#like do you think all the war and colonization that destroyed all record of the vacuan monarchy and turned vacuo into a wasteland

[bestworstcase]

looks up. i regret to inform you all that i’ve seen another post today. the faunus woman who led vacuo during the great war was not a queen and almost certainly not of royal descent as the asturias family claims to be: it is stated repeatedly in the CFVY novels that the last time vacuo had any kings or queens was centuries ago and that very little of the historical record has been preserved (with 9.11 reiterating the novels’ point that this is a consequence of colonial occupation in the intervening centuries).

and from the world of remnant episodes pertaining to vacuo and the great war, we know that modern-day vacuo did not have a formal government until after the great war; it was not a state, it was an occupied territory under mistrali control. the faunus woman who led vacuo’s forces was the leader of the vacuan movement for independent statehood and likely became a member of the ruling council established after the war—which is now defunct and has been de facto replaced by shade academy.

please. BLEASE. the great war began about ninety years ago it has not even been a century. the vacuan monarchy is “ancient history.” finn talks about his mother—who would have been a contemporary of nicholas schnee, who was born right after the great war—and her mother, who would have lived through the great war, and his grandmother’s father, and his grandmother’s grandfather, and his grandmother’s grandfather’s mother. rumpole—who is an actual historian—flat out states that it was so long ago, and war and colonization so thoroughly degraded the historical record, that all that remains is legends and uncertain guesswork.

the asturiases having no blood relation to the faunus woman who led vacuo in the great war doesn’t prove or disprove anything because even if she did style herself a queen and claim royal descent the vacuan monarchy ended so long ago that her claim would have been unverifiable mythmaking too.

[beautifulblooms]

Ok so I was hoping for a jake sully x male reader

Takes place between 1 and 2 (let’s say he didn’t get with natrei )

For the plot so the reader is with the science team he came after the war and he has an avatar body and norm tells jake that the reader wants to learn the way of the navi (like he did in the first film) and so the story is jake teaching him everything and thay both slowly fall in love but the reader thinks he can’t be with jake as a Navi ans than jake tells him about how awa can put him in the avatar body forever ( I love a good slow burn )

You are one of the Omatikaya Now - Jake Sully x Male! Avatar! Reader

God I had a field day with this request, absolutely loved writing this and it felt so good. I hope you enjoy it and I really did take on the slow burn fanfic style, this is pushing a good few thousand words.

CIS Women and Female Aligned people, please DNI, this story and all of my others are for non-binary, masculine aligned and male readers!

I stood next to Jake within the pathway of Navi, Avatars, and the few humans that were escorting the rest of the humans back to their transport ships and off of Pandora. They had destroyed Home tree, killed the clan leader of the Omatikaya, and lost the war between the indigenous and the colonizers. As the last shuttle was loaded and closed, I looked up at Jake, so much taller in his Avatar form than I was used to. I was assigned to help his team in the Hallelujah mountains, mostly with maintenance of the link units as that’s what I had been brought to Pandora for. I have an Avatar to use if needed or wanted, but he’s been in a monitored coma for months. He looked back down at me and smiled lightly, finally happy with the humans they deemed destructive and not deserving to be here off the planet.

“We did it, hurt like a bitch but we did it.” His voice brought a smile to my face, he always sounded so kind when he talked to me.

“Yeah, we did, what’s the plan now?” His head moved to face forward, thought written on his face.

“I’m not sure, although there are a few things I need to do tonight with the people.” Looking back down at me I knew he was contemplating something, but I figured it was best to leave it alone.

“Don’t do anything stupid.” He chuckled at my response.

“That’s the most fun stuff to do though.” We both laughed lightly while he began to sprint off to the forest line, his Ikran waiting in the trees. I headed back to the main facility and found my way to the link room. Jake was already out of his unit, sitting at the desk across from it with one of the recorders sitting in front of him. The same one I had seen throughout his entire journey of learning with Ney’tiri and the other Navi. I was jealous of him when I first heard what he was brought here to do. I never resented him for it, but I was definitely unhappy when he and Norm would hop into their links every morning knowing he was doing what I wanted to do. I had only confided in Norm and Grace a few times about how much I wanted to be out there and learning. I made sure to stay out of the way of his recorder and his vision, not sure what he was doing with it. When I heard the familiar beep of it turning off I made my way away from the link room and to my private room in the facility.

After that night I never saw Jake in his human body again, only his Avatar form. Once we kicked most of the humans off the planet, we found out that the Avatars could breathe in small amounts of our makeshift atmosphere. It wasn’t really good for them, not surprising given that their atmosphere is so different from ours. So the few engineers and scientists we had left focused on making a reverse oxygen mask that didn’t need to be used constantly for them. After about a week of tinkering and redesigning, we had a functional mask with an attachable tank that filtered and added the necessary elements to the air the Avatars could breathe inside the lab. Even working with things I loved, I still never felt like I actually belonged here fixing the links and workings in the lab. I was missing something, some excitement, a release from the real world. One night I was in the lab late and Norm had just gotten out of his link, coming over to check on me.

“Why’re you up so late? Someone need repairs on a machine?” He had spooked me a little and made me jump in my chair.

“Christ Norm, um no, just thinking too much to sleep, and this is the only place in the building with any good whiskey.” Norm chuckled and sat on the desk next to the bottle I had poured a glass of about half an hour ago.

“Well if you’re thinking, I’m here to listen, we’ve literally been through hell together.” His response made me laugh a bit more, deciding to say something now instead of forever holding my piece.

“I’m missing something, I don’t know what it is, some excitement maybe, something to make me feel alive. I’ve been stuck in this lab for years and never felt this way until a few months ago.” Norm looked shocked to hear such raw emotion in my voice, used to my calm and collected demeanor. Unbeknownst to me, Jake was about to come into the link room, coming to check on Norm after a bit of a rough day out in the field. “I wanted so badly to learn the ways of the people, I just wanted a chance to learn what it’s like to be a Navi, one of the Omatikaya. I never got it because I was sent here to fix machines and help the real Avatars do their job.” Tears began to gather in my eyes, I had never thought something would trigger such an emotional response. Norm sat silently, not sure what to say, and Jake was still ducked behind a wall, he felt so guilty for no reason, watching you stay behind and fix things while he went and did what you wanted to do. Rather than say anything, Norm just stood up, and hugged me, not even mentioning any of the tears he felt fall onto him.

“I’m so sorry you never got to do what you wanted to do, you more than deserve it, you’ve done so much for us.” Those words made the tears come faster, I couldn’t control it at this point, god I felt like such a loser, not even able to control my own emotions. After a good few minutes I patted Norms arm to let him know I was good.

“Thank you for this, it really was good to just let that out, I think I’m gonna go to bed now, night Norm.” He smiled lightly to show some kindness, nodding and patting my shoulder twice.

“Of course, good night (y/n).” I left the lab first, headed down the hall and somehow missing the 9 foot Avatar to my left while I turned right. Norm knew he had to look for Jake and talk to him about teaching him the ways of the people, he knew I needed that. To his surprise there Jake was standing against the wall of the hallway, occasionally taking breaths from the mask, a rather somber expression on his face.

“Hey, I was actually coming to look for you, we’ve gotta talk about something.” Jake looked down at Norm, then to the floor.

“If it’s about (y/n) I already have a plan to help him. I overheard the whole thing and I’m going to help him learn the ways of the Omatikaya.” Norm was wide-eyed, he never thought Jake would’ve heard them talking.

“Good, that’s one less thing to talk about, how about a chat about the mission today then?” Jakes ears perked up a bit, reminding himself why he’s here in the first place. They went into the link room to talk for another hour, all the while Jake was still planning how to help me learn the ways of the people.

Come the next morning, I woke up the blaring alarm I had become accustomed to scaring the shit out of me in the morning. Groaning and turning it off I sat up in bed, ready for another day of random fixes and sitting around doing nothing. A knock on my door spooked me, when it persisted I told them to wait a minute while I threw a shirt on. Opening the door I was graced with the sight of a blue abdomen, glancing up I saw Jakes smile.

“And what do I owe this early ass knock on my door for?” I really only had one eye open, and it was squinted shut slightly due to the bright lights in the hallway.

“You’ve got an Avatar right?” I was very confused at this point, but nodded my head. “Good, go get some coffee and breakfast then hop in a link, we’re exploring today.” Now I’m even more confused, but I continue with my morning and head to the cafeteria to get my coffee and plate of breakfast. Once done with that I go talk to Max about my Avatar.

“Hey Max, I need a favor.” He turned around in his chair to look at me.

“What’s up?” I didn’t really know how to phrase it without sounding weird so I just went for it.

“Jake told me we’re exploring today and I need my Avatar pulled out of his coma.” Max was stunned, I hadn’t used my Avatar for probably a year, everything being much easier if I just used an oxygen mask.

“Um sure, it’ll take me half an hour or so, I need to run vitals and check some things, I’ll let you know when you can hop in a link unit.” Nodding my head I went to find the giant blue alien that told me to do all this nonsense. Calling for his name I eventually realized he was sitting on a skylight we had over the cafeteria. Putting on an oxygen mask I went outside and climbed up to the roof, walking over to where he was still seated.

“Hey (y/n)! Why aren’t you in your Avatar yet?” I sat down next to him and explained that he had to be pulled out of a coma for me to use. “Wait, you haven’t used your Avatar in like a year, how often do you do external repairs?”

“Oh quite a lot, but the tools are all human sized and they refused to get me an enlarged set so I just put on an oxygen mask and deal with it.” His expression changed after hearing the company didn’t get the one thing I needed to do my job properly. “But Max is checking vitals and making sure the Avatar is fine right now, I should be getting a text or something from him soon that he’s ready.” Almost immediately after I finished my sentence, Max told me to get to the link room. “And there’s my cue, see you in a few.” Standing up I began to walk back to the edge of the roof and the ladder. Pulling my oxygen mask off I realized that I had to go through the proper Avatar training again because it’s been so long and groaned. Making my way to the links I saw Max standing at one.

“(Y/n)! Over here!” A picked up my walking pace to make it over to Max quickly. “Alright, I’ve got this one reserved for you, do you remember what to do once you’re in here?” I rolled my eyes a little.

“Of course, I had Grace teach me, remember? It’s a little hard to forget anything that women taught me.” Max chuckled and agreed quietly before heading to the observation room to help me adjust once I got into my Avatar. Laying down on the gel bed and putting the metal cage down I grabbed the top and did the same, starting to let my mind go blank. It was weird to feel the reconnecting of my subconscious to the Avatar. Waking up I put my hand over my eyes, not used to the bright light of the room. One of the scientists came up to me and started doing my physical and checking if everything was working appropriately. Once I was cleared I realized I was still in the medical outfit they put me in before my Avatar was put into a coma. Asking for one of the outfits they had prepared for me when I first landed here they handed one over. Getting dressed quickly I made my way outside and headed back up to the roof where Jake was still where I left him. Only this time he was laying down and clearly passed out. I made my way up to him and kicked his thigh.

“Wake up Taruk Makto, you said we’re exploring.” He sat up quickly and took in my appearance. I may have not used this avatar for a good long while but the natural muscle I had from the Navi DNA was clear.

“Holy shit, I know they used your DNA to make the Avatar but it really does look just like you. C’mon, we've got a lot of stuff to do.” He stood up and called for his Ikran. As it landed in front of him, Jake mounted it and reached out a hand for me. Not hesitating, I grabbed it and climbed on behind him. “Hold tight, we like to fly fast.” I scoffed at her statement.

“Yeah sure, I really don’t think you can fly that fast Sully.” Jake chuckled and shrugged his shoulders, signaling for his Ikran to take off. As soon as it’s wings we’re in the air I realized the enormity of my fuck up and very quickly clung onto Jake. All he could do was laugh at my reaction while I just buried my face in his shoulder, too scared to look down. Once we reached a higher altitude the Ikran slowed down a bit, leveling out as it only needed to glide now.

“A bit more of a warning would’ve been nice Sully.” He laughed at me again.

“If I recall I did warn you and you just scoffed at me.” I huffed back at him before looking to see us floating above the trees and headed towards the Hallelujah mountains. And just as I started to let go of Jake I very quickly held onto him again as he nose dived into the trees.

“You mother fucker! Warning next time!” His laugh was barely audible over the wind whipping across my overly sensitive ears. Landing on a very large branch of a tree he looked back to me still clung to his back.

“You can let go now, we’re on solid ground, well, solid tree.” Moving my head away from his back I let go and slid off the Ikran, sitting down very quickly on the branch and cherishing that it was not moving. “So are you just gonna sit here forever or am I gonna show you around?”

I glanced up at Jake who was standing behind me, hands on his hips. “Gimme a minute I’m still processing that I almost died twice cause of you and your shenanigans Sully.” Squatting beside me he put a hand on my shoulder.

“Get used to it cause if you wanna explore Pandora you’re gonna experience a lot of close calls.” I sighed and looked over at him.

“Really?” He nodded and confirmed by repeating what I said with less inquiry. “Well shit, alright where are we going next?”

Jake didn’t even answer me, simply stood up, grabbed my hand, dragged me back onto his Ikran and began flying again. We went to the place he was chased by the angry thanetor, then to where home tree once stood where he explained what it used to be like to be there with the people. Next to Mons Veritatis to see the unbonded Ikran in their home amongst the Hallelujah mountains. We flew over the tree of souls, I being an outsider to the Omaticaya couldn’t step foot on the sacred grounds. It was so much to look at and enjoy that by the end of it I had gotten used to flying on an Ikran, feeling the wind whip across my face and Jake's consistent nose dives he did to scare the shit out of me. Landing back at the main facility I let go of Jake and got off the Ikran, before I left I asked him something.

“Jake?” He stopped what he was doing before to look down at me.

“What’s up?” I was fiddling with my hands, nervous to ask but wanting an answer.

“How possible would it be for me to become one of the Omaticaya? I know it’s a hard ask and something that is maybe too selfish given what they’ve been through recently but I-“ Jake cut me off before I could keep rambling.

“I’ll ask Mo’at, as the Tsahik she has final say.” I nodded and muttered a thanks before he took off into the dark Pandoran night. Jumping off the roof I snuck my way into the Avatar bunks, taking up a spot for my own. Falling asleep comfortably knowing I might get the chance I always wanted made me all that more excited to wake up tomorrow. Coming out of the link I opened it and sat up, how could such a wonderful world be out there and I let myself be stuck in here for years?

I made my way out of the link room, passing by Max who was passed out at a desk, monitoring my brain activity while I was in my Avatar body. I grabbed one of the spare blankets Grace kept in her desk and draped it over him, then headed to my room to tuck in for the night. Climbing into my bed I passed out rather quickly, even being in Avatar form the whole day was exhausting.

The next morning I woke up to my alarm, damn near punching the clock to turn it off. I groaned and sat up, almost forgetting what I asked Jake about yesterday until there was a banging on my door.

“HOLD ON I JUST WOKE UP!” It stopped quickly and I shuffled my way to the door, eyes still heavy with sleep and opened it to see Jake standing there again.

“Finally, c’mon get into your Avatar, you need to talk to Mo’at.” I groaned and just nodded before following Jake to the link room and to the same one I used yesterday. Hopping in I was barely conscious enough to form any thoughts that would prevent my link from working. Waking up in my Avatar body I sat up and saw Jake sprinting into the bunks, searching for me.

“Over here numb nuts!” I shouted to him before he came and threw me over his shoulder. “Jake what the fuck are you doing?!?!”

“I said you gotta talk to Mo’at, that means in 10 minutes, we don’t have time to walk at your pace.” I grumbled and just accepted my fate of being carried by him. I would never admit out loud that it was kind of nice to be carried like this, considering I got a great view of Jake’s body. He dropped me right next to his Ikran, climbed on and dragged me on quickly, reminding me to actually hold on this time. We took off even faster than yesterday and I just held on even tighter, knowing that Jake really was rushing to get me to Mo’at. We made it to the small cave the remaining Omaticaya had found within the Hallelujah mountains to stay in. Jake dragged me through the Na’vi and all the way to a tent set up in the back of the cave to where Ney’tiri and Mo’at were talking. I had heard of Ney’tiri from Jake many times and every time I heard of her I grew more and more jealous that she spent more time with him than I did. Reaching the tent Jake walked in with me right behind him, still confused as fuck as to what was going on.

“Mo’at, Ney’tiri, I see you.” He used his hand to signal something from his forehead which they returned.

“Is this the dream walker who wishes to learn?” She gestured to me as Jake stepped aside to give them a full view of me.

“Yes, this is (y/n), he wishes to do what I have done, become one of the people.” I nodded and tucked my ears, confused, tired, and somewhat scared of her threatening aura.

“He seems weak and scared, are you sure he is strong enough to do what you did?” She asked Jake as she began to walk around me in a circle, observing my body, grabbing my tail and running a hand along my arms.

“Yes, I am sure he is strong enough for this.” Mo’at gave an approving hum, continuing to examine me before she took something from her necklace and pricked my arm. I hissed at the action, it stung more than I was expecting.

“JakeSully, you will teach him our ways, teach what we have taught you, you are Omaticaya, if you seek help, Ney’tiri may offer assistance.” When her name was mentioned she looked me up and down and over to Jake, her eyes widened and softened when she looked at Jake. She likes him, I knew it the moment I saw her look at Jake, I felt anger boil inside of me but tried so hard to put it down while in the presence of the Tsahik.

“Thank you Mo’at.” She nodded and went back to sitting next to Ney’tiri discussing what they had before. Jake just grabbed my arm and guided me out of the tent. He had his own up in one of the higher parts of the cave, it was small but homey. “Put this on, I’ll be outside.” He threw what looked like a loin cloth at me before stepping outside.

“Jake, you say put this on, but this isn’t clothing, it’s a strip of animal skin.” He chuckled and popped his head back in.

“Yep, and that’s what you wear when you are one of the people, now stop whining and put it on.” I groaned but did as he said, leaving my entire uniform in his tent before stepping out and looking at him, rather uncomfortable with the situation. “Great, first things first, we’ve gotta toughen up those feet and you’ve gotta learn to ride a horse.” He just jumped down and expected me to follow him, I groaned again and did as he expected. We ran through the cave and back to his Ikran, he hopped on and I followed suit before he took off to a pasture. Many different horses were wandering about and grazing, some with young and others without. Hopping off the Ikran, Jake ushered me to follow him. Showing me how to bond with the creatures of Pandora, Jake hopped onto the dire horse and performed tsaheylu with it. I watched in amazement as he began to do what he did with the Ikran and command it to move mentally, then verbally to show me how he did it. This was only the beginning of the process. Over the next few months, Jake taught me every custom, practice, fighting and hunting style he could think of, he even started to teach me the language. In that time my love for him only grew stronger. I wanted to be near him more and more, have him somehow teach me more things, just spend time hunting so I could be with him. By the end of the third month I had done everything Jake could teach, all but three things. Taming an Ikran for my own, and taking part in the ceremony where I will be reborn as one of the people. As for the third, Jake still refuses to tell me what it is, I can only make educated guesses based on what I have learned so far.

