#it's literally the whole generic genocide wing and I just--

[jacensolodjo]

I'm trying to work on my intro for one of the other wings in the museum so I qualify for more than one of them as a docent but my anger keeps getting the best of me lmaoooo

[needle-noggins]

(CW for SA, suicidal ideation) Here we go. My favorite and simultaneously least favorite panel of Vash and Knives.

I've seen a few interpretations of this scene and before we dive into the one that really struck me, let's start with the more... chill one. We're finally introduced to the third gun of Trigun, Vash's angel arm. And the way we're introduced to it involves Knives forcing him to pull the trigger. Of course, since no one knows anything about Knives, the people of Noman's Land blame Vash for Fifth Moon, and Vash likewise blames himself (this is kinda a spoiler but if you've been paying attention, it's just par for the course). However, he's not the one who pulled the trigger, Knives is. It brings up an interesting moral question of blame - do we blame the gun (and Vash, who is being used/objectified as a weapon here), or the person who wanted it to happen? Guns don't kill people, genocidal twins do!

Now for the awful interpretation, the one that makes me cry and wish Vash was real so I could hug him and pay for his therapy. And really highlights how awful Knives is and how far he'd go for his brother in his own, fucked-up way. I touched on this in a previous post about Legato and the Murder Cafe, and the whole time I was thinking about Fifth Moon but didn't want to say anything for the sake of spoilers.

So. Pay attention to the way Vash and Knives are standing. Knives, when he first grabbed Vash's head, was standing in front of him. He moves behind him to better control him and yeah, he's still controlling him via hand on head, and now he's got his other hand gripping Vash's chest, where feathers/wings are manifesting. Knives is assaulting him. If you wanna get crazy with it and say that the angel arm is kinda phallic, you could say... yeah. This is rape. I heard that specific interpretation once and while I accepted it I also don't know if that would be generally accepted or if I'd be called out for it, so I'm trying to tread lightly here.

It also doesn't escape me that of course the angel arm has feminine features like the plants - the plants that, again, humans are exploiting for their ability to create. There's a lot of feminist commentary to be made here but many people have said it better than me. Specifically I'm thinking of this one post I saw about gender fuckery and Tristamp Vash. Anyway.

Also, the atomic bomb/black hole/sun/whatever that is in the middle... It's just so powerful. It's terrifying. The eldritch body horror here is a punch to the gut. What the fuck, Trigun? I thought this was a funky space western!!!

Oh, and here's more commentary on the following few panels:

Vashussy shot, Knives is still right behind him. Yeah, I wasn't kidding about how bad this pose is for them. Knives, you sick fuck.

Vash shoots himself in the leg (a key difference from '98 trigun, lol), because of course he does, but it doesn't free him from the arm.

The arm's getting darker/the light inside is getting lighter! Stampede did an awesome job with their interpretation of the angel arm and I don't think I would have understood it without that. Also, on my first read I didn't notice that Vash is literally levitating, which is cool, but also terrifying because ?? he's not in control of that either??

Finally. A super painful, minimalist, double-page spread. Nightow loves 'em. Vash thinks he's dying (maybe?) and he wishes he had never existed. It's not suicidal ideation per se, but he wishes he didn't exist at all because he's already caused enough suffering. This is a low for him, because he believes so strongly in the concept of the Blank Ticket. (Come on, soupy brain bitch boy, get it together!) He's a monster, it's just how he was born, and he's not in control. Very specifically too, he says "we", and then changes it to "I"... he doesn't blame Knives at all, and that's very him. I want to shake him! Stop playing the martyr, Vash!

[miss-rum-hee]

Every time I see a pro-Israel post in the wild, I take somewhere between $200 - $1k out of my trust and donate it directly to a Palestinian family or place a large order to a pro-Palestine business. Just letting people who condone genocide know :)

"""Condone genocide""" and it's just me hoping for the hostages to be brought back home & bitching about how this site's """Activitism""" is LITERALLY just going after random Jews online & harassing them & doing borderline, oftentimes straight-up Nazi shit like cheering terrorist organizations who outright say that they want to kill all Jews in the world.

And the worst part is that this isn't the only example of antisemitism & general clown shit that I can find present in the movement, either. Cheering on a girl's sister being murdered at the Nova festival & hoping she suffered more as she died.

Saying that the only place Jews are indigenous to is Hell.

Holocaust inversion & denial.

Getting salty at a Jewish celebrity (PINK) for celebrating Hanukkah

Calling Tara Strong's cousins """settlers""" & calling her a colonial apologist while October 7th was STILL GOING?

Getting mad at Mike Pollock for making a tribute to the hostages

Just flat-out reinventing Nazi race theory

Going into a whole tirade about how anti-zionism isn't antisemitism & then at the end of it proceeding to call the Jewish person they're talking to a k*ke

Peddling conspiracy theories

Wearing the symbols of terrorists (Hezbollah, Hamas) & raising their flags

Doing the Nazi salute & praising the leader of Iran (who has oppressed the people of Iran for the last 4 decades)

Calling to "Globalize the Intifada" (which were bus bombings, stabbings & shootings that killed 1000s of Israelis)

Literal callbacks to Hitler's final solution + praising Al-Qassam (Hamas military wing which carried out the Oct 7 massacre at Nova)

Tearing out tributes to the hostages & calling it propaganda

I don't even know how to describe this last one

You got some nerve insinuating that I'm a genocide supporter when THAT'S the sort of bottom feeders you've got hanging out in your movement.

Anyways, grow the fuck up & stop harassing randos online because they said that hurting Jews is bad.

[lafemmemacabre]

Liberals in general are sheeple (read this in a communist tone of voice, not a right-wing fascist conservative tone of voice), but US liberals are on a whole other level completely brainless AND EVIL sheep I stg.

The only fucking times you all use anything resembling class analysis it's to justify why supposedly Poor Americans (the US military is composed mostly of people who're from white and well-off backgrounds but ok lol) are fine to join the Maiming, Killing, Torturing And Raping Babies Worldwide Machine.

Liberal anxieties, especially the more privileged the liberal in question is, are never about the actual outcome of evil and harm, they're about How Can We Justify Doing Absolute Evil? We Must Do Absolute Evil Otherwise I Might Have To Sacrifice My -GASPS!- Personal Comfort... And The Lives Of NPCs--I mean, Foreign Civilians, Are Worth Less Than My Immediate Comfort.

We don't care if you need to join the Maiming, Killing, Torturing And Raping Babies Worldwide Machine in order to be able to afford a college degree btw.

There's imprisoned Americans working themselves literal slavery wages to donate just a few dollars to people suffering a genocide and you cunts can't get student loans or work minimum wage jobs? Fuck off. It's you all who should be dying instead. I hope everything you're justifying doing to innocent human beings in the global south is done to you in hell for eternity once your time comes.

[determinate-negation]

German anon again. Of course I think Germans and the German state are racist. I thought i made that pretty clear. This is about where left-wing people show up and where they don't. Where we join in fights and where we start wishing people a slow death (wtf?). Where some people completely manage to ignore the violence towards jewish people (which has increased significantly) and where we tolerate other forms of antisemitism like no longer listening to what Jewish people or scholars say. Again, anti-zionist Jewish people. Antisemitism doesnt go away just because the state of Isreal is committing crimes against humanity. As you said yourself, Isreal and Jewish people are not the same.

And the far right wing party, the AfD has plans to get rid of all POC as well as left-wing people who "cannot be saved" including LGBTIQ+ people so i dont know what yout point here was? Of course they will also target disabled people, Jewish people, other minorities. They are literally a Nazi party with Nazi members. And currently the left is completely divided because apparently being anti genocide, pro palestinian and also pro protecting Jewish people in Germany all at the same time is not possible for some people. And the facists here and in the US have it even easier because of it. If this opinion is so controversial that people find it cringe or wish me a slow death then great, we are so far beyond of having any meaningful anti-fascist, anti-imperialist resistance against what's to come that we are genuinely so fucked. I would also appreciate for you to be mindful of what messages you share. It's quite upsetting to try and connect and find common ground with other left-wing people who offer a position and insight from their country and have such a hateful response. We are not enemies.

