#really says a lot about this country

[lazylittledragon]

taking all my american followers by the shoulders. listen to me. just because you have a more promising candidate now doesn't mean you just assume it's going to be fine and don't bother voting. assuming trump wasn't going to win is how you got here in the first place so you go out and fucking vote for harris and give everyone a fighting chance.

also if you're still in the 'they're both as bad as eachother' delirium, please take your head out from between your cheeks and consider that your options are an imperfect president and the literal worst person alive who is going to get masses of people killed. i've said it like this before, but it's like deciding between maybe getting food poisoning or definitely having a brain aneurysm. take your pick i guess but don't be surprised when you drop dead.

[idolomantises]

i'll be real, i always hated it whenever media tries to "critique" Christianity while portraying all Christians as bigoted, misogynistic and irredeemable. its why it matters a lot to me that my own angels have some nuances to them.

Sera is very puritanical and obsessed with showing her devotion to God, but she's still a caring and well-meaning angel.

[seagreenstardust]

I cannot believe the canon bkdk dynamic though.

Katsuki, completely whipped, 100% on board to spend the rest of his life with Izuku, living the dream as heroes.

Izuku, completely oblivious to his own worth, oblivious to how Katsuki really feels about him now, just so oblivious to it all.

[adiradirim]

Sephardic Jews from Thessaloniki in their traditional costumes, in the city’s old cemetery, before the war // a contemporary photo that shows where the destroyed cemetery once was, which is now Greece's largest university, built partially on top of and with land and materials (particularly tombstones) stolen from the razed site.

Thessaloniki or Salonika, once referred to as “the Jerusalem of the Balkans” due to its Ladino-speaking Jewish majority, saw roughly 96% of its Jewish population murdered during the Holocaust. This mass destruction extended to the city's Jewish cemetery, which had been the country's largest, established in the 15th century and housing hundreds of thousands of Jewish graves until its razing by city authorities who had long desired to repurpose the land and resented the inconvenience of Jewish presence. Despite its large-scale destruction during German occupation in 1942, which was initiated and carried out primarily by Thessaloniki authorities with Nazi consent and arrangement, some parts of the cemetery survived intact as late as 1947. Many tombstones were subsequently appropriated and used by city authorities and the Greek Orthodox Church. After the war, people were still carrying away Jewish gravestones each day and regularly looting the cemetery in search of valuables. The city's officials, led by their mayor, completed the cemetery's destruction and sold the tombstones to contractors for use as building materials in various projects; as such many were and are still found in various walls, roads, structures, and churches around the city. A 1992 commemorative book pictures Greek schoolgirls playing Hamlet with skulls and other bones they found in the cemetery.

“[T]he ‘rape’ of the cemetery escalated, marble flooded the market, and its price plummeted. Jewish tombstones were stacked up in mason’s yards and, with the permission of the director of antiquities of Macedonia and overseen by the metropolitan bishop and the municipality, used to pave roads, line latrines, and extend the sea walls; to construct pathways, patios, and walls in private and public spaces though out the city, in suburbs such as Panorama and Ampelokipi, and more than sixty kilometers away in beach towns in Halkidiki, where they decorated playgrounds, bars, and restaurants in hotels; to build a swimming pool – with Hebrew-letter inscription visible; to repair the St. Demetrius Church and other buildings...” Devin Naar, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece

Most of the efforts to return found tombstones throughout the city are led by Jews, particularly Jacky Benmayor, the curator of the Jewish Museum and last Ladino speaker in Greece, who has personally recovered hundreds of tombstones including his own family's. Surviving Greek Jews never received compensation for the confiscation of the land under the destroyed cemetery, upon which now partially rests Greece's largest university, Aristotle University, which also used Jewish gravestones as building material for its long-coveted expansion finally made possible by the dispossession and annihilation of the city's Jews. In 2014, 72 years after the cemetery's destruction and appropriation, a small memorial was established on campus grounds to acknowledge the Jewish cemetery the school is built on and with; the ceremony just 10 years ago involved the first-ever acknowledgement of the atrocities and apology from a Thessaloniki mayor. The memorial has been vandalised multiple times since its establishment.