We rode dire horses up to the point that they could no longer traverse, instead using the dangling vines and sturdy islands to make our way up to the home of the Ikran. We made it to the final stretch, a waterfall covered passage with a thin walkway where I would have to plaster myself against the wall to not fall.

“You got this, c’mon, peace of cake considering what you’re about to do.” I gave Jake a look before following him across the thin strip of rock. Coming out on the other side there was Ikran of every color, staring down and beginning to hiss at us for invading their home.

“Well now we’re here, the fuck am I supposed to do?” Jake chuckled and turned around to speak to me more clearly.

“Firstly, you have to find the Ikran that wants to kill you the most. Second, use this to wrap around the jaw to keep the mouth closed, it’ll save your life. Third, if something goes wrong, I’ll be here to get you out of there, got it?” I was still stuck in awe at the first thing he said to me.

“I’m sorry, it’s gonna try to kill me?!?!” Sighing Jake put his hands on my shoulders.

“Yes, now are the instructions clear?” I groaned in response before nodding and mumbling a yes. “Great, get out there and kick some ass, and try to get an Ikran to make tsaheylu while you’re at it!” Pushing me into the more open area, I was greeted by many different hisses in all directions. I already had my rope unraveled and swinging slightly to give me the upper hand once I found mine. Walking through the crowd I kept my eyes focused, waiting for the one to hop out and try to attack me. Many Ikran stepped up and jumped back or flew away quickly once I hissed back at them. I had hissed back at probably 15 that didn’t want to fight back, and then one started to circle me.

Bright yellow and green with splotches of blue along its back, it stepped ever so closer to me while still circling. We hissed back and forth a few times before I started to get closer to it.

“Let’s go motherfucker.” Running at the Ikran I managed to get behind it rather quickly, wrapping the rope around its jaw and pinning the wings to the ground, doing my best to not hurt it.

“Tsaheylu (y/n)! Tsaheylu!!!!” Jake screamed from behind me, reminding me that I had to bond with the damned thing. Grabbing one of the tunnels I tried to pull my braid from behind me to bond quickly, but got smacked in the face by the Ikrans head. I almost let go but tightened my grip quickly and pulled myself back up, initiating tsaheylu as fast as possible. Both our eyes shot wide at the bond, and suddenly it calmed down and stopped trashing underneath me. I pulled the rope off its mouth, gently draping myself over its neck and head, taking a breather.

“As much as I’d love to tell you that you get a break, the first flight seals the bond and is super important. Get going soldier!” Jake shouted from behind me once again, reminding me that there’s more to the process than just bonding with the damn thing.

“Fine, fine, I’ll try not to die, but if I do, you gotta tell Max and Norm.” Jake gave me a panicked expression when he realized he would have to tell them if I died.

“You better not, Max’ll kill me!” I laughed and began to move with myIkran to the edge of the cliff. Internally telling it to jump and fly, it did so, hopping off the cliff and starting to flap its wings. We dropped slightly but gliding was pretty easy compared to getting a horse to move. I started doing turns and dodging some of the floating mountains, Jake soon appeared behind me, riding his Ikran.

“So, how’re you liking flying?” I looked behind me for a second to see Jake, shocked and less scared now that I knew where his voice came from.

“It’s a lot more comforting having me controlling the Ikran than you.” He gave an offended gasp at my statement, quickly moving closer to me to have me see his face. “What it’s true, you fly like a maniac.”

“Hey, maniac or not, I’ve had a lot more practice than you.” He pointed an accusing finger at me, making me laugh. It was early in the morning when I tamed my Ikran, and later that evening was the ceremony for me to become one of the people.

Flying back to the floating island the Omaticaya had settled in, I landed and followed Jake back to the tent with Ney’tiri and Mo’at.

“Tsahik, he is ready.” Jake announced as we walked in, I signaled to both of the ladies while saying “I see you” in their language. I got a look of surprise from them both as they hadn’t seen me since that first day I showed up in my military uniform.

“It appears he is, before dusk you will become one of the people.” I bowed in response and thanked her, following Jake out of their tent and back to his on the other side of the cave.

“Well would you look at that, in just a few months you’ve gone from nerdy dream walker to one of the people. It took me a lot longer, you’re a fast learner.” Jake gave me a good few smacks on the back as a “good job”.

“Thanks, I had a good teacher, a handsome one at that.” He turned back around at my second comment, confused by what I said.

“Did you just call me handsome?” I realized what I had said, and just nodded with mildly flushed cheeks. “If you think I’m handsome, what else do you think of me?”

“W-well I think you’re a good teacher, a great soldier, really strong and intelligent…” I started to trail off after Jake got closer and closer to me.

“Oh yeah? Anything else you wanna add to that list? You’re getting awfully quiet.” At this point Jake was leaning over me, on his knees, hands cornering me against the back of his tent and the floor.

“Um, I don’t really know if I should keep adding to that list, your ego might get too big, or something else.” Jake somehow managed to get even closer, mere inches from my lips, I was breathing heavily, not sure what to do.

“Jake, (y/n)? It is time to prepare for the ceremony.” Ney’tiri came around the edge of the tent and inside right as Jake got off of me and sat beside me, trying to hide what he was doing before.

“Oh, right of course, I’ll leave you to it then, she’s a gentle touch.” Jake leaned over to whisper the last part before leaving the tent.

“Hello Ney’tiri, what do I need to do for this?” She sat down a bowl with white liquid in it, a few rags and another bowl with water.

“Nothing, I will do everything I need to as you are, just sit still.” Nodding, I let her get to work. I felt her grab one of the rags and dip it in the water to wash me of any dirt or other filth. Then she dipped her fingers in the white bowl and began to trace my skin in very circle-like ways until I had been covered almost entirely in the white paint.

“Jake, you may come back inside. You taught him our ways, you must walk him to the ceremony.” Walking back inside, Jake gave a look of surprise, I guess he’d forgotten what it looked like to be covered in the same paint.

“Of course, thank you Ney’tiri, I’ll see you there.” She nodded and exited the tent as Jake came over to help me up. “C’mon, we’ve got a lot of Na’vi out there waiting for you.”

I stood and followed Jake out of the tent, down to the center of the cave where all the Omaticaya were gathered. Standing before the Tsahik, Mo’at put both her hands on my shoulders and muttered something in Na’vi I couldn’t hear. Soon every member of the clan had a hand connected to me or through another person already touching me. After the ceremony, Jake grabbed my hand and dragged me to our Ikran. We flew to one of the rivers to let me rinse all the paint off, before he had me get back on and begin flying again. We made our way to one of the sacred sites where a tree was connected to Eywa.

“This is a place of memories, where the people connect to Eywa to see their loved ones, speak to them, relive memories.” I gave a gasp of awe at how beautiful it was, running my hands through the dangling branches. “And now that you are one of the people, you may choose a mate. There are many of the Omaticaya to choose from. Great hunters, warriors, singers, cooks, mothers and fathers.”

“There are many yes, but I don’t want any of them, I know who I want.” Jake turned to glance at me over his shoulder.

“Well, if you know who you want, you should ask them, don’t let me stop you.” I moved closer to Jake, putting a hand on his shoulder to turn him around.

“The man I want must also choose me.” Looking him in the eyes I noticed his softened greatly while he stared into mine.

“He already has, just waiting for you to make the first move.” Grabbing my waist, I pulled Jake into a kiss, long and full of emotion. We let go for only a moment to catch our breaths, before going right back at it. Sitting down, Jake on top of me, we mated that night, before Eywa, in the sacred place.

I woke up in my link, not sure what to do now, I had mated with Jake as my Avatar, but now I had no way to be with him without this stupid fucking link. I walked back to my room and cried for what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than one hour. I fell asleep like that and woke up to my alarm the next morning, still sad and not sure what to do. I walked back to the link room, getting into the one I had grown familiar with. My human body had suffered because of the training and spending almost all of my days with Jake in my Avatar body.

Hopping in and reawakening in my Avatar, I was back in the cave with Jake, not sure what was going on. He was still asleep, but I knew I couldn’t go back to sleep with him unless I wanted to end the connection to my Avatar. I waited for probably another hour before Jake woke up, smiling when I saw him open his eyes and look down at me, instinctively wrapping his arms tighter around me.

“Jake, I have a serious question.” He leaned back from me.

“Yeah, what’s up?” I could feel the tears surfacing, it was gonna be a stupid answer and a lot of “well tough luck”.

“Is there a way for me to fully be in my Avatar body, forever, without having to get in the link every morning? I don’t want to pretend that I’m fully one of the Omaticaya when I’m still a dream walker to all of them.” The tears bubbled up and Jake leaned down to kiss my eyes, leaning back to smile at me.

“Yes, there is definitely a way to make that possible, what did you think happened to me?” I guess I never really thought of it, I just assumed he was still using a link somewhere else not in the main facility.

“Really? Can we do it tonight?” I sat up and straddled his lap, excited now to be able to join him forever as an Avatar.

“I’ll have to talk to Mo’at, we should be able to.” My tail was wagging behind me like a puppy about to get a treat.

“That’s great, thank you Jake.” I leaned down to lay on his chest, hugging him as well.

“Of course honey, of course.” That evening Jake took me to the tree of souls, where once again all the Omaticaya were gathered for me. Walking my human body, fully awake and Ney’tiri carrying my Avatar, they laid both me and my Avatar down at the tree beside Mo’at.

“Eywa, we wish to take all that he is and bring it into this body, please allow him to pass through your eye and return safely to us.” That was the last thing I heard as I was suddenly taken from consciousness. It felt like I was in an empty void for a few minutes, walking through and trying to find someone, anyone, hell anything. Then suddenly I saw a bright light and followed it out of the void where I awoke again under the tree of souls, Jake, Mo’at and Ney’tiri standing above me.

“What’s going on?” I asked and Jake grabbed my face to kiss me, a surprise but a nice one.

“It worked, you passed through the eye of Eywa, you’re in your Avatar forever now.” I looked down at my hands, sure enough, blue as the day I first linked with my Avatar. I was finally going to get the life I always wanted.

[everlastiingiimmortals]

well!! thanks Ventium for enabling me

I'm rather fond of the lore of Rationality's Fall, one of the Curios in the Simulated Universe:

What is truth? No one truly knows. Supposing that "stupidity" is an incurable disease in this world, then disseminating knowledge counts as a treatment for the universe. But can "books" mend all living things? According to the Intelligentsia Guild's historical records, the Philosopher Union of the Laurel Wreath Galaxy once erupted in civil war, and blood and machine oil had stained all the books in the contemplators' corridors. Uncountable numbers of scholars died, and the IPC employees who witnessed it all deemed this occurrence "Rationality's Fall" — Through such absurd means, books cleansed a world of its impurities once more.

I think it's not a very difficult leap to assume that this Curio has some direct relations to Ratio, what with the very mention of his philosophy and the Greco-Roman associations (the Laurel Crown of Planar Shifts is similar, what with the mention of laurel as well as the obvious planar shifting, something Ratio is clearly familiar with due to his ability to effectively utilize a spark of the Phase Flame). I like to imagine that Ratio's home is in this Laurel Wreath Galaxy (honestly why did they name it that...) and that, perhaps, this Philosopher Union is very much tied to his world's history. Whether or not the Philosopher Union remains today is left to interpretation I'd assume, since we have nothing, but I find it interesting that blood and machine oil are referenced here -- clearly, the Philosopher Union comprised of both organic lifeforms and Intellitrons. These people would kill to prove a point, and these very same people are referred to as 'impurities' -- those flawed enough to lose sight of their wisdom and be blinded by hubris.

(The mention of machine is very fun because I like the contrast and deeper relation it has the potential to bring between Ratio and Screwllum, as Screwllum is curious about the origins of sentience and the workings of the human mind and yet these machines like him are equally capable of succumbing to irrationality.)

But how so very ironic it is, then, that Ratio takes up this very same mentality, shares a similar aggression? Though he would claim he is above such primal brutality, that he would never succumb to the same follies that destroyed his predecessors and have led to the ruin of countless Genius Society members (oh, how he would say this with such scorn), he is also the same person who very casually comments that a "robust constitution always proves its mettle" -- and yes, this could be taken as a funny euphemism, haha having a "debate" in bed etc. etc., but it's pretty clear that Ratio means he has gotten into blows over a debate. That if not for self restraint and very, very firm morals, he could do worse over a debate.

And so I wonder, then, if this aggression is perhaps more a trait of his people, of the Laurelians (????), and if his clear enjoyment of a pursuit ("Do you know what to do with cornered prey? Hunt it... to the death.") is at least somewhat innate in nature, made only stronger an instinct by his personality and goals. Perhaps his people are of a widespread type, not unlike the Xianzhou with their several planet-sized ships, able to colonize multiple habitable planets within this galaxy, and thus diversify and war with one another...

And of course, Ratio proudly wears the face of a bright-eyed owl affixed to his pauldron. Not just a symbol of wisdom, but a symbol of Athena/Minerva, a symbol of the Greek/Roman war goddess -- of strategy and foresight and heroism. I wonder then, if he does not worship the Aeons because he would rather instead invoke the wisdom of the owl to stay his hand, to favor his cunning, to not let him fall prey to the mindless rage and bloodshed of those who came before him. Does he worship any god by name? No, I don't believe so; rather, the owl is a source of calm and a reminder of home, a reminder of how far he's come and how much further he needs to go, and what is required of him to get there.

[sketching-shark]

what do you think about religion, god and stuff? what do you think about people who believes on these things? I don't want to offend or smth, I just want to know your opinion about it, also I like your blog!

You're not being offense at all anon, and glad you're enjoying you're time at sketching shark dot hell.

That said, I am going to begin this ask with a somewhat confused El Am A Oh on account of the fact that religion and the concept of God, throughout both human history and in the contemporary work, take of a dizzying amount of beliefs, creeds, rituals, loves, hates, and faiths. As such, I feel that my opinion on God, religion, and religious practitioners is very context specific.

I do very much enjoy learning about different belief systems and the mythologies that have formed, especially since they are often the foundation for how a society structures itself. At the same time, I've often been left feeling pretty conflicted if not downright hatefully cynical about religion due to the extent to which people have used it and its structures to hide or even to justify a obscene number of atrocities. I do for example feel great admiration for the Catholic priests who genuinely see their calling as a way to promote actual peace and nonviolence, as exemplified by the priests who actively protested the Vietnam War by destroying draft records. At the same time, however, I also feel deep hatred for the Catholic church for the extent to which it covered up its priests sexually abusing children. And incorporating some other religions and histories that personally hit close to home, I am horrified that the Mexica had a religion that justified and even demanded constant warfare and human sacrifice. I'm even more horrified that the Conquistadors and later colonizers used their Catholicism to justify the murders and tortures they inflicted on the people they subjugated long after the fall of the Mexica empire.

So yes, history and contemporary life is rife with people using religion as the basis to do all kinds of genuinely good things, but also with people using it as an excuse to be absolute monsters to their fellow men. And even while I can and have definitely found great meaning in some of the ways religion has offered to contemplate the divine, I've come to feel pretty leery about many organized religions due to the sheer amount of abuses and mass death they've often permitted.

I will say that the element I've come to appreciate the most from my personal encounters with and studies of different religions is how the metaphorical reading of mythology can at times mesh pretty well with the more scientific sense of material reality--I especially like this in terms of the contemporary growing sense about the universe being animate--as well as the sense of necessary humility religion can bestow. And here I'm not talking about the "submit to the will of God (i.e. human religious human authorities)" that way too many religious institutions push, but more in the way that religion can give space to consider this brutal and beautiful creation in its totality that often seem too much for the human mind to fully grasp or fully handle, i.e. how you might think about God. For me at least being able to contemplate how vast and often unknowable creation/God is has been a important element in helping me grow as a person, as well as to help keep down my sometimes overinflated, all too human ego haha.

[ruthlesslistener]

maybe they thought that because you said pk wasn't a colonizer

I mean...mayyybe? But I really don't think so, because the reason why I hate the 'PK was a colonizer and the Moth Tribe/Radi were the natives he killed' is mostly bc the story of the game only works if both PK and Radi are seen as horrible, yet relatable villains, and the problem with making Radi the victim is that people who were subjected to colonization do deserve to lash back against their oppressors with such violent force. But what the Radiance did was gut-wrenchingly horrible, and she did it against multiple tribes that were nowhere NEAR responsible for what happened to her or her people. So it brings a really fuckin bad taste to my mouth to link the very real, very justified anger and pain of marginalized people to someone like Radi, ESPECIALLY since we have to either enslave or kill her to win the game.

Also, I keep saying this, but if anything, the civilization that's hinted at being victims of attempted genocide appears to be the Void Civilization. The fact that we have very little record of them + the Radiance has such strong Christian crusader vibes + the fact that the sympathetic protag character is of the Void and gains the best endings for themselves by defying the Pale King and destroying the Radiance always felt like it fit better with the concept of Hollow Knight than making one out of the three major antagonists 'better' by either claiming she was secretly the victim all along, or by demonizing either the Pale King or the White Lady. (Which, let's be real here, it's only ever really PK who gets demonized because of course women can't be responsible for atrocities like mass murder, infanticide, and war with other rulers, they're the gentler gender who is incapable of being anything other than soft and weak compared to the 'natural evils' of men).

[innuendostudios]

I was invited to give a talk on GamerGate over Zoom in early 2021. I've long been frustrated that there isn't a good timeline of GG and its origins on YouTube. When people ask "what the hell was GG anyway?" they often get referred to my or Dan Olson's videos on the subject, but both of them were made while GG was ongoing, and presumed a degree of familiarity on the part of the audience. There was just too much to say about what was already happening to spend time getting the audience up to speed, and it was safe to assume our audiences had enough context to follow along. But time moves fast on the internet, and many people who now care about such things weren't there while it was happening, and are lacking the necessary context to follow the better videos. For a long time, I've only been able to direct them to RationalWiki's timeline, which is excellent but so exhaustively comprehensive that it's likely to scare off first-timers.

I realize an hourlong lecture isn't necessarily helping matters, but the first 20-or-so minutes of this video are my attempt at streamlining the timeline such that people can be up to speed on the most important stuff fairly quickly. The rest is talking about what it all meant, how it prefigured the Alt-Right, and using it to better understand digital radicalization.

This video was made with the help of Magdalen Rose, who edited the slides to the audio while I was laid up with a back injury. Go sub to her channel! And please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

FUCKING VIDEO GAMES? FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THEY MADE DOZENS OF PEOPLE MISERABLE FOR YEARS OVER VIDEO GAMES! NOT EVEN FUCKING VIDEO GAMES, FUCKING ARTICLES ABOUT FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT??

Hi! My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, please like share and subscribe.

