#or people are being violently colonised

[misspermitted]

Barbecues this. Tim tams that. Come on guys, be honest, Australian culture is complaining about the government but refusing any systemic change

[jayktoralldaylong]

One of my favourite things about Arcane is that all the couples can be read as toxic, which is GREAT.

I'm tired of people bringing morality debates into dark media. Let dark media be fucking dark. You guys wouldn't survive a day in the TMA fandom, needing everyone to be as good as gold. How are they going to make for enjoyable complex characters if they're not morally grey. In fact, I wish there'd been more expansion on just how morally black they can become!

"CaitVi is so toxic" According to lesbian statistics, that sounds just about accurate. 💀 Heck, I wish Caitlyn had done more (Not really, but it would have been nice to further explore the darkness in her heart). Isn't it adorable how she immediately folded as soon as Vi called her cupcake? Caitlyn's like one of those villains that will consistently do the most....until it comes to someone else hurting her girlfriend. The only one allowed to hurt her girlfriend is her. 💀

Then let's talk about Vi. Someone pointed out how Vi never cared about Zaun's independence in the first place and many people yelled that they were wrong. But actually, they were right. Vi never wanted Zaun. Zaun was Silco's dream, and Jinx inherited that dream cause Silco would never shut up about it. Vi wanted Piltover to take responsibility for all the shit they allowed to happen in the Undercity. That's a part of the reason she joined up with Caitlyn in the first place. Let's not forget she wasn't dissuaded when she dragged Jayce down to fight with her and he killed a child. Children been dying, it's been her whole life. Someone needed to do something about it, and Zaun would have just isolated the people from all the privileges that Piltover SHOULD have been providing for them. Some people just can't accept that Independence cannot in fact solve every problem, and sometimes independence is colonisers running away from the responsibility of fixing the mess that they started in the first place.

Besides, we all know Vi joined up with the Enforcers because "I feel like I am worthless if I can't be of service." She'd already run out of family members to serve, Caitlyn was the next best thing. She's just like Jayce.

And speaking of Jayce, let's talk about his violent levels of codependency with anyone who'll give him attention. People LOOOOVE to talk about Mel, but it's there with Viktor too. When bro wasn't basing his worth on his inventions, he was centering it around Viktor.

Viktor who decided at some point in his life that he would not LIVE without Jayce. He was fine dying without him, but living without him was unacceptable. Oh how healthy. 🙄😂 Viktor be the kind of toxic ex to threaten divorce 500 times over, then burn the world when you actually leave him. Jayce is no better cause he's the kind of guy to keep going back to his toxic Ex.

Yes, Mel is manipulative. That's what I love about her. How are you guys failing to give this woman the praise of being an outsider in Piltover, but running their entire council. 💀 Girl raises her hand once and the whole government starts spinning. She was the best sugar mummy Jayce and Viktor could ever ask for. She kept the whole city running. Literally the entire of Piltover dancing on her palm. And yes she manipulated Jayce but let's not forget she thought that was a love language. 💀 You wanna be mad at someone, be mad at Ambessa for raising her that way.

I also don't think it's fair to blame her for the Undercity situation, she's not native. Monkey see, monkey do, and not a single one of those Council members actually cared about the situation down there, it was deplorable. 💀 Jayce did way more in his two weeks as Councillor than any of those drug pushing, money laundering, Piltovian heads of government.

And that just covers MelJayVik, we don't even need to get fully into TimeBomb, cause we know what's wrong there. 💀 Surely we have not forgotten the many teammates Jinx has killed, but making sure to never kill Ekko cause that's her man. Ekko has a lot to unpack, like how his consistent and unwavering love for Jinx is an indication of a lot of doors he might not be ready to open. I know they dynamics go crazy and I love to see it.

Ambessa and Sevika are a crack ship but I'm sure we all know bedroom dynamics go crazy with Mrs. Warlord and Miss Liberation. I love it when characters clash in a toxic heap. It's insane and should be explored.

Quit saintifying my toxic ships with your woke morality debates. If you want everyone to be sunshine and rainbows then you should be watching literally anything else. 💀 "It's not healthy." GOOD, I like it that way. 💀 Angst, spice and trauma are the recipe for a plethora of explorative fanfiction. Any of their dynamics can be taken in any toxic direction and I want that EXPLORED.

[zingay]

No Israeli was raped, no Israeli children were beheaded, the hostages are treated better than Israel treats anyone who isn't jewish, and even the stupid zionist bitch everyone is martyring is apparently still alive and being treated in a PALESTINIAN HOSPITAL

Meanwhile, Palestinian people have been routinely raped by IOF (men AND women), are being bombarded nonstop in a way never seen before, babies and children are being pulled out of rubble dead, their only exits blocked or destroyed, a complete blockade and shutting down all food transport, electricity and water, medics and press being targetted to cover everything up, Israelis have telegram groups filled with images and videos of Palestinians getting killed and laughing at it, and all of these war crimes are being documented by the fucking facist in charge himself on twitter

Even all their allies are being threatened with war, the Egyptian border already bombed in an attempt to prevent humanitarian aid, Lebanon's border bombed to prevent anyone from providing military aid

And SOMEHOW all of you are mad at the Palestinian people? Calling them savages and animals? You make me fucking sick and I hope you know you're ignorance and stupidity is empowering the violent colonisation happening right now

[ayin-me-yesh]

lrb I am really bothered by the endless questioning I see of Palestinians about their vision for Israelis in a decolonised Palestine

it always seems to come with the following unspoken undertone: "assure me that decolonisation won't be violent and that settlers won't lose their colonial property or else decolonisation isn't worthy of my support and shouldn't happen."

