the actions of Israel, and they’re often the strongest front of any protest action since - yes, you’re right - mainstream news is very committed to selling the idea that this “war” is Jews vs Muslims which is just inflammatory racist garbage. There’s more to it than I can easily get into right now, but just for a start, it completely erases the existence of Palestinian Jews or Palestinian Christians, and also ignores Israel’s historically abusive and degrading treatment of their own Holocaust survivors in their population.

This “war” is not a war. It’s a genocide, where the total amount of bombs dropped on Gaza is officially over twice the impact of a nuclear bomb. One side is asking for a stop the fighting, for aid to be allowed through, they are asking for clean water and food as their women have been forced to rip off scraps off tents to use as menstrual products. One side has had all 35 their hospitals bombed (a war-crime the first time, and it continues to be a war crime every time it still happens), over 100 of their journalists have been targeted and murdered (more journalists than were killed in all of WW2, and btw this is also a war crime). And the other side films TikTok’s levelling apartment buildings, looting houses, kicking Palestinian hostages, stripping them naked and urinating on them. Israel has rained white phosphorus down on Palestine, they have bombed Palestine indiscriminately, they have destroyed archives, historical locations, they have done their best to rob Palestinians of their dignity and empathy and still, they’re not done.

Oh and the excuse that they’re just doing all of this to save the hostages? Hamas offered them all back in exchange for a ceasefire. And the Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, said no.

In the future, try to get your news from trusted news sources like Al Jazeera, and following journalists on the ground like Bisan and Motaz.

[starlightomatic]

Hi! I saw your tags on unlearning zionism and I was wondering if you've ever spoken about that/the kind of processing you had to do? I think it's... Interesting (for lack of a better word) how this is a sentiment I've seen reflected on pretty much all explicitly non-zionist Jewish blogs I follow, and how much that reflects both how closely entwined the concept and Jewishness has become and the fierce zionism in some people.

Obviously you're free to not discuss this at all, I also understand it's deeply personal. (I'm also not intending to make anyone change their mind, I believe this is a process Jewish people should be afforded on their own terms; I'm really just trying to understand where they're coming from). ♥️

The tl;dr was through talking to people, breaking my rigidities, and being lucky enough to encounter people who were kind, committed to dialogue, and not dismissive.

Longer version under the cut.

In winter 2019 I started dating a non-zionist, so a lot of the early stuff was through conversations with them.

Here are the specific things I recall through them:

They validated my experience of having felt traumatized by a negative experience I had at a protest. I felt very on the defense, and dismissed, as a zionist who wanted to be in leftist spaces and they validated that. I don't know if they were faking it or not, but it felt real, and being heard and not dismissed was super important to building trust and safety. Ultimately, building trust and safety was the most important thing.

They would sometimes patiently poke holes in things I said. Matter of factly, not confrontationally. For example, once I said I didn't like the separation wall dividing Israel proper from the West Bank but that it was necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, and they were like "no, that wasn't the wall, it was a change in PA policy." Another time I was like "I don't understand [West Bank] settlers, if they want to be pioneers and settle more land they should settle the Negev, where they're not encroaching on Palestinians!" and they explained to me more about the situation between Israel and Bedouins and how that actually still would involve encroaching/displacement.

They're very religious, and so they had the tools to poke into my "but just open a siddur! you can see all the references to returning to Jerusalem!" and discuss how that differed from and predated zionism the political ideology. They were able to break through my dismissiveness/derision of Chareidi antizionism and help me understand that it has legitimate religious underpinnings. (They're not Chareidi though.) They affirmed for me that they do feel connected to Eretz Yisrael and they love Eretz Yisrael.

They also explained that indigenous doesn't mean "from a place" but rather describes a relationship to colonialism. It still didn't totally click for me, and they and I have both since come to understand that there are a lot of definitions of indigenous, but what it did help me understand was that when people push back against "Jews are indigenous to EY" they're not always trying to say we're not from there.

In general it helped me break down what I thought an antizionist was. I thought that an antizionist was someone who didn't think Jews had a meaningful spiritual and communal connection to EY, thought we weren't from there, didn't give a shit if all Israeli Jews ended up pushed into the sea, hadn't opened a siddur to see references to return to Jerusalem, etc. I was also pretty rigid in my thinking and had collected a bunch of talking points, mostly that I'd co-created with other members of Jewbook (Jewish facebook). They helped me break out of that rigidity and once I'd done that I was open to learning more.

What happened next is that in fall 2019 is I did a fellowship that, while unrelated to the topic, put me in contact with other Jewish antizionists.

There was one person whose project we visited during an outing on the fellowship, who had discussed their project's antizionism. I was bothered by it and asked them one question: Did they feel Jews were connected to Eretz Yisrael? Did they feel connected to Eretz Yisrael? They responded yes of course.

Another person was my roommate on the fellowship, a leftist antizionist Syrian Jew. For a while one of my sticking points had been Mizrahi support of Zionism -- my thought process here had a few pieces. One, it seemed like white privilege to go against what most Israeli Jews of color believed and wanted. Another was that I felt that a lot of antizionists were dismissive of and racist towards Mizrahim and don't understand or care to understand their needs, history, or motivations (I do still think that's true). I also saw the expulsions from SWANA and the fact that Israel took in the SWANA Jewish refugees as proof of the necessity of Zionism.

So, I think that interacting with a Mizrahi antizionist both taught me expanded perspectives on the issue, and taught me that it's possible to be antizionist and still in solidarity with Mizrahim. I learned more nuance, for example around Israel's taking in of the refugees; I knew they had been mistreated, but I think it helped me connect the dots about what that meant about the entire Zionist project. That was also the year A-WA's album Bayti fi Rasi came out, and when I listened to Hana Mash Hu Al Yaman, I think that's when it clicked for me that Israel taking them in was not some sort of miracle or blessing in disguise but rather a last resort for people who did not want to go but had no choice. The main characters in that song wanted to stay in Yemen which is I think something that hadn't clicked for me before. That may not be the majority Mizrahi perspective but it is a perspective and one I hadn't previously considered.

By the same token, my partner at the time (the one I talked about at the beginning of the post) was raised as a Yiddish speaker, and we talked about Yiddish suppression during the early days of the state, as well as Ben Yehuda's disdain for Yiddish, and the general early Zionist disdain for Eastern European Jewry and "old world" Jewish culture. I was already aware of the New Jew concept (the idea that the old Jew was studious and unathletic, but we should put that behind us to become strong and agricultural). They helped me frame this in terms of antisemitism, connecting it to the vitriol Chassidim receive from other Jews, antisemitism directed towards Jewish men and the ways it's about gender and goyish and Jewish constructions of masculinity, anti-circ rhetoric that depends on the Hellenistic idea of the body as perfection, and Naomi Klein's analysis of the dislike of Yiddish by Ben Yehuda et al as sexist due to their association of it as "feminine" and therefore lesser.

We also talked about the ways that Zionism devalues diaspora culture. I definitely see this in the ways that eg Jewbook zionists used to see the Ashkenazi past in Eastern Europe as simply a time of pogroms and violence with nothing generative or valuable. It seems that zionism posits Israel and Israeli culture as the "right" or "completed" version of Judaism, and discourages us from mourning the loss of culture we experienced during the Holocaust and our subsequent exodus.

