#reverse colonisation

[mayasaura]

Going into Alecto, I think it's important to expect that the series won't conclude with a clear lesson. Either about morality—what makes a good person, evil getting their just desserts, ect—or a thesis on decolonization. It's not that kind of story.

Deep down, this series is two drunk girls bearing their souls in a dark corner of the bar. An hours-long conversation that wheels wildly through pop culture, past trauma, theoretical physics, dreams and aspirations, global warming, hairstyling, friends, family, gender, personal insecurities, world history, favorite foods. It has a lot to say, and a lot of it profound, but it's not trying to teach anything. At the end of the night, the point was how fucking cool that girl was, and the potent electric potential for something lgbt to happen

[mishkakagehishka]

Also i love the way most of my girl dinner meals are made by me remembering an italian recipe and then just trying to recreate it based only on 1) my memory of how it goes and 2) the ingredients i have in my kitchen

[ace-and-the-rpg-horrors]

fun fact!! in my town there used to be this one church

it got converted into a curry house

[apas-95]

Nazi antisemitism was not based on “economic needs of German capital under the burden of postwar reconstruction”. The price of operating extermination camps and sending out death squads far exceeded confiscation of Jewish wealth. It was based on sincerely belief in Jewish racial inferiority and that Jews, communists, & social democrats had sabotaged the German war effort in WWI.

The direct primitive accumulation of appropriated wealth was not the only economic benefit of the German program of depopulation, this is fairly basic — was the colonisation of the Americas principally carried out for the purpose of seizing indigenous belongings? Were the massacres carried out in the European colonies, such as the Bengali famine, done for the seizure of the wealth of individuals? The very plain fact is that the depopulation of Germany proper and its newly-seized territories in the east was carried out as part of a plan of economic reconstruction explicitly based on European settler-colonial projects, wherein the destruction of fixed capital and the establishment of small-producer wehrbaueren was intended to both reverse and inhibit the tendency of the rate of profit to fall under capitalism.

The further notion that Weimar Germany's opposition to communists was out of revanchism and not an actual threat to the ruling classes and their state is genuinely hilarious, and goes directly against both what was explicitly stated at the time and also basic facts.

Your position here is basic idealism - if you're interested in being correct, I'd suggest looking into Dialectical and Historical Materialism, and On Practice, etc.

[auggieblogs]

From mine to yours | Max Verstappen Instagram au

Max Verstappen x fem! reader

* ੈ✩‧₊˚ Max does not hide his blatant favouritism!!!

Author's note: HAPPY DIWALI TO EVERYONE CELEBRATING!!! I hope all of you are doing good. This smau is a service to all my brown girlies, (and @maxiepinkz) consider it a Diwali gift. Also, my non-brown girles, all of you can read it just for the funnies (I like to think I am hilarious). Anyway, I love you all so much. Happy reading, my loves🤍

―୨୧⋆ ˚masterlist

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yourusername Happy Diwali🪔

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username parents if I may

username MAX VERSTAPPEN IN A BLACK KURTA THIS IS NOT A DRILL HSJAHDSG

username me and who

landonorris Diwali is my favourite festival actually

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username Y/N, meri jaan<3 (Y/N my beloved)

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maxverstappen1 I love you kaafi zyada (I love you a lot)

yourusername more than redbull sugar-free? maxverstappen know your limits (yes)

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martingarrix Sick party, sick music and I WON THAT GAME OF CARDS

yourusername Martin puh lease🤚🏼🙄

charles_leclerc I need that party playlist Y/N I'm begging

lewishamilton +1

lilymhe omg me too!!!

yourusername anything for my favourite lady🫶🏼

username Y/N making all the firangis (foreigners) dance on desi music like yessss queen reverse colonisation or something

username ik my goat

maxverstappen1

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maxverstappen1 Happy Diwali, from mine to yours❤️🪔

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maxverstappen1 And I love you usse bhi zyada (And I love you more)

yourusername sharm aa gyi mujhe hehe🤭 (I’m blushing)

username Max learning Hindi for Y/N can be something so personal

username his side quests are getting out of hands

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yourusername he knows 3 languages, what’s one more?😼

maxverstappen1 I am a romantic like that actually😊

username pretty pretty

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username oh to celebrate Diwali with my white boyfriend😭🙏🏼

username jokes aside, I want to know what max looks like up close with that kurta on

yourusername rishta material fr🤤 (marriageable)

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landonorris nahhh no way after the ladoo incident

alexalbon Y/N is going to pull out her hair😭

yourusername uhm I'm actually conflicted tbh.

username WHAT IS THE LADOO INCIDENT?