And the thing that really gets me is that they're coming from a belief that an imaginary future possibility of violence or loss of property towards settlers is 100% unacceptable, but the current, ongoing violence and dispossession of Indigenous people must innately BE acceptable because it is the option they will support if they are not assured that decolonisation will cater sufficiently to the settler.

I'm going to spell out our position as settlers in settler colonies: our current position is completely unjust. It was created and is maintained through unimaginable violence.

Decolonisation absolutely should mean settlers do not get to continue being benefactors of injustice. It does mean that the dispossessed should regain access to their land and regain authority over their resources. That does mean taking them back from the settler apparatus.

How violent that process is is entirely dependent on the settlers. Settlers can absolutely side with the colonised. They can support justice for Indigenous people. They can support Indigenous sovereignty movements.

Working class settlers can understand class warfare through the lens of colonialism and fight for shared freedom from the ruling class and justice for Indigenous people. Marginalised communities can see how their marginalisations revolve around colonial paradigms and fight alongside Indigenous peoples to dismantle them.

But if settlers choose to violently uphold a system of theft and murder against Indigenous communities, those communities have a right to resist. Including with violence.

Where settlers in Palestine fit into a free Palestine is up to them. And settlers in Aotearoa, in Australia, and in Turtle Island also need to make those choices.

But do understand that settler colonialism is always genocidal. Is always police states and police brutality. Is always war. Is always dehumanisation. Is always homelessness and statelessness and loss of autonomy. The status quo IS violence in the absolute most extreme. And Indigenous people have a right to fight back.

[kiunlo]

every time i look into the comments section of any fucking post that talks about indigenous people and our land it's always whitefella who are like "okay but how exactly do you think 'giving the land back' is going to work". you are TELLING ON YOURSELF if the first thing that you think when you think of landback is of indigenous people taking the land back by force and forcing everyone to move out of the country and killing people if they don't comply. idk how to tell you this but indigenous people are not violent colonisers whose first thoughts are of murder, rape and genocide when it comes to having our land being given back to us. the idea that land cannot be given back to indigenous people because that would cause white people to be without a home is a very white colonialist thing to think, and it is the very mindset and arguments that white people make in order to ensure that indigenous land is NEVER given back to us. if you cannot even think of A SINGLE OTHER WAY that indigenous people can be given back our land that doesn't hurt other people in the process: you have some reflecting to do. not only do you have no imagination, you also are so deep within the white colonialist mindset that peaceful options are completely out of your sight, unable to be thought of and unable to be understood. you have been flashbanged by your own whiteness.

[incessantscreech2000]

Image transcriptions below:

Legendary South African Jewish Freedom Fighters

And Their Condemnation of Israel

Many people don't know that several of Nelson Mandela's closest and earliest comrades and co-conspirators were South African Jews.

These Jewish comrades and their work was pivotal to the defeat of South African apartheid, giving them a unique perspective on the state of Israel.

—

Joe Slovo (1926-1995) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. In 1942, at age 16, Slovo volunteered to travel to Europe to fight the Nazis. Upon return, he studied alongside Nelson Mandela. He eventually was a founding member of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the paramilitary arm of the African National Congress.

Slovo was exiled to Mozambique by the apartheid government. Whilst there, his wife, legendary Jewish anti-apartheid activist Ruth First, was assassinated by a parcel bomb sent by the apartheid regime.

Working from abroad for the fall of apartheid, he eventually returned and became a Minister in Mandela's government. Throughout his life he remained a staunch critic of Israel.

—

"Ironically enough, the horrors of the Holocaust became the rationalization for the preparation by Zionists of acts of genocide against the indigenous people of Palestine. Those of us who, in the years that were to follow, raised our voices against the violent apartheid of the Israeli state were vilified by the Zionist press."

- Joe Slovo

—-

Denis Goldberg (1933-2020) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. He spent 22 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, for his political activity alongside Mandela.

He was finally freed when his daughter, who lived in Israel, lobbied the Israeli government, which was closely allied to the apartheid regime, to release him. Due to his staunch opposition to Zionism, he refused to join her in Israel.

—

"The violence of the [South African] apartheid regime was nothing in comparison with the utter brutality of Israel's occupation of Palestine."

- Denis Goldberg

—

Beata Lipman (1928-2016) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. She drafted the original Freedom Charter in her own handwriting in 1952, which became the basis for the constitution of free South Africa after the fall of apartheid.

Lipman was a proud Jewish critic of Israel, penning many letters condeming Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.

—

"We who have fought against Apartheid and vowed not to allow it to happen again can not allow Israel to continue perpetrating apartheid, colonialism and occupation against the indigenous people of Palestine. We dare not allow Israel to continue violating international law with impunity. Apartheid was a gross violation of human rights. It was so in South Africa and it is so with regard to Israel's persecution of the Palestinians!"