Once again about 2014: The response in Germany was more than anyone had anticipated. People started offering apprenticeships, their homes, emotional and bureaucratic support, soli-parties, and again all language courses were booked out for months. Free language classes offered by private persons. That doesn't mean suddenly Germans aren't racist anymore and i know very well how violent life in Germany is for refugees. I was trying to compare social action in times of crises and where people show up quickly and efficiently to help and where they remain abscent. When Jewish places got attacked recently there was one antifa Mahnwache but no nation wide protests against anti-semitism. My only point is: I think we have capacity to show up for more causes. We have to. Ukraine's fight is our fight. Palestine's fight is our fight. Imperialism, racism, antisemitism, desinformation, anti-LGBT* are all our fight. I thought this was the whole point.

thanks for totally proving my point about german political pedantry. i dont think my response was especially hateful but youre pushing me cause this is kind of obnoxious

ive seen coverage of “anti antisemitism” and pro israeli rallies in germany, maybe leftist anti zionists arent associating with them bc theyre full of genocidal zionists and racists. meanwhile i see german police arresting pro palestine jews, and nearly 1/3 of people who got their events cancelled in germany for being pro palestine are jewish. but you already conflate burning israeli flags with antisemitism so you seem to have a distorted view on this

also ukraine is not my cause. and people dont generally go out and protest in support of things their government is already funding

[artfilmfan]

I don't think i've ever despised US politics more (i've always been critical of the foreign policy under basically any US president during my lifetime - even under Obama it was disastrous, but this has gone now beyond all acceptable limits), BOTH parties. The DNC is the display of everything that is wrong with the US political system (basically two right wing parties that follow AIPAC guidelines, one of them pretending to be left while it hasnt been for ages, a few issues alone and waving lgbt and minority flags doesnt make you progressive if you allow genocide to happen to people that look different than you or follow a different religion) and just how incredibly one sided they are about the whole thing. Hosting exclusively hostages from one side while forgetting there are many more Palestinians hostages in prisons (or torture camps as even the more decent Israeli journalists call them) without any evidence, children included. Palestinians don't even exist for them, their suffering doesnt exist and they are not allowed on that DNC stage to even say how THEY feel about it all, or their POV. They are still giving a blank check to Netanyahu (who is a wanted war criminal by international law and with all the ICJ rulings) to do whatever he wants including sending more military aid while Palestinian children and other civilians are literally being blown apart, after destroying basically everything in Gaza and killing more than 10 percent of the entire Palestinian population (those numbers could be even much higher after all is examined). Anything that happens on US election day is totally on them. Anything that happens out of disgust of enabling all this is totally on them.

At this point i dont think i have anything else to say on this matter, my words wont change anything, even far more important people cant do anything about it as it seems, i'm done talking about it. We will however never forget or forgive this and we will act on it as much as we can. Boycotts (the financial consequences of them are already working worldwide and its only the beginning), disrupting events of any kind that feature the enablers, letting anyone involved in this know how an entire generation of people feels about it all will be the least we can do. The young and future voters (that they are alienating more and more, that's why they fear tiktok so much) will one day be the decisive factor and they too will not forget what they did when it mattered. Sooner or later there will be a boomerang effect. And then maybe there will be some kind of justice, although far too late for the present generation of Palestinians going thru the worst anyone could ever imagine. Almost one year of all this and the powers that be still pretend its nothing. The world really failed you Palestine and i'm truly sorry and embarassed i'm part of this world that let it happen and go on for this long. The protests and the epic scale of them is the only good thing that happened because of it. I hope they continue on many levels until there is true justice for Palestinians.

[nihoneshi]

Welcome to Aqua Rambles on about KFP

I just finished binging Kung Fu Panda 1-3 (not 4 yet) and man outside of a few secondhand embarrassment scenes, because there are a couple of them still for my brain, What I will say is this

god I do miss KFP fandom so so much but I also was REALLY young when I first found myself in that fandom, so like, It's only a matter of time before I found myself brainrotting the movies again and even shorter of time before I re-entered Fandom Space.

So let's get the obvious ones out of the way. God I love Tragedies and the whole prophecy that was laid out hundreds of years ago, I love how cohesive the Trilogy is (I think we all agree that KFP3 was the true end of the Series, since not even the VAs liked KFP4 and it was a glorified corporate cash grab, but don't worry, AUs exist (: )

Tai Lung and General Kai are definitely by far the two MAIN villains I vibe with the most given their situations (Tragedy Affliction & Bond Brother Give-Take disagreement) I do love Shen but my love for him is extremely nuanced on the fact he's a diabolical genocidal sociopath but he's also oddly fucking dramatic, theatrical and comedic of a villain DESPITE the 3 words I JUST called him.

But also the Wolf Boss.. God he's a bastard (affectionate) but EVERY TIME HE "INSULTS" PO HE JUST GOES OFF ON NON-THREATENING TERMS homie please stop being bisexual on the battlefield lmaO /pos.

The Will to write Tai Lung just like 13yo me wanted to has not changed outside of the fact that after a decade more of writing with extremely intricate and nuanced characters with complex tragedies and traumas, I feel like I could finally do justice with this Snow Leopard (especially with Redemption Arcs, because hee-ho I write Saren Arterius, you know. Mass Effect 1's big bad villain that is just as much as a tragedy as Tai Lung but unlike Tai Lung this idiot decided to try to get parasitical genocide machines to spare them and ended up getting indoctrinated against his will)

Now onto Main Cast. Just like kid me, Viper and Mantis were my two go-to idols for KFP1, my love for Crane's realism-centric attitude and Tigress' having second thoughts and a much more intricate wake-up call in KFP2 and on became so much more apparent, like, trust me I haven't watched any of the other animated content but you can tell like, these 6 have gotten so attached to one another (Monkey and Po, especially, literally best buds love that for them)

But the SHEER amount of times I have said this phrase "Viper, Please rephrase yourself" has been in the nearly every thing she has ever said she is so upfront and has misread the room every single damn time. and don't even GET ME Started on KFP2/3 Tigress, the sheer amount of character development she gets is insane

she goes from an asshole to deep down realizing that Po has fallen still due to mental turmoil SEVERAL times and isn't keeping Po down there with Ox and Croc because she doesn't want him getting in the way but BECAUSE She doesn't want him to get hurt like him freezing up both times has gotten him. And then further more watching Po teach everyone their own ways of Kung-Fu all the WHILE TIGRESS IS HOLDING ON TO A BABY PANDA THE WHOLE TIME, EVEN FIGHTING WITH THE KID. AND THEN SHE CARRIES THEM AROUND EVEN AT THE JADE PALACE AT THE END OF THE MOVIE.

And please I can't fucking believe it took Crane several MOVIES TO GET HIS FUCKING NECK FIXED AFTER WHAT TAI LUNG DID TO HIM, HOMIE HAD A CROOKED NECK FOR MONTHS. There were scenes in KFP2 and Early KFP3 where this man's neck was still partially FUCKED. Dude shrugs it off like it's nothing and then proceeds to heal his wing in merely a few damn days max.

The Theatrics, all of the animations, the voice work.. god damn I adore these three movies so so much. But there is one thing I was not expecting and honestly I should've seen it coming.

My eventual brainrot and emotional attachment to side characters and characters with very minimal screen time (I should've seen this with me Writing Volteer from The Legend of Spyro, Nihlus Kryik from Mass Effect 1, and many more)

Dude I LOVE Master Croc, I don't know why SPECIFICALLY him but like. I like how he looks so cocky wanted to kick Shen's shit in, even laughing to himself, how he's so so loyal to Ox after Rhino's (supposed death), like you KNOW these three were inseparable and it LOOKS like Rhino reunites with Master Ox and Master Croc at the end of KFP3 that's what I hope if it was even only for a couple of minutes following what was probably Rhino heading back to the Spirit Realm.

