#so many lives - culture and history deliberately destroyed for what

[ganondoodle]

didnt want to talk about it but i feel like im actually going insane

anti-queer laws are popping up everywhere, fascism is on the rise in every country around me, including my own which is famous for the atrocities of its past that happened not even 100 years ago and only got this far bc no one thought he'd get through with it

a pandemic that WASNT defeated and is STILL around and endangering everyone yet nigh everyone acts like its a thing of the past

the entire creativity of humanity being stolen and chewed up in a maschine so companies can make an endless shitty new schlock of media to pay even less to even less people and earn more or for some entitled tech bros thinking that all art is is the jpeg on screen deluding themselves into believing they now have a privilege denied to them by the talent-god even tho that god never existed and the only one who denies them the ability to make art is themselves

the climate visibly going haywire and few things are done against it, if at all even

and now i am watching a genocide happen while every piece of media joins into the propaganda of the oppressor, of course i dont think hamas is good, a terror organisation is a terror organisation no matter who they claim to fight for, and i am not defending them, hell no, but why are we being told to cheer on an entire country being wiped out for something a small group did, knowing that wiping palestine from existence has been the goal of israel all this time and this has now given them a good excuse and international support to finish it off?? the war russia started agaisnt ukraine is still ongoing, isnt there also a genocide happenign in armenia? and one against a minority in china as well?? probably even more i havent even heard about..

i didnt know about the details of whats happening to palestine until a few days ago either but now, on top of everything, i feel like im losing it, what even is happening, how am i supposed to just .. go on with my daily life while all of that is going on, not losing your faith into humanity has become a real challenge over these last few years even tho i know its vital to keep it alive bc the pit of thinking its all lost anyway is deep and only makes things worse for everyone

[garkgatiss]

{{esquivalience}}, The Auteur, and Doctor Who the TV Show

alright so this novella.

First, its provenance: I was googling the Twist at the End song last week because it's catchy as hell. I ended up on the Tardis wiki and realized that there was a song by the exact same name that appeared in a licensed DWU novella that was published April 9th. As in, last month. Which is weird. It's hard to say how weird, but given the timing, it either has to be a) pure coincidence (lol), b) someone who worked on the show abusing their advance knowledge of plot details for personal gain, or c) intentional coordination between showrunner and novella-writer, a la Joe Lidster writing John Watson’s blog for BBC Sherlock.

The likelihood of (a) is decreasing by the week. I feel like I have to entertain the idea of (b) happening, but it's hard to square why a DWU-writing supernerd who is also involved somehow with the production of the show would risk a lifetime of blackballing from DW for a bit of cheap promotion for their extended-universe tie-in novella. I am so sorry to be saying this, but I think (c) might actually have legs.

The novella's title is {{esquivalience}}, which is a fake word invented in real life by editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary. The invented word means "deliberate shirking of one's official duties", and it was added to the dictionary to protect the copyright of the electronic version. In S9, Face the Raven showed us a “trap street", i.e. a fake street drawn on a map by a mapmaker to identify any copyright infringement of said map -- a dictionary entry for a word made up by the dictionary editors operates similarly as a copy-trap. The definition is apt for a copy-trap as well, because anyone illicitly copying a dictionary is themselves shirking a job they ought to be doing themselves... it's clever, it's very fun, we're off to a great start.

{{a crash course in esquivalience below the cut}}

THE STORY:

The unnamed protagonist applies for a custodial job at this library that serves basically as a databank for the history of everything in the universe. If a book about something is thrown away, that something ceases to have ever existed. Exhibit A: Protagonist works in the Dead & Dying Language Department. They throw away The Book of Belgian Dutch, and a) a couple coworkers with Belgian Dutch heritage either disappear or get completely different names/family trees, and also b) everyone quickly forgets that Belgian Dutch was ever a thing to begin with.

The librarians cover for this accidental deletion of reality by copying/fudging a new book on "Belgian Gerench", their name for what they replace Belgian Dutch with. They try to catch most of the people who were deleted, bring them back, and fit them into that new language/culture/ethnicity bucket they just made up.

(The narration explains that because both Belgian and Dutch still exist separately as concepts, there aren't too many knock-on effects in terms of loanwords in other languages that needed to be modified/recovered. It also explains that time-traveling back to make an exact copy of The Book of Belgian Dutch wouldn't work because of the universe's copyright laws or something.)

Protag then comes after the head of their department, the Head Dictionary Contributor, or Head DC. They find him in a hidden room called the Internal Reference Room. Instead of languages, the books here hold the life stories of every employee, which auto-update as the person lives their life, but can also be edited or destroyed to alter that person's reality. Protag sits down with the Head DC's lifebook and starts adding and erasing things.

It turns out that Head DC knows how wrong editing these books can go from personal experience. Years ago, wanting to leave his mark on the universe, the Head DC chose to add his own copy-trap into The Book of Dutch -- the fake word "esquivalience". This action seemingly created the concept of cutting corners at your job, leading to the insufficient vetting of Protag for this job and therefore their subsequent hiring, which results in Head DC's eventual death.

Head DC pleads with Protag for his life, but Protag is undeterred. They finally tear out the final page in Head DC's book, which kills him. Protag then writes themselves in as Head DC. Settling into their new role, they turn their attention to The Book of English (8th to 25th Century). They first look up the dictionary entry for “esquivalience”, which says it came to English from Dutch, and then flips to the entries for “ravel" and “unravel”, described as contranyms from Dutch roots, both “meaning variably to tangle or to fray”.

This is the central story of the novella. There is also a Prelude and Postlude that describe the lives of two young men, first in a reality in which they never meet, and then in a reality in which they do meet and fall in love (their meeting is enabled by one of them skivving off work in time to make it to see the movie where they first meet -- esquivalience!)

Just before the Postlude, there is also printed the lyrics to a song (see below), and an excerpt from The Book of English, this volume covering the 4th to 5th billionth centuries of history. This excerpt again gives the definition of “unravel”, but refers the reader to an appendix for the full list of definition, and notes they are “largely in usage as reference to Unravel, The” and “N.B. to be used with extreme care and caution”.

NOVELLA-SHOW CONNECTIONS:

Mavity [Wild Blue Yonder]: Mavity happened all the way back in Wild Blue Yonder, so it's not necessarily surprising to see it in a novella published in April 9, 2024, but there's a whole scene establishing that the M has seemingly replaced the G in all Romance languages, while Domhantarraingt in Irish-Gaelic is unaffected.

Rope [The Church on Ruby Road]: We're all learning the vocabulary of rope now! The Unravel is what the novella calls the meta-historical revisions caused by making edits to the books. There are also rope/weaving metaphors everywhere. Again, the rope themes of the TV show predate the April 9 novella just far enough that in theory it would have been possible for the novella to have taken inspiration from the 2023 Christmas Special. Except. The wiki page for The Unravel credits ownership of the concept to Jamie H. Cowan, the author of the novella. Not just that, but The Unravel was used – with credit to Jamie – in a DWU short story collection published December 26, 2023 – the day after The Church on Ruby Road aired.

Dot and Bubble [Dot and Bubble] : At this point, “Dot and Bubble” is a contextless episode title to me, first announced on March 31. In the novella, we get this:

The Twist At The End [The Devil’s Chord] : Just before the novella's Postlude, there are the lyrics to a song called “The Twist At The End”. Just listed there, no context, like an azlyrics.com entry. They are not the same lyrics as the song in The Devil's Chord, but then, meta-historical revision would kind of be the point, wouldn't it? There's just this sentence to connect it to anything happening in the narration: "Somewhere, in the far distance, as ______ continued to erase, an old 1960s Earth tune began to play."

EDITED TO ADD: @corallapis has pointed out to me that not only did the existence of the song "Twist at the End" by John Smith and the Common Men leak, but the novella's author tweeted about it in December 2023.

The Chumerian languages of the planet B’llauit, for instance, needed much consideration. Particularly Krulvan. There was still a great deal of work to be done in compiling the post-technoweb aspects of Krulvan. Like how most emotional words and phrases contracted more and more, until finally, they were little more than abbreviations. The old dot-and-bubble effect.

A parent’s love was no longer expressed post-technoweb as “Kal-at lur amoi”, but instead as merely “KLA”. Which needed to be carefully distinguished in the relevant encyclopedia from another abbreviated Krulvan phrase “Kal’ati Lepr’en Acrumpsal” – which was something rather equivalent to the expletives of other languages like “D’Arvit”, or “Bleno”.

It's only a brief mention in the book, so it's possible in theory that it was added after the episode titles were released, or even after the novella’s publication (Amazon allows post-publication changes up to 10% of the text, and it’s not possible to track those changes). I’ve included the second paragraph because it’s interesting that the example they’ve given is the word for a parent’s love, which we can see as a running theme in this season of DW (though Moffat has said before that the only thing he writes about is a parent’s love, so who knows).

Not the strongest evidence of two-way coordination, but we may learn more when the episode airs.

Dutch [Space Babies, Boom]: Yeah, as in, the Dutch language. The words “spoor” & “smelt” both get a "oo, good word!" callout, spoor in Space Babies and smelt in Boom. These words both have Dutch roots. Splice, the daughter's name in Boom, is not only from a Dutch root, but also means the joining two pieces of rope. I read this novella just before Boom dropped on Disney+, so I can personally confirm that this is not a post-hoc addition to the novella. It hardly could have been anyway, this element is much more integral to the novella’s narrative than any of the other pieces.

The Auteur

This is where this all becomes relevant to the “Doctor Who is a TV Show” theory.