Diwali, also known as Deepavali, is a Hindu festival celebrated with great enthusiasm across India and various other parts of the world. It symbolizes the victory of light over darkness and good over evil. Diwali typically involves lighting oil lamps or diyas, decorating homes, exchanging gifts, and enjoying festive meals with family and friends. The festival holds cultural, religious, and social significance, promoting the spirit of joy, unity, and hope.

A ladoo (also spelt laddu) is a popular and traditional Indian sweet. It is a round-shaped sweet ball made from various ingredients, including flour, sugar, and ghee (clarified butter). Ladoos are often prepared during festivals, celebrations, and religious occasions in India. They are considered a symbol of good luck and are distributed as a gesture of joy.

Needless to say, it's my favourite time of the year😁

[writingwithcolor]

Creatures of Folklore Who Represent Cultures Preventing Wars Throughout History

Anonyomous asked:

Hi! I’m writing a story which is set in a fantasy version of our world. The main difference between our real world and my fictional version is that the spirits and fairies of each culture and folklore exist, and that the majority of them basically stop war from happening because they react very badly (and potentially violently) when invading forces etc try to start battles. 

I’m doing a lot of research into the histories of the various cultures that will be featured in the books set in this world so I can hypothesise how they might have developed without, for example, violent colonialism, and where trade and so on might have flourished in its place. However, it’s possible for colonialism to happen through more insidious ways, such as assimilation. In one of my books, I’m intending to use this as part of the plot, where Japan will try to colonise the Ryukyuan Kingdom through assimilation, but will be stopped by the Ryukyuan Kingdom making allies with other nations (amongst other tactics), but I was wondering if you had any advice for respectfully handling the colonialism that very much did happen in real life in a fantasy setting where it didn’t manage to occur, without erasing the history and ramifications etc of what actually happened?

Do fox spirits have citizenship? 

You mean well with this concept, but there are multiple key problems. 

One major issue with cordoning off spirits and folklore creatures by “patron” culture and have them fight said patrons’ battles is that there’s a lot of overlap. It’d be hard for there not to be a conflict of interest. 

For example, everyone knows about the kitsune fox spirit from Japan. But the story of the fox spirit was introduced to Japan and Korea by China, where they are called húlijīng. These foxes are remarkably similar, with their characteristics and stories almost borrowed wholesale. Are they all the same “species?” If so, when small differences emerge in the countries’ folktales, how do you resolve this? Do these spirits also morph and specialize, or does one interpretation win out? How about when kingdoms are unified, like the Korean Three Kingdoms–do separate versions of the kumiho reverse-evolve into a single variant? What side do they pick when these kingdoms and empires try to battle? If they live apart from humans or aren’t very friendly with them, why would they have a reason to care about invasions when they have no reason to be allegiant to said borders, or whatever name they’re called in whichever country whose land they live on?

Folkloric beings are never static, and are influenced over time by cultural shifts and exchanges, including shifting borders. Human history is stuffed cover-to-cover with events of what we called “conquest” then and “occupation” or “colonization” now. And through these changes, cultures diverged and came together, creating new stories. In other words: not even fairy tales are immune to colonization. 

Leigh can explain the rest. 

~ Rina

The Problem with Retconning War

A very simple question for you:

How are you going to rectify every single historical war that’s ever existed?

Like, the whole plot of the Trojan War as we know it is that the gods of the same culture were on different sides! And the gods made the war last as long as it did. Alexander the Great was a colonizer. Romans were definitely colonizers. Ottomans and Mongols, also colonizers. It wasn’t to the scale of modern colonialism, but it happened. If you look at census records from the 1800s of Indigenous populations in North America, you’ll find that the men 20+ have way lower numbers because they died in war! 

I’m not of the opinion that the basic state of humanity is war and we are barely contained by base instincts. But I’m also not so far in the other direction that I believe humans lack any sort of warring instincts. It shows up in chimps and other primates, so it shows up in humans.

In a way, it sounds like you’ve taken a very Christian-fundamentalist-centric view of things, which is: humans need religion to be “contained”. That humans are amoral without some sort of religion or folklore or spirits telling them to not do a “bad thing.”

This is ignoring how people have been using religion to justify wars since religion was invented. As Rina said, there can be overlap in groups’ beliefs and deities so there’s the side-picking issue, which as I mentioned is the whole plot of the Trojan War. Even when humans write about gods meddling in war, they have the gods not all be on the same side.

