#imperialists will always side with each other

[robotpussy]

pro palestine protest today in London and suddenly nobody is allowed to wear anything that "conceals their identity" in certain parts of central London and the excuse of "based on evidence" it's so clear this is just racial profiling and islamophobia and a gateway for police harassment and even when asked about masks the pigs are still trying to cover their trail. ok fascist police state

[vanessalocke]

Black Triangle Trio

One of the things I don't like about Himaruya is that this author loves to create triangles, but the triangles he creates are often very unnatural and forced to satisfy his complicated loveline fetish. While the true triangle relationship really affects the whole world, he doesn't care. (But I care!)

As I said before, I have the headcanon that the Big5 is divided into two parts:

Russia/Soviet Union -> America: Russia really likes, even admires America. There are many American cultural elements that greatly impact the lives of Russians. However, despite admiring America's liberty, if Russia were told to live like America, Russia would refuse.

America -> Russia/Soviet Union: in short, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States sent experts to research and review the situation to help the Soviet Union avoid collapse. The collapse of the Soviet Union makes America sad.

Russia/Soviet Union -> China: two lone wolves isolated by the whole world had to rely on each other. Economically, China is the largest economic supporter of Russia when Russia is under economic sanctions.

China -> Russia/Soviet Union: admire, really admire. Very few countries (especially Western countries) have this admiration from China. Even during the most crisis period of the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, the Chinese, although angrily said "the imperialist Soviet Union", still carried a feeling of anxiety and regret about the period when the two countries were close.

China -> America: from enemy to ally. China used to rely on and be protected by the US in every move, gaining a lot of influence in US diplomacy. However, China does not admire America, so China always tries to deny that past.

America -> China: very apprehensive. Having wholeheartedly covered both the dark side and the bright side, the relationship was also very close, but unexpectedly, the later rise of China, tolerated and supported by the US, would become a serious competitor to the US.

Ps: I don't ship 3p. Actually, I really like trios, but hate love triangles. These three are my brot3, I like to think that although they are rivals, they are also close friends, and I like to talk about their ambiguous and complicated relationship.

[paper-mario-wiki]

You made a decent post about how imperialist news sources obfuscate the settler-colonial nature of israel and how we should be supporting Palestinian liberation but then some liberal says "oh actually the imperialist news says youre wrong" and you roll over and apologize?

Of course imperial nations strengthen certain currents of their "enemies" to manufacture consent to brutally crush them further.

This will be my last statement on the matter, as I really don't think it's my place to be a source for information on this topic. This ought to be interpreted as an opinion, because it is. My blog is called Paper-Mario-Wiki. I'm a bit out of my lane speaking on geopolitical conflicts. That said, I'd be doing myself a disservice by not at least making my stance clear.

Completely setting aside your assessment of The Intercept of all things as imperialist news, you'll note that in my post I only apologized for unilaterally endorsing Hamas and not acknowledging them as a creation of the Israeli occupying forces. They are, by definition, a terrorist group. And they are, in fact, killing civilian families. It is a violent, terrible thing that is happening.

I did not apologize for, or take back, saying that the IDF has been murdering and torturing Palestinian civilians for longer than you or I have been alive, and that they are singularly at fault for deaths of the occupying settlers. In fact, at the end of the post I reiterated my support for the Palestinian resistance.

Regaining land and footing against an oppressor will be violent and regrettable, as (I believe) on a fundamental level most reasonable people do not want to kill each other for any reason. But it will continue to be violent and regrettable because of the state of Israel, and exclusively because of Israel, for the alternative is the total displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people, as has been their goal for the past century. Real, militant resistance does not look cool or pretty or sometimes even fair. The loss of human life will always be terrible, and no matter how good the intentions of strategic wartime violence, it is still violence. It is still war, and war should not be glorified on any side.

I feel no shame in acknowledging nuance in one of the most complicated international affairs of my lifetime. I also feel no shame in acknowledging this nuance while steadfastly believing that many, many people would end up dead in this conflict regardless of what tactics Palestinian forces used. The only difference is that the settlers who were murdered by Hamas took the land they were murdered on, and the violence of the oppressed cannot be equivocated to the violence of the oppressor.

[determinate-negation]

“To re-emphasize the point: ethics relate to the individual and the necessary consequence of this relationship is that the individual’s conscience and sense of responsibility are confronted with the postulate that he must act as if on his action or inaction depended the changing of the world’s destiny, the approach of which is inevitably helped or hindered by the tactics he is about to adopt. (For in the realm of ethics there is no neutrality and no impartiality; even he who is unwilling to act must be able to account to this conscience for his inactivity.) Everyone who at the present time opts for communism is therefore obliged to bear the same individual responsibility for each and every human being who dies for him in the struggle, as if he himself had killed them all. But all those who ally themselves to the other side, the defence of capitalism, must bear the same individual responsibility for the destruction entailed in the new imperialist revanchist wars which are surely imminent, and for the future oppression of the nationalities and classes. From the ethical point of view, no one can escape responsibility with the excuse that he is only an individual, on whom the fate of the world does not depend. Not only can this not be known objectively for certain, because it is always possible that it will depend precisely on the individual, but this kind of thinking is also made impossible by the very essence of ethics, by conscience and the sense of responsibility. He whose decision does not arise from such considerations — no matter how highly developed a creature he may otherwise be exists in ethical terms at a primitive, unconscious, instinctual level.”

Georg Lukacs, Tactics and Ethics (1919)

[hammerhead-jpg]

Okay okay okay imma talk about something

Redacted ramble number 45 go!!!!!

The potential argument as to why shipping Asher and David is bad could be "yes, Asher and David have shown to be very close in a way regular friendships aren't, literally being "more than a promise " and "two sides of the same coin" and all the other other stuff we've been told, but why can't that be platonic? Why can't we assume that even in a world where they don't already have their own mates that kinda thing couldn't possibly be platonic ? As a society we always assume that if two people that aren't related become closer than your average friendship it automatically means that it has to be romantic, that they then have to start dating, move in together, get married and have children. But Asher and David very well could have all that closeness and still be just best friends."

