#is clearly COMPLICIT in GENOCIDE.

[infiniteglitterfall]

Palestinians to platform, part 1

مؤمن الناطور / Moumen Al-Natour

@MoumALnatour

رئيس الشباب الفلسطيني للتنمية / President of Palestinian Youth for Development

Moumen Al-Natour is amazing. Not only does he run a Palestinian youth organization that is doing great work in Gaza, but he's also one of the organizers of the 2019 anti-Hamas protests.

Even to criticize Hamas, in Gaza, means to be interrogated, and potentially jailed, tortured, and/or killed. To actively protest Hamas is many times more dangerous.

To have survived that work and continued doing it? I cannot imagine the emotional strength this dude has.

Here's what Center for Peace Communications (another great organization) has said about him:

So many Palestinians, in or from Palestine, are out there talking about what everyday life in Gaza is like. About Hamas, about Israel, about what they want and what they need, about their struggles and their interests and their families.

My goal, in finding people for you to follow and platform, is to help more voices get out of Gaza after years of suppression, and to help more outsiders (like me) connect with them.

People care SO MUCH about Palestine. But frequently, all there is to share is outrage, semi-accurate news, and more outrage. Frequently, we're not calling for the same things they are. We call for a ceasefire; they demand Hamas return the hostages and surrender. We call for Israel to let aid in; they say Israel is letting the aid in, but it's being stolen, and call for air drops rather than trucks. We call for Israel to stop fighting; they say they hope Israel takes Hamas out first.

We aren't centering their voices and experiences. We aren't lending our reach and our strength to their demands.

I want to make that possible.

Ala Mushtaha, the son of this imam, evidently said, “On Saturday December 30, our front door was busted down and twenty masked men barged in and took my father, a widely respected and deeply learned imam here in Gaza."

“One dragged him by his head and another grabbed him by his beard. My younger brother tried to intervene and reason with the kidnappers, but they beat him. I have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to breathe, so all I could do was watch as the horror unfolded.

“He wouldn’t preach what Hamas told him to. He refused to tell Gazans that violent resistance and obedience to Hamas, is the best way out of our current hell.”

ok this dude needs his own post honestly, he goes on to say so much intense stuff about their lives.

OMG his dad was actually released!

This is what I'm talking about. This is effective activism. Imagine what all these people could do if they had the entire global pro-Palestinian movement behind them.

Al-Natour posts a fair amount of political commentary.

The "we want to live" hashtag is a callback to the amazing "We Want To Live" protests he co-organized against Hamas, in Gaza in 2019, and again in the summer of 2023. Activist Hamida Howidzy (who will also be getting a separate post) wrote about them in Newsweek recently.

Some things he posts in Arabic and then in English. Some of his posts are in Arabic only. In the thread above, he actually posted a couple more that were just in Arabic, presumably aimed at Arabic-language comments.

What I like about Twitter is that you can whack the "translate post" button and get a pretty decent translation most of the time.

Translation:

"I saw all the responses... What is wrong and forbidden in reuniting the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem through elections in which the people choose who will represent them??!?? Why are all the responses offensive...a collaborator, a traitor, and contain insults that indicate that whoever wrote them needs restructuring?! What prevents us, after ending the war, from returning our choice and choice to the Palestinian people?!+

"Everyone wrote that I opened??!! how did you know???!! Stopping the war is the most important thing now... Whoever sees the condition of the people and feels all this is easy for him does not have humanity, and is not a human being... Whoever, after the destruction of more than 80% of Gaza and the North, and still writing in a way that wants the war to continue while he lives abroad, should reconsider. He accepted to live the same suffering!++"

Note: I copied the "I opened" bit and threw it into Google Translate separately, because that cannot be right. It still insisted that it meant "I opened".... but it gave me the transliterated words, "ani fatah."

Everyone wrote that he's Fatah -- the party that runs the West Bank, the one Hamas violently kicked out of Gaza in 2007-08.

"The end of my speech... I know... whoever is not with you is a traitor and an agent... shameful... by God, by God, by God... there will be an account[ing] for all of this talk... so that you understand the word agent... and the account will be through a government of law... It is clear that there are many who benefit from the poverty and destruction of Gaza, and they must be held accountable according to the law.

"Have mercy on people with your tongues"

The comment on that one is noteworthy:

"Yes, whoever is not with the resistance is indeed a traitor, and those who must be held accountable are the traitors, agents, hypocrites, liars, and racists who slander the resistance and who want to hold it accountable only because it fights the enemy of humanity and defends truth and the oppressed. If you want to apply the law, apply it to yourselves first."

It highlights how much of what we hear in the West is Hamas propaganda. That's a whole other post too. But Hamas claims to be "the resistance," to "defend truth and the oppressed," while arresting people who refuse to preach its propaganda. While jailing and torturing someone 20 times for organizing a protest.

Which are the exact tactics that make it so easy for their propaganda to reach us . And so hard for us to even know that there has been an entire protest movement against Hamas in Gaza, much less to support its activists.

I'll just cut and paste the translations from his most recent thread, above. All emphasis is mine:

"When demonstrations took place in Israel demanding that Netanyahu stop the war and free the hostages, Al Jazeera and Hamas considered it a victory and an achievement, and that the Israeli government was under pressure. But what is striking is that these demonstrations were not suppressed. They were secured. The hostage issue and public pressure were dealt with professionally.

"The demonstrations that took place in Gaza demanding an end to the war and the return of the displaced...they were classified as suspicious [by Al Jazeera etc] ...even though the displaced Israeli lives in a 5-star hotel and has the privileges of the displaced, and when the Palestinian displaced in Gaza receives help, he needs a mediator, and if he wants a tent, he needs leadership intervention, and if he does not have the mediator And the intervention wants to scratch his pocket..+++

"Why did Israel allow demonstrations and look pressured, always trying to contain everything... while we have a displaced person lost, homeless, and no one is trying to contain him, and when he talks, they call him a fifth column???"