I really love Master Croc, it is not even funny he's such a character, a silly, perhaps.

but now my rambles go to something else, since it takes place in the era that it does.. and like.. my hoard of Dragon OCs and Dragon Characters (literally all the guys on this blog ARE dragons!~ ) Like.. what would be the general consensus of a Dragon popping up in universe? Since back then they're still hailed as deities (Like the Dragon Kings, and all the dragon deities in both Chinese and Japanese mythology)

I am so so curious. But maybe I should add more to my rambles later when I am not so tired but god I have ideas and WILL enact on them.

A tiny edit: I 100% support kaiway due to the context I now have from watching KFP3, homie you have spent all the time in the world holding up Oogway's Chi charm like you want him to see everything like, they def. had something going on pre-banishment

[palioom]

. This “Druckman is a genocidal Zionist so I need to put a lil blurb on my written porn so everyone knows this porn is FOR GAZA” stuff is so out of hand.

If you actually played the game, had an ounce of media literacy, and knew about the Israel/Palestine conflict as deeply as you THINK you know about it, you’d see that you are perpetuating the exact shit the game warms against. That the ISRAELI WRITER of the game warns against. Cycles of violence, from EITHER SIDE, lead to nothing but suffering. If you thought the game was this pro-Israel, fuck Palestinians, blood thirsty Zionist propaganda scheme-then you literally missed the entire point. In fact, if you think that I’d say we must have played 2 different games. It’s a pretty centrist idea, the whole “both govts are bad and have been doing bad things as revenge to each other and gets us nowhere” thing, but hey it’s better then if the game was actually like, made my a right-wing Israeli politician whose idea would be “let’s have Ellie just absolutely DESTROY Abby. And the fireflies. And anybody else. And then she can come back and expand Jackson all the way out to Seattle and everyone will be happy the end.” THAT would be fucked.

Something being made by an Israeli does not inherently make it zionistic or radical or immoral or bad. Especially when that thing is a piece of media that explores the suffering of both populations of a conflict and also of people in war in general.

Anyway, Joel is a Hebrew name that means The Lord is God and Miller is the 3rd most common Jewish surname in the states so Joel Miller is canonically a Jew™️ 🥳 Ellie is also a Hebrew name. Do with that info what you wish.

neil literally stands with israel, there hasn't been shit about the people in gaza. my dude, if you can look at what's happening and not feel the need to speak up, get the fuck out.

plus, i find it important to denounce neil and not give him any further attention or money for his creations because as i said, he stands with israel. i'm not telling people to do shit, but i wish people spread more awareness about what's happening, and i feel better to add masterlists and infos onto my fics, because they have been written already and might be my last joel ones.

also you equating this issue with jews, wanting to go on about how ellie and joel are jewish names when it's not even about that at all, shows me exactly what kind of person you are and how much you think you know.

it's not jews vs muslims, because that's what you're implying. no one even MENTIONED jews until you came in. guess what! there are jews and even christians in gaza that are getting killed just as the muslim population is! this is about a genocidal, occupying force pushing people into smaller and smaller "safe zones" just to bomb them when the world is busy watching the fucking superbowl.

i doubt you've seen the videos that i have seen, dead children, torn limbs, skeletal remains, cats eating the dead, or you wouldn't be coming into my mentions like this.

if you truly cared about what's happening, you wouldn't mind me saiyng i wish we raised more awareness, but as i said before, you showed me exactly what kind of a person you are and you, just as everyone else who thinks like you, can block me.

also no one says it's zionistic cause he's an israeli, don't put your thoughts into my mouth and pretend that's what i said. if he was supporting gaza and the end of the genocide, i wouldn't even be saying shit. but he isn't, so please look at what i actually said before you do all this.

[queerchainsaw]

I'm not American but seeing the rhetoric of voting blue no matter what here on Tumblr and other social media has definitely confirmed for me that liberalism is a disease and that the US is patient zero. These people are so lost in their own shallow bipartisanship they fail to understand that the months before an election are quite literally the only time politicians will "listen" (and using the word "listen" is generous), the only power, and I mean only power, one has in this specific case is to threaten to withhold the vote, but these dumbfucks are like "so you want Trump to win?" No, shitface, I want Trump to drop dead, but right now you're pledging undying support and allegiance to an administration that is overseeing a literal genocide, and it doesn't matter how many times Harris says "we need to stop the suffering" or some other innocuous bulshit, she, as VP, literally signs off on millions of tax dollar every single week that go, you guessed it, to the Zionist Occupation Project (aka "Israel"). I wonder if these blue-magas understand that "Israel" relies almost entirely on US support, they are not a self-sufficient "nation", if the Biden-Harris administration actually threatened to pull all support, Israel would have no other option but to stop the assault on Gaza and the illegal settling of the West Bank because without American Handouts it would cease to exist within a month (assuming European backers like the UK, France etc. tried to keep it afloat, if they also backed out, Israel would vanish in less than a week), but since all that's been happening is empty threats from the UN and the ICJ, Israel keeps on keeping on, because it has the United States' blind support, and with the world's biggest superpower backing your every move, there isn't a security council or international court on this earth that can stop you.

ALSO, it boils my blood when democrats pretend to care about Palestine while treating it as an "issue" within the grand scheme of some election campaign, this is not an issue, this is the issue, has been for the past 75 years, people are dying every day, land is being stolen, a people is being annihilated, their representatives wiped off the face of the earth and their culture bulldozed and misappropriated by colonizers, this is an American project, Zionism is baked into the Modern American Political System, it's something the two-party system has no disagreements about - Republican or Democrat, money will continue to be funneled into the Zionist Occupation. When people are accused of both-side-zing the Presidential Election (as though it's the biggest sin since Eve decided to have a snack) I have to give a big hearty laugh, because these democrats actually think they're denouncing some obscure resurfacing of the horshoe theory when in fact, in the grand scheme of political stances, Democrats and Republicans are basically on the same side of the aisle, they're both right-wing parties, one is just proto-christofascist conservative capitalist monsters and the other is just faux-progressive diehard-liberal (still christofascist) capitalist monsters, obviously nuance is necessary, and the Republican party is objectively worse (it's their whole shtick), and so when the bar is 6 feet below Hell, obviously one is forced to say the Democratic Party is "better", but that, by no means, makes it a good party. Democrats who say "let's elect Harris and then we'll focus on all the problems of the two-party system and the blatant support of genocide" clearly don't understand that by blindly supporting either candidate, the two-party system has won already and so has the Zionist Project. You wanna do better? : fight the system. Agreeing to fall in line with the expectation of "dealing with these things later" is the biggest bulshit cop-out in the history of human mediocrity, if American "Progressives" weren't, by large, so terminally-liberal they might have understood that over the summer they had an unprecedented opportunity to make the two-party system shake in its boots, by turning away from the democrats, but it only took some light fear-mongering from the Biden-Harris administration for liberals to fall in line and forget all about the inherent injustice of a system that regularly and consistently forces you to chose between the lesser of two evils. Wake the fuck up and smell the tyranny that your day-to-day lives are built on.

It is a tragedy in and of itself that the fate of Palestinians and Palestine is largely in the hands of forcefully-uninformed Americans, but it's important to realize that as long as the US keeps dolling out money, weapons and overall resources, the Zionist Occupation has next to no reasons to stop the Genocide, the power rests in the hands of the current administration, and who in the hell do you think puts the power in the hands of any administration if not the people? get wise dumbfucks

[thetardisisnotourdivision]

Is it just me who's seriously worried about the fact that they're not even imprisoning the migrants in a secure, safe, on-land building, but on a boat? I have a horrible feeling about where this is going. They're literally imprisoning people who just wanted to be safe and live better lives, and on a boat, no less, which feels at best like a cruel joke ("they come over here in boats" rhetoric) and at worst feels like a setup for a horrific "tragedy"... I genuinely wouldn't put it past the Tories at this point to do something like that, and the scry thing is how many people would be unbothered. One of my mum's friends, who has always been generally left-wing, the other week said something about immigrants being WORSE than ACTUAL CONVICTED CRIMINALS. It's scary how easily people are falling into this trap, I've said it once and I'll say it again; it's terrifying how many parallels there are between modern Britain and Nazi Germany. THIS IS FASCISM. First prosecution, stripping them if their human rights, then "rounding them up" and putting them in camps. We know where this goes. We know what comes next. WE CANNOT LET THIS HAPPEN.