[strawbebbiesart]

june/ july / august 💌🥪🦢

[cerastes]

Another thing that bothers me, and this is on a General About Japan level, is how the same people that seem to always complain about there being, I don’t know, whatever their fucking alt-right pipeline has fed them in their easily digestible grub, such as there being piss fountains or panty vending machines or any of the other Literally Exists In Like One Place Just Like Some Real Suspect Stuff Also Exists In Specialty Shops In Every Other Country, never seem to bring up the absolute service Japan has for people with disabilities.

I’m not an expert and also not a resident of Japan, but in my time there as a tourist (1 month), I noticed that every single elevator had a both a loud, noticeable sound cue, a secondary call button at wheelchair-bound person height, and an actual person nearby. Every street in Tokyo and Osaka, and most at Kyoto, had those grooves on the floor for blind people to follow. Every traffic light had a loud, clear audio cue to when it was green (well, blue in Japan’s case).

I’m from the third world so seeing this level of infrastructure blew my mind, but I never hear anyone talk about it. But haha Shinzo Abe baby propaganda in anime, am I right?

[liquidstar]

This is such a tangent btw but on the topic of guilt tripping and reblogs... I remember a few years back there were some terrible fires in Greece (and again this year, entire island villages are gone now) and at that time I had family who were caught in them. I can't describe the desperation I felt with these horrible things happening to my family and loved ones in my country. And I remember being frustrated and desperate with how no one around me in America really seemed to give a shit. I remember blogging asking people to PLEASE care please share something please reblog this link for mutual aid please think about the stories and fires etc etc etc. And the thing is I was very much in a state of grief myself, maybe not every word or action was perfectly reasonable, because I don't realistically expect everyone everywhere to care about every tragedy in the world. You can't. Emotionally it's just not possible, especially with all the stuff going on in the states rn too. Yeah it's a lot. It's not like I blog about every tragedy that ever happens either. I understand.

HOWEVER what I also remember was at this time there were a couple mutuals very clearly making vagueposts along the lines of "remember not everyone has the energy to care about everything in the world uwu" while I was posting about family who died and family who were drifting in the ocean for hours as their homes and loved ones burned. Listen. You have to understand sometimes that when a person in grief and frustration with things going on in their countries and communities impacts them very personally beg you to care... It's coming from a place of needing to see that care in the world in general. They're not holding a gun to your head Specifically saying you have to reblog the posts, if you don't have the energy just ignore it.

You don't have to go out of your way saying "um actually I can't care about the horrible stuff you and your family and your country are experiencing rn. I'm too busy focusing on my own stuff so can you be quiet or more reasonable with your grief thanks." Like. Just keep it to yourself then??? Have some fucking sympathy for other people and understand that maybe it's not always logical. The same way you don't have the emotional energy to think about every tragedy in the world, people who've been impacted by them often don't have the emotional energy to handle that alone and may seek somekinda community or solidarity. Idk. It's not about forcing shit on you sometimes it's not about you

[cienie-isengardu]

Iroh's "I looked away"

“The Storm” [s01e12] provided us a great insight into Zuko’s character, one that undoubtedly helps to understand his motives and anger but also how Ozai’s physical and psychological abuse influenced the banished prince. There are plenty of things to talk about, many little details that build layers of a complicated relationship between Zuko and his father, uncle, or even his crew and how perception of Zuko changes once we learn the truth behind the scar. But the episode also shows us a great deal of insight into Iroh’s character and though I do love how “The Storm” challenged our perception of those characters, rewatching ALTA makes Iroh’s “I looked away” much more devastating to me. 