- Beata Lipman in joint letter

—

Ronnie Kasrils is a Jewish South African who was also a founding member and Chief of Intelligence for uMkhonto we Sizwe.

In 1992, Kasrils led an unarmed protest when the apartheid government opened fire, killing 28 of his comrades and injuring over 200 others. He went on to serve in various Ministerial roles after the defeat of apartheid.

In 2001, Kasrils was co-author of the

*Declaration of Conscience by South Africans of Jewish Descent, which calls Israel a colonial apartheid-state. He has drawn criticism for stating that Israel has behaved like the Nazis.

—

"We recognise the operation today by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza as a legitimate expression of their right to resist. We support all efforts of oppressed people to liberate themselves from their oppressors in the same way we did in our liberation struggle.

We are saddened by all violence but Israeli Jews will not realise peace until they accept a future where they will live with Palestinians as citizens in a single, democratic Palestinian state, with Palestinians being compensated for seven decades of colonisation, occupation and apartheid."

- Ronnie Kasrils, 7th October 2023

[vyorei]

Copied from the OG Tweet as it's too long to screenshot. Source is @Jonathan_K_Cook on Twitter:

The missing context for what's happening in Gaza is that Israel has been working night and day to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homeland since even before Israel become a state – when it was known as the Zionist movement.

Israel didn't just cleanse Palestinians in 1948, when it was founded as a Western colonial project, and again under cover of a regional war in 1967.

It also worked to ethnically cleanse Palestinians every day between those dates and afterwards. The aim was to move them off their historic lands, and either expel them beyond Israel’s new, expanded borders or concentrate them into small ghettoes inside those borders – as a holding measure until they could be expelled outside the borders.

The 'settler' project, as we call it, is a misnomer. It's really Israel's ethnic cleansing programme. Israel even has a special word for it in Hebrew: 'Judaisation', or making the land Jewish. It is official government policy.

Gaza was the largest of the Palestinian reservations created by Israel's ethnic cleansing programme, and the most overcrowded. To stop the inhabitants spilling out, Israel built a fence-barrier in the early 1990s to pen them in. Then when policing became too hard from within the prison, Israel pulled back in 2005 to the outer perimeter barrier.

New technology allowed Israel to besiege Gaza remotely by land, sea and air in 2007, limiting the entry of food and vital items like medicine and cement for construction. Automated gun towers shot anyone who came near the fence. The navy patrolled the sea, stopping boats straying more than a kilometre or two off shore. And drones watched 24 hours a day from the sky.

The people of Gaza were sealed in and largely forgotten, except when they lobbed a few rockets over the fence – to international indignation. If they fired too many rockets, Israel bombed them mercilessly and occasionally launched a ground invasion. The rocket threat was increasingly neutralised by a rocket interception system, paid for by the US, called Iron Dome.

Palestinians tried to be more inventive in finding ways to break out of their prison. They built tunnels. But Israel found ways to identify those that ran close to the fence and destroyed them.

Palestinians tried to get attention by protesting en masse at the fence. Israeli snipers were ordered to shoot them in the legs, leading to thousands of amputees. The 'deterrence' seemed to work.

Israel could once again sit back and let the Palestinians rot in Gaza. 'Quiet' had been restored.

Until, that is, last weekend when Hamas broke out briefly and ran amok, killing civilians and soldiers alike.

So Israel now needs a new policy.

It looks like the ethnic cleansing programme is being applied to Gaza anew. The half of the population in the enclave's north is being herded south, where there are not the resources to cope with them. And even if there were, Israel has cut off food, water and power to everyone in Gaza.

The enclave is quickly becoming a pressure cooker. The pressure is meant to build on Egypt to allow the Palestinians entry into Sinai on 'humanitarian' grounds.

Whatever the media are telling you, the 'conflict' – that is, Israel's cleansing programme – started long before Hamas appeared on the scene. In fact, Hamas emerged very late, as the predictable response to Israel's violent colonisation project.

Israel could once again sit back and let the Palestinians rot in Gaza. 'Quiet' had been restored.

Ignore the fake news. Israel isn't defending itself. It's enforcing its right to continue ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

[jewish-sideblog]

I think it's very funny when people on tumblr tell me that "decolonisation is not a metaphor". Because, uh, yeah. I know that. My ancestors were colonised and stripped of our native lands, forced to assimilate and lose our culture, forced to convert and lose our religion. Every day I work to undo that damage. Every day I study Hebrew because my family could not do so safely under colonialism. Every day I pray to a G-d that my people could not safely worship under colonialism. Every day I study and embrace ancient Jewish ways of learning, thinking and being that were lost because of colonialism. I share this knowledge with my family, with my friends, and with my community. As an academic, I am actively involved in attempting to unmake the violent and continued coloniality of my people's homeland, hoping to undo the damage caused by Brits, Romans and Turks. I do that for the benefit of native peoples in the land-- all of them. Jews, Arabs, Druze, Samaritans and Bedu all deserve equality and peace. Decolonization isn't a metaphor to me. It's a constant way of life.

And what are you, non-indigenous American goy on tumblr, doing for your decolonization? Are you learning the Cherokee language? Sioux? Muscogee? Do you spend your spare time meeting with the indigenous tribes local to your area? Do you push your representatives to help those tribes have greater access to land, healthcare, and autonomy? Can you even list the names of the native peoples whose land you walk on without looking them up?