Humans have war. Humans try to take over other groups because they want the resources that group has. Alliances shift. Territories shift.

This is also treating humans as a monolith—there are populations within the colonized groups that agree with the colonizers because they get benefits. Claiming that all colonized groups hate all aspects of their colonialism all of the time is deeply ahistorical and flattened. Sometimes the benefits were only for a small group, but sometimes the benefits were far-reaching. It’s in the India tag on WWC, varying views of the Mughals. 

Also, how will you handle the Christianization of Europe? How will you handle all of this folklore that only got written down via monks and nuns making notes and modifying beliefs to fit the Bible? Will any area with only Christianity’s records written down not have folklore? 

And how will you handle folklore drift? Religions are not static. If you look at Greek myths, there are ten to thirty versions of each story and those are just the ones that survived. Each city-state had its own mythology, using the same gods, modified to fit the local needs.

And what about folklore that deals with war and thrives in war? What about the gods of war and destruction? I know Norse mythology is Christianized beyond recognition, but even in its Christianized form half of it is about war. Would the Valkyries, whose whole purpose is to find valiant soldiers slain in battle, not want war? Their whole purpose is war.

Also, on top of it—how will you handle revolution?

You say yourself, colonialism could still happen subtly. Colonialism and injustice can still happen. Will these subjugated spirits force an already disadvantaged group to exclusively use a rigged system to try and politely ask for their rights back? Or would these spirits want to be free and support the means necessary to take it back?

War has happened to upend the divine right of kings. War has happened to free slaves (Haiti). War has happened for basic workers’ rights (some union strikes have resulted in war). 

You’re basically removing a whole toolbox in the fight for a better world. Yes, not being able to colonize because of fantasy AU sounds fine, until you realize that pretty much all of human history from the Romans has been created via war to some degree.

You’re basically just saying “violence is bad and humans need fantasy babysitters to not dive into it”, which really doesn’t sound that great once you sit with it. It removes human agency, removes human nature, and ignores the entire history of the planet.

-Leigh (Lesya)

Marika interjecting here:

We had an ask (Linked here) envisioning a story set in a de-colonized Hawai’i and the socio-political issues with that. Same problem.

[marlocandeea]

never mind the assonance

piovurno has decided damui in japanese would be written 蛇婺囗. but i dont really know about the 2nd kanji

[saintetheldredablogshorrormovies]

so im watching hannibal with the same friend who i watch supernatural with and weve got a system now of watching one supernatural episode followed by one hannibal episode

and i kind of love this cause i find the contrast so funny and interesting between supernatural (were on season 12) which is so stubbornly pro-redneck and hannibal which is so viciously terrified of rednecks haha

and i think this is important cause hannibal seems to have a lot of problems with american culture

after all it nods to flannery oconnor who was very disturbed by american culture too

see the way i see it is it correctly identifies the figure of the detective as one of the great symbols of the american ideal of individualism. after all in the history of detective stories they originated in a time where citizens were enjoying much more privacy in their lives. and all of a sudden the private, individual mind of the detective figure is the brilliant tool for justice rather than any kind of national institution or external strength

and will graham is a lot like that - the show makes clear that his MIND makes him an asset in a way that no one even with the same evidence can really compete with, he just sees it his own individual way

now in a typical detective story that would be a great thing but here it is kind of very worrying. cause will needs more external control input over his mind from other people and institutions than he ever really accepts. would it really be a bad thing for him to accept more institutional interference even if it made him less brilliant

and i feel like the reason we get all this american hunting imagery and the idea of hunting as an american family bonding ritual is because it is the essence of american colonisation and american power for the individual to turn the environment around them into objects (this is hobbs insistence to "use every part" of the hunted animal to decorate and furnish his home)

in american ideology everything outside you is conquered and it all becomes a part of your private world

which gives us the "evil minds museum" of this show which i am convinced is a pun/double meaning founded on the reversibility of the observer/observed in this show - as in, referring both to "a museum of evil minds" and also a model of the mind in which "the evil mind is a museum" - a place full of objectified versions of aspects of the world

but hannibal is a little different from the killers weve seen in the show so far in a key way (ive seen 3 episodes) - he does not kill and deconstruct his dead victims, he tries to break them down while living

i think he represents the simultaneous desire to turn people into an object to make them containable and to keep the essence of their life which could even be expressed as their sanctity, the "gods image" part of them (hence all the religious imagery of this show eg "this is my design" - alluding to the christian grand design idea in which everything is imbued with a sacred significance by god)