Last month, he posted about pregnancy in wartime. Note the cost of the tent later in this thread! Numerous Palestinians have posted about humanitarian aid getting stolen -- by Hamas, by NGOs, by others -- and sold on the black market. Food and tents especially get mentioned a lot. Everyone mentions the tents are being sold for more than (the equivalent of) $700, even though they were supposed to be free.

I'll leave you with this one for now:

You can read all the posts in this series in my "platform palestine" tag.

[nhaneh]

pretty sure I saw a case of actual full-on blood libel casually saunter across my dash earlier and it still kind of bothers me

like I think there are things where your brain should just automatically spam X to Doubt when encountered unless there is truly extraordinary evidence involved. shit can be real bad as is without bringing in cursed millenia-old conspiracy bullshit

[buttercuparry]

In less than two months it will be October 7th again.

In less than two months, it will be a year of genocide. 

In light of this, I just have only one request for you; please do not give into whatever you are describing as “compassion fatigue” right now.

Realize that this is exactly what the colonizers conducting this genocide want you to feel. Realize that apathy during a genocide is what leads to the normalization of atrocities. Realize that this is a tried and tested method found throughout history; that now when the genocide is been widely documented by Gazans themselves- the only way the colonizers can get away with it is by running you down and making you feel hopeless!

They want you to stop caring about their victims and this is why you need to fight harder now more than ever!!

I request you to fight harder for every Gazan! And therefore request you to fight for my friend Siraj Abudayeh too, whose family recently faced another assault. His parents and siblings had to flee to him for protection, because their areas ( Hamad, southern Khan Younis) were marked for assault from occupation forces. With the number of people depending on him increased now, Siraj has a much heavier responsibility on his shoulders to raise enough funds to support all of them and their needs, when prices of food water and other essentials are already skyrocketing.

With the coming of the rainy season, there comes the danger of epidemics spreading from open sewers as well! Siraj’s son Amir has already fallen ill, and his other two sons are showing symptoms too- they are in dire need of medical treatment! I cannot overstate how badly Siraj and his family need these funds!! How badly he needs your continuous support.

There has been a significant drop in engagement with fundraising posts and I very clearly remember, someone tagging one of my posts with compassion fatigue. It shocked me to my core to think that the cries of Free Palestine could fade so suddenly; that after only a year some of you have begun to feel fatigued, from having to care about this.

Do not give in please; do not let the colonizers make you complicit in this horror! They know that if they can overwhelm you enough, then one day the videos and posts would stop hitting as hard and sooner or later everyone will stop talking about Palestine. This cannot happen again! Not when your attention can literally save a life! This is the power you hold- especially if you are living in the Imperial core. The colonizers are afraid of it. You have to know this and believe this!

So please do not turn away and help Siraj get to 50k as soon as possible!

He is currently only at $45,044 / $82,000 CAD

[ GFM LINK ]

[ Vetting at 219 on Hussein's spreadsheet]

And if you are having trouble donating to Siraj's fundraiser through Paypal, please get in touch with @malcriada .

[news4dzhozhar]

[pissvortex]

i would obviously marginally prefer kamala harris over trump but i am under no illusion that progress is truly being won under bourgeois politics. i also don’t see “not voting” as a useful political action in the same way that i don’t see voting as useful either. what i support is building power for whatever miniscule scraps of a communist left exist in this country. the only real pragmatic application of that wrt election are, in my opinion, gauging the power that i and people in a similar enough bloc to me hold through a conditional vote. the only circumstance under which i will vote for kamala harris is if she supports a full permanent ceasefire in gaza. if she does not, then clearly her campaign has made a calculated decision that my vote and others like mine are not worth earning, and that a population of moderates in support of or functionally apathetic to the genocide are a more valuable electoral base. this at least tells us something in regards to our power and ability to coordinate a unified popular demand. if she forsakes our vote and wins anyway, obviously we have got a lot of work left to do (not that this isn’t the case anyway). if she forsakes our vote and loses in a way where she could have won if she had our vote, this makes her 100% complicit and morally culpable in everything trump does to the country. small comfort to us but what’s the point in having voted for her if she is fundamentally identical to trump? if she concedes to the demand and wins, we’ve achieved the best possible outcome of the bargain (even though she will probably not actually work towards a permanent ceasefire). this all requires a degree of coordination from us that i would like to see socialist organizations put forward - this is also practical in that the exercise of what power and coordination we have is useful for forming our capacity to express alternate modes of power. we’re living in hell in this country and this is how i choose to navigate it.

[infiniteglitterfall]

Please be aware that Within Our Lifetime explicitly supports what Hamas did on October 7. That's what it's referring to when it says "uplift the Palestinian people resisting by any means necessary."

That's why it's on October 7. The rally is specifically to celebrate and show support for this:

And that when it says "supporting Palestinians resisting genocide by any means necessary since 1948," it's genuinely claiming that Israel has been committing genocide continuously since 1948.

Even when every surrounding country invaded in 1948. Even during the 19 years that Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan occupied the West Bank. Even when Palestine declared independence in 1988 and went through years of peace negotiations with Israel. Even when Israel destroyed all settlements in Gaza in 2005, pulled out all troops, and ended all Israeli administration of it.

Most of all, please understand that this is NOT "standing with the people of Gaza!"

The people of Gaza have had SO MANY protests against Hamas over the past year. They did not want any of this.

His tweet continues:

Just look at Hamas’ October 7th—after a year of hyping up that atrocity in the name of "resistance," what are their demands now? Not even a return to the day before, but something that’s a disaster far worse than October 6th, 50 years ago. And the best part? Not even the most extreme Zionist could’ve dreamed up a plan as disastrous as the one Hamas has unleashed on Gaza. But sure, go ahead and accuse the Zionists—while the “resistance” ends up doing more damage to its own people than their assumed enemy could ever imagine.