Or does your "decolonisation" look like an occasional land acknowledgement, reblogging lip-service posts about the plights of indigenous communities, and using your political views to justify attacking Jews on the internet? 'Cause patting yourself on the back for that sure looks like a metaphor to me.

[lesbiskammerat]

A Zionist argument you might hear is that the Palestinian identity was only constructed very recently, either during the establishment of Israel or just prior, and that for this reason they're really just generic Arabs who could just move to other Arab countries. Palestinian historians have responded to this claim by looking for earlier signs of identification with Palestine, but regardless of how far back you can find these, it doesn't really matter when it comes to the question of what Israel is and what it's doing.

The issue of settler colonialism isn't about which people "belong" in a certain place or whether their people is "ancient" enough or have some "connection to the land" that gives them a right to live there. Settler colonialism means displacement and violence enacted on a group of people, and whether they previously identified as a singular people or many, they now share that common experience of being colonised. The category of "indigenous" or "native" is one that's constructed in the process of colonisation, not a natural category that someone belongs to by virtue of their ancient bloodline.

Even if people only began to identify as Palestinian in response to Israeli colonisation (which is not true, to be clear) it would not matter. Israel is enacting completely unjustified violence on innocent people. It has been displacing them since its inception (continuing the policy of the British colonial government which favoured European Jewish settlers and sold them land that was already inhabited) and is continuing to do so today, particularly in the West Bank. This isn't even getting into the treatment of those who live within the official borders of Israel.

The name for this is settler colonialism. It's completely unjustified, as every case of settler colonialism is, and it does not change character because of the historical identities of the colonisers or the colonised. Plenty of Jewish people have connections to the land, either recent or ancient, but it does not give them a "right" to engage in colonialism. Nobody "belongs" anywhere; people should be able to move and live where they want, but this does not justify the continuous, violent displacement of innocent people.

The only way to stop this violence is the dismantling of Israel and the creation of an independent, secular Palestine, with reparations for the displaced Palestinians, and equal political status for all, regardless of religion or ethnicity.

[ultfreakme]

For the [checks notes] 256th time, Jay is not intended to be the bad guy. Ever. He was used to subvert the racist trope of colonised people being labelled as "terrorist" purely because they used a fraction of the violence inflicted upon them against their colonisers to fight back (the worst part is he isnt even violent. He's a journalist & his powers are entirely about evasion & self-defense).

He is a part of a group called the Revolutionaries & his pseudonym is "The Truth".

They could not have been more ham-fisted about this if they tried, the only other option was Jay turning to the camera and saying "The US & other supposedly First World countries villainize brown people & colonised people such as myself evil & call us terrorists for merely fighting for our freedoms in order to justify our annihilation. Everyone can fall for propaganda kids!" and then Jon says "You're right Jay, the US is an imperialist power which must be stopped!"

And yet......people think he's evil. Comics are political and have been since day one & you have to set aside fanon & shipping goggles at least once ti actually examine the politics of the story please please its very fun & enlightening.

[gothhabiba]

What people miss with regards to the Jordan Neely/Daniel Penny story is that Penny didn’t choke him out because he’s a bad person. He did it because of socioeconomic factors which made him desperate. The alternative to him being found not guilty would be him going to prison, and that wouldn’t have been justice. Penny needs to be treated with grace and care in this undoubtably troubling time for him

I think my scambaiting post must be going around because I'm getting some asks about it. I'm mostly just deleting them if they're not interesting or instructive, but I think this one actually might be.

My OP made a gesture at a materialist analysis which should be performed. This material analysis would have to do with the flow of money, labour, and resources as it actually exists in the world: the extraction, extortion, and theft of raw materials; the purposeful, violent destabilisation of entire regions by the military arms of the USA, Canada, Europe &c. to force people to work for pennies, so that labour will be incredibly cheap compared to what it would cost if performed by most citizens in the imperial 'core'; and other measures that are taken to ensure that value flows from colonised nations to colonising nations. (These measures also include the devaluing of institutions in the 'periphery' such that advanced degrees from certain countries are simply worth less than others; and the restricted ability of those in the 'periphery' to travel or migrate across borders with the freedom afforded to those with imperial citizenship.)

So certain people are in a situation where structures and enforcers of power have made them poor and desperate on purpose so that they can be 'superexploited' at a level beyond that experienced by most people in the imperial 'core'. This is the purpose of imperialism, and it's the purpose of the concept of 'race.' People work in factories for very little money, because the imperial periphery is supposedly only good for the production of raw materials (fabric; t-shirt blanks; assembly of parts of electronics &c.); the design, the artisanship, the packaging, the 'refining,' the making of the chocolate bar from the cocoa, everything that confers 'value' to the item, is done in the imperial core, and that increased 'value' / sale price is added to the GDP of the country in which the product is completed.

In fact this 'raw material' is not 'raw' at all, and it also invovles design and artisanship—but the people of the 'third world' cannot 'design' anything and they cannot be 'artisans'—nothing they make can be labelled as 'handmade' or 'hand-sewn' even if it is literally made with their hands—because they are not considered as people in that way.