the push and pull between these two desires is what puts him and will in a state of endless stasis and tension

and this is the reason for hannibals cannibalism - wanting to eat something but also wanting it to be more than just meat to be consumed at the same time. trying to have both. trying to bridge that line

cause the first two killers of this show, hobbs and mushrooms, are founded on fears of self-sufficient communities, hunting and farming. the sound design in the mushroom episode even really calls attention to the diy aspect of it, sounding like diy wood instruments that might be made in some exotic/secluded community in the forest

so i guess the main message of hannibal in that sense would be that we need to exist in the same community, the same world. rather than everyone in this show simultaneously having the impulse to objectify and subject people to their own personal worlds. so that everything is fragmented and no one knows how to fucking talk to each other without killing/eating each other (lol)

[lilyliveredlittlerichboy]

it's time now. it's time to imagine the brightest future you can, and talk about it.

a future where people only work 8 hours a week and everyone's basic needs are met. a future where we are more connected to nature and eat seasonal, local produce. a future where you look out for your neighbours and they look out for you. a future where you actually know who your neighbours are. a future where everyone is just a lot more relaxed and able to do whatever they want to do - this 8 hour working week has given people their lives back and now they're able to make community events, work in community gardens, sing and dance and spend time with their kids, play whatever sport they want, travel, read, create art and music.

People are interacting with each other in good faith again because money as an ulterior motive has all but disappeared. Cus you see a few decades ago they made profits illegal. All money has to be put back into the company and CEOs can take home a salary only, no bonuses and it can't be more than 3x what the lowest paid employee makes. You can go to jail if your company is found to make profits, advertise on a large scale or pay its high ranking members more than what's allowed.

Jail still exists but mostly people go in for financial crimes (greed still exists); drugs are decriminalised and available to use safely. people are not as desperate now so there's been a massive reduction of violent and petty crime and most of the people who still do this are teenagers who get away with a slap on the wrist. police are not armed anymore and are heavily penalised if they abuse their power or hurt a civilian, and their role is more that of mediator, signposter (to community services, social services, and free and accessible healthcare including for mental health) and security. together with the former military they make up an "emergency task force" which are called upon in times of need and crisis, for floods, fires, other such disasters.

the stock market completely collapsed after profits were made illegal and people had to find other ways to figure out what a company was worth: such as how they treat their staff or how accessible their processes are. as a result of this, as well as more widespread disability thanks to Covid and an ageing population, accessibility is fucking incredible now. most places are accessible to the vast majority of disabled people even without them having to ask for a single thing. If they have to ask, accommodations are made quickly and without fuss and this is completely normal now. disabled people are more visible than ever in public life and this has led to a generally kinder, more tolerant public life.

Everything is slower now. Social media as we know it died decades ago and Internet 4.0 is efficient, will find you accurate answers and the websites you're looking for very easily and fast. there's monopoly laws restricting how large companies operate online. online ads are all but illegal - there's "phone book" esque pages where you can promote your business or service and that's allowed but not anywhere else. Lots of people are still annoying and some of them are still cruel but overall living together as humans has gotten so much more chill. We've tackled climate change and reversed much of it, now it's a global day of mourning whenever a species is found to be extinct through human intervention. these days used to happen much more frequently but it's very rare these days. Most everyone gets the day off and is encouraged to read about the lost species or hold themed funerals. Globally everything has gotten better - there's much more global equality now after a bunch of western/formerly colonising countries almost self destructed and then instead decided to own up for colonialism, pay reparations to a lot of countries in Africa Asia and Latin America, as well as indigenous nations of North America, Oceania, even in Europe. The USA doesn't exist anymore instead its a whole host of separate nations all managed by the native people whose land it is. The UK doesn't exist anymore. England is still sad about it but Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall are called Cymru, Alba, Eire and Kernow again and they've formed a Celtic Union for better collective bargaining power in the EU (which still exists, somehow. Its better now. England may still be out of the EU I'm not sure). Migration is common and foreigners are welcomed into any country with open arms.

I may try to write something about this. I have a vision for a future and it's so lovely. Here, on earth, with the starting point being now. We have a lot to work with and only a few changes could make such a difference. Demilitarisation, UBI and maximum working hours, greedy financial practices made illegal. Conservation and education on local plants and nature and food. Community building on every level. Giving people their lives back.