I’m here to talk to you about GamerGate, and I needed to get all that out of the way. I’m going to talk about what GamerGate was and how it prefigured The Alt-Right, and there are gonna be moments where you’re nodding along with me, going, “yeah, yeah I get it,” and then the sun’s gonna break through a crack in the wall and you’ll suddenly remember that all this is happening because some folks - mostly ladies - said some stuff - provably true stuff, I might add - about video games and a bunch of guys didn’t like it, and you’re gonna want to rip your hair out. By the end of this, you will have a better understanding of what happened, but it will never not be bullshit.

Also, oh my god, content warning. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, rape threats, threats of violence, domestic abuse - I’m not going to depict or describe at length any of the worst stuff, but it’s all in the mix. So if at any point you need to switch me off or mute me, you have my blessing.

Brace yourselves.

Some quick prehistory:

In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian ran a Kickstarter campaign for a YouTube series on sexist tropes in video games. And, partway through the campaign, 4chan found it and said “let’s ruin her life.” And a lot of the male general gaming public joined in. And by “ruin her life” I’m not talking 150 angry tweets including dozens of rape and death threats per week, though that was a thing. I’m talking bomb threats. I’m talking canceled speaking engagements because someone threatened to shoot up a school. I’m talking FBI investigation. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

And in 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, a free text game about living with depression. They received harassment off and on for the next year, most pointedly from an incel forum called Wizardchan that doxxed their phone number and made harassing phone calls telling them to kill themself. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

(Also, quick note: Zoe Quinn is nonbinary and has come out since the events in question. When I call Zoe’s harassment misogynist, understand I am not calling Zoe a woman, but they were attacked by people who hate women because that’s how they were perceived. Had they been out at the time things probably would’ve gone down similarly, but on top of misogyny I’d be talking about nonbinary erasure and transphobia.)

Okay. Our story begins in August 2014. The August that never ended.

Depression Quest, after a prolonged period on Greenlight, finally releases on Steam as a free download with the option to pay what you want. In the days that follow, Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, writes a nearly 10,000-word blog called The Zoe Post, in which he claims Quinn had been a shitty and unfaithful partner. (For reference, 10,000 words is long enough that the Hugos would consider it a novelette.) This is posted to forums on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, both of which immediately take it down, finding it, at best, a lot of toxic hearsay and, at worse, an invitation to harassment. So Gjoni workshops the post, adds a bunch of edgelord humor (and I am using the word “humor” very generously), and reposts it to three different subforums on 4chan.

We’re not going to litigate whether Zoe Quinn was a good partner. I don’t know or care. I don’t think anyone on this call is trying to date them so I’m not sure that’s our business. What is known is that the relationship lasted five months, and, after it ended, Gjoni began stalking Quinn. Gjoni has, in fact, laid out how he stalked Quinn in meticulous detail to interviewers and why he feels it was justified. It’s also been corroborated by a friend that Quinn briefly considered taking him back at a games conference in San Francisco, but he became violent during sex and Quinn left the apartment in the middle of the night with visible bruises.

Off of the abusive ex-boyfriend’s post, 4chan decides it’s going to make Zoe Quinn one of their next targets, and starts a private IRC channel to plan the campaign. The channel is called #BurgersAndFries, a reference to Gjoni claiming Quinn had cheated on him with five guys. A couple sentences in The Zoe Post - which Gjoni would later claim were a typo - imply that one of the five guys was games journalist Nathan Grayson and that Quinn had slept with him in exchange for a good review of Depression Quest. Given the anger that they’d seen drummed up against women in games with the previous Anita Sarkeesian hate mob, #BurgersAndFries decides to focus on this breach of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover story, many of them howling with laughter at the thought that male gamers would probably buy it. This way, destroying Quinn’s life and career and turning their community against them would appear an unfortunate byproduct of a legitimate consumer revolt; criticism of the harassment could even be framed as a distraction from the bigger issue. Gjoni himself is in the IRC channel telling them that this was the best hand to play.

The stated aim of many on #BurgersAndFries was to convince Quinn to commit suicide.

Two regulars in the IRC, YouTubers MundaneMatt and Internet Aristocrat, make videos about The Zoe Post. Incidentally, both these men had already made a lot of money off videos about Anita Sarkeesian. Matt’s is swiftly taken down with a DMCA claim, and he says that Quinn filed the claim themself. (For the record, in those days, YouTube didn’t tell you who filed DMCA claims against you.) Members of the IRC also reach out to YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who had been critical of Sarkeesian and dismissive of her harassment, and he tweets the story to his 350,000 followers, saying a game developer trading sex for a good review might not prove true, but was certainly plausible.

This is where GamerGate begins to get public traction.

Zoe Quinn is very swiftly doxxed, with their phone number, home address, nudes, and names and numbers of their family collected. Gjoni himself leaks their birth name. The Zoe Post, and the movement against Quinn - now dubbed “The Quinnspiracy” - make it to The Escapist and Reddit, which mods will have little luck removing. The Quinnspiracy declares war on any site that does take their threads down, most vehemently NeoGAF. People who defend Zoe against the harassment start getting doxxed themselves - Fez developer Phil Fish is doxxed so thoroughly, hackers get access to the root folder of his website.

In what I’m going to call This Should Have Been The End, Part 1, Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku where Nathan Grayson worked, in response to pressure not just from The Quinnspiracy but an increasing number of angry gamers buying The Quinnspiracy’s narrative, publishes a story. In it he verifies that Quinn and Grayson did date for several months, and that not only is there no review of Depression Quest anywhere on Kotaku, not by Grayson nor anyone else, but that Grayson did not write a single word about Quinn the entire time they were dating.

In response, The Quinnspiracy declares war on Kotaku. r/KotakuinAction is formed, which will become the primary site of organization outside of chanboards. The fact that their entire “movement” is based on a review that does not exist changes next to nothing.

Some people start to see The Quinnspiracy as potentially profitable. The Fine Young Capitalists get involved, a group ostensibly working to get women into video games but who have a Byzantine plan to do so wherein they crowdfund the budget and the woman who wins a competition gets to storyboard a game, but another company will make and she will get 8% of the profits, the rest going to a charity chosen by the top donor. 4chan becomes the top donor. They like TFYC because the head of the company has a vendetta against Zoe Quinn, who had previously called them out for their transphobic submission policy, and he falsely accused Quinn of having once doxxed him. 4chan feels backing an ostensibly feminist effort will be good PR, but can’t resist selecting a colon cancer charity because, they say, feminism is cancer and they want to be the cure to butthurt. They also get to design a character for the game, and so they create Vivian James, who will become the GamerGate mascot.

Manosphere YouTubers Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini launch a Patreon campaign for their antifeminist documentary The Sarkeesian Effect and come to The Quinnspiracy looking for $15,000 a month for an indefinite period to make it, which they get.

In what will prove genuinely awful timing, Anita Sarkeesian releases the second episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and, despite not being a games journalist and having nothing to do with Quinn or Grayson, she is immediately roped into the narrative about how feminists are ruining games culture and becomes the second major target of harassment. Both she and Quinn soon have to leave their houses after having receiving dozens and dozens of death threats that include their home addresses.

After being courted by members of the IRC channel, Firefly star Adam Baldwin tweets a link to one of the Quinnspiracy videos and coins the hashtag #GamerGate. This is swiftly adopted by all involved.

In response to all this, Leigh Alexander writes a piece for Gamasutra arguing that the identity that these men are flocking to the “ethics in games journalism” narrative to defend no longer matters as a marketing demographic. Gaming and games culture is so large and so varied, and the “core gamer” audience of 18-34 white bros growing smaller and septic, that there was no reason, neither morally nor financially, to treat them as the primary audience anymore. Love of gaming is eternal, but, she declared, “gamers,” as an identity, “are over.” Eight more articles contextualizing GamerGate alongside misogyny and the gatekeeping of games culture come out across several websites in the following days. GamerGate frames these as a clear sign of [deep sigh] collusion to oppress gamers, proving that ethics in games journalism is, indeed, broken, and Leigh Alexander becomes the third major target of harassment. These become known as the “gamers are dead” articles - a phrase not one of them uses - and they make “get Leigh Alexander fired from Gamasutra” one of their primary goals.

Something I need you to understand is that it has, at this point, been two weeks.

Highlights from the next little bit: Alex Macris, a higher up at The Escapist’s parent company, expresses support for GamerGate; he will go on to write the first positive coverage at a major publication and cement The Escapist as GamerGate-friendly. Mike Cernovich, aka “Based Lawyer,” gets GamerGate’s attention by mocking Anita Sarkeesian; he will go on to hire a private investigator to stalk Zoe Quinn. GamerGate launches Operation Disrespectful Nod, an email campaign pressuring companies to pull advertising from websites that have criticized them. They leverage their POC members, getting them, any time someone points out the rampant racism and antisemitism among GamerGaters, to say “I am a person of color and I am #NotYourShield”; most of these “POC members” are fake accounts left over from a previous, racist disinformation campaign. Milo Yiannapoulos gets involved, writing positive coverage of GG despite having mocked gamers for precisely this behavior in the past, and gets so much traffic it pulls Breitbart News out of obscurity and makes it a significant player in modern conservative news media.

[Hey! Ian from the future here. This talk mostly addresses how GamerGate prefigured the Alt-Right strategically and philosophically, but if you want a more explicit, material connection: Breitbart News took its newfound notoriety to become, as its Executive Chair phrased it in 2016, "a platform for the Alt-Right." That Executive Chair was Steve Bannon, who threw the website's weight behind The Future President Who Shall Not Be Named, and, upon getting his attention, would then go on to become his campaign strategist and work in his Administration. So, if you're wondering how one of the central figures of the Alt-Right ended up in the White House, the answer is literally "GamerGate." Back to you, Ian from the past!]

In what I’m calling This Should Have Been The End, Part 2, Zoe Quinn announces that they have been lurking the #BurgersAndFries IRC channel since the beginning and releases dozens of screenshots showing harassment being planned and the selection of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover. #BurgersAndFries has a meltdown, everyone turns on each other, and the channel is abandoned. And they then start another IRC and things proceed.

It goes on like this. I’m not gonna cover everything. This is just the first month. It should be clear by now that this thing is kind of unkillable. And I worry I haven’t made it obvious that this is not just a chanboard and an IRC. Thousands of regular, every day gamers were buying the story and joining in. They were angry, and no amount of evidence that their anger was unfounded was going to change that. You could not mention or even allude to GamerGate and not get flooded with dozens, even hundreds of furious replies. These replies always included the hashtag so everyone monitoring it could join in, so all attempts at real conversation devolved into a hundred forking threads where some people expected you to talk to them while others hurled insults and slurs. And always the possibility that, if any one of them didn’t like what you said, you’d be the next target.

To combat this, some progressives offered up the hashtag #GameEthics to the people getting swept up in GamerGate, saying, “look, we get that you’re angry, and if you want to talk about ethics in games journalism, we can totally do that, but using your hashtag is literally putting us in danger; they calling the police on people saying there’s a hostage situation at their home addresses so they get sent armed SWAT teams, and if you’ll just use this other hashtag we can have the conversation you say you want to have in safety.” And I will ever stop being salty about what happened.

They refused. They wouldn’t cede any ground to what they saw as their opposition. It was so important to have the conversation on their terms that not only did they refuse to use #GameEthics, they spammed it with furry porn so no one could use it.

A few major events on the timeline before we move on: Christina Hoff Sommers, the Republican Party’s resident “feminist,” comes out criticizing Anita Sarkeesian and becomes a major GG figurehead, earning the title Based Mom. Zoe Quinn gets a restraining order against Eron Gjoni, which he repeatedly violates, to no consequence; GG will later crowdfund his legal fees. There’s this listserv called GameJournoPros where game journalists would talk about their jobs, and many are discussing their concerns over GamerGate, so Milo Yiannopoulos leaks it and this is framed as further “proof of collusion.” 4chan finally starts enforcing its “no dox” rules and shuts GamerGate threads down, so they migrate to 8chan, a site famous for hosting like a lot of child porn. Indie game developer Brianna Wu makes a passing joke about GamerGate on Twitter and they decide, seemingly on a whim, to make her one of the biggest targets in the entire movement; she soon has to leave her home as well. GamerGate gets endorsements from WikiLeaks, Infowars, white nationalist sites Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, and professional rapist RooshV. And hundreds of people get doxxed; an 8chan subforum called Baphomet is created primarily to host dox of GamerGate’s critics.

But by November, GamerGate popularity was cresting, as more and more mainstream media covered it negatively. Their last, big spike in popularity came when Anita Sarkeesian went on The Colbert Report and Stephen made fun of the movement. Their numbers never recovered after that.

Which is not to say GamerGate ended. It slowed down. The period of confusion where the mainstream world couldn’t tell whether it was a legitimate movement or not passed. But, again, most harassers faced no meaningful repercussions. Gamers who bought the lie about “ethics in games journalism” stayed mad that no one had ever taken them seriously, and harassers continued to grief their targets for years. The full timeline of GamerGate is an constant cycle of lies, harassment, operations, grift, and doxxing. Dead-enders are to this day still using the hashtag. And remember how Anita had nothing to do with ethics in games journalism or Zoe Quinn, and they just roped her in because they’d enjoyed harassing her before so why not? Every one of GamerGate’s targets knows that they may get dragged into some future harassment campaign just because. It’s already happened to several of them. They’re marked.

(sigh) Let’s take a breath.

Now that we know what GamerGate was, let’s talk about why it worked.

In the thick of GamerGate, I started compiling a list of tactics I saw them using. I wanted to make a video essay that was one part discussion of antifeminist backlash, and one part list of techniques these people use so we can better recognize and anticipate their behavior. That first part became six parts and the second part went on a back burner. It would eventually become my series, The Alt-Right Playbook. GamerGate is illustrative because most of what would become The Alt-Right Playbook was in use.

Two foundational principles of The Alt-Right Playbook are Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense. Make sure people are talking about what you want them to talk about, and take an aggressive posture so you look dominant even when you’re not making sense. For instance: once Zoe leaked the IRC chatlogs, a reasonable person could tell the average gater, “the originators of GamerGate were planning harassment from the very beginning.” But the gater would say, “you’re cherry-picking; not everyone was a harasser.”

Now, this is a bad argument - that’s not how you use “cherry-picking” - and it’s being framed as an accusation - you’re not just wrong, you’re dishonest - which makes you wanna defend yourself. But, if you do - if you tell them why that argument is crap - you’ve let the conversation move from “did the IRC plan harassment?” - a question of fact - to “are the harassers representative of the movement?” - a question of ethics. Like, yes, they are, but only within a certain moral framework. An ethics question has no provable answer, especially if people are willing to make a lot of terrible arguments. It is their goal to move any question with a definitive answer to a question of philosophy, to turn an argument they can’t win into an argument nobody can win.

The trick is to treat the question you asked like it’s already been answered and bait you into addressing the next question. By arguing about whether you’re cherry-picking, you’re accepting the premise that whether you’re cherry-picking is even relevant. Any time this happens, it’s good to pause and ask, “what did we just skip over?” Because that will tell you a lot.

What you skipped over is their admission that, yes, the IRC did plan harassment, but that’s only on them if most of the movement was in on it. Which is a load of crap - the rest of the IRC saw it happening, let it happen, it’s not like anybody warned Zoe, and shit, I’m having the cherry-picking argument! They got me! You see how tempting it is? But presumably the reason you brought the harassment up is because you want them to do something about it. At the very least, leave the movement, but ideally try and stop it. They don’t, strictly speaking, need to feel personally responsible to do that. And you might be thinking, well, maybe if I can get them take responsibility then they’ll do something, but you’d be falling for a different technique I call I Hate Mondays.

This is where people will acknowledge a terrible thing is happening, maybe even agree it’s bad, but they don’t believe anything can be done about it. They also don’t believe you believe anything can be done about it. Mondays suck, but they come around every week. This is never stated outright, but it’s why you’re arguing past each other. To them, the only reason to talk about the bad thing is to assign blame. Whose turn is it to get shit on for the unsolvable problem? Their argument about cherry-picking amounts to “1-2-3 not it.” And they are furious with you for trying to make them responsible for harassment they didn’t participate in.

The unspoken argument is that harassment is part of being on the internet. Every public figure deals with it. This ignores any concept of scale - why does one person get harassed more than another? - but you can’t argue with someone who views it as a binary: harassment either happens or it doesn’t, and, if it does, it’s a fact of life, and, if it happens to everyone, it’s not gendered. And this is not a strongly-held belief they’ve come to after years of soul-searching - this is what they’ve just decided they believe. They want to participate in GamerGate despite knowing its purpose, and this is what would need to be true for that to be ok.

Or maybe they’re just fucking with you! Maybe you can’t tell. Maybe they can’t tell, either. I call this one The Card Says Moops, where people say whatever they feel will score points in an argument and are so irony-poisoned they have no idea whether they actually believe it. A very useful trick if the thing you appear to believe is unconscionable. You can’t take what people like that say at face value; you can only intuit their beliefs from their actions. They say they believe this one minute and that another, but their behavior is always in accordance with that, not this.

In the negative space, their belief is, “The harassment of these women is okay. My anger about video games is more important. I may not be harassing them myself, but they do kind of deserve it.” They will never say this out loud in a serious conversation, though many will say it in an anonymous or irreverent space where they can later deny they meant it. But, whatever they say they believe, this is the worldview they are operating under.

Obscuring this means flipping through a lot of contradictory arguments. The harassment is being faked, or it’s not being faked but it’s being exaggerated, or it’s not being exaggerated but the target is provoking it to get attention, which means GamerGate harassers simultaneously don’t exist, exist in small numbers, and exist in such large numbers someone can build a career out of relying on them! It can be kind of fun to take all these arguments made in isolation and try to string together an actual position. Like, GamerGate would argue that Nathan Grayson having previously mentioned Zoe Quinn in an article about a canceled reality show counts as positive coverage, and since Grayson reached out to Quinn for comment it’s reasonable to assume they started dating before the article was published (which is earlier than they claim), and positive coverage did lead to greater popularity for Depression Quest. But if you untangle that, it’s like… okay, you’re saying Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist in exchange for four nonconsecutive sentences that said no more than “Zoe Quinn exists and made a game,” and the price of those four sentences was to date the journalist for months, all to get rich off a game that didn’t cost any money. That’s your movement?

And some, if cornered, would say, “yes, we believe women are just that shitty, that one would fuck a guy for months if it made them the tiniest bit more famous.” But they won’t lead with that. Because they know it won’t convince the normies, even the ones who want to be convinced. So they use a process I call The Ship of Theseus to, piece by piece, turn that sentence into “slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review” and argue that each part of the sentence is technically accurate. It’s trying to lie without lying. And, provided all the pieces of this sentence are discussed separately, and only in the context of how they justify this sentence, you can trick yourself into believing this sentence is mostly true.

So, like, why? This is clearly motivated reasoning; what’s the motivation? What was this going to accomplish?

