#sinophobic

[system-of-a-feather]

You know what, I'll admit a thing about being anti-tulpa. While yes, I do stand by the claims of cultural appropriation and colonialism and that people much more formally educated on the topic can put out there - and that yes, as a Buddhist, it is so infuriatingly clownish to correlate "western Tulpamancy" with Buddhism as they are almost opposites in sheer principle.

But ya know, the gaslighting of 'all the anti-tulpas don't actually care about it being cultural appropriation and just HATE endos' whenever someone - like me - speaks up about it actually gets to me as a part enough so that the system TYPICALLY bans me from arguing or talking about people on it

And ya know what? I'm gonna declaw it cause I just realized the only reason it gets to me is cause there is a grain of truth in it and to be fair, I haven't been 100% honest and direct with my feelings on the topic in the guise of being 'formal' about it. Yes I do care and think Tibetian Buddhists and Buddhism should be protected and what not, and yes this and that - none of that is facetious or a lie

But the truth is, it's not what I'm actually mad about. Its not the real reason this pisses me off, but you know what? The REAL reason is not irrelevant.

I'm just tired as fuck of white people taking all sorts of Asian culture and fetishizing it and turning it into some kind of joke then running around acting like its okay in the slightest or calling it "cultural exchange" when REALLY its just "hey look at this mystical Asian culture and how we can have our fun with it!!!!".

I'm TIRED of white people looking at eastern cultures and AAPI saying the way they interact with it is disgusting, uncomfortable, and kinda gross and them going "um ACTUALLY"

I'm TIRED of people entirely ignoring the constant and regular racism, disregard, prejudice, hate and fetishism of Asians and Asian culture in America SPECIFICALLY in regards to Asian Americans and think its their place to talk over them

I'm TIRED of Asian and Eastern cultures being treated like a joke and a "not REALLY POC" or like we aren't marginalized or structurally taken advantage of or have a history of white people fucking us over historically enough for 'not racist people' white to feel uncomfortable debating what is and isn't harmful to us. And the best thing is? 95% of them don't know the first LICK of the fucking atrocities done to our cultures.

I'm TIRED of being the side tangent and the Gotcha point - I'm TIRED of people looking at ONE person on ONE reddit who had ONE opinion and saying they define the ENTIRE POPULACE cause of course.

I'm TIRED of people assuming everyone is Chinese and that everyone who is Chinese supports the CCP

I'm TIRED of people assuming we weren't fucked over by the CCP

I'm TIRED of people not understanding the nuance that while all Asians and cultures in Asia are different that it doesn't mean disrespect to one part doesn't in turn affect others - ESPECIALLY in America and ESPECIALLY from white people.

I'm TIRED of the 'you aren't X enough to have a say on this'.

I'm TIRED of deep personal things rooted in deep history being made into a fun game and community for white people.

I'm TIRED of white people interacting with our cultures and I VERY much understand why my family and my ancestors all fucking wanted nothing to do with White Westerners cause yall (generalizing this to be 'westerners who are a piece of shit, you know who you are') are fucking ridiculous assholes of clowns

I'm TIRED of it and the fucking audacity yall fucking have.

I'll admit it.

Tibetian Buddhism and Tibetian Buddhist culture is not what I'm actually mostly mad about. I'm NOT actually mostly mad about how a thing I value and treasure is turned into a fucking joke that is the opposite of its original meaning while being toted around as a "cool and quirky esoteric fact about the history of this subculture predominantly run by white people and started by a white person"

You are all right on that.

I'm actually just upset on the quiet and inherent SEVERE sinophobic macro and microaggressions that inherently plague the discussion with every pro-"tulpa-term" I've talked to save for like, literally ONE who is ACTUALLY raised understanding more about Buddhism and has my respect.

I'm just tired of me and my culture and my related cultures being turned into a fucking ornament for white people.

That's it. Getting that off my chest.

Call that a conflict of interest or call that valid, I don't care.

White people can reblog, but be a fucking clown piece of shit and I'm fucking blocking you.

[akitossohma]

the blatant sinophobia that infests white western anime communities is so foul. like what do you mean you are watching a donghua dubbed in japanese? does it really pain you that much to hear chinese languages spoken? will you really only consume donghua if you can pretend it’s japanese?

[crippled-peeper]

the fact my mother might still be alive if only we lived in China where they took covid seriously is extremely jarring to think about

[insipid-drivel]

Toxins, Venom, and Poisons in Historical Western Medicine: How Are We Not Extinct From Doing Some Of This To Ourselves?