While the Protag is shredding the Head DC’s book, the Head DC is in the room, and what follows is an extremely meta narrative-aware pre-death monologue from the Head DC. He's pleading with Protag to stop changing things in his book, but he also refers to an "It" whose power surpasses them both.

He held eye contact with them as they looked up, “You didn’t pick up Belgian Dutch by chance. It’s how it plays. In weaving coincidences.”

“Just stop reading. Stop changing things. Stop, and we can be spared. Be free! If you keep going, then it will get what it wants. It is a happening [sic]. Out there, and in here in the basement. Everywhere. It will win if you keep going.”

“One day, you’ll make the same mistakes. Goddamn, you will. Because it’s all already written. It has already written it all. The paths, the choices. Rewrites, erasures, and even the contradictions. If you don't just... stop... it will... Unravel us all."

The "It" in question is presumably the author. Like an author writing a story, "It" plays by weaving coincidences, "It" gets what it wants when we keep reading, "It" has already written everything.

The Head DC mentions a special disposal chute, which had recently appeared as if by magic, which enabled Protag’s destruction of Belgian Dutch. Head DC’s references to this “It” suggest that his decision to create a word meaning cutting corners caused his eventual death, not by inventing the concept of cutting corners, but by creating a set-up that the Auteur, a godlike being that cares only for the rules of narrative, was compelled to write a satisfying follow-through for. The Auteur changed reality in order to weave a narratively-satisfying coincidence.

The Auteur is a character from the DW-spinoff series Faction Paradox. The creator of the Faction Paradox universe describes it as “on the surface an SF universe, but it works on the same principles as traditional folklore.”

I am but a humble Moffat scholar, so explaining the character of The Auteur is immediately getting into lore that I cannot even begin to decipher.

But it seems plausible that in the show we’re dealing with a godlike being, someone along the lines of Maestro or the Toymaker, but instead of caring only for the rules of play, cares only for the rules of narrative.

And this being, The Auteur, is altering reality and creating the narratively-satisfying coincidences in 14’s and 15’s timelines, possibly starting all the way back with the coincidence of 14 regenerating as David Tennant and immediately bumping into Donna Noble.

And it seems plausible that this season was created in cooperation with these DWU authors to whom concepts like The Auteur and The Unravel are licenced, and the novella is a tie-in text full of references to the current season to lead savvy superfans on a merry chase that foreshadows the season’s big bad.

Because I... don't really have another explanation for the existence of this novella at this point.

[witchofthesouls]

The 'Quintassons selectively breeding' raises other questions, too.

Do the medics and medical facilities operate off of Quintasson standards?

If so, could they unintentionally be causing harm by forcing those standards upon those whose frames keep rejecting them?

Entire swathes of the population would actively prefer illegal mods if that were the case. Non-standard being worth the risk if it means living with reduced pain or malfunctions. Doctors who performed them would obviously get their licensing revoked if caught, but maybe that was the most scandalous, obvious form of protest a medic could do.

How many frames were made extinct just to get a "factory standard" and how many of them were key to the planet's health?

Like, were predacons and similarly large beastformers environmental cornerstones, drawing resources and exposing veins from deep in the crust as they nested? It could've been like it'd be a whale fall situation, where entire ecosystems would've been sustained for generations off what was exposed.

How many mechs felt strangely violated or vindicated seeing how humans used those odd things within/on their alt modes that they always had yet never knew the use for?

Ding ding ding!

Quintessons had a really long time to impose their cultural practices as well as their social structures and mannerisms into Cybertron. They had no qualms messing with the Well of Allsparks to ensure 'standardization' of all that came from it, aka enforcing criteria to either get rid of the frame-types too difficult to control or hampered the population completely.

Quintessa has a very complicated relationship with its own origins. They're a race that's fiercely proud of their technological advances and high intelligence to 'escape the weaknesses of their flesh,' but Quintessons still can not smother their instinctual fears across certain kinds of frames (usually predatory beastformers) invoke. Nor do they wish to become fully automata as they subjugated many mechanical species by leveraging their own organic biology along with lost arcane lost and technology.

Quintessons had a very long history with crushing natives beneath their tentacles and did the same tried and true procedures. They took over all the main pillars of society and brutally put down any uprisings, killed dissentors, destroyed and/or highjacked important cultural sites and spiritual practices, and heavily crusaded against any that didn't uphold the new status quo through insidious means: time.

Medicine is an important field on Quintessa, so there was no way they were going to allow anyone to practice with 'backwards' thoughts and 'outdated' methods. Using legalities that they had full control, they stacked the deck in their complete favor to disseminate misinformation and outright lies to indoctrinate each subsequent generation of new Cybertronians from the Allspark. To them, it became a war of attrition between cultural genocide and scattered retention as Quintessons deliberately targeted the newbuilds to teach and viciously hunted down 'rogue' elements.

They sown so much discord that even when kicked off, they basically got the last laugh as Cybertron had many cultural similarities to Quintessa that the old masters were cackling with glee when they saw Cybertronians continuing to do their own work without their input, including the standardization practices, caste system, and the heavily edited religious doctrine.

On Earth, many got a huge surprise when they realized just how similar the insides of their new disguises were like to their alt-mode on Cybertron. The Autobots had a series of realizations with cupholders, 'glove compartments,' and how easily the humans found the buttons and devices to maneuver the seats to a more comfortable position.

[intrepid-fictioneer-7]

"Historical Civilization Cohabitation", for lack of a better term, has always been an obsession of mine.

I don't mean fantasies where the cultures and realms are inspired by historical ones, like in Warhammer Fantasy. I mean a story where a strange (frequently artificial or supernatural) event forces different "great"™ civilizations that rarely or never interacted, as they were separated by great distances or stretches of time, to be stuck together in a new environment where they are neighbors, and the clashes that ensue.

An example of this is For Honor. After a Cataclysm in the 10th-11th centuries that drastically altered the planet's geography and destroyed countless civilizations, three nations consisting of knights, Vikings, and samurai arrived at a new land and compete for its resources by warring against each other, up until what would be present-day for us. It explicitly takes place on our Earth after a point-of-divergence, so these are actual European knights, Norse raiders, and Japanese samurai (who came west after Japan sunk). Although For Honor, being a live-service multiplayer game, has somewhat of an inconsistent lore subject to retcons that is more beholden to what will be interesting for the game than what makes sense. For example, it went from somewhat grounded to magic being real now. Other factions from historical culture have since arrived in the setting, some of which make some sense (a group from ancient China, Scottish highlanders, Arabian warriors, Aztec jaguar warriors who sailed east, Asian pirates similar to wokou and with firearms, etc.) and others that are just straight up impossible (apparently, both the Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt were still alive before the Cataclysm hit them). Another example of Historical Civilization Cohabitation is Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere, whose map I posted months ago. The gist is that a science fantasy posthuman civilization (basically elves, dragons, magic, etc. but with added scifi nonsense) recreates world history like a giant historical reenactment experiment, hoping that by retracing their steps they rediscover space/dimensional flight and return to the heavens/space (it is deliberately unclear if actual outer space or actual heaven is meant) they fell down from. They are stuck on the Japanese islands to do it, as the Earth had become mostly uninhabitable at this point, so the archipelago is treated like the "world" in miniature. It's a gonzo series, though it has a lot of, um, sus element in both the plot and the worldbuilding.

The tabletop role-playing game Banestorm is somewhat close to what I mean, but a bit of a different example. It's a setting in which Christians and Muslims from around the First Crusade were transported to a fantasy planet by a botched spell, and now in what would be our modern-day, humans are the dominant species over native elves, dwarves, and orcs as well as fellow transposed races such as hobbits and goblins, and many of these species have converted to either Christianity and Islam. It's really peculiar, but the civilizations there are mostly the medieval Christian and Islamic worlds. There is a land of pagan tribes and a realm created by transported Asian populations, but the pagan savage land is boring and nonsensical, while the Asian realm (named "Sahud") is has aged so poorly it's embarrassing.

But my fascination with this trope started with an old book from my childhood:

For some reason, world history has actually operated in successive cycles, with the same civilizations rising and falling again, in the same process, from the dinosaurs to mankind nuking itself while fighting its robots. While this was happening, the continents continued to drift until they rejoined once again into a super-continent, the Atoll of Zoombira. And the third time history repeated, the civilization found themselves next to each other.

It was not high literature, if you couldn't tell by the title and the goofy map. And not just that, but revisiting it showed really amateurish writing, especially compared to other YA books at the time.

But the setting, of multiple civilizations on a new Pangea separated by walls to stop a literal world war, always stayed stuck in my mind like mold, because of the basic concept but also because of the numerous things it didn't do. The original series never explain why history repeated 3 times, leave much of the history of the nations of Zoombira (just the worse names) blank save for specific plot relevant thing, nevermind the state of the place before they raised their walls. You would think this cyclic history would be something important or a cycle to break or something when it always ends with human extinction. And there is also a fair number of "great"™ civilizations present, but not others for some reason: why no ancient China? Persia? Arabs? Mongols? Incas? Sub-Saharan Africa? North America? And the mechanics of "Jurassium" are outright bizarre, like who built the walls keeping the dinosaurs in and why haven't some of the species spread across the continents instead? Jurassium also has cavemen cohabiting with dinosaurs, and the idea of Paleolithic or Neolithic humans living among dinosaurs is not explored at all. There is the "modern" world in the "contrée oubliée (forgotten country)" that is basically post-apocalyptic and radioactive, which raises even further questions like why didn't they curbstomp the others, why is it still radiated if it's a new cycle (did they nuke themselves again?), and where are the robots who war start the whole end of the world.

All this wasted potential has severely rotten my brain and hasn't left me, making me desire to see more of the same or similar concepts elsewhere as seen in the examples I mention above.