The answer is nothing. Nothing, by design. GamerGate’s “official” channels - the subreddit and the handful of forums that didn’t shut them down - were rigidly opposed to any action more organized than an email campaign. They had a tiny handful of tangible demands - they wanted gaming websites to post public ethics policies and had a list of people they wanted fired - but their larger aim was the sea change in how games journalism operated, which nothing they were asking for could possibly give them. The kind of anger that convinces you this is a true statement is not going to be addressed by a few paragraphs about ethics and Leigh Alexander getting a new job. They wanted gaming sites to stop catering to women and “SJWs” - who were a sizable and growing source of traffic - and to get out of the pockets of companies that advertised on their websites - which was their primary source of income. So all Kotaku had to do to make them happy was solve capitalism!

Meanwhile, the unofficial channels, like 8chan and Baphomet, were planning op after op to get private information, spread lies with fake accounts, get disinformation trending, make people quit jobs, cancel gigs, and flee their homes. Concrete goals with clear results. All you had to do to feel productive was go rogue. In my video,

How to Radicalize a Normie, I describe how the Alt-Right encourages lone wolf behavior by whipping people up into a rage and then refusing to give them anything to do, while surrounding them with examples of people taking matters into their own hands. The same mechanism is in play here: the public-facing channels don’t condone harassment but also refuse to fight it, the private channels commit it under cover of anonymity, and there is a free flow of traffic between them for when the official channels’ impotence becomes unbearable.

What I hope I’m illustrating is how these techniques play off of each other, how they create a closed ecosystem that rational thought cannot enter. There’s a phrase we use on the internet that got thrown around a lot at the time:

you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

Now, there are a few other big topics I think are relevant here, so I want to go through them one by one.

MEMEIFICATION

So a lot of interactions with GamerGate would involve a very insular knowledge base.

Like, you’d say something benign but progressive on Twitter.

A gater would show up in your mentions and say something aggressive and false.

You’d correct them. But then they’d come back and hit you with -

ah shit, sorry, this is a Loss meme.

If I were in front of a classroom I’d ask, show of hands, how many of you got that? I had to ask Twitter recently, does Gen Z know about Loss?!

If you don’t know what Loss is I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s this old, bad webcomic that was parodied so, so, so many times

that it was reduced to its barest essentials, to the point where any four panels with shapes in this arrangement is a Loss meme. For those of you in the know, you will recognize this anywhere, but have you ever tried to explain to someone who wasn’t in the know why this is really fuckin’ funny?

So, now… by the same process that this is a comics joke,

this is a rape joke.

I’m not gonna show the original image, but, once upon a time, someone made an animated GIF of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z graphically raping Vegeta. 4chan loved it so much that it got posted daily, became known as the “daily dose,” until mods started deleting every incident of it. So they uploaded slightly edited version of it. Then they started uploading other images that had been edited with Piccolo’s color scheme. It got so abstracted that eventually any collection of purple and green pixels would be recognized as Piccolo Dick.

Apropos of nothing, GamerGate is a movement that insists it is not sexist in nature and it does not condone threats of rape against the women they don’t like. And this is their logo. This is their mascot.

If you’re familiar with the Daily Dose, the idea that GamerGate would never support Eron Gjoni if they believed he was a sexual abuser is so blatantly insincere it’s insulting… but imagine trying to explain to someone who’s not on 4chan how this sweater is a rape joke. Imagine having to explain it to a journalist. Imagine having to explain it to the judge enforcing your abuser’s restraining order.

Reactionaries use meme culture not just because they’re terminally online but also because it makes their behavior seem either benign or just confusing to outsiders. They find it hilarious that they can be really explicit and still fly under the radar. The Alt-Right did this with Pepe the Frog, the OK sign, even the milk glass emoji for a hot minute. The more inexplicable the meme, the better. You get the point where Stephen Miller is flashing Nazi signs from the White House and the Presidential re-eletion campaign is releasing 88 ads of exactly 14 words and there’s still a debate about whether the administration is racist. Because journalists aren’t going to get their heads around that. You tell them “1488 is a Nazi number,” it’s gonna seem a lot more plausible that you’re making shit up.

MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS

Online movements like GamerGate move at a speed and mutation rate too high for the mainstream world to keep up. And not just that they don’t understand the memes - they don’t understand the infrastructure.

In an attempt to cover GamerGate evenhandedly, George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop interviewed a lawyer who specializes in journalistic ethics. He meant well; I really wish he hadn’t. You can see him trying to fit something like GamerGate into terms this silver-haired man who works in copyright law can understand. At one point he asks if it’s okay to fund the creative project of a potential journalistic source, to which the guy understandably says “no.”

What he’s alluding to here is the harassment of Jenn Frank. A few weeks into GamerGate, Jenn Frank writes a piece in The Guardian about sexism in tech that mentions Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. In another case of “here’s a strongly-held belief I just decided I have,” GamerGate says this is a breach of journalistic ethics because Frank backs Quinn on Patreon. They harass her so intensely she not only has to quit her job at The Guardian, for several months she quits journalism entirely.

Off the bat, calling a public figure central to a major event in the field a “journalistic source” is flatly wrong-headed. Quinn was not interviewed or even contacted for the article, they were in no way a “source”; they were a subject. But I want to talk about this phrase, “fund a creative project.” Patreon is functionally a subscription; it’s a way of buying things. It’s technically accurate that Frank is funding Quinn’s creative project, but only in the sense that you are funding Bob Dylan’s creative project if you listen to his music. And saying Frank therefore can’t write about Quinn is like saying a music journalist can’t cover a Bob Dylan concert if they’ve ever bought his albums.

And we could talk about the ways that Patreon, as compared with other funding models, can create a greater sense of intimacy, and we also could comment that, well, that’s how an increasing number of people consume media now, so that perspective should be present in journalism. But maybe it means we should cover that perspective differently? I don’t know. It’s an interesting subject. But none of that’s going on in this conversation because this guy doesn’t know what Patreon is. It was only a year old at this point. Patreon’s been a primary source of my income for 5 years and my parents still don’t know what it is. (I think they think I’m a freelancer?) This guy hears “funding a creative project” and he’s thinking an investor, someone who makes a profit off the source’s success.

The language of straight society hasn’t caught up with what’s happening, and that works in GamerGate’s favor.

In the years since GamerGate we have dozens of stories of people trying to explain Twitter harassment to a legal system that’s never heard of Twitter. People trying to explain death threats to cops whose only relationship to the internet is checking email, confusedly asking, “Why don’t you just not go online?” Like, yeah, release your text game about depression at GameStop for the PS3 and get it reviewed in the Boston Globe, problem solved.

You see this in the slowness of mainstream journalists to condemn the harassment - hell, even games journalists at first. Because what if it is a legitimate movement? What if the harassers are just a fringe element? What if there was misconduct? The people in a position to stop GamerGate don’t have to be convinced of their legitimacy, they just have to hesitate. They just have to be unsure. Remember how much happened in just the first two weeks, how it took only a month to become unkillable.

It’s the same hesitance that makes mainstream media, online platforms, and law enforcement underestimate The Alt-Right. They’re terrified of condemning a group as white nationalist terrorists because they’re confused, and what if they’re wrong? Or, in most cases, not even afraid they’re wrong, but afraid of the PR disaster if too much of the world thinks they’re wrong.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

A thing I’ve talked about in The Alt-Right Playbook is how these decentralized, ostensibly leaderless movements insulate themselves from responsibility. Harassment is never the movement’s fault because they never told anyone to harass and you can’t prove the harassers are legitimate members of the movement. The Alt-Right does this too - one of their catchphrases is “I disavow.” Since there are no formalized rules for membership, they can redraw boundaries on the fly; they can take credit for any successes and deny responsibility for any wrongdoing. Public membership is granted or revoked based on a person’s moment-to-moment utility.

It’s almost like… they’re cherry-picking.

The flipside of this is a lack of control. Since they never officially tell anyone to do anything but write emails, they have no means of stopping anyone from behaving counterproductively. The harassment of Jenn Frank was the first time GamerGate’s originators thought, “maybe we should ease off just to avoid bad publicity,” and they found they couldn’t. GamerGate had gotten too big, and too many people were clearly there for precisely this reason.

They also couldn’t control the infighting. When your goal is to harass women and you have all these contradictory justifications for why, you end up with a lot of competing beliefs. And, you know what? Angry white men who like harassing people don’t form healthy relationships! Several prominent members of GamerGate - including Internet Aristocrat - got driven out by factionalism; they were doxxed by their own people! Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini parted ways hating each other, with Aurini releasing chatlogs of him gaslighting Owen about accepting an endorsement from Roosh, and they released two competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect.

I say this because it’s useful to know that these are alliances of convenience. If you know where the sore spots are, you can apply pressure to them.

LEADERS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP

One way movements like GamerGate deflect responsibility is by declaring, “We are a leaderless movement! We have no means to stop harassment.”

Which… any anarchist will tell you collective action is entirely possible without leaders. But they’ll also tell you, absent a system of distributing power equitably, you’re gonna have leaders, just not ones you elected.

A few months into GamerGate, Randi Lee Harper created the ggautoblocker. Here’s what it did: it took five prominent GamerGate figures - Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Monroe, formerly known as [sigh] PressFartToContinue - and generated a block list of everyone who followed at least two of them on Twitter. Now, this became something of an arms race; once GamerGate found out about it they made secondary accounts that followed different people, and more and more prominent figures appeared and had to get added to the list. But, when it first launched, the list generated from just these five people comprised an estimated 90-95% of GamerGate.

Hate to break it to you, guys, but if 90+ percent of your movement is following at least two of the same five people, those are your leaders. The attention economy has produced them. Power pools when left on its own.

This is another case where you have to ignore what people claim and look at what they do. The Alt-Right loves to say “we disavow Richard Spencer” and “Andrew Anglin doesn’t speak for us.”

But no matter what they say, pay attention to whom they’re taking cues from.

AD CAMPAIGN

George Lakoff has observed that one way the Left fails in opposition to the Right is that most liberal politicians and campaigners have degrees in things like law and political science, where conservative campaigners more often have degrees in advertising and communications. Liberals and leftists may have a better product to sell, but conservatives know how to sell products.

GamerGate less resembles a boots-on-the-ground political movement than an ad campaign. First they decide what their messaging strategy is going to be. Then the media arm starts publicizing it. They seek out celebrity endorsements. They get their own hashtag and mascot. They donate to charity and literally call it “public relations.” You can even see the move from The Quinnspiracy to GamerGate as a rebranding effort - when one name got too closely associated with harassment, they started insisting GamerGate was an entirely separate movement from The Quinnspiracy. I learned that trick from Stringer Bell’s economics class.

Now, we could stand to learn a thing or two from this. But I also wouldn’t want us to adopt this strategy whole hog; you should view moves like these as red flags. If you’re hesitating to condemn a movement because what if it’s legitimate, take a look at whether they’re selling ideology like it’s Pepsi.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

One reason to insist you’re a consumer revolt rather than a harassment campaign is most people who want to harass need someone to give them permission, and need someone to tell them it’s normal.

Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”

People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.

This is why they have to believe games journalism is corrupt because of a handful of feminist media critics with outsized influence. Legitimate failures of journalism cannot be systemic problems rooted in how digital media is funded and consumed; there cannot be a legitimate market for social justice-y media. It has to be manipulation by the few. Because, if these things are common, then, even if you don’t like them, they’re normal. They’re part of the in-group. Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike getting normalized, because they know, if they are normalized, they will have to accept them. Because the thing they care about most is being normal.

This is why the echo chamber, this is why Fox News, this is why the Far Right insists they are the “silent majority.” This is why they artificially inflate their numbers. This is why they insist facts are “biased.” They have to maintain the image that what are, in material terms, fringe beliefs are, in fact, held by the majority. This is why getting mocked by Stephen Colbert was such a blow to GamerGate. It makes it harder to believe the world at large agrees with them.

This is why, if you’re trying to change the world for the better, it’s pointless to ask their permission. Because, if you change the world around them, they will adapt even faster than you will.

THE ARGUMENT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO END

Casey Explosion has this really great Twitter thread comparing the Alt-Right to Scary Terry from Rick and Morty. His catchphrase is “you can run but you can’t hide, bitch.” And Rick and Morty finally escape him by hiding. And Morty’s all, “but he said we can’t hide,” and Rick is like, “why are we taking his word on this? if we could hide, he certainly wouldn’t tell us.”

The reason to argue with a GamerGater is on the implied agreement that, if you can convince them they’re part of a hate mob, they will leave. But look at the incentives here: they want to be in GamerGate, and you want them not to be. But they’re already in GamerGate. They’re not waiting on the outcome of this argument to participate. They’ve already got what they want; they don’t need to convince you GamerGate isn’t a hate mob.

This is why all their logic and rationalizations are shit, because they don’t need to be good. They’re not trying to win an argument. They’re trying to keep the argument going.

This has been a precept of conservative political strategy for decades. “You haven’t convinced us climate change is real and man-made, you need to do more studies.” They’re not pausing the use of fossil fuels until the results come in. “You haven’t convinced us there are no WMDs in Iraq, you need to collect more evidence.” They’re not suspending the war until you get back to them. “You haven’t convinced us that Reaganomic tax policy causes recessions, let’s just do it for another forty years and see what happens.” And when the proof comes in, they send us out for more, and we keep going.

The biggest indicator you can’t win a debate with a reactionary is they keep telling you you can. The biggest indicator protest and deplatforming works is they keep telling you in plays into their hands. The biggest indicator that you shouldn’t compromise with Republicans is they keep saying doing otherwise is stooping to their level. They’re not going to walk into the room and say, “Hi, my one weakness is reasoned argument, let’s pick a time and place to hash this out.”

And we fall for it because we’re trying to be decent people. Because we want to believe the truth always wins. We want to bargain in good faith, and they are weaponizing our good faith against us. Always dangling the carrot that the reason they’re like this is no one’s given them the right argument not to be. It’s all just a misunderstanding, and, really, it’s on us for not trying hard enough.

But they have no motivation to agree with us. Most of the people asking for debates have staked their careers on disagreeing with us. Conceding any point to the Left could cost them their livelihood.

WHY GAMES?

Let’s close with the big question: why games? And, honestly, the short answer is:

why not games?

Games culture has always presented itself as a hobby for young, white, middle class boys. It’s always been bigger and more diverse than that, but that’s how it was marketed, and that’s who most felt they belonged. As gaming grows bigger, there is suddenly room for those marginal voices that have always been there to make themselves heard. And, as gaming becomes more mainstream, it’s having its first brushes with serious critical analysis.

This makes the people who have long felt gaming was theirs and theirs alone anxious and a little angry. They’ve invested a lot of their identity in it and they don’t want it to change.

And what the Far Right sees in a sizable collection of aggrieved young men is an untapped market. This is why sites like Stormfront and Breitbart flocked to them. These are not liberals they have to convert, these people are, up til now, not politically engaged. The Right can be their first entry to politics.

The world was changing. Nerd properties were exploding into popular culture in tandem with media representation diversifying. And we were living with the first Black President. Any time an out-group looks like it might join the in-group, there is a self-protective backlash from the existing in-group. This had been brewing for a while, and, honestly, if it hadn’t boiled over in games, it would have boiled over somewhere else.

And, in the years since GamerGate, it has. The Far Right has tapped the comics, Star Wars, and sci-fi fandoms; they tried to get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly. They’re all over YouTube and, frankly, the atheist community was already in their pocket. Basically, if you’re in community with a bunch of young white guys who think they own the place, you might wanna have some talks with them sooner than later.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this stuff, RationalWiki’s timeline on GamerGate is pretty thorough. You can also watch my or Dan Olson’s videos on the subject. I’ll be putting the audio of this talk on YouTube and will put as many resources as I can in the show notes. The channel, again, is Innuendo Studios.

Sorry this was such a bummer.

Thank you for your time.

[fatehbaz]

aw i swear i reblogged a post of yours with a reading rec and now i can't find it. :( but i was interested in learning more about indigenous vs colonial/imperial relationships with nature (especially in terms of nature as a food source) and was wondering if you had any books (or other resources) you could recommend? thank you for all the resources and information you share!

Thank you for the kind message. :)

Are you thinking about the new book on how the US, despite formally occupying the islands at the time, also simultaneously flexed some so-called “Soft Power” (which is, of course, violent and never actually “soft”) and asserted itself in the Philippines by messing around with food culture and changing food traditions? Taste of Control: Food and the Filipino Colonial Mentality Under American Rule. From 2020, by R. Alexander D. Orquiza. (The book focuses on the period between 1898 and 1940s.)

Maybe you’d be interested in these? These are some posts from me. Each post contains short excerpts. (Like, the juicy bits and short enough to not be overwhelming, y’know? Then, if the subject seems cool, the author names and full citation are included. Some of the posts contain maps, photos of plants/animals, other visual aid, and direct links to read the longer full articles for free.) These are posts about local food sovereignty; differences between worldviews of traditional food systems and settler-colonial food systems; difference between traditional and imperial relationships to plants; Empire’s use of food, plants, botany, and scientific institutions to undermine Indigenous autonomy; and contrasts between imperial and traditional human-plant-animal relationships.

-- Manoomin, the imperial plot to domesticate wild rice, “cottage colonialism” in Canada, imaginative control, the power of names and naming plants, different understanding of food contrasted between Empire and Indigenous knowledge. (Covers 1880s to Present.)

-- Pineapple, domestication of breadfruit, and plantations “doing the work of Empire” in Hawaii. Difference between Indigenous Polynesian respect for plants/food, and imperial/industrial food extraction.

-- Leslie Marmon Silko: Gardens. Food sovereignty and imperialist use of food to gain control. Settler-colonial theft of Indigenous plant knowledge. She says: “It wasn’t too long before I realized how very political gardens are. I had actually stumbled into the most political thing of all – how you grow your food, whether you eat, the fact that the plant collectors followed the Conquistadors.”

-- “We don’t need to know what starfish know”: Aboriginal knowledge-holders of Bawaka Country discuss contrast between traditional and settler-colonial understandings of food harvest and multispecies communities.

-- Anna Boswell’s discussion of endemic longfin eels of Aotearoa as example of contrast between Maori worldviews and settler-colonial understanding of ecology; and the problem with making “land-water” distinctions in Euro-American agriculture and land management.

-- Robin Wall Kimmerer speaking frankly about paying attention to plants, and the differences between kinds of inquiry, difference between settler-colonial institutionalized knowledge compared to Indigenous/land-based “ways of knowing”.

-- Native food and imperial appropriation of food/plants: “The Nineteenth-Century Garden: Imperialism, Subsistence, and Subversion in Leslie Marmon Silko's Gardens in the Dunes.”  

-- Mapuche cultural autonomy, Valdivian temperate rainforest, and European  plots to dismantle the rainforest to create “Swiss or German pastoral farm landscape” in Chile.

-- The debris and ruins of imperial sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and modern Caribbean art

-- Easy-to-access compilation of audio recordings and oral histories of bioregional foodsheds, from 13 Native food autonomy advocates. (New England maple syrup. New Mexico. Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. Abalone/acorns in California. Salmon in PNW, etc.)