This piece is an involuntary piece inspired by @writing-with-sophia's awesome post "Poison list", which is an accurate and succinct list of commonly known (and ancient!) poisons, venoms, and toxins that have been and were used for causing poisoning in ancient and recent history. I wanted to write this because what struck me by their post crossing my dash was, the sheer number of poisons listed that were - and even still are - used as mainstays for healthcare around the world throughout the ages!

OBLIGATORY DON'T BE A DUMBASS PSA: If you're planning on incorporating these poisons into your HISTORICAL-era writing, it's also important to remember that many of them were used for medicinal purposes at one time, too, and it's great you're interested in learning about the subject! And also, you shouldn't try ANY of these! I will not tell you how to do it at home if you DM me, so don't! You are not appropriately trained to do it! You will harm or kill yourself and possibly your loved ones if you fuck around with any of these and it will be 100% your fault and you absolutely should feel bad bout it! I've seen some of you idiots believe 4chan posts about making home-grown crystals using recipes for actual mustard gas and seen you being wheeled into the ER on the news! I will not feel bad if you get yourself hurt if you screw around with any of these plants, elements, or animals!

Resource blog plugs and PSA over, now for the Hilariously Poisonous Medicines:

If you're writing something that's meant to take place prior to the advent of our more modern understanding of poisons, venoms, and toxins, factoring in "this is toxic to me NOW, but what about 500 years ago?" can add a lot of opportunities for interesting plot elements to your story.

These can include someone accidentally poisoning themselves with a toxic drug or substance that wouldn't have killed them if they'd handled it properly - like tansy? Grows all over the place in Europe and England? That'll kill you if you harvest it too late in the season, but it's good for intestinal parasites when it's harvested early in the year and processed right.

Did the lady's maid really kill her mistress with belladonna? Or was she trying to secretly help her mistress get rid of an unwanted pregnancy?

The protagonist's children can't survive to make it to weaning age! Is the wetnurse a poisoner, or does the milkman hide that he sells sour milk by pouring Borax into it so no one could taste it and has no idea he's killing his clients' babies?

Nuance and cultural mores regarding historical views about poisons and toxins can make writing even more fun, dynamic, and interesting! Explore 'em!

Just... please don't try any of this crap yourself. You will poison yourself, it will hurt, you will die, and you will hurt the entire time you're dying. Using OP's master list alone, here's the flip side of these lethal beasts through the eyes of our distant ancestors who believed illness was caused by "vapors", "bad air", and "imbalanced humors":

Hemlock:

Used across multiple different cultures in history. When properly administered to treat a disease, poison hemlock was used to treat asthma, whooping cough, bronchitis, joint/bone pain, muscle cramps, and insomnia. Hemlock was most often used as a sedative and antispasmodic.

Arsenic:

Arsenic is a heavy metal, and so has been used in everything from making specialty dyes for wallpapers (Scheele's green is the most infamous arsenic-based paint; Queen Victoria once had a guestroom in her palace redone with Scheele's green wallpaper. The first dignitary to stay there had to be carried out and taken to emergency care after breathing astronomical amounts of arsenic dust from the wallpaper's paint), to medicine. Arsenic was especially commonly used in history to treat skin ailments ranging from acne, to psoriasis, to syphilis sores. It was also sometimes prescribed for menstrual cramps, upset stomachs, colic, and arthritis, among many, many other things.

Cyanide:

Uh... I have literally never found any evidence of cyanide in medicine, outside of its use in modern medicine as part of certain chemical lab tests for measuring urine ketone bodies that involve no contact with a patient whatsoever. Cyanide literally works in less than a few seconds to render your entire body incapable of absorbing OR using oxygen in your lungs or already existing in your blood. Cyanide is really only good at making things that breathe not breathe anymore.

Nightshade:

There are a lot of different "nightshades", so being specific is essential here. Potatoes are nightshades. Tomatoes are nightshades. Calling anything a "nightshade" does not inherently mean it's lethally toxic. Belladonna is probably the most notorious of the "deadly" nightshades, but to this day, is still used medicinally, and would actually be seen as a health and cosmetic mainstay in historical fiction, especially if your setting is in Italy!