But that's the product realm. In terms of the internet (even setting aside the physical materials, space, energy, water &c. required to maintain the internet):

Things (such as Amazon's failed "Just Walk Out" thing) are advertised as "artificial intelligence" despite the fact that thousands of people in India are forced to do work that is tedious, time-consuming, and often horrific and traumatising (consider content moderation!!) in order to make them work. Their material conditions—which are created and maintained, in the most violent manner imaginable, on purpose in order to force them to do this work—render many people desperate enough to take these jobs.

If there are people, who are reachable online, who at a baseline are making a hundred times what you are making, whose currency has incredible purchasing power where you live, and you can get some of that money—if you can work for yourself this way, obviously you're going to do that. This happens because there's money to be made in it. If people can set up an operation and train hundreds of people in how to do this, and take most of the profits and still provide a salary that's attractive to people because of how high the margins are, then obviously that's going to happen. This is just, the concept of capitalism. If there is a way to make money doing something, someone is going to be doing that thing.

Material analysis is looking at the world as it actually exists, in order to figure out how materials, labour, and value are 'flowing' on local and global scales, as a means of determining why things happen the way they do. Like, on a base level, that's what it means to analyse something—to try to figure out why it happens the way it does.

This anon, in sending this ask, didn't understand what any of this meant, or didn't want to consider it, or something. They were unable or unwilling to consider a different lens than that of personal desert, personal merit, and innate personal badness / criminality. The concept of trying to understand where money is, how it moves and why, as a base level of knowledge necessary to understand why there is money to be made in doing certain things, doesn't compute to them—so they have to move things back into the realm of personal desert, and act like I'm saying that people who commit acts of interpersonal violence "deserve" to be allowed to commit that violence as long as they're going through something, whether or not the thing they're going through created the necessary circumstances for, or has any other direct relation with, the act of violence being committed (basically "some people commit violence to cope").

All of that is kind of typical—it's very normal for people to act like asking them to consider people in the 'third world' as actual human beings with human things like "circumstances" and "motivations" and "thoughts" that influence their actions is tantamount to spitting in their grandmother's face.

But what's most interesting to me about this ask is how, in order to dismiss the idea of material analysis as necessary to understand why things happen and to reassert an interpretive framework of individual criminality, anon uses the idea of interpersonal racial violence as something that we can all agree is caused by innate criminality and not by material factors. As if by comparing scamming to this act of violence, it emphasises the innate criminal personality at the root of both acts. As if, obviously, we can all agree that people who commit this kind of violence are just evil demons who "deserve" to be locked up—so saying "the material fact of present-day colonialism creates the conditions for this kind of scamming" is tantamount to saying "we shouldn't lock criminals up in prison." If the latter statement is unthinkable, then so, by comparison, is the former.

Except that this concept of "the criminal" as being a specific "type" of person who uniquely does and deserves evil, and who needs to be locked up in a cage for the good of the rest of society, is exactly what I am, in fact, intending to question. I think the anon would be surprised to learn about the vast body of work (I mean texts, but also direct activism) conducted under the heading of "prison abolition."

[brw]

1, 9 and 10 for your ask game please!

1) the character everyone gets wrong

I'd go with Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, and I know that's cheating because that's two, but in my defence, the ways in which people get them wrong independently absolutely inform the ways they get the other wrong to.

Janet is a lot more proactive in her relationship with Hank than people give her credit for, and was a much bigger reason of why their relationship failed than people also give her credit for. There's a push to rewrite history and make her a very flat victim, and I can see why, but it's frustrating because I think it's a lot more interesting that Janet repeatedly and purposefully ignored multiple warning signs that Hank's health was imperiled simply because she held on to a belief that love could overcome anything, including a man's undiagnosed and unmedicated schizophrenia. It is JANET who makes the decision to marry. She is essentially the one who proposed, after Hank–hallucinating as Yellowjacket and genuinely thinks he is his own murderer–kidnaps her, then briefly becomes lucid and backs off.

Genuinely, right. Genuinely. I don't think the Hank we see here, violently hallucinating, thinking he murdered himself and having a totally different persona and attitude, was in a position to give meaningful consent! I think it's very clear this is a man a danger to himself and to other people, who was not in the right frame of mind to agree to marriage, but people prefer to write Janet as a very basic victim, which I think is a massive disservice to the actually really nuanced way her relationship with Hank was sometimes written, where Hank was clearly unwell and Janet knew it but thought it was an issue that could be fixed with holiday's and sex and Avenging and not a more fundamental psychological one, and that's a far more interesting story to me.

9) worst part of canon

Lotta things I can put here. I think at the moment I am most frustrated by "Krakoa had no people on it before mutants fine, therefore it isn't an ethnostate and it's totally cool and awesome", because the lie of "there were no people here before us!" has been used time and time again throughout history to justify genocide, oppression, violence and colonialism, and I do not think it is the place of the white Americans in charge of writing Krakoa to essentially legitimise those lies because they didn't want to write Magneto or Nightcrawler or Wolverine and company to be out and out colonisers. If you are writing this kind of project, I think you should have the dignity to commit to it.

10) worst part of fanon

in no particular order

Dadneto, House of M dynasty as a whole

Charles is walking. More than anything else with Cherik this annoys me the most. Motherfucker I'll break his legs myself. Please at the very least let the disabled character be disabled.