-- “Ghostly non-places; settler-colonial hallucinations and fantasy visions; monstrous plants and animals; hiding, destroying, re-making ecological worlds; permanent cataclysm; the horror of settlement”: Anna Boswell on settler-colonial agriculture and ecology.

-- Some fresh annoying OC from me. Vegetation as a weapon: On soil degradation and the use of non-native plants to change landscapes and sever cultural relationships to land; extinction of megafauna; and on the dramatically under-reported but massive scale of anthropogenic environmental change wrought by early empires and “civilizations” in the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and ancient world (including the Fertile Crescent, Rome, and early China)

-- Indigenous Sami reindeer herding contrasted with colonial/industrial resource extraction; “eternal catastrophe”; power over death; “disaster as a form of governance”; apocalypse. From the great writing of Hugo Reinert.

-- Anna Boswell on stoats; native plants/animals of Aotearoa; and how settler-colonial environmental management targets species (and humans) for persecution or sacrifice.

--- Calcutta Botanic Gardens abduction and use of Chinese slaves; Kew Gardens (successfully) plotting to steal cinchona from people of Bolivia to service their staff in India; botanic gardens’ role in large-scale dispossession to create plantations in Assam and Ooty (1790s - 1870s).

-- The role of grasslands, deforestation, and English grasses in ecological imperialism in Aotearoa, early 20th century.

-- “Forage wars” between Native food harvesters and California legal institutions: Abalone, native foodsheds, and food harvesting in Pomo, Yurok, Coast Yuki, and other Klamath Mountains and coastal Northern California communities.

-- Zoe Todd discussing connection to local place, traditional ecological knowledge, and knowledge appropriation: “Not all knowledge is for your consumption.”

-- The grand tale of breadfruit domestication, the mutiny on the Bounty,  and plantation owners plotting with Kew Gardens to domesticate crops to  undermine slave gardens in the Caribbean. (Also includes comments on the under-reported central role of media/PR manipulation and slavery in the “mutiny on the Bounty” story.)

-- Conflating women with “bloodthirsty” and “flesh-eating” plants, and the  dehumanization of Indigenous cultures through scientific illustrations of imperial scientific agents and artistic depictions of plants from  colonized ecosystems (Euro-American art and science of botany in1700s to early 1900s),

-- Robin Wall Kimmerer: Paying attention to plants and her love for strawberries, from Braiding Sweetgrass.

-- “Coyote’s biota”: Comcaac (Seri) and O’Odaham food, plant knowledge, and the ascribing of special names to native plants and Euro-American plants to distinguish between types of food.

-- In the Falkland Islands: Intersections of extinction; the “Antarctic wolf”; colonialism, whiteness, racism, “invasion,” indigeneity; environmental history; decline of penguins; introduction of non-native European sheep, cats, cattle, pigs and ecological reinforcement of settler-colonial culture, etc.

-- Bogong moths and ethics of killing insects in settler-colonial Australian imaginary

-- “The British Museum was built on coral, butterflies, and slavery”: Hans Sloane, Caribbean ecology, museums and curiosity cabinets, and how plantation money and slavery built British scientific institutions

-- Human relationship with bees; use of insects in imperialism

-- Racism in depictions Melanesia; the mapping and naming of Polynesia and Melanesia

-- Records and details of extreme deforestation in ancient Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia around 4500 BC; extreme landscape modification in Asiatic steppes in first millennium AD.

-- Zoe Todd on human-fish relationships in Alberta, prairie, and boreal forest.

-- Dandelions, other non-native plants, and settler gardens changing soil of the Canadian Arctic. (Late 1800s and early 1900s.) From Broken Frontier: Ecological Imperialism in the Canadian North.

---------

And some of the so-called “classic” authors:

-- Zoe Todd: Might be most famous in popular media for her criticism of the Eurocentrism of the  “Anthropocene concept; for writing about racism and anti-Indigenous prejudice in academia; and for her 2014 essay, a retort to Euroamerican anthropologists. But aside from her advocacy, her academic research is often concerned with fish, food, plants, and traditional ecological knowledge of Indigenous communities in Canada (she is Metis, from Alberta). You’d be able to find many of her articles online, though I linked some above.

-- Neel Ahuja: Pretty famous scholar, “leading” author on biopolitics. References foodsheds and contrasts local and imperial food production, but also more broadly addresses interspecies/multispecies relationships; entanglements of race, gender, speciesism; health, medicine, and control of disease; control of food and personal bodies as sites of colonization.

-- Robin Wall Kimmerer: Wonderful. She’s a botanist, she loves moss, and she’s concerned with traditional ecological knowledge. (She is Potawatomi.) She does explicitly contrast imaginaries, like the difference between Settler-colonial/imperial perceptions of plants/ecosystems, and Indigenous/local/”attentive” perceptions of plants/ecosystems.

-- Vandana Shiva: She has many, many lectures and publications available. Her politics aren’t always great, but she might be most famous for advocating food sovereignty and resistance to corporate agriculture and food giants. Often speaks of development, industrialization, and gender hierarchies. But one influential text was Biopiracy: the plunder of nature and knowledge from 1997.

-- Anna Boswell: Perhaps most famous for writing about the plight of the endemic Aotearoa longfin eel, she specifically focuses on the contrast between, on the one hand, Indigenous/local perceptions and Maori knowledge of landscape/living creatures, and, on the other hand, settler-colonial and industrial/extractivist perceptions of land. She uses some certain animals/plants of Aotearoa as case studies to clearly demonstrate different treatment/perception of land, to criticize settler-colonial “world reordering” (landscaping, pasture, plantation, etc.) as a form of “deathwork.”

(1) Aotearoa longfin eel and devaluing species; (2) tuatara and colonial environmental change; (3) non-native stoats and persecution; (4) settler-colonial landscapes, fantasy-visions, and ecological apocalypse.

-------

Something I mentioned in the tags on that post about food in the Philippines was that an early formative learning experience for Young Me was when I met a teacher who had worked with ecology and horticulture in Southeast Asia, who stressed that, even after Euro-American imperial powers formally end their colonial occupation of a place, we have to ask: What avenues of food sovereignty are available, if plantation monoculture has destroyed the soil microorganism lifeforms and traditional knowledge systems have been deliberately dismantled or subjugated? Soil is dead, local traditional knowledge has been appropriated and undermined (and traditional knowledge is deliberately targeted during campaigns of erasure and overt violence). And so, even “liberated” places might be forced to drink corporate soda products. There might not be a military occupation, but corporate entities and financial institutions can now act as de facto occupiers. Destroy somebody’s food garden, and you force them to shop at your supermarket. Words like “independence” and “post-colonial” are haunted, because Empire continues, reasserts, finds “new” ways to dominate. But are these tactics really “new”? Just like in earlier historical periods of power consolidation, Empire seems to achieve great power by disturbing, changing, or severing connection between people and their local landscape/environment.

And food is at the center of that human-environment relationship.

If soils are damaged and people are dispossessed, no longer with access to a backyard garden; people of a Caribbean island might no longer be able to grow staple tubers, and instead the US-owned grocer franchise becomes the food source, entangling people involuntarily. Instead of eating Louisiana’s gumbo or the Pacific Northwest’s huckleberries, you can instead eat the same standardized meal at a fast food restaurant in New Orleans and in Seattle, at opposite edges of a continent, which has the effect of undermining potential regional cultural practices situated in local landscape, local plants, local food.

You know what I mean? Anyway.

------

Hope these are interesting. Sorry for all of this, an overwhelming amount of text. :)

[kyidyl]

Kyidyl Does Archaeology - Part 1

About me, and about the site.

I’m gonna have to do this in parts because I tend to be, uh...wordy.  Actually...ok, so I believe very strongly that knowledge does no one any good behind a paywall, but I also have a hard time parsing it down for social media because, well, people are complex but also ADHD.  So if you guys have any feedback for me that’d be awesome.  I’ll probably do these as a series so they don’t get overwhelming to read.  Tag for ‘em will be kyidylCL

A caveat to all of these posts: archaeologists walk a fine line between “I’d love to tell you about this and here look at this cool thing” and “I don’t want to share a colleague’s forthcoming paper on social media before they publish it and also fuck looters”. We classify anyone who *isn’t* an archaeologist as a looter.  Because even when you find artefacts just lying around, as soon as you pick them up they’re removed from context and become near-useless for scientific research and data.  When we remove them we capture all that information via a prescribed methodology.  When other people remove them they tend not to.  And you can tell how legit someone is by how much they care about the context.  Context is key, that’s why we’re so meticulous.  Anyway so I can’t tell you where the site is specifically because I’m not allowed.  I also, though, have been heavily involved in this project so I’m mostly going to be telling you about my own research so it’s ok to publish it on social media.  Anyway, that’s why if you show an archaeologist something you just like found they’ll be like “gee...thanks...well...I don’t want to squelch your curiosity, buuuuuut...” 

A little bit of background on my involvement with this site: I’m a newly minted archaeologist.  I’ve had my MS a little over a year, and I’ve been doing things in that time to keep up my skills and get the field hours I need to be a registered state archaeologist (it’s basically just like a professional license for archs.) bc I didn’t get enough in school and my dissertation is on genetics and cannibalism (and if you want to know about *that* I’ll tell you, but in another post.), so yeah.  Anyway.  I’ve been volunteering with the local archaeology society, and they’re great.  They found this site because two of the members grew up in the area and just knew of its existence.  So I volunteer with them and am one of like 3 people they know who have a degree so I get to be really involved - probably more than I would be otherwise just cause people with my credentials are in short supply for them.  I’m basically the only member with a degree, and the rest are consultants they bring in for stuff like this (including the RSA who works the site - the site director.).  

Before a site can be dug there’s a lot of prep work involved.  It varies based on what kind of money you’ve got and access.  We have lots of access - it’s on private land owned by someone who is childhood friends with a member of the arch society - but almost zero money.  Before I showed up, in summer 2018, they did a series of what are called shovel tests.  Basically there’s a grid laid over the site and where the grid lines intersect they dug a round pit down to what archaeologists call “the sterile layer”, IE, where there’s no evidence of human activity.  Basically, you dig small holes to see if it’s worth digging big holes and in this case it was worth it.  

When I started working with them, I took all of the material from the test pits and sorted and catalogued it.  We’ll come back to this in the next post, so remember this.  Pause.  

I forgot to tell you where the site was.  Like not specifically, I can’t do that, but I CAN tell you that it’s in the Shenandoah valley.  Wanna see pics? Yeah, you wanna see pics (I took all of the images I’m gonna be posting so I give myself permission to post them. :P): 

The site is too big to get in one pic, but this is the far end looking towards the mountain.  The field continues off to the left of the shot.  

Here’s a nicer pic of the mountain: 

And another one cause it’s super pretty: 

And here’s my view when we’re eating lunch:

And here’s an artsy shot of the cows I pass on my way in, because who doesn’t love cows? ;) 

The site has been occupied for a long time (how long? Well, that’ll happen in the pottery post soooorry. ;), and I think you guys can see why.  It’s also on a slight ridge overlooking a river so it’s near fresh water, easily defensible, and is fertile.  Speaking of which... 

It’s also what archaeologists call “highly disturbed”. See, after the colonizers drove the natives out of the Blue Ridge mountains, they started farming the fertile land in the valley.  This site was farmed for several decades, and not only that but during the civil war they dug a big ‘ole defensive trench through the middle of it.  So whilst farming disturbs the finds, it tends to a, only be a max of 15 inches deep and b, keep the finds in the same relative area they’re pulled out of.  And we can tell where that layer ends (I’ll show you that in the post about our pits bc I don’t think Tumblr will let me add more pics.), so even though it destroys features and damages things it’s a lot less destructive than, say....building a giant war trench and shooting at each other.  

The site is an entire settlement.  It’s...several acres in size.  There are burial cairns in the woods around it, and some rumors that human remains have been found there in the past - although we have not, as of yet, found any (much to my personal dismay because, well...bioarchaeologist.). 

So who lived here? Well, when the colonizers drove out the natives they didn’t exactly keep good records about who lived where, but generally speaking the site is on both Massawomeck and Manahoac land. We don’t know which group lived there, and there were other groups coming and going in the general area so it could have also been Piscataway or Potomac or even one of the later nations that formed the Iroquois.  Based on the age though I think the best candidates are the Massawomeck or Manahoac.  

Next up, the prep work I did for the site and dig! 

(aaaahhhhhh hopefully I didn’t forget anything. x.x)

[spurgie-cousin]

Weird History Wednesday🦃

Hey guys! For today’s Weird History Wednesday, we’re getting into the very bizarre American holiday of Thanksgiving. I just want to preface this by saying that this list was originally 70% food facts, both because food preparation at this time in history was straight up bananas, and also because it started making me hungry while I was reading about it. It was only when I was at about 7 food preparation facts that I realized that was probably kind of overkill. 

I did manage to rein myself in eventually, although I think I might’ve transferred that energy into a bit of a Squanto rant. All of which you can view at your own risk under the cut!

1. Contrary to popular belief, the Mayflower’s landing at Plymouth rock was not the local native people’s first contact with Europeans. The Wampanoag people of Massachusetts had already been in contact with Europeans for over a century, and were completely familiar with their culture and intentions.

2. The ‘Plymouth Rock’ historical landmark in Cape Cod that tourists (and Jill Rodrigues) can visit is not the actual ‘Plymouth Rock’ or even the location the Pilgrims landed on. It’s essentially just a random rock with a sign in front of it. The real one got split up into three pieces for some reason, and currently resides in museum and historical collections.

Jill Rodrigues posing with the fake Plymouth Rock.

3. The ‘first’ Thanksgiving only happened because of the Wampanoag’s desire to form an alliance with the Plymouth colonizers. Despite the traditional American telling of the story, their invitation wasn’t out of friendship, but out of fear of further decimation by the Europeans; by the time the Mayflower arrived, thousands of Native Americans had been killed by foreign illnesses brought by the colonizers.

4. It’s known that about 2/3 of the people at Thanksgiving feast were Native. There are records of the Pilgrims doing occasional target practice with their muskets during the feast for literally no reason except maybe to be intimidating. Which is kind of bonkers if you think about it, like what kind of asshole just starts shooting at trees during a party because they’re insecure?

‘Massasoit and His Warriors’, wood engraving, 1857

5. There were probably no women that sat down to eat at the ‘first’ Thanksgiving. Since the main goal of the gathering was to form a political alliance between the colonists and the Wampanoag, women were probably purposefully excluded, except when it came to preparing the actual food. Which was a big fucking job, since the feast ended up stretching out over 3 days.

6. Most historians agree that there probably wasn’t any turkey at the first Thanksgiving, and if there was, it definitely wasn’t the centerpiece of the meal. Goose, duck, and shellfish would’ve more likely been main dishes, as well as venison, which we know was brought to the colony that day by the Wampanoag. Wild turkey might’ve been included as a side dish along with pigeon and swan. Turkey didn’t really become associated with Thanksgiving until the mid-1800s.

The pilgrims and Natives probably ate a lot of lobster and oyster during the ‘first’ Thanksgiving, a tradition I personally believe should be revived.

7. If turkey or any large bird was served, it was probably boiled in plain water, which sounds bland and gross but was the traditional way to cook large fowl at the time. The meal was probably mostly meat with limited grains and vegetables, despite modern depictions of the feast including tons of corns and grains.

8. There were no potatoes of any kind at the first Thanksgivings, and there wouldn’t be for many subsequent ones. Potatoes would not make it to that area of North America for at least a century.

9. The mythical figure of Squanto (one of my all-time personal favorites of this story) was actually named Tisquantum and was a native of the Patuxet, a branch of the Wampanoag Tribal Confederation. He was one of several Natives who were enslaved by John Smith’s raiding party in the early 1600s and dragged back to England as a slave and sideshow. At this time, the Patuxet had a thriving civilization of thousands on the coast of New England that would rival a lot of Western city centers. 

10. While in England, Tisquantum became fluent in English and years later was eventually able to persuade his way back to New England. When he returned, he found his home had been completely decimated by the colonists, and all remaining Patuxet were either dead or dying. The Patuxet are now considered to be an extinct civilization, with Tisquantum being the last know member. 

’Tisquantum, Or Squanto, the Guide and Interpreter’ Charles de Wolf Brownell, 1864

11. Another related fact that’s worth noting is that around this time, it was popular for explorers from the ‘new world’ to return with captive animals and Natives, and parade them as mini sideshows at aristocratic events. Pocahontas is a famous example of this and was arguably a more ‘exotic’ and desirable ‘guest’ at these events, since she wore English clothes and participated in English society.

12. George Washington and many other ‘founding fathers’ originally wanted a Thanksgiving-ish holiday to celebrate the success of the Revolutionary war that focused on prayer and reflections. Thomas Jefferson, always the self righteous hypocrite, was the only one at the time to be opposed to the idea because of his dedication to the separation of church and state.

13. Until around the early 1800s, the Thanksgiving holiday wasn’t really nationally celebrated, and those who did celebrate focused more on prayer and meditation like Washington intended. The holiday didn’t focus on a large meal, and a lot of people actually fasted. It wasn’t until the Civil War, when Abe Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in an attempt to unite a divided country, that the holiday began to take it’s more modern shape.

Part of Abe Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

14. Ok we’ll end with a modern weird Thanksgiving fact, which is that Thanksgiving is by and large the most busy day of the year for plumbers. Apparently Americans just destroy the shit out of their plumbing systems over the holiday, even more than on Christmas. The most affected fixtures include sinks and toilets.

This isn’t a weird fact, but I think it’s also important to note that Thanksgiving is considered a day of mourning for many Native American tribes (and rightly so). The United American Indians of New England organize a mass mourning rally every year in remembrance of the hundreds of thousands of Natives killed by colonial genocide, much of which was initiated by colonizers like the Pilgrims. 

In honor of that, this year I will be making a donation to the Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness and I wanted to include that link here in case anyone else wanted to do the same. 

I also wanted to add the link for the American Indian College Fund which is another great and vital organization that definitely deserves your support!!

Thanks for reading, and see y’all next week! 

[thelittlesttimelord]

The Littlest Timelord: The Fall of the Eleventh Chapter 15

TITLE: The Littlest Timelord: The Fall of the Eleventh Chapter 15 PAIRING: No Pairing RATING: T CHAPTER: 15/? SUMMARY: Elise Smith is now a teenaged Timelord. In addition to losing the Ponds, the fields of Trenzalore are calling. But first they have to figure out exactly who Clara Oswald is.

[A/N - I thought I’d be nice and give you another chapter for being so nice and understanding.]

“Please don’t do this,” Elise begged the Doctor.

“She's right. You don't have to be in there. We can do this remotely,” Kate told him.

“Remotely isn't my style. See you after.” He kissed his hand and hit Amy on the head.

Elise grabbed onto his jacket and silently begged him with her eyes not to do this. He took her hand in his and gave it a light squeeze before letting go.

He went inside the room as the number went down to two. He sat down and spun the cube. It went down to one and finally hit zero.