This is all extremely possible. If it were up to me, very little in society would be left unchanged but it would all be people friendly changes. changes that aim to support the poorest and most marginalised, changes that aim to punish greed and exploitation. It's a work in progress of course. But I have a vision for a better world and dammit if I'm not going to share it with you.

[saintsenara]

Any favourite Irish headcanons for Seamus? 😊

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

and i'm sorry to say that i'm going to be really dull and - before we get into the more insincere headcanons i have for seamus - say that figuring out his role in the series depends on the answer to a really important question which neither the books nor [to my knowledge] jkr's post-series writing addresses:

is wizarding ireland a colony?

as someone who is fond of seeing the series through the lens of anglo-irish history, this preoccupies me a lot - and i think it's something very interesting to unravel...

the statute of secrecy - the law which brings about the separation of the magical and muggle worlds - was first instituted in 1689 and put fully into effect in 1692.

it's reasonably clear from the tone of the extra canonical material that these dates come from [and also from the fact that - i am told - the statute of secrecy is a fairly significant sub-theme of the fantastic beasts films] that jkr landed on these dates for the statute primarily by thinking about the history of witchcraft in early-modern america [the salem witch trials, for example, take place in 1692-1693].

[witch trials were not an exclusively american phenomenon, of course, but they had begun to fade out in early-modern europe by c.1650, which is roughly when they begin to become more widely-documented in the american colonies. it's also fair to say that the pop-culture image of witch trials, even in europe, is heavily influenced by their american manifestation - we've all seen the crucible!]

but selecting this american context to situate the statute within means that - apparently by accident - it's also a document which appears into the lives of british and irish wizards during an extremely bloody time in anglo-irish history...

a detour which has nothing to do with harry potter...

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the main period of british colonial expansion in ireland - the early seventeenth century is, for example, the period of the plantation [that is, the settler colonisation] of ulster [what is now roughly northern ireland].

like many periods of anglo-irish relations, there was a major sectarian aspect to the british treatment of the irish. the plantation was driven by protestant settlers from scotland [which is not and has never been a colony!] and england into northern ireland. the protestant population expanded rapidly in the seventeenth century, political authority in the subordinate irish parliament was largely in the hands of protestant elites [especially clerics connected to the church of ireland] who enacted the policies of the british parliament and the crown, the catholic population was subject to land confiscations, restriction of worship, and an expectation of anglicisation.

and in march of 1689 - the year the statute of secrecy was first signed - this all... rather kicked off.

in november 1688 - in an event known as the glorious revolution - the king of britain [and ireland!], james ii, was forced from the throne. among the reasons for this [many of which were to do with james' absolutist views of monarchy] was the fact that james was a roman catholic, and that the birth of his son james [iii, the old pretender] in june 1688 displaced james ii's protestant daughters mary and anne in the line of succession and would result in a catholic dynasty on the throne. which was unpopular.

so james was chased off and the throne was offered to william of orange - soon to be william iii - the husband of mary [ii].

in an attempt to regain his throne, james primarily recruited support from among the catholic population of ireland [as well as scotland and france], having promised to reverse many of the more unpopular sixteenth- and seventeenth-century policies imposed upon ireland by the crown. this was intolerable both to british and irish protestants, and william iii had no choice but to land in ireland with an army.

the start of the conflict was bloody but nebulous. the tide turned in william iii - and his protestant supporters' - favour in july 1690, with the battle of the boyne, a williamite victory. the jacobite cause was in shambles, james fled the country, and his supporters were eventually made to formally surrender with the signing of the treaty of limerick in october 1691.

from 1691 to 1800, ireland was a british colonial client state [nominally an autonomous kingdom with its own parliament, in reality controlled by the crown and responsible to the king's cabinet in london] politically dominated by anglo-irish protestant families. in 1800, this "independent" legislature was abolished and ireland was absorbed into the united kingdom of britain and ireland and governed from westminster via a colonial administration in dublin, which remained dominated by anglo-irish protestants. this remained the case until the establishment of the republic of ireland in 1922. northern ireland remains a constituent nation of the united kingdom.

and now back to the wizards...

according to the harry potter lexicon [my beloved], jkr has connected the establishment of the statute of secrecy in britain to a delegation of wizards who sought protections for the magical from [a post-battle-of-the-boyne?] william iii and mary ii in 1690. when they failed to get these, the british delegation - along with the representatives from other nations who made up the international confederation of wizards - agreed to the full imposition of the statute, with the main local result of this being the creation of the ministry of magic to govern the magical citizens of britain...

and of ireland?

because something which has always stood out to me - in a way i imagine it has for literally nobody else - is that you can suggest on the basis of canon that magical ireland was never partitioned...