I think there is nuance here; there are Israeli Yiddishists, there are people practicing all kinds of diaspora Jewish cultures in Israel, etc. I think this is a case where antizionists take something real and over emphasize it to sound bigger and more harmful than it is. It's not Israel's fault that European Jewry got destroyed and it's not Israel's fault that A-WA's family had to leave Yemen. Sometimes it feels like antizionist project those harms onto Israel and Zionism.

At the same time though, there is a kernel of truth in the way at least that many North American zionists view Ashkenazi culture, thought I can't say how much of that is their Zionism and how much is the legacy of American assimilationism (even among religious Jews).

In any case, 2020 is when I started on my journey to deepen my understanding of old world Ashkenazi culture and history. I started with a day spent in the kids' section of the Yiddish Book Center using the beginner education resources there to start teaching myself Yiddish (I had a lot of familiarity because my extended family speaks it, but I didn't yet). About half a second later the pandemic started, and the chaos from that took all my attention for a while, but by the end of the summer I did a deep dive on my genealogy and spent two weeks tracking down documents and names and towns. At that point my family history was no longer abstract, and I started wondering more about what their lives were like in the old country.

I started watching Yiddish plays on zoom, including a production of the Dybbuk that I fell in love with. I got involved in the shtetlcore movement, which was a social media aesthetic fad that was basically the shtetl version of cottagecore. That spring the duolingo Yiddish course came out and I did a six month streak. The following winter I went to a virtual Yiddish conference. I went again two more times in person, and last summer I went to a week-long retreat where we were only allowed to speak Yiddish. I also do Yiddish drag and burlesque.

With this emphasis and knowledge it's hard for me to accept any framing that the only "right" place for Jews to live is Israel, or that diaspora cultures are lesser-than. At some point I encountered a belief among some zionists (though I don't think most believe this) that the Jewish people's differentiation into a myriad of different cultures was a bad thing, and constituted negatively picking up pieces of non-Jewish culture, and that it's good we're back together in Israel so we can become just one culture again. I obviously strongly disagree and I while I wish we had not had to experience the trauma of Khorban Beis Hamikdash and the ensuing displacement, I think the variety of different cultures we split into is beautiful.

Ironically, Israel is actually a place of great cultural exchange between those cultures. And yes, I do worry there will be cultural loss if everything blends together melting pot style, but that's more of a function of how societies work as opposed to official state policy. And I also think the Jewish subcultures will endure. Also the cultural loss is the fault of the Holocaust, the Soviet Union, and nationalist SWANA countries way way more than it is Israel's.

At this point I've come to view the idea that Zionism is detrimental to Jewish culture as weak, but I still am not a Zionist, and that's because the issue with Zionism is not that it harms Jews but that it harms Palestinians.

In early summer 2020, I, along with many other white people were called to reckon with the realities of white supremacy in the US, and our part in it, far more deeply than we had before. I learned to understand how racism functions as a pillar of the US's underpinnings, how white supremacy morphs to sustain itself, how I as an individual and Jews as a group were being used to maintain white supremacy. It fundamentally shifted how I view these topics and how I understand the way that states function.

It was impossible not to apply these concepts to Israel-Palestine. While it is obviously not a one-to-one comparison and I am frustrated with folks who seem to think it is, the concepts and analyses I learned in June 2020 were very elucidating in understanding Israel as a state, and how white supremacy and Jewish supremacy operate in Israel-Palestine.

One of those concepts is a deeper understanding of power dynamics and the oppressed-oppressor relationship. While that is not the be-all end-all, and it is still possible for an oppressed group to do harm and commit war crimes (as they did on Oct 7), it helped me understand the ways it makes no sense to view Palestinians and Israelis as equal parties or to view Palestinians as "the aggressor" as many zionists do. Riots are the language of the unheard and, yes, so is violence. Do not imagine that I excuse, condone, or celebrate Oct 7, but I understand why it happened.

These past seven months have forced a magnifying glass on Israel-Palestine and I have spent a lot of time thinking and talking about it. I have had many experiences and interactions that have illuminated different things to me, but I'll leave you with this one.

In 1956, a young man named Ro'i Rothberg was killed in Kibbutz Nahal Oz by Palestinians who lived in Gaza. Moshe Dayan came to give a eulogy and in it, he said:

Why should we declare their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and the villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate.

Which is to say, he is stating point blank that the Nakba happened, and that Nahal Oz -- and in fact Israel -- is built on land that had been farmed and inhabited by Palestinians. The hasbarist canard of "we didn't steal their land" falls away when Moshe Dayan himself admits it, doesn't it?

He is acknowledging, also, that he understands why the people of Gaza are enraged, and why some of them express this rage as violence. He gives his solution: That the Israeli people, and especially the people of Nahal Oz, must always be on their guard. Must never become peaceniks and forget the rage of the people of Gaza. He says "we are a generation that settles the land and without the steel helmet and the cannon's maw, we will not be able to plant a tree and build a home."

His vision is of an Israel that is always militarized and militant, always on its guard, never to know peace. A people who will send their children to the army generation after generation after generation. Never to rest. Never to be able to lower their guard.

And that is awful! Not just for Palestinians, but for Israelis! Dayan lays out here that if the Nakba is not redressed, this will continue forever. He wants it to continue forever; I want the Nakba redressed.

He knew Nahal Oz would be attacked again. And he was right. On the morning of Simchat Torah of this year, 5784, twelve residents of the kibbutz were brutally murdered. A family that my family knows hid there in their bomb shelter for ten hours with their small children until they were rescued. The kibbutz was destroyed.

And Moshe Dayan knew it would happen, all the way back in 1956. And yet did nothing to change our trajectory. I cannot forgive him that.

In the months since the destruction of Nahal Oz, we have seen Gaza pummeled with a terrifying vengeance. For years I have encountered, albeit few and far between, people who have clammored for Gaza to be "turned into a parking lot." I was horrified by them, but did not take seriously the threat they represented. Yet now, their genocidal flowers have borne fruit. Gaza lies in ruins. 60% of the roads and infrastructure are destroyed. The descendants of refugees are refugees again, chased from their homes by the descendants of refugees. The live in tents, they scrabble for water and food. They live under threat of bombing, or being shot, or dying of illness and malnutrition.

And still Nahal Oz remains destroyed. The Jewish dead of Europe remain dead. The synagogues of Tunis and Algiers remain empty. Nothing is fixed, only more and more broken.

Is it to continue this way? Is this the world we want?

I say no. I say another world is possible. And on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

[gtsdreamer2]

   You were deep in the Amazon rainforest. A recent graduate with your mycology doctorate, you were researching a special species of mushroom that only was said to grow deep in the jungle and only during the twenty four hours of the full moon during the autumn months. According to ancient texts found in the indigenous people's temples, the mushroom was used in fertility rituals and to signify a bountiful harvest during these months before the cold winter. You were curious about the cultural significance as well as the medicinal properties of this rare shroom. You didn't know what it looked like, only that it wasn't foraged for by the locals anymore and that it should look like a mushroom that you don't know.

   Hours of searching later, you begin to grow tired and wonder if you should give up and wait until the next full moon. The sun is starting to set when you finally spot something different. It's a mushroom you've never seen before, which is remarkable seeing as how you've seen them all. The cap is a pinky flesh color with an even pinker button on top. You giggle to yourself as you remark that it looks like a tit with a firm nipple poking out of it.