It switched off and opened up.

“What's happening?” Kate asked.

The Doctor peered inside the cube.

“Well? What's in there?” Amy asked.

“There is nothing in here,” the Doctor said.

“Er, well, that's good. It's not, it's not bombs, it's not aliens.”

“Why? Why is there nothing inside? Why? It doesn't make any sense.” The Doctor came out of the small room and walked over to the researcher at the computer bay. “Glasses, is it the same? Is it the same all around the world?”

“They're empty,” Kate said, “We're safe, right?”

“Ah, no, no, no, we are very far from safe. All along, every action has been deliberate. Why draw attention to the cubes if they don't contain anything?”

“Doctor, look,” Amy said, looking at one of the screens.

People walking down the street grabbed their chests as they came near the cubes.

“They're CCTV feeds from across the world. They're showing the same,” the researcher said.

Elise covered her mouth in horror as she watched the people die.

“People are dying,” Kate said, shocked.

“What? They can't be dying. How? How are they dying?” the Doctor asked.

“I want information on how people are being affected.”

“The cubes brought people close together. They opened and then…” The Doctor cried out in pain and grabbed his chest.

“Dad!” Elise said, rushing to his side.

“Doctor, what's the matter?” Amy asked.

The monitor started beeping.

“I don't know!”

“Hospitals are logging a global surge in heart failures. Cardiac arrests,” the researcher explained.

“That's it.” The Doctor cried out in pain, hitting himself on the chest. “Only one heart. Other one's not working.”

“Okay, I'm going to get you to the hospital!” Amy yelled.

“Oh, no, no, no, no. Just a short circuit. Tell me, show me. Ten seconds after the cubes opened, show me the patterns in their electrical currents.”

A heartbeat signature appeared on the screen.

“See?” the Doctor asked, “The power cut. They zapped the power and then…” The Doctor cried out in pain again. “They're signal boxes. People leaning in, wham. Pure electrical surge out of the cube targeted at the nearest human heart. The heart, an organ powered by electrical currents, short-circuited. How to destroy a human? Go for the heart. Ow. Crikey Moses.”

“Doctor, the scan you set running. The transmitter locations. It's found them,” Kate told him.

“And look at them all, pulsing bold as brass. Seven of them, all across the world.” The Doctor hit himself on the chest again. “Seven stations, seven minutes. Why is that important?” The Doctor cried out in pain, grabbing his chest.

Elise wished she could help him.

“How do you people manage? One heart, it is pitiful,” the Doctor snapped, “A wormhole, bridging two dimensions. Seven of them hitched onto this planet, but where's the closest one? Glasses, zoom in.”

The program zoomed in before stopping.

“It's the hospital where Rory works,” Amy said.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The Doctor lumbered down the hallway, leaning on Elise for support. “How many deaths have been recorded?” he asked Kate.

“We don't know. We think it could be a third of the population.”

“Kate, I have to find the wormhole, but the attacks could still happen. Tell the world. Tell them how to deal with this. The world needs your leadership right now.”

“I'll do my best.”

“Of course you will. Good luck, Kate.” The Doctor cried out in pain and stagger over to the wall to hold himself up.

“Okay, how long are you going to last with only one heart?” Amy asked.

“Not much longer. I need to locate the wormhole portal.”

Elise pulled out her sonic screwdriver, scanning the area.

They walked past a little girl, who was throwing off odd signals. The girl’s face glowed blue.

“Oh, my God,” Amy said.

“Outlier droid, monitoring everything. If we shut her down, we can…”

Elise soniced her neck area and the girl went down.

The Doctor caught her and lowered her onto the ground. “It's all right, it's all right.” The Doctor collapsed. “I can't, Amy. I can't do it. I need both hearts!”

Amy grabbed a defibrillator. “All right. Desperate measures.”

“What? No. No, no, no. That won't work. I'm a Time Lord!”

Amy opened the Doctor’s shirt and charged the defibrillator. “All right, clear!” She shocked the Doctor and he shot up.

He jumped to his feet. “Welcome back, lefty! Whoa-ho! Two hearts! Woo! Back in the game.” He grabbed Amy’s face and kissed her head. “Never do that to me again.”

Elise and Amy followed him to a lift.

“Ah, portal to another dimension in a goods lift?” Amy asked.

“The energy signals converge here. Does seem a bit cramped, though.”

They entered the lift, Elise unsure about the whole thing. After all, she didn’t have good experiences with lifts.

The wall shifted in front of their eyes.

Amy smiled at the Doctor.

“Through the looking glass, Amelia? Elise?” he whispered.

Amy took one hand and Elise took the other.

They stepped out into a spaceship.

“Where are we?” Amy asked.

“We're in orbit. One dimension to the left,” the Doctor told them.

“Rory!” Amy ran over to him. He was laying on a slab next to Brian.

Elise was having “black spot” flashbacks. She wondered how Captain Avery and his son Toby were doing.

The Doctor pulled out a small vial from his jacket. “Soborian smelling salts. Outlawed in seven galaxies.”

Amy waved it under Rory’s nose and he shot up.

Someone started shooting at them. Go figure.

“What kind of a welcome do you call that? Get them out of here. You too. Now!” the Doctor yelled.

“What are you going to do?” Amy asked.

“Absolutely no idea. Get him to the portal. Elise go with them.”

“No. I’m not leaving you.”

The Doctor stared at her for a moment before snapping, “Fine!”

Brian started to wake as Amy and Rory started to move him.

The alien shot at them again. “So many of them crawling the planet, seeping into every corner.”

Amy, Rory, and Brian managed to get away now that the alien’s attention was on the Doctor and Elise.

The alien disappeared and reappeared in front of a bunch of monitors.

The Doctor and Elise stepped in front of them on the other side.

“It's not possible. I thought the Shakri were a myth. A myth to keep the young of Gallifrey in their place,” the Doctor said.

“Who?” Elise asked.

He looked at her. “Didn’t your parents ever…? Nevermind.” Although the Doctor didn’t know much about her biological family, it didn’t seem like they ever cared for the small Timelord.

“The Shakri exist in all of time, and none. We travel alone and together. The Seven,” the alien told them.

“The Shakri craft, connected to Earth, through seven portals and seven minutes. Ah, but why?”

“Serving the word of the Tally.”

“Why the cubes? Why Earth?”

“Not Earth, humanity. The Shakri will halt the human plague before the spread.”

“Erase humanity before it colonizes space. We thought the cubes were an invasion. The start of war.”

“The human contagion only must be eliminated.”

“Who are you calling a contagion?” Amy asked, appearing behind the two Timelords with Rory.

“Oi! Didn't I tell you two to go?” the Doctor said.

“You should have learned by now,” Rory told him.

“Yeah, and what is this Tally anyway?” Amy asked.

“Some people call it Judgment Day, or the Reckoning,” the Doctor explained.

“Don't you know?”

“I've never wanted to find out.”

“Before the Closure, there is the Tally. The Shakri serves the Tally,” the alien said.

“The pest controllers of the universe, that's how the tales went, isn't it?”

“Wow. That's some seriously weird bedtime story,” Amy commented.

“You can talk. Wolf in your grandmother's nightdress?” The Doctor clapped his hands and approached the alien.

“So, here you are, depositing slug pellets all over the Earth, made attractive so humans will collect them, hoping to find something beautiful inside. Because that's what they are. Not pests or plague, creatures of hope, forever building and reaching. Making mistakes, of course, every life form does. But, but they learn. And they strive for greater, and they achieve it. You want a tally. Put their achievements against their failings through the whole of time, I will back humanity against the Shakri every time.”

The alien chuckled. “The Tally must be met. The second wave will be released.”

“What does that mean?” Amy asked.

“It's going to release more cubes to kill more people,” the Doctor said.

“The human plague breeding and fighting. And when cornered, their rage to destroy. You're too late, Doctor. The Tally shall be met,” the alien said, before vanishing.

“He's gone?” Amy asked.

“He was never really here. Just the ship's automated interface, like a talking propaganda poster,” the Doctor said. He ran over to the computers and started sonicing them. “I can stop the second wave. I can disconnect all the Shakri craft from their portals, leave them drifting in the darkspace. Ah, but all those people who were near the cubes, so many of them will have died.”

“I restarted one of your hearts,” Amy reminded him.

“You'd need mass defibrillation,” Rory said.

“Of course. Ah, beautiful. But, Ponds, Ponds. We are going to go one better than that. The Shakri used the cubes to turn people's hearts off,” the Doctor told them, “Bingo! We're going to use them to turn them back on again.”

“Will that work?” Amy asked.

“Well, creatures of hope. Has to.” He soniced the alien computer. “Thirty seconds. Don't let me down, cubes, you're working for me now.”

The ship started shaking.

“Oh dear. All these cubes. There's going to be a terrible wave of energy ricocheting around here any second. Run.”

They took off running and just managed to go back through the portal before the spaceship blew up.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

After saying goodbye to Kate and UNIT, they met back up with Amy, Rory, and Brian for dinner.

It was getting late and the Doctor checked his watch. “Dear me. I'd better get going. Things to do, worlds to save, swings to swing on.”

Elise and the Doctor got up and started to walk towards the TARDIS.

The Doctor turned around and walked back towards Amy and Rory, throwing his arms around their shoulders. “Look, I know, you both have lives here. Beautiful, messy lives. That is what makes you so fabulously human. You don't want to give them up. I understand.”

“Actually, it's you they can't give up, Doctor. You and your wonderful daughter. And I don't think they should,” Brian said.

Amy and Rory looked at Brian.

“Go with him. Go save every world you can find. Who else has that chance? Life will still be here.”

“You could come, Brian.”

“Somebody's got to water the plants. Just bring them back safe.”

Amy and Rory changed, said goodbye to Brian, and they were off again.

[hello-robin-goodfellow]

THE DIFERENT CYCLES OF NOSTALGIA FILTER

Most of the nostalgia towards the past is based on Nostalgia Filter. The good stuff is remembered and the bad stuff ignored, forgotten or not even taken in account. When it's about a time period Two Decades Behind people will be nostalgic for it because they experienced it themselves, but from the viewpoint of a child or a teenager, when they didn't have to worry about all the adult stuff that depresses them nowadays, because the grownups took care of all that: taxes, work, bills, tragic news events,... If the nostalgia is about a time period people didn't directly experience themselves the romanticism is even more rampant. People will base their rosy posy image of that time period on stuff they have seen and read in books, comic strips, cartoons, TV series, films, old photos and/or fond memories of older family members. Usually they aren't aware that many things they now take for granted didn't always exist back then or were still considered highly controversial.

The glories of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome where the cradle of philosophy and science started, everyone is able to enlist in the army (well, if you weren't a woman or a slave, of course) and see the world while doing so. You can go and enjoy watching Olympic Games, a play in the theater or watch exciting gladiator battles in the arena, philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Virgil are respected as pillars of their societies, and people were opened to sex and LGBT as opposed to the close-minded Christians in later centuries. Not taken in account: class systems, people dying early of diseases we nowadays have proper treatment for, slavery, democracy only for rich upperclass males citizens, bloody battles, Roman military service had to be fulfilled several years! before you could retire and start a civilian life, women having no rights, not even allowed to watch sporting games, xenophobia was so prevalent that would make modern prejudices and bigotry look tame, scientific contributions were more based on superstitions and empirical and weren't always based on logic (see Plato's and Aristotle's works), pederasty was the only accepted form of homosexuality and it was punishable if a relationship did not fit in those criteria (also it was only tolerated in some city and states), Roman sexuality was still arguably patriarchal and not all sexual taboo was acceptable (ie. a wealthy man get away with his slaves while married women were expected to be faithful, oral sex was considered shameful).

The thousand years of Chinese dynasties up until Republic was the time where people dressed in beautiful colorful haifu with good etiquette and manners, scholars were appreciated, education was valued as opposed during the Cultural Revolution, the Tang Dynasty was the golden age of prosperity and where women has more rights than any other periods. Not taken in account: the Confucians were oppressive against the lower social classes, the caste system, education systems were corrupted with many scholars and students were promoted based on bribes rather than actual skills, women were still considered inferior in the Tang Dynasty, the royal court were so deadly and decadent that would make the place in wuxia media look tame, slavery, the rebellions and civil wars (ie. The Three Kingdoms, An Lushan Rebellion, Taiping Rebellion) that were very common that cost million of lives that went unheard of and resulted in many famine and diseases that led to cannibalism, footbinding was practiced since the Song Dynasty, xenophobia was prevalent including against their sister countries like Japan and Korea.

The Middle Ages are usually romanticized as a glorious past with chivalrous knights fighting for the honor of beautiful princesses, proving their worth in tournaments, stuffing themselves at royal buffets with the kind old king, and defending castles against malevolent invaders. Not taken in account: The Plague, wars, mercenaries and soldiers plundering farms and villages, filthy streets, people dying at a young age because of insufficient knowledge of diseases, the injustice of the feudal system, monarchs and the Catholic Church being oppressive towards people with other viewpoints, high illiteracy, people executed and tortured for audience's pleasure and often without anything resembling a fair trial, women considered being lesser in status than men, famine whenever harvests failed... Ironically, the part that was arguably good, the Byzantine Empire (with its extremely high literacy and such luxuries as running water) is usually overlooked or completely ignored.

The Renaissance and The Enlightenment are the time when society finally got out of the bleak, primitive and God fearing Dark Middle Ages and gained wisdom by discovering a lot of stuff. Kings and queens never looked more magnificent. Artists and sculptors painted the finest works and humanists, philosophers and Protestants learned humanity to think for themselves. You could enjoy a Shakespeare play, listen to baroque classical music or have a swashbuckling duel. Not taken in account: A lot of new thought and discoveries in the field of science were very slowly adapted into society. Mostly because a lot of royals, religious authorities and other government officials suppressed these "dangerous" new ideas. Compared to those "primitive" Middle Ages more people have been hanged or burned on the stake for their beliefs and/or on the assumption that they were witches during the 1500s, 1600s and 1700s than in the centuries before! The Reformation and Counter-Reformation divided Europe and caused many casualties. All the great books and art works created during this era were only enjoyed or experienced by the very rich. Wars still ravaged Europe, colonization exploited other continents, slavery became a real industry and absolutism made the monarchy and nobility so powerful and decadent that they didn't care about the lower classes. Duels weren't glorious at all, just a matter of killing off your opponent.

The Golden Age of Piracy is one big adventure where you could go on a boat trip with pirates and have fun attacking other ships, taking gold and bury or search for treasure on some Deserted Island. Men were real men with a Badass Beard and cool looking eye patches, hooks for hands and wooden legs. Not taken in account: scurvy, people forced to do what their captain told them, your ship being attacked by other ships and losing, keelhauling, loot just being spent instead of buried, anti-piracy laws could get you arrested and hanged, storms could destroy your ship, all the cool looking eye patches, hooks for hands and wooden legs were just practical solutions for grievous injuries suffered during fights, and the fact that most of the Caribbean economy was reliant on the slave trade. There were also plenty of brutal attacks on helpless villages, indigenous communities, plantations, civilian ships, and even colonial settlements. In addition to helping themselves to everything that wasn't tied down, pirates would also torture, murder, enslave, and/or rape men, women, and children indiscriminately just for their own sick pleasure.

America's Wild West is a fun era where you could roam the prairie on a horse, visit saloons and shoot outlaws and Indians. Not taken in account: slavery was not abolished until deep in the 19th century and still going on in many colonies or remote place in the American South, cowboys took care of cattle and didn't engage in gun fights, gun violence was just as illegal as it is nowadays and could get you arrested by local sheriffs, outlaws could actually remain on the loose for several years, Native Americans being massacred by white settlers and armies, black people having no basic human rights, The Ku Klux Klan was a respected organization...)

The mid-to-late 19th century and early 20th century were a classy time period where everybody was impeccably dressed and had good manners. You could take a coach ride or (later on) test the "horseless carriage", read some of the greatest novels in history, listen to the first records or even the great Caruso in person, admire the wonders of electricity and enjoy a world still untouched by modern industry. Life in the colonies was even more fun because you so many countries were still unexplored territory and the ideal place for adventure. Not taken in account: Victorian values were dominant, women couldn't vote, poor people couldn't vote, industrialization didn't have any health, safety or ethical rules to obey, child labor was rampant, workers had no rights, factories were very harmful to people's health and the environment, city rivers were open sewers, upper class had all the advantages upon the lower class, people could be sent to the poor house when they couldn't pay their debts, many novels were just pulp (think of it as the 19th century version of Internet) and music was strictly symphonic, the first automobiles were as dangerous as electricity, colonization was great for white Europeans but not as much for the oppressed native populations of Africa and Asia, animals were still hunted down as trophies, people who looked different were exploited in freak shows and circuses for spectators to Come to Gawk.

The Interbellum (1920s and 1930s): Between the two world wars, life was great. Everybody went to night clubs and/or revue theaters where they could enjoy great jazz music, girls and comedians. Movie theaters were a great place to be, because fantastic cinematic masterpieces were made. On the radio you could great music and serials, and newspapers published the best and most engaging comic strips ever printed. Not taken in account: From 1920 until 1933 alcohol was prohibited in the USA, so having an alcoholic drink was impossible without getting arrested or dying because of bad homemade brew. Crime was able to organize itself in a way that will probably never get untangled again. Many people got murdered in gangster violence. Jazz music was initially seen as "barbaric" just because it was made by blacks, and it had to be adapted to symphonic music to make it well-known. Hollywood in its early years was subject to more scandals than ever since, leading to a industry-wide censorship that lasted until the 1960s. The Great Depression between 1929 and 1940 caused major unemployment and poverty in many civilized countries, also forcing quite some people to start a life in crime. The "Dust Bowl" generated a desertification of the Midwest. Germany was particularly struck hard, because the country was still paying huge war debts to other countries, causing mass poverty and the ideal atmosphere for Nazism to gain voters. Many countries during this time period suffered under either Nazism, Fascism or Communism. From 1933 on Jewish, homosexual, Romani and left wing people were already persecuted in Nazi Germany, at the same time disagreeing in anything with Stalin meant a one-way ticket to Siberia. War was already brewing in Europe and the Far East, when Japan invaded China and South East Asia. Many countries were still colonies, which wasn't a great deal for the natives there. Afro-Americans were still second class citizens and the Ku Klux Klan was still quite powerful in many political circles.

The '40s and World War II, the time where the entire world was united against a common evil foe and soldiers could still fight a just cause. Everybody worked together to defeat the Nazis or Japanese, while enjoying great Hollywood films and jazz and big band records on the radio. Not taken in account: Not everyone was united against the Axis. Numerous people (even Lindbergh and Ford) didn't consider Nazism or Fascism anything bad or felt their country should stay neutral in the war. During the occupations many people on both sides were arrested, deported, and/or murdered. People couldn't trust anyone, because your neighbor might be a Nazi collaborator or a spy who would turn you in to the authorities. The Nazis banned American and English music and films in Europe, so you could get in big trouble if you tried. Also, you know, there was a big war on. Millions of young soldiers were drafted and died on the battlefield, cities were bombed and occupied by enemy armies, you could die any day, shortages were rife.