And Historical Civilization Cohabitation, while a cool concept to me, is rarely executed the way I would personally want it to.

[lilithhexe]

This statement is false, and it appears that all of you not only believe it but are also spreading misinformation. It is crucial to always seek out the source and educate oneself before making claims about the truth of something. The fact that many of us weren't taught this is because it's a LIE!

Hold on, because it's going to be a long post.

There are various reasons why many Egyptian sculptures lack noses. The noses were intentionally damaged or removed during ancient times. This occurred due to political or religious reasons, as conquerors or rival factions often sought to deface or destroy the symbols of previous rulers or deities. Political motivations, religious shifts, or attempts to erase the memory of previous rulers or deities were some of the factors that led to intentional defacement.

Seriously, this really pisses me off. You have to understand that not everything you come across on social media or TV shows is legit. Sometimes they're just obsessed with current politics rather than the actual truth. I've dedicated my entire life to studying Egypt, and one of my best friends is about to become an archaeologist, and she's totally on the same page as me. It's just mind-boggling that all of you are falling for this utter bullshit. Not everything boils down to racism; this time, it's about religion, power, politics, etc.

The notion that archaeologists intentionally removed noses from Egyptian sculptures to hide or alter the racial or ethnic identity of the depicted individuals isn't supported by historical evidence. Furthermore, it goes against the principles and ethics of an archaeologist.

Removing or damaging the noses of Egyptian sculptures wouldn't be an effective method to hide or alter the racial identity of the depicted individuals. Ancient Egyptian culture is richly documented through a variety of sources, including art, mosaics, texts, and historical records. These sources provide evidence of the diverse racial and ethnic identities of ancient Egyptians.

The suggestion that damaging or removing noses from sculptures was done for such a purpose is not supported by historical evidence or logical reasoning. It's crucial to really think about and question these claims, keeping in mind the bigger picture of ancient civilizations and their art. Take a step back and consider the broader context to get a better understanding of the whole picture.

Preserving and understanding ancient artifacts, including sculptures, is the primary goal of archaeologists. Their work is guided by principles of objectivity, historical accuracy, and respect for cultural heritage. Proposing that intentional nose removal was motivated by an attempt to alter racial identities is unfounded and lacks credibility.

I beg you all to read these sources, before loudly accusing archaeologists of racism, both in the past and present. I'm sharing the links so that you can comprehend it better, as the situation is more intricate than it may initially appear. I'll also give you examples of Greek and Roman monuments and statues that were vandalized and destroyed.

Just as in Egypt, Greek and Roman, during times of political unrest, conquests, or cultural transitions, statues could be defaced, mutilated, or destroyed as a way to erase the memory of previous rulers or deities. This intentional damage could involve breaking off noses or other facial features.

One notable example of a vandalized Greek statue is the statue of Athena Parthenos, which stood inside the Parthenon in Athens. While the statue itself no longer exists, historical records indicate that it was heavily damaged during the 5th century CE.

During this time, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church, known as the Parthenon of Athens, and the statue of Athena was regarded as a pagan idol. The statue was reportedly stripped of its gold and ivory, and its other decorative elements were destroyed or removed. This act of deliberate vandalism was carried out as part of the early Christian efforts to suppress pagan worship.

Roman statues were vandalized too by enemies or conquerors. One example is the destruction and defacement of statues during the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 CE.

When Rome was sacked by the Visigoths under the leadership of Alaric I, many artworks, including statues, were looted, damaged, or destroyed. The Visigoths, like other invading forces throughout history, sought to assert their dominance and undermine the cultural and political symbols of the Roman Empire. This included defacing or breaking statues that represented Roman power, deities, or emperors.

It's important to recognize that not all Greek and Roman sculptures lack noses, just as not all Egyptian sculptures do. There are numerous intact sculptures from these civilizations that have preserved their original features.

Ancient Egypt, like many ancient civilizations, did engage in conquest and interaction with other cultures too, which sometimes resulted in the vandalization or appropriation of statues and monuments from other civilizations. One example is the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III, known for his military campaigns and territorial expansion. It is believed that he brought back statues and monuments from conquered lands, including those of other civilizations such as the Canaanites and Nubians.

When the Egyptians ruled over regions such as Nubia, they may have imposed their cultural and religious influences, leading to alterations or modifications of statues and monuments to reflect Egyptian aesthetics and beliefs.

I really hope this clears things up and shows you how wrong it is to say that archaeologists are racist. It is crucial to understand that not everything can be attributed to racism alone. History has so much to teach us, and I hope you've picked up a thing or two from it as well. Keep digging into different historical aspects, and you'll see how complex and diverse past civilizations were. Let's embrace knowledge and develop a more informed and open-minded outlook.

[ghostopossumlives]

Cannibal Kings and Witches

A strong cultural taboo in Tortog society is cannibalism. Of course, species in which cannibalism *isn't* taboo are generally the outlier, but for Tortogs it is a more focused fear. Tortog religion has official rites of ritual suicide for situations where starvation seems imminent.

This stems from an era deep in Tortog history, long before they even came close to space travel. The dark age of the Cannibal Kings. Tyrannical warlord giants that ruled the ancient Tortog people through cruelty and fear.

As has been described in my previous posts detailing Tortogs, they have a seven stage lifecycle, and remarkable regenerative abilities that eventually kill them from organ stress. Their regenerative abilities stem from special cells that cluster in and around their heart.

There is, or more accurately, was, a method of extending the Tortog lifespan and intensifying the regenerative power of the Tortog body that involved eating the hearts of other Tortogs. Some research indicates it may not have been "eating" per say, but rather some form of self-surgery that compounded the regeneration, and the eating of hearts may have simply been a mix of visual shorthand, or/and a ritualistic threat display towards the peasantry. Whatever the specifics, biological and archeological evidence firmly shows that it is historical fact that these ancient warlords practiced cannibalism, lived to be up to 400 years old (with an unknown upper limit, due to all deaths of these warlords having resulted from purposeful destruction), and grew to be up to eighteen feet tall. This process has not been rediscovered, and attempting to rediscover it is illegal and blasphemous.

The cannibal kings had an elongated, emaciated appearance, regardless of their resources, and were said to eat almost perpetually if able, but didn't starve to death any faster than a typical Tortog. There exists no record of any societies that lived under, nor adjacent to these warlords expressing positive impressions of their appearance, demeanor, behavior, or leadership once they came to power. Those that served these beings had nothing pleasant to write of them, with the cannibal kings seeming to never compel flattery from their servants, instead overseeing a culture of uncensored kratocracy, and often deliberate kakistocracy. What remains of their writings and reputation shows an ideology that believed that strength was born of suffering, and so the priority of the old was to maximize the suffering of the young to strengthen them.

The modern Tortog religion teaches that theirs' was born of a global rebellion against this ideology, which is broadly supported by evidence. However, the conservative branches of the modern Tortog religion also teach that the Cannibal Kings ruled through this ideology for all of Tortog existence prior to this, which has many more holes as a theory. Secular consensus is that the Cannibal Kings rose as an extremist sect of an older religion, filling in the power vacuum resulting from a revolutionary wave that destabilized that civilization. The previous culture did have some focus on testing the young against hardship, but was vastly less, for lack of a more scientific term, "completely insane".

It is difficult to study this earlier society in depth because it is clear that the Cannibal Kings put in a concerted effort to destroy all record of it. Later, as the new religion rose, they too destroyed what the Cannibal Kings missed due to its potential connection to them.

What little evidence has been recovered of the predecessor culture indicates that the Cannibal Kings-proper only dominated Tortog civilization for under a century (*Though several cannibal kings clocked in at up to 400 years old, they had not held power during that whole lifespan. Some were rogue cannibal warriors that had lived in the wilderness *before* coming back to capitalize on the chaos, and others lived much of that time *after* their fall from power, being hunted through the wilderness by the crusaders of the new religion.). The predecessor culture was warlike and authoritarian, using strength-through-suffering to justify a rigid and increasingly abusive hierarchy based on age, as well as a culture of conquest, but was not *deliberately* dysfunctional like the Cannibal Kings. They possessed knowledge of heart-eating, but it seems to have been used only for creating elite warriors who would be ritualistically incinerated and mixed into molten iron at the end of their service to bless the weapons of the armies. A revolutionary wave against that hierarchy wiped out many older Tortogs, causing a period of debilitating technological regression, famine, and war. This allowed an extremist reactionary sect (one which came to include many rogue cannibal warriors) to take control and run Tortog civilization even further into the ground.

This entire previous civilization came to be called The Cannibal Kings, despite it not all having been that. Artifacts from that era were destroyed as cannibal abominations for the next millennium, before secular archeology was finally able to begin.

Former Cannibal Kings, who came to be called Cannibal Witches, were driven into the wilderness after their fall to the new religion. Individuals were hunted and caught sporadically for the next two centuries. Rumors and alleged encounters persist into the modern day, but it is extremely unlikely that any actually still live after 1600 years. That doesn't stop cases of mass hysteria from sweeping through Tortog communities, leading to paranoia and hunting parties being formed in rural areas from time to time.

Because of the seven stages of Tortog life, and the seven elements in their metaphysical beliefs, Tortogs associate Cannibal Witches and dark magic with the number eight, and consider it an evil number in popular superstition.

There is a symbol, based on an upside down Tortog "Community" elemental symbol, which is associated with Witches and Cannibalism, looking somewhat like an exposed Tortog organ block with a missing heart. This symbol regularly appears in alleged "grimoires" and "Witch caves".