The notion that Sue/Namor is real and happened

Logan Howlett girldad

Crystal doesn't exist in the Maximoff family conversation, related to that I once saw a haha fandom meme where Crystal was called an absent parent and that is so fundmantally untrue it felt like I was being trolled

Claremont's racism and zionism isn't real don't worry about it. Close your eyes and only mention it when it's something you can't pretend doesn't exist like Kitty Pryde saying the n word multiple times

Hank McCoy was Always Evil and Always Fated To Go Dark. That's just a regular man forced to hang out with his high school friends after three years of doing nothing but smoke weed with a gay 1950s theatre nerd. You would turn "evil" too.

That Reed Richards doesn't love his wife??? He invented comic guys being really intense about their wives. Leave him alone... that's the love of his life above all else??? Excuse me.

[kennytheworkingclasshero]

I find the episode “Going Native” so interesting because South Park perfectly encapsulated the continuous settler colonisation that mainland Americans inflict on the island of Hawai’i, as well as exposing the stereotypes that are reinforced against the indigenous population.

The episode starts off with Butters being so uncharacteristically angry, beating up a kid for having diabetes and calling out most of his friends for their self proclaimed expertise, their self-centred nature, their selfishness and cowardice. He carries this anger with him, even when talking to his parents, despite the fact he is usually incredibly obedient and scared of what they might do to him otherwise.

His parents “understand” where this anger is coming from and explain that it is because he is “different” and not from this place but “native” to Hawai’i and that is why he is experiencing these angry and violent spells.

While Butters is not a native Hawaiian, he is presented that way for the plot of the episode and this is when harmful and racist stereotypes of indigenous peoples are reinforced by the foreigners. Natives have historically been seen as angry, selfish and violent “savages”, people unwilling to “share” their land and therefore result to killing and warfare. In terms of Hawaiians specifically, they were painted as people who were uncivilised to rule and often times depicted as caricatures in the press to justify the colonisation of the island.

Not only that, but we also see the bastardisation and co-optation of native Hawaiian culture by foreigners. Use of phrases like “ancient ruins”, the display of making Kenny do a “trial” on a surfboard when Hawaiian are well known voyagers and the very idea of Butters having a “coming of age” ceremony all points to the practise of foreigners “enjoying Hawaiian culture.” However, the culture is often a westernised version of traditional practises. A real life example of this is the “classic” portrayal of a hula dance with a sexualised woman wearing a coconut bra, when in reality the Hula is steeped in Hawaiian folklore and history. It is the same in the episode, with the use of native terminology but in reality these “rituals” and “ancient ruins” were just cheaper copies of tradition.

The biggest take away from this episode is the amount of native Hawaiians that are shown as working for the foreigners that are living and exploiting their land. In the airport, at the food places, as security in the residence. They have to stand there and take people saying they are “native”, flashing their awards card that “proves” they’re “local” while the indigenous people are forced to work for their colonisers. It’s a direct reflection of life in Hawai’i for the natives. A large number of the population live in poverty, with many needing to work in resorts in order to survive, despite the fact that these resorts are taking their native land and making it hard for them to live at home. Pricing them out of their native land.

This episode may be fun, it might focus on two fan favourite characters, but it also gives a good insight on settler colonialism.

[anarchistka]

Israel’s war on Palestinian territory is an atrocity. And illegal Israeli settlers should be stopped and convoyed back to Israel by Israeli law enforcement. And sure, the creation of Israel itself was a debatable project from the start and mass migration is known to bear potential for violent conflicts.

But the type of pro Palestinian activism I’ve observed (in North America and Europe esp.) rises so many questions:

[some examples that came to my mind I wrote down below, I would be seriously grateful for a detailed informative answer]

- Where should Israelis go?

- How tf is beating up Jewish students and painting graffiti on synagogues in Europe and America going to save any Palestinian civilians?

- Why is Jewish nationalism bad but Arabic nationalism is great?

- Are people who are not native to a land allowed to live there? What does it mean to be native to a land? Does indigenousity expire?

- (directed at European far left) Why should the EU integrate and support every refugee but Jewish refugees to Palestine should be expelled and are treated solely as inherently evil oppressors and their reasons to seek refuge in Palestine/Israel are ridiculed and dismissed? Of course Israel plays the role of an oppressor now but Palestinian fear of population replacement was a cause for unrest in the British Mandate in Palestine. This led to immigration stops for Jews who were fleeing the Holocaust. So at that time a fear that is usually associated with right wing politics cost additional Jewish lives. Why is right wing racial nationalism agreeable when non Europeans are doing it? Why do you oppose Jewish right wing nationalism by supporting Arab right wing nationalism?