   Kneeling down, you take out your notebook and a pencil and begin to sketch it. 'I'm just drawing a boob.' You think to yourself. You stare in awe at this shroom as the sun continues to set. Taking your pencil, you poke the nipple-esque protrusion. Immediately this mushroom expells a giant cloud of spores right in your face. You gasp in surprise, sucking into your lungs an ample amount of the potent plume.

   You hack and cough, but its way too late for that, they're already lodged deep within you and entering your blood stream. Your eyes dialate and your body grows hot. You stand and lean against a tree, trying to catch your breath. You can feel your heatbeat in every nerve. Your cells are responding in a way they never have to the new foreign agent that has begun to take over you. Your heatbeat concentrates in your breasts as you feel your nipples grow almost painfully erect. Then you feel your breasts start to press against your soft white cotton top. You can feel the belts on your corset tighten to try and contain whatever is happening to you. Suddenly you shoot up four inches in height.

   Your sudden growth spurt elicits an a forced maon from your mouth. "Mmmph!" You cry out as a second wave hits you. The belts on your corset snap and suddenly you're six foot five with the seams of your jeans splitting. You feel your feet break free from your hiking boots as your toes sink into the damp rainforest earth.

   'This is starting to feel really good.' You think to yourself as you start to regain a semblance of your normal senses. Doing a body check, you can tell that you've grown. Your breasts have at least doubled in size and are now very hot and sensitive to the touch. You can feel a hunger deep in your womb as if ovulating on steroids.

   You attempt to sit down on the cool jungle floor, your now massive ass shredding the back of your jeans as you squat down. You pick up your pad and pen and continue to make notes about the shroom.

   'It is clear that this is how the Amazon women in the lore of this land gained their stature, and I can clearly feel why this particular fungus was revered for its fertility-inducing properties. I feel so full of life, yet I also feel the need to be bred full of babies.' Looking back at your notes, you are in shock that you actually wrote that down.

   You wonder to yourself how potent the flesh of the shroom might be, considering what just inhaling some of the spores had done to you. As the sun began to set, you walk back over to the shroom and delicately pluck it out of the ground before greedily shoving the whole thing into your mouth, quickly swallowing it without so much as trying to find out what it tastes like. Again the euphoria strikes your body. You feel its effects ten fold as you quickly gain four feet in height and explode out of your inadequate top. Sitting back down on the remainder of your ruined clothes, you bask in the feeling of your massive body and heightened strength and senses. You close your eyes and listen to the jungle around you, lamenting that you ate the only specimen that you had found on your journey, and now the only evidence was what it had done to you. When you open your eyes, the realize that the moon has peaked through the canopy. Your dialated eyes can see the jungle floor quite clearly now, and shimmering all across the damp dense expanse before you, you can see dozens more of the mushroom glowing against the moon, as if drinking in its power. 'It would have been so much easier to find at night.' You chastise yourself as you stand up again. You leave your ruined clothes behind as you pick up your foraging Satchel and start to delicately pick as many of the shrooms as you can carry, trying your best to put them in containers without them expelling more spores. 'This will be so great for my research.' You think to yourself. 'And it'll make a great snack for the walk back'. You giggle to yourself as you pop another three into your mouth.

[mage-of-mip]

Half-Foots and Ainu Culture in Dungeon Meshi

It sometimes feels like I might be grasping at straws with this, but I do feel like it's not completely unfounded. Please note, I am a white woman living in the USA, I am by no means an expert on Japanese culture in general, much less a marginalized subculture. I have simply made limited attempts to educate myself out of genuine interest born from exposure to media about Ainu characters and culture. I am always hoping to learn more.

I think it's fairly obvious that many parallels can be drawn between Ryoko Kui's Half-Foot race, and more than one ethnicity or subculture in real life. Romani, Irish, and Jewish stereotypes come to mind immediately.

But I think there's another one that may be explored less in the text, and much harder to catch by a western reader, but nonetheless could be intended by Kui, or perhaps was at one point. That of the Ainu people of Hokkaido, Japan.

There's not a lot of translated information about the Ainu online, so please bear with my limited knowledge. In short, the Ainu are the indigenous people of Northern Japan. For generations, their way of life has been taken from them and they were forced to assimilate to the wider Japanese culture. There are not many who still fully practice the cultural heritage in this day, but there are movements to bring the Ainu culture back.

In Delicious in Dungeon, there are two instances that reference the Ainu, both relating to Chilchuck. This could, of course, be a coincidence, especially if there are more references that I missed. It may be flimsy, but it still feels significant that this is the case, and that Half-Foots are or were meant to be an allusion to the Ainu.

This is the first instance. A significant panel in the context of the story. To my knowledge, this is the only specifically Ainu dish that's referenced in the text. On it's own, its just an interesting factoid, and the same dark humor that's being used for all the other character deaths in this fight against Thistle.

This is the second instance. From the supplemental material rather than the main story, Chilchuck is discussing what Half-Foots are called across the languages. The one that caught my eye here is the one in the top corner. Korpokkur.

The Korpokkur are a race of small people in Ainu folklore, their name meaning "those who live under the butterbur leaves".

Again, in a vacuum, this could just be a Japanese person using a Japanese word [Edit: Correction; An Ainu word] in her manga. But I think it's interesting that the two instances of Ainu culture being referenced have to do with Chilchuck and Half-Foots as a whole. It could warrant a deeper read-through looking for other references, perhaps by someone more educated than myself.

I think this could have some interesting implications in the wider worldbuilding. Perhaps the Half-Foots have faced similar cultural erasure and assimilation attempts, which is why a lot of their customs and clothing are just "Tallman but smaller", and why other races regularly mistake them for the children of tallmen, despite having pretty noticeable differences in how they look other than just their height(their disproportionately large ears, for example).

This idea might be a tad more indulgent, but I also like the idea that Half-Foot children don't receive a permanent name until they are toddlers. At one point, in Ainu culture(this may not be practiced today, I could not find information on that), the Ainu would give their children "vulgar" placeholder names until they started forming personalities, as a ward against evil spirits. Perhaps the same is done for Half-Foot children, and their two part names are selected when they are a little older.

Again, these are just the observations of an outsider looking in, please feel free to correct any mistakes I may have made! And if I'm completely off-base or have said something offensive, I apologize and will delete or amend the post as necessary.

[morphids]

well, two can play that game, ellie williams

pairing: college!ellie willams x afab!reader

chapter: one-shot (4.6k words)

warnings: 18+ content, minors do not interact!! dom!ellie x femme!reader, poc friendly, sexual content, angst, past relationship, jealousy, abby x reader (briefly for plot tension), reader and ellie are toxic petty, semi-public sex, hatesex if u squint but they love each other so idk angry sex is more accurate.

summary: you and ellie hadn't spoken since you broke up a few months ago and suddenly she shows up to this party with another girl on her arm.

inspired by heartbeat by childish gambino

author's note: soo linger got so much more love than I expected I love u guys wish I could respond to comments or follow y'all back but this isn't my main acc rip, just know that I'm lurking and appreciate all the reblogs and love <3

:::

Disclaimer: I do not support the genocide of the indigenous Palestinian people, and neither should you, please don’t buy the new Remastered or continue giving any more money to Druckmann. Educate yourself, learn the history, it is vital. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free 🇵🇸

**

The music was booming, noise reverberated through the walls of the home belonging to whichever current popular kid was hosting this weeks Friday party.

You had been in a bit of a rut recently, not really taking time out of your schedule to have fun and live like you should be living, Dina was aware of that. So today, she had forced convinced you to come to some sports-heads party.