Because it is not just about his guilt over abuse Zuko was forced to endure. A guilt that won’t disappear no matter if he could or couldn’t do anything to prevent it, but… Iroh truly looked away from Fire Nation as a whole, didn’t he? Understandably, he was grief-struck after Lu Ten’s death and he did not fight back Ozai for the throne, as I suspect he either did not care anymore for it or did not want a civil war to destroy Fire Nation from inside. But he still was The Dragon of West, a very respected general and powerful political figure that others weren’t willing to openly challenge, including Ozai himself.

And no, I’m not wondering why Iroh did not interference with Agni Kai before Zuko’s face was burned to “teach him respect” but about the fact that he did not say anything at all against using the division of new recruits as a bait - and from the episode alone, we know he agreed with Zuko on that matter. It wasn't the right strategy - even if it has merit from a military standpoint, it definitely wasn’t moral or good for Fire Nation’s wellbeing. Beside Zuko, who openly challenged the strategy and called it betrayal, the only person that questioned it at all was an old unnamed general (“But the 41st is entirely new recruits. How do you expect them to defeat a powerful Earth Kingdom battalion?) while Iroh simply kept quiet and this detail makes me think the “I looked away” is as much about Iroh looking away from Ozai’s cruel abuse toward Zuko as about Iroh’s passivity during the war meeting, and in greater scheme, Fire Nation’s politics. I doubt Iroh could change Ozai’s mind and sure, I do not have an idea how the relationship between Fire Lord and ex-Crown Prince looked like, but the point is, Iroh did not even try to question the strategy and choose to sit quietly and dunno, it makes me wonder, did Iroh give up at this point of his life? Was he so afraid of the consequences for speaking his mind that he allowed Ozai and Fire Lord’s court to subdue him so much? Because if he did, his words to Zuko “[...] But you must promise not to speak. Those old folks are a bit sensitive, you know?” is as much warning to Zuko as to himself. 

Iroh said to the crew that Zuko was right but it wasn’t his place to criticize the strategy, but who else was supposed to speak against this plan, if Iroh himself chose to stay quiet on the matter? If all generals - then and three years later - didn’t have any respect for life, whatever for their own subjects or civilians of other nations? And I think this is what truly kills me about this situation, that 13 years old boy had courage to speak against this dehumanization of Fire Nation’s citizens when Iroh, our good uncle Iroh, kept quiet and looked away again and again from what was happening until he couldn’t do that anymore because too great damage was already done.

(And isn’t it ironic that Iroh gave little Zuko a knife with the description never give up without a fight - words Zuko adapted as his life motto - but Iroh himself gave up? First at Ba Sing Sai, after Lu Ten’s death, now here during a war meeting and maybe, just maybe it is Zuko that unexpectedly pushed him back on the right track to actually do something, to make a choice and fight for what he believed was right instead of passively watching all the abuse done to an innocent child and young soldiers serving loyalty to their country. Was Iroh already a White Lotus then or did the travel with Zuko give him an opportunity to join it because he couldn’t anymore look away from how messed up Fire Nation became?)

[rolandkaros]

i've been ruminating a lot on it because i think i'm bad at putting my thoughts into words but i need y'all to understand that while there are absolutely a lot of Not Good Things about the finals being held in saudi arabia for three years...the way people seem to treat is as morally black and white is shortsighted and unhelpful.

realistically the players traveling there will be protected. it may be uncomfortable, it's certainly not ideal, but they will travel there for a few weeks, play their tennis, then leave. there are a lot of women, a lot of queer people who actually live in saudi arabia who cannot just leave, who are actually subjected to laws and social climates...and to me it just seems very disrespectful to that actual lived experience, for everybody to sort of turn their noses up and get on their high horses. of course, if the players wish to opt out, that is their choice, but that is their choice to make. that's their judgement. not ours.