“[England] Went down to Transylvania, three hundred and ninety to ten,” said Charlie gloomily. “Shocking performance. And Wales lost to Uganda, and Scotland was slaughtered by Luxembourg.” 

charlie is talking about the performance of the uk's constituent nations in the quidditch world cup here. we know - obviously - that ireland are the finalists and eventual champions of the competition.

northern ireland, however, is nowhere to be seen...

it could be that the northern irish quidditch team is as abysmal at international sport as its muggle equivalents and that charlie regarded it as futile to mention it. it could be that wizarding ireland is a united ireland [slay!]. but it could also be that the minister for magic is ultimately responsible - as the monarch would have been at the time the statute was signed - for the governance of the entirety of ireland, with his rule maintained within ireland itself by a client government which he appoints.

because while i don't buy the idea of a hereditary wizengamot or think that the sacred twenty-eight has any actual power other than the opportunity to influence the minister... it's striking that the name of an anglo-irish noble family appears on it [burke - although carrow is sufficiently close to the anglo-irish "carew" for us to consider it a variant, and one also finds the odd lestrange knocking about irish history...], and that jkr has written about another of the most prominent pureblood families as having been resident in ireland during the seventeenth century... the gaunts [it's why lord voldemort like relics so much...]. we also know that the london edition of the daily prophet - which functions as something close to state propaganda - circulates in ireland, because seamus' mother takes it, and that the ministry is unhappy with the tricolour flag being flown ostentatiously by ireland supporters during the world cup...

it is, then, entirely possible - should an author wish - to imagine that the imposition of the statute at such a key point in anglo-irish history means that the magical ireland of the 1990s remains subject to the british minister, and that it therefore has a very different political and cultural relationship to britain than its muggle cousin.

and i also think that this but one way of thinking more broadly about the wider imperialist vibe which is found in the books: the defence of "civilisation" and the status quo; the fact that so much "wizarding" culture is just posh british stuff; the fact that so many of the historical analogies jkr uses to mirror wizarding history relate to the troubles; the ways in which the size and insularity of the wizarding population means that the conditions which enable revolution might not be present in magical communities, etc.

and for us to think about the ways this might make wizarding history diverge from muggle in the early-modern and modern era: is there a revolution in wizarding russia, or are there still estates staffed by squib serfs? do wizards think they're travelling to istanbul or constantinople? do wizards participate in the "new imperialism" of the late nineteenth century, imposing the same colonial borders upon magical africa and asia as muggles do? what would it be like, if you were muggleborn, entering a world which is not only so culturally and politically different, but geographically different?

which brings us to...

seamus finnegan headcanons

on the basis of name alone - which, of course, doesn't mean everything - seamus appears to be one of the only students of irish extraction [that is, not just the only student who's an irish national, but the only student who's of irish heritage] at hogwarts [orla quirke - sorted in goblet of fire - is the only other one i can think of].

[although it is worth noting that many names which appear to be scottish are also common in ireland - especially in the north. professor mcgonagall has - on the information of the seven-book canon - just as much chance of being an ulster protestant as she does a scot...]

[i have decided on the basis of this that i now think cormac mclaggen is northern irish.]

irish people from all walks of life live, study, and work in britain - and vice versa. but the fact that seamus attends a boarding school with the specific cultural vibe hogwarts has - that is, an institution which is a pastiche of elite, fee-paying british schools; which directly maintains the class-based status quo which props up the wizarding state; whose graduates dominate high-level political and institutional positions; and whose student body is strikingly well-heeled - suggests that there are less famous wizarding schools in ireland, and that him being sent to hogwarts is the result of a certain anglophilia [and the desire for him to benefit in any future ministry career, in britain or ireland, from an elite british education] on behalf of his parents...

this is not to say that i think seamus is a protestant - although i genuinely think that the muggle dad witch mam thing is meant to be a joke suggesting he comes from a mixed marriage [still reasonably scandalous here even in 2024!] - but that he comes from a reasonably posh, anglophile, unionist catholic background, as did many real anglo-irish civil servants educated at the sort of institutions - especially oxford and cambridge - hogwarts shares a cultural vibe with.

but who gives a shit about class and religion! the more important things to know about seamus:

his go-to chip shop order is - as it should be - a spice bag.