Gazan activist Hamza Howidy writes:

We Gazans attempted several times to remove Hamas from power. In 2019 and in 2023, the people of Gaza held peaceful marches against Hamas; for this crime, we were brutally assaulted by Hamas militants. Hamas imprisoned over 1,300 protestors at each protest. I was one of them. I was personally imprisoned by Hamas and tortured twice, because I participated in these protests. So I know firsthand that when ordinary Gazans like myself protested against Hamas, there was no media attention. No human rights organizations demanded the release of prisoners held for months in Hamas prisons, not to mention those who were tortured by Hamas, and even killed by Hamas—like Issam Al-Saaffein, who was killed under torture in Hamas's jails.

It's long past time for the pro-Palestinian movement to center and support the activists of Gaza.

🇵🇸 On Monday October 7th Flood New York City For Palestine, stand with Gaza and uplift the Palestinian people resisting genocide by any means necessary since 1948. Call out of work and school, take to the streets and join us throughout the day 🌊

Confront the forces of imperialism and zionism and let the world know that NYC stands with our people’s heroic struggle in the face of annihilation. Share widely, travel to NYC from wherever you are and join us in the streets on 10/7.

GATHERING POINTS: 1:00 PM Wall St (NYSE) 2:30 PM City Hall 3:30 PM Washington Sq. Park 4:00 PM Union Square 5:00 PM Grand Central 5:30 PM Times Square 6:00 PM Columbus Circle

[eroguron0nsense]

Garp, Fascism, and Parental Failure

Garp is truly one of the most interesting One Piece characters for me because of the extent to which his dogged, relentless devotion to a fascist system–and the supposed "order" it promises to uphold in the face of anarchy or rebellion–perseveres no matter how many times it fails him and his son and his grandsons. He's fully aware of the deep-seated corruption and atrocity, and feels some kind of moral obligation to bend its rules to protect the innocent (as we can see with his attempts to protect Rouge and Ace), but when faced with widespread femicide and infanticide, genocide, slavery and endless examples of egregious cruelty, he is unable to comprehend the notion that the system is indefensible, or that the only moral choice he can possibly make when faced with that level of atrocity is to leave and resist it. His son recognizing the inherent, inexcusable failures of the World Government and its armed enforcers–literally quitting the force to start a revolution– changes nothing. The order to slaughter pregnant people and infants at Baterilla can't convince him otherwise. The countless instances of bribery, the tolerance of atrocity from state-sanctioned privateers, everything about the history of the Valley of the Gods are all things he's aware of, and takes issue with, but never comes to the conclusion that he cannot affect positive change within a system designed for oppression. The public execution of his grandson–a prime example of the marine's fundamentally irrational, arrogant, vindictive cruelty clearly bound to blow up in all of their faces even before their Pyrrhic victory at the summit war–makes him waver, but even when confronted with this obvious, indefensible injustice against a child he raised and rescued by people seeking to murder him on live TV and desecrate his corpse as a show of power, he cannot bring himself to act against it in any meaningful way no matter how much it hurts him to leave his grandson to die. If he can't veto it, he'll stay Vice Admiral and suffer through Ace being sacrificed on the altar of fascist state control, and functionally leave Luffy for dead in the process while he's at it. He fails every single person he wanted to love–Ace, Luffy, and almost certainly Dragon–and allows himself to be reluctantly complicit in countless crimes against humanity again and again and again because he's so deeply steeped in this notion of preservation of order through state control that he convinces himself that even this disgusting, atrocious, fundamentally flawed and untenable excuse for a government is better than abolition, better than revolution, or just the act of expecting accountability or literally anything better from the systems that issue false promises to protect you. Dadan beating the living shit out of him and calling him a failure as a grandfather, as a self proclaimed defender of the people, is one of the most important scenes in the Postwar Arc because a lesser series might frame Garp as a tragic, helpless figure suffering more than anyone else due to conflict of love and duty, but One Piece refuses to whitewash his actions/inaction or allow the grief and suffering caused by systems he's complicit in to take precedence over its real victims: the D brothers.

There's so much I could say about statism and anarchism and the ways people have internalized the supposed necessity of state violence to the extent they can't oppose that violence even when it ruins them or their loved ones, but that horrible indoctrination and its devastating consequences for both him and his family are what makes Garp so fascinating to watch and so thematically/politically important to One Piece as a whole.

[obsessivevoidkitten]

I don't bring up politics and world events up on here very much, that isn't what this blog is about. This blog is for escapism from reality, but those who are not willing to speak out against brutality are complicit. And this is my largest platform.

Don't continue reading if you don't want to read about war and violence.

Regarding Israel and Palestine I have seen many inaccurate assumptions and outright lies.

1ST CLAIM: One claim I hear ad nauseum is that Gaza elected Hamas and therefore they deserve punishment.

Let's break this down.

A. Hamas was elected around 2006. 17 years ago. They have not allowed elections since.

B. Roughly half of the Gazan population are under 18. This means half the population wasn't born during the last election. This means that of the Gazans who were alive many were too young to vote.

C. Hamas won by a 45 percent plurality, not a majority. This means that less than half of the Gazan who did vote did so for Hamas.

So taking these facts together we can conclude that only a fraction of a fraction of Gazans alive today elected Hamas.

In fact Netanyahu was happy to fund and prop up Hamas because doing so meant dividing Palestinians between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. So Netanyahu is more to blame for Hamas than Palestinians are.

2ND CLAIM: Another thing I hear a lot is that this conflict and all of the casualties are the fault of Hamas. Let me be clear, I do not support Hamas or the October 7th attack that ended up with a civilian casualty rate of around 50 percent, but that one attack doesn't exist alone or without context and nuance as many on the pro-Israel side would have people believe.