and then, what about a tournament like miami? florida is literally experiencing one of the worst active regressions that i've seen in the us (granted i'm young). things like critical race theory and lgbtq+ ed are being removed from curriculums, rights for trans youth, trans healthcare, etc. are going backwards. abortion rights? gun violence? and yes i know that the laws and climate in saudi arabia are different gravy, i understand that, but my point is, no one would ever DREAM of arguing against hosting a tournament in miami despite all of these issues. and we can extend this to a lot of other tournaments! i mean, all the outrage about fifa hosting a world cup in qatar, but we don't have any of these sentiments about doha? i've seen other people bring up that the finals were hosted in singapore when gay marriage was still illegal there. we've already talked about italy's fascist prime minister. and i could go on and on and on about the war crimes of countries like the us or the uk - is the us not participating actively in genocide right now? where is the standard? if you argue against hosting the finals in saudi arabia for the reason of human rights, to me it seems you have to uphold that standard for the location you do land on. and i can guarantee, you will not find a single country in the world with clean hands.

i want to be clear i am not arguing that hosting the finals in saudi arabia is a good thing, especially for three years, especially because it's definitely going there because of money, and not for any of the "good" reasons i think some people want us to believe about "improving the region" (which is very weirdly white savior-esque anyway). i don't really have an official "conclusion" to this discussion.

what i am arguing is that i think a lot of the protests against saudi arabiahosting the finals are more an example of implicit anti-arab bias and islamophobia, rather than genuine discussion. key word implicit: i don't think most people are purposefully trying to be anti-arab/islamophobic. or at least, i'd like to believe nobody is. but i also think, particularly in the west, there is already so much of this xenophobic sentiment ingrained. and this is why i think it's really really REALLY important to check ourselves when we talk about it instead of just jumping straight to the human rights conversation without a second thought.

i'll say it plainly: i don't think the finals should be held in saudi arabia. but for me, it has more to do with sportswashing, with the dangers of the way money is thrown around in sports, and because i think it's more evidence that the wta doesn't care about player welfare but rather about making a profit (what else is new). human rights are absolutely a concern of mine, but how is it fair to hold saudi arabia to a standard that we don't seem to care about for literally anybody else?

literally look at the us's ugly ugly history, past and present, and tell me why we deserve to host a tennis tournament.

[gunkbaby]

I do wonder how much of the mischaracterisation rampant in a lot of manga/manhua fandoms is related to a western perspective

[kittykatninja321]

Much to think about…

[the-busy-ghost]

Me normally: Let people love what they love

Me, after a Test Match Special commentator expresses their belief that the new All Creatures Great and Small is somehow "better" than the 1978 version: This is pure insanity and TMS can no longer be trusted on anything, how can they even be trusted to know about cricket, do they have no TASTE

[caimitos]

saw a post about projecting your ethnicity onto a character and started missing vespa ilkay. so so bad

[somedaytakethetime]

In true Nagelsmann fashion allow me to present to you: Denmark vs Germany (29.06.2024, Euros 2024) - The Lowlights Reel

*lines up to be sexy på dansk one last match*

*trips on children*

*talks but no one listens*

*legit gets called to chat about the weather*

*is given bad news, checks fit, braces*

*does the most, is rewarded the least*

*reflects the same emotions girlblogger had while watching this match*

*serves looks and chest*

*runs sexily and applauds fans that want him out of the club*

*considers pursuing German ancestry. or playing for England....*

[dirt-str1der]

I still get scared when i remember kiryu is canonically quite lean and not a fatty at all

[kallistersbullshit]

has anyone thought about what happens to the players PHYSICALLY when they enter the digital circus

because we know their minds are transported into the digital world, but what happens to their bodies?

they ALL put on the headset and immediately got transported inside, so I doubt they'd have time to take it off - does that mean they're still at least partially connected to their bodies, enough to stay alive but not quite conscious?

if we go off that idea, i feel like they'd just collapse on the spot when they put on the headset

imagine finding some cool headset in the back of an alley or maybe even in that C&A office with the computer and you put it on and just like faint

imagine FINDING some random mf unconscious in a sketchy place with a headset latched onto their head