The symbol is a modern invention and has no connection to the historical Cannibal Kings nor their predecessor culture. The earliest "grimoire" it appeared in has long been confirmed to have been printed on Thill grasspaper soaked in tea, but this has not stopped it from being the subject of moral panics amongst Tortogs.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Whether an understanding of cultural rivalries tells us more about violence within Italian-American organized crime, and something about relations between American criminals and those from abroad, is naturally not settled. But it seems a more fruitful line of inquiry than the one chosen which is to see all events, in some cases since 1890, in others 1900, or 1930, or 1931, or 1936 through [Mafia] Commission-colored glasses. Let me suggest that American organized crime would have been more or less the same had Sicilians, Neapolitans, and Calabrians never migrated to the U.S. Though much of American organized crime is ethnically oriented, it never depended on the migration of criminally-inclined Southern Italians to prosper. In fact, as far as drug racketeering is concerned, the important entry of Italian American gangsters came after World War II, and their presence signalled a mostly disastrous reorientation of the American market according to users.

As many addicts attested, Jewish-American racketeers were disproportionately represented in smuggling and distributing opium and opiates. Moreover, their dope was purer and cheaper than what came after they apparently left the scene. The accounts indicate that they were replaced particularly after World War II by Italian-American racketeers who sold terrible heroin (cut far too many times with far too much toxic junk) for exorbitant prices. This ethnic change thus represented an era of increasing pain and desperation for users.

The transformation of notable drug racketeers from Jewish- Americans to Italian-Americans was at least partially the result of the Nazi interregnum which destroyed everything Jewish in Europe including overseas traders who supplied American drug distributors. In addition, the effects of chaos in Asia particularly after Pearl Harbor finished other American-Jewish connections with European-born traders living in Chinese coastal cities such as Shanghai and Tientsin. The comparatively stable connections of the pre-Nazi prewar decades which had produced purer narcotics at affordable prices were terminated. Italian-American racketeers responded to the temporary shortage of narcotics and their new position on the line of production and supply in predictably capitalist ways-prices soared and quality plummeted. It was only the postwar U.S. drug world that was crafted on the distribution of bad heroin by Italian-American racketeers to users who were overwhelmingly African-American. It must also be added that for at least the two decades following the war the overseas suppliers for the Italian-American drug distributors were typically French, Greek, Lebanese, and Syrian traders.

The historical reasons for these factor are not difficult to ascertain. The vast majority of Italian-American migrants to the U.S. came from impoverished rural agricultural backgrounds. The history of the Mezzogiorno from the Risorgimento (1860) through World War 2 maintained that backward exploited agriculture zone deliberately that by northern Italian industrialists their political cronies. Historian Jack Reece notes that Sicilians did not participate in post World War I protest movements characteristic of Northern Italy because social, political and economic structures there were "retarded" - "There were no factory occupations in Sicily because there were virtually no factories."

The typical Mafia crimes of this period were "cattle rustling, robbery and extortion." Politically astute Sicilians complained quite rightly that Sicily was far more like a colonial outpost than a "constituent part of the Italian Kingdom." Ceasare Mori, the Prefecture of Police under the Fascist regime, argued that the Mafia was a consequence of illiteracy and pauperism, malaria and chronic economic exploitation brought about by an antediluvian "Latifundia" system, and the personal politics of "clientelism." As so many historians and social scientists have found, the Mafia phenomenon emanated in the post-Risorgimento movement of estate guards to rural power brokers largely caused by the landlords' endemic absenteeism. Southern Italians who migrated to the U.S. in the latter decades of the nineteenth and the early ones of the twentieth centuries unquestionably lacked entrepreneurial skills honed from a commercial environment. They were a world apart from any phase of international commerce including the commerce of drugs. They were far different in this respect from many of the Eastern European migrants to the U.S. who had these skills and contacts with European, Middle East, and Far East contraband traders.

As common sense suggests, Americans who either shared a communal heritage with overseas criminals or otherwise were prepared to develop overseas contacts were far more successful than those without the heritage or contacts. The latter's primary recourse if they wished to enter the narcotics trade was to align themselves with key U.S. importers and wholesalers which is precisely what was done. Italian-American underworld figures who aligned with Jewish-American ones were thus enabled to work in the more profitable spheres of drug trafficking."

- Alan A. Block, "Organized Crime: History and Historiography," in Space, Time & Organized Crime. Second Edition. New York: Routledge, 2020 (originally 1994). p. 40-42.

[hoodoobarbie]

The mythology of the Siren, Mermaid, Water Spirits & Mami Wata and it’s origins within black feminity.

Today I had to listen to other another black woman rant about how mermaids/sirens/mami wata are evil low key. So this educational post was born in response. 

Did you really think the divine essence of the black feminine wouldn’t protect itself ? That energy exists for a reason.  Suddenly it’s evil, to have teeth and protect yourself from predators. Water is a precious resource. You will be tested to see if you are deserving of it or not. Also these spirits will defend natural resources so they don’t get fucked up by human greed. 

It’s common for some places in Africa for people to offer the Sirens/Mami Wata/Water spirits or make an offerings/contracts with them in order to use the resources on their land. It also keeps the white ppl away too because they cause so much trouble.

Sirens are also associated with being the killers of children and men, but often this is completely misrepresented intentionally.

Men fear the power of the siren because she can override the patriarchy at core and can completely unravel them. The orgins of many water spirits lie in matriachal societies, temples divine feminine and motherhood. This is why temples and sacred magikal knowledge was intentionally destroyed and stolen, especially to empower the white patriarch.

Sirens are also described as thiefs of children and child killers. Sirens have been known to kidnap kids who were being abused or have were murdered near water and take them to their kingdom to restore them.

Sometimes the child returns, sometimes they are not. However in general they are big on kidnapping people, mostly women and giving them powers, if they decide to return. The idea of them eating and killing children, was a lie perpetuated by Greeks to cover up some truly horrific acts. Unfortunate these false accusations have been allowed to continue to perpetuate.

If a siren is acting in a predatory way, there is a reason why as their energy as been disturbed. Sirens are natural guardians. 

So the real question is . . . what did you do ? Did you destroy their habitat ? Abuse a child or a person ? Commit an egregious act against a woman ie rape/murder etc ? Disrespect a sacred place, the land, the seas or rivers ? Steal precious resources that weren’t yours to take ?

These sacred traditions are more than just deities, spirits and our ancestors. All forms of ATR are access to our spiritual mind state as an entire community. When you move in Vodou, you can sense the whole of black consciousness and all of our problem spots, specifically  areas that need healing. 

Oxum-Oshun, Olokun, Yemaya, the Mami Wata, La Baliene, La Siren, Met Agwe, The Simbi - these are all spirits with a connection to waters. Water is life and has always been inherently associated feminine energy. I’m not going into detail about all these cross connections but let’s chat about La Sirene, specifically.

La Sirene, Queen of all Mermaids is more than just a powerful sorceress and queen of song/music and dreams, she is also a keeper of secrets an a guardian of sacred memories & knowledge.

Many of the souls of slaves, from the Transatlantic slave trade that were thrown off the boats into the ocean are her children, citizens and warriors now. She comforts them eternally & they live in paradise. That doesn’t mean all of these souls are at rest, plenty continuously ask their mother if they will be avenged, especially the young children. She also has a close connection with the Indigenous Taino. The isle of Hispaniola also known as Haiti (Ayiti) & the Dominican Republic is her most known domain. 

Let’s not act like slavery and colonization was a cake walk. Rape was common place and mermaids, water spirits offered African and Indigenous women protection and power over men. They became demonized overtime for their hypnotic powers and killing men, who often overstepped their boundaries. Women could leave offerings to these spirits, work or commune with them and be quickly avenged or gain great power and wealth. All of this was threatening to the white patriarchal standard.

La Sirene’s presence in Haiti and other merfolk tales that float around the Caribbean/West Indies, is not without purpose. She has ties to many people and many different cultures. Her sacred symbols are global. This is why I speculate she is much older than people think. La Sirene, is a fairly young evolution. She clearly has ties to much older things. Her older names might have been lost but she has evolved, to save her self and also document other forgotten elements of history in the process. There are those who speculate that La Sirene is the embodiment of a cross mixed culture, the evolution of Indigenous & African water spirits combined, due to the excess trauma of colonization and so the Mermaid Queen was born. Others will argue that she is the Orisha Yemaya but a newer avatar of her.  I hate to argue semantics but I will say this, she exists and her presence is felt to this day, all around the world. 

La Sirene is often depicted as a mulatto woman with eyes like the sea but if you have been blessed to see her in dream state, she does appear sometimes as a brown or dark skinned skinned woman of possibly mixed Indigenous/African ancestry with glowing hypnotic eyes.  Alot of her older depictions, deal with colorism and slavery, but as things have grown in the modern world this imagery has begun to change. However mermaids, are known for their shapeshifting powers - to truly behold her true form, is a gift reserved for the rare few. 

As a keeper of the mysteries, La Sirene also access to many forgotten things in the black subconscious. The element of water is an intensely psychic sign.  Water is her domain, and what is the human body 80% of? WATER! The truth does not hide from her hypnotic eyes. This sacred connection to water and her essence, also means you can  track forgotten elements black history and connect to other deities/cultures who’ve had contact with her & her whole court or other black water spirits as a whole. So let’s take a short historical trip down memory lane.

The Greeks & Black women. Sirens, Aphrodite, Sibyls and other Children of Water 🧜🏾‍♀️

The deity Aphrodite/Venus is of Grecian and Roman legend.  