It frustrates me how powerless I am - I can't even vote yet, so here I am desperately shouting into the void on Tumblr, hoping that someone with some semblance of power and influence will read this. Even without the "migrant issues", this country is falling to fascism - I've just started questioning my gender and I'm terrified by the new laws being put in place. Up and down the county, more and more people are in danger, are vulnerable, homeless, struggling, in poverty, in the town I live in - a very white, very middle-class town, so you can imagine what it's usually like (there's like four churches too, whatever you're picturing as the average citizen before the cost of living crisis is probably accurate) - people are having to shut off rooms in their houses and sleep in their living rooms because there's mould or damp or other things that are making their children ill. This country is in chaos, people are dying, there are fucking fascists in government and yet STILL PEOPLE INSIST THAT THERE'S NO POINT VOTING ANYONE ELSE IN. Let me tell you now - Starmer might not be great, but at least he's not a fascist - and his party are a thousand times better than the Tories. This country is falling apart.

If you live outside the UK, you might or might not know all of this. It's awful. It's chaos here, there's basically Nazi's in government and no one gives a shit. There are a few people who quietly talk about where this is heading, how we've seen this before in every genocide in history, but nobody else seems to care. We have a whole generation of people starving, unable to afford to live, and no one cares. Innocent people looking for a safe place to live are being forcibly imprisoned - their children are being stripped of any sort of comfort DELIBERATELY - for the crime of fleeing danger.

I don't know. I really don't know. I've forgotten what my point was. I hate this country. I hate these fuckweeds in government who think they can do what the fuck they like. I hate it I hate it I hate it. And I hate that there's nothing I can do.

[bisluthq]

No offence but it’s not your right to say whether a country in the Middle East should be secular or not lmao. I too am not a fan of religious extremism but i at least recognise that my worldview is not an objective norm, and that it’s extremely paternalistic for westerners to decide what sort of governments they’d like to see in the Middle East. Or that they should be there at all. And it’s also not up to us to decide how much land Palestinians should have since all of it belongs to them. If you live in Israel you should be able to coexist with Palestinians, just like white South Africans were forced to have to interact with black South Africans after apartheid ended. You don’t get to call the fucking shots

idk I’m anti religious extremism - I gave a bunch of examples and specifically not only in the Middle East. I gave the example of certain American states following extremist Christian ideals, which I find morally repugnant and deeply problematic. Sure - everyone gets to decide what they want to do and who they want to elect and what represents them best but religious extremism harms people (often women and marginalized people in general). So yes I am anti religious extremism in any part of the world and of any kind 🤷🏻‍♀️ I don’t think it’s specific to one religion. Religious extremism generally leads, as I say, to measurable harm against women and queer people and often leads to genocides or violence against other religious groupings in that area. It’s not paternalistic to say that. It’s literally just a fact. Obviously though people get to make their own choices - if something works for them, okie dokes. Kinda sucks for the people it doesn’t work for but eh 🤷🏻‍♀️

regarding your point on land maaaan idk it’s really not as simple as you’re saying either. Firstly there is the issue of Palestinians versus Israelis in general. Israeli Arabs very much exist and occupy a number of senior positions in Israeli society. They are… Israelis… However, Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank (and here it gets even more complicated) are not Israelis. They are foreigners in Israel. So there’s yk that. Secondly, while it’s easy to call Israel a settler colony it’s not really that simple (West Bank is again a whole other issue and those are ILLEGAL settlements)? Israel is indeed a very racist place lol but it’s got a massive Mizrahi population (Jews who never left the Middle East) and who came to Israel as a result of forced expulsions from other Middle Eastern countries after the 1948 war. So like must a Jew of Iranian descent for instance “go back” to Iran? That’s not really gonna work lol I don’t think they’re gonna be very welcome there 😐 Like realistically it won’t work. So what exactly must happen?

I think it’s a VERY COMPLICATED ISSUE and no one is saying I - or anyone else for that matter - must “call the shots”. It’s also well and good to say everyone must coexist and sing kumbaya together but that takes us back to the religious extremism. If Islamic jihadists “win” they are, I can guarantee you, not going to want to sing kumbaya with the Jews there and where precisely do you want those people to go? Again, forget about like completely forget the Americans and let’s even forget the Holocaust survivors and the ex Soviet Jews who went there - where must the Mizrahi population go lol?

A two state solution would be ideal and fair or I suppose a one state secular nation where everyone coexists and sings kumbaya would be even better but while you have religious extremists ON BOTH SIDES - I’m not erasing the right wing Israeli parties - that doesn’t seem like it’d happen?

The comparison with South Africa is not the great one people think it is because those are 1) completely different histories 2) the ANC actually wanted to negotiate and when apartheid ended it was under a Government of National Unity and I’m not really seeing a situation where Bibi and Haniyeh and Abbas sit down and form something like that. Literally none of them are super reasonable people and none of them are especially interested in compromises 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️ which is terrible because that just means civilians keep dying.

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Ultra

Story Pile: Ultra

Content Warning: Rachel Maddow.

Oh and all the Nazis.

I am personally of the opinion that American history is interesting because it seems, from the outside, to be so immensely cyclical. It’s possibly a byproduct of being such a young country, and having its history so well documented compared to places where you have centuries between epochs and whatnot, but it seems like you can almost always throw a dart at a calendar and find a story in American history that just happens to overlap with some current events.

Or maybe it’s that the nature of American history is pretty much everything is always grappling with the trans-atlantic slave trade, while say, Australia, we just have a lot more of a staggered set of separated genocides to work with. Britain? It has a whole empire of terrible things it did, but also it has the class system and kings and all that jazz. But in America, America, oh, you can almost always open up any given historical event and find that hey, turns out racism was a crucial element in this story.

When talking about the rise of the right-wing in American politics, I liked to point to the narrative of the Know-Nothings, anti-immigration isolationist assholes who originally got their name out of refusing to disclose their origins, meaning they were a political party birthed in hate and cloaked in conspiracy in their point of origin. They also had no material policy beyond ‘hate the immigrants’ and ‘no,’ which as it turns out, when they got power, meant they sucked at their jobs and they failed and they got turned out, in this repeating cycle. But that was the 1850s: this party fell apart basically because of the Civil War, which – again, grappling with the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

I don’t bring this up because it’s core to the story of this podcast. It’s completely unrelated. I bring it up to underscore that I did know about some of the stages of American history where things went weird and assholes got attention.

I had no idea about this period of US history.

Did you know that there was a point of time in American history when a Senator was having his speeches written by a Nazi handler who was explicitly trying to escalate America into an uninvolvement policy, or even a commitment to an alliance with Germany during World War 2? You didn’t?

Well, guess what, there was more than one.

Do you know how popular Nazis were in America? Did you know how many high profile celebrities, in a period of wireless and public speaking events, were being cutouts for Nazi handlers? Not in a nefarious, get-famous-for-these-reasons way, but instead in the much more embarrassing ‘rich idiot convinced by being flattered by a racist’ way. Because boy, there are some historical names that stand out in this space. Like Charles Lindbergh.

And what you’ll find if you listen to the podcast, that we know about this stuff not because of tireless exercise in helping to maintain the status quo of the world, struggling to police the good moral character of America and fight back against this insidious, invading idea, but rather, because almost all these Nazis who were literally at the job of communicating discretely in a foreign power were also kind of colossal fuckups who could trip and fall and scatter paperwork around and nobody would want to cause a fuss about that. It’s interesting to consider that as much as my entire life, America has defined itself as being ‘the ones who won World War 2, so you better be grateful’, that they were a culture who, when they jumped into that war It was completely unclear as to which side they were going to jump into.