"Come on, get dressed" She had said, with a smug smile as you lifted yourself off the bed and into your bathroom to get ready. You had worn a silky, long black skirt. It reached the ends of your shins with a long slit that exposed your leg all the way up to your thigh. On top, you wore a simple tee, with a long strip of thick eyeliner along your skin.

And here you were. Sighing to yourself as you watched the typical acts of debauchery unfold amongst your peers. A bottle of alcohol was soon in your line of sight, Dina holding it up to you after just having taken a swig herself. "Here, looks like you need it."

You grabbed the clear bottle and drank, grimacing at the harsh taste that was developing in your mouth. You, Dina and Jesse had settled on sitting in-front of the couch on the floor, you tended to be a floor sitter; being crosslegged was quite comfortable.

In that moment, the front door of the owner's house swung open, and you felt your heart drop. In walks Ellie Williams, your ex-girlfriend, with another girl clutching on to her arm. You watched as the duo did their rounds, greeting the people they knew and joking briefly. Ellie looked around the living room, looking for a place to base, her green eyes landed on where you, Dina and Jesse were sat before making her way over, causing you to sigh.

That was possibly the last thing you had wanted, to be in an environment with your ex and her new conquest. You and Ellie had broken up a few months ago, not through lack of love, and definitely not due to bad sex. Quite the opposite. Ellie had a habit of self-sabotage, you'd get close to her and then one day she'd freeze and want to cut off all connection. She was a ghost, you knew this. That's why you broke up in the first place. It had been a painful wound which had still not healed over.

Technically, you had no say. There was nothing you could say about her sitting with you guys, Dina was Ellie's friend as much as she was yours, and despite the painful breakup, you wouldn't force her to pick sides. It would've been nice to know in advance that Ellie was going to come, though. At least then you could've prepared for the pang in your chest as the girl interlocked her fingers onto Ellie's as they sat. Dina threw you a sympathetic look, as if to say, 'I didn't know she was gonna be here..'

You took another swig of the alcohol as conversations between Ellie and the group started, knowing you couldn't avoid her any longer. You hadn't spoken to each other since she left, there were so many things left unsaid. Focusing on the music, you nodded your head along to the beat of the song that was playing over the speakers, your eyes glancing at the crowd dancing in the middle of the living room, observing.

You suddenly got the sense that you were being watched, your eyes flickered away from the crowd and into the green eyes that were staring you down from across the group. Ellie looked at you with no expression, her hand resting on the unknown girl's thigh. She caught your eyes look down towards her hand and glanced back up to you. What was she trying to achieve here? Make you feel worse?

You broke the eye contact, preferring to get up off the floor and making your way into the kitchen to head out into the host's backyard. You heard Dina ask where you were going but you hadn't registered her voice in time to reply.

Your body was met with cold temperatures as soon as you passed through the backdoor, you mentally groaned as your jacket was not warm enough to keep you warm. Glancing around, you took note of where groups of people were sat talking to each other, you just needed a moment to yourself. You gravitated towards the quietest spot in the backyard, liking how there wasn't much activity and sat yourself down, perched with your chest resting on your legs.

Grabbing a pack of cigarettes from your jacket pocket, you singled one out from the deck and brought it up your lips. With the cigarette secure against your lips, you reached down, searching for a lighter, your head facing the floor, before you heard the familiar flick of flint come from above you.

Looking up, you were met with the last person you had wanted to see in your time out. "How long are you going to pretend I don't exist?" she spoke, the first thing either of you had said to each other in months. Her arm was still holding the lit lighter, looking at you, waiting for you to light the cigarette.

Knowing how stubborn she is, you knew you had no choice but to bring your face closer to the lighter, meeting the flame and sparking the tobacco. "You're definitely not the one who should be asking that question." You muttered, inhaling the smoke.

"Look, what do you want me to say?" Ellie sighed, placing herself next to you before lighting her own cigarette. She was wearing her favourite grey hoodie, it was so worn you could see small tears in the sleeves. "Honestly, nothing right now, why don't you go back to the girl you brought with you? I'm sure she's missing your presence."

"She doesn't smoke, and I wanted one." "Well, you didn't have to sit here," you knew you were being harsh, but what else were you meant to do with the built-up hurt? If you took away the anger, what would you have left? Ellie sighed beside you, "We haven't spoken in months.." "And whose fault is that, Ellie?" You were looking at her now, eyes boring into hers.

"I know I shouldn't have left," she took a drag, exhaling as she spoke, "I wa-," Cutting her off, you spoke. "You were what? You didn't just leave, Ellie, you completely blindsided me. You think something's going well with someone and then they disappear. No explanation, no message, nothing!"

Hearing your words, her heart fell. She knew she had hurt you that day, but she felt scared. You were right, something was going well, so well that Ellie was scared she'd get hurt first. So she decided to end it before giving you the chance. "I didn't mean to hurt you," "Yeah? Too bad," you scoffed, "Cos you did." Finishing your cigarette, you stumped it out on the floor, forcing yourself up to your feet to go back to the living room. A hand stopped you, wrapping itself around your forearm preventing you from walking further. With a sigh, you turned to face her.

"You don't have to run away from me," Ellie said, voice low. Shivers travelled down your spine, as her eyes glanced to your lips, "I'm not contagious." "I don't want anything to do with you." You whispered, fighting every urge you had to just kiss her and make up. If you stayed here a minute longer, you knew you would cave to her. Despite how badly she had hurt you, you couldn't forget the way she made you feel. Knowing you still loved her, still felt the burning desire to kiss her.

Your thoughts focused on to the girl that had come with her tonight, your brows furrowed as anger washed over you. Ripping your arm out from her grip, you turned away and walked back inside to the party.

—

A week had passed, you were making your way to Dina's kitchen as you helped her set up the decorations, food and drink ready for her birthday party.

You had gotten completely dolled up, at least to your standards, wearing a band tee underneath a long, dark satin dress with your signature eyeliner. After all, it was Dina's birthday, you had to look nice. Besides, you were in hopes of getting some action tonight, knowing Dina had invited some girls from her class and you hadn't had any action since Ellie. It had been a... long time.

Ellie was helping at Dina's, too. Since your last conversation, things hadn't gotten better. Your hurt had somehow, shifted into snark, bickering with Ellie anytime you'd be in the same vicinity, which happened often.

Snark, petty comments and arguing. That's all Dina had heard between you and Ellie, at one point she thought you were about to kill each other. Dina had asked you about some guy that had approached you earlier on in the day. He had walked up to you with the utmost confidence that his flirting would be successful. You almost felt bad for him, the way his smile dropped when you told him you were a lesbian. Dina thought the story was hilarious and had asked you about it, upon hearing this, against her better judgement Ellie had made a comment about it which resulted in a heated argument between the two of you and Dina suddenly regretting her decision to bring it up. It had gotten so riled up that when Ellie stormed out of the room, she slammed the door so hard that it left visible cracks on the wall and the plant pot on the window beside it smashed into pieces.

"Okay, so... the bottles can go on this table and the food goes to that one with the bowls." Dina instructed, motioning you to put down the items you were carrying. Ellie had stayed in the living room moving the furniture around the room so that people could have more space to move, so Dina took her chance to talk to you.

"So, um.. you and Ellie haven't been doing so hot," she spoke, looking at you with a worried expression. "Well observed, Dina." "Hey, don't take your frustrations out on me, I'm an innocent bystander watching as world war three breaks out." She joked, lightly. "Sorry, it's just, I don't know what's changed but every time I look at her I just get so angry."

