#idk if this post is controversial i'm not from europe

[newwavesylviaplath]

u can always tell a song is gonna be a banger if it's from an irish band and has some type of allusion to their feelings toward the brits

[tianshiisdead]

Alright 3 18 24 and 9 for both good and bad?

BAD

3. part of canon you found tedious or boring

I'm going to say something controversial within my niche, I think, and say the Japanese provinces KJLSDHDGF LIKE! I APPRECIATE THAT THEY ARE THERE AND I'M HAPPY FOR EVERYONE WHO THINKS THEY ARE FUN... AND I DEFINITELY THINK THEY DESERVE MORE LOVE... BUT I JUST. I DON'T CARE THAT MUCH 😭😭😭 I wish I did but... Japan too, I love Japan but I think I liked early Japan the best, before the moewave of Hetalia. I like him like how I like England, I like his edges and roughness, his bad traits that sometimes overshadow his good traits, and I miss them a lot... feels like they aren't really there as much anymore.

18. worst blorboficiation

My first thought was England but honestly, realistically I'd have to say America. People out here blorbofying him in horrifying ways, probably because the fandom is largely American and yknow what we do with our motherlands, we blorbofy them!! But America is not my motherland and I roll my eyes at it haha

24. Confess your sinful Hetalia thoughts

If I wrote out the shit I talk about to my friends or in some of the discords I'm in I'll get like, idk, kicked off tumblr for unimaginable explicit levels HAHA but I also think anyone who's seen my ao3 account knows about my sinful Hetalia thoughts. Well, it's not hard to find my account I don't think, but I like keeping my sinful side separate since I feel it might end up making my mostly serious posts on here have less... idk, credence? I enjoy serious hetaliaposting and sinful hetaliaposting but I enjoy them kind of seperately.

9. part of canon you think is overhyped

...UK br-

GOOD

3. most chill character stans

Honestly gonna have to agree with u Beetroot it's gotta be Lithuania stans djklghfd u guys seem so peaceful I'm jealous!

18. List three artists you want to shout out

@serica-e fluffy and cute and warm

@kimetsunozushi69 muscles... also pretty faces with a lot of personality

@stella-azurite pretty dresses!!

24. Name something someone has done to make the fandom a more positive place

already answered! Although I think your directory is really useful and I appreciate this Eastern Europe niche you've created even if I'm only glimpsing into it through you and a few others. We really just be making niches here and I think that's great lol

9. Have you made any friends in this fandom

Yes <33 more so than I expected honestly! I mean, I met my beloved darling gf in this fandom LOL but also many other friends who've taught me so much about their cultures and cultures of interest, and I'm so happy I met them. I'm also very happy with the circle of tumblr I'm in right now, even if I complain it's usually about random stuff that gets brought to me from outside, inside it's cozy and nice hehe

[gra-sonas]

Ngl, I'm kind of scared of sending you this bc I'm not sure how you will react to it. So I want to say that if it bothers you or sth like that, I'm sorry. I was hoping that you could help me out:I can't stand to watch Maria (sth similar happened to me with a friend so I can't get over it) so I decided to skip all her scenes in s3. But bc it seems that she will be important for the plot, I know that I will miss key things. Will you be willing to give a summary after each episode of her plot?

No need to be scared, nonnie. <3

No hate, but discussion of the character below the cut.

While I'm not here for any kind of Maria hate (which your ask is not, hence I'm happy to answer it), I understand that the character's not without controversy.

Ngl, I too struggle with scenes featuring her (I skipped pretty much all S2 scenes she was in, I just couldn't handle watching them), especially after 2x06, and especially any scenes she had with Alex or Michael after that.

I liked Maria a lot when the show started - until the character was - imo - highjacked by the writers (well, CAM, lbr), and used as a vehicle for several plotlines I vastly disliked. Sigh 😑

Still, I want to like her (again), and I want to watch entire episodes without skipping scenes she's in - all I hope for is that S3 won't feature any scenes with her and Alex. I just couldn't handle those (and I would definitely skip them). And even scenes with Michael would be... difficult to watch.

So, for the sake of wanting to enjoy S3, I hope she won't have any scenes with Alex and Michael. Instead, I hope she finally gets her own storyline and the show will stop using her as a prop/catalyst for other characters' stories.

That being said, I'm not sure I want to post summaries of her scenes, bc depending on what the show delivers, I'd potentially have to deal with things I don't want to post about.

IDK whether that makes sense, but on this blog, I really want to focus on the things I LOVE, not the things I'm not (too) happy about. Chances are, I'll like what they do with the character in S3, then I'd be happy to post about it, but if that's not the case... I'd rather not put it on my blog.

There's so much negativity going on, and I don't really want to add to that.