This podcast is a trip. It’s not a story with a single, narrow focus, the story arc of (say) Spiro Agnew like you’d hear in Bag Man. It’s rather looking at the different sampled layers of ways that America, in general, had these fulfilling feedback loops of different groups of right-wing shitheads, who were dangerous, and organised themselves with things like newsletters and wireless radio and individual rallies and just the way that these things are not just terrible ideas, they’re social experiences. People weren’t showing up to racist rallies to hear new ideas about how to do a racism, they were showing up to be part of a community of racists, whether that was fans of a hate preacher or arming themselves with political theory that justified the fundamentally capitalist nature of Hitler’s holocaust.

Chances are you’ve never listened to a podcast like this, a high production value long-form audio book worth of material that’s divided up into chapters for an easy engagement experience. Just because when I hear ‘podcast’ most people I know assume that it’s defaulted to a conversation between some people you like, it’s not a thing where you get say, one person telling you a story, with detailed sources and archive audio.

Ultra isn’t a fun listen; to compare it to Bag Man, the other major Maddow podcast I’ve recommended in the past, it isn’t as fundamentally funny as that one. Bag Man was kind of listening to the worst asshole in the world (as far as the podcast is attenuated) being both grotesquely corrupt and getting so thoroughly caught that it wound up being a negotiation about how to escape punishment. It’s ultimately, a darkly comic piece, in particular because there are some people of the time talking about what utter shitheads these politicians were. Ultra by comparison is a sort of encyclopedia entry of examining a lot of different characters dotted around and realising that almost all of these stories end up at ‘and they were pretty okay with the Nazis,’ which is more lurching and miserable.

Plus, the desire to hear someone suffer, the desire to hear a moral ending to this narrative is kind of dilute. There are a lot of total shitheads who failed because they sucked, but also because there was some social value to destructive shame. This was back when you could shame people into giving up on their shitty newsletter. Kinda. Now, the closest you can end up with as a message for the future is ‘these people suck and fail, but they also are trying to not fail, and maybe it’s worth treating shitheads like they’re actually shitheads.’

You can listen to Ultra on any given podcasting app, and I recommend that rather than going to the MSNBC website, which is… uh… bloated?

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media #StoryPile

[flowerflamestars]

I'm in a very angry-with-the-IC-and-Rhys-in-particular mood, and since I'm just rereading Daylight I was wondering, what is going through Rhysand's mind throughout the events of Daylight? Because it's basically his entire life CRUMBLING around him and I'd love to see the mental gymnastics he does to fit it all into his "I'm the good guy, actually" narrative. Or just his general reaction.

this is a FABULOUS question, thank you!

Daylight! Rhys is, in my opinion, the closest to a canonical (pre-acosf) character representation that I go for. He's so SO fucked up, and sublimating and burying all that trauma has, of course, failed, and it's all manifesting, in all these different directions.

To understand the level on which Rhys is losing his shit, it's important to go back to the very beginning: Rhysand, to Rhysand, is always, always the hero of the story. The down on his luck knight with truth in his heart. The struggling, just man.

He CANNOT seeing beyond himself for even a second. He casts himself in the most important role, as the only person whose personal consequences exist.

His mother, at probable great risk, takes him to Illyria to be trained- the precious, first-born, godly son of Night. To learn to fight- to learn, presumably, her culture- to see what that culture is reduced to, a harshness he will on day have the power to change. Rhys had to be, at some point, a great hope for Not High Fae denizens of the Court.

What does Rhysie learn? Illyria is harsh. Illyria is bad. Backwards and cruel.

He hates his father for...presumably, the crime of being a pretty traditional High Lord? Rhys hates the cruelties! the Court of Nightmares! the broken system!

So what does Rhys do when he has power? he fires everyone. He doesn't like them, he doesn't like whatever they did under his father...so instead of hiring new people, he removes himself entirely from a potential role in changing/mitigating those policies. See also: the Court of Nightmares, cowed occasionally, but not in any way governed by Rhys.

But he's the hero! He's destroyed the oppression! His Court of Just his Bros is made of women and Illyrians!

(Rhys removed the terribleness from his direct experience...because only his experiences matter)

So, Rhys in his head: the struggle, the hero, the man just trying to do it right.

Which brings us to Daylight....and Feyre. I know we can attribute the way the characters stop even remotely being sympathetic between acomaf and...everything else...to poor writing, but I also think there's some (maybe accidental but PERFECT) character work there: in acomaf, pre-acknowledged bond, Feyre is an important possession/ally- she's on the same level as the other members of the Court of Dreams, if the jewel of the collection, a high point in the story Rhys tells himself: HE saved the HERO OF PRYTHIAN

(which...let's not even touch on the fact that the deal he makes in acotar is CREEPY and he can only justify it later. she wasn't someone he wanted to work with in acotar- she was a vulnerable, hot young woman he fully took advantage of)

And then they're mates.

And then, slowly but surely, Feyre's personhood disappears. For two reasons: 1) Feyre is on a pedestal so sky-high it blots out everything. Good, pure, true hero Feyre whose adoration Rhysand needs like air. the happy end of his story, the prize and the salvation, the one who sees him.

and 2) ultimately, to Rhys, Feyre is an extension of him. A symbol: his happiness, his peace, his endless power, what he fought to keep.

She's his whole anchor staying sane, which isn't great, considering...ya know, everything. But the Story is Over. They are Happy.

Except- except- nothing is over. Post fifty straight years of torture, a freefall into war and fuckery, teen marriage and literal death, the consequences for all those things AND THE SHIT RHYS WAS PULLING LONG BEFORE AMARANTHA TURNED HIM INTO A CHEW TOY, are still present.

But now, he has something to protect. His golden future. His puppy Mate.

Because Feyre's safety is the safety of his power and vice versa. Anything he does is justifiable because the loss of Feyre is Not an Option. She is Happy. They Are Happy.

It bleeds into everything- and then it intensifies, because this is the breaking point.

The Az/Lucien thing and Feyre incredibly hurtful blindness? No Rhys isn't going to interfere- Az is so private anyway- if Feyre believes its a romantic bond, Feyre is right, she knows her sister, not that it matters because Elain is totally out of her mind.

Sending Cassian to Illyria? Illyria is a backwards shithole right? They're fierce fighters and that's what Rhys values them for- as the hammer of his power- and nothing else? why would there be anything else? Look at them fighting and hurting each other.

Nesta runs and Cassian is left throwing himself in battles actively trying to die and Rhys? Rhys is totally smug. A problem that hurt Feyre and his brother is GONE.

But it's not gone. Az isn't talking to anyone- and Rhys thinks this probably means Lucien is probably, finally fucking him- but even Feyre understands that Azriel knows where Nesta is. When this is proved (when Elain surfaces and they have the very fun kitchen fight) Rhys isn't happy- but he understands. Azriel has always felt responsible for broken things.

But thats not his job, it's Rhysands job, and Rhys has already made that tough choice for the safety of his own: Nesta has no place here. When she resurfaces inevitably, broke and wanting something, Rhys will stop her before she gets close enough to upset (hurt) Feyre. It's his job.

Cassian goes missing, and Rhysand sets upon what will become his eventual move: Illyria's value is strength. (a martial strength that belongs to RHYS). But they think they can take from him? They can destroy their own best chance? (Rhys recognizes Cassian's value to Illyria even while, you know, ordering him to slaughter Illyrians) They would threaten his power? hurt his family?

Rhys will not allow a world to exist where Feyre can be hurt.

If Illyria can't be controlled, Illyria will be put down, like the rabid creatures they are. (They were always backwards, Rhys thinks. Freeing my mother was the one good thing my father ever did)

But Cassian lives.