A little known magikal fact is that Aphrodite/Venus is half siren. She is a child of the water, she was literally birthed this way after Uranus got his balls cut off & thrown into the sea. Much of her Venusian influence and powers of love and beauty come from this element. Now my Mambo doesn’t like mentioning it but Aphrodite, is tolerated by the oceanic court of sirens/mermaids. Any child of water, falls under the domain of the queen. La Sirene has a sort of strange fondness for her and so does Aphrodite for her. However this doesn’t mean they are best friends.  It’s tentative friendship at best and comes with some perks. Aphrodite works quickly for children of water sirens and often will send mermaids to her devotees who misbehave. She has deliberately placed me around her people have pissed her off, to cause mischief. She’s quite petty but also  very generous. I won’t go as far to dare and say she is in the queen’s court, but she does curry favor with the queen. Being born of water, her half siren/mermaid influence has definitely attributed to legends of her beauty in myth but also her treachery with men 🧜🏾‍♀️😂. She clearly also has some sort of homesickness for the world underneath the water, because many of her offerings are gifts of pearls, kisses, sea shells, beauty products etc. Anyone who serves the Mermaid Queen knows the meaning behind those gifts. If you’re a black gyal with water or siren energy and decide to work with Aphrodite, do it!  If you ever irritate her, the least she’ll do is give you pimples and fuck up your skin, she won’t have the full power to completely fuck up your love life like she does with the white girls.  And let me tell you, she has completely ruined some white girls lives by giving them terrible lovers or men.  

The trident 🔱 is known for its connection in Greek and Hindu cultures.  However La Sirene or other African water spirits are depicted carrying it, which is largely ignored in the occult world.

You can track the trident in Hinduism, with the serpent spirits, the nagas or Lord Shiva but let’s focus on it’s Grecian connection. The usage of the trident and Poseidon, even in mainstream society today is associated with him.  This lets us know there is a connection between the mermaids, merfolk and La Sirene/African water spirits. Poseidon’s trident was rumored to made in Athens by the Cyclops - this is the city of Athena. So now we can track an element of black history all the way to Poseidon & Athena. Keep that in your thoughts we’ll come back to that later.

Tridents were also used ceremonially in Africa & India as well, as scepters, tribal weapons and religious symbols.

They were also associated with the sea faring people and fishing. It’s highly likely the origins of the trident are cross mixed between these two societies. Indo-African relations, go back to the Bronze age and the Indus Valley civilization. Which means traveling over by sea to reach each other was necessary. There is historical evidence of African millet being found in a Indian city Chanhudaro, including a cemetary or burial ground for African women.  Maritime relations between these two groups existed before Grecian & the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasties.

Now of course there are some deranged historians that will try to whitewash history and say the trident has its origins from the labyrs but the Ancient Greeks & Africans/Indians interacted regularly. The trident also looks nothing like a labyrs, which is quite literally a double sided axe.  This is one of the more painful obvious pieces of white washing and historical revisionism. 

Regardless, the trident is associated with water, ceremonial/religious purposes, fishing, battling in the coliseum and the symbol of power for a few African,  Black diasporian an Hindu deities.

🧜🏾‍♀️ Oracles & Sibyls

Some sibyls/oracles were known to be African prophetesses/Mamissi to the Mami Wata/Sirens in Africa, some were stolen or captured by Greeks or Romans, sold into slavery and made to be oracles, some of whom became quite famous in legend. Their connection to these water spirits, is what gave them their gift of prophecy. Not every sibyl or oracle was African but SOME were.  This lead to the sharing and theft of sacred knowledge. It’s likely these women shared this sacred information, with their colleagues, some whom may or may not have been enslaved or kept in these temple and likely this information was traded, for their freedom, power or money etc. This gave way to the usage of sacred spirits and magick being used by men. A great example of this is the snake spirits of the genii, genius spirits (not to be mistaken with genies) and which then evolved into a diluted lesser energy in Greek society being known as daemons (not to be confused with goetic demons) Instead of a woman commanding these specific energies/spirits, the patriarchs decided that these specifics powers were only worthy of being used by men. These spirits were whitewashed, adopted into their religious practices and said to only be given to men at birth. No woman was allowed to possess them anymore.

🧜🏾‍♀️ The whitewashing of Medusa & Lamia. 

In mainstream society these two women stories have been white washed but also to hide a very shameful history and narrative. These two were beautiful women, in older stories of black black mythology were known to be black and they were children of water & daughters of the powerful water spirit/snake/siren divine mother/feminine goddess. 

Medusa was raped by the GREECIAN GOD OF THE SEA, POSEIDON  and Athena covered it up, refused to avenge her and punished her by making her ugly to everyone. It’s speculated in several magikal circles that the snakes in her hair were actually dreads, due to their lack of understanding of black hair and also allegorically might have been a reference to her devotion to the fish or water snake, great mother goddess. A child of the divine feminine, mother goddess was assaulted in a temple by a man and a woman covered it up & celebrated it.

Let’s start there ... cuz this story says a lot! It’s one of the first historical cases  in myth that really documents the issues that surround the black feminine specifically and it was intentionally whitewashed. Then to add insult to injury, Athena made her hideous to all men and her chopped off her head and used as a symbol of protection but also a subtle sign of disrespect to the fullest. This still goes on to this day.

In fact ALGOL, the demon star, which is considered to be strongest protective magick talisman in the occult world today is the HEAD OF MEDUSA. The child of water! BITCH! This energy is invoked constantly and the spirit of medusa is never allowed to rest.

However these egregious acts did not come without a price. Athena at time was a goddess of fertility. However desecrating a child of water or the sirens, is seen as an attack by the divine feminine and can will cause people to be afflicted with fertility and other mental health issues as well. This is speculative but it’s also likely that after this they were constantly visited by droughts, floods or repeating issues with water sanitation & purity after this. Lowered fertility rates and miscarriages might be more prominent, for Athenians and Athena devotees & likely continues to this day.

Devotees of Athena may also develop severe issues when it to their mental health because of this connection. They completely lose touch with their feminine energy and become extremely misogynistic after continued work with her.

Not only did Athena, cause Medusa to be seen as hideous throughout the land but she celebrated when she was murdered and proudly wore Medusa’s decapitated head on her shield. From the feminist eye this virgin deity/woman was extremely male identified and adhered to the patriarchal standard. She was tested by the divine feminine and failed.

Even more strange, Athena’s birth allegorically proclaims her essential character: her wisdom is drawn from the head of a male god; the bond of affection between father and daughter; her championship of heroes and male causes, born as she was from the male, and not from a mother’s womb. A dreaded goddess of war, she remained a virgin and a servant of the patriarchal society and remains so to this day. She is the misogynistic cool girl and very asexual at the core. In fact if you explore more of her mythos, it becomes very clear she hates women. I’m bewildered at how she has become associated with lesbians and the feminine at large, when it’s been very clear that she was intent on transcending her gender from the very beginning, but never managed to escape it.  

To top it off, I’ll leave you with this quote from Aeschylus’ Oresteia by Athena:

“There is no mother anywhere who gave me birth, and, but for marriage, I am always for the male with all my heart, and strongly on my father’s side. So, in a case where the wife has killed her husband, lord of the house, her death shall not mean most to me.”

Queen Lamia was a said to incredible beauty who seduced Zeus, (a literal man whore) which as made Hera jealous. Hera cursed Lamia with infertility and insomnia. She went insane and is said to have killed her own children and ate them. Zeus is said to be the one who gifted her prophecy and gave her the ability to take out her eyes, so she would not be irritated at the site of other happy mothers.

She became associated with a child eating monster who was half woman and half snake, which ties into the Libyan snake cults. She was associated with phantoms, the shapshifting laimai or empusai and the daemon spirits.

Medusa and Lamia were Libyan by heritage and came from a place in Africa where temples to the water snake mother goddess & divine feminine were common before they were destroyed by invaders intentionally. These women likely had extreme gifts of seduction, mind control and other abilities etc. It’s highly likely that Queen Lamia used her powers of seduction, at the behest of her people to save them from colonization and was demonized for it. Zeus’s temple was in Cyrene in Lybia, so this is far more than an allegorical story. This may be a real life story that was disguised in mythos. Unfortunately deeper research into this subject has turned up many dead ends for me. It’s highly likely Medusa was a priestess of the the matriarchal Mami Watas or water goddess/snake spirits and was likely raped intentionally in Athena’s temple, as a show loyalty to the rising patriarchy by descrating the symbolism of the great mother and the divine feminine. This was likely an attempt to lessen power and status of the matriachal societies that existed at the time. Rape was common war tactic amongst colonizers and news of such disgrace would likely spread like wildfire. This also solidified Athena’s place amongst the male gods and gaining her their respect. Athena and her devotees went a step further to show their allegiance to the patriarchy, by stripping Medusa of her beauty supposedly and exiling her, then parading her decapitated head on shields, when going into battle likely with Libyan enemies.

This is just a brief explanation of a few horrific acts in history, which were whitewashed & explain why the essence of the black feminine has evolved to become more protective, predatory and fierce. She learned to defend herself. Now she kills those who threaten her. 

Fun history tip: Usually anytime you see a snake in Grecian mythology, just know something got whitewashed, because the truth was really fucked up, made them look really bad & a black woman was there.

🧜🏾‍♀️ The black feminine is capable of more than you know.

Yes, mermaids/sirens/snakes & the mami watas can be scary at times but that’s what stepping into mysticism of deep waters is like. Water is capable of many things, it is one of the most powerful elements on earth. It can nourish you and kill you, and that’s the beauty of it really.

We should all be grateful the black feminine is so beautiful, fierce & scares the living daylights out of everyone.

You would be dead if it wasn’t.