Belladonna is an Italian portmanteau for "beautiful woman", because tinctures (water-based drops) of belladonna were commonly used by Italian women as eyedrops to dilate their eyes and appear more attractive, aroused, and desirable. Today, belladonna's eye-dilating effects are still used by optometrists to dilate the pupils! Belladonna has been, and still sometimes is used as an NSAID, general painkiller, motion sickness treatment, asthma medication, and even as a treatment for IBS.

Ricin:

As OP said, Ricin is derived from the toxin found in Castor Beans, and is surprisingly new as an official "the only reason this is made is to make someone dead" poison. Not only is ricin a popular "nobody would think to test for this!" choice in mystery/thriller writing, but it has been used for political assassinations in real life before. Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian anti-Communist dissenter and writer, was killed in 1978 with a 1.7mm diameter ricin-coated pellet shot into his thigh muscle by an unidentified assailant using a modified umbrella as a gun. He died 4 days later.

Historically, castor OIL has been used for medicinal purposes, especially for treating constipation, inducing labor in pregnancy, and as a topical skin moisturizer. If you've ever watched the opening scene in Disney's "Peter Pan", when the childrens' mother is trying to give them a spoonful of medicine each, she's actually giving them castor oil! Castor oil tastes really bad (so much so that flavorings like cinnamon were often added to try to muffle the taste), so the childrens' reluctance and disgust at their mom making them take their medicine is very realistic for the era the movie came out in!

Strychnine:

Another lethal poison that started life as a medicine/food additive. Strychnine is no longer used medicinally at all today, but historically, it was used to stimulate the heart, treat bladder and bowel incontinence, and limb palsy. Strychnine is a deadly-powerful muscle stimulant that, as a poison, causes horrifyingly painful full-body strictures (spasms) and destroys the cardiovascular system. (Fun fact: Strychnine and hydrochloric acid were historically mixed into cheap vodka to make knock-off gin, especially during the Georgian Era in England if the brewer didn't have or couldn't afford juniper berries!)

Snake Venom:

Seriously, do your research before you write an actual, real snake species using venom they don't produce! The Big 3 Forms Of Snake Venom are: Hemotoxic, Neurotoxic, and Cytotoxic. Specific snake species exclusively generate the same kind of venom (so a hemotoxic snake will ALWAYS produce baby snakes that also make hemotoxic venom). Aristotle himself wrote in 380 BC that certain snake venoms could be applied for treating fevers, smallpox, and leprosy, and there is even some evidence in the historical record prior to the 1800s that different cultures have experimented throughout the eons with using venom for converting into antivenom, but I've never found a source citing anyone making a successful form of antivenom until around the 1850s.

Digitalis:

OP really nailed the important thing about Digitalis, and that is it's cardiac benefits for certain people - particularly for treating congestive heart failure. Vincent van Gogh was actually prescribed epilepsy medication that likely contained Digitalis, aka Foxglove, and there are some prevailing theories about van Gogh's love of bright yellow paint as being either caused or exacerbated by the symptoms associated with digitalis use, which can cause an attraction to and increased visual sensitivity to the color yellow. In several portraits, including one of his own psychiatrist, van Gogh shows subjects presented alongside foxglove flowers. Digitalis is absolutely lethal if consumed or taken without expert guidance, however, because it's the mother ingredient of Digoxin. Digoxin isn't used as frequently as it used to be a few decades ago, but it's still used and prescribed today for certain forms of heart failure and heart disease. Digoxin was also, at one time, was also sometimes used to induce chemical abortions.

Lead:

Dear god, lead. Not only is it so slow to kill you that you'll think that the only way to manage your symptoms is with more lead, but lead poisoning can be a life-long crisis for a person who is regularly exposed to it. Humans have used lead for everything from plumbing, to paint, to our cutlery, to cosmetics, to medicine. While yes, it is very possible to ingest enough lead in a single sitting to die within hours or days, most sufferers of lead poisoning experience it for years or decades before the symptoms become obvious. Some archaeologists believe that the Romans used lead cutlery because lead has a unique reaction when we lick it: when you have lead coating your tongue, it makes EVERYTHING you eat suddenly taste 10x better. I learned this myself from going target-shooting with my mom at a gun rage as a teenager, inhaled gunsmoke (which contains lead), and went for lunch immediately after. Even though I was just eating a $5 meal from In-N-Out, my burger tasted so good I thought I was gonna have to change my pants. When I asked the rangemaster at the target place about it later, he literally said, "Oh yeah, lead makes the worst cooking taste like heaven."

The ancient Romans ate a lot of rotten, spoiled, and sour food, and so lead would've made it easier to eat it back then. But the neurological effects of lead poisoning are nightmarish. It's suspected that, in America, the #1 reason we had so many active serial killers in the country from the 1940s-2000s was because of leaded gasoline. Ever since leaded gasoline was banned? Serial and random violent crime rates have dramatically gone down, especially in metropolitan cities. Ancient Rome, too, gradually became an increasingly violent city as its population went up and its reliance on lead did. We're only just now starting to figure out how toxic lead actually is, so go nuts with using it as a plot element regarding subjects like "Why Are You Like This?"

Mercury:

Mercury is also known as quicksilver, because in spite of being a heavy metal, the temperature at which it melts into a liquid is very, very low compared to most other metals. The first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, was rumored to be so obsessed with the notion of immortality that he would send his doctors on doomed voyages around the world searching for a legendary substance that would, indeed, make him immortal. Legend has it that some doctors who were tasked with the job found out about the last guys, and produced mercury before Emperor Qin Shi Huang and cried, "Here it is! I got it!" so they wouldn't end up doomed to drown at sea. Qin Shi Huang became so obsessed with ingesting and medicating himself with mercury that, when his legendary tomb was being constructed, he had a small-yet-accurate-to-scale map of China+the known world about the size of a football field with every body of water full of fountains of running mercury in his burial chamber. His tomb was rediscovered in the last couple of decades after archaeologists found suspiciously high levels of mercury in the soil on top of a "hill" that had been sitting in the countryside untouched for thousands of years. It turned out to be Qin Shi Huang's long-lost tomb.

Since those days, mercury has closely been associated in early medicine as a sort of cure-all, since it literally kills anything it touches (including people). Captain Blackbeard himself, the most notorious pirate in Western history (Western specifically; google who Zheng Yi Sao was), was known or widely believed to be a syphilis sufferer, and desperately sought infusions of mercury from ships he'd capture (and the doctors onboard) to treat it, believing like everyone did that mercury could cure syphilis. It can't. They just didn't understand back then that syphilis starts off surface-level, and then eats your brain years after the initial infection.

Aconite:

Again, ridiculously toxic outside of specific medicinal applications that still aren't safe today! Aconite, or wolfsbane, has historically been used as a heart sedative (for slowing the heart), diuretic, painkiller, and even used to induce sweating. Evidence of wolfsbane being used for medicinal purposes has been spotted here and there over thousands of years throughout the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Empires, but its original use came about in Ancient Greece for hunting and culling wolves by poisoning bait-food with it. That form of hunting died out long before the European Middle Ages, but the name "wolfsbane" stuck. Mostly because in the Middle Ages, a lot of people believed werewolves were a huge problem, and kept wolfsbane handy to deter said werewolves.

Thallium:

Today, thallium is mostly used in the production of camera and eyeglass lenses. Before its toxicity was known about, it wasn't strange to hear of thallium being used topically to treat fungal infections like ringworm. Thallium was also sporadically used in treating typhus and tuberculosis, along with a wide array of sexually transmitted diseases.

This list doesn't even touch the tip of the toxic iceberg when it comes to the sheer quantity of hilariously dangerous toxins people have, or still continue, to use for medicinal purposes! In a Victorian-era English London middle-class townhouse setting alone, there were dozens and dozens of ways to poison or otherwise harm yourself just by going about your daily life. So, if you've got a period piece you're working on, or are just bored, you can pick an exact date and time in our history and learn just how terrifyingly comfortable our ancestors were with upsettingly dangerous substances and home remedies. You can also watch a massive docuseries, called "Hidden Killers" and hosted by historian Suzannah Lipscomb, among other historians and archaeologists, which deep-dives into the hidden and unknown dangers of living in eras from Tudor-Era England, to the Post-WWII Reconstruction Age.

As a final note: I am NOT bashing Chinese or Eastern medicinal practices here, and in fact deliberately have gone out of my way to not include any references toward culturally-sanctioned medicinal practices in Eastern and Southeastern Asia. This post is specifically related to the history of WESTERN medicines and their associated history. I am not, nor have I ever been, a doctor of any traditional Eastern medicinal practices, and do not pretend to know better. Sinophobes are unwelcome in my blog space.

[tf2heritageposts]

temu fortress 2

[flagellant]

"why is it propaganda when china does it but not when the united states does it" didnt say that didnt say that didnt say that didnt say that for the love of GOD no one anywhere said that and in fact it was important to say the opposite of that aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa stop making this a moralistic thing i swear to GODDDDD

[renmorris]

really hope the kids today have access to random stashes of books in their teacher’s classrooms that contain healthy radicalizing content.

every time there's a protest outside the white house I immediately remember this one passage from a book series I don’t remember that described peaceful protesters being gunned down on the white house lawn and men with hoses coming to wash off the rose bushes

I was 10 or 11 when I read that and now I’m nearly 30 years old, and I will never forget that shit even though I’ve forgotten nearly everything else about the book

[anarchistbitch]

they hate u when u serve beautiful, strong, chinese girl with a vengeance untill death. and also an affinity to turn into a cat

[anambermusicbox]

Joy of Life 2 OST “Excuse Me” now up on Spotify and Youtube Music!

[bluebirdmuppet]

A post about how a shit stain waste of space @ajawrites @bookshop attacked fans of Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan in an article she wrote for @vox, and then went on to slander and defame Zhang Zhehan in an attempt to get the only article published about his cancellation by CAPA retracted.

Here's the context: On June 6, 2022, @vox published an article written by @ajawrites @bookshop claiming that fans of Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan are "conspiracy theorists". In it, she makes all types of claims defaming myself and the entire JunZhe fandom (both here and in China) for being conspiracy theorists because we do not believe Zhang Zhehan's Instagram account is controlled by him. For those who don't know, Instagram fraud is rampant and there have been several Chinese celebrities who have been the victim of this. Zhang Zhehan's solo fans encouraged the reposting of this article and defended it because they somehow believe that Zhang Zhehan would "comeback" on an international platform before his name is cleared in China (another story for another day).

On June 14, 2022, less than one week after the publication of that article, The China Story published an article about why Zhang Zhehan was cancelled, and specifically that a non-governmental organization called the China Association of Performing Arts (CAPA) was behind the cancellation, not the Chinese government. It also described the efforts made by Li Xuezheng, a famous government-affiliated director, to clear his name. To my knowledge, this is the only story in the world to shine a light on CAPA's role in Zhang Zhehan's cancellation.

After this article was published, @ajawrites @bookshop wrote a long email to the China Story on June 18, 2022 seeking that the article be retracted. She claimed she had done "research" which showed that the article was part of a conspiracy theory (false), that Zhang Zhehan's family was linked to Japan (false), that Zhang Zhehan was cancelled by the government (false), that CAPA wasn't involved (false), and that all those who believe they are are "conspiracy theorists" (false). She repeats anti talking points to smear Zhang Zhehan in an attempt to obtain a retraction of the article.

Yes, @ajawrites @bookshop attempted to get the only article in the world that described CAPA in a negative light retracted.

We have a copy of the email. Here are some excerpts of her own words.

Here's @ajawrites @bookshop insinuating that Zhang Zhehan was banned by the government, when it has been proven on multiple occasions that the government did not ban Zhang Zhehan.

A writer who cannot even get this fact right does not deserve to be called a writer or a thinking human being.

Here's @ajawrites @bookshop claiming that Zhang Zhehan has family ties to Japan, which is FALSE.

Zhang Zhehan himself stated in his interview with Li Xuezheng on January 1, 2022 (seven months before this email) that this was not true. Yet, @ajawrites @bookshop continued to spread this smear to the editors of The China Story.

How does someone who is too lazy to confirm facts become a "culture writer" for @vox?

Here's @ajawrites @bookshop claiming that their "research" shows that the public genuinely hated Zhang Zhehan. They claim that Zhang Zhehan was not cancelled by bad actors, but rather by the "public".

They ignore all the proof and statements that what happened was due to malicious competition and monopoly. All of this was readily available, had @ajawrites @bookshop actually done diligent research. Li Xuezheng had, after all, talked about it for weeks at the end of 2021 and early 2022.

But of course @ajawrites @bookshop knows better! They know better than even Chinese people! They even know that CAPA is a government organization, when CAPA itself said that it is not government and does not represent government.

Pretty rich for white journalist @ajawrites @bookshop to claim that when Li Xuezheng, a renowned government affiliated film director, says that Zhang Zhehan's cancellation was not done by the Chinese government but instead by CAPA, he is spouting a "conspiracy theory".

@vox is this the type of sinophobic journalists that your publication now employs?

Here's @ajawrites @bookshop defending CAPA by stating that it is not to blame for Zhang Zhehan's censorship from all media platforms in China.