- Why do you call Israel a colony? A colony of which country is it supposed to be? Of the US? (Illegal settlements are an exception, they are definitely colonies [of Israel] )

- If Israel, because it is a colony (?), should be eradicated, shouldn’t we also eradicate the USA, Canada, Brazil etc.? Where should the colonisers go? Or has the colonial status of these countries expired? Or were the reasons for the colonisation of these countries somehow more legitimate and righteous than the creation of Israel? Wtf

- Why do you dismiss the great cultural similarities between Europe and the Middle East? Why do you portray Palestinians as the noble but primitive barbarian when the Middle East is a highly developed region that has close cultural ties with Europe (even if often by war)? Besides : Arabs are capable of doing good and doing evil as well as everyone else. Palestinians and Israeli Jews know each other, they can learn each other’s language, they are familiar with the other’s religion, they literally stand on the same cultural foundation, and they use similar weapons and technological devices…

- What should Israel do when Israeli civilians are attacked by militant extremists from Palestine? What would the ideal response be?

- Why are Jews suddenly accepted as being “white” once this identity label has become a disadvantage (according to CSJ conspiracy theories)? Over six million Jews have been killed because they were considered inferior.

- What should an Israeli do to not be considered an evil oppressive genocidal colonist? How can an Israeli meaningfully contribute to a better peaceful future?

- Why is Palestinian violence framed as trauma response and Israeli violence is seen as demonic evil that is inherent to Israeli Jews?

[cuddlytogas]

an incomplete list of terrible but extremely popular Our Flag Means Death takes that I would like to never see again please

(and I do mean popular, as in, lots of people seem to think they're canon, to the point where I feel slightly insane and like I was watching a different show to everyone else)

1. Ed's mum was loving and nice and supportive, if hampered by her bad situation

this comes up more in fic than analysis, to be fair, but good god, what show were some of you watching? this isn't to vilify her, because yeah, she's clearly a product of colonialism, white christian supremacy, and domestic abuse, but like. that doesn't make how she raised Ed good. clearly she was trying to keep him safe, but "we don't deserve nice things", and especially "it's not up to us, it's up to god", speaks to me of someone who squashes down any ambition on her son's part, has fully bought into the lies of christian colonialism, and tries to pass them down to her son.

as does happen in colonised communities, particularly among older generations. I know us white people like to think that every indigenous person is a perfect left-wing anti-imperial activist, but that's simply not the case, and Ed's mum is so clearly an example of an older conservative christian indigenous parent who had to believe the lies told by their coloniser in order to survive, but is now passing on that trauma to their children. and I just...

if I read one more fic where Ed's mum is a perfect loving supportive angel who always believed in her kid and always supported and protected him, I'm gonna scream. yes, it's sweet, and it's fun to sometimes veer from canon and give your blorbo nice things, but it's still veering from canon. and yet, I see very few people acknowledge that, or actually talk about the nuances of Ed's mother, and how she definitely tried to protect him, but was far from sweet, doting, and unconditionally supportive.

2. Ed's loving look when Stede is picking food from his beard in 1x07

like most of these things, I enjoyed it as a joke or exaggeration at first, until I realised that people were actually being serious. but every time I watch that scene, I see Ed looking absently-mindedly over Stede's shoulder, because a) that's what you do when someone leans in to pick something off you, and b) surely the point of the scene is that they're so comfortable and easy together that they don't notice the intimacy of what they're doing, but Lucius, an outside observer, thinks it's obvious. right?? I can't be the only one seeing it???

[sigh]

anyway. finally, the really really big one:

3. Ed is a soft uwu babygirl princess femme bottom sub who loves her cat collar and is teaching Stede how to dom him in the "say you're the captain" scene

I mean, there's not much to say except to link to duke's absolutely phenomenal twitter thread about "how the 'babygirlfication' and infantilization of ofmd ed teach is an extension of racist perceptions of indigenous men being inherently violent and thus needing to be emasculated to be considered sympathetic"

but especially That One Fucking Scene, good lord. talk about taking shit out of context. everyone looked at a slowed-down gif of one shot in the trailer and cried "babygirl!! he's such a simp, he just wants to be dommed!!", when actually that scene is about how a) Stede is cringefail and terrible at being a typical harsh, commanding pirate, and b) Ed is lovingly embarrassed by this. he encourages Stede to assert himself (and give Ed something to do during his probation/help him make amends with the crew), but like. normally. he's acting perfectly normal in that scene, and mostly annoyed by the outfit and embarrassed by how badly Stede fails. but just because he's sitting down while Stede is standing, and he happens to take a breath in that one shot (because, you know, people breathe sometimes), everyone's doubled down on their "submissive babygirl" bullshit, and I can't get the fuck away from it.

which - listen, it's fun for me, too! it's fun to explore exaggerated aspects of a character, it's fun to read/write/draw that angle in smut, I get it! but I keep seeing people keep claim it's literally canon, and I cannot stress enough that that is Straight Up False. for the love of god, please just watch the show without your (potentially kinda racist) bias glasses on, and remember to treat the characters with respect instead of projecting onto their every interaction a shallow dom/sub binary just because you find it hot.

Our Flag is a show very specifically about masculinity, and what it means to be a man; how assumptions about that can harm and restrict men; and how men can grow beyond them. it's a nuanced and sympathetic examination of this. the whole point is that Ed is allowed to like nice fabrics and be tired of violent piracy and still be a man. the point is that two men fall in love - equal, honest, sincere love - and are still men, still exactly who they are.