[fatehbaz]

hi maybe you’ve written about this before but i’m working for someone who is part of the ecological landscape alliance and we’ve been having big talks about the concept of “invasive” species vs “native” plants and how the concept is rooted in xenophobia, and also talking about how maybe invasive plants aren’t that bad?? this goes against everything i’ve ever heard anyone talk about invasive species but i really don’t know all that much about it. sounds silly maybe coming from a farmer but i really don’t have a super firm ecological understanding, most of my plant knowledge is agricultural based and im really curious to learn more and was hoping you could point me in the right direction?

Yes, I definitely run into this disk horse all the time. Especially the “maybe invasive plants aren’t that bad” discussion. It seems the native/alien stuff is most often mentioned in disk horse about the Anthropocene. Basically, you’ll sometimes see statements like: “Is anything really natural in the Anthropocene?” I have also seen, and spent a lot of time contemplating, how belief in the categories of “natural” and “alien/invasive” in discussion of ecology might be rooted in or at least inadvertently support racism/xenophobia.

But I am still wary of the “native vs alien” and “no creature or landscape is really natural, not any more” disk horse, at least as explored by some white/settler-colonial academics, for exactly the same reasons: because it might be rooted in or support racism/xenophobia. Because the proposal that “nothing is native, nothing is invasive” itself can actually engage in a sort of “settler absolution” that obscures how there really is a contrast between imperial and Indigenous peoples, and the “nothing is natural, nothing is invasive” proposal could excuse the colonial/imperial introduction and expansion of monoculture by accepting the spread of industry/agriculture/non-native species as an inevitability. And these concepts can actually work to generalize conditions of ecological degradation and apocalypse, as if to say that “all humans now live in such a damaged world, we’re all victims” (even though many non-white, especially Indigenous, people actually bear most of the violence and burden of living in “post-apocalyptic” ecologies.)

But actually, I don’t think I can be too helpful here.

I still have a lot of contemplating to do, about how categories of natural/invasive in ecology might support the violence of categorizing people as natural/invasive. Don’t really know where I stand yet, y’know? So I don’t want to be too quick to come to a conclusion. I don’t even really want to offer opinions here. That said, I am very sensitive to language, and the language that I use. So I do appreciate that there is an effort to interrogate the negative consequences of describing things with words like “alien”. Also, the categorizing of lifeforms is and always has been a mess.

I don’t have many reading recommendations. The “native vs alien” and “nothing is really native, actually” proposals are concepts that I brush up against but don’t read too deeply into, even though this disk horse has been popular-ish in dark ecology and academic ecology/environmental studies circles for at least 10 years or more by now.

I guess, for my thoughts on native vs alien, what counts as “natural”, invasive species, and how the disk horse can excuse settler-colonial/imperial racism, I would point to this post I made about Pablo Escobar’s feral hippopotamuses in Colombia.

One introduction to the concept, which I think is an enjoyable read (though I don’t necessarily agree with all of his implications), is this essay by Hugo Reinert about the category of “natural” and the “purity” of a species: “Requiem for a Junk-Bird: Violence, Purity and the Wild.” Cultural Studies Review. 2019.

Anna Boswell’s very famous article about stoats and non-native species in Aotearoa kind of dances around this same issue of naturalness: “Settler Sanctuaries and the Stoat-Free State.” Animal Studies Journal. 2017.

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Generally, I agree with the implication that there is no “remote” or untouched corner of the planet where ecology has escaped human influence.

On that aspect, here’s a post I made about “planetary urbanization”.

But the native/alien disk horse can be extended to problematique degrees, with proposals that sometimes remind me of sci-fi goofiness, like fans of dark ecology or weird fiction or Mieville/Van der Meer got a little too excited about “the boundary between human and other-than-human has become so blurred that there may as well no longer be distinctions between native species and invasive species”, like they got a little too drunk on theory and just decided that “everything is in flux!”. Criticisms, then, of the “nothing is native” disk horse include how this oversimiplifies ecology and might enable/excuse settler-colonial invasion.

A lot of the “invasive plants are good, actually!” disk horse I’ve seen shows up in Australian literature written by settler scholars, which might be pretty telling.

Basically, it seems some scholars will take Alfred Crosby’s “neo-Europe” and “ecological imperialism” concepts, and then say something like “look, the damage is done, so much of Earth’s soils/landscapes are altered by introduced plants that we may as well accept it as the new baseline/normal ecology, and work from there.” As if to point at how North America has been entirely overrun by non-native earthworms and then to say “well, the worms are going to inevitably destroy hardwoods forests, soils of the Great Lakes region, the boreal-temperate transition zone, and maple trees which supply place-based maple syrup foodsheds, so we may as well accept that we live in a damaged world.”

I don’t know if I’m entirely satisfied with this.

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Other related concepts brought up in the same  discussion of “nothing is really native” might include “invasion biology” and “assisted migration.” I see these concepts brought up in academic writing from the University of California system, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and “environmental humanities” generally. Basically, these writers/scholars will point to the past ten thousand-ish years of the Holocene, and how humans have had such profound influence on global ecology that “introduction of non-native species” and “mass-scale anthropogenic climate/ecological change” are not just recent developments since Industrial Revolution or Indus/Yellow/Mesopotamian statecraft, but even older. For example, I’ve talked a lot about how, in the Late Pleistocene or early Holocene, the Asiatic steppes and parts of the Great Plains could have apparently been more like intermittent woodlands before humans engaged in deliberate fire-setting to better target megafauna herds, meaning that the human role in creation of vast “naturally-occurring” grassland regions may be underestimated. This dove-tails with the better-established fact that the forests of Central America and eastern North America in the early Holocene were/are actually more like cultivated food forests managed by Indigenous people.

The argument, then, may also point to yams, sweet potato, and coconut as examples of creatures with what now appear to be “old” and “established” widespread transoceanic distribution ranges which actually may have been introduced via assisted migration by humans.

The argument, basically, says: Well, let’s say hypothetically that humans didn’t play a role in spreading sweet potato or coconut. By chance, if ocean currents “naturally” introduced these species, if these plants “naturally” colonized whatever lands they were swept off towards, doesn’t this mean they could essentially be “natural” to anywhere they might arrive and successfully establish themselves? Therefore, does it really matter if humans helped them get there?

This seems to be related to the “no plants are actually invasive” proposal. As if to say: “If English pasture grasses have successfully reproduced themselves in Patagonia, Aotearoa, South Africa, the Canadian prairies, etc., what does it mean that their migration was assisted by humans?”

But this is where I have reservations: It wasn’t just any humans that “assisted the migration” of monoculture grasses from Europe to the prairies of Turtle Island. It was specific humans, with deliberate intent, upholding specific institutions, protecting their own well-being at the expense of other humans and lifeforms, enacting specific violence against specific victims.

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Another aspect of this which I see mentioned often is how early human/Polynesian settlement in Oceania and the South Pacific is an example of how mass anthropogenic ecological change doesn’t always involve statecraft, mass mono/agriculture, and imperialism. Aside from the famous decline of creatures like the moa, Polynesian islands were also home to relict species of large land turtles and ancient terrestrial/semi-arboreal crocodiles until human arrival in recent millennia. Writers will also point to human settlement in the Caribbean, where human arrival coincided with extinction of remnant populations of endemic Pleistocene ground sloths. (This also happened on Mediterranean islands, which hosted endemic species of hippopotamus and goats until recent millennia.)

Again, though, this is where white/settler-colonial academics advocating “nothing is natural” can kind of obscure settler-colonial violence, by pointing to history of anthropogenic environmental change and saying “see, all humans provoke extinction.”

Thus, you’ll see these scholars invoke Anna Tsing or Donna Harraway, referencing the “arts of living on a damaged planet” or “living in post-capitalist ruins.” Essentially, advocates of “nothing is native, any more” might say “we all live in a post-apocalyptic world now, so we should get used to it.”

This, coming from white/settler-colonial academics, sometimes rubs me the wrong way, as if it’s sort of like wish-fulfillment, or “an adventure” for comfortable white academics to engage in low-stakes thought experiments about extinction, naturalness, and apocalypse from which they’re actually largely insulated, at least compared to the poor, non-white, non-academic people who cope with the worst of environmental racism and ecological collapse.

This, again coming from white/settler-colonial academics, is also of course more than a little grating, since it kind of co-opts or culturally appropriates the “Indigenous/Native people actually live in a post-apocalyptic world” concept proposed by Indigenous scholars. It kind of takes from Indigenous/non-white people, and then generalizes the apocalypse as something that all humans now live with in seemingly equal measure, obscuring the fact that many people are actually forced to cope and/or live with more-serious-of-an-apocalypse than others.

-------

At the end of the day: Sure, kudzu or English pasture grasses or coconuts or European earthworms or domesticated cattle might be generalist species which can successfully inhabit landscapes across the planet. So whether humans introduce them via agriculture, or whether they "naturally" expand by some accident or by drifting across ocean currents, they might exist in this strange ontological space between "native" and "alien" which confounds human conceptions of what "belongs"? And this is worth considering! This is good to think about! But there are still, and always have been, those "small" landscapes, those isolated pockets, those relicts and remnants in shaded stream corridors, where small populations of endemic species teeter on the verge, with highly-specialized adaptations to highly-specific microhabitats. You're not going to "assist the migration" of or "accidentally introduce" a cave-obligate salamander from a limestone cavern or a temperate rainforest-dwelling land-slug to a desert biome.

But, again, I still think it is good to stop and ask ourselves whether categories of “natural” and “alien/invasive” in ecology make sense, are outdated, or if they reinforce racism/xenophobia. And, again, I haven’t read enough -- I haven’t grappled with these questions enough -- to have an opinion which I’m comfortable sharing, so I don’t want to discourage this disk horse too much.