"I didn't say it wasn't justified, just worried about you guys, I'm friends with both of you and it's not nice seeing you two like this," Dina's hand went to rest on her hip as she spoke, emphasised her point, she sighed before continuing, "At least try and get laid tonight, fresh blood might make you less angry." She joked.

"Dina!" You groaned, before turning away from her and returning to the living room where people were beginning to show up.

A few hours go by and the party is in full swing, it wasn't crowded like last week's but more of a gathering, which you could handle. You had a few drinks, were nowhere near as drunk as some people, but you were at a nice level. You had spent an amount of the night away from your friends, after being introduced by Dina to this girl, Abby, one of the gays Dina had invited in hopes she could wingman you a date.

It was nice. Abby was incredibly attractive, she had long blonde hair and her arms were unlike anyone you had ever met. So muscular and big, you had a thing for slightly more masculine women, that's what got you in this mess with Ellie in the first place. Though, Abby and Ellie were complete opposites and if memory served correctly, you were pretty sure you remembered Ellie saying there was a girl in her class that she hated of the same name. Said girl had been involved in an altercation with Ellie, you honestly didn't remember why. You wondered if they were the same person.

Abby had completely distracted you from your worries with Ellie, revelling in the straight-forward way she would flirt with you and touch your thigh. It was nice to feel wanted.

Someone wasn't impressed, though. Ellie had been a sour mood all day because Cat had refused to come to the party with her, claiming that Ellie still had feelings for you and that's why she always cared enough to pick fights with you. Ellie denied this causing Cat to immediately break up with her on the spot. You had been on her mind today more than she cared to admit, and seeing you flirt with someone she absolutely despised, watching as Abby placed her hand on your exposed thigh, simply put, it pissed her off.

Dina watched Ellie carefully, not uttering a word when she saw her rolling her eyes at you both. "Can you believe that shit?" Ellie said, pointing at you from across the room. "Of all people, why is she entertaining that asshole?" "Ellie-," Dina was interrupted, "Laughing like her jokes are funny, she's the most boring person I've ever met," "Do-," "Who does she think she is?" "Ellie!" Dina shouted, "If you're that bothered, stop staring."

"I'm not staring.. they're just fucking gross." Ellie sighed, taking a swig of her beer. "You're staring. Go take a walk or something," Groaning, Ellie got up deciding to to the bathroom. Not that she needed it, she just couldn't bear the sight of you two any longer.

She stepped her way up the stairs, music and alcohol causing her to suddenly realise she was a bit more waved than she originally thought, either that or she got up too fast.

Stepping into the bathroom, she rested her hands on either side of the sink, looking at herself in the mirror. She could still feel the anger burn through her chest, igniting further as she remembered the ease with which Abby placed her hands on your thighs and the way you allowed it. Deep down she knew she had no right to be jealous, it was her fault after all. Yet, she cursed to herself as she thought back to the past weeks.

Cat had been right, of course. Ellie was in no way over her feelings for you, they never even left. She was just scared and jumped ship, and now this arguing and pettiness had only been an excuse so that you could have a way of talking to each other. Ellie's thought process was interrupted by someone knocking on the door and she knew her little breather was over and she'd have to face the world again.

Sighing, Ellie lifted herself off the sink and opened the bathroom door, not expecting you to have been the person who was knocking. "Oh, sorry I didn't know you were in there," you stated, your long eyeliner standing out in the dim light of corridor. Ellie had always loved when you wore that.

"It's alright, actually, I kinda wanted to talk to you," You quirked an eyebrow up at Ellie's words, "What did you wanna talk about?" "You should stay away from her, Abby, I mean. She's not a good person," Ellie quipped, the alcohol making her lips a lot looser than they would be if she was stone sober.

"Oh?" your features turned sour, "And who are you to tell me to stay away from her?" "I just wanted to let you know, no need to be a dick about it." "What makes you think I care about your opinions on my love life? You have no right." You were stepping up closer to her, frustration all over your features. "I heard you and Dina talking earlier, if you're gonna sleep with someone out of desperation at least pick someone better." Ellie squinted, her anger levels quickly rising as your voice raised, that seemed to piss you off even more. How dare she?

"If I want to fuck Abby, I will," you paused, noticing the way Ellie's chest was quickly rising as she took deep breaths, "It's none of your business." You voice lowered, Ellie's top lip sneering as she listened to you continue.

"She's nice, she's hot and have you seen her arms? I'm gonna sleep with her and there's nothing you can do to stop that." You whispered, knowing you were playing with fire but you couldn't stop yourself. Were you doing it on purpose? You weren't sure. You saw something in Ellie's eyes snap as soon as the words left your lips.

Within moments, your arm had been grabbed and you were being pulled into the bathroom. Ellie slammed the bathroom door shut and pushed you against it, the back of your head hitting the wood. "You sure about that?" Ellie muttered, she was seething, "I can think of many things I can do to stop that from happening." There was a snarl in her voice, a gruff raspiness that spurred you on.

"What was it specifically that pissed you off?" You teased, "The fact that it was her or the fact that it wasn't you?"

Ellie's hands trailed down to the back of your thighs, the only barrier being your long dress, with a firm grip she squeezed, causing a sigh to escape your lips. Truthfully, your comment about Abby's arms had touched a nerve, and Ellie found herself wanting to prove that she was just as strong as that meathead that was flirting with you. "Brave words for someone who threw a hissy fit the other day because she saw me with Cat."

You brought your hands from your sides to the back of Ellie's neck, silently wrapping your arm around her shoulders, Ellie's grip still tight on your thighs. Her face nearing your neck, "It's funny," Ellie whispered, before placing kisses on the space behind your ear, "You talk all this game about letting her fuck you, but darling, I'm the best that you've had, face it."

Her hands travelled up your legs, before landing at the curve of your behind, you swallowed a gasp, feeling her tease you through your dress, not wanting her to know the power she had over you in this moment. You were embarrassed at your own silence, not knowing how to reply to her words.

"Abby could do a better job," As soon as you said it, you regretted it. Ellie was certainly not impressed, hands clutching at your dress as she slowly lifted up the fabric, exposing your legs to her. "Oh yeah?" her gaze flickered down to your lips, "You want me to call her up here and show her how much you can't stand me?"

You stayed silent, her words spurring you on more that you expected, "Cos I can do that."

The distance between your lips had closed, Ellie pressing softly against yours as the music thumped in the background. Her hand travelled up from your thighs, caressing your sides as she reached the back of your head. You couldn't hold yourself back any longer, deciding to press into the kiss and wrap your arms around Ellie's neck. You could feel her smirking into the kiss as her fingers tightened around your hair, evoking a sigh out from your lips.

"You always did like when I did that," Ellie basked in the memories of your past relations, something she regretted losing. You two just always seemed to understand each other at that level, your bodies working together, she knew exactly what you liked and you knew exactly what she liked. It just worked.

It was no different this time around, just with a little added bitterness. All the tension from the arguing, the snide remarks and jealousy over the past few months seemed to have been leading to this exact moment. A cathartic release of pressure that had been building up.

"Shut up, Williams."

She chuckled as her lips went down your neck, kissing down to your collarbone as she sucked, intentionally leaving a lovely purple symbol marked on your skin. A symbol that you were hers, and she was going to let everyone else see it. Let Abby try and flirt with you now. Your chest heaved up and down, anticipating the gentle touch of her hand lifting your skirt, exposing your legs more than they already were. You felt a tightness at your core, even amidst your anger towards her, you still reacted in this way.