Except they failed to read the multiple media reports indicating that CAPA had allied itself with multiple media platforms to ban those it deems "immoral". These media resources includes a western outlet, Reuters. Basic due diligence would have unearthed this, but it appears neither @ajawrites @bookshop or @vox care about the facts.

Here's @ajawrites @bookshop suggesting (as a white foreign writer with zero access to his case), that it is "unlikely" that Zhang Zhehan's investigation would go anywhere, that he can't come back, that he is "already back".

These are clear anti talking points easily found on Chinese social media.

Of particular note is that @ajawrites @bookshop claims that these conclusions are a result of their "research". Yes in their own words, in 2020 they were just learning Chinese. With their level of genius, I bet they're not far from being a beginner.

Yet, this is the type of "expert" that @vox employs to write about Chinese fan culture.

The article in China Story is one of the only published articles in the world that details how Zhang Zhehan was cancelled by CAPA, not the Chinese government. Yet @ajawrites @bookshop, great friend to Zhang Zhehan solo fans asked for a retraction.

Yes, we have the email. They actually did.

Who has incentive to take down an article that speaks negatively about CAPA? Who has incentive to water down statements negative to CAPA? Who has incentive to perpetuate smears against Zhang Zhehan internationally?

Who better to manipulate than a lazy and dumb writer like @ajawrites @bookshop

I do wonder how @vox and its advertisers feels about @ajawrites @bookshop spreading slander about a Chinese celebrity and his fandom? I wonder if @vox even bothers with basic fact-checking? I wonder if @vox is okay with one of its writers contacting another publication in an attempt to supports their biased views?

To the Zhang Zhehan fans (Zhang Sanjian believers) who have fawned at the feet of @ajawrites @bookshop: good to know that you support those who defend CAPA, the organization that cancelled Zhang Zhehan.

And one last thing to @ajawrites @bookshop: only a shit stain waste of space would write an article about a celebrity to gain a following in his fandom while actually despising him, believing the smears against him, and thinking he's a t******.

We call people like you blood sucking vampires.

[enlichened]

The thing thats consistently bothered me the most in the fallout show is the racism. I would hesitate to recommend it because of that alone. And there was obvious love that the set and prop designers, actors, costume department, and even maybe the writers put into the show! There are themes and characters in fallout that i'm certain would resonate with fans of color!

It KILLS me that so many of the fallout entries are damn well unplayable/watchable in this regard because the writers simply Don't Care how the people in their work are presented. That this like hugely popular world with a lot of worldbuilding and thought behind it does such wrong to so many people, fans and otherwise, that you cannot find any game in the series that does it right or well. It alienates a lot of people who might've been fans just because the majority white creators and fanbase don't give a shit, and I'm sick of it.

it's not enough to say "in the fallout in my head that racism doesn't happen," you actually have to put some things into PRACTICE. Allow space in your head, your games/show, your fan spaces for people of color! notice and say something when you see racism coming from media, yourself, and others!

[heartbreakercupcake]

Listen, I need a Fallout Game set in China

I wanna know how life has changed after them after the bombs drops and what they've been doing to adapt

What where their vaults like???

fuck it, give me a Fallout Game set in the USSR

GIVE ME THE COMMUNIST GHOULS THAT CURSE THE AMERICAN YANKEES FOR BOMBING THEM

Fallout game set anywhere BUT America

[zhongscara]

.

[communist-hatsunemiku]

i definitely need to vet the people i follow a bit more. Like i just had to block someone i was following for being like "tiktok is turning the youth into PRC drones! we need to ban it!" like wtf are you on about seriously

[rebelontherocks]

i think what a lot of people need to understand about dune is that frank herbert watched lawrence of arabia which is a movie based on the real life account of a real man who fought alongside arab tribes and peoples in a revolt against the ottoman empire. It's also a scathing takedown of the white saviour, just a clinical excision of why exactly there's no such thing. It paints a vivid picture of british imperialism and why 'good men' working from within said empire can do fuck all to help liberate anyone. it's also a really heartbreaking gay love story, and it gave the world one of the greatest romantic heroes in Sherif Ali.

Frank Herbert saw all that and decided, but what if it was homophobic instead, and there was desert cocaine and worms, and the white saviour had superpowers as a result of eugenics.

[d3epfriedangels]

'this main character deserved to live" well actually I think tryla should have lived. fight me