Anyway, hope some of this is interesting. Sorry. Again, I don’t really have any good recommendations.

[raeynbowboi]

Dating Disney: Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast features my favorite love story and my favorite Disney Princess, so it holds a very special spot in my heart. So, it’s worth looking into the film to decide when the Movie is supposed to be set.

During the opening musical number “Belle”, Belle is telling the Baker about the book she’s been reading. She’s clearly describing Jack and the Beanstalk, the earliest version being the tale of “Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean” in 1734. But she also deliberately mentions an ogre, not a giant. Near as I could find, the only version with an ogre was written by Joseph Jacobs in 1890, making Belle nearly contemporary to modernity. Belle’s excitement over the book is likely a sign that this is a new story.

During the same musical number, we see a sign depicting a tobacco pipe, but unlike with the Calabash pipe from the Little Mermaid movie. I could place it to possibly be a Billiard type, but the exact era of creation escapes me. However, tobacco pipes have been around as long as Tobacco has been introduced to European trade, starting in the 16th century.

The history of colored printing goes as far back as the 16th century, and there are illustrations from the early 1700s with an impressive variety of color that help establish a stronger time period. The book also shows the words Le Prince Charmant or Prince Charming. Prince Charming started being used in 1697 in Charles Perrault’s version of Sleeping Beauty, although there, Prince Charming was not a name. Rather, Perrault stated that the Prince was charmed by her words. The first story to use Prince Charming as a name is the Tale of Pretty Goldilocks. It was written at some point in the 17th Century by Madame d’Aulnoy, but in her version the hero was named Avenant. It wasn’t until 1889 when Andrew Lang retold the story that Avenant was dubbed as Charming. One year later in 1890, Oscar Wilde used the term “Prince Charming” sarcastically in his novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, meaning that the term had gotten its more modern meaning by this point in time.

Gaston’s musket is a Blunderbuss, which was invented in the early 1600′s and remained popular through the 18th century before falling out of fashion in the middle of the 19th century. However, considering Belle states that this is a backwards town and Gaston is an old-fashioned, Primeval man, it’s possible he’s using a largely outdated weapon.

While there are no street lamps in the city, we can see in the background lanterns on the sides of buildings, which might allude to the movie taking place before the invention of gas lamps. However, gas lamps were invented in 1809, and if the version of Jack and the Beanstalk is from 1890, then by all accounts the town should have gas lamps. What this amounting evidence is leading me to believe is that the film is directly following the plot of the original fairy tale.

In the story, Beauty’s father is a merchant who loses his fortune due to a storm destroying his cargo. They’re forced to live on a farm until the merchant stumbles upon the Beast’s castle and kick starts the plot. In the opening song, Belle says “every morning’s just the same, since the morning that we came, to this poor, provincial town.” This could mean that she grew up in a much more modern, urban, and progressive town. Possibly even Paris. But that after Maurice suffered severe financial trouble, he was forced to move them to the small, backwards town that was practically living an entire century behind the rest of France, which is why she’s so bored and unimpressed by the little town. It helps explain why she’s so eager to want to get out of this town and see the world. She wants to be part of the modern world again.

Interestingly, I can support this theory with background information. According to some of my research, Belle’s village was based on the little town of Riquewihr, France, which still looks like it did in the 16th century to this day. So the idea that Belle’s little village lacks so many modern elements could be a nod to the architecture of this sleepy French village that has remained largely untouched by the march of time. Hence why it looks more like something out of the 1700s despite the many elements from the 1800s being present.

During the song “Be Our Guest”, Lumiere dances with a match stick. Match sticks were invented in 1805. Assuming the film still takes place in the 1890s, this would be concurrent with the other evidence we’ve seen thus far. Later in the same song, the silverware makes an Eiffel tower, which was constructed in 1889. Since Jack and the Beanstalk was written after that, it still fits within the suspected time frame.

During the climax of the battle, Cogsworth is wearing military garments reflective of Napoleonic styles. Napoleon was coronated in 1804 until 1814, had a brief return to power in 1815, and eventually died in 1821. So this is also congruent to the established time period.

In the Youtube Video “Fashion Expert Fact Checks Belle from Beauty and the Beast’s Costumes” by Glamour, April Calahan, a Fashion Historian from the Fashion Institute of Technology directly noted that Belle’s yellow gown lacks the shape of a proper 18th century dress, and more closely resembles the shape of 19th century dresses, fitting into the evidence that’s been mounting in support of a late 19th century setting.

As a part of his primary costume, Lefou wears a waistcoat and tailcoats, which came into vogue in the 1800s, namely from the 1840s through the 1850s.

But if the film is set in the 1800s, how can the Beast still be a prince after the French Revolution? Well something worth noting is that when he finds out that Belle isn’t coming to dinner, the Beast storms through the halls to her room as Cogsworth calls after him as “Your Eminence” and “Your Grace”. The address of “Your Eminence” is reserved for Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church, and is an ecclesiastical style of address. “Your Grace” is noticeably an English style of address, but it’s being used by Cogsworth who is British, so I can chalk that up to just part of his culture. Although it was used for British monarchs, it fell out of use during the reign of King Henry VIII (1509-1547) and after that, the use of “Your Grace” became used to address archbishops and non-royal Dukes and Duchesses. Now clearly the Beast is not a cardinal or a bishop, especially if he is looking for the love of a woman to make him human, since it’s forbidden for Catholic priests to marry. So clearly that is not what is meant here. But the other answer actually does hold a bit of weight. Beast’s father was in fact, a Duke. So how is the Beast a prince? He’s not. Not entirely. See, there’s more than one kind of Prince in French nobility. There’s a Prince du Sang, or a Prince by Blood. Effectively, the Crown Prince, the sons of ruling monarchs. But the title is also given to lords in charge of a Principality, one of the smallest territorial sizes. The Beast’s principality probably only extends to having power over the little unnamed village. And with it being after the revolution, Beast might not even have the proper use of his title anymore. He’s effectively a rich kid in a fancy house with no real authority or power. He’s just old money from a by-gone era of human history. But if Beast’s address of “Your Grace” is accurate, that would mean that he’s a non-royal Duke, meaning he would not likely have been executed during the Revolution, as his family would have essentially been governors or senators than actual monarchs. They just had jurisdiction over a small piece of the Kingdom of France and reported back to and obeyed the orders of their King. Thus, he would not have been important enough to be killed or chased out of power by the townsfolk.

CONCLUSION

The movie is set between the late autumn and early-to-mid winter of 1890. Although the snow is gone when Belle returns to the village, the trees are still bare, signaling that it may just be unseasonably warm, though it could be the very early spring of 1891 between the receding of the snow and the blossoming of new spring foliage. Between the books, clothing, and references made, my conclusion is that Belle is a very modern girl living in a backwards little town stuck in the past, thus why a village in 1890 looks so completely lacking in modern technology despite the era. The Prince is nothing more than a fancy title as the son of a Duke, and he likely has very little if any actual government authority. Essentially, Belle married into wealth, not power, and will never be a proper queen, and I’m not sure if the wife of a lord ruling a principality is a princess or not, but I suspect the answer is no. Making Belle, like Mulan, a Disney Princess who did not marry royalty, was not born royalty, and thus, cannot be called a Disney Princess. She’s definitely a noblewoman, but she’s not royal by any means.

SETTING: Riquewihr, France

KINGDOM: The French Republic (France)

YEAR: Autumn, 1890 - Spring, 1891

PERIOD: The Third Republic (1870-1940)

LANGUAGE: French

[thefloatingstone]

Akhenaton “the Alien hybrid” pharaoh according to Ancient Alien theorists

The argument is “WhY dOesS AkHenAtOn lOok DiffreN to OhEr PhaRaOhs? ALIEMS????”

Here’s the answer and its a wild fucking ride, lemme tell you.

Akhenaton was a fucking revolutionary Pharaoh and almost single handedly tried to rewrite ALL of ancient Egypt’s religion during his rule. He;

1: Moved Egypt’s Capital to a new city further down the Nile called Akhenaton after himself which is entirely based on worshiping the singular god, Aten. 2: Established a new religion that saw a singular god called “Aten” rather than an entire pantheon and esentially said “Yeah all those other gods we’ve been worshiping for literally thousands of years? Yeah just throw those out. They’re not canon now” 3: Re-worked how ancient Egyptian art was drawn (and this is the big one) where he was essentially bored with the “Eyptian style” of art and instead urged all HIS depictions in art capture his appearance more accurately to real life. His frescos also, unlike any other pharoah, show him in domestic scenes, spending time with his wife and children in very mundane, every day situations

(an image of Akhenaton with his wife playing with their young children. Akhenaton is shown kissing one of his daughters in fatherly affection)

Akhenaton was not traditionally handsome (probably thanks to hundreds of years of inbreeding thanks to how Ancient Egyptian royalty worked) and did not want to be depicted in a way that wasn’t true to himself. So his image is always shown as gangly with long limbs, slightly over-weight with a belly, elongated features and pronounced lips.

So..... this kind of really REALLY fucking pissed off literally every high ranking priest in all of Egypt because they’re now, to put it plainly, out of a job. Akhenaton’s moving of the capital also severely crippled the religious structure, moving political power away from where most of the greatest temples were, and since the Pharoahs are meant to be living gods on Earth, what does it say when the gods of Earth don’t live in the same city any more?

Akhenaton dies from unknown reasons but most likely the same genetic disease that gave him his appearance (some have obviously suggested assassination but there is no proof of this that’s been found and it remains up for debate) and the priests and historians go about striking his name from history and destroying and defacing artwork depicting him and his new religion.