he has - in his life - drunk the odd bottle of football special.

his over-the-top loathing of "pretty-boy diggory" in goblet of fire is an absolutely iconic deflection tactic from the fact he's gay - and deamus is canon.

indeed, he loves dean so much that he has willingly cheered for the england national football team [although he threatened to obliviate anybody dean told about this]. dean, for his part, has got really into hurling.

the closest they come to divorce is when dean won't stop singing galway girl by ed sheeran at him.

one @whinlatter has convinced me of: this is their son.

his confirmation name is florian - the patron saint of protection against fire.

him getting beaten to a pulp by the carrows - and then explaining in great detail how the room of requirement works to harry - is iconic, and is a really under-appreciated aspect of character growth from his doubt over harry in order of the phoenix.

the derry girl he identifies most strongly with is james - although he tells everyone it's michelle.

he met edele lynch from b*witched once and lost his mind.

he owns a flat cap.

him publicly beefing with his mam in the immediate run-up to dumbledore's funeral is one of the most specifically irish things he ever does and i can't explain why.

him giving harry an "appreciative smirk" after he drops the iconic "there's no need to call me sir, professor" line is the second most irish thing he does. i, once again, cannot explain why. [him winking at harry after he answers snape back in their very first potions lesson also sends me.]

he is the voice behind this iconic video... and, let's be real, his slight capacity for self-aggrandisement and sulking does make him a plausible cork man.

he visits his granny every sunday for endless cups of tea and re-runs of ballykissangel.

he has never read a single piece of writing by sally rooney - but he lies and says he has.

he did this to harry on his first day in the ministry:

his wand is made of dogwood - which suits the flamboyant and loud.

he's shown in canon to quite like a bit of gossip - him being gassed up by quirrell's claim that he fought a zombie and then gutted when quirrell refuses to actually tell the story always sends me - and i like the idea of him being amazing value in a pub.

he's an only child - but he has at least thirty cousins. and his cousin fergus genuinely never did have another peaceful moment after seamus learned to apparate.

he and lavender went to the yule ball together because both dean and parvati are stupid and didn't see what was right in front of their faces. they split a bottle of archers behind a rose bush and complained about men and it was the best night of their lives.

he goes as red as a lobster the second the sun's out.

he runs the shit london guinness twitter account.

his boggart is a banshee because his dad - who is literally only mentioned once in philosopher's stone - dies over the summer before his second year [banshees - in irish folklore - herald the deaths of family members with their weeping]. however - unlike harry - you don't hear him fucking banging on about this all the time...

and he can't speak a word of irish, but none of the posh english lads he knows are going to risk calling him out on that...

[boccher]

i don't get the point of the dune movie. "what if the whole world was blindly loyal gullible ideological fanatics and they did reverse colonisation. pretty bad to be a blindly loyal gullible ideological fanatic now isnt it" well its pretty bad that your contrived premise lead to a contrived conclusion, but im not convinced that that says anything about how real life works

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

Here's my AD 2024 challenge to Zutarians.

Before you hit that wretched "Post" button, ask yourself: if the character traits and key decisions of Aang and Zuko in the show were reversed at that point of the story, would you still agree with the direction of your judgment? Or would you be gushing over Zuko and bashing Aang nevertheless, even though their actions would be the exact opposite of what happened in canon?

(For example: in TSR, if Zuko were the one preaching forgiveness whilst Aang encouraged Katara to follow the road of vengeance, would you still hold similar judgments as now? Or would Zuko's pacifism count as a sign of maturity and a wonderful page of his redemption arc, whilst Aang's insistence on revenge would register as hot-headed immaturity and further prove his "entitled violent coloniser" status?)

If your answer is the latter, then your post is rubbish, and you are probably much more an Aang hater than a Zutara fan.

Ain't this the fucking truth.

[familyabolisher]

hello ave ! i was wondering if you’ve watched the 2022 interview with the vampire series and if so what you thought of it

i really enjoyed iwtv! i haven’t read rice’s novel but as far as i understand it, the show was a pretty significant departure from the original text, at least where rice’s engagement with race is concerned—i think the show seems pretty determined to strike out on its own, and thus far seems to be doing a pretty good job of that. i think what i found most interesting was the show’s honing in on a relationship between the coercive enforcement of normative kinship structures and the social abjection of the slave relative to the white master (i’ve been reading vincent woodard’s the delectable negro which expounds on this idea of like, rape + abuse + consumption extant within models of kinship relations, ‘the ideological infrastructure of childhood in slavery’ as he puts it, which i think has a lot of explanatory power around lestat/louis/claudia…); there’s lestat’s ‘teaching’ vampirism to louis which of course then morphs into physical abuse & that the text makes clear can be read parallel to a relationship between a slavemaster and a slave, and there’s the way lestat functions as a patriarch relative to whom we can read louis as the ‘wife’ and claudia as the ‘child,’ and the networks of [physical, economic, emotional] dependency, violence holding them all together.