The '50s: The last truly great time period in history. Music, films, politicians were nice, clean and decent. There was a general optimistic feeling about the future, exemplified in sunny fashions, interiors and technology. The youth enjoyed some great rock 'n' roll on their transistor radios and the early TV shows show how happy and pleased everybody was. Not taken in account: the Cold War, the Red Scare, anti-communist witch hunts, the Korean War, the French Indochina War, many European countries tried violently oppressing the inevitable independence of their colonies, Afro-Americans were still second-rate citizens in the USA and had to fight for human rights, homosexuals were forced to keep their sexual identity silent in many countries, the traditional role of women as housewives was still encouraged in many Western countries, a lot of music in the hit parade was still the bland, square, formulaic and sappy crooner music popular since the 20s, adults were scared of early rock 'n' roll and actually did everything to suppress the youth from listening to it and becoming teenage delinquents, the TV shows and films of that decade were so escapist that they ignored every controversial element.

The '60s and The '70s, a great time when everybody was a beatnik or a hippie and enjoyed fantastic rock music, marijuana, LSD and free love. People chased bad guys with their own hands with cool funk and disco music playing in the background. The young demonstrated for more democratic rights and everything changed for the better. Not taken in account: the older generation looked down upon hippies, the Vietnam War cost many lives, The Cuba Missile Crisis nearly caused a nuclear war between the USA and USSR, Afro-Americans still had to fight for civil rights, just like today there were just as much idealistic but naïve demonstrators who merely wasted time smoking pot instead of actually doing something, drug casualties were just as rampant back then as they are today, people took the law on their hands because of the alarming crime rates, not helped by the extreme corruption of police forces, psychedelic rock, funk and disco are now confined to sit in the shadow of both rock-and-roll and modern pop music, to the point that for decades, these were considered as the most cheesy genres created by man, [[not all demonstrators were pacifistic in their approach and it's an open question whether everything actually changed for the better.

The '80s: Oh yes. A great decade for pop culture after the sordid '70s and before everything went to the gutter in the '90s: Everybody felt a bright future coming along, as demonstrated by good TV shows, groundbreaking technology, computers and videogames, colorful clothing, simple yet catchy pop music and finally a TV channel that showed your favorite bands 24/7. The Cold War came to an end, the Berlin Wall and Apartheid fell. Not taken in account: The early 1980s had many people fear the Cold War wasn't going to end well. The Latin American debt crisis. President Reagan wanted more nuclear missiles in Europe, envisioned the Star Wars defense system and the "Evil Empire" speech reflected the "Red Scare" at a time "the Bomb" was still making everybody nervous. The Cold War, Berlin Wall and Apartheid did fall, but only near the end of the decade. Unemployment and economic crisis were a huge problem in many Western countries in the early years of the decade and the high speculation led to a bubble which fatigued in 1987 and burst in 1989. AIDS caused many victims because governments were slow to inform the general public on this disease as most people at first dismissed as just a problem for blacks, gays and drug users. TV shows and movies were extremely escapist and PCs and video games were prohibitively expensive. MTV did bring music videos on TV, but the downside was that how a pop star looked and danced became more important than the music, which was now created by computers, becoming increasingly sappy and repetitive as samples became the norm, becoming a disadvantage for those who still wanted to use actual instruments, chords and tunes. Metal and rap were seen as crime-mongering and even "satanic" as a whole. Also drugs went artificial during this time, turning Florida into a Crapsaccharine World. The nuclear power plant explosion in Chernobyl caused another major fear among people about the dangers of nuclear power.

The '90s and The Aughts: Dude. The Cold War has ended, and though some pesky Arabs (and some nutcases in the West) will try to blow people up and some Central European countries will be at each other's throats, there is peace at last! Outsourcing has lifted the West from the heavy load of manual work for good and turn to technology, and anyways, isn't the Internet wonderful? Society and culture are now free to break all imposed boundaries: Music has become more authentic with the arrival of rap, hip-hop, grunge and pop-punk. TV and movies now address modern issues instead of being stuck in those stodgy 50s and 60s. Politicians at last agree on stuff and generally get along. Whatever. Not taken in account: While a couple of years in the late 1990s were quite peaceful, the years before were marked by the extremely chaotic rearrangement of the former Warsaw Pact nations and the decade after was dominated by the Iraq War and memories of 9/11. The "technological revolution" ultimately never became the boon it was supposed to be: Economically, the exodus of manufacturing jobs forced the middle class to live on debt, which would give way to an economic meltdown by the end of the 2000s while privacy would gradually become a major source of concern as personal data became readily accessible. During the 1990s, the Internet was very expensive and was the province of businessmen and geeks while during the following decade, online downloads and chatrooms became incendiary topics. Grunge and "gangsta rap" were better known at their peak for the demise of several of their stars than for the music while hip-hop and pop-punk would be regarded in retrospective as trashy as the bubblegum pop that dominated the late 90s. By increasingly appealing to the trendy set, TV and film became increasingly shallow. While ideological differences became a thing of the past, politics became more self-serving and conflicts became pettier. As a result, people began to feel a sense of disconnection, which eventually led to the rise of strongly ideological populist movements.

SOURCE:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NostalgiaAintLikeItUsedToBe

EXTRA: IN THE DISTANT YEAR OF 2045.

The New '10s and New '20s : Remember that meme? Do you have a Harriet doll? I need her to complet my My Little Poney: Friendship is Magic and Equestria Girls collection. Do you want to exchange her for my Fluttershy doll? Oh, do you like Lady Gaga? Her music was so deep. “Oppan Gangnam style. Gangnam style. Op, op, op, op oppan Gangnam style. Gangnam style. Op, op, op, op oppan Gangnam style. Eh sexy lady. Op, op, op, op oppan Gangnam style. Ehh sexy lady, oh, oh. Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh”. Oh, i love your funko pop of Baby Groot!  “ Gotta get that. Gotta get that. Gotta get that. Gotta get that that that. Boom boom boom (Gotta get that). Boom boom boom (Gotta get that). Boom boom boom (Gotta get that). Boom boom boom. (Gotta get that) Boom boom boom. That boom boom boom. That boom boom boom. Boom boom boom”. Avengers Assemble! 

Not taken in account: The Syrian refugee crisis. The burning of the Amazon jungle. Donald Trump as the american president. Jair Bolsonaro as the brazilian president. The Covid-19 Pandemic. Navy oil in the beachs of the brazilian north east. The Brazilian Cinematheque getting closed. Height of murders of LGBTQ in Brazil. Disney monopolizing the american TV an Movie Industry.

@theroguefeminist @ardenrosegarden @witches-ofcolor @mademoiselle-princesse @butterflyslinky @anghraine @notangryenough @musicalhell @rollingthunder06 @graf-edel-weiss @princesssarisa @culturalrebel @irreplaceable-ecstasyy @im-captain-basch @iphisquandary @jonpertwee

[littleworldbigdreamsblog]

Intruders- Jessie Reyez (A Review)

Introduction

So from the first time I heard this song and watched the video I knew I had to write something on this. I have always loved Jessie Reyez, I even wrote one of my thesis papers about her song “Gatekeeper”. If I can find it I will definitely post it here. The topics that I will tackle with this one are quite heavy but it must be done. We will be looking at colonialism, the manipulation of history and the personification of nature. 

The Artist 

My girl Jessie Reyez has been making music people have been afraid to make and I will say something I don’t say often; she is so underrated. I wish more people knew about her and the messages she convey in her lyrics. Her voice is also so unique and she sings with so much passion and conviction. I have watched so many live performances of hers and I haven’t been disappointed so far. If you have never heard of Jessie Reyez I do encourage you to give her music a listen. Also she has a new album out called “Before Love Came to Kill us”, stream that ish everywhere.  

Song 

Listen here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVhqNnFh25E

So in most of Jessie’s lyrics she does this very interesting thing which again I wish more people talked about. The lyrics of her songs usually create a meta narrative. This just means that there is a main story which possesses a message or a world view within another story. For instance using “Intruders” as an example it reads like a love letter and sounds like a love song. I was casually browsing the comments on some lyrics sites for this song and a lot of people just saw the song as her saying that the man is hers and these “intruders” or other females don’t belong within their relationship. Absolutely nothing is wrong with seeing the lyrics as that alone but if you dig deeper paying special attention to certain words, you would see that this song is a lot more than what meets the eyes or ears. That is where the concept of the meta narrative comes into play. The story we read or hear on one level is a love story and the main story is about land being taken. People who would have done a little history even secondary school history know there is a term for such actions:colonialism. For a little recap National Geographic explains it to be when “one nation subjugates another, conquering its population and exploiting it, often while forcing its own language and cultural values upon its people”. If you watched the music video you would see more physical representations of colonialism which I will get into but for now we are looking at the words and what they say. 

From the first set of lines in the song there is reference to the original natives of whatever colonized land she is writing about, “I found ya, cleared land /  Put down my flag /This is mine from now on”. As someone from the Caribbean I immediately thought of the Amerindians of the greater Antilles. These Amerindians or Indigenous people are known to be the original settlers of the Caribbean and possibly that of America. There were some studies done to try and track where these people came from and the results varied. Some researchers claimed they came from the Amazon while others said the DNA found from bones matched that of  people from Asia. Wherever they traveled from they are the known first civilization of people to inhabit these lands. Just those opening lines say a lot as it relates to theme and it is amazing how much just a few lines can say.      

There are other pieces of evidence of this song alluding to a telling of the colonization of native lands and people. In the second verse she sings “ I wrote you a love song /A war song/ I'll sing it when the ships come, yeah / I'll die for my state” which paints the picture of the natives standing together as the ships of the foreigners arrive willing to die for their land. And that is exactly what happened. Some assimilated while the ones who rose up were killed like animals. It was an act of genocide and historical records tend to see it another way. These records refer to the Amerindian settlements as pre-history which is incorrect as pre-history implies that the colonization of the land is the main or more important part of history when all of it is our history. This is what I meant by the manipulation of history. Just like there is evidence ie artifacts and relics as proof of the Europeans “discovering” the land, there is also evidence of the first settlers. It was a fully structured civilization which involved the tools they used, the type of agriculture grown and even their burial rituals and customs.  So therefore we cannot and should not see it as pre-history. For instance, growing up in the Caribbean, history was taught according to a British curriculum.It was only when I got older and more educated that I realised how biased it was. it was framed to make the Europeans look like our saviours. No sir! 

Video 

So the music video is a visual representation of this message or meta narrative that the song has. The video starts with a kind of Pocahontas like colours of the wind vibe with the main character worshiping the land. The land itself is personified as a man. Personification is giving more of less inanimate objects human-like features. The main character is using every part of the land to live and at the same time not harming it. 

It is a relationship that functions in harmony..... 

......until the fire nation attacked....I mean colonizers.

I feel like the Toronto-based studio, Solis Animation really studied the lyrics of the song and were able to create a video that works with the true meaning. Actually with both meanings of the the meta narrative. It functions as painting a picture of a love story but also one that shows an aspect of history that some people gloss over, that is, colonialism. I mean you can’t get clearer about what this video is really about. Even taking a look at what the colonizers were wearing. The uniforms were very similar to that of either the English or Spanish military like the colour scheme and the shape of the hats.  

 I also think it is important to note that all the people who came off the ships were female. This ties back to the part of the song that infers that it is about a love story. It is to mean that the intruders in the video while describing European colonizers, are also symbolizing the other women that would want to enter the relationship.  

As the good parts of the land were personified we also saw what happens when land is pillaged and destroyed, mainly how it bleeds. This heavily reminded me of the poem by Eric Roach called “Carib and Arawak” from his book The Flowering Rock. The poem really speaks about the land remembering the history of the genocide of the indigenous people of the Caribbean in particular the Caribs and Arawaks of Trinidad and Tobago. The poem highlights the concept of the flowers (hibiscus) grown on the land after colonial times being a reminder of the blood and death that occurred on the land. The hibiscus because of their original and true colour being red, it symbolizes how the land is bleeding out of revenge of the past.  I absolutely love this poem and if you have an interest in reading it, message me as I know it is almost impossible to find online.     

In these couple of frames we also see that she is willing to fight for her lands. This time marking herself with the blood of her home on her way to defend it. This shows the fighting spirit of the natives in order to protect their home. Based on historical accounts and records it states that some natives were peaceful and ready to cooperate until they were betrayed and they felt the need to reclaim their home.   

I believe we have come to the end of analyzing this piece of art. As someone from the Caribbean I really appreciated the way this video was put together. It emphasizes a part of our history which is sometimes buried and lost. It took a little longer to pull together not only because of the the research but also things going on in real life. I hope you learned something from reading this and if you feel like you can educate me some more on the topic feel free! 

References: 

Lyrics : https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jessiereyez/intruders.html

What is Colonialism? : https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/topics/reference/colonialism/

Where Native Americans came from: https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/where-native-americans-come

Eric Roach-https://www.peepaltreepress.com/authors/eric-roach

All gifs : https://giphy.com/channel/BobbieSan

[manbomary]

Dear White People: You were colonized too

Hi, white people! How’s it going? Come on in; I just put the coffee on.

 How do you take it? Cream? Sweetener? Oh, I nearly forgot. Here’s some Nilla wafers. I even put them on a plate for you. I’m not an animal, after all.

 Oh, you want a cold brew? Sorry, I’m clean out.

 Anyway, on to the reason why I called you here today.

Let’s address the spiritual elephant in the room. Actually, let’s address the spiritual elephant in America. I’m not talking about what church you go to, or what religion you were raised in, or even if you believe in God at all. I’m talking about something else. Something that didn’t even originate in America.

 It originated in Europe, a very long time ago, before any of your family thought of coming here as migrants. You know, migrants that may have left a country where they were being oppressed, or not free to practice their religion, or there were no jobs or food…

 Sorry, did that strike a nerve? Have another Nilla wafer.

 You have a spiritual unease, white people. This is beyond religion or dogma. This is much deeper.

I’m saying you were robbed. You were robbed a long, long time ago. You were robbed of your culture and heritage.

I know, I know, you’re getting defensive. I get it. I know exactly what you’re thinking:

“I have my heritage! My great-grandparents are from Ireland and Germany!”

Wonderful. What is the indigenous religion of those countries?

“…well, my family is Christian.”

No, I mean before that.

“Huh?”

See, that’s what I mean. Christianity did not originate in places like Ireland and Germany. It was brought there by colonizers.

Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. First, there were the Romans. The Romans were, like, the bomb at colonizing. They were everywhere. Their armies spread all over Europe and to the Middle East. In many cases, the Romans would move into an area and set up temples to their Roman gods. Local folks were usually allowed to keep worshipping their local gods but were also forced to sacrifice to Roman gods (including the emperor, who was viewed as a deity).

That was the first instance of colonization.

When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the year 380 C.E., the second and perhaps greatest colonization began. Missionaries began going through Europe to spread the message of Christianity to the indigenous people of Europe. Wherever the missionaries went, they preached to the people that their gods and spirits were demons, that following Christianity was the only legitimate religion, and they’d better practice it or else.

As the missionaries grew in power, as more and more leaders became Christian (sometimes for political or strategic reasons rather than true spiritual conversion), the preaching became aggression. The sacred tree groves of the Celts in Ireland, England, and France were chopped down and the wood used to build Christian churches. Temples to gods that had stood for hundreds of years were razed.

Now, I’m not saying that Christianity is inherently bad, or that if you’re a Christian and white that you yourself are responsible for all these things. However, white folks, we bear those scars of colonization in our souls.

I know you’ve felt it. You may have heard stories that your older relatives told of how things were in Italy or Ireland or Germany, folk stories and beliefs. You may have heard of the fairy folk, of how trees and plants had magical properties.  I know you’ve heard of some of the “old” gods: Thor, Freya, Brigid, Athena…and you may have felt something in your soul. Something that feels longing. What would it have been like to live and know these old gods as your own? Your grandparents may have told you stories of their parents and grandparents. You heard stories of your grandfathers who fought in wars, your great-aunts who were healers or herbalists. What would it be like to have those stories be real?

I have news for you: they are. You just don’t realize it because colonization took away your opportunity to continue the old ways of your indigenous ancestors.

The Native people of what is now the United States had their lands invaded by people from another land who forced their ways and religion and laws on them. Where did these invaders (Europeans) learn how to do that? Because it was done to them.

African people were ripped from their homelands and forced into slavery in a far-off land. They were punished or killed for practicing their native religions and cultures. Christianity and imperialism told the invaders, slavers, and Conquistadors that their religious belief in spreading the Gospel of Christ justified their actions.

This same obsession with spreading the Gospel and converting the heathens that saw Africans and Native American peoples as less than human, primitive, and available to be exploited is the same force that colonized your indigenous ancestors.

How’s the coffee? It’s a fair-trade blend from Haiti. Se anpil gou, wi?

 Anyway, what I’m saying is the unease and discomfort you feel when you see Native peoples having a pow wow, or Black folks practicing Lukumi, or Latinos celebrating Day of the Dead, that weird jealous/indignant feeling, and the thought of “Why do they get to shove their ethnicity in our faces?”

That’s because you were colonized too, and your deep ancestral knowledge and heritage was taken away from you. A part of your, OUR, collective soul as indigenous European descendants was cut out. Our ancestral healers and herbalists were burned or hanged as witches. Ancient gods and land spirits were diminished into ghost tales and “superstitions”. And we have taken that energy of colonization, the energy that destroyed our indigenous culture, and foisted it onto Native Americans and the Africans brought to this side of the world and enslaved.

 Don’t look so down, white people. There is hope. You can start decolonizing yourself.

How?

Start with your ancestors. Get a white candle, light it, and put out a glass of plain water. Talk out loud to your ancestors, saying, “Ancestors of my blood, I ask those who lived well and died well to guide me to learn about the pre-Christian and pre-colonization beliefs and culture of your time.”

Do this once a week. Then pay attention. You might start having dreams. You might feel led to certain books, to ask living relatives what stories of your family they remember. Take notes. Don’t feel like you’re going crazy. You’re not.

You’re reconnecting.

This won’t be easy. Cultures like the Celts and Germanic people (just as an example) did not leave written records about themselves. You’ll be led to do more and more research, but you don’t have to turn into a research nut. Keep calling on your elevated ancestors and they will lead you in the right direction.

There are people out there who are trying to reconstruct ancient European pagan traditions. Some of them are getting things right, some of them are fronts for nationalist “white pride” groups. Don’t let them bullshit you. Vet people and check them before you get sucked into something awful.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by; come back any time.

Hey, take an extra Nilla wafer. When you get home, find a nice tree on your property and leave the cookie there for the land spirit.

Start small, act humbly, talk from the heart, and you can get decolonized.