Rhys asks Azriel if he's been cursed. Az laughs in his face.

And Cassian is a terrible enemy to have. The strategies the loyalists are using? His, filtered through Rhys. The magical contingencies? Cassian and Az, trying to prevent bloodshed.

Feyre thinks, for a long time, that maybe the rebels have Nesta. What else could compel Cassian to even care? these people keep trying to kill him. they want to kill Rhys. the brothers suffered in the frozen mud at the hands of these monsters, what is Cassian doing?

And then the massacre happens.

And Feyre sick to her stomach, cries when she hears. Rhysand thinks about a little hazel eyed boy who'd never had a bed, a present, who'd been nothing until Rhysand plucked him up- a little boy who'd grown into a dangerous man, who'd just killed every person who ever contributed to his pain. Rhys thinks, knowing he'll have to punish Cassian for this, that it's over.

The camp lords are dead, it has to be over.

(Azriel hears and understands- because he knows damn well Cassian was something before Rhysand, and after despite him. That beneath those repeatedly broken ribs is a heart that was once so big so save him, grown strong enough now to save everyone who was like them: forgotten, abandoned, used.)

It's not over. The mountains are burning. Banners fly on northern wind in a language long dead. They're singing, the spies say, they call him dawn. Loyal-heart-as-dawn.

It's Cassians name. Not that Rhys, who never knew more than a few vile insults in the language of his mother's ancient, proud people, understood it then.

Rhysand, the long-suffering hero of his own story, has been betrayed.

He can risk no more- it's time to end this madness. It's Feyre's idea to use Elain- it's Feyre who is left crying, a betrayal Rhysand will never forget- when Elain, who they've given everything, Elain, perhaps just as broken and wretched as her eldest sister, refuses to help keep Feyre safe.

(Elain refuses to participate in what she sees as genocide, but as we've established, what consequences exist? the ones Rhys feels right in front of his face)

Azriel, Elain, and Lucien run.

Of course, if both Feyre's sisters are capable of betraying her, of course, both of Rhysand's brothers would as well. They are one in the same, aren't they? Marked by destiny, by fate for this hard and terrible work- of course it hurts. Of course- but Rhysand will stop it from hurting Feyre any more.

There's one force in the world that can stand in truth against Illyria. The Darkbringers- their ancestral, ancient conquers.

(Yes, I do think Rhys knows the shitty, shitty history of his court! He just doesn't care! He didn't do it. He's different. He's in Velaris with the common people. He has wings. He's not his father.)

(He is, in fact, far worse)

When he thinks of it, it seems perfect. Illyria will be destroyed- a loss, but a safe one. Keir, will, almost certainly, also be destroyed or at least critically weakened.

Rhysand will stand alone, the man who was willing to do anything for peace. He will rule over an emptied playing field, secure in a world where Feyre is safe.

The Hewn City empties, the armies march- Rhysand holds tight Feyre's hand, says nothing about the fact that nothing, nothing, will stop Keir from killing anyone in front of him when battle starts, and reaches once more for Cassian's mind.

His brother, his friend, his loyal right hand- he begs him to come back. To come home. That they can put down this rebellion and in his love for Cassian everything can go back to how it is meant to be, all of them together.

It does not occur to him to address the hundreds dead. The system he was complicit in and responsible for that ground a culture to dust and ash- what matters is brother against brother should never have turned, and Rhys, in his kindness, will offer Cassian this last chance for honor.

Rhys doesn't want Cassian to die- he wants Cassian by his side- but he will drown the world in blood before he'll lose his crown and hope and Feyre.

And when Cassian dies, falling to the earth in Rhysand's arms, Rhys thinks of penance.

A circle closed.

But of course- Cassian wakes. Death is not done with her right hand anymore than the contract between Lordship and land in immutable. Cassian brought the magic back, brought Illyria back.

Rhys is fighting for something personal- Cassian is fighting for a whole world and future, with everything in himself.

When the new border is drawn, Rhys doesn't despair- sure he's shaking, he's covered in Cassian's blood, his twelve thousand year old walls are smoking and the whole world smells like fucking Nesta Archeron- he's been the victim of curses before.

He won't let it keep him down. He'll be fine. He has Feyre, they're safe. Illyria is going to implode- and maybe, maybe, he'll save some of those that remain when the violence is too much, when they need a real High Lord.

They'll come home. Just like Feyre's sisters will. Rhysand's brothers. They fought for peace and Velaris has it- it is their home.

It's what they fought for, the happy ending, and it's all worth it.

It has to be worth it.

[transmechanicus]

Hey! Sorry if there is something I missing that Google could answer this but you seem to be knowledgeable on it from a post I saw you talk in. I had watched AOT a while ago and thought the kinda fantasy setting with humanity on the run was a neat concept and liked the animation but now I'm hearing more on the mess behind the authors ideology on nationalism and the more obvious antisemitism that I missed before. Seeing the new season stuff and weird parallels to nazism make my skin crawl and would like to educate myself better on this, do you have any recommendations as looking on the internet is full of people claiming this is just "outrage culture" and dismissing any points being made up. Thanks! And no pressure if you'd rather not get into this!

Happy to help break it down for you~!

https://www.polygon.com/2019/6/18/18683609/attack-on-titan-fascist-nationalist-isayama-hajime-manga-anime

^^ This is a pretty comprehensive breakdown of most of the big points. In summary, the island exiled people capable of becoming Titans (Eldians) are put in concentration camps on the mainland (Marley) in obvious parallels, stars and all, to Jewish people during the Holocaust. The final season, with Eren planning to brutally conquer and genocide Marley using feral Titans, directly feeds into the right wing conspiracy theory that Jewish people are plotting revenge/world domination. Additionally, side characters are author confirmed to be named after/inspired by war criminals, likely including facist fan favorite Erwin Rommel, and the survey corps as a whole takes heavy inspiration from the Nazis in its uniforms. Additionally, the survey corps casts militarism and imperialism in as positive a light as possible, and military commanders are presented as the most capable leaders overall, aligning with the views of Japan’s own far right and its efforts to expand its military.

An attempted counter argument from Collider(a site im otherwise unfamiliar with) did not do a great job in putting any of this to rest imo: https://collider.com/attack-on-titan-fascist/

The article’s argument boils down to ‘if this is meant to make jewish people look bad why are they the protagonists??’ even as they included a page where an Eldian kid declares the power of their Titan ancestors to come from their wealth(dogwhistle) despite said kid having no evidence (he literally looks at a tablet and decides this is the case bc ‘its obvious’ (- _- ). 

A final article (https://newrepublic.com/article/160193/attack-titan-alt-rights-favorite-manga) makes perhaps the most nuanced suggestion, that the series is simply atrociously badly written. The author has stated that they don’t want there to be unambiguous ‘good guys’, and wanted to allow for reader interpretation for who is morally right. He HAS explicitly stated he opposes the idea that his series promotes militarism. Unfortunately, some of the interpretations still open are really fucking atrocious, fed by such inept story points as an Eldian family secretly ruling Marley(cabal dogwhistle), the fact that pre-exile Eldians were brutal tyrants(implication that the concentration camps are justified), or the fact that Eldian titans eat people purely for fun(arguably falls under the umbrella of blood libel). Regardless of author intent, AOT remains a piece of work with multiple high profile antisemitic dogwhistles in a series that has decided to center its story around fictionalized Jewish people. This is at best incredibly harmful incompetence that deserves generous criticism, or at worst legitimate antisemitism that deserves to be condemned and denounced. Apologists don’t fucking start shit on my post.

[gamesception]

The Promised Neverland is kind of really good, actually?  I mean, yeah, I’m late to the party as usual, but I just binged the first season of the anime, and then the manga from that point on (the site I was on didn’t have any of the second season, but apparently it diverges from the comic and gets bad anyway, so maybe just read the comic to begin with).  And, I mean, spoilers, obviously, but I’m going to get into some extremely major spoilers here so if you haven’t read it or if you’ve only seen the first season of the anime maybe skip this post and read the manga, but...

...

I’ve tried and failed to write a big long post about all the ways it’s so good, how the main three characters are each so compelling, how its pitch dark but not cynical or misanthropic, with mortal stakes but not gore-porny, positive and optimistic without being trite or naïve, how choosing Emma out of the main three to be the primary protagonist and viewpoint character keeps the story from becoming a masculine militaristic power fantasy, how the antagonists are treated as characters and not just monsters - even the ones that are literal monsters, about how the story never supports or glorifies the idea of sacrificing the weak so that the strong can survive, about how empathy and understanding and a chance for peace are extended to every single villain without putting a burden to forgive on victims and without ignoring the need to fight those who refuse the offer of peace and uphold the status quo, how the story opposes oppressive hierarchies at every turn - not just those the monsters use to control the human children at the farms, but also how the monster elites use access to human meat to controller the lower social classes of monster society, and even to an extent within the human resistance.

But there’s just way too much to talk about to get it all into one big giant post, and I don’t have the stamina for a big extended ongoing project right now - or else I’d return to one of the like 12 I have on hold.

But, like, to pick just one thing....

ok, so eventually we learn what the monsters are and why they eat people.  They’re a weird sort of organism that can temporarily take on the characteristics of things they eat.  Eat a bird and grow wings, eat a bug and grow an exoskeleton, eat a human and gain a humanoid body and the intelligence to become self aware, learn language, form societies - for a while.  But if they go too long without eating people, then they lose their minds and revert to a bestial form.  In order to save the humans, the resistance leader Minerva plans to wipe out the monster society altogether.  After all, they literally have to eat humans to continue being people, there is no possibility of peace.

Protagonist Emma, though, has seen not just the horrific human farms and their cruel and corrupt rulers, but also their towns and settlements, their families and children.  She was even saved at one point shortly after her escape by friendly monsters who opposed the farm system, and even though it seems impossible, she wants to save both the humans and the monsters.

A more typical show, at least among those with premises as dark as The Promised Neverland, wouldn’t take Emma’s side in this.  She would be forced to ‘grow up’ and face the fact that she can’t save everyone.  Her naivety would get someone killed to break her heart and teach her to be hard and cruel as if those things are virtues.  Or, more likely, she wouldn’t be the viewpoint character to begin with, she’d be a side character whose ideals would get herself killed in order to elevate the male characters’ angst and justify their violence.  Either way, the message would be “Emma’s ideals were unrealistic and could never survive contact with the harsh reality of the world.”

TPN instead takes Emma’s Side.  She finds monsters who maintain a humanoid body and intelligence without eating humans, and they’re able to spread that trait to the rest of monster society while the humans all escape to the human world.  Now, as much as I don’t like the grimdark ‘there is no peaceful option’ hypothetical version of the story, this development could have been handled pretty badly.  Like, just reading it like that, it sounds like the story raised a big moral dilemma and then chickened out of it.  But that’s really not how it comes off while you’re reading it, for a couple reasons.

First of all, Emma meets the non-human-eating monsters early in the story, long before we get the explanation of how monsters in general work.  So by the time we learn that the monsters must eat humans to maintain their self identity, the audience already knows that there are exceptions and that an alternative exists.  The story never sets this up to be a moral dilemma in the first place, so when the issue is bypassed it doesn’t feel like it’s undercut itself.

More importantly, though, is the thematic & metaphorical content.  Because the monster society is a pretty explicit metaphor for unjust human societies, and monsters represent the people who make up such societies.  Not just the aristocrats who benefit from the unjust society, or those who directly enforce and uphold it, but also regular people.  People insulated just enough from the suffering and death that their lives are built on that they can turn a blind eye to it, but aware enough of their complicity in that suffering that they construct excuses to justify their part in it, and by proxy excuse those at the top who actually benefit from and shaped the society as it is.  People living lives simultaneously just comfortable enough to keep them docile, but precarious enough that they’re too caught up with struggling to maintain the tenuous grasp on the lives they have to feel like they can work towards anything better.  Monster society in TPN is a cage built out of the corpses of humans cattle, but built to imprison and enslave the monster civilians who eat them.

Hanging the story on the fantastical element of monster biology would divorce it from that essential metaphor while also endorsing an outright genocidal worldview, and TPN explicitly calls out the plan to wipe out the monsters altogether as just that - genocidal.  It never even pretends to entertain the notion that the audience should accept that plan as the right choice, even while it doesn’t condemn Minerva for pursuing it. When Emma is proposing her plan to Minerva, the deal she strikes with him is ‘I will try to make my peaceful solution happen, and if I succeed then you cancel your plan to wipe out the monsters’.  Minerva is eventually shown to be lying when he makes that agreement, but Emma isn’t, and note the if there.  If Emma’s plan fails, then she - and thus the narrative - accepts that Minerva’s plan to save the children is still better than leaving things as they are, even if it means wiping out all the monsters.  After all, the society IS monstrously unjust, and even the lower classes within that society ARE complicit in that injustice.

Minerva’s problem isn’t even presented as a matter of him hating the monsters too much to see a route to peace with them.  The story doesn’t frame the conflict between Minerva’s and Emma’s plans as hate vs. love or revenge vs. forgiveness.  It’s instead more of ‘hierarchy and division bad, mutualism/openness/relying on each other good’.  The point is to show how Minerva’s role as a figurehead who believes he has to project strength to uphold the hope that the other humans have placed in him has worn away his ability to rely on others or to be open to alternatives they offer, leaving him with rigid and inflexible thinking.

So when Minerva learns about the monsters who don’t need to eat humans, he doesn’t see an opportunity for a better outcome - potentially even an easier outcome since he doesn’t have to make enemies of the entirety of monster society - rather he sees a threat to his plan to starve the monsters back into an animalistic state.

And if that whole subplot isn’t explicit enough, Minerva’s internalized need to project strength also results in his physical body wasting away in secret from a condition he believes to be untreatable, but the moment he finally breaks down and admits he needs help Emma is able to point to a solution, one that again doesn’t come across as a cop out because again it takes the form of another character the audience was already introduced to a long time ago.

In a story arc that the second season of the anime adaptation apparently cut entirely, wow the more I hear about anime season 2 the worse it sounds.  And after the first season was so good....

...

Anyway, I tried to pick just one thing and this post still turned into a colossal gushing word cascade, and there are so many other elements to talk about.  Like how The ‘Mothers’ and ‘Sisters’ are menacing villains with seemingly no empathy for the children, but when Sister Krona realizes she’s lost the power struggle with Isabella she leaves the kids tools to help them, and then when Mother Isabella realizes the children have escaped, she covers up the route they used in order to buy them a little extra time to get away.  It’s these little touches - just as much as the short backstories that follow them - that show us how, while they might uphold the system out of fear for their own lives, and might have rationalize their part in it in order to live with the horrible things they’re doing, the mothers and sisters don’t actually hate the children.  Knowing that makes it believable when in the end Isabella does turn on the system, and every single one of the other mothers and sisters join her.

The bit when the fighting is mostly over and she tells the Mother at the house “it’s over, now we can just love them” and the other woman breaks down crying is so sad and human, it makes me tear up thinking about it..

Like I said, all the villains are characters, not just monsters.  They all have motivations for the horrific things they do - sometimes irrational, often selfish, but not even the most unforgivable of the monsters are just evil for evil’s sake.

Again, I’m rambling.  It’s just...  I’m used to these sorts of pitch dark dystopias being, for lack of a better term, kinda fashy in their messaging?  Or at the very least deeply cynical and misanthropic and just kind of mean spirited.  And TPN is so completely the opposite of that, in so many ways.

[gesternchen]

Just randomly reviewing scenes from the movies no one remembers now. This week: Avatar (2009).