No, that attack was one incident in a line of many. Starting with the brutal apartheid, displacement, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel.

A slow motion genocide taking place over the course of many decades.

Let's look at some events leading up to and then following Oct. 7th.

It starts with the beginning of Israel. Even the often recited phrase "a land without people for a people without land" erases the existence of native people who had lived there for centuries.

In 1948 you have The Nakba. A mass displacement of Palestinians as Israel took their land. This flew in the face of the UN partition plan, after The Nakba Israel controlled 78 percent of the land, 25 percent more than the UN plan.

This trend of land theft has only continued.

Let's fast forward to more recent events.

2018-2019 The Great March of Return: For over a year there were peaceful marches protesting the Gaza border, this resulted in Israeli forces killing over 220 peaceful Palestinian protesters.

In 2019 Netanyahu admitted support for Hamas to prevent a 2 state solution.

In 2022 journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was targeted and killed by Israeli forces. Israeli forces also attacked her funeral.

Note that during this entire time Palestinians are arrested, even children, and kept in indefinite detention without trial.

In 2023 we then have the October 7th attack. But as you are now aware this isn't where the conflict started.

And clearly not where it has ended.

3RD CLAIM: And that brings us to the 3rd and most blatantly bullshit lie you will here on repeat. The notion that Israel only targets Hamas.

More UN workers have been killed in a 2 month period than have died in any other war since the UN's formation. Over 130.

If they were targeting Hamas then why have so many UN buildings, refugee camps, and hospitals been bombed?

If there goal wasn't civilians then why do civilians make up the majority of the casualities?

Why the medieval style siege/blockade that has caused hospitals to lose fuel and medicine and civilians to go hungry and thirsty?

Why parade civilians around in their underwear? Why laugh and cheer as a UN school is exploded?

Why leave babies in the NICU and force the hospital staff to leave with the promise an ambulance would be provided for the babies only for people to return once the IDF left and find the baby corpses rotting because the ambulance was never provided?

We can even leave Gaza to prove this is not about Hamas. Hamas does not lead the West Bank. And yet Palestinians there are being murdered and arrested at increased rates, their homes stolen by illegal settlers.

Israel officials have called this the Gaza Nakba, they have claimed they will make Gaza inhospitable, they have claimed there are no civilians in Gaza.

Netanyahu has said to remember Amalek.

What is Amalek? Amalek refers to Israels enemy in the bible. This phrase specifically, "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys"

Israel wants to steal the little land the Palestinians have left. Even now they are herded and concentrated into ever smaller camps with no resources.

Idk what we can do about the situation. This post seems silly for all the good it will do. But maybe it will open the eyes of a couple people. I think that would make it worth it.

[itsbansheebitch]

RIP Aaron Bushnell

Aaron Bushnell, an active duty Air Force officer, set himself on fire today. He did it in front of the Israeli Embassy in DC to protest the genocide against Gaza & Palestine. He said "I will no longer be complicit in genocide" and set himself on fire. He said, "Free Palestine."

Thank you, Aaron, for doing what our "free" country wasn't brave enough to do: Speak out and against the powers that be.

This act can not be defined as a mental illness problem. to do so would be to water it down into an act that he could not control, when he very clearly stated that this was an act of protest.

To say he didn't have a clear motive, to say his words had no meaning, is DISGUSTING. To ignore his words and his stance is incredibly INSINCERE.

I DO NOT encourage anyone to repeat what he has done, but I implore the people who don't understand to look into the history of the genocide against Gaza & Palestine and learn why "peaceful protest" isn't an option for a lot of people.

When Palestinians peacefully protested, they were gunned done again, and again, and again.

Not to meme or whatever, but Peace was Never an Option.

Again, Rest in Power, Aaron Bushnell, your bravery as an officer in the Air Force and your bravery to do what's right, will forever be remembered. Even if our country refuses to write you in the history books, the people of this country, nay the world, will remember.

[sukifoof-art]

Hi, I really liked your art and all and was a fan of you, until you started posting things about supporting a state which is controlled by a terrorist organization that doesn’t care about their own civilians and when any donations come there it doesn’t go to the people who need it but to Hamas, and by donating to Gaza not only do you not help the people in Gaza ,but you also help a terrorist organization who doesn’t care who it needs to kill in order to achieve its goal.

Also when I saw you reposted a post who supported the people in the picture’s with all PLO flags (which weren’t the main problem there) ,it seriously hurt me to see that one picture where people were stepping on USA flags and Israel flags. like….why would you support someone who obviously hate you(assuming you’re from the USA) but even if you aren’t from the USA then think about the fact that you’re LGBTQ, these people HATE people who are Queer and kills them ,so I really can’t understand how are you supporting people who want you dead and are against feminism.

I really hope that what I wrote helped you see this complex situation more clearly and I beg you to look at the situation from both sides.

so this means everyone there deserves to die? this means that a whole school year of children needs to be wiped out? that hospitals must be bombed and millions displaced and communication be cut off? that every palestinian must pay with their lives? that every closeted queer palestinian should die? are you seriously that dense. i made it clear i do not want people who support a genocide following me. have you bothered reading palestinian voices from queering the map? those who regret not saying they were in love and dont even have the chance anymore because thousands are dying? i genuinely don't know what to say to you to make you realize these are real, actual people who are dead. you speak of palestinians as if they're a monolith and not real individual people who had thoughts and dreams. none of these people deserved to die, even if they hate people like me. people can change and learn and grow and they weren't even given the chance. i am so sick of seeing fellow queer people SUPPORT GENOCIDE because they can't be bothered to think about others and their experiences for more than two seconds. of all the queer experiences i've read this is one of the most heartbreaking, and it's from gaza.

do NOT act like queer people and their families aren't being harmed and DO NOT come into my ask box supporting ethnic cleansing. there is never any reason for thousands of people to live in fear of airstrikes and white phosphorous, or to be stuck beneath rubble and in hospitals that don't even have power. if the idea of THOUSANDS DYING wasn't enough to upset you, there are so many videos of parents mourning their children, children mourning their parents, children and pets shaking in fear for me to not have explain to you that genocide is bad. there is NEVER any reason to JUSTIFY GENOCIDE. that should be clear enough. again, if you are complicit or try to justify genocide, do not follow me and DO NOT try to make me "see the situation from both sides". to be so privileged that you can sit here and write out paragraphs supporting genocide says enough about you.

if you see this i am begging you to contact your government, just do anything you can. even just spreading the word helps because palestine can't. the most important thing is to not give up hope. mourn the dead, and fight like hell for the living.