And to that I would usually say that well, shipping is done for fun. There doesn't have to be rhyme or reason to it. Most people who ship them (at least I think) are able to comprehend the idea that Asher and David could be that close and still consider themselves best friends and not lovers because that is the reality of the series.

But then I thought no- I - uh -NO!!

Because hhejjsjesjsuj EVERY single interaction that implies closeness IS FUCKIN FULL of sextual tension like no joke with the scene in the wedding where David fixes Asher's tie I was actually wondering if they were gonna start making out or somth

I can't fuckin say that their relationship is inherently romantic cuz that would be a lie but LIKE hdkdndmdhjfjj their relationship is so much closer to romance than your average very VERY close friendship

To paint you a picture Milo is also a person that is very very close to David and Asher

Sure, maybe not as much to them as they are to each other, Milo met them later in life, he was never their roommate or David's main support while he was grieving his father's death but they're still very close

Yesterday I read a fic about all three of them as a polycule and it's just felt...wrong

I guess if there are any wolf boys polycule lovers rn I'm sorry but having Milo in there felt wrong in a way I cannot describe

And the imperium AU.....the IMPERIUM AU

The existence of the imperium au inherently implies that if Asher and David didn't meet their mates they would be together romantically. THERE IS A NON CANON YET OFFICIAL AU WHERE THEY WERE LOVERS FOR LIFE SO CLOSE THAT WHEN DAVID DIED NOT ONLY DID IT PERMANENTLY CHANGE ASHER BUT LITERALLY A PART OF HIS MAGIC DIED WITH DAVID.

There is nothing in the story that really needed Asher and David to be mates, so much so that in the original Imperium AU episode Erik had no plans for them to have been lovers until he made the cataclysm sequel it's literally just because Erik wanted to

SO IF the implication is that if they didn't meet their mates they would've have been lovers then you CANNOT judge people for imagining that scenario where it's not in an imperialistic world where one of them ends up dying

Also I can't even say that it's because they didn't meet their mates because although David obviously didn't meet Angel because they were engaged(?) to the king imperial Asher I'm pretty sure meets Baabe around the same time that he meets them in the prime universe so like?????

In conclusion If Erik ships them then you cannot blame me for doing the same thing!!

[stirringwinds]

i know people talk a lot about the us and UK special relationship but it kind of fell after the Suez and France kind of sneakily stole it didn't he? I mean did the same before the wars

thanks for the ask! ngl, as a londoner, i've always personally felt the representation of the "Special Relationship" as this mega-close and affectionate dynamic is kind of...an un-holistic understanding of the UK or England, as well as of the United States. don't get me wrong, it's one of their most important relationships and there's a lot of deep history there—my issue is mostly with rose-tinted interpretations underpinning it and what biases they showcase. these were heavily biased by Churchill's (imperialist) gaze of envisioning Anglo-American affinity and leadership on the world stage. this interpretation quite significantly downplayed the rivalry, power struggles, conflicts and differences that historians existed between the US and the British Empire, or how US presidents tended to see it in far less majestic terms. like, Churchill rather downplays FDR's vehement disagreements with him over the issue of Indian independence lol or decolonisation (because the US was eyeing the world as a chessboard, re: new markets and also whether or not support for the old colonial power would be a bulwark against or risk soviet or other communist influence).

so, while you're right that Suez was a pretty low moment in US-Britain relations due to the US being pissed at Britain and France jeopardising its ostensible goal of swaying Egypt away from the Soviet sphere of influence (sidenote: Egypt itself was trying to navigate the mess of the Cold War rivalry to secure its interests), i don't really see it as "falling" after Suez or stolen by France simply because that dynamic Churchill painted a picture of never really existed in that way. plus, Europe (France included) and the ex-colonies of the British Empire (like the dominions and India) weighed heavily on British foreign policy/its national outlook too; i tend to find an overemphasis on a rose-tinted view of the "Special Relationship" leads to a lot of US-centrism that shuts out this understanding. to me, Arthur and Alfred's relationship is most interesting when we situate them properly amidst all these other imperial and geopolitical cross-currents. of which Francis is an important one, from the time he helped Alfred during the Revolutionary War, to the Entente Cordial, WWI and the post-WWII world of NATO, the EU and so on.

in hetalia-verse, it's one of the reasons I personally headcanon Arthur and Alfred as father and son. their bond is lasting, forged by the blood, steel and saltwater of empire, and all the familial, deep and troubling implications that implies. they are "stuck" with each other in some ways, because post 1945, it's a familial dynamic of the old king and the young, ambitious crown prince who thinks his father is out of time—and out of line. francis never really "steals" anything because he and arthur's relationship is on a very different axes: francis is the neighbour who has been by arthur's side as his enemy, friend, lover, rival in imperial douchebaggery, ally (for better and also for worse, like in suez...)—and everything in between. whereas arthur and alfred have some real patricidal/regicidal, titanomachy-level father-son power struggles going on, mixed in with this dysfunctional level of understanding and them also colluding together shadily (you are different from him in many ways, there are many things he'll never understand about you—but you are your father's son, alfred; to be powerful is to be tainted).

so in conclusion, i see alfred-arthur and arthur-francis as both very important foundational dynamics crucial to arthur's character, but conceptualised differently from that understanding of the "special relationship" because they're two different kinds of relationships, even if there is the overlapping dynamic of power, rivalry and empire. ✌🏼

[the1975attheirverybest]

Free Palestine + BLM movements

Touched on this briefly before, but apparently it’s a persistent issue in online spaces so I’ll say it more fully this time. To online advocates and activists, on both the black side and the Palestinian side. PLEASE DO NOT LOSE SIGHT OF THE GOAL. white supremacy thrives when we are pitted against each other. Our struggles are inherently intertwined. AND HAVE HISTORICALLY INTERSECTED. Below is a fact-checked and verified list of examples.

Malcolm X has written an essay on Zionism in which he rightly stated The ever-scheming European imperialists wisely placed Israel where she could geographically divide the Arab world, infiltrate and sow the seed of dissension among African leaders and also divide the Africans against the Asians.”

As seen here and here. Palestinians in Gaza and The West Bank have protested for black people against police brutality in the US, including during the George Floyd protests.

VERY IMPORTANT: the IDF trains American police forces to treat black folks with the same cruelty that they treat Palestinians.

So, this is why I always say “context matters.” If all you’ve ever known is TikTok activism, if you haven’t looked into the history and understood the way that systemic oppression operates, then it’s of course easy to get sucked into taking sides. WE ARE ON THE SAME SIDE. Stop fighting. The enemy is racism. White supremacy.

if one or ten or 1526272 black people shitting on you as an Arab makes you less supportive of their rights, or likewise if one or ten or 15627282 Palestinians using anti black rhetoric makes you suddenly feel that they don’t deserve human rights, then with all due respect you were never with the cause to begin with.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

thoughts on ppl (not necessarily zutarians) saying that killing yon rah would've been good/relieving for katara?

Simple: these people don't understand Katara. At all.

Katara's Trauma

The attack on her village changed Katara's life forever. She was forced to face the ugly side of humanity, lost her mother, her dad left to fight the war, and she had to step up and basically raise her older brother. All of it because the Southern Raiders need to kill HER, not Kya.

War, grief, growing up too fast, survivor's guilt... all of it was throw at Katara at once, and even though she seems to be well-adjusted enough, episodes like The Swamp, in which we see just how desperately she wants her mom, or even the first episode itself, when she immediately gets emotionally attached to Aang because he gave her the chance to be a kid and have fun, show us that she's still struggling to process it all.

She 100% needs some form of closure. But what exactly can give her that, and at what cost?

Righteous Fury VS Blind Rage

Katara hates Yon Rha and wants him to pay for what he did to her mother, and by consequence to everyone who loved her. That is not a problem. In fact, it is the way anyone in her position would feel. Aang himself says that's how he felt towards the Fire Nation when he found out about the genocide of his people, and towards the sandbenders when they stole Appa - both times, that anger caused him to get into the Avatar state.

And Katara could not stand to see Aang like that. When he tried to weaponize it, she tried to talk him out of it. Why? Because that kind of reaction of violently lashing out, like nothing else matters ALWAYS leads to problems. That has been a consistent theme through the show.

Whenever Aang's grief triggers the Avatar state, everyone around him is terrified, and he got dangerously close to accidentally hurting people during it - and just the emotional distress of it all was so intense, he was having nightmares about it later.

Zuko had the awful habit of verbally attacking people who had done literally nothing to him whenever he got too upset about anything, and he even got the point of started a physical fight because a guy dared to talk to his girlfriend, who looked very bored listening to it. Not only did this kind of behavior push people away from him, but it also made Zuko miserable. Even his bending was affected by it, as his impatience and pride made him refuse to master the basics before moving onto the advanced set.

During the whole episode of "The Southern Raiders" Katara is taking out her anger at Yon Rha on the wrong people. She tells Sokka that he didn't love their mom as much as she did, does NOT give Zuko a much needed telling off when he mocks the culture of Aang's people - ya know, the one his family commited genocide against - which she 100% would have done at any other time, is pushing herself too hard and looking exhausted as she flies on Appa, and even uses bloodbending willingly for the first time ever... on the wrong guy.

Sure, he was still an imperialist scumbag, but considering Katara was horrified after using it on Hama, who had literally been using it to capture and torture innocent people and tried to force Sokka and Aang to kill each other right in front of her, it's safe to say Katara would not see that as enough to excuse her own actions.

Katara is not being "empowered" in her quest for revenge. She is spiralling out of control and basically crying out for help without even realizing it. She has every right to be angry, but she's letting it take over her.

(Note: Her being angry at/not trusting Zuko even after everyone else befriended him is NOT misplaced anger like the episode claims. Zuko might not be as bad as Yon Rha, but he gave Katara plenty of reason to dislike him).

Action, Inaction & Guilt

Kya's death, and the attack against their tribe, was the definition of injustice, and Katara wants that to be corrected. Obviously it is impossible to undo it all, but there's still time to punish the people who caused it.

However, we cannot forget that Katara is 14-years-old. She's a child fighting the adults' war, like her friends. A child that had to hear her older brother say that when he heard the word "mom" he thought of her now. Not only is that unfair, it is also one of the main things that Katara had been trying to escape for a long time: not being allowed to be a kid.

Obviously, neither her nor the rest of the Gaang have the option of just not trying to stop Ozai - especially not after the failed invasion on the day of the eclipse, that had a ton of the adults on their side imprisoned.

But for a long time, she also did not have the option to go after Yon Rha directly. She didn't know his name, didn't know what position he held, had no idea how to track him. He was completely out of reach until Zuko gave her a lead to follow. Katara now had the option to confront her mother's killer and punish him for what he had done - even though that was not her obligation, since she was just a child.

But did she really see it that way? Like I said, Yon Rha had been after HER, not Kya - who only died because she lied to protect her child. Survivor's guilt could have very easily played a part on Katara's decision, and honestly I think some of the dialogue sugests that it did. She does not argue when Zuko says that forgiving is the same as doing nothing, and even her "Then you didn't love her like I did" to Sokka after he objected to her mission could be seen as her letting slip that, deep down, she believes that if she doesn't avenge her mom, doesn't "make up to her" for "causing" her death, then it means she did not really love her. And she deliberately mentions Kya's lie saving her life both to Zuko and to Yon Rha.

Katara isn't going after him just out of anger - she feels this is her responsibility. Her burden. Once again, this is not her being "empowered" enough to punish a wicked man. This is her falling into the trap of thinking she's not allowed to not want that weight on her shoulders.

A Forgotten Man

When Katara finally confronts her mother's murder, he is very different from the terrifying man she remembered. Sure, he can still use his bending a bit, but he clearly has not fought in a while, is easily overpowered, and is the definition of cowardly. He doesn't have any allies with him anymore, just his elderly mother that seems to hate him as much as he hates her. The cruel, oppressive system he was once a part of has chewed him up and spat him out. Nobody gives a damn what happens to this miserable bastard.

Now, obviously he doesn't want to die, especially not if the person who will take him out has EVERY REASON to make it slow and painful, but considering what we saw of his life, I wouldn't be surprised if he was the type that would just lay his head on a pillow at night and think "Wouldn't it be nice if I just never woke up again?"

THIS is the man Katara sees before her. Like she said, someone that is pathetic, sad and empty. Someone that would not be missed by literally anyone - not his mother, not his community, not the Fire Lord. Someone that offered her the head of the one family he still has left.

Kya meanwhile had a happy life before the Southern Raiders came to her tribe. She was a brave, loving mother that sacrificed her very life to protect her child, and left behind a family that is still grieving her.

This would not be "an eye for an eye" Yon Rha's death could NEVER come even close to be enough to "pay his debt" because it was absolutely worthless.

But does that mean that Katara confronting him at all was pointless?

Healing

By the end of the episode, after deciding to spare that bastard,Katara is being comforted by Aang, her best friend - like she had always done for him after he'd get into the Avatar state - and giving a second chance to her former enemy. She has also made it very clear that she will not forgive her mother's killer. Not now, not ever.

But this does not mean that she's back on square one. She faced her biggest trauma, confronted the monster that had been haunting her all her life, and acknowledged her anger and accepted that it will ALWAYS be there, but without allowing it to turn her into something she's not.

It is simmilar to her fight with her dad at the start of Book 3. After suppressing all the resement she felt after he left them to go fight against the Fire Nation, then taking her anger out on him, she broke down and accepted her pain, her vulnerability. She admited that, at the end of the day, she's just a child that wanted her dad with her, and now that Hakoda is there again, she CAN have that.

Naturally, there's nothing Yon Rha could say or do to make things better. But by facing him, giving him a taste of his own medicine, leaving him to rot, and then helping take down the very system that allowed people like him to commit attrocities everywhere, Katara finally got some closure. The grief will always be with her, but it won't define her anymore. She no longer has to be the adult figure of her family, she no longer has to wonder where that evil monster that took her mom from her is hiding and if he's making new victims.

Conclusion

Yon Rha was a horrible person, and if Katara had killed him, nobody could have judged her, and it sure as hell would NOT have made her just as bad or worse than him.

She needed to face him. She needed to let her anger out, to show him all the pain he had put her and her family through, to make him feel as powerless and scared as she and her mother had been.

But she did not need to stoop to his level. He did not deserve her forgiveness, but she did not need to sacrifice what was left of her innocence to put him out of his misery. He was just not worth it. Killing him would have been just violence for the sake of violence, and that is not in Katara's nature, and would have NOT helped her with literally anything. Quite the contrary.

She didn't spare his life for his sake, but for her own.

[hussyknee]

Regular reminder that if you don't live in the Global North, nothing they have to say applies to the rest of us. Actually most things they say have little value anyway since the Global South and Eastern folks are afterthoughts to them, much less center us in their social justice.

- The USAmerican cultural hegemony has fuck all to do with us. Be aware of what they're trying to peddle you, but they have more power to harm and radicalise you than you have ever could to harm them. This applies to both the Western left and right wing. They are both equally racist, colonial and imperialist.

- Global North issues around capitalism, exploitation and piracy have nothing to do with us. Consumer activism might work to some extent over there idk, but if anyone brings it up over in the lands of the Black and brown people, you can laugh them out of the country.

- Their queer history is not ours. Congrats to Stonewall and all but that's just some shit that happened in the US. We need to dig past 18 different strata of cultural genocide and colonial garbage to mine our queer histories back into the light, and designing microlabel flags and fighting over colonizer language acronyms have fuck all to do with that either.

- Always pirate everything within reach. Save up and buy from authors and creators you really like (that's what I do – esp when it's a BIPOC creator), but people who can't afford to buy shit in the first place ain't stealing food out of anybody's mouths. Pirating is praxis and always has been since the days of the East India Company.

- Don't buy into the USAmerican theories of race. They aren't universal. "BIPOC" especially is a USAmerican specific term, it is not used in the UK or other settler colonies. Constructs of race and the tribal Other far predated European colonization; race as a colour system that exists today is simply one variation of it. The global apartheid against the mellanated takes many forms, histories and terminology. There are especially no "people of colour" in Asia, Africa, Caribbean and Polynesia. There are only people who live there, and "people of white".

Race is a fake, made-up conceptualization imposed by whoever has power within each region. It's ethnic, cultural and casteist, with no biological basis whatsoever. There is no uniformity, no universalism, no rhyme nor reason to any of it; the only people who know exactly who doesn't belong are the oppressors. I'm seeing concepts like "unambiguously black" floating around the terminally online Western left; any dark-skinned person of the Global South should split their sides laughing at it. Whites have no ambiguity on who the darkies are.

- Read, watch, listen to, play whatever the hell you want, just have the sense to pirate it, and to be very conscious about the narratives they try to smuggle.

- When the US and UK speak, listen with compassionate interest, offer what solidarity you can spare for their downtrodden, and then go back to reading and following your own fucking news. Focus on our own women's and reproductive rights, trans rights, queer histories, rise of fascism, militarisation, anti-blackness, class warfare, nationalist violence, imperialism etc. That is decolonization, that is emancipation from the Western cultural hegemony. Everything else is the bread and circuses of empire, in which both the left and right wing of the West are complicit.

We owe the Global North nothing more than we can each individually afford to extend to them on grounds of common human decency and compassion. Which is a lot more than they will ever reciprocate.

[apollos-olives]

Hi, I appreciate your effort on spreading the words about Palestine on this website that's been suppressing Palestine content so much these days. I've been posting about Palestine and got shadowbanned on my other account. I just want to say something.

Regarding the last ask about white queers, I as an Asian (Vietnamese) queer can definitely tell that the queer liberals are very unproductive. I can tell from many people even my friends, who are staunchly against the West, lumping queerness with Western value (despite our culture is rich of drag queens and homosexuality has always been there) and therefore very queerphobic. Queer liberals cannot and must not stand with the oppressor bc the oppressed are homophobic, which yes so many times the homophobia from the oppressed comes from the oppressor. A lot of queer spaces being this reactionary makes me don't want to join a lot of queer spaces.

I also feel like the conversation around why people support Palestine has been very strange. People using various amounts of idealistic reasoning, but the number one reason that I and pretty much 80% of the world would agree on is that it's the fight of the oppressed against the oppressor, and 80% of the world had been in the place of the oppressed. I was lucky to not live in those times in history, but I was taught and told to never forget our oppressed history, of more than 127 years fighting the colonialists and imperialists. Our hospital was also bombed, our cities destroyed, villagers massacred. When I saw the Palestinian doctors said they will stay here for Palestine, it reminds me of my grandma who said the exact same about Vietnam. Palestinians arguably had it significantly worse than us Vietnamese during our war time with that total blockade, so I as a Vietnamese wants to share the struggle with them too.

Also Idk why an one-state Palestine solution is so hard to imagine to people. We Vietnamese also had been subjected to a two-state solution as well, and what happened after reunification is very simple. Most of the people just stayed and became citizens of the new united Vietnam, some fleed to other countries. If Palestine unification happens it would be similar imo. A lot of arguments against the one-state solution comes from just pure projection bc Israel afraid of what they're doing to Palestinians will be done to them

Anyway that's just my two cent about Palestine from a Vietnamese perspective. Free Palestine now and forever.

hi and yes i'm doing as much as i can to try to spread what's going on. i'm not typically afraid of getting shadowbanned right now, but i understand how much that hurts and affects other people who are also trying to spread awareness.

you're right about the way that queerness is often grouped up with the concept of the west and white majority countries. and that (white lib) queers would happily side with the oppressor out of the fear that they would be further oppressed by the other group that is being oppressed itself. this is just one of the many ways that propaganda twist the narrative and tries to split up minorities, and this entire belief of "us and them" is only going to hurt everyone in the end. we, as oppressed minorities, need to stand together against the oppressor, not be against each other.

i'm not gonna add much onto what you said about vietnam, since you already said pretty much everything, but it is saddening to see how so many people can relate to what's going on in palestine because of how much colonization has impacted their life and own culture and country. it genuinely is so unfortunate, and no one deserves to go through the horrors of colonization and being horrifically oppressed. i wouldn't wish that on even the zionists (and i fucking HATE those guys).

you're right about the one state solution thing. the only reason people fear it is because they are scared that the palestinians will do to them the same thing they did to us. it's a sad delusion.

thank you for speaking up though, free palestine 🇵🇸

[mandalorianchronicles]

Did Bo-Katan ever believe in Mandalorians being Mandalorian by "blood"?

So one thing I keep on seeing Bo-Katan accused of is this idea that she believes the Mandalorians are Mandalorians by blood. I believe this started when the Armorer said she took the title of Mand'alor by right of blood and the Darksaber, which anyone who watched Rebels would know was not the case. She has never said or done anything to make me believe that she held that view. If ever she did, she certainly doesn't now, as the writers have made exceedingly clear. But did she before?

It was Satine and the New Mandalorians who held the view that Mandalorians could be a race of people or, at the very least, a nationality. Those who held to the old ways, The Faithful, always believed that Mandalorians were Mandalorian by creed, not by blood. When Death Watch formed as a sect of the Faithful, they also held that view. They wanted to return to the ancient ways of Mandalorians when they were conquerors, and they certainly taught their followers that anyone could become Mandalorian as long as they followed the creed. This was canon in The Clone Wars, by the way.

Now, I've heard people argue that Bo-Katan also believes in right of bloodlines because she said things like "My family once ruled all of Mandalore". That in no way means that her family believed they had the right to rule because of "royal blood". Mandalorians are a religion of warriors. Warriors require an enemy in order to be warriors. They fought each other for dominance.

In the old days, the Tuang conquered those who lived on neighboring worlds and subjugated them. They were imperialists who presided over the mass genocide of many races. Eventually, when their race began to die, they started teaching their slaves and vassals to follow the resol'nare too - that's how humans and other species first became Mandalorian. In the present, most Mandalorians are human. In centuries past, when their expansionist efforts were repeatedly thwarted by the Jedi and the Republic, they were forced to stop trying to colonize. But a warrior society still needs an enemy to fight. So the clans turned on each other and began jockeying for power. This isn't to say that the clans didn't struggle for power before, only that it became all out civil war when they didn't have a common enemy to unite them. Those wars wrought terrible destruction on their planets, evident on the surface of Mandalore and the ruins of Concord Dawn. Rebels really delves into the cold, hard facts of Mandalorian culture and their self destructive nature.

Over the centuries, certain clans rose to power and stayed in power. Clans that held the fealty of lesser clans became Houses. House Vizsla and House Kryze were two such families. They ruled because they were strong. Those houses were comprised of family members who were born into the clan and some who were adopted into the clan. Whether you were born into it, or adopted into it, you were raised to become a Mandalorian. Their children were (mostly) taught to be warriors. I say mostly because the old canon when TCW was being written tells us that the New Mandalorians had been around for centuries, and that there were family members of even the great houses who had people on both sides. There's some disagreement on when the ideals of the New Mandalorians came about in the current canon. The Mandalorian concurred with the old canon that Bo (and probably her older sister, Satine) had been taught the warrior ways by their father, who was a powerful warlord and the head of House Kryze. We don't know if Satine ever took the creed like Bo-Katan did, but it's implied that she did not when Bo says that "she [Bo] didn't embarrass her father". I don't know how opposed to fighting Satine was in her youth, but when she was sent to Coruscant to protect her during the conflict, she became an all out pacifist. Honestly, though I think pacifism is flawed to its core, I can understand her desire to remake Mandalore into a more traditional society, since years of civil war had driven Mandalorians to the brink of extinction. But to rebuild a civilization, one must break the old one - so all traditional Mandalorians who believed in the creed and followed the warrior ways were banished to Mandalore's moon, Concordia. Adonai Kryze was killed in the Great Clan Wars, and so began the downfall of House Kryze. Bo's nephew, Korkie, was raised in a society where Mandalorians were Mandalorian by blood. Bo would have also also raised in this society until she was old enough to be on her own and she left her remaining family to join Death Watch.

Death Watch was fighting against the ideas of a Mandalorian race or nation, but the tactics they used to achieve their goal of removing Satine and her government from power were brutal and dishonorable. However, it's important to note that their brutality was in keeping with the ancient culture of the original Mandalorians - the Tuang. Yes, they were terrorists. Yes, they were brutal and they treated weaker people terribly. But, that's actually in keeping with the old ways. Since they are also followers of ancient tradition, I'm extremely curious what the Armorer and the Children of the Watch will want to do with their strength and power once they do retake Mandalore, but that's another matter.

We see the subject of bloodlines come up as a very serious matter in Chapter 22, Guns for Hire. Axe Woves is young enough that he was probably introduced to the ideas of Mandalorians by blood when he was small, as Bo-Katan was. We don't know when he became a part of Bo-Katan's Nite Owls. He may not have been with her during her time with Death Watch, joining her sometime in the years that followed, after the Empire rose to power. In any case, just because he carried over those beliefs into adulthood doesn't mean that she did. There were people in Death Watch who believed different things, obviously; that's why they split when Maul gained the Darksaber, even if it was by creed.

As of yet, there is no evidence that Bo-Katan ever believed that Mandalorians were Mandalorian by blood instead of creed. She believed in the greatness of her family, but she never insinuated they ruled because it was their right by blood, as opposed to the honor they had earned as capable and powerful warriors. Mandalorians are supposed to be loyal to their clan, always fighting to put their family first. Whether you're born into it or adopted into it, your family is everything. When Satine rejected everything they had been taught, Bo considered their family ties severed, and she sought her own sister's death. But when Maul murdered Satine and took the Darksaber, she saw the wrongness of it all. She has been walking the line of retaining their warrior culture while also uniting their people and stopping the endless bloodshed (that she was once a part of) ever since the end of the Clone Wars.

Personally, I don't believe Bo-Katan's belief in Mandalorians by creed instead of blood began with her introduction to the CoTW. She's been with them for too short a time for there to be that much change in deeply held beliefs. Her conviction that Din was just as much a Mandalorian as the rest of them was heartfelt and passionately spoken. I think this is something she has believed for a long time. But, even if it isn't, we are seeing that this is a woman who believes in the resol'nare, even if she doesn't believe in the "add-ons" (ancient tradition or otherwise) that the CoTW have adopted. And if there's one thing that we (and Bo-Katan) learned in TCW and Rebels, it's that neither old ways nor new ways are necessarily good ways. They have a chance to make Mandalore into a truly good society, and I think that Bo-Katan is the perfect person to lead them into that because she's seen both extremes and rejected both. She can forge a better way forward for their people...Din certainly believes so.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Hello.

You and gay-jesus-probably have successfully made me question everything with your view that Tears of the Kingdom is imperialist propaganda, so that's been fun.

Anyway, I decided to share this discussion with the Zelda fans on reddit, and perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of them disagreed. Here is what they said (I'm Alarming_Afternoon44):

So what do you think? Have I and all these other people just been duped by the game's manipulative framing? Or do they actually have a point?

And if you'd rather not answer this, or would prefer if I censored the usernames, just tell me and I'll delete this.

Hey! Thanks a lot for reaching out, and I'm glad it made you think stuff through!!

Honestly, as I mentioned in this post, I am not super interested about in-world conversations about who oppresses who, because what can be assessed from the game is super vague and more vibes-based than evidence-based. Within the text, of course that the Good Zonais are good and the Bad Ganondorf is bad! But that's my whole point! The narrative has been deliberately crafted so that the zonais and Rauru (and Hyrule) are as blameless as possible (and it's not doing a great job at it overall to be frank; we would not be having these conversations about how offputting it all feels for a non-zero number of people if it did do a great job). More importantly, I want to focus on what sort of real-life narrative it all parallels. Because people make stories, and people live in the real world.

Not going after everyone's throat here, gamedev is hard and the hydras that are AAA game production do end up doing super weird stuff, especially since the thematic ramifications are absolutely never prioritized (and it's also always the same kind of people who make the final calls and push out what can and can't be talked about also). And as fans, we tend to have trouble stepping outside the lens of lore and take a look at the bigger picture sometimes; not as an attack on any individual part of that decision-making process but to just pause, stop, and question our standards, our priorities and the kind of reality (or skewing of reality) the stories we tell each other reflect.

Again: do we want to take videogames seriously or not? If we do, then we need to accept they are a vehicle for ideology, just like any other artform. And sometimes, you push out questionable ideology, sometimes without meaning to, because you didn't unpack your own biases as you did. And it's even fine to do it, nobody is perfect, a 300+ people team spread over 6 years certainly will not be that. But that it wasn't prioritized is, in my opinion, a problem. As a narrative designer, I want games (at least the narrative side) to be held to a higher standard than this. It's literally my job to work with the industry so it can hold itself to higher standards of quality --so the whole TotK situation is quite frustrating to witness from a very pragmatic, work perspective where I already spend my days trying to convince people that things mean things. I have a vested interest here in not having the companies I work for being given a free pass by gamers to do literally whatever as long as it's fun, especially when we're talking about a billion-dollars company suing its own fans left and right for any perceived slight. Nintendo are not underdogs here. It's fine to point out they cut corners and maybe promoted messy ideologies, voluntarily or not.