[nomadicism]

Hey friend! I wandered over here to ask something but then was distracted by shiny things bc I am also an 80s child who loves mechas... Transformers was my jam. But seriously nevermind LotGH... every time I watch any show now, I’m just like, wtf vld. Saw Aladdin today. Wtf vld. Saw Wolf Children again last week. Wtf vld. Paw patrol. Wtf vld. So, Pollux. How does it compare and pls tell me more about the anti- monarchist separatist potential. Loquaciousness is appreciated.

Hi there, thank you for the Ask!

You had me dying at Paw Patrol. WTF VLD indeed.

Seriously though, Legend of the Galactic Heroes (LotGH) will shine a harsh light on all the “war story” flaws of the Voltron Coalition’s liberation of Galra territory. I’m totally here for a super robot taking down a universe-spanning empire b/c that’s what super robots do, but the second the story introduces a ragtag collection of scrappy rebels taking on that universe-spanning empire without supply lines, any sense of long-term strategy, discount GI Joe style special forces battle tactics, and unethical leadership, then I’m going to call that out when it tries to sell me on being a serious war story as justification for tragedy pr0n and character deaths.

Anyway, onto Pollux the Cliffs Notes Edition: (Some of this you already may know via fandom osmosis so bear with me)

Pollux in DotU is the ‘sister planet’ of Arus (Arus = Altea). Romelle is the princess of Pollux and is Allura’s cousin. They look almost exactly alike.

Romelle, her father King “Don’t Care About His Name”, her older brother Avok, and younger brother Bandor, are more-or-less supporters of Zarkon. Pollux is kind-of-sort-of an ally to Planet Doom. When they are introduced, Avok wants to be made into a Robeast to destroy Voltron and conquer Arus (for a better and deeper explanation of their introduction, read the Romelle meta by @crystal-rebellion here). 

Needless to say, Avok’s “Turn me into a Robeast” plan doesn’t go well, and Romelle and Bandor decide that working with Zarkon and Lotor was a bad idea. Romelle then gets Allura and Voltron to help them (without ever fessing up to her part in scheming against her cousin in the first place), thus beginning Pollux’s rebellion against Planet Doom.

So, right from the start, DotU provided plenty of political angles to work from for introducing Romelle and other Alteans in VLD (b/c of course there were going to be survivors of one kind or another). Between S1-S4, all of the sacred Altean + monarchy stuff, S3’s political introduction of Lotor along with the rumors stated by Throk and That Claw Guy about Lotor “letting planets he conquered rule themselves” had me thinking that if VLD were going to introduce Pollux, then they’d take from DotU’s introduction that Pollux might be made up of Alteans who supported Zarkon’s destruction of Altea based upon any number of reasons, but separatist or anti-monarchist sentiment interested me the most. Or they simply could have peaced out at some other point during Altea’s past and ahead of its destruction and war with Zarkon.

S4 showed Naxela as having Altean terraforming tech, which implied that Alteans were colonizing planets. Thus the idea of Alteans living away from Altea definitely wasn’t a stretch, and given Lotor’s background ahead of the Garbage Colony Plot, it made sense that he’d be involved with a hidden planet of Alteans either on the sly or in the open. At least two directions to take that as there would be plenty of reason for Pollux-Alteans to hate Alfor, either blaming him and Voltron for Altea’s destruction, or not liking the idea of a sacred Altean monarchy that keeps the secrets of Altean Alchemy to themselves. 

That VLD reduced Romelle into a character that could have easily been replaced by a strongly worded letter written in blood (or a sad-tragic hologram recording) is a bit of a shame, but not making the most of Pollux is even more so.

[eclisseacontextforfilm]

you only care about who lose. Typical of intellectuals, selfish but so full of pity! eclisse inspirations, vol. V Michelangelo Antonioni’s Trilogy of incommunicability part. 2 - La notte, 1961 “one question I am often asked is why the women in my films are more lucid than the men. I was raised among women: my mother, my aunt, and lots of cousins. Then I got married, and my wife had five sisters. I have always lived among women; I know them very well... Speaking for myself, I find that the feminine sensibility is a far more precise filter than any other to express what I have to say. In the realm of emotions, man is nearly always unable to feel reality as it exists. Having a tendency to dominate woman, he is tempted to hide some of her aspects from himself and see her as he wants her to be. There is nothing absolute in this area, but it seems to me that is at the heart of it  Michelangelo Antonioni In reviewing the critical reception of La notte (1961), it strikes me that many observers seem to almost completely miss the fact that the film is, in part, a feminist critique of capitalist society, which centres around women, consumption, and the failure of our ecosystem, and not just the director’s trademark alienation and ennui.Conventional plot summaries of the film routinely insist that La notte centres around a male author, Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni), his uncertain career, and his failing relationship with his wife, Lidia (Jeanne Moreau), as well as his flirtations with beautiful socialite Valentina Gherardini (Monica Vitti) I would argue, rather, that women are both the centre of the film and the mirrors upon which Antonioni reflects his dark perceptions and stark conclusions about the human condition. At a launch party for his latest novel, those who celebrate Giovanni’s newest book spend precious little time actually reading, opting instead to party all night, while simultaneously remaining oblivious to their own mortality. As in most of his films, Antonioni’s wealthy protagonists in La notte live in a hell of their own making. So thoroughly alienated are they from one another (and from the environment) that they experience the rain from the sky (in the pool sequence) as a sublime rapture from above, giggling like schoolchildren, briefly lifted out of their stupor for a moment’s play with the actual elements. The tragedy of Antonioni’s characters is not simply a matter of bored bourgeois ennui; these people are disconnected from the feminine, from the earth, and from life itself. Perhaps no critic got it more wrong than Pauline Kael in her infamous essay The Come-Dressed-As-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties: La Notte, Last Year at Marienbad, La Dolce Vita, in which Kael attacked the film, demanding less ambiguity: La notte is supposed to be a study in the failure of communication, but what new perceptions of this problem do we get by watching people on the screen who can’t communicate if we are never given any insight into what they could have to say if they could talk to each other? On the contrary, Antonioni gives us nothing but insight into the various relationships, and thus I find her dismissal baffling. More recently, critic Christopher Sharrett takes a far more perceptive feminist eco-critical approach to key Antonioni films such as Il deserto rosso (Red Desert, 1964) and L’eclisse (1961), noting of L’eclisse that “the failure of people to connect is rooted less in vague existential dread than in concrete social realities”. For me, it is those specific social realities that are most vividly explored and exposed in La notte. Antonioni’s key, early films are best understood from the point of view of a feminist director – keeping in mind Antonioni’s own philosophy, as noted above, “the feminine sensibility is a far more precise filter than any other to express what I have to say.” Sharrett’s perceptive comments on Red Desert also apply to La notte. He notes that Red Desert is: “explicit in its insistence that the sensitive individual (who must be, in the director’s view, axiomatically female, with little possibility for the male partaking of authentically human sensibility) cannot enjoy happiness in this end-product of patriarchal capitalist rule. A pervasive theme in Antonioni’s work is the concept ‘Eros is sick,’ meaning that the erotic, the drive for life, is sickened and doomed by the death drive in a society operating under the assumptions of capitalism and repression” Filmed on location in Milan, the opening credits shot is a stunner. The camera glides in a long track down the exterior of a glass-facade building, suggesting a descent into hell. Images of nature are fleeting in La notte – a few scrub trees in a desolate urban environment; the sky violated by amateur rocketry competitions; unfinished buildings everywhere – depicting Milan as an unnatural colonization of the feminine earth. Humans in La Notte shuffle along resembling zombie-like “sleepwalkers.” Specific allusions to sleepwalking abound, the most direct being a reference to Hermann Broch’s classic 1932 novel, which Giovanni picks up at the party with an air of surprise, wondering aloud, “Who is reading The sleepwalkers?” Broch’s own obsession with the death of values and the decay of humanity mirrors La notte’s central preoccupation with mortality as it relates to the value of love and art (as Eros). Mortality is omnipresent in the opening sequence in a hospital room, where Giovanni and Lidia visit their dying friend, an author named Tommaso (Bernhard Wicki). Tommaso wonders aloud if any of his life’s work is of value, and ironically Giovanni himself is battling the same sorts of questions, the central post-war preoccupations of modernism; self-doubt, alienation, and existentialism. Giovanni’s self absorption precludes him from a loving relationship with his wife, Lidia, who patiently waits for him to grow up during the entire length of the film. Antonioni crafts our perspective so that we see Giovanni primarily through Lidia’s point of view. Though he is unfaithful, selfish, and childish, Lidia still loves Giovanni, but she is keenly aware that their marriage is barely alive. Lidia observes Giovanni trying to woo the stunning young Vitti, but instead of protesting, she seems to almost push her husband into Valentina’s arms through her powerful gaze. Though Moreau is said to have disliked the role of Lidia, it is one of her finest performances and most of her power is established through her active gaze. In a strong and memorable sequence, Lidia wanders the streets looking at life going on around her, watching the activities of workmen and women of all types. Lidia seems keenly aware that life is going on around her, but in many ways without her, as she feels the pain of her own mortality and her unraveling marriage. Antonioni clearly empathizes with Lidia strongly. A particularly acute feminist moment comes when Lidia witnesses some young men fighting near a construction site seemingly for no reason at all. The fight summarizes patriarchy in a nutshell; macho, pointless, violent and dangerous. There is a brief moment when we think that perhaps Lidia will be hurt or even raped by the men, but she shoos them away and calls Giovanni to pick her up. The couple wanders through the nearby railway tracks where they first met and fell in love, even as the environment has taken over, and numerous wild plants have sprung up since they last visited, many years ago. Eros is still possible, even between these two. Thanatos has not won yet. La notte makes it clear that women’s artistic talents are wasted in a society that values them only for their beauty. As if to demonstrate this, in one telling sequence, Valentina uses a tape recorder to tell a story to Giovanni. She is a far better storyteller than the author, but after she finishes her narrative, Valentina erases the tape rather than playing it back. We hear a whiny, high-pitched squeak as the recorder rewinds the tape, thus destroying her story – and making us acutely aware of the myriad untold stories of all women. Whether or not Lidia and Giovanni’s marriage is saved at the end of La notte seems insignificant in light of the larger issues raised by the film. Antonioni offers us far bigger issues to contemplate. What have humans made of the earth? How do we love one another? What is the value of women, art and love in a world defined by men of commerce? Can we wake from our sleepwalking? These are but a few of the questions raised by La notte, a masterwork that only gets better with time, provoking a wakeful regenerative  response to 21st century consumption, devaluation of Eros, and our reckless destruction of the natural world. [by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, February 2015]

[kataibusaibiin]

Offering our voices to honor our ancestors

Protecting What is Sacred: Our land, Our water, Our hope for a better future 

 I preface this with an apology because these thoughts were scribbled in the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep and thus this lacks the clarity I’d hoped for in sharing some of what’s been weighing so heavily on my heart. That said, some folks have nudged me to share some of these reflections and it felt important to start somewhere in voicing how my heart connects these dots. So, below are some meandering thoughts as I reflect on Obon and how it threads us together with our past, present, and future... and ultimately each other...

In less than a month, I will be returning again to my place of birth - my maternal ancestral homeland in Okinawa - to visit with family and friends and to pay my respects to those who came before us.  It’s been 2 years since my last visit and it will be the first time I am able to speak to my beloved grandmother in Uchinaaguchi -  one of Ryukyu/Okinawa’s indigenous languages which I’ve been studying - to thank her and share with her my ongoing studies here in Hawai’i as I continue working to record our family’s stories, deepen my appreciation and understanding of our indigenous Ryukyuan history and culture, and create resources to share with fellow Uchinaanchu/Okinawans living in the diaspora across the globe. My grandmother is 96 now and has been my trusty compass since as far back as I can remember - back to my earliest childhood memories in Okinawa. Her visits to see us once we moved to North Carolina are highlights of my youth. Even when we moved to the states and we were thousands of miles apart, I could still always feel her love and would sometimes look out across the ocean in the direction of Okinawa, trying to picture her and the rest of the family there, hoping that I too could cultivate the kind of love she shares which could be felt across time and space.

It is not coincidental that my upcoming trip to Okinawa next month was planned to coincide with Obon and, as such, will involve returning to my grandmother’s village in Kijoka, Ogimi where some of our family tombs (ohaka) are located. I have yet to find the words to express what it means to me to be able to revisit the same land where generations of my family have lived and where we continue to return, year after year, to offer prayers and gratitude for our village, our ancestors, and all the sacrifices they have made for us. It is something to treasure all the more since there are many who are unable to do so, especially since I know many in Okinawa whose family tombs were destroyed during WWII or were paved over for US military bases under US occupation in the aftermath of the war.

I remember before taking that trip back to Okinawa two years ago, my mom had told me on a number of occasions that visiting our family tombs to pay respects was something she had always wanted us to be able to do together. I was never able to line up the time and resources to return for Shimi but she’d made clear that the timing wasn’t even what was important - just that we made the time.  And I vividly remember when I finally had the opportunity to join my family to do so as an adult during that trip, time seemed to collapse onto itself. I could feel an overwhelming connection to the past, present, and future as a continuum extending well beyond the 5 generations of our family represented in the gathering that day.

One of my young nieces and I tidied up the area and altar together as other family prepared the offerings we brought.  As we did so, I recall my grandmother commenting how happy the rest of the family (meaning our ancestors) must be to see my niece Sawana and I there together, putting such love and attention to detail in cleaning and helping with preparations. Hearing this as a gentle breeze passed, it certainly didn’t feel like we were alone. After our prayers and offerings, we found a nearby spot to enjoy our family picnic. Sitting in a circle, I looked around at my family with the sweeping views of the ocean behind them and my eyes welled up with tears of joy as I laughed and we talked story, savoring the beauty of that moment and seeing it similarly reflected on their faces. As I think back on such moments, my hope is that each day, I find a way through actions to express how much I cherish these gifts of love, tradition, and hope for a better future that have been and continue to be passed forward through my family and communities.

As many of you know, my return to Okinawa two years ago was something I was apprehensive about in many ways - despite longing to return since I was little - and I am beyond grateful that it was ultimately a deeply healing and transformational experience. During this trip in August, I plan to return to Shuri were my grandfather’s family is from and offer prayers and gratitude for my grandfather’s family at their hakas too, in hopes of contributing towards intergenerational healing within my family. After all, the history and stories of my grandfather’s family are part of what motivates me to do some small part to preserve Uchinaaguchi and not only Ryukyu/Okinawa’s history and culture but also our family’s legacy as part of that living history.  (Some of you already know why I’ve not grown up close to that branch of our family but for others, suffice to say my grandmother is a strong, fiercely loving woman who would always stand up for what is best for her children...no matter the self-sacrifice involved.) I mention this because history is never clean - often filled with pain, conflict, and contradictions - but we shouldn’t shy away from certain parts of our past because of that; those parts shape(d) us too and can be part of how we learn, heal, and ultimately reclaim our futures.  This is true even of my father’s side of the family - direct descendants of both Reverend John Robinson “Pastor of the Pilgrims” who sent his congregation over on the Mayflower as well as the Mississippi band of Choctaw who were nearly wiped out by the arrival of these European immigrants. I often think about how to hold these complicated truths and seeming contradictions of our past and/or different perspectives and the importance of doing so even as we face such situations in the present...

To Honor My Ancestors Is to Honor All Our Ancestors

Here in Hawai’i, Obon festivities have already begun as there are literally bon dances held every weekend from mid June through August. To write about some of my experiences and reflections thus far (including the way Obon is celebrated here versus back in Okinawa) is a topic for another time. I share this as context though because as a member of the Young Okinawans of Hawai’i (YOH), we share our song, drumming, and dance as offerings to our ancestors and to communicate with them, just as Okinawan eisaa was traditionally intended for. It is not entertainment for the crowd that gathers but, if anything, an invitation for the community to join us in this collective offering for all our ancestors. Whether it’s the little ones that find their way towards the inner circle around the yagura to dance by our side during our bon dances or the young ones in my family and communities, I hope that any child I ever interact with can feel and cherish the gifts of our uyafaafuji (ancestors) and learn to manifest that gratitude with their voices and in their actions, guided by what’s in their hearts. I do not take lightly the moments like this weekend when a group of little kids surrounded me and looked up wided-eyed and open-hearted, eager to watch and follow in my footsteps as we sang and danced around the yagura together. When I heard one of the littlest ones next to me begin to join me as we called out with our heishi, I’m not ashamed to admit I got a little something in my eyes.

In sharing the history and meaning of Okinawan eisaa and inviting friends to join us for Bon dancing, I have found myself often clarifying for folks that when I say I dance and sing for “our ancestors” I am referring collectively to the people we are tied to through our connection to place as well as our families of origin which we are connected to through blood and other familial connections. So, when I sing and dance here in Hawai’i, I too sing for the kanaka maoli - the indigenous Hawai’ians and the Kingdom of Hawai’i. I am aware that in moving here to study and build community with the Asian plurality and fellow Uchinaanchu here, I am also a settler. So, I strive to listen and learn from not only the elders I meet but also to their ancestors who sought to protect this land and its precious resources.  That comes with inherent responsibilities to listen, learn, and take heart when I am asked to speak out as someone whose ancestral homelands were similarly colonized, whose people also endured physical and cultural genocide, and whose democratic voice and right to self-determination is still being ignored. As shimanchu whose past have so many parallels, I believe our hopes for a better future and collective liberation are also bound together. So too, I feel a deep responsibility as someone raised in the US and with the relative privilege that comes with that, even when so many Americans have made it clear that they will always see me as an outsider. It is all too clear to me how these things are all interconnected.

So, this weekend, I danced not only for my ancestors back in Kijoko but also for those in Henoko, Okinawa where my parents met and for the community there who have been dedicated to protecting our one ocean in the face of joint US-Japanese military construction in Oura Bay. My heart also joined the protectors here in Hawai’i who have been gathering at Mauna kea to prevent the desecration of that sacred land. I lit candles and held in my heart the memory of my paternal grandparents and their families. My heart too, also sang out for the children who are locked up in cages across the US for the crime of having a family who dreams of a better future for them but come from another side of an imaginary line.  I carried in my heart - the heart of a first-generation immigrant to the US - all the families of refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants who are dreaming for a brighter future.

I might not have all the answers for how to re-envision the future to be a better one for all, but I’ve seen enough to know one thing we have to do is speak out to say that this current path we’re on sure isn’t the way. 

To honor my ancestors is to honor the preciousness of all life. Nuchi du takara. So, to honor all my ancestors, I offer my voice to honor the ancestors of all of us - to acknowledge our interconnectedness - and to share our ancestors hopes of a better future for us all. In sharing my voice as an offering, I also extend an invitation: Let us never give up the hopes and dreams of our ancestors. Instead, let that be what unites us as we protect what is sacred. 

Rise for Henoko! Aole TMT! Protect Our One Ocean! Kū Kia`i Mauna!  Never Again is Now!  Together, We Rise!

p.s. I recently shared this music video but felt it was apropos to share this song again here with a gentle request to take the few minutes to watch and reflect: