#not even a colony either it's just france

[beardedmrbean]

Europe's Ariane 6 rocket blasted off successfully for its maiden flight on Tuesday, a live video feed showed. The success of its three-hour flight is crucial for European countries, who hope to regain independent access to space more than a year after they retired their workhorse Ariane 5 rocket.

Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket launched for the first time on Tuesday, carrying with it the continent's hopes of regaining independent access to space.

The micro-satellites were delivered one hour and six minutes after the rocket blasted off from Kourou, French Guiana. The rocket's success marks a "historic day" for Europe, announced European Space Agency chief Josef Aschbacher.

The much-delayed inaugural flight of the European Space Agency's (ESA) most powerful rocket launched smoothly into clear skies at 4pm local time (1900 GMT) from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, an AFP correspondent observed.

Crews on the ground at the launch site, which is surrounded by jungle on the South American coast, applauded as the rocket soared into clear skies.

Ariane 6's first launch, which was originally planned for 2020, is hoped to bring an end to a difficult time for European space efforts.

Since the last flight of its workhorse predecessor, Ariane 5, a year ago, Europe has been unable to launch satellites or other missions into space without relying on rivals such as Elon Musk's US firm SpaceX.

ESA chief Josef Aschbacher said it was a "very important moment for Europe".

"We are re-establishing independent access to space for Europe," he said just before the launch. 

Earlier Tuesday, the giant metal structure housing the rocket called the "mobile gantry" was rolled away, unsheathing the 56-metre (183 feet) behemoth in light rain, an AFP journalist observed.

A 10am forecast said that "Weather is GO for fuelling", the ESA said on X.

This gave the green light for filling the rocket's tanks with the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that will propel it into space.

From that point, any physical intervention would force the tanks to be emptied, requiring a 48-hour launch postponement, the ESA's launch base project manager Michel Rizzi said.

Rocket crisis 

Many will be nervously watching the launch, hoping it can bring an end to a difficult era for European space efforts.

Since the last flight of the rocket's workhorse predecessor, Ariane 5, a year ago, Europe has been unable to launch satellites or other missions into space without relying on rivals such as Elon Musk's US firm SpaceX.

Historically, nearly half of the first launches of new rockets have ended in failure.

That includes Ariane 5, which exploded moments after liftoff in 1996 – but out of its 117 launches over nearly 20 years, only one other flight would fail.

Everyone at the Kourou launch site, which is surrounded by jungle on the South American coast, is hoping history does not repeat for Ariane 6.

Tony dos Santos, the ESA's Kourou technical manager, said that teams on the ground would only be able to "breathe our first sigh of relief when the first satellites have been released" an hour and six minutes after liftoff.

The mission will be considered a success after the rocket's reusable upper stage splashes down into the Pacific Ocean.

Franck Saingou, Ariane 6 launch system architect, said there had been so many rehearsals that it all feels "routine – except this time it's the real thing".

Concealed in a nearby bunker, more than 200 experts in the launch centre will scrutinise the rocket until liftoff, ready to interrupt the countdown to solve any problems, he added.

They will be in constant contact with the Jupiter control room, the hub of communication between the teams – and data sent from the rocket.

A large number of armed forces will also watch over the launch, including three fighter jets deployed to deter any curious aircraft nearby.

Europe's 'return' to space

A successful flight would mark Europe's "return" to the space scene, said ESA space transportation director Toni Tolker-Nielsen.

Russia pulled its Soyuz rockets, long used for European launches at Kourou, after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Later year, Europe's Vega-C light launcher was grounded due to a launch failure. Delays to Ariane 6's first flight – originally scheduled for 2020 – further compounded the crisis.

Ariane 6 is scheduled for one more launch this year, six in 2025, then eight in 2026.

The launch of Ariane 6 is the first step towards "changing the future of the European space transportation ecosystem", ESA chief Josef Aschbacher said on X.

Gareth Dorrian, a space science researcher at the UK's University of Birmingham, told AFP that "the first launch of any new rocket is always fraught".

But Ariane 5 started with explosive failure and "went on to become one of the most successful launchers in history", he added.

[mesetacadre]

one of the most infuriating parts about yanks their country is like 50 different countries is, apart from overestimating the remarkability of a federal system of territorial administration, that the lines along which those mini "countries" are drawn are not drawn following any form of cultural similarity and dissimilarity between peoples, they're drawn in spite of it. This is most obvious with straight borders, but behind every single state border, straight or not, is a history of a gradual theft of land from indigenous people, and afterwards a series of petty disputes between state governments to get more productive land.

Take the dispute between Ohio and Michigan over the Toledo strip. It was not a conflict of nations, it was squabbling over who controlled the most economically important city in that area taking advantage of a border treaty that used the wrong latitude of the southernmost tip of Lake Michigan. The northern border of Delaware is literally a circumference drawn with a church as its center. Perhaps the only change in US state borders born of an actual cultural difference was the West Virginia split over slavery. Either way, whichever perceived cultural differences exist between states, they originated barely over a hundred years ago, after most of those borders were drawn. All of these miniscule differences which are exaggerated into constituting different nations were the product of the artifical borders themselves, themselves a part of the process of genocide and settler-colonialism. If the square that is Colorado had been drawn 10 kilometers to the west and 1 km to the north respective to where it is in reality, there would not have been any depatriated coloradoans. There would have been slightly more Kansanians and slightly less Coloradoans.

Acknowledging that all of those truly miniscule differences relative to actual differences between actually different cultures elsewhere in the world are recent, artificial and the product of a genocide is a necessity for any USamerican who wants to ever do something productive, just like recognizing the ways racism was institutionalized and ingrained into the country even before its founding is necessary to combat racism now. Acting cutesy about how actually Kansas and Missouri are as different as France and England is not a way to do this. Nationalism for your state or your closest national park is as insidious and reactionary as nationalism for "America".

[sissa-arrows]

If what’s happening in France right now was happening in the Global South there would be talks about sending troops to bring democracy in France.

The leaders and big figures of the opposition who support Palestinians are getting summoned by the police one by one for refusing to call October 7th a terrorist attack (for the record a lot of them say that it was a war crime because it targeted civilians but not a terror attack so they don’t even support what happened).

All while letting Zionist who actually called for mass murder on live TV get away with it.

But you know what? As strange as it sounds it’s actually a good sign. One of the most violent day for Algerians during the war of liberation (17 October 1961) happened less than a year before the independence just a couple months actually (the independence was on July 5th 1962 but it was signed in March 1962). Because that’s how the colonizers behave and think. The crackdown in France, the new German law forbidding the use of Arabic and Hebrew at pro Palestinian protests, the crackdown in US universities… a wounded dying beast always get more violent. They are scared so they try to silence us harder. They know that it’s a matter of time that the fall of colonialism, imperialism and white supremacy will happen in our lifetime so they try to scare us into stopping the fight.

Don’t get me wrong it will be hard and won’t happen overnight but their reactions are convincing me that we will see a Free Palestine a Free Global South a Free world in our lifetimes.

(P.S: ​tagging the post with Palestine because my previous post being positive about the outcome seemed to help some people who felt hopeless so I hope this one will help too. That being said we don’t have the right to give up the fight and we shouldn’t give up hope either. None of us is free until all of us are.)

[alpaca-clouds]

Analyzing the New Nocturne Trailer

Alright: I promised some folks yesterday to make an analysis for the new trailer - so I am going to do just that. Fair warning: this will not have a whole lot of historical details, because I think there is just not enough about historical context in this trailer to talk about that. So more... general influences and speculations.

We start the trailer off with Emmanuel standing by a grave during what is either a night or still the eclipse caused by Erszebeth. It is impossible to say. Sadly, there does not seem to be any name on the gravestone (if it even is that), so it is hard to say who it could be. Someone on a server speculated that it might be the empty grave of Tera's sister (I doubt she managed to drag the body from Russia to France), which I could see. It could also be that we learn something more about Emmanuel's backstory.

From all we got implied, Emmanuel joined with the Knights Hospitaller when they were on Malta, so he was not with them in Jerusalem. We can also say that he is Frenchman. So there is something going on with him giving him the background of him and the hospitaller.

Something else of note: This grave is underneath a Wisteria tree. And Wisteria's are connected either to youth/something new or it is a symbolism for a deep devotion. The latter probably fitting rather well with Emanuel.

Next we have these few frames of Erszebeth in her lion form fighting Richter. Something that is interesting to me in this one: It almost feels here as if Erszebeth has no control over her power. Which would make sense, because it is heavily implied that she stole Sekmet's powers by drinking from Sekmet.

I am spitballing here, but something tells me that Olrox has drunken from Quetzalcoatl in a consensual way (almost guessing it was so that a dying god could live on), while in Erszebeth's case it was more an act of colonialism of some sort.

We have next these two very short flashes. Richter down on the ground and bleeding - and then Tera attacking. The trailer of course implies that Tera is implying a Richter who went down. But the background is different. Tera is somewhere in the forest in what appears to be some celtic ruins (more on that a bit later), while Richter is on some city street.

I am fairly certain actually that the Richter scene is fairly late in the season.

We then have the eclipse ending. I am very interested to know the context of this. It seemed in season 1 as if Erszebeth wanted to keep the eclipse just eternally to protect her vampires - but maybe she also understands that she cannot do that given she has also human followers.

We also see Maria (probably in the company of everyone else) hiding out at some ruins.

If I was going to hazard a guess, this is a scene within the first 5 minutes of episode 1.

We have then a few quick shots of first Richter, Annette and Alucard together. Then one of Richter fighting what is clearly Drolta. And then one... that could be either Drolta or Tera from the clothing. Though given that Richter has the same ripped off sleeves as in the Drolta fight, I am gonna assume it is Drolta.

This goes doubly, because the background here is the same as in the fight of Alucard and Drolta later in the trailer.

The we have another grave scene with flower imagery. In this case we have Juste in front of a grave. Once more there is no name to be seen on the grave, but I have seen a lot of speculation - based on what happens in the game - that it might be Lydie's grave, while Maxim is either a vampire or a werewolf now.

We will see, I guess.

There was also a discussion on the server on what the tree was. Is it plum or cherry. I am gonna say, this is a Kanzan cherry tree, given that the stigma is not as pronounced as it would be in a plum flower. And the Japanese cherry tree is obviously a symbol of fleeting youth and fleeting beauty.

Then we have a shot with Erszebeth mustering her new army. Notable about this is that Erszebeth is back to her normal vampire form in this shot - and that it seems now that she has a whole lot more night creatures now. Has Emmanuel figured out how to createm ore night creatures, or if she has found another way to acquire night creatures. We will see.

We have also several scenes of our main characters in this building. There are several shots of this. And this does not seem to be Tera's home, given that the windows look different, if I am not fully mistaken. So that leaves us the question: Where are they here? Who allows them to stay with them?

Then we have these shots of Alucard on a warfield surrounded by soldiers. We see later that they are fighting against the vampires lead by Drolta, who is not dead. (I might note: As I said. I told y'all that Drolta was not dead. It was obvious.)

Notable about this scene is that Alucard is surrounded by Republican Soldiers. So soldiers who are loyal to the revolution. While at this time the royal soldiers and the revolutionary soldiers wore fairly similar uniforms, the hats are notably different.

So we can tell from this, that our heroes manage to get the revolutionary forces up to Machecoul. I am wondering how that is going to happen. Who will get this support?

Either way, I am gonna hazard another guess: This is from the last two episodes of the season.

Something that seemingly also happens on the battle field is Alucard attacking these three figures. All three are dark-skinned and Alucard attacks them. Two of them also clearly wear ancient egyptian garbs. And that implies they are somehow connected to Sekmet, either through Drolta or Erszebeth. I am really interested to see what is up with this.

I said this before: The reason I was fairly certain that Drolta was still alive was two fold. One: Drolta is Katie Silva's favorite character. lol Two: Drolta is clearly very heavily connected to how Erszebeth has gotten access to the blood of Sekmet, given that we know that Drolta was a priestess of Sekmet. So she kinda has to survive given that she will be important to understanding Erszebeth. :P

I am still somewhat wondering whether she will be loyal to Erszebeth and such.

Then we have some shots of Richter and Annette fighting some night creatures (though one of them might also be Drolta in a monster form - we will see - given it has the same tail as her, and hooves). One of the fights is happening in the church again.

Then we have this scene of Juste and Tera fighting. Again, this is a celtic place, given the stones - and I am fairly certain that this is the same place where Maria has her little revolutionary meeting in episode 1 of the first season. We had those celtic stones standing around there as well. Which is obviously interesting given the themes of colonization and the fact that they have been colonized as well.

It is obviously also interesting that Juste is fighting Tera - clearly to take this from the kids.

Something several people have already noticed though is that Tera in these scenes seems to be under some sort of control. Her eyes are flat and empty.

I might also remind you though, that we have so far very little information on how vampires and fledglings work in this world. In a lot of vampire media it also is a theme that fledgling vampires in the first months/years of their life being fairly hard to control and more animal than person. This might be a possibility here, too.

It could be that Tera is controlled by Erszebeth, but it could also just be that she is a fledgling in a sort of blood frenzy or something like that.

Then we have this scene with Maria and Seiryu in the church. It is clear from Maria's gaze here, that she is either in a deep shock, or really, really angry. From all we know she never summoned Seiryu before. And we see also that the portal she summons Seiryu through is nothing like the other portals she uses which are light and golden.

However, this portal is a lot like the one we see on the poster that went around yesterday, where a bear comes through the portal.

Now, I am fairly certain that with the summons they go with the same direction that I and a lot of other writers use: The summons she is using are somehow connected to the otherworld, which in this probably connects not only celtic spirits and fae, but pretty much similar concepts from all around the world.

But the thing is, as I said: The bear usually in East Asian mythology is a shorthand for "a god". And of course dragons in Asian mythology are also minor gods. And I am going to assume that this does tie in once more with the theme that we clearly have: Divine bloodlines. This is a divine bloodline as well, that ties Maria to the Asian spiritual gods.

But she is very much not in control over those powers yet.

We know that she never knew how her magic worked. She explains that much in episode 2 of the first season. And given that this is so clearly a theme of Nocturne... Yeah, that is going to be tied to that.

Then we also have this shot of Drolta and her knew outfit. I will be honest, I have nothing much to say about that. She once more has the horns - and again: Drolta is not a vampire, she is a succubus. And as such we do not know what kind of rules might apply to her.

As you might notice on the screenshot above: It is fairly bright in the background. And she does not use anything to protect herself from the sunlight.

Then we have another scene of Olrox holding back Mizrak, which is notably the only time we see either character in the trailer. (It should be noted that Edouard, my baby boy, is completely absent from the trailer. Q-Q) It is fairly hard to say what the context of the scene is. So far I do not see anohter scene with a similar background, so it is really hard to say.

Some part of me is going to assume that Mizrak might be the reason that the revolutionary forces are there for the big battle. But that is once more just me spitballing. He just seems to be the most likely character to get those soldiers there.

Then we have several scenes of Drolta fighting. Some of the shorts show her on the battle field, some of them are her and Alucard (who shape shifts into a bat swarm during it). And once again: I am fairly certain that the earlier scene of Richter on the ground happens in the same scene of Alucard and the shape shifting here.

Again: I am going to assume that Drolta will probably show up in episode 3 or 4 again, after the fakeout death, and that they will have some bad fights against her and Erszebeth, and that the revolutionary forces will show up for the finale of the season. That would make the most sense from a writing perspective.

Lastly we have also this shot of Richter. This also probably happens in the context of the Drolta dight, as it is fairly clear he looses his sleeves in that fight.

But yeah, that is so far all I could get from the trailer.

Cannot wait for season 2.

Also: I am very sad that I did not get to see my baby boy Edouard. Where is my son?!

[unamazing-sheep21]

The Daroga is actually an extremely important character to the themes of Phantom of the Opera

Many people might not know this but living as a Muslim/brown person in the west ( especially France… see: burqab ban, burkini ban, hijab ban, etc) is extremely difficult for some. Not to mention in a world post 9/11. Not to mention ( probably) in the 1890’s like in Phantom of the Opera where orientalist art and inaccurate and often dehumanising portrayals of the Middle East and it’s people ( muslims, arabs, Persians etc) were common and were used to justify colonialism.

In classic literature there’s only like, ONE character who is brown and is treated like an actual human being by the narrative and is presented as a central cast member to boot: and that’s the Daroga/ The Persian in Phantom of the Opera. And even then, every adaptation after either replaces him with a white person or has an incredibly disingenuous and inaccurate portrayal of him and his ethnicity/religion. Heck, in the Phantom Susan Kay book he’s given the surname “Khan” which isn’t even Persian it’s a PAKISTANI name.

Every other presumably brown/POC character are written animalistically and antagonistically. E.g Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights and Bertha from Jane Eyre. Bertha especially who is just used as an obstical/metaphor instead of an actual genuine character who deserves her own nuance and voice.

Now, back to the tittle, why do I think The Persian’s mere existence and especially with him being Persian/Muslim is inexplicably tied to the themes of POTO? Because he’s just like Erik and completely unlike Erik at the same time. In the book he’s constantly described as wearing as astrakhan cap/ a fez. Something quintessentially Middle Eastern and exposes him as ethnic right away to the eyes of the then European public. Both Erik and The Persian have sides of them that the society they live in at large shuns/dehumanises/condemns. For Erik it’s his face, and for The Persian it’s his culture/ religion/ race. But unlike Erik, The Persian has the choice to “ take it off” or assimilate more into society. He can, and it was better for him if he wore, a top hat but he CHOOSES to wear a fez. And he never takes it off. While he CAN and he has the chance to be more accepted in society than he already is.