i’m also quite interested in this idea of a ‘disciplined’ vampirism, or indeed vampirism as ‘disciplining’ (which is of course to say class-enforcing), because of course the dominant cultural narrative of the vampire (& the one with which i have the most familiarity) is that of a kind of nondifferentiated alterity which can be moulded into any number of metaphors. lestat to louis, of course, but also eg. lestat killing the opera singer who performed badly, the opulence of the mardi gras ball at the end (and something about consumption as disciplining—again tapping the vincent woodard sign but the mardi gras attendees coveting a kind of consumption of louis as a Black man only to then themselves be consumed), louis in 2021 comparing vampires who eat humans rather than animals to slaves (‘slaves to their appetites’ or similar, i forget the exact wording used, but it’s the language of body fascism plus the obvious pertinence with which slavery in the show as a whole is imbued—which ofc then invokes ideas around [un]disciplined bodies and racialisation) … it’s interesting how the show kind of plays both positions at once. the alterity metaphor is there, but so is the hegemony of sorts—vampirism disrupts louis’ position within a traditional family structure where vampirism stands for queerness, obviously, but also the intrusion of lestat (which is to say both queerness and slavery!) as a force that destabilises a Black family. it’s an interesting little balancing act and i’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

anyway i also just think it’s a well-written show lol! visually gorgeous, erotic, indulgent, well-paced. i had a good time. no idea what happens next (again, haven’t read the book) but my ears pricked up at the idea of travelling from louisiana to europe … a transatlantic crossing, a reverse colonisation of sorts … there’s a lot you can do with that!

[beginner-witch-blog]

Witchcraft is queer Witchcraft is queer Witchcraft is the struggle of the oppressed Witchcraft is the power of those who don't have power Witchcraft is women who have lost their agency in the land enclosure Witchcraft is people bringing their cultures and religions with them as they are taken to slavery Witchcraft is practices that cling on under colonisation Witchcraft is for those who are marginalised oppressed and otherwise powerless Witchcraft is reversal of power and changing status quo Witchcraft is queer

[apas-95]

I wonder if memecucker et al are still doing the whole 'landback is just reverse colonisation, indigeneity is racist' thing through the upsurge in public support for Palestine. I don't wonder enough to bother to check, but still.

[dezmolad]

Speaking of Beast Wars, am I the only one weirded out how casually the maximals handle the fact that the Predacons brainwashed their amnesiac friends, with only BlackArachnia being saved and the rest being left for dead at the end of the series.

Than there's all the other maximal protoforms whom are assumed dead and even if they're not, they're stuck in the past!

The topic of protoforms and how they work is pretty much... weirdly handled in the series.

Maximals don't show much sympathy towards most of the protoforms changed into Predacons, as if they weren't completely different people before. We also see transformers who come out of the protoforms getting more attached to Earth than the others (like Airrazor and Tigatron just living somewhere in the wild) as if their connection to Cybertron is less significant.

In this one episode where Rhinox gets altered into a Predacon it gets even weirder. His change is treated way diferently than what happens to the protoforms that Predacons got, right. It both works different and gets reversed relatively easy, and also all of the Maximals care a lot about the incident. Rhinox is treated here as their friend, not like a prop in the conflict with Predacons, as most of the protoforms before opening them are!

The fact that at least big part of the characters gets their name after getting an altmode also is a factor that doesn't help in the search of some kind of previous identity in those protoforms.

Based on all of that I don't see protoforms as fully shaped cybertronians. For me protoforms works kinda like... like if you'd take seeds of a plant from one place to another with intention of growing them there? But done to their own species by themselves?? This could be used by cybertronians as a metod of colonisation, too (also making them kind of a sentient invasive species, as it would be fairly easy for them to spread XD).

Canon of Beastwars is pretty messy and it's hard to figure out what the intention was for something to work in this universe. They invented many terms end mechanics without making a great job of explaining them. But I think this version where we look at the protoforms as kind of pre-cooked cybertronians works pretty nicely.

Thanks a lot for the ask!