It’s not like everyone forgot James Cameron’s Avatar. Since we’re still getting some footage from behind the scenes of the sequel and news about the cast, at least someone takes pains to remind themselves of this cinematic experience from the year of 2009. It’s already been 84 (just kidding, 11) years and I’m still looking forward to at least watching the teaser (fun fact: I was 11 when Avatar came out, I’m 22 now). I even bought the Darkhorse comic book on Tsu’Tey’s backstory to, you know, investigate one of my favorite characters a little bit better (spoiler: the backstory wasn’t very much eventful but I noticed a nice detail there which I may talk about briefly a bit later).

Throughout the years Avatar has received a lot of backlash and more or less justified criticism, mainly for the plot and its problematic packaging. I believe, it depends on the perspective one watches a movie from. Of course, I wouldn’t call it an absolute gem of exciting storytelling, even though I truly enjoy it, as in majority its twists are undeniably predictable. However, I always disagreed with people saying relations in Avatar aren’t deep at all. Well, romance between Jake and Neytiri, which, let’s be honest, except for the scene of telling the truth, went too smoothly, and this is why I strongly believe clash of interests is inevitable in sequels. Their interaction remained the key one for the whole movie, and nothing is bad about that, people enjoy a nice lovestory, so do I. But 11 years after I’d like to focus on the disturbing conflict everyone prefers to ignore for some reason when recalling Avatar. For me it’s always been Jake versus Colonel Quaritch.

You guys may have already guessed which scenes I wanna talk about. Those really important ones that I consider climactic to the pace of narration. And what is more about them, they give us crucial details in character development and actors’ play to think through. The main message: Quaritch knew it was coming.

Let me firstly touch upon the scene of short conversation between Jake and Quaritch prior to Sully presumably leaving Pandora. While Jake is awating Quaritch in a large empty hall, he hardly seems to be calm about the talk, every nerve in his body is trembling, but why?

The way Jake’s drumming his fingers on the table makes me wonder if he’s okay.

Then Colonel enters the hall, grabs a chair and reminds that it had been more than two weeks since he got the latest report on how the misson was going. He knows, Sully is questioning reality, and no, he’s not ‘doubting his resolve’. He knows, the right moment to ‘terminate the mission’ is missed. He knows, he lost Jake. He knows, he’s talking to the deserter. Yet Quaritch speaks indifferent. He praises Jake’s effort and rewards him for that. With real legs he promised to him when they first talked. Quaritch hoped they’d trigger the realization in Jake. Which doesn’t happen. How sad he looks when Jake openly refuses to accept the reward.

In just one sequence Stephen’s face demonstrates the shift of all four feelings Quaritch goes through: dissatisfaction, melancholy, shame, disgust.

Quaritch sensed the moment when Jake expressed superiority to the mankind. Jake grasped that Quaritch knew everything, he played with fire, and that’s why he felt anxiety. And it lasted all the way until Quaritch stepped back for leaving the hall. But did Colonel really surrender? I doubt that.

The tension between them both feels electric, so it’s explainable why Jake’s transient smile is so awkward. Sam then heavily staring straight at Colonel's back suggests that up until now Jake regarded Quaritch as his enemy. The enemy he knew he would not be able to defeat.

I remember when watching this scene, I couldn’t get myself the answer to one question. The question was: which report did Quaritch refer to? ‘That report from two weeks ago’, but such information wasn’t satisfactory for me. To be honest, this small discovery became the actual reason why I decided to type this study. Let’s assume that this particular report which Quaritch mentioned was the videolog where Jake confessed that Omaticaya wouldn’t leave the Hometree. Here’s why.

The general audience is used to perceiving Quaritch as a cruel short-tempered military man who just waits for the starting pistol’s shot to destroy everything in sight. Again, nothing is wrong about this, the fact that his character was simply meant to be a generic personification of such type doesn’t leave us with any alternative impression of him. Let’s say, if he was given the order to ignite the operation of the Hometree’s destruction to screw the tribe out of the site, he would absolutely go for it (and so he does). He’s a man of his word after all. Let’s also say, if he was pissed off by Jake’s betrayal, he would transport himself to the mountain site in a blink of an eye, turn off the link and put Jake in jail right after the talk in the hall. Instead, Quaritch decided to wait and give Jake the last chance. Jake preffered unearthly wings to those more tangible, so Quaritch chose not to cut them so abruptly.

We’re moving to the next scene, taking place right before a toned down fight between Tsu’Tey and Jake (I’m saying so, because it’s actually one of the deleted scenes that got edited out of the final cut, and believe me, the pressure between two rivals there is way too intense). Quaritch is watching the record of Jake destroying bulldozer’s lenses with a stone. After that Jake’s face is zoomed and we watch Selfridge get frustrated, Quaritch looks pretty annoyed as well but doesn’t seem to be much surprised. What he’s feeling, is bitter disappointment in himself and knowing that he totally failed to persuade Jake to change his mind.

Just observe Stephen Lang’s performance here. He absolutely nails cold-eyed look, the fire burning slow inside of him is so palpable, and guess what, in a flash he flies off the handle.

Now, shall we check the ultimate scene, preceding the destruction of the Hometree. Though Grace versus Parker juxtaposition is central to this scene, the last time Quaritch confronting Jake face to face in his human body is essential to consider for making things clear.

When it comes to revealing to Selfridge the vainness of further negotiations with Omaticaya, isn’t it just interesting how fast Quaritch manages to find the correct videolog? It literally takes him not more than a couple of swipes to produce the proof. Here is why: he’s already watched the record and is completely aware of the Jake’s values having deteriorated.

You can tell, Jake knew he was under control, but he would rather like to ingnore this fact. His pathetic glance at Quaritch, who’s almost impending above his head, causes to think Jake would guess that Colonel could have watched this videolog. Rather, it was a mutual secret between the two of them until a turning point. But the moment of truth came, and Jake didn’t change his mind. Quaritch made sure of that and finally it was his time to triumph.

So how was it even possible to assume Quaritch may have watched the videolog I’ve been talking about for so long? Well, my explanation may be too easy to believe, but still: we can tell by Jake’s appearance and the date of the record that it is the vlog we need.

This telltale videolog was recorded 16 minutes after the another one, when Jake says that he’s uncertain, who he is anymore (LST abbreviation stands for Local Standard Time). Jake might have suddenly felt depressed and hopeless and got back to the camera while being too emotionally instable, and so must have forgotten to delete the final record.

I have one more note for you. If you check the videolog library Quaritch is swiping through, you’ll see that the latest important record, which he actually needs, is made in the interior of the mountain site block and dates back to August, 13. Other recent vlogs’ covers look nothing like Site 26 sequence. Jake may not have done any of these records at the mountain site. I still wonder though where those three or four ensuing videologs were recorded, the location seems to be red lighted, which means it isn’t blue lighting at Site 26. I may even assume he recorded some pieces at Hell’s Gate. Why would I think so? Probably because in those two scenes (dialog with Quaritch and confession at Parker’s office) Jake looks ten times better than before, he gained some weight at least and doesn’t resemble a living sceleton.

Selfridge gave Jake an hour to relocate the tribe, while gunships led by Colonel’s Dragon were already on full alert. Quaritch had no doubt that Jake’s peacekeeping mission would fail. He knew it from the beginning. Hence he sounds so sarcastic seeing Sully’s avatar tied.

Now Quaritch sipping his villain’s morning coffee tasting like fresh genocide doesn’t feel so cringy: he’s celebrating his victory over Jake (still I should agree with critisism on this point, it really is a stupid cliche and wasn’t intended to carry a deep meaning).

Now I should admit, it’s been a long journey to run this investigation and bring it to light by finally posting it. It took me around a day to collect my thoughts and express them by means of more or less readable English. Just would like to make a little side note: English is not my native, so I promise I did my best! Thanks to James Cameron for making a movie, which woke me up in the middle of the night to start reflecting, and to all the fans out there who still exist and remember this movie and so can read this essay. @avatarmovies I found your blog not so long ago and you guys say you enjoy headcanons (and movie reviews probably?..), so it would be nice if you reblogged this but I’m not insisting!!