"You're so soft, for a girl so frigid." she muttered into your neck, kneading the skin of your thighs, her hand was so close to where you wanted her. "You're an asshole," You breathed out, back arching into the door, pressing you closer into it as Ellie moved her body closer to yours. "Oh yeah?" she paused, "Is that why you're letting me touch you like this?" Her hand trailed closer to your centre, fingers skimming over your underwear, her raspy voice sending shivers down your spine.

"Because I'm such an asshole?" Her words dripped like honey, and suddenly you were melting. "Fuck," you sighed, your head falling down to her shoulders for support, suddenly feeling out of breath as her fingers teased around your most sensitive spot. "What was that, pretty girl?" her finger clutched on to the cotton fabric and slid underneath it, sliding the cloth to the side as she teased her finger through your dampened folds.

"Fuck, Ellie.." you gasped, your hips jutting towards her hand, a futile attempt to relieve some of the tension between your legs as Ellie retracted her finger from you. "No, no, pretty girl, that isn't how this works," You groaned, hearing distant chatter in the corridor outside of the bathroom as you were suddenly reminded of the outside world. "Ellie, please," you whispered, conscious that you would be heard by the partygoers. "Please, what?" She hummed, enjoying dragging this out, it was all a power play to her. You knew that, but you thrived off it just as much as Ellie did.

"Please," you rocked your hips into her hand again, "Need you to fuck me, Els." Upon hearing you, she restarted her movements, skimming your folds with her fingers once again, your mouth was agape, letting out tiny whimpers at the feeling of her fingers against your clit. "That's a good girl," she smirked as she watched you, her scarred eyebrow flicking upwards, her eyes full of mirth. Your hand reached towards the back of her head, grabbing on to the elastic that held her bun in place as you pulled, tugging her head backwards slightly as some strands of her auburn hair fell out of place, looking almost as disheveled as you felt.

Spurred on by your actions, Ellie had decided to insert two of her fingers into you, emitting a wanton gasp to fall from your open lips. You clenched around the intrusion, feeling as her fingers sloppily dipped in and out of your soaked core, filthy sounds bouncing around the room. You bit back moans as Ellie buried her slender fingers deep into your folds, groaning at the indecent sounds of your slick against her digits.

"Fuck," you accidentally moaned, and a lot louder than either of you had expected, causing Ellie to let go of her grip of her fingers on the back of your head and into your open mouth. Taking the hint, you sucked on her fingers, drool slipping out from between your lips as she fucked your mouth. Suppressing your moans, your eyes rolled shut as Ellie slid another finger into your centre, relishing at the sight of you. Fingers stuffed in your mouth with one hand, fingers glistening with your slick as she rocked in and out of you with the other. Your flawless eyeliner now smudged and smeared all over your eyes, with a single stream cleared from a tear that had fallen from your eyes at the pleasure you were feeling. You were a sight she wanted to keep in her memory for the rest of her life.

"You're so fucking hot, babygirl, but you gotta stay quiet for me," The pads of her fingers met with the walls of your core, hitting you at a deeper angle than before. How the fuck were you meant to stay quiet like this? Was she doing this on purpose?

"Unless you want everyone here to know how good I'm fucking you," Her words were inching you closer, when you suddenly felt her fingers retract from your mouth and her body dipping down, kneeling in front of you. Her antsy hands fumbled over the fabric that was still tight against your hips, ripping them down so she could have complete access to you.

"You look so good when you're being fucked, pretty girl." You felt her head reach closer towards your centre, you breathed in a sigh as her hand grabbed hold of your leg and placed it over her shoulder. Her tongue licked gentle stripes up your folds, as she continued her movements with her hands, fucking into you as she licked your cunt like she was starved.

"You taste so good, baby," she breathed out, "Ellie- fuck.." you moaned, not trusting yourself to keep quiet as you covered your face and mouth with your arms. Ellie looked up at you, watching your face contort with the pleasure she was giving you, holding your arms against your face to keep yourself quiet. You felt the knot in your stomach tighten, Ellie seemingly knowing exactly what to say to bring you closer and closer.

"Wanna tell me again how you're going to go fuck Abby?" she paused, fingers still in a consistent, deep motion inside you, "Because it seems like you've changed your mind, angel." You were never going to go and actually fuck this girl, you had just said that to rile her up, Ellie knew this, yet she couldn't hold her tongue from saying these things to you.

"Ellie, shit," you gasped, "I don't want anyone else," Your hand moved down to her disheveled hair, forcing her head closer to you as you rocked your hips into her face, pure desperation. "I'm the only one who can make you feel like this, don't forget that," And she was right. Within seconds of her reconnecting her tongue to your centre, fingers still pushing into you, you felt all control of your body leave you. Shaking and writhing on her face as she brought you closer to your peak, your juices sliding down Ellie's chin.

Moaning and gasping, you dragged her face up to yours, capturing her lips in an ardent kiss as you could taste yourself on her lips. You felt her fingers slowly slide out you and let out a final moan. Your hands started to trail down Ellie's sides, grasping at her clothes in an attempt to take them off her.

"No, no, baby. None of that, I'm going to leave you right here," she chuckled, feeling your desperation, "You know where I'll be, when you're tired of flirting with strangers, give me a call."

And she left you, in your fucked out haze, all delirious and dazed, in the bathroom of Dina's party.

——

[tiredmagicalwarrior]

I think one of the things I appreciated the most about Nocturne was the protagonism on the Haitian Revolution.

This was a revolution that didn't just change Haiti, it changed the world. This was the revolution that would make the first black state. The first slaveless state. That would make every slave nation tremble with fear, from Europe To America to Asia to Oceania to Africa. It was what was never meant to happen, but did.

It's the nation that would defeat Napoleon and the British marine. Nobody could take down Haiti. You know why Napoleon went to colonize Europe? Haiti. That's why. He couldn't take down Haiti. Couldn't make it french territory again. So, he turned towards Europe.

We are talking about an undefeated nation.

AND! AND! A largely Vodu nation!

I was SO happy to see Vodu be portrayed as the wonderful religion it is, sacred and divinely intertwined with the Haitian revolution. The revolution was noted to start with Vodu chants and ritual.

White people refused to understand the link between the two worlds that could bring ancestors to meet their descendants. They created zombies as a horror trope. They made vodu dolls as a horror gimmick. They took a sacred religion and reduced it and vilanized it.

And I'm so happy to see it being positively portrayed in such a famous media. Vodu practicioners have already made media of the like. But I was positively surprised with what Nocturne had to present to us.

Of course, the knowledge that the french revolution was incomplete, that it was NOT FOR EVERYONE, is then again, something I really appreciate as a history student and a person. The french revolution killed mostly peasent and established the bourgeoisie, but did it end the Noir Code? No. Did it establish women's and black people's suffrage? No. Did it make a agrarian reform? No. Was it for the people? It had it's importance. But it was, at the very least, not for all the people.

And let's not forget that the french revolution's main intellectual current would birth biological racism, an unscientific current that claimed evidence of "different sized skulls" for example to prove humans possessed different races based on phenotypes.

Last, but certainly not least: it is absurd to see people claim that "all indigenous people have been killed". Acknowledging multi-ethnic indigenous genocide HAS to go along with the respect that there STILL are indigenous people and they continue their fight for their lives and land.