[tobiasdrake]

Could you tell us something underrated about Bulma? For being around since literally the very beginning, I find she’s not talked about as much.

Bulma is the scariest person in the Dragon Ball universe. The anime softens a lot of her edges. And, like, she's not a total monster; She cares about things like people not being killed by genocidal assholes too.

But she is such an asshole and I love it. Bulma is the character I relate to most in Dragon Ball.

(Also she has an unshakable faith in Goku and he'll always be the number one martial artist in her eyes, and any man that wants to be with her needs to respect that.)

For starters, it's worth noting that the naming convention of Bulma's family is called out as weird even in-universe. Nobody bats an eye at characters being named after fruit or vegetables or rice or the Dairy Special Forces but they draw the line at underwear.

That's weird, Bulma. Your name is weird. Your father Briefs is weird. Your sister Tights is weird. Your son Trunks is weird. Your daughter Bra is weird. Why is your family like this?

Nearly every single person in the cast is someone who Goku initially had to fight in some way or another. Bulma is no exception, though their battle took place as early as issue #1.

When shooting a 12-year-old in the face with a gun failed, Bulma resorted to manipulation and subterfuge, and thus the most important relationship in the entire Dragon Ball universe was born.

Though Goku would not be the only person whose arm Bulma twisted, as this initial journey also sees her enslave a sentient being to do her bidding.

Despite ironically filling the role of a Buddhist monk in the original Journey to the West, this opening arc lays a lot of groundwork for who Bulma is. She tricks Goku and enslaves Oolong to coerce assistance in her quest to conjure up a magically-generated boyfriend (or infinite strawberries).

...then again, Tang Sanzang imprisoned Sun Wukong in the original so maybe Bulma's a better adaptation than I gave her credit for.

Point is, Bulma's a fireball. Even Goku sees it.

In the first arc, we also see her get accustomed to calling on Goku like he's her Pokemon.

Bulma is not a martial artist. She knows next to nothing about the implicate complexities of the art. Though she does enjoy being on the outer fringe of it and watching from a distance.

Well. Not from that much distance, because she always has the best seats in the house. Courtesy of inappropriate violence with firearms.

Not only is Bulma complicit in this - they clearly discussed it in advance, based on Oolong's remark and Bulma's knowing smile - but in the 23rd she actively makes it happen.

Sitting in the nosebleeds is for peasants; Bulma is a princess.

I should probably note that after Lunch moves on and leaves the group, Bulma doesn't lose access to violent backup. She just trades Lunch out for Chi-Chi.

The Battle of the Soccer Moms is the best part of the 25th's Junior Division. There's only room for one Alpha Bitch in these audience stands.

Notably, it doesn't take long for her relationship with Goku to grow into a genuine friendship. Following this first arc, Bulma goes out of her way to hang out with Goku when she can and is always excited to see him.

Fun fact, despite the fact that Bulma's boyfriend Yamcha is actively living with them at the time, Bulma's dad ships her with Goku.

No love for Yamcha in this house. Notably, when they're six years older and it's not fucking weird, Bulma herself starts to agree.

But it's honestly best for everyone that this never became a romance. Bulma would have been even more miserable with Goku than she was with Yamcha, and having them hook up would deprive us of one of the greatest platonic male/female friendships in anime.

I'm not saying Vegeta is a replacement goldfish for Goku who got married and became unavailable this same day.

...but I'm not not saying that.

So far as martial arts go, her practical knowledge of the art is simple: Goku is a) invulnerable and b) infinity powerful, and that's all she needs to know. Nobody matches Goku. Ever.

You might think that this unyielding confidence in Goku as the Supreme Warrior would cause some conflicts for Bulma. Her boyfriend Yamcha is one of Goku's rivals, and has his eye on the Tenkaichi Budokai medal.

You'd be wrong. Bulma knows exactly who she's rooting for.

It's Goku. It's always been Goku. It's always going to be Goku. Bulma watches Yamcha and Krillin gush over how well they plan to do in the tournament and her takeaway is "LOL Goku's going to school both of you clowns."

This attitude makes it really funny to imagine what her relationship with Vegeta must be like, I gotta say. That Goku will always be #1 in Bulma's eyes can't be doing good things for Vegeta's insecurity.

But I digress.

Bulma is an exceptional scientist who comes from an exceptional scientific background. She's from one of if not the richest families in the world courtesy of her father inventing revolutionary shrinking technology that changed the entire nature of how products are transported.

You can put anything in a Capsule Corp. hoi-poi capsule. Throughout the series, we see not just vehicles stored in these capsules, but portable homes, weapons, and her father's pornography collection.

For her part, Bulma's a chip off the old block. I've spoken at length in the past about Bulma's invention of the Dragon Radar, trivializing what was meant to be a holy quest of virtue and turning the miracle dragon Shenron into her own personal plastic surgery vendor. She was 15 years old when she made that.

One year later, she extrapolated her father's shrinking technology into a portable device that safely applies its principles to people.

But both of those devices pale in comparison to the greatest invention of her life.

No, not the kid. Though he's cool too.