But Erik can’t “take it off”, he can’t take off his face.

Though we don’t know much about the Persians’ beliefs, it’s safe to assume he was probably Muslim since Persia has been a Muslim country for a long time ( ignore the one we have now lmao). And I like to think that even in France he doesn’t give up this one part of him. He could just convert to whatever the majority religion in France was at the time and he would be more assimilated into French society, but he doesn’t . He actively chooses to keep parts of who he is even though they put him at a disadvantage. In contrast, Erik would give anything and does try everything ( even to phycotic lengths ) to be considered “ Normal” in society.

And throughout all of Erik’s efforts the only one who was ever really there for him was The Persian. But Erik dismisses him constantly.

I like to think that The Persian stayed because he understands Erik to a certain degree, and I like to think that Erik resents him because he doesn’t use every chance he gets to assimilate into society. To be considered normal. Sometimes Erik quite literally would kill for. Instead hanging onto every part that makes him who he is even when it only isolates him further.

[unhetalia]

any headcanons for alfreds relationships and/or friendships and/or toleranceships with other nations?

Honestly I tend to have a few different versions of one relationship depending on my mood, and for every Alfred ship I like (England, Russia, Germany), the other two relationships have to change with it.

For England, it's the most complicated, because I either have him and Alfred as endgame, or I frame their relationship as father/son, which a lot of people are understandably confused about.

For me, it's pretty simple: these two will always be important to each other in a way that is completely unique from their relationship to anyone else. Don't want to spend too long on them, but their father/son relationship tends to be close, and you can't avoid one if you want to be around the other.

In their endgame universe, things are fraught for a long while, and this tends to be the slowest burn out of all the 'ships. However, Arthur does not let Al out of his sight easily, even if their relationship isn't the most friendly. This relationship basically needs a post of its own, but "complicated yet as always, filled with love" might have to sum it up.

Ivan and Alfred start working together after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Alfred is forced out of hiding civilian life in order to prevent all-out nuclear war between their countries. They hate each other, at first — Ivan thinks Alfred is selfish for abandoning his government despite disagreeing with them, Alfred thinks Ivan is a coward for not leaving, but eventually they grow to really understand each other. They're together by 1980, and in public AU, Ivan really helps Al when he's ostracised by his people.

If they're not endgame, Ivan is in love with Alfred and he either carries on a charade of hating him in order to be in his space and to make it so Alfred's at least THINKING of him, or they're just... colleagues. Which is sad.

I always have Kiku as being quietly in love with Al, but unwilling to do anything about it. Sometimes, their friendship is unimpacted, and they're close, but sometimes I like to have Al more lonely, and Kiku's feelings will lead to him distancing himself from Alfred. When they're close, Alfred tends to have a bigger group of friends - Taiwan, nyo Philippines, South Korea, nyo India - but when they're not, it usually means I'm craving for a loneloer Alfred. I guess this means his friendship with Kiku leads to his friendship with these others, somehow.

Belarus is (alongside Tony), Alfred's best friend. Alfred isn't scared of Belarus, and Belarus is surprisingly a really good listener - she doesn't get impatient when Alfred talks about x topic for too long, and will even ask (practical) questions. They're not touchy feely, but the two of them accept the other as they are, and both of them need that.

Matthew is another one that needs his own post — I default to a Matthew that both resents his brother yet loves him to the point of obsession. Alfred is oblivious, and always forgives Matthew when he lashes out.

Mexico is their older sister who blatantly favours Alfred (further adding to Matthew's issues). She and Alfred have similar life trajectories - violent revolution and rejection of the traditional "Nation works for government." Matthew's the complete opposite on both fronts, so she just finds it hard to connect with him. Mexico is incredibly independent and can go years without seeing either of her siblings, so she's not in the picture very often, and is not really the type you would talk to about your problems or feelings.

France and Alfred are very close, and I've spoken about that a few times, so I won't go on (/tagged/re: face). There's a lot of mutual respect there.

Scotland adores Alfred, and Alfred adores him right back, and he treats Al completely different to Arthur's other colonies. Northern Ireland and nyo Ireland are similarly close with Alfred, and it's only Wales who does't actually care for Alfred at all and doesn't approve of him.

China is fond of Alfred but mostly in a distant way - he's mostly concerned with his siblings and himself.

Cuba loathes Alfred because he believes if Al had done his job, his people wouldn't have been impacted the way they were. Most people who dislike Alfred are in the same boat. These include, surprisingly, Spain and Portugal, who both see Alfred as irresponsible and "not doing his duty right."

Similarly, there's a subsection of England's colonies/ex colonies who resent Al. Anguilla, Barbados, Bermuda, Gibraltar, Falkland Islands. (Canada).

If you have any characters you want to ask about in particular, please do!

[fatehbaz]

Coral today is an icon of environmental crisis, its disappearance from the world’s oceans an emblem for the richness of forms and habitats either lost to us or at risk. Yet, as Michelle Currie Navakas shows in [...] Coral Lives: Literature, Labor, and the Making of America, our accounts today of coral as beauty, loss, and precarious future depend on an inherited language from the nineteenth century. [...] Navakas traces how coral became the material with which writers, poets, and artists debated community, labor, and polity in the United States.

The coral reef produced a compelling teleological vision of the nation: just as the minute coral “insect,” working invisibly under the waves, built immense structures that accumulated through efforts of countless others, living and dead, so the nation’s developing form depended on the countless workers whose individuality was almost impossible to detect. This identification of coral with human communities, Navakas shows, was not only revisited but also revised and challenged throughout the century. Coral had a global biography, a history as currency and ornament that linked it to the violence of slavery. It was also already a talisman - readymade for a modern symbol [...]. Not least, for nineteenth-century readers in the United States, it was also an artifact of knowledge and discovery, with coral fans and branches brought back from the Pacific and Indian Oceans to sit in American parlors and museums. [...]

---

[W]ith material culture analysis, [...] [there are] three common early American coral artifacts, familiar objects that made coral as a substance much more familiar to the nineteenth century than today: red coral beads for jewelry, the coral teething toy, and the natural history specimen. This chapter [...] [brings] together a fascinating range of representations of coral in nineteenth-century painting and sculptures.

With the material presence of coral firmly in place, Navakas returns us to its place in texts as metaphor for labor, with close readings of poetry and ephemeral literature up to the Civil War era. [...] [Navakas] includes an intriguing examination of the posthumous reputation of the eighteenth-century French naturalist Jean-André Peyssonnel who first claimed that coral should be classed as an animal (or “insect”), not plant. Navakas then [...] considers white reformers [...] and Black authors and activists, including James McCune Smith and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and a singular Black charitable association in Cleveland, Ohio, at the end of the century, called the Coral Builders’ Society. [...]

---

[H]er attention to layered knowledge allows her to examine the subversions of coral imagery that arose [...]. Obviously, the mid-nineteenth-century poems that lauded coral as a metaphor for laboring men who raised solid structures for a collective future also sought to naturalize a system that kept some kinds of labor and some kinds of people firmly pressed beneath the surface. Coral’s biography, she notes, was “inseparable from colonial violence at almost every turn” (p. 7). Yet coral was also part of the material history of the Black Atlantic [...].

Thus, a children’s Christmas story, “The Story of a Coral Bracelet” (1861), written by a West Indian writer, Sophy Moody, described the coral trade in the structure of a slave narrative. [...] In addition, coral’s protean shapes and ambiguity - rock, plant, or animal? - gave Americans a model for the difficulty of defining essential qualities from surface appearance, a message that troubled biological essentialists [...]. Navakas thus repeatedly brings into view the racialized and gendered meanings of coral [...].

---

Some readers from the blue humanities will want more attention, for example, to [...] different oceans [...]: Navakas’s gaze is clearly eastward to the Atlantic and Mediterranean and (to a degree) to the Caribbean [...], even though much of the natural historical explorations, not to mention the missionary interest in coral islands, turns decidedly to the Pacific. [...] First, under my hat as a historian of science, I note [...] [that] [q]uestions about the structure of coral islands among naturalists for the rest of the century pitted supporters of Darwinian evolutionary theory against his opponents [...]. These disputes surely sustained the liveliness of coral - its teleology and its ambiguities - in popular American literature. [...]

My second desire, from the standpoint of Victorian studies, is for a more specific account of religious traditions and coral. While Navakas identifies many writers of coral poetry and fables, both British and American, as “evangelical,” she avoids detailed analysis of the theological context that would be relevant, such as the millennial fascination with chaos and reconstruction and the intense Anglo-American missionary interest in the Pacific. [...] [However] reasons for this move are quickly apparent. First, her focus on coral as an icon that enabled explicit discussion of labor and community means that she takes the more familiar arguments connecting natural history and Christianity in this period as a given. [...] Coral, she argues, is most significant as an object of/in translation, mediating across the Black Atlantic and between many particular cultures. These critical strategies are easy to understand and accept, and yet the word - the script, in her terms - that I kept waiting for her to take up was “monuments”: a favorite nineteenth-century description of coral.

Navakas does often refer to the awareness of coral “temporalities” - how coral served as metaphor for the bridges between past, present, and future. Yet the way that a coral reef was understood as a literal graveyard, in an age that made death practices and new forms of cemeteries so vital a part of social and civic bonds, seems to deserve a place in this study. These are a greedy reader’s questions, wanting more. As Navakas notes [...], the method [...] is to understand our present circumstances as framed by legacies from the past, legacies that are never smooth but point us to friction and complexity.

---

All text above by: Katharine Anderson. "Review of Navakas, Michele Currie, Coral Lives: Literature, Labor, and the Making of America." H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. December 2023. Published at: [networks.h-net.org/group/reviews/20017692/anderson-navakas-coral-lives-literature-labor-and-making-america] [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism.]

[belladrawschstuff]

When your shitty 13 colonies become the world superpower

General info

Nicknames: Ame, stars, the Phoenix (ThEn IlL rAiSe YoU lIkE a PhOeNiX) He's friends with a lot of people, he mostly likes you as long as you respect him. He really is just his dad.

HCs

Because he's older than most countries he's kinda known as a lot of peoples mentor and some see him as an older brother

Speaking of mentors America was taught by a lot of old empires. People like Prussia, Russian empire and all his uncles along with a lot of other countries who taught him about their culture and language. But America did learn how to fly because of Prussia.

He has a few gifts from people, the sunglasses were originally given to him by Scotland but when America was taking care of west Germany, he got weirded out about the fact he couldn't see his eyes, so he made them have an eye tracker, the guitar was given to America by Britain as a way to say sorry for the revolution and war of 1812

He loves fluffy and soft things which is why his coat is fluffy despite the fact he can warm himself up by his fire

His personality disorder is mostly the reason he acts differently in certain situations than others. Its not that he doesn't know how to act its just he needs to have that experience to know how to act. An example is when he 1st started to date Russia because the only affection he knew how to put on other people was to Either act like a child like he was when he was younger or act like a guardian because he was an older brother and also because he's a father. France had to explain to Russia to take it slow and show America what to do.

The choker around Americas neck is from when he was younger. Because he has fire powers, he's kinda allergic to water so he gets burned by it so Britain made a little gem to keep him immune to water, so now he can talk underwater with no consequences.

America is forces to go the presidential debates but he doesn't really care anymore cause he knows both of the people are gonna be shit so he just uses that time to make fun of them.

To torture America Canada makes him watch Hamilton. Like imagine there was a musical about reliving you least favorite time in your life and also the story of how your friends died.

He hates his singing voice so he'll go outside to the forest and play his guitar on the edge of a nice cliff and blast music through his headphones.

America has extreme Arachniphobia. every time Australia loses one of his spiders America says you better find that spider before it finds me.

When his siblings were younger he used to sing to them because he didn't want Britain and France to have to wake up and deal with it.

After 9/11 America has to wear a hearing aid because new York is technically his brain, he covers his ears because of it

Idk how I forgot this one but Americas eyes changes colors depending on his mood. Blue and red is normal, only red is mad or ticked off, green is protective or wary, yellow means he has his eagle wings out and purple means he's bout to nuke you cause he's really mad like lvl 5. His eyes show not only his mood but also which persona is in control at the time ( which I figured out is called split personality disorder

He can also talk to the ancients and dead countries, so he just talks to them when he's bored, Canada can do the same since he is a ghost. If America doesn't have pupils and it's just fully white or black he's talking to them, but its more his internal thoughts that talk to him. he doesn't just start mummbling luckily.

Hes immune to most of the different abilities of other people, he doesn't get frozen in time which came in handy during the cold war, he can still see Canada even if he is a ghost, though Britain can still use magic on him, bad magic like cursing him doesn't work, France can still see his memories, but its mostly because their his parents.

(I know I'm making him over powered but like you should've expected that, I do live in America and America does have the best military by a landslide, so L)

Oh also meme of the day ( don't expect this to be normal)

[hellonerf]

endless insanity incoherent shit about ame and love and family(featuring england and cana a bit specifically sorry france i actually do have thoughts about that there but i'm lazy and tired and this is incoherent already)(it didn't start off like that this is honestly like some stream of thought shit hence the incoherence)

some shit when i think about. sorry. colonial ame extremely upset tantrums theres no way england didnt hit him or spank him which would just upset ame more. ame would sulk and wish for england to drop dead because theres not much else he can say or do about the frustration. cana goody two shoes kid would be like why do you have to act out like that so much... ame immediate rage. probably hits cana like GO CRY ABOUT IT!!! and cana cries and then england walks in like America!!! and it just gets worse. but in the end when england has to leave again ame still clings and cries after england is saying his goodbyes. england does feel that he cares about ame deeply, so he does try to show his affection. theres some gap here between the care he shows and his "responsibility as a caretaker" if you will... and he's like a teen dad at this point? with his own shitload of baggage and ideas on responsibility from that baggage. man this family can be so interesting. i love tension

of course. this is just my crazythinking that in situations where, you could say, england's parenting was abusive of sorts, specifically in the physical way, to punish tantrums or etc... i think cana would be inclined to try to play polite kid to avoid punishment. and so he would feel maybe more vindicated? that he's the good example. in this it creates kind of a chasm between england/cana and ame. (why i think mapletea would just drive ame crazy wall smashing head insane, besides that ame already feels jealous/insecure like that anyways no matter what) this feeling is pushed by the revolution where ame and england are Like That, and here again cana sides with england(he's not Fully in it but he does technically side with england, and ame definitely views it like that). to him this is proof... of what you ask? i don't know..... that period where he was on decidedly bad terms with both of them, i always think he's like teenage-losing it about it. won't show it or at least will try not to of course, but it's genuinely something that eats at him so hard. (ame voice Nobody loves me. Everyone should love me. i could probably make that happen.) and ame decides things like that first and foremost with personal relations. this is specific, but im like, i think it's a mental testing he does on people. example, completely without their knowledge, someone's random act can register in his brain as an opposition to him, because his mind decided that's what it means.(somewhere subconscious). so for some time i'd imagine in his mind, that cana and england hated him, or looked down on him, or expected him to wind up dead anyways. ame is never not looking for approval and this fuels that sooooo much. it's like spite and anger and crying and stomping on the ground and in a way grieving. he's staring at the sky like it's unfair. they don't want me in their life. because i'm better than them. i hate them so much.(he wouldn't say it like this to other people, hate is a strong word, and i wouldn't say he hates them here either)

despite his bravado of "whaat? everyone likes me right?" the mental cogs are stuck here no matter what he says. cana loves him, even if it's so frustrating to, cana cares about him deeply. it fucks with ame's brain but he knows this deep down, that cana does love and care about him. at some point too he knows the same for england. but i also think he's like, specifically with cana too when he's specifically being really cynical about relations is like, "oh and he's only around... cause he has to be..." and ame wouldn't entirely be wrong there. and cana would argue so what! do you need a cosmic soulmate love to prove something? and ame is like (yeah i kinda do....). love can't just exist for you right here right now?! cana's love is "invalidated" in this sense. and also it hurts his brain too much to really think about the complexities in his relationship to both england and cana. that they really did care about him, but it's not easy. (hurts his brain... like why is interaction so stressful? why is it complicated? why can't people just go i love you and the end?). ame is not a romantic person but i think his view on love can get so fantastical like this. (he wants to be the one proposed to awwww omg you guysss...) at the same time it's a very simple view on love. he doesn't want to end up humiliated and is willing to humiliate others to avoid it. if love is true then there is One True Love... For him... JK! NOT FOR HIM!(slurps soda) who needs that shyit!!!(eats burger). a lot of things he can't/really doesn't want to accept. this is why i'd say anytime he ever felt feelings significant enough that even he would call it love it was mindnumbingly overwhelming. putting his eggs in one basket... don't fail me now!!! (and i always think none of his relationships are stable. duh. so). i like fics where ame is made to be like a crazy ex girlfriend. because he would. rather than love as a constant thing to do it sometimes feels more like an achievement or endpoint for him. something that happens at the end of movies lol... if love was happening REALTIME it'd be surreal for him to process. and like true genuine love not his fake idea of what love looks like

[murfpersonalblog]

I have been thinking about Louis and him being a vampire capitalist means he has to stay connected with humanity. To know art and reality trends means he cannot sever his ties.

I love this @deepalienstudentshepherd.

It really gets to the spindly roots of Louis' unique approach to vampirism, through his approach to what being human is or even means & works--for him.

"Him being a vampire capitalist means he has to stay connected with humanity."

And this is why I roll my eyes when Lestat talks, cuz he swears that vampires are oh-so-removed from humanity, and so above worldly attachments--oh, look at those silly mortals, all they ever think about is Food, Sex & Home. As if Lestat isn't the walking talking incarnation of hedonistic hyperfixations on Food ("and then there was the food"--the MEAT); and Sex ("we can have an orgy; you can F**K them, I can EAT them~!"); and Home ("I am your family, Louis").

Either as a capitalist, artist, butcher, baker, candlestick-maker--or ROCK STAR--vampires doing anything humans do (and passing as humans) naturally requires staying connected with humanity. You have to KNOW your audience; know what makes them tick. We always clown on companies being out of touch, cuz if no one's buying you ain't selling!

"To know art and reality trends means he cannot sever his ties."

And what's sad is that Louis experimented with art via photography, cuz it called to him, and he does have an eye for it--Louis is, after all, very fashionable & stylish; we see it in Ep1 when he gives Lestat a makeover & helps furbish the townhouse & design Claudia's bedroom & dress her; "it's chiffon, it has movement~!" But at the end of the day, Louis realizes & has to accept that he's NOT an artist; that's not his calling. He doesn't have the patience for photography, and what's worse; he can't connect with human muses if he himself cannot be around humans when they're living their DAY-to-DAY lives--cuz he's a nocturnal vampire. (TBH I'd love to see him take another crack at it with modern technology; around modern nightlife.)

But you know what Louis IS good at? What he's always had a real knack for? And what he's much smarter & savvier about? BUSINESS.

The unique thing about Louis is that unlike so many of AR's Old World vampires, who either lived during antiquity (Akasha, the Twins, Seth, Cyril, Teskhamen, Marius, Pandora, Mael, etc), or frikkin ye olde medieval/rennaisance times (Thorne, Armand, Gabrielle, Lestat, Nikki); Louis is a MODERN vampire. book!Louis was born in France and came to the Americas as a colonizer, but AMC!Lou was BORN in the New World. Like anyone, Louis is a product of his environment; and that shapes what drives & motivates him; as his vampirism/capitalism is all wrapped up in how he existed as a human.

The DPDLs lived lavishly in their mansion--land that used to be a slaveowning sugar plantation--waited on by Black servants; giving hefty donations to the biggest White church (vehicles of imperialism & colonialism--"Gold, God, and Glory"); gaining who knows how much money that had been seeded and fertilized by nothing but the exploitation of Black men & women--slavery & prostitution both.

Louis' character is defined by his vampirism--even before he's ever made a vampire. Vampires are predacious parasitical leeches. They are voracious insatiable carnivorous bottomless pits that just eateateat; consuming but never being fulfilled--Hungry Ghosts.

Of course Louis would be attracted to real estate (HOMES); since buying, selling & developing property is in his French White ancestors' colonial settler drug-addicting sugar-growing plantation-owning blood (FOOD). When his father up & died and Lou inherited the DPDL estate, Louis HAD to learn how to successfully run land & shops & people; so he could keep his bougie AF family afloat.

When he ran Storyville, he owned multiple businesses, not just brothels, and was apparently a very good landlord. (Ironically, we also know how quick Louis is to evict a mofo & take their deed--just ask Antoinette, Lestat & Armand! XD) Of course Louis would turn from making art to selling art as an art dealer--Louis is fashionable, and he knows what people like, even if he himself can't produce or even mimic it (like Santiago, Armand, Marius, & Lestat can). We saw Mr. "Fire Escape" Louis flex his skills with the Alderman's racist lawyer dabbling in effery in 1x3; and when Lou renovated the old-timey Fairplay and made it the slicker hipper & more popular Art Deco-themed Azalea.

Louis built a microcosm of the Savage Garden at the Azalea; a tiny corner of hedonistic paradise (full of "hookers, hooch, and cards"), where men could live out their fantasies (SEX). He inspired Armand to even conceptualize Night Island--as Armand realized he needed a better/another companion to teach him about modernity, technology, treasure-hunting, etc. And together, they lived in the neo-capitalist hellscape of Dubai for who knows how long--I wouldn't be surprised if they had a direct hand in its vampiric development.

Louis' character is also defined by his delusional hypocrisy; always tryna justify his place in the world (and the space he wastes/takes up) by tryna do "good" things, to balance out the evil.

During Jim Crow, so many Black people suffered under socio-economic inequality & oppression--even Black folk lighter-skinned than Lou, as seen with Bricktop, Lily, and even BBass!Claudia; all living in the worst slums of Storyville; deriving not a single drop of privilege/benefits their mixed/white ancestry might've given them in better circumstances; other than the dubious Pretty Privilege that made them sexually exploitable as prostitutes, etc.

book/show!Lou's a HUGE exploiter; not just as a slaveowner/pimp, but also as a father; using Claudia to boost his ego and save his marriage. Lou FAILED at being a father, cuz he couldn't relate/connect to the wants & needs of a growing girl/woman past his own self-centered aims. And Lou FAILED at being an artist, cuz he couldn't relate/connect with the human(ist) soul; and rage-quit cuz of his hurt pride/ego, rather than paying attention to what the art deal was saying (albeit condescendingly).

The one thing Lou took pride in that he was actually good at was his status as a businessman/capitalist--exploiting/relying on middle-men to produce/create things for him to buy & sell at a profit. (His failures as a businessman in NOLA were solely cuz of racist white men & the Ordinances that shut down Storyville.) At the end of the day, know thyself, and capitalize on one's strengths. So that's what he did. And cuz capitalism is evil AF, as a vampire, he's pretty good at it, LOL.

[qsycomplainsalot]

Lindybeige is Either an Idiot or an Asshole

Most Likely Both

--There could be more flattering ways to put it, but he's never once given us that favor so why should I. His videos are wildly speculative and often based in cherry-picked British sources, when they come with any sources at all - see his masturbatory piece about the Bren vs the “Spandau”.

--There are two videos that I absolutely loathe at the edges of my youtube recommendations, both just filled to the brim with misinformation and logical contrivances. Videos that neckbeards will endlessly quote at me without question, taking a frustratingly long amount of time to untangle by which point they'd have usually lost interest already. The first one is Shadiversity's video about boob armor, the other is Lindybeige's video about the French Resistance.

--This video will have you believe that the French Resistance on its own did nothing of worth, based in great part on the fact that De Gaulle glamorized its contribution to the war for political status. I cannot stress this enough, just because De Gaulle used the general idea of the Resistance to smooth over a lot of Vichy war crimes and restore national unity does not mean the Resistance did not exist as a capable fighting force. --The very first more specific argument he offers to support his view -if you ignore “ME AND ME PA FOUND THAT VERY FONNY”- is that most of the French armor was American-made and provided through the lend-lease policy, making French people less deserving of credit in winning World War 2. I assume that in his mind that would diminish the contribution of the French Resistance to war efforts, even though these tanks and armored fighting vehicles were used by the Free French Army, not the Resistance at any point of its existence, making the point moot while also conveniently ignoring that the United Kingdom received ten times the aid France did through that same program.

--The image is from War Thunder because it makes for a better glamor shot than having it stand behind a museum fence or in black and white.

--His next argument implies that De Gaulle was "allowed" to walk in the liberated Paris ahead of Allied troops to give a speech that solidified the myth of the Resistance I mentioned. Again, in this passing, deceptive comment, Lindybeige implies that De Gaulle walked in after the fact and that Allied forces did the heavy lifting, only allowing him to do his speech a their convenience. Even a cursory amount of research will tell you that Paris was in fact liberated by the FFI, the Parisian people themselves and Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division composed of Metropolitan and Colonial French with Spanish elements, supported only on the very last day by the US 4th Infantry Division and a special British unit sent to gather intelligence. --Following this, he quotes the speech De Gaulle delivered in front of the town hall the day the German garrison surrendered, but cuts it short of the part in said speech mentioning “the help of our dear and admirable Allies” to then call De Gaulle ungrateful, which I have a hard time believing could be anything but intentionally deceptive. He then goes on to claim that the French Resistance was not organized by De Gaulle but by the British, justifying the ludicrous claim with 'they didn’t tell him because French intelligence services were bad and would have leaked all of it’. This is of course ignoring the fact that De Gaulle had personally sent Jean Moulin back to France for the exact purpose of organizing the five big Resistance movements into one organization, which he did, creating the Council for National Resistance that played a major role in the liberation of Paris. How the British would have any hand in this may be explained by his further comments, where he goes on to say that agents of the organization preceding the MI6 had been infiltrated in the Resistance to organize it, which begs the question of who's responsible for it being a non-effective combat force if it had been the case. He then gives us a voice in a sarcastic tone by saying, “of course you and your British bias would say that !” but does not really address it. Because honestly yeah, you and your British bias would say that.

--After quickly rambling that there were too many people in France and not enough bushes for all people to join the Resistance, which I have to admit is an extremely pointed and pertinent thing to say in a video downplaying the efforts and suffering of thousands of people fighting back against Nazi occupation under constant threat of torture and execution if caught, he mentions that the German forced labor system had severely depleted France’s manpower of fighting age. He says that by 1944, only teenagers and decrepit middle aged men were left to fight in the Resistance, to the great disappointment of the British agents he mentioned earlier. According to him, this meant France lacked the manpower and the communication capability required to pull the Resistance off, which is again contradicted by the actions of Jean Moulin, who had seemingly managed to access both before his death.

--There are a few problems with that argument. The Service de Travail Obligatoire, STO for short, was a system put in place by Vichy France to supply Germany with civilian manpower to make up for their own shortfalls due to the Eastern front. Because Vichy had negotiated a relative independence compared to other occupied country, its own government was responsible for the order, although it was in almost every point similar to forced labor orders in Denmark or the Netherlands. Now the STO did deprive France of over six hundred thousand young men, many of them skilled workers. However as an incentive given by the Nazis, every three forced laborer sent to Germany would lead to the release of one French POW, meaning that as far as manpower was concerned, France pretty much lost only four hundred thousand men and received qualified military personnel for its trouble. Not only is it hardly the manpower drain pictured by Lindybeige, it also ignores that many of these forced laborers, my grandfather included, immediately skipped work and joined either the Resistance or Allied military regulars after operation Overlord, as they were not as tightly surveilled as POWs and minorities in concentration/death camps. It also bears mentioning that it was teenagers, dismissed by Lindybeige as a negligible quantity, that acted as reconnaissance troops for the Free French using their motorbikes to scout and guide the way to the German Kommandantur. In any case, most members of the FFI integrated the regular French army after the liberation of Paris, meaning they were definitely of fighting age. Of course that whole argument is dropped as soon as he brings in British involvement, at which point he finally points out how the Resistance disabled most of the railway network and stopped the famously lightning-fast German army from facing the Allied invasion properly. For their role in this sabotage, a hundred fifty Resistance members working for the French national railway company were shot and another five hundred deported.

--To put it simply, Lindybeige dismisses the Resistance as a useless, wasteful and infighting group of functional morons, while every successful operation they carried out, every display of good mobility and coordination is attributed to British uniformed soldiers overseeing it. In reality most of that effort was done by either agents of the French government in exile or the Allied command under Eisenhower, with no account mentioning any significant autonomous British involvement which stands to reason as De Gaulle and Churchill could not stand one another. In fact Lindybeige tries to pass off operation Jedburgh as a purely British operation while it was specifically a joint one with American, British, French, Belgian and Dutch operatives all along the Atlantic coast.

--The next part is baffling. Lindybeige points at the Allies stopping their shipments of weapons to the French Resistance after July 44 and justifies it by saying the various cells were fighting each other and were uncoordinated. Thank god the Brits stopped sending arms or there would have been a civil war between these silly French Resistance members. Of course what happened in August was the liberation of Paris followed by the integration of the FFI into the new French army, which would go on to liberate the rest of the country. But Lindybeige pushes this civil war angle pretty hard, calling at this point of the video both Vichy France and the Resistance to be pro French in a way and underlining the conflicts between the two as a reason why the weapon shipments stopped coming, with examples such as Resistance members exacting reprisals against Nazi collaborators, which is a completely moot point because Vichy France and collaborators had nothing to do with the Resistance and were in fact, at this point of time, recognized as the enemy by all Allied forces, meaning acts of resistance against them would in no way prompt Allied command to stop supporting the French Resistance. Lindybeige goes so far as to say that the OSS and British secret service stopping the weapon shipments in August 1944 legitimately prevented an outright civil war between the different cells of the French Resistance, which was in actuality pretty unified in its support to De Gaulle at this point thanks to the efforts of Jean Moulin as discussed previously. This hardly gels with the events following August 1944, where the members of the Resistance and FFI were enlisted in the Free French Army and were therefore issued American military equipment and training to function as regular troops. Now stop me if I'm wrong but it appears that in Lindybeige's mind all French people were ready to tear each other apart until the British stopped sending them pipe guns, after which the Americans sent them tanks which obviously disabled their ability to start a civil war.

--Two French colonial soldiers using a blend of Allied gear during the winter of 1944-45. They are presumably thinking of killing each other.

--Much like the Phantom Menace review this is addressing a piece of media were essentially everything is wrong, hence the length of this post. Lindybeige has obviously researched the topic to great length, then ignored half of it to record 17mn of vague, dismissive and unsubstantiated claim that each take an equal amount of time to debunk. He present the facts as if everything that happened on British soil was under British orders so as to make the French Resistance only effective on their accord, all the while disregarding the French government in exile and slandering the efforts of French people but also inadvertently of the Americans. It is my honest belief that this sad excuse of an historian is either profoundly lacking in literacy or actively trying to justify his xenophobia by bending WW2 historiography around his bias, and whatever it may be he should be deplatformed to avoid spreading more harmful and disrespectful lies about a group of brave men and women who fought to liberate their country from fascism.

[lemonthepotato]

Narratives Schools Teach Us About Language Learning That I Dislike

Maybe this is rich for a monolingual to say, but I hate this narrative we’re told growing up that English speakers are just “lazy” when it comes to learning other languages. It’s a lie, and honestly, I think it just blatantly ignores the reasoning why English is so widely learned… cough, colonialism. The school system? Not wanting to teach us things that might us uncomfortable or break the historical narratives? Never heard of that before. Sarcasm.

No, other countries aren’t just super intelligent compared to English natives (I find intelligence narratives in general rooted in… many things). The reason why someone living in Wales might not speak fluent Italian is the same reason why someone living in Japan probably doesn’t speak fluent English, why would they? Well, also the fact English education in Japan is the equivalent of Spanish education in American classrooms… not very good, but mainly the lack of a need to speak it.

And that’s not laziness, it’s that the human brain is wired to go with the more practical options, the ‘easy’ ways. This is why I believe motivation to be a myth, something I have been reminding myself recently as I go through a pretty fucking difficult time in my life. Motivation isn’t something you strive for in order to be productive, it’s something that makes you want to be productive. Does that make sense? Motivation is the reason we do things, it can’t be forced.

It’s not lazy for someone living in America to not know fluent French… because they don’t live in France, so the chances that they’ll need to speak French, unless they’re living in certain parts of Maine or Vermont or something, are low. The same is true for other countries.

I don’t think language learning should be shamed into people. From a young age, it’s driven into us that the lack of proficiency is our fault, not the system’s, based on a lack of discipline. My high school forced us to take two language courses, and sometimes you wouldn’t even end up where you wanted regarding that.

I feel like this narrative just further discourages people from learning other languages- you’re not “skilled” enough. If you don’t have the time to learn it, you’re just not “motivated” enough. Let’s ignore the fact that unless your only hobby is being a polyglot (based tho) you have other shit to attend to- you’re just “lazy.”

I think the easiest language for someone to learn is the one you can immerse yourself in easiest. After putting myself through two weeks of nothing but Japanese content with minimal grammar study, I also think ‘immersion’ is overhyped. I think “you’re not immersing enough” is the new form of shaming, honestly. But I’ve learned from my mistakes, so I’m learning about Spanish grammar before I immerse. Spanish? Yes, I’ve switched to Spanish. Why? Well, growing up I tried learning many languages, and ended up giving up and throwing 5 years into lazily ‘learning’ Esperanto. Didn’t really work, I could form sentences but vocabulary was lacking and relied on google translate. I truly believe duolingo doesn’t work, even for ‘easy’ languages.

But, anyway, I felt shame for the fact I couldn’t learn a ‘harder’ language. But you know what? Don’t let anyone shame you out of learning an “easy” language. I wanted to learn Japanese and French too because I felt like I would’ve been too lazy or basic learning Spanish, but let me tell you, there is nothing wrong with learning an “easy” language. I don’t even believe there are languages “easy” for English speakers based on objective difficulty.

I think it’s about how much you can expose yourself to the language more so, though, yeah, obviously an English speaker will struggle more with learning Mandarin Chinese than French. But like. I think having a “beginner” language that you learn is perfectly fine. You’re learning a language and that’s okay. And also, don’t let people do the opposite either, and shame you out of learning a “harder” or even more obscure language. Just do what works for you.

I’m focusing more on Spanish because it’s easier to expose myself to; that’s all. Sure, learning Japanese sounds like fun, but it’s not practical. I think it’s okay to look at a language, study it a bit, but not aim for total fluency. I think you can appreciate a language without focusing so much on the end goal. Yeah, sure, if you want to learn Frisian (a language pretty close to English, so probably ‘easier’) but you think you’ll get more coolness points for learning Korean… you can do that. But you don’t have to start now. You can look at a language and think “I like this. I’ll study this from time to time. I appreciate this language” without feeling like a failure for not understanding it.

This goes for non-native English speakers, by the way, or people who speak very different languages than English. You’re not a failure for not understanding it. I also think there’s a discussion to be had about the opposite; shaming people for NOT speaking English. I’ve actually heard stories of people going to Japan and being upset that they can’t communicate with Japanese people. Yeah, uh, you’re in JAPAN? What are you expecting?

So, fuck it, I don’t care if learning Spanish will make me “basic.” Not everyone has to be a hyperpolyglot and there seems to be a weird internet measuring contest of who can learn the most languages. Also, I find it really funny when people assume I can speak Irish because I’m Irish. It’s actually very hard to learn Irish unless you live in very specific parts of Ireland, trust me.

What the fuck was I even talking about again? I went on a tangent about how I was basically like a weeb but for American culture growing up and then deleted it. Try growing up on the internet and not developing a half-American half-Irish accent. Btw despite people telling me that, I was never really aware I had an Irish accent. I used to not really care about my culture growing up, honestly, especially since I’m detached from it, but I kinda like being Irish, now. Will I ever learn Irish, though? PFFT. No. Irish class in high school KILLED my motivation because not only did I want to learn Spanish & French but got stuck in the Spanish & Irish classes, but I’m convinced that language teachers don’t even know or care about the languages they’re teaching.

Anyway, I swear I had a point with this post… see, sometimes I want to make well-structured essays on this app, but I’m just too incoherent, man. Oh, speaking of languages, considering Co09 the flip side came out and sucked, it made me curious if there was any Spanish fandubs of the original games. And you know what? There was a trailer for one a year ago, but it has like, 1,000 views, which sucks! Oh, yeah, another reason why I want to focus on Spanish > Japanese is that a lot more media I like is available in Spanish than Japanese. Also, Spanish has, like, an easier barrier of entry? Japanese has kanji.

You know, a lot of people shit on kanji, but I think I can acknowledge “it makes things 10x harder for me, but that’s okay.” Like, for me, the thing with kanji isn’t even the amount of kanji, it’s how many strokes some kanji have! I have poor eyesight 😭 at the same time, though, removing kanji from Japanese is like… I think it would get confusing fast because from what I’ve heard, it’s like, uh, okay, what’s a metaphor I can use? Imagine removing contractions from English but if 80% of English was contracted. Actually, avoiding using contractions was something I did as a young teen… for some reason. I just felt a need to speak “proper” or else I was bad or improper. But it’s just awkward. Sorry, “it is” just awkward.

Another thing- I’ve kinda grown to hate Esperanto. It’s really hard to immerse yourself in a conlang, and honestly, I should’ve just spent those 5 years learning Spanish instead of losing confidence. If you’re going to learn a language that’s very similar to English, kinda easier for an English speaker, why not learn the one that’s actually practical? Also, I know I said language learning shouldn’t be about impressing people, but I just- I don’t even like Esperanto anymore! I’m kinda embarrassed about it, frankly. It’s not even a good auxlang. Though, I will say, people who say Toki Pona is better as an auxlang are kinda funny. Imagine you’re in a burning building and trying to communicate with your Spanish friend in Toki Pona. You’d spend more time thinking about how to say “fire!” than running out the building. So, honestly, I think Esperanto is better in that regard, but I think Toki Pona is a better language because it accomplished its goal. To be fair, though, I think Esperanto kinda gets an unfair rep. Like, yeah, it didn’t age the best, but back then, there wasn’t really any social media, Zamenhof was polish, so it’s not like he could make the perfect auxlang with all languages considered. Nowadays, if you want to know more about a language, you can just use google. Back then, Wikipedia didn’t really exist.

Also, really depressing fact about Esperanto is that people were killed in WW2 for speaking Esperanto. I wonder how much of Esperanto’s lack of success has to do with the historical repression/censorship of the language. To be honest, I don’t even know if it’s possible to make a “good” universal auxlang.

But honestly, I find the fact English is such a widely spoken language more depressing than anything. So many non-natives learn English because it’s inescapable.

The moral of the story is that if you speak another language and want me to learn it, just refuse to speak English to me. The social pressure will be too embarrassing and I will buy 10 Swedish textbooks or Bengali or Serbian. Okay, I have no idea why those were the first three languages I thought of.

Anyway, I hope nothing in this post comes off the wrong way. Overall, I think that people being colonised into learning English, and then the education system putting individual blame onto English young children for not being “smart” or “motivated” enough to learn a foreign language, is, er… definitely problematic. I also think it’s bullshit to get mad at foreign people for not knowing English, too, obviously. Just like, be chill, god damn. Language learning should be done out of a genuine desire to learn a language.

[sissa-arrows]

by settler/coloniser do you mean like, west bank settlers and the like (i mean actively settling or whatever. i hope you understand what im trying to say) or like all descendants of settlers who may no longer have a settler role like idk some guy in jaffa whose grandparents were settlers but he himself is just. a guy and doesn't own property etc etc.

asking bc in the first sense i fully agree with you but i saw too many leftists embrace a practically ethnic definition of coloniser which i find rather disagreeable

ps this is not meant to be like an attack i am curious

First of all this is how I personally view things and I’m Algerian not Palestinian so my definition is not a rule. At the end of the day my opinion, our collective opinions don’t matter in the scale compared to Palestinians’ opinions. I’m still choosing to answer because I don’t think Palestinians should carry that burden alone BUT if a Palestinian read this and think I’m overstepping send me a DM I will delete my post without any arguing.

Now to answer the actual question. All Israelis are settlers excluding the rare Palestinians who have the citizenship but then those are Palestinians not Israelis. Settlers = colonizers = non indigenous people permanently living in a settler colony.

The difference between the settler in the West Bank and the settler in Jaffa is not that it’s them doing the settling or their grandparents. Both live on stolen land that does not belong to them and never will. So both are settlers. The difference is somewhere else. The settler in the West Bank is fucked. He is unredeemable because he is doing the colonizing himself right now. He should leave that’s the only option. Now the guy in Yaffa there’s more nuance to it.

That guy whose grandparents were settlers and therefore stole Palestinian land… he is still living on stolen land even if he is not a land owner even if he didn’t do the stealing himself… he is still benefiting from settler colonialism. He doesn’t get to just wash his hands and pretend he is not involved because his grandparents did it not him.

Is he actively fighting against Israeli colonialism? Is he in favor of giving ALL the land back to indigenous people aka Palestinians with the right of return for the Palestinian refugees and one single Palestinian country where those who fought for its liberation could stay and live with equal rights regardless of religion? If the answer is yes he is still a settler BUT he is a redeemable settler he can get rid of his status of settler by helping get rid of settler colonialism. If the answer is no if he just sits there thinking the status quo is good enough thinking the problem is Netanyahu or any other politician when the real problem is Israel itself because it’s a settler colony, then he is a settler AND he can go fuck himself too.

Living in a settler colony as a non indigenous person means that you cannot be neutral. You cannot just exist. You are either a settler trying to end settler colonialism (and in the process put an end to your status as a settler) or a settler supporting settler colonialism.

The “suitcases carriers” I mentioned. They were still settlers (excluding the mainlanders who helped Algerians in France). They just made the right decision and stood for the liberation of Algeria. That decision led to the end of French settler colonialism which put an end to their settler status. By fighting to end settler colonialism they freed themselves of being settlers. It even allowed those who wanted to stay to do so and stay as Algerians.

Lastly I want to add that a settler colony cannot create people who do not have racist bias against the indigenous people of the land they occupy. So one also needs to actively work to unlearn those bias because even settlers who fight for the liberation of indigenous people have those bias.

[their-name-is-fake]

I know it seems like I talk a lot about Algeria, but i really think some of yall should look into its revolutionary war. Not just like the general strokes but I mean get INTO it. There are some revolutionary fighters I think some of yall really need to know, especially in relation to Palestine and their revolution.

Morocco is another one that’s overlooked because TECHNICALLY it wasn’t a war, but I promise you France had no interest in letting Morocco go either, and they did some real messed up stuff in an attempt to keep Morocco as a “protectorate” like CIA type torture on children type stuff.

That’s why anytime France is pro something, you have to look at it with a grain of salt. To provide context, one of Frances most well known in generals during the Algerian revolutionary war, still believes that the Algerians were terrorists. This was an interview given like 30 years ago.

I’m just saying, I think a lot of people who are neutral, or even pro Palestinian could learn a lot from the Algerian war of independenceAnd the Moroccan peoples fight against the French. I think, in general Africas fight against colonialism is often washed in a way to make it seem far more pacifist, or in some cases, as if the white community came to stop the atrocities, as opposed to what really happened, which was that the natives revolted and spilled blood.

Either way, y’all should really know some of these revolutionaries and some of the tactics used.

[on-partiality]

Today's the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party so here's some information on the Sons of Liberty, the lead up to the Boston Tea Party and what happened after!

apologies for any inaccuracies, I wrote this pretty late

The conflict between the American colonies and New England started after the French and Indian war ended with the Treaty of Paris on the 10th of February, 1763. The French and Indian war started because of conflicting territory claims in North America between the British and the French. Originally it was fought between only the British Americans and the French colonists with Native Americans helping on either side (especially with the French because they were severely outnumbered). However two years into the war the United Kingdom - except for ireland - decided enough was enough and officially declared a war with France which started a large world-wide conflict over many territories. In the end, the war was won by the Colonial Americans and British, the French lost all of their North American territory and what used to be their territory was split somewhat evenly between the Spanish and the British but that was only sorted out after the British fought in a war against the Spanish called the Anglo-Spanish war (the first one). So a victory, that sounds good for America right? Wrong. Wars are expensive, maintaining an army is expensive and the British were dealing with many other wars in all different territories at around the same time so England had a national debt of nearly 177.645 MILLION modern day USD.

England had a HUGE poverty crisis. They had to come up with a way to get money and quickly so on April the 5th 1764 the British parliament amended their pre-existing Sugar and Molasses Act. A tax on the importation of wine, molasses, indigo and sugar from places that weren't part of Britain, mainly the non-British Caribbean. This act also banned all foreign rum. Then on March the 22nd, 1765 the British parliament passed the stamp act. A tax on playing cards, newspapers, legal documents. The main problem with this tax was that it couldn't be paid in the paper money used in the 13 colonies, it had to be paid off using the British Sterling which wasn't easy to obtain in America. That and paper was possibly the most important resource in the 18th century. Later in October 1765, a Stamp Act Congress was held in Philadelphia to discuss all of the problems with this act. Then on March the 24th the British passed the Quartering Act which stated that if British troops want to stay at your house you have to provide them with food and let them inside of your house. This was a clear invasion of two very basic rights of Englishmen, private property and personal security.

The Americans fought back against these acts like with Boston's non-importation agreement where merchants from Boston agreed not to buy or sell anything from/to Britain and the Golden Hill riot in New York and the Gaspée Affair which was when a group burned a British ship while the soldiers were off looking for smugglers in Rhode Island, the group was then accused of treason. The most notable of all of these protests though was the later Boston Tea Party.

The Boston Tea Party happened because of a group called the Sons of Liberty which was created in 1765 out of a strong hatred of the Stamp Act. They believed that it was ridiculous that the British could tax the Americans when the Americans didn't even have a representative in parliament, their phrase was 'no taxation without representation'. There's a lot of dispute over what kind of organisation the Sons of Liberty actually was. I might go into all of the theories in another post but for the moment if you want to come up with your own idea on it I suggest looking into them yourself, for this post I'm just going to call them a group or organisation because it's pretty ambiguous. Anyway, the Sons of Liberty usually met at liberty poles/liberty trees which are believed to have been marked as meeting places using the Sons of Liberty's flag. The group was founded in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay colony and it's leader was Samuel 'Sam' Adams.

The Sons of Liberty's first big really move was to burn an effigy of the local Stamp Act enforcer, Andrew Oliver and then burn his office and destroyed the house of his associate. The group's protests were more often then not violent but they got their points across. It didn't help when the Boston Massacre happened in 1770, which only further outraged the colonists, expect the Boston Massacre to get it's own in depth post one day because the court trial was super interesting. Then on the 10th of May, 1773 the British made another act called the Tea Act which made it so that the colonists had to pay more for tea that wasn't legally imported. The Tea Act was meant to help the British East India Tea Company because they were making most of Britains money and they'd gone into a huge debt which caused 20-30 English banks to collapse and started the British Credit Crisis of 1772-1773. The problem was that because the imported tea from Britain was really cheap people didn't buy from local businesses which caused farmers to go completely bankrupt. The Tea Act was the final straw for the Sons of Liberty and many Americans.

Britain sent a shipment of East India Company Tea to America and all of the American colonies that the tea was going to be sent to convinced the people on the ship to resign except for Massachusetts. So the Dartmouth, a ship full of tea arrived in Boston Harbour, Samuel Adams called for a meeting at Fanueuil Hall and thousands of people turned up so they had to move meeting places. During the meeting the Colonists discussed possible resolutions, they decided to have a medium group of men watching the tea to make sure it wouldn't be unloaded and pleaded for the ship to leave. The governor of Massachusetts refused to let the ship leave and two more ships arrived. On December the 16th, 1773, Samuel Adams met with the people of Massachusetts again to tell them about the governors refusal, the meeting caused total fury amongst all of the colonists.

In protest of the Tea Act and all of the other taxes the British had put on the Americans, the people ran out of the meeting room, some of them put on Native American costumes both in an attempt to conceal their identity because what they were about to do was illegal and as a symbolic choice to show that America's their country, not Britain. They then ran onto the 3 tea ships while Samuel Adams was telling everyone to calm down and stay for the end of the meeting. And spent 3 hours hurling all of the chests of tea into the water.

The British did not respond well, they believed that the Colonists needed to be punished so they passed the infamous Intolerable Acts which consisted of the Boston Port Act, meant to force Boston to pay for the tea by closing the port until the people of Boston paid for the tea which the Colonists argued was unfair because it was punishing the whole population for something only about half of them did, the Massachusetts Government Act which changed the way that the government of Massachusetts worked by giving people appointed by the British Parliament/King far more power, this made it easier for the British government to manage the Massachusetts Bay colony from England, the Administration of Justice Acts which state that any accused Royal officials can get a trial in England if they don't believe that they would be judged fairly in Massachusetts - which seems like a strange thing to add given how the Boston Massacre trial with John Adams went? - And I've already talked about the last intolerable act, the Quartering act which states that you have to let British troops stay in your house if they want to and you have to give them food.

[teecupangel]

So I had this idea of Connor meeting adéwale who gets a sense of deja vu but can’t pinpoint from whereand the two of them teaming up to find the son of adewale’s friend and Connor’s father both not realizing that they are looking for the same person until they have a run in with haytham and adewale having a lot of things of Connor suddenly make sense with the reveal

So this would be a bit hard considering Shay killed Adéwalé while Ratonhnhaké:ton was just a kid but we can fudge it a bit. They did talk a bit after Shay struck him down so we can make this a case of “he almost died but he didn’t”.

Let’s say one of Adéwalé’s crewmembers survived and found him, dragging him out of danger and helping him survive.

During that time, Adéwalé dreams of Edward Kenway, of the past they shared, the letters they sent to one another…

When he wakes up, months have passed and he was still too weak that he could barely walk.

He had been transported to Port-au-Prince and being taken care of by his son, Babatunde Josèphe. His son tells him to rest and that they’re trying to get in contact with the Colonial Assassins but with no luck. Messengers either return empty handed, talking about the danger and the heightened Templar presence, or they do not return at all.

The Templars had the colonies under their control and it was becoming too dangerous to try and infiltrate the colonies while Shay Cormac, the Assassin Hunter, is on the hunt.

Adéwalé can’t do anything but try to heal his weak body, his mind dwelling deeper and deeper into the darkness the more news they hear about what had happened to the Assassins in the colonies.

The Assassins Adéwalé knew.

By the time he was strong enough, the damage had been done and the Brotherhood were too busy in France and Britain. Their letters asking Achilles if he needed help only being met with silence.

But Adéwalé knew he needed to go back there.

No.

He needed to see Haytham Kenway.

And kill him.

Even if it was the last thing he did.

Haytham Kenway had destroyed what the Kenway stand for, what Edward had worked so hard to create.

As Edward’s friend…

As his only remaining friend…

It was Adéwalé’s duty to destroy the last remaining Kenway before more damage could be done.

His son tells him he was projecting his guilt and anger to someone else.

His grandson did not understand why he was leaving.

Adéwalé was part of the past and he was dragging Haytham Kenway with him if it was the last thing he would do.

So he returns to the colonies and meets up with Achilles.

That’s when he meets up with the young man learning under Achilles.

Ratonhnhaké:ton.

There was something about him that reminded Adéwalé of Edward Kenway…

So he took Ratonhnhaké:ton under his wings as well and Achilles didn’t say anything. Ratonhnhaké:ton never told Adéwalé about his father by name because Achilles had told him months before Adéwalé had returned that he should keep it a secret.

Being known as Haytham Kenway’s son would only put him in danger.

So Ratonhnhaké:ton kept quiet.

And they formed a bond with Adéwalé assisting him.

Where Achilles pushed for caution, Adéwalé supported any way he can.

Ratonhnhaké:ton was free, like Edward. It would only serve to push him away if they try to chain him down.

The best way to support Ratonhnhaké:ton was to help him.

And then…

That faithful winter day…

In an abandoned church…

Ratonhnhaké:ton and Adéwalé come face to face with the man they were both searching for.