You know who the show demonstrates as such? Olrox.

While I don't appreciate the show claiming "all of his people were slaughtered" as that is historically inaccurate, I was most happy to see an Aztec vampire present and very alive, connected to his culture, protagonizing the show. The Nahua are still very much alive and kicking and I appreciated that the show took that into account.

And Annette! Sweet Annette being one of the leads makes me most joyful. I can't stand idiots that claim her presence.on France was """historically innacurate""", check again, dumbasses, free black people were all over France (especially the children of black Caribbean elites, for example, from Haiti back then known as Saint-Domingue, which did not possess universities and would sent their children to study in Europe.)

Anyway. To see her star as one of the leads made me so incredibly happy. She's a wonderful character and I appreciate how they let Annette be unapologetic and direct, especially during a moment between revolutions were she was very aware the french revolution didn't mean shit to her people.

But she was so lovely and to see her afro-caribean religion present AND source of her power made me emotional more than a few times.

Castlevania Nocturne really did hit this nail on the head.

Anyways. To make sure I give people answers to "but where's the evidence to x thing you said?" Here are my sources:

THYLEFORS, Markel; “Our Government is in Bwa Kayiman:”A Vodou Ceremony in 1791 and its Contemporary Significations, 2009

DUBOIS, Laurent; Avengers of the New World : the story of the Haitian Revolution, 2004

BUCK-MORSS, Susan; Hegel, Haiti and universal history, 2009

[punkeropercyjackson]

I'm pretty sure Atla being Aang's story and never about Zutara is just.......kinda what Atla about instead of making it a bad story lol!Like it's called 'Avatar:The Last Airbender' and the 2nd part refers to Aang being the sole survivor of a genocide which like the characters is based on the real genocide that happens to Tibet,Aang's people,by China.The Water Tribe gang are also genocide survivors because they're native-coded and the Fire Nation is an imperialist empire because it's based on Japan when it was

So Aang's the protagonist because it's about poc trauma and potraying etchnic cleansing survivors as the victims they are but also humanizing them and showing them as heroes and capable of saving the world that tried to wipe them all out!Aang is the good guy because he goes out of way to help everybody,with activism AND direct action and in the comics,he kickstarted decolonization and arguably counts as the inventor of in his world.Atla was created to radicalize the kids watching it and while it's not perfect(see the demonization of Jet and Hama and asskissing of Iroh),Aang is undoubtedly a great role model and relatable to kids of color as well as asian people who come from lesser known asian cultures that're happy to finally get some rep that's not just easian characters

On the topic of Katara,not sorry at all but she's never been meant to be 'the universal female experience' or some other radf.em-adjacent caricature.Yes,she's a girl and it's really important to her she's a girl but she wants to be a girl HER way,not what's expected of her by society.Katara is a brown native american-Inuk girl who was parentified despite having an older brother due to sexism and fell for Aang because he helped her feel like a real kid instead of a mini mom and he fell for her at first sight because he found her indigenous features to be angelic and princess-y and all around perfect and Katara is a punk girl,she refuses to follow the rules or conform to standards or hold herself back for ANYONE and never shuts up about it or refuses to stop acting on it so she's canonically an anarchist,she was Aang's righthand in The Gaang and did her own solo anti-imperalist activity on her own too and provided resources and aid and even emotional comfort for oppressed groups all throught the show so she's canonically an activist and she hates the Fire Nation and ALL bigots and abusers,no expections,so she's canonically anti-authority and anti-establishment too.Katara is a feminist character in the sense she's nothing like women are expected to be and does the heroism and has the personality traits which are said to be reserved for men by the patriachy,ESPECIALLY at the time.And yes,Zutaras,you too to this fuckin' day

Zuko's redemption arc was Zuko's redemption arc.Not an arc about finding a way to make it okay for him to date Katara!ZUKO'S REDEMPTION ARC IS ABOUT ZUKO!Not even Mai had a huge hand in that despite being Zuko's canon girlfriend but that's not because 'she wasn't important to him',it's because he didn't do anything he had to redeem himself for to her except breaking up with her in a petty way so he could work on healing and free himself from Ozai and she understood that by connecting the dots so she forgave him as she gets what it's like to have your parents abuse you because it's 'normal' in their culture-easian culture.Zuko is fundamentally a japanese man,his name,his design,his backstory,his personality,his powers/fighting style,his tastes,his generational trauma.Ozai abused Zuko using techniques created by abusive easian parents specifically since sadly the normalization of child abuse is so wide,different cultures each have their own unique tactics for it and Zuko thought nothing of it until he left the Fire Nation and learned it's not normal at all and that he deserves better.That's how it works for a lot of kids of color,if not most of us

In addition to the giving reperations aspect,Zuko becoming Aang's big brother figure and pseudo-dad is him healing his inner child and breaking the cycle of abuse.Dadko symbolizes peace with their dynamic too,peace for Zuko's lineage because now he gets to be the good dad to Aang Ozai never was to him and grew up to be a good biodad to Izumi largely realistically thanks to Aang giving him experience with raising kids.Zuko's dad friend behavior is a positive trait,'Mom'tara is silencing Katara for your male fave so she can be realize she's not a real kid actually,Aang was wrong and she's not actually beautiful,kind,cool,funny,charming,badass,a hero and deserving of a soft love with someone who's patient with her because he's just happy to her in silence until he thought he'd have to die to save the world and couldn't bear the thought of parting with her because she's his whole world just as he gave her hope she could grow up to save it.And y'all call him a r*pist because they were mutually unspokenly flirting for months and she got angry at him for implying they shouldn't kiss followed up by an implied almost kiss and multiple cheek kisses from her to him so he thought to make up for it out of misreading the room and immediately regretted it and berated himself for making her uncomfortable at the same time an EXPLICITLY non-consensual on her side episode where Zuko kidnaps her,talks badly to/of her,threatens her condesendingly and even steals Kya's necklace is what gave Zutara popularity

Atla is one of the best pg show's of all time because it's not about Zutara but about Aang.Not about cishet romance where the oppressed girl falls for her boy oppressor as it has the 'undesirable' race boy the villain.Then it would've been propaganda and glamorization of Japan's darker history as during Japan's imperialist era,women were treated pretty similarly to black people in the slavery/segregations and i'm making that comparison because as a black woman 1.It's pretty accurate and 2.Zutradras have a misogynoir problem and an antiblackness problem towards black men too by treating black girls as the same white girls like how they do Katara as a brown indigenous girl and moc Atla fans are targeted by the white Z/K suckers on the basis of being 'males' when white women inherently have privilege over moc,black and brown men most of all.They got a transmisogyny problem too since as i stated,their 'feminism' in regards to Katara is ciscentric only and carry r.adfem-like rethoric to how she should be written,plus their hatred of Aang for 'not being a real man' since they see him as amab and he's canonically very feminine and then there's all the anti-trans Zuko headcanons sentiments that only come from them with literally every other Atla ship group being supportive of trans readings of him,as well as for the Avatarverse cast in general.Atla is a love letter to misfits,not a love story for the normies.Aang was right to keep the Air Nomads alive by not killing Ozai because poc shouldn't have to give up our culture to be 'real punks' when punk is black made and whites and westerners are very much the biggest reasons we and other poc we even need revolutions

Kataang is a ship between two punk kids of color and Zutara robs countless abused japanese/asian-american kids of the narrative they needed and still need.The Atla fandom is extremely anti Zutara because it's a papable replacement for a very powerful story that only caters to the very people the series was saying are bad for correct and proven reasons.You can say 'interracial relathionships are so important and that's why should've Zutara happened!!!' but as a black/white biracial woman you're no different than people who only like interracial ships if they have a white person and get mad at poc4poc interracial rep seeing as you whitewash Zuko's writing and you can also say 'No girl would choose Aang over Zuko' but i had a huge crush on Aang and i was told i wasn't a real girl despite being afab because i was an autistic black tomboy and a huge part of his appeal was that he's not the fantasy,he was like me and plenty of girls weren't attracted to Zuko and it's enforcing cisheteronormative to act like we all did just because we're women.Hell,i'm convinced Katara is trans because of her relathionship with girlhood and canon punkhood and bi with a preference for gnc partners because of Kataang and the Katoph subtext and curiously enough NO Zutara shipper who's anti Kataang headcanons her as transfem while most Kataangers nowadays follow the t4t take on it and almost every lesbian i've met in the fandom stans it too and mocks Zutara

Avatar:The Last Airbender is about a tibetan boy who saves himself and everyone else from the system that tried to wipe his people out entierly with the help of a parentified brown native femme punk girl he's in love with and her in love with him back for his own unconventionality and the reason the mc even survived properly was she didn't stand for her older brother's misogyny and the tritagonist is a japanese disabled abuse survivor who's redemptic arc and joining of the good guys is a healing arc that involves holding himself accountable and unlearning propaganda and ACTING on it instead of infantalizing him because he may have been 16 at the the time but literally everyone he'd hurt is younger than him and coddling and refusing to progress isn't actual healing.'Aang is an ugly loser because he shaves his head for cultural reasons and is kind and positive and boys aren't supposed to be if they wanna get girls and Katara should've ended up with Zuko to fix the nation that colonized hers by becoming it's leader and living there and Zuko's arc was ruined because he didn't become a good person for romance but for himself and to make friends' is NOT the hot take you think it is

[eye-in-hand]

Alexander, 27 (18+), ✡ autistic bisexual trans man, married to my platonic companion and in love with a gorgeous man, thank fuck they get along lmfao ✡ Deep in the depths of Jewish conversion.

Feel free to message in English, Russian, Spanish or Italian!

Art blog: @sova-dozhd

Fandom blog: @flut-flut

Book blog: @look-books

Header Image: Fanny Baron Rouah (fannybaron1 on insta)

I do not have anons on, if I can show my face while talking about politics you can show yours. Stand behind what you say proudly or don't say it at all.

And I have a lot of political opinions, but since I post about these the most and it's gonna give me the most shit lmfao:

All indigenous peoples have a right to self determination in their indigenous lands. All of them.

On Israel and Palestine: Note: These are not up for "debate". I am not spending any more time arguing with fascist hamasniks on tumblr dot com.

I am not qualified to have an opinion on how to end the centuries old conflicts in the Middle East. I urge people to listen to those in the region who support Peace and coexistence, whatever that may end up looking like.

Jews are indigenous to the Levant. You can not settle or colonize your native land. Israel is a land back movement.

The far-right of Israel speaks for Jews about as much as Trump speaks for me as an American. Which is to say he fucking doesn't.

While the conflict centers around Jews and Arabs, there are other groups of people in Israel and Palestine that also deserve safety.

Hamas is using Palestinians as human shields. Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist proxies of the Iranian regime, and Arab colonialism is just as awful as European colonialism and has resulted in numerous native cultures being erased.

To actually care about Palestinian lives you must condemn Hamas.

The UN and UNRWA are arms of Hamas and the Iranian regime.

I will not engage with historical revisionism, propaganda, or Nazi rhetoric on any topic, but especially Israel/Palestine. I will not engage with terrorist sympathizers. And I will not engage with anyone who claims Israel is committing Genocide when that is not a proven fact and everything says the opposite of that (like the Palestinian population actually growing. Which you know, doesn't happen during a genocide.). I will not engage with anyone who refuses to accept that Jews are indigenous to the Levant, and Arabs are indigenous to Arabia. This does not mean I support killing Arabs in the Levant, as I believe anyone should have the right to live where they want. I just support Native rights to self determination in their indigenous lands, no matter how long they've been forced into exile. My position on Israel is not founded by Religion or the Torah, it's founded on archeological fact. If you ignore these facts, I am not engaging with you.

I will not engage with Kahanists either btw. Equating all Palestinians with Hamas is racist.

On Ukraine and Eastern Europe:

Слава Україні! Героям слава!

Westerners really need to get a grip on not supporting the USSR/Russia or Russian supremacy.

Communists are not the opposite of Nazis - the USSR did not fight the Nazis because they cared about human rights.

Here at home (the US):

Trump is a fascist.

You do not get to not exercise your right and responsibility to vote and then bitch and whine that you don't get what you want.

America has a real problem with the alt-right and the rad-left. The average person is incredibly radicalized.

Russia interfered with our election because Trump owes Putin's friends money (or government secrets, take your pick).

Misc:

I'm neither a capitalist nor a communist because we need an entire re-hauling of human society and the only way it'll ever get better is to demolish the economic system all together. However this is an idealized world view and not the reality we live in right now.

I support unions, a 4 day work week, paid maternity and paternity leave, and not having to work when you're sick!

Anyone or any movement that tries to get you to hate an entire group of people for traits they were born w is trying to sell you something.

Trans people exist, deal with it. Someone else's identity is none of your business.

Support victims regardless of gender

Whiteness is a western social construct but that doesn't mean it doesn't affect people in different ways. We need to be open to talking about race if we want to take a stand against racism.

To truly be anti-imperialism, we have to stand against it regardless who is doing it.

Pro choice. If abortion is murder every twin that ate their sibling is a murderer. Sound ridiculous? Because it is. A fetus is not a baby. Abortion saves women's lives.

Waiting for a revolution is not going to save you. The "revolution" is not going to save you. To protect each other we need to engage with positive social change!

Politics are not sports, you don't have to choose a "team"

Being safe from bigotry is not conditional. I don't care how much you disagree with someone. You can disagree/hate someone without being discriminatory.

Most Importantly:

Value human life. Value companionship. Value peace. Value understanding. Value communication. It's harder to be radicalized by hate groups when you put loving human beings over ideologies.

[solar-sunnyside-up]

God I’m just. So scared and so fucking angry at America and its broken system. Whenever I see someone who’s in the third party who is significantly better than both the Republican and Democrat candidates it feels like a false hope. I’m at the point where everyone in the country realizes everything we’ve done wrong and actively try to reverse this to the best of our ability. I’m talking official apologies to those we’ve done wrong, I’m talking taking money away from the police force, military, and tax the hell out of the 1% to repay our debts, and talk to indigenous groups to give their land back. I’m just. So disappointed in the country I was born and live in. We’re supposed to be the “land of the free” give me a break what a joke. We enslave our own people in debt to ensure they work for the rest of their lives. Ugh I just needed to get that off my chest

Dw that's what this week is for!!

These are all valid feelings, the only comfort I think I can offer is:

You are not your government. I am Canadian, and we have more in common with one another then either of us have with "Leaders" from our countries. I have more in common with someone who couldn't understand me bc of language barriers then I could ever have with a billionaire. You are allowed to grieve these horrors, bc you care, but never EVER blame yourself for structural problems beyond your control. Your the one fixing it despite everything. And God I'm proud of you.