(on that note, insisting that Ed is canonically trans or femme because of these things often ends up just leaning into gendered stereotypes: men are harsh and active and dominant, and women are soft and passive and submissive, and if Ed's not the former, he must be the latter, right? it also tends to hetero-ify the central relationship, casting Stede as "the boy" and Ed as "the girl", needing one to be masc and one femme. not always, and again, I understand and have enjoyed transformative works that take those elements and run with them, and explore what the story could be like if Ed were trans/nb/etc - but it's still a transformative interpretation. it's not canon.)

relatedly: those fucking wedding toppers! it seemed blatantly obvious to me that half the point of those scenes was that Ed is distraught and blaming himself for Stede leaving because he wasn't the ideal partner. it's his entire arc for the first half of season 2! Ed hates himself and believes there's something wrong about him that makes him unlovable. so he keeps and then discards the wedding toppers, painting himself onto one of them, because he's projecting himself onto an image of ideal/successful romantic love that he thinks Stede wants, and in which he doesn't fit. he's trying to mould himself into someone else to make himself lovable, not realising that Stede already loves him for himself.

so it's important to the whole narrative that Ed's yearning for/projection onto the wedding toppers is false, and born from his insecurity. he gets drunk, and play-acts a stereotypical image of romantic happiness into which he doesn't fit, but real love looks nothing like that, because real love isn't found in stifling hegemonic cultural structures, but honest, emotional connections between people allowed to be their whole, vulnerable selves. Stede is not like the groom, and Ed is not like the bride, because they shouldn't have to be. Ed should not (and does not) have to warp himself into a demure bride in order to be worthy of love: he's already lovable and loved exactly as he is! that's the point!! of the scene!!!!!!

like, it's important that the groom figure isn't actually like Stede, either. yes, it's blond and has a nice, peach-coloured suit, but a) Stede was very specifically unhappy in the posh, heterosexual, married state the figures represent, and b) Stede by this point looks nothing like that figurine. it's directly contrasted with the image of him in the rowboat, scruffy and plain and earnestly in love, rather than fancy, cold ceramic.

[EDIT 29/12/24: I ended up writing a whole Twitter essay about the wedding cake toppers that I then gussied up for Tumblr; so if you want a clearer, more substantial, and better supported argument about those, check that out!]

but no, I have to wade through swathes of art and fic and meta about how badly Ed wants to be a sweet little demure kitty princess, how he wants a wedding night and a ring to prove he's Stede's property, and acting as if this is somehow canon, because people on the internet have zero reading comprehension and are scared of brown men.

the whole point of Our Flag is that you don't need to compress yourself into prescribed social roles, and in fact, doing so will only make you miserable; and that racist, patriarchal, colonial institutions should be resisted and dismantled at every opportunity.

so tell me again why the ultimate message is that Ed and Stede should get married under an arch in front of an altar and their lined-up friends, with flowers and rice falling around them, all dressed in white, one in a suit and one in a dress, with rings and a kiss and a honeymoon after, before they move into a detached house with a yard and a fence and re-adopt the kids that Stede abandoned? and this isn't about promises, fidelity, or even monogamy - I'm specifically talking about everyone in this fandom who seems to think that the ultimate goal is the most stereotypical 20th century cisheteropatriarchal christian wedding, but with the name "matelotage" slapped on top, as if that takes away all of the underlying baggage.

just - I know we're all meant to hate men and masculinity and yadda yadda yadda, but actually, to be earnest for a second, men deserve respect too, because all people and all genders do. and two men are allowed to be in a relationship and still both be men - complex men, with their own, layered relationships to their gender - without having to fall into neatly-arranged dom/sub masc/femme roles, or seal the deal with a hegemonically-approved ceremony.

so please, stop reducing an indigenous lead character to a caricature of a femme uwu princess bottom just because he has long hair, wore a robe once, and you're too scared of brown men to imagine him with proper agency. and then please, for the love of god, stop claiming that that interpretation is canon.

[the-casbah-way]

forgive the brief jesus chris superstar rant but. there is a very important difference between the pharisees being villains and the pharisees being antagonists. they're technically antagonists because they're actively working against the interests of our protagonist, but i don't believe they should ever be played as villains. they're not evil or bad or wrong. they're terrified just like literally everyone else in the show is, and their actions are completely justified. to me that's the entire point of the musical. it's not about christianity; it's about the impact the roman empire's brutal and violent imperialism had on everyone on all levels. including jesus and judas, but also including the pharisees, and even herod and pilate. when a powerful coloniser forces their presence on innocent people they are the only winners. everyone else suffers, even the puppet kings and high priests who look like they're reaping some sort of benefit from it all. that's roman propaganda. the romans kept native rulers like herod and caiaphas in power to maintain the illusion of provincial autonomy, and keep populations appeased and therefore under control. everyone in the show is acting out of fear of the romans. the one roman character we do see (pilate) is acting out of fear of his own emperor. it makes no sense to cast the pharisees as two dimensional Bad Guys, especially when the same productions that do that usually offer a sympathetic portrayal of pilate. it would be so easy to stage and direct a production in a way that makes it obvious that the pharisees are doing what they're doing because they truly have no choice, and not because they're pure evil and want to kill jesus for the sake of it. it's not only an antisemitic trope but also undermines a really important theme of the musical. if you can see the humanity in the violent roman governor installed forcefully on conquered land then you can afford some humanity for the pharisees too. they are victims of pilate and victims of rome just like everyone else