So long story short: no I don't believe anyone here has a point in regards to what I think is actually important, which is why these choices were made in the first place. If you look at an imperialist text expecting the text to tell you that it's imperialist instead of recognizing a framing used for propaganda by yourself, you're never gonna find any imperialist text ever, obviously not!! I'm sorry if I sound a little gngngn here, but I don't know why audiences have, at large, this feeling that lore and story beat decisions materialize themselves already formed and without any human bias, meddling, intervention, internal politics or approximations (it seems that people can only conceptualize this part if they have actual names to attach to the story, but without clear authors it's like there are no authors and so no bias, which is... a very strange bias in itself). I can promise you that it does not work that way in practice: every narrative department on every big game is a battlefield --some nicer than others, but all of them very emotionally draining either way.

So yeah, I guess that on these grounds, I disagree with every point raised here. Sorry Reddit :/

But thank you for the ask and sorry if I didn't go more into details as to why. The big Why I Dislike Rauru Post and the Gerudo Post might have some more specific rebuttals, but I am not super interested in debating small detail stuff tbh. I feel like it's no use if the frame of reference isn't being understood in the first place.

[lady-of-imladris]

Babe enlighten me pls, how % is your city Dark Academia-vibed?

(I have a strong impression that it is super dark-academiac)

Ahdkahdk sorry this took me so long 😭. Ok so it depends A LOT on which areas of you focus on but for the purpose of a pretty post we are going to ignore the ugly parts 🥰

How Dark Academia is Vienna?

Let's do this by categories! 1. Univesities :) Bottom left is Vienna University of Technology main building, the others are University of Vienna main building, I'd say 100% dark academia.

Next some museums:

Left side is Albertina which is where Dürers' famous bunny painting is! Right side is the Naturhistorisches Museum (biology ish) and across from that building is an art museum that looks exactly the same because imperialist Austria was REALLY good at cool city architecture

Cool building section!!

Left column is Hofburg which is where our President has his office! It used to be the Emperor's official palace I suppose. The other two in the first row and the one in the middle are Stephansdom which is like THE church in Vienna! Fun fact, my grandparents got married there :) Bottom center is Charles' Church WHICH IS MY FAVOURITE BUILDING EVER (I'll explain in the footnotes lmao) and bottom right is Volksgarten which is a pretty park!

Miscellaneous category!

Top row: The Riesenrad, The tram (I LOVE the tram) and castle Schönbrunn

Middle row: still Schönbrunn just the other side, also still Schönbrunn (except I cut the picture wrong so it's just the gardens lmao), and a Fiaker, which is what those horse carriages are called in Vienna. We still have them and you can tour the city in them!

Bottom row: the courthouse (If someone asks I WILL tell the funny story related to this one), the Belvedere, and the opera!

Fun fact about literally every pretty building in Vienna: THEY ARE ALL RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER!

Stephansdom? Walk 5 minutes end up at Charles' Church. Fall over once? VIENNA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY. Cross the street: OPERA. Behind that? ALBERTINA. Walk 5 minutes? 2 museums right across from each other. Behind that? COURTHOUSE. Cross the street? PARLIAMENT. Next to that? UNIVERSITY.

All the important buildings are all neatly aligned in circular form around Stephansdom. What do we call it? THE RING. Super uncreative but cool as fuck.

In conclusion: YES. Dark Academia 100% and very pretty, you should come visit me!

Pictures as always stolen from Pinterest or taken by ✨me✨ and whoever guesses which two are from me gets a kiss.

Bonus: why Charles' Church is my favourite:

1. It's right next to my university and there's a huge pit they fill with water so in summer you can just hang out there and study and WATCH CUTE DOGS PLAY IN THE WATER

[horizon-verizon]

The only thing this election did is solidify my hated and contempt to the smug liberals I know irl and everyone else around me who’ve been silent this year aside from getting up and vote scolding Arabs and Latinos. I’m blackpilled to the highest order.

I genuinely have been exhausted of sympathy for Americans like they seriously bring this on themselves and they still aren’t able to understand how being incapable of caring about anything except their immediate self-interest and ease screws them over too.

America has been an issue as much as most Western nations has by being an imperialist one whose citizens are strewn across a too-large expanse of land (think Australia or the entire EU continent) with their own unique cultures, "sub" histories, state laws, etc. Don't wish death on Latinos or deportation (which means death for a lot of them), but hold them through the fire (this is an idiom I don't mean it literally). Arabs and Muslims and Palestinian Americans who didn't vote for Kamala? Leave them be, obviously they wouldn't, why would they?! Black people wouldn't vote for cop-heavy candidates, now would they?

I think Latinos (and really other races or ethnicities who were nearly evenly split for "reasons") do need a side eye, though NOT SCAPEGOATING, but keep reviewing. the gov's part in how these people voted (or didn't, as many indigenous people and assumedly other races were barred or had difficulty voting) .. I mean...half of them voted for the worst of the worst of conservatives? If you stand up and say anything collectively about Americans bc of a large number of them doing shit like going after Arabs and Muslims when they don't get their way, it's weird to make as if Latinos or Hispanic people ("Hispanic" is a literal "racial" category in the U.S. census and "Latino" practically is one, too in American society even though it shouldn't be) haven't earned some "scolding" when nearly half of the men have walked out of their homes and voted for the worst of the conservative options possible.

I know Harris is equal to Trump for many. There's also something to be said about a minority who hears a man say that he'd deport their like or people like them and then go out of their way to vote for him as if he cares. Same for the queer/LGBTQIA+ people, few Black people, women who weren't coerced.

Either way, the real problem is how removed and unaccountable our possible candidates are. How rich and bought by other silent movers, the internalized racism amongst minority populations that have always prevented enough solidarity (which the sheer largeness of this nation really doesn't help since it supports a feeling of nonlikeness even with social media and the ability to make online group chats....people think they are too different to have a true interest in each other besides the rampant capitalist/consumerist individualism).

Can't blame you for dismissing America, but I also rather it come with knowing what makes America America. "Florida deserves to sink into the sea, they ruin it for everyone else"; "Latinos should get deported"; "The U.S. all deserve to be blown up for their effect on others"; "England has the worst colonial history and current policies for its own people and others outside of Brexit, they should all burn"; all these have people that will go on to perform some fucked shit from selfishness...doesn't mean that those who are stuck with them that aren't aware they are affected by them and are trying their hardest to meet their own and foreign/"other" people's needs.