Tell you what, message me off anon after each episode (either here on Tumblr, on IG, or on Twitter) and ask me whether the ep is "safe to watch" or what to expect, and I'm happy to answer that in private (and really, I mean it, no need to be afraid of me, I don't bite xD), I just don't want to talk about it publicly, and like single the character out like that. (Just be aware that I'm from Europe and won't watch the show live when it airs - that would be at 2am my time and I rather value what little sleep I can get at night 😵 - might be a couple of hours before I'd be able to answer)

Hope that's okay for you.

Sending much love your way, nonnie, and I hope S3's going to be enjoyable for both of us! ❤️

P.S.: I won't answer any more asks about Maria, I don't want to discuss the character, possible S3 woes (esp. in regards to Malex), or other things (like S2). Thanks!

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

#please don’t yell at me#just gently popping in for a bit of devil’s advocate#many Jews (myself included) criticize the Israeli gov for their horrendous treatment of Palestine#but still feel that Israel should exist#just as much as Palestine should have their freedom#both ideals can exist in tandem :/

I'm not here to yell at you but you are on my post so I'm gonna make my Palestine Argument. I know I'm trying to get to 1000 followers and this probably isn't conducive to that. But I'm gonna be so nice about it I swear you guys. and I'll keep it as brief as possible.

I'll be upfront with my position first. I'm an antizionist and I'm against ethnostates on principle. That said I'm a goy and I'm not Palestinian so I don't have a horse in this race. That being said, non-Palestinian goyim have their own brand of Zionism that has a lot to do with this conflict to begin with so I don't feel bad about veering wildly out of my lane to talk about this. I'm also gonna keep this brief and not link to a ton of stuff because I'm fucking lazy, I really encourage anyone who is interested in this to do some research. I tend to do mine by going on wikipedia and then going down into the references section to try to get some readings on the topic. I know that's probably not the best way to do things but I'm not a scholar. I dropped out of college after one semester.

So whenever we talk about Israel and Palestine and Zionism we have to talk about the origins of Zionism. I would encourage anyone looking into this conflict to research christian zionism. Evangelicals are... insane. I don't think that statement is too controversial among my followers. But white English protestants were talking about a return of the jews to judea and the expulsion of the "infidels" from the holy land as the first step in the rapture in the 1800s, before Zionism really gained popularity among European Jews, something which I believe happened in the 1880s when there was a mass migration Jewish people from Eastern Europe to Ottoman controlled Palestine. Christian Zionism is relevant because things like the British Mandate for Palestine, far more motivated by colonialism and Christianity than any concern for Jewish people's welfare, were instrumental in setting up Israel as it exists today. Jewish zionism is of course is more understandable, as it gained popularity whenever the persecution of Jewish people spiked. I wouldn't have a problem with the idea of Jews setting up a country that they're the majority of in order to flee the persecution in the diasphora, but the way Israel was established was frankly in bed with the colonial interests of christian zionism. Christian Zionism and it's influence is why American Jews are split on the issue but American Evangelicals are pretty uniformly pro Israel.

So there's that history, which shows that there are other motives at play here than just a genuine desire for Jewish self governance, and then there's how Israel operates today. The state of affairs for Palestinians is ... not great. The last time I really did a deep dive into this issue was like two or three years ago so things may have gotten better without me knowing about it but Israel is still an expansive ethnostate. The Israeli government has citizenship laws that exclude and disenfranchise Palestinians, it continually encroaches on Palestinian land, kicks Palestinians out of their homes and replaces them with jewish people, ghettoizes Palestinians, and has a big fuck off US funded military that the use to bomb the shit out of Gaza. If Israel was interested in a two state solution that would still be comfortably bad enough, since Palestinian land was stolen to make one of those states, but there might be an argument that it's easier to just make two states and be done with it. However Israel is not interested in a two state solution, they're interested in wiping Palestine off the map.

To me there would be an argument for Israel's existence if it had been set up in, idk, Bavaria after WW2. I love the idea of self governance for persecuted people, and European Jews needed somewhere to go frankly. The Allied powers were splitting up Germany after they'd won and taken out the Nazi government. Should have given Jewish people a slice of that that they could govern for themselves so that they can have enough political power to prevent this from happening again. There was a huge antisemitism problem (still is to this day) and it needed a solution but I'm very skeptical that the agreed upon solution to that was to move displaced Jewish people to an unrelated country where uninvolved people were already living in a colonized area. They(US, UK, France, and USSR, but mostly the US and UK) were weaponizing Jewish trauma for colonial power. You can have all the arguments you want about the fact that Jewish holy sites are in Palestine and that's why, but to me that becomes a religious argument rather than one of self determination, and it's not an excuse for colonialism.

Basically Israel is a colonial project and while there's nothing wrong with a bunch of Jewish people moving to a different country, it was done in a way that effectively colonized Palestine, It stole land that people were already living on in order to set up a state that the people in question could not participate in. So Israel in the way that it exists today and has existed since it's inception should not exist. It does not have the right to exist.

Final thing. I'm a white American, so before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy I'm also in favor of land back and I consider my own country an illegitimate state. I live in Dakota territory as much as any Israeli lives in Palestinian territory. I don't support the uprooting of Jews who live in Palestine. Like I said at the top I'm against ethnostates, there's nothing wrong with human migration. I just think that they should have to live in Palestine, you can't declare it Israel and kick the Palestinians out, or, at least, you shouldn't.

the guz kahn thing was a response to someone being like, wow this guy is in ofmd and supports palestine too, that's so cool. and he was like, i'm not in that anymore actually, not sure why. i do support palestine though. those things aren't related. and then some people decided to be anti-semitic and went aha i knew taika was secretly a zionist. it's just twitter being weird and people putting screenshots together in a way that makes things seem more dramatic.

That's possible. Like I said in the tags to the post I think it probably has more to do with the budget cuts. We know OFMD's budget was cut for s2. Guz Khan is a fairly popular actor as I understand it and so paying him is somewhat expensive and his character is easier to write off than many of the others. That's my working theory.

That said I still don't think people were wrong for asking questions about it when he mentioned that he would never compromise for a job shortly after getting laid off. He said that he's not saying OFMD is that job and I'm personally choosing to take him at face value there but others are not wrong for reading into it. Additionally I've never seen anyone accuse Taika specifically of Zionism over this (or at all personally). I've seen people talk about Con O'Neill's Zionism, though I don't think that's relevant to this particular discussion it's a fair criticism of Con. Somehow I don't think Taika would be making that call. He got laid off at around the same time the show got renewed, which makes me think that David Jenkins and the creative team probably hadn't made any concrete creative decisions at the time the lay off happened. To my mind that means that he was more likely laid off by someone higher up on the chain. I don't know exactly how these things work but that would track with my money based theory and if he was laid off for ideological reasons I think anyone who knows anything would be squinting at HBO max as a company rather than at Taika who has taken a bit of a step back from his role as EP to play Blackbeard and might not even have the power to pull the trigger like that.

I'm willing to believe that there's nothing there and that things were said and data was compiled in a way that make it look a bit sus when it wasn't. I just don't think that raising that suspicion is wrong.

All that said don't be weird about Taika. That's a huge leap in logic and to my knowledge he has a) never said anything about Palestine and b) spoken out against colonialism repeatedly in other contexts so his politics while sometimes inconsistent do not seem to align with the biggest proponents of Zionism so there's literally no reason to think he has anything to do with anything. All the Jews I know personally are anti-zionist. I know that there are Zionist Jews but from the information I'm working with they're in the minority among Jews. Taika Waititi's Jewishness is unrelated to the Guz Khan lay off. I also gonna go out on a limb here and say Taika Waititi is unrelated to the Guz Khan lay off.

I'm gonna leave this tweet here because I think it's relevant

[janiedean]

I'm am not the other anon and I will not unfollow you simply because we do not see eye to eye on an issue. My thing is why wouldn't Europeans who follow you and seem to be pretty passionate about this debate even acknowledge that a lot of what we "know" about "race" comes from European thinkers. Just thinking about Locke and all the other political philosophers who supported slavery and the case is made. Why is even owning up to that so controversial?

..... because no one brought it up?

Like, uh, sorry if I sound rude, but... that wasn’t the point of the issue. The point is that we don’t like it and we don’t use it because of the meaning it took after nazism which tainted it beyond salvation while in the US even if it has the same origins it hasn’t been tainted beyond salvation and people are comfortable using it (tho if you agree it has that same origin then you’re automatically implying that it’s not a Good Term, but never mind that). But like, no one denies that before it was used plenty, actually that was the entire point. Since it was commonly used and we had plenty thinkers shaping that concept up and whatnot it was a term/ideology that was a thing (wrongly), then with nazism it got completely fucking out of hand, we saw what thinking in **different races** terms brought and we rejected it. But like if we’re discussing why we don’t use it, then the point is that its current meaning is tied to neonazism. No one in this discussion (last that I had it idk if it popped up on someone else’s feed) was discussing the origin of the term or Locke’s support of slavery or whatever it is, but like, saying that after WWII we rejected it implies automatically that we know perfectly that BEFORE NAZISM it was a thing everywhere and it was an acceptable way of seeing things. how is that not owning up to it?? disowning it means that at some point it had to be part of the discourse.

like, if someone disowns their children, he wants nothing to do with them anymore but they still generated them and they can’t deny it. it’s the exact same point. we know that. it’s implicit. in between us we don’t need to state it because everyone knows the historical background, why would we need to if we know it already? and I don’t literally know anyone european who wouldn’t own up to it. like the fact that we don’t do it now post-WWII doesn’t mean we didn’t do it before but like I didn’t even think that was up for discussion XDDD it’s implicit XD if you want someone to discuss that then you have to ask them what do you think of the racial question the way it was in europe before WWII or what do you think of the fact that european intellectuals shaped that concept, obviously they won’t bring it up without prompting because for them it’s implicit in the issue at hand