In a sense, despite being out-of-focus for most of it, the entire Cell Arc is Bulma's masterpiece. It's a proxy war between two mad scientists over the fate of the Earth. Seeking to kill Son Goku and avenge the Red Ribbon Army, Dr. Gero destroyed the world with his Androids.

Bulma took exception to that. And by "took exception", I mean she bent the time-space continuum over her knee and spanked it.

Trunks's journey through time is the culmination, both of Bulma's impossible super-genius and of her unyielding faith that Goku is the answer to any problem that needs to be solved with violence.

Dr. Gero's master stroke was to flood the world with murderous Androids. Bulma's response was to load a bullet named Goku into a gun named Trunks and fire it through time to put it between his eyes. Everything that transpired from there was the consequence of their two plans colliding.

The happier future we get to know in the Buu Saga is the world that Bulma made happen. Because the woman who would make a personal assistant out of our Great Green God's greatest miracle had the audacity and the irreverence to violate causality itself.

[latecommentevryday-blog]

I originally responded as a repost to this post by asgardswinter but I think it's important that the entirety of the fandom knows this.

Edit: I've been blocked by the OP :(

Below is my response:

There's a few problems with your take here and I'll break it down in the most respectful way possible.

1. Motion Capture and Actors

Call of Duty uses Motion Capture to animate its characters in game, which reflects the actor's real-life motions, and consequently (In Call of Duty's case) the image of the actors themselves.

"big cod fanartists draw the characters eerily similar to the VA’s even though the characters look VERY different from the VA’s."

When we look at Neil Ellice and John MacTavish's character model, the similarities are very close because the game developers have based Soap's looks off of Neil.

Here we have an in-game screenshot of Soap from MW3 2022 and Neil Ellice

The player model looked so similar, that they even had Neil do a live action sequence for advertising (Sources: Neil Ellice's Instagram).

Link to advertisement reel on Neil's Instagram

Link to sneak peak inside the studio on Neil's Instagram

"It also bothers me that these fanartists draw some of the characters such as Gaz and Simon exactly like the zionist VA’s even tho they clearly look very different."

Ok, I see that you mentioned Gaz and Elliot Knight. Let's analyze them.

Here's an image of Elliot Knight (Source: imdb.com)

Here is a skin available in the reboot MW3's store.

Elliot also appears as Gaz in the live action sequence for the Call of Duty advertisement (Again, Link to advertisement and an image from the live-action set from Neil's Insta)

Do you see the similarities? When the animators and sculptors were creating the characters, they essentially scanned the actors into their data-base and used them as the base models for each character.

A few other examples are:

Alejandro Vargas and Alain Mesa John Price and Barry Sloane Phillip Graves and Warren Kole

The fanbase, and in extension the large COD artists, are making assumptions that Simon 'Ghost' Riley's face will also reflect Samuel Roukin's facial structure because of the techniques the game developers used when creating the other characters. I encourage you to look further into how Motion Capture was used during the making of the Call of Duty Franchise.

2. Zionism, the Actors, and the Character's themselves

"Like u have no problem with drawing characters looking like real people that support genocide. Its despicable. Get a grip and stop being complicit in this."

Has it ever crossed your mind that there are other, different ways a person could protest Zionism?

Your way is completely erasing the Zionist actor's participation, which includes trying to change how the characters canonically look (With an exception for Ghost). While I respect your choice, it is simply not easy to change a game character's appearance, especially if we can clearly see the similarities between actor and character.

Drawing and creating such masterpieces is hard to do from scratch and artists use references from the game, which will, in extension, reflect the actors.

Does that mean the artist agrees with the actor's support of Zionism? No. Unless explicitly stated that they support Zionism and the actors, the only thing you've made are very damaging assumption.

These artists are paying tribute to a franchise that they enjoy interacting with and they have free will to choose what they want to look at, receive, and contribute.

Wombywoo blocking people for accusing her of being a Zionist is a fair and reasonable action, especially if the messages you are sending contains cursing, slurs, and other offensive and rude language. It's considered spam.

If you want to point out that an artist is supporting a Zionist actor, respectful language is the best way to get your point across.

Do I support Israel and Zionism? No. Hard no. I am extremely disappointed in both Roukin and Elliot for having such viewpoints and supporting such groups. The slaughter in Palestine and other surrounding countries needs to stop and Israel needs to be held accountable.

However, the game material and the characters do reflect the actors and the artists who portray 141 like their actors are doing so because they want to stick as close as possible to the original content.

The character's personalities are different from the actors and their careers are completely different, as well.

The best thing to do if content reminds you of something is to block that category and move on. Especially when the content reflects the in-game designs and consequently look like the in-real-life actors.

You are entitled to your own opinion, asgardswinter (this reply post does not encourage any user to go harass the original user), but there is more to these characters than just their voice actors. Find something else to associate the 141 with instead of their VA's and continue spreading the information that Roukin and Elliot support Zionism, but don't harass artists that draw the characters like their in-game designs who have not explicitly stated that they show support for Zionism themselves.

[weemietime]

Why the FUCK are you bringing up the Iraq war to defend Israel

That's like saying "oh you think ISIS is bad? Did you know America dropped agent orange on Vietnamese?"

Nigga we think both of those things are fucking terrible

Why the FUCK are you bringing up the Iraq war to defend Israel

Read my pinned post, for it explains in excruciating detail why it is important to treat every person and every country on Earth with equity and dignity. It is that fucking simple.

we think both of those things are fucking terrible

The problem is that you don't, actually.

Because you treat equivalent situations (actually, the Iraq war was far worse) with different standards. Which means that you don't actually have a problem with the situation, but rather with the parties involved.

It is not my fault that you are unable to read and comprehend the very plain and clear explanations that I have already laid out for you. But just in case you didn't get the memo, here are some posts I have made in my private friend group that elucidate it clearly to you fucking imbeciles.

Honestly it's an emotional thing for me because I've seen a lot of the unrwa materials for schools in Gaza that actively teach kids to cheer for dead Jews, sinwar was found with a unrwa employee tag, unrwa members participated in Oct 7th, the UN is being very quiet about condemning the sexual abuse that happened during this pogrom. They did finally say they found it credible but this was instantly buried and is never brought up by any UN officials any longer, the UN first didn't even admit to complicity and now are saying they want immunity for their unrwa employees who were complicit, countries like Russia and China are using their seats at the UN to push the narrative of genocide with no evidence and zero pushback while the UN platforms their voices and refuses to condemn their genocidal actions and it just feels like, you know, part of the intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust is that the international community at the time, the league of nations, was also very lackluster about condemning the genocide against us and did indeed have many member states who openly supported and participated. I mean this was an attack that was planned for 15 years by people who pretended for generations to be the friends of these peace activists and shit. It's just a theme of betrayal and the feeling that we Jews are alone. Because the loudest voices from every country are shouting from the river to the sea lol. Is it a totally factual statement, is it a cognitive distortion, probably. But there is a real sentiment behind the words that is born from pain, not just shit posting

Of course it's a lot. Even one is too much. But every time these dipshits talk they say "Israel killed 40,000 children." No, the official number given by Hamas and the UN is 7,797. Plus 4,959 women. That's 12,756 civilians. Out of a 40,000 death toll, that is 27,244 Hamas combatants killed meaning the ratio of combatants to civilians dying is 2.25:1. This is an INSANELY good C/C ratio and is the numbers that Hamas has given. The normal C/C ratio is 9:1, the USA C/C ratio in Iraq was 4.46:1 out of 174,000 meaning a 77% civilian casualty rate. And look at how people talk about the war in Iraq and Iraq war veterans and Americans and tell me that matches how people are discussing Israel. You know? I'm not blaming people for being antiwar. For being horrified. For not wanting to send ammunition or weapons. For being appalled at Israel's use of Lavender. But the double standard is very devastating because when 9/11 happened the world mourned with the USA. When Oct 7th happened, a literal pogrom, people literally spit in our faces, shut down universities, scream at us on the streets, fire bomb our synagogues, gang rape our children for being Jewish (happened in France), cheer gas the Jews, you will not replace us, Zionists are rats, kicking us out of cafes, interrogation us to see if we're a "good Jew". Like you don't understand how the atmosphere has changed in North America and how virulently antisemitic its gotten. Our memorials for our dead have to be held in secret. Because people deface them, vandalize them, and show up to protest screaming through a megaphone that we are baby killers while we are crying over our babies being killed. And eighteen year olds are being sent to fight in war in our behalf because every country around our homeland has declared they wish to exterminate us. And that taps into the very real intergenerational pain of the Holocaust.

I've seen protests that look no different than Nazi Germany protests against the Jews. It is wrenching. Most Jews I know have lost their entire friend groups literally over night. Lost their living arrangements. Have professors fail their work if it's about Jewish history. Teach that Zionism means Jewish supremacy and conquering the middle east because we are all from Poland. It hurts. It hurts. And I know that Palestinians are suffering, too. 12,000 innocent people were killed. And I mourn them as much as I mourn my own people. But no one else is going to mourn our dead but us. The world has shown that they cheer when we die. And that hurts.

If I say "I'm grieving the actual people that I PERSONALLY KNOW WHO DIED IN A POGROM" people turn around and scream at me that I am a pedophile rat Zio Nazi genocidaire baby killer. When this first happened I posted the article "bombs fall in sderot" and joked "haha idk if my friends are safe." well my friend wasn't safe. She fucking died.

Ppl don't understand how small the Jewish community is. Whenever Jews meet up we play Jewish geography and we ALWAYS find someone we know in common. When Pittsburgh happened people in my community bc we are conservative Jews too, knew the victims. Ppl I know post about having to go to a bomb shelter all the time, their friends dying in terrorist attacks, experiencing terrorism as children etc these are innocent people who have nothing to do with fucking ben fucking Gvir

My friend is a gdmn [redacted] she deserves to die???? Okay all Americans deserve death because of Iraq. All Russians deserve death because of Ukraine.

Conscription is wrong and we should be protesting against it but no not every Israeli deserves death just as no Palestinian civilian deserves death even tho many of them are radicalized as children to want Jews dead and to join Hamas and get conscripted as well. THIS SUBJECT IS COMPLICATED. and anyone who reduces it to one side vs the other good vs evil is full of fucking shit.

Like I always say the settler colonial language I feel is misguided in some ways because of the whole Israeli population we have 70% Jews, 61% of that 70% were not migrants during waves of Zionist aliyah they were expelled and murdered and ethnically cleansed from Iraq Afghanistan Iran Ethiopia Yemen (every single Jew in Yemen was expelled to Israel) and they literally have no place to go.

Which is why from the river to the sea, means they will end up being literally pushed into the sea lol. And then 20% aren't even Jewish they are Arab, where will they go if Hamas takes over Israel and tries to enact extremist fundamentalist religion when they're used to living in secular democracy? They go into the sea too. Now 31% are European descent of those, many are from Russia which means they were kicked out and not Zionist oleh as well. But then we get into the west Bank where Israeli Jews are literally living as settlers and literally calling themselves settlers and perpetrating violence. The legal terminology of this all is also twitchy. Technically it isn't apartheid because Palestinians aren't Israeli civilians but we cannot ignore Hebron where Israelis literally dump piss and shit and garbage on their heads so they had to build a fucking net. Okay maybe it's not legal apartheid but it's obvious fucking degrading and they are not free to move or work or have the same rights regardless of who is in charge and we need to fix that. We also can say ok it's not a genocide in Gaza bc the numbers suggest of 40k, 12k were civilians according to Hamas themselves giving a 2:1 civ casualty ratio. The normal ratio is 9:1 so it legally cannot be called genocide. But Lavender is indiscriminate targeting civilians and bombing the place to fucking rubble which is a war crime and the Israeli government must be held accountable for this. Hamas does war crimes too they fired 20k rockets per year for 20 years into Israeli residential zones

[10:38 PM] Anyone who reduces this conflict to one side good one side bad is a fucking idiot. There is harm and suffering and complexity on both sides and both sides must be held accountable and then work for peace and prosperity

In conclusion: if you have nothing constructive to say, you can do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up.