[basedkikuenjoyer]

To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day...

This is not exactly a first-time playthrough. But I am ripping through yet another of one of my all-time favorites. Because apparently Fallout: New Vegas became a staple of Millennial trans culture and at times I do live up to stereotypes. You should see how wide-eyed I get at opportunities to use heavy machinery around the greenhouse. At least my PoliSci degree is useful here, because everyone knows the most fun thing in video games is complex political scenarios!

Seriously, we have a fun action RPG here but if I wanted that I'd pick up Fallout 4. Which I quite like a lot in it's own right. But there's something about the charm of New Vegas. Sorta become a Christmas tradition to play it while cooking my parts of the big get-together meals. How can you not love this beautiful concoction of 50s sci-fi B movie and old Western? Cowboys & Aliens shouldn't be just one random forgotten movie it should be an entire subgenre complete with it's own Samurai & Aliens analogue. World is bullshit sometimes.

Giant fuckoffty Gatling laser chem fiend build this time because I have spurs that jingle jangle jangle and usually rely on the Big Iron on my hip. Never done Sneering Imperialist in Honest Hearts before and yeah we're doubling down on the evil with enthusiastically supporting my original and current decision to the big question it all builds to. Who should Courier Six tip the scales toward in the battle for Hoover Dam? (Which I can never take seriously due to how many times I saw Beavis & Butthead Do America as a kid.)

House Always Wins bay-bay! And don't you dare sully the good name of this captain of industry by comparing him to Fuccboi Prime Elon Musk. Game gives you three factions and the choice to go it alone. The New California Republic, or the best candidate for the US government's successor on the West Coast. Caesar's Legion, a pack of Roman cosplayers complete with slavery and aggressive chauvinism while still being anti-drugs so like...wtf? Not a serious choice. If I have to endure a post-apocalyptic Mojave Desert I am going to make Hunter S Thompson look like Carrie Nation. You dorks managed to conquer Arizona, stop the fuckin presses (<3 you Piper).

Then you have Edwin House, an old CEO of a robotics Corp from before the great war on some kind of space-age life support for 200 years with a great big boner for Las Vegas. Yes, he's kinda a total douche but his goal is to mostly maintain Vegas as a city-state with his advanced robots. He's the one I lean towards because his resources at hand don't allow him to do much more than that and while he isn't perfect he seems content to operate through finding someone he can just pay. Doesn't seem too big on moralizing and honestly he's kinda funny. Like, recruiting tribes to fill out themed casinos is such a weird way of bringing "civilization" to the wasteland but...they did it willingly and it's been working pretty well. For all the shit Freeside gets even it's pretty stable by wasteland standards.

Obviously if you decide the main character Courier Six is a saint who'd never do wrong Wild Card where you do it yourself is the moral choice. But the kicker to me is that House and his agent sorta keep each other in check, especially if Courier Six has stuff like Big MT in their back pocket. House is ultimately doomed to fail because he only has so many of his big robots and his explicit goal is mostly about trying to get technological progress back on track. He can't really project power though. He's fine working with the NCR but they'll win in the very long game. Vegas staying a city-state that the Republic needs to sit down and stabilize if they want to oust is good for both sides and it'll get the Legion out. That's my view at least.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

I like your blog but I was disappointed to see you say it would ever be okay for Zutarians to have Katara and Zuko cheat on Aang and Mai in their fics if they acknowledged it is bad. Somethings can't be done right and need to just be kept out of any story. It's completely disrespectful to the Kataang and Maiko fans.

Also if I were you, I'd block the anon who said they could understand the appeal of Zucest even if they claim not to ship it, and in case you don't know, a blog you reblog from a lot hello-nichya-here likes that cursed shit so there's another one for your block list. Incest is gross and immoral even if it's fiction, and you'd be better off not interacting with that kind of people.

Buddy, I'm brazilian. I was raised on soap-operas. If I gave people shit for enjoying any media that involves the main characters selfishly cheating on their partners to be with each other, I'd be the world's biggest hypocrite. That kind of stuff is an easy source for drama, and it will always be part of romance stories - regardless of the quality of said romances.

As for it being disrespectful to Kataang and Maiko, yeah, I could see it, but only if it's combined with a bunch of slander towards these characters, and pulling stuff like "How I Became Yours" did by saying Mai was a terrible, abusive person for being angry that her husband cheated on her, or if it's shit like Zutarians constantly harrassing shippers about how Aang/Mai is totally being cucked. But if they're just writing as a source for drama in a story, without demonizing the characters that are clearly being screwed over by Zuko and Katara, I don't mind it.

Also I fully disagree with you on the "Somethings can't be done right and no one should write them." No topic should be forbidden in fiction, and what people should discuss is "Does this make narrative sense?" not "Is this a morally correct thing for people to do?"

How would that even work for the Avatar fandom anyways? "Sure, the original show is literally about war and genocide, and it is constantly praised for having an imperialist prince redeem himself and befriend the people he sent a hitman after, but if we write characters doing immoral things like cheating or sleeping with a relative THAT is going too far"

Sounds like one hell of a double-standard to me. And I've literally said it in my pinned post: This blog exists solely to point out the kind of behavior that made Zutara become such a hated ship, not to bully people that are just minding their business, or to tell them what tropes they are allowed to like. I don't like the idea of Zuko and Katara together at all, especially not with it involving them hurting Mai and Aang. But if the people writting these stories weren't constantly forcing it down everyone's throats, I wouldn't mind them adding that trope to every single fic they wrote.

As for the second part of your ask, I guess there's only one way for me to make my stance on Zucest VERY clear, so you and anyone else who could be bothered by it can decide if you want to keep following this blog:

Hello, Nichya here. I'm not going to use this side-blog to block my main, as I feel it would be kind of pointless to block myself considering the content in both accounts is coming from the same brain.

And see Zutara fans? It's super easy to only bring up your OTP when it is relevant to the conversation and without trying to force other's to like it, and it tends to get you far less hate too, no matter how "problematic" your ship is.