[brick-van-dyke]

Okay, in light of the "vote blue or don't vote blue" argument I'm seeing around here, I'm gonna tell you all a story.

I'm Australian and I voted for the Labour Party in the last election. For context, the Labour Party is essentially the left democrat party for Australia, while the Liberal Party is the ring wing republican one. So, I did what you'd all call "voting blue" in the USA, but in Australia. Anthony Albanese is the leader of Labour Left, a faction within the Labour Party to push it towards more leftist policies and ideals. He promised to protect minorities and said he would advocate for a free Palestine. We all voted for him believing it would help and so far, it sounds good doesn't it?

Well, here we are and Anthony Albanese has so far been pushing against pro Palestine protests, trying to implement anti protest legislation and made things actively harder for minorities in Australia. He's done nothing that he promised and of course acted almost as bad as the Liberals when they were in just before. In fact, it's arguably worse since the Labour Party has been attacking the right to protest over the last several months. They haven't done shit for minorities and if argue the ALP has actively made our lives harder.

Is voting important or not important? I don't know if u can answer that, but I can say this; politicians shouldn't be trusted to carry out promises when they're only there for self interest, regardless of what label they use to advertise that self interest. You shouldn't depend on them for change and sit around waiting for that change to come from these people. And, most importantly? There is no difference between those who voted and those who didn't when the most left leaning candidate we had has now just become legally complicit in the ICJ for genocide. There is no lesser evil when even one of us is harmed, and there is no "well at least it's not as bad" when that means sacrificing each other for the sake of a few benefits, so we have to band together and fight the whole damn system. It doesn't matter who did what, because at the end of the day the power is to the people, not the politicians who clearly can't be trusted no matter if you voted for "the right one", or chose not to vote at all. So, sure, vote. But don't expect that to change the world. You change the world through getting up with your fellow community and making a stand through your own physical actions against he system, not waiting for a politician to change anything when it's their job to lie and cheat. Reliance on the system is how we all come to lose and division is how we're silenced.

We're in this together and we need to remember what's important; each other and the power WE hold when we work together and fight against the entire system itself, not some representative in a suit.

[girlcrushart]

I was admittedly disappointed when Chappell decided not to endorse Kamala. And a lot of people are, and they're being vocal and honestly nasty about it. I do think it's of paramount importance that she win, because if the other guy gets in, then a lot of the things Chappell is passionate about (from drag to basic human rights for the LGBTQ+ community) are in serious jeopardy. And, as a Canadian, who can't vote in this election, but who's life will unquestionably be effected by who becomes the next President, I get upset when people don't take the right they've been given seriously. That's where the hate that Chappell has received is confusing and obnoxious, because even tho her motivations are really obvious to me, people really seem to have missed the boat on this one. Right away, people accused her of "both-siding" it, when she said that there are bad people on both sides. That's not both-siding it, you guys. That's when you say there are very fine people on both sides and one side is Nazis. That's not what she was saying. Honestly, there ARE bad people on both sides. People also accused her of doing it because she didn't want to lose fans, or upset her family or whatever... those people are also confused. You really think Chappell has a lot of red-hat-wearing fans? You really think she cares at all about that? She had to clarify today that she is not voting for Trump, and while she didn't say who she was voting for she def kinda implied that she's basically not happy with either choice for some real reasons. Chappell has made it very clear in the past that she is unhappy with her government's position and involvement on what's happening in Gaza and that they are complicit in aiding and supporting a genocide. That's what she means by bad people. Genocide is bad, you guys. She doesn't want to enthusiastically support and endorse people who, while they may fight for things that are important to her that she believes in, are also contributing to something she believes to be inexcusable. And I think she's brave for sticking to that. For me, personally, I'd prefer it if she endorsed Kamala and helped ensure she ends up in charge—that would be best for me. But Chappell has already made it very clear that she's not gonna just do things because other people expect her to because she's a celebrity and there are unwritten rules that need to be followed. She's challenging so many of those rules (and I applaud and love her for it), and in this case, for her personally, she didn't feel like she could officially endorse anyone and she has perfectly reasonable reasons for doing that. I'm sad, I wish she'd do otherwise, but my admiration for her has only increased because she's clearly a deep thinker who does not make decisions lightly and is sticking to her values and beliefs. Today's girlcrushart guardian is Chappell Roan.

[asgardswinter]

Having been in the cod fandom for a year and a half now (played the games since i was a kid tho) i have noticed how a lot of the big cod fanartists draw the characters eerily similar to the VA’s even though the characters look VERY different from the VA’s. It also goes hand in hand with the mlm fetishizing, how these fanartists (mostly straight cis women honestly) have the audacity to draw nsfw content looking exactly like the VA’s, bc again its very fetishizing especially when their sole content is mlm nsfw content.

It also bothers me that these fanartists draw some of the characters such as Gaz and Simon exactly like the zionist VA’s even tho they clearly look very different.

With Simon it isnt even confirmed he looks like the VA, so its even more gross that some of these fanartists draw him.

I think its rly disgusting how fanartists like Wombywoo block people for calling her out on this, especially the zionism. Like u have no problem with drawing characters looking like real people that support genocide. Its despicable. Get a grip and stop being complicit in this.