(whoops)

He is then excluded from the king lists and is referred by later Dynasties as “The Enemy” or “That Criminal” in archival records. When Akhenaton’s mummy was located his sarcophagus and funerary mask were both deliberately destroyed.

You may have heard of his wife, btw. Nefertiti.

You ever wonder why she’s called the most beauiful woman in history? It’s probably because she was one of the few Pharaoh women accurate sculpted to relfect what she really looked like, versus a stock style.

also fun fact, this most famous image of her is an incomplete wooden bust found in the ruins of a sculptors’ workshop, presumeably because she was killed before he could finish it and he was like “aw shit... NOW what do I do with this?”

Now the problem is, the priests can’t just appoint a brand new Pharaoh, because pharoahs are descended from the gods themselves and their blood can’t be mixed with that of mere mortals (which is why Egyptian pharaohs marry their mothers and sisters. To keep their godly blood “pure”). So, the hastily appoint Akhenaton’s son who is 9 years old as the new pharaoh (and of course the child will have advisors to help him rule until he is an adult... of course.)

Problem. Akhenaton’s son’s name is Tutankhaten. “Living Image of Aten” and that just won’t do. So 2 years into his reign (aged 11) his name is changed to  Tutankhamun, “Living image of Amun”after the sun god Amun or Amun-Ra. The city of Akhenaton is abandoned and falls into ruin.

All is well and Tutankhamun’s kingdom is ruled by his advisors... until he’s about 18 or 19. Whoops! Now he’s an adult and probably wants to start actually doing his job as the ruler of Egypt.

Oh wait no nevermind. he conveniently died. We’re not sure how exactly because, oh... uhm... it seems there are no surviving records of King Tut’s final days! Whoops!

Ok that’s an over simplification. In truth, thanks to many... many... many.... MANY scans and autopsies, we now now Tut broke his knee recently before he died, had a very aggressive strain of malaria which led to a bone disease and also, due to being inbred as FUCK because of how Pharaohs work, also suffered from mild kyphoscoliosis (a curved spine), pes planus (flat feet), hypophalangism of the right foot (missing bone), bone necrosis of the second and third metatarsal bones of the left foot, and a club foot that was so bad he could not stand unless aided by walking sticks. However the exact cause of death is still unknown but it seems direct assassination is unlikely.

But anyway.

So King Tut dies as does the two stillborn children of his and Akhenaton’s family line reaches an end. It did not end well for Tut’s wife either as she disappears from history after a war which left Egypt defeated and her new husband, Ay the new Pharaoh, with a sudden second wife. After Ay’s death a new Pharaoh comes into power by usurping the throne and has a complete and utter “Stricken from history” campaign against all of Tutankhamun’s family, including father, mother, daughters, wife, half sisters, and all other family members.

King Tut is buried in an unusually small tomb most likely due to his sudden death, that became forgotten and buried.

Fast forward 3,245 years to 1915 and his tomb is discovered by Archaeologists. The tomb is one of the most intact and untouched tombs EVER discovered in the history of all Agyptian Pharoahs, and almost single-handedly caused an absolute obsession with Ancient Egyptian culture and kickstarted what we now call “Egyptology”. A fascination which has never truly died even in modern times today.

.....

Anyway Akhenaton wasn’t an alien.

[seewetter]

I went into detail on this here. The relevant section starts at "Fair point".

But I'll summarize:

If we want to understand the role reproductive exploitation has played historically (and whether it's the main driving force behind the patriarchy, which is what I understand Talia is saying) then we have to deal with the fact that it originated very early, likely before we even have written records. So it's not like white supremacy, where the architects of white supremacy left a paper trail that explains why they did it and what they were thinking.

And any attempt at understanding what patriarchy is or how to end it will have to grapple with the diversity of social relations, from Assyria and Harappa to Great Fulo and Oyo, where gender may have worked very differently.

Simple narratives like "patriarchy was everywhere and unsolvable and then the Enlightenment toppled it" or "patriarchy is a Western invention and pre-colonial societies were saints when it comes to gender" are unlikely to be true and are definitely not helpful, given the current state of evidence.

Talia and I don't necessarily disagree here, but I think we place emphasis differently. For Talia, it was important to reject the idea of the West as the ultimate villain -- as far as I understand, this is because it serves to excuse other villains -- and for me that rejection felt too one-sided, because there is something strange about the fact that:

In India, the earliest writings (like Bhagavat Gita) come from Indo-European settlers and the society they replaced (Indus Valley civilization) shows no archaeological signs of gender oppression

In China, most of the neolithic shows no signs of gender oppression (to the point that academics have been unsure about what's going on) until at some point someone seems to have invented it

In places like Java and Borneo, the earliest writings come from contact with Indo-European merchants and travelers.

In Africa, all Europeans are able to say about gender comes from contact that happened after Islamic missionaries had been let lose on the region for hundreds of years.

In Europe, most pre-Christian history was deliberately destroyed.

In the Middle East, a lot of pre-Islamic culture was deliberately destroyed (a look at Arab religion prior to Islam for example reveals tremendous blindspots).

In Latin America, there are no pre-colonial sources. We can say that the Popol Vuh is an authentic reflection of Mayan pre-colonial myths, but the fact remains that it was written after colonization. I personally believe it's an authentic reflection and scientifically that's probably more plausible, but it's still stunningly important.

I will summarize this: wherever you look in the world, cultures that either are Western or very strongly influenced the West have had control over our historic records -- with maybe the exception of China.

Now you might argue (and Talia does) that this is immaterial, because there are so many smaller cultures that have engaged in patriarchal practices and lots of indications that they did so prior to Western contact.

But it's important to realize that

the human timeline goes back hundreds of thousands of years, most of which we have no written records for

quite a few societies have records we can't decipher (Indus Valley civilization for example or Inca) and coincidentally (?) were more egalitarian in certain respects than Western societies

sometimes Westerners would show up in places like the Philippines or among the Minangkabau and there had already been heavy cultural influence from successive generations of Islamic missionaries or merchants from Buddhist or Hindu societies, bringing a lot of Indo-European or Abrahamic baggage

So in light of that, the patriarchal practices around the world might come from the way that Indo-Europeans live or think. Or from some other factor that biases us to think that these people are all independently coming up with the same idea.

Now I agree that Talia's version is more likely. I agree that this story of cross-cultural influence bears the burden of proof and is possibly an unhelpful rabbit hole.

But I don't think we can exclude the possibility when we find this widespread censorship. I see this almost less as a research question and more as an opportunity to make people reflect how much we have lost to the censorship efforts of people like Gregory the Illuminator or Charlemagne. The more of the past they destroyed, the less able we are to understand their own role in it. Maybe they were just as patriarchal as the societies they destroyed, but because they destroyed all this evidence, they accidentally created this phantom, this idea that maybe there was something else, something better, that they ruined.

So as you can see Assyria is not really mentioned because of third-sexing. It's mentioned because it goes against certain modern narratives where agricultural revolution = patriarchy. Those narratives are self-congratulatory Western fairy tales that paint the West as saving the non-West from their backwards values.

Again: I'm not making a coherent argument, because Talia's argument is (for the most part) my argument. So Assyria is something I felt would bolster that argument, not something I thought would "debunk" Talia's ideas. Because my "aimless rambling" was aimless, I was often changing the direction of what I was discussing without warning the reader. So while I am supplying information about Assyria (for example), it doesn't necessarily contradict anything Talia said or fully support her line of argument.

The reason I was disagreeing with Talia (and discussing the Old Assyrian period) is because while Talia is correct in principle that Westerners often pretend the world revolves around them (even as villains) it is also the case that sometimes Western influence has in fact been pervasive. That successive waves of Western influence have had negative consequences but also been in contradiction with each other. Maybe the first proto-Western (Vedic) wave in India caused the removal of egalitarianism in Indian society, maybe the Mughals were a later wave (Abrahamic and thus also influenced by Indo-European proto-Western traditions) and then the British came and introduced their brand of nastiness and gender politics. If that's the case (and it is hypothetical, not certain) then in a certain sense the conceited Westerners who think they are to blame would (accidentally, not through their own wisdom and intelligence) be correct. And we shouldn't exclude that possibility, because if it's how history played out then it's how history played out. We shouldn't underestimate this possibility, not in order to normalize a pre-colonial pride in pre-Western pre-patriarchal traditions, but in order to understand how and why patriarchal norms and gendered oppression were introduced and what their social function is.

Now all that speculation may be totally outside the scope of what Talia is trying to do and argue. If the main point is to talk about Third Sexing and about modern day identity in non-Western countries then broad philosophical questions like "where did it all come from?" "why did it happen?" might be out of place.

But that's why I must emphasize again that I was not attacking or trying to debunk Talia's ideas. They may be fit for purpose. Just not for every purpose -- and the kind of things I tend to discuss on my blog are often more those broad questions, so that's the direction my response took.

"Racism is inherent to transmisogyny"

So, are white trans women affected by racism?

This is not a gotcha. I've seen a lot of people on here attempt to discuss racism and (trans)misogyny as co-constitutive, but people never show their work. If racism is in fact inseparable from transmisogyny, is everyone who suffers transmisogyny a victim of racism?

If cis women of color are subject to transmisogyny, is there no distinction between cis and trans women of color, either within or outside the West?

How does the inseparability of racism and transmisogyny operate in global south cultures where imperialism has shaped their history and economy, yes, but the extant regime is not one where white people are a present or meaningful demographic?

I know people mean well, but if you're going to make broad, sweeping statements about these topics, you need to be able to think through your arguments, realize what conclusions you are implicitly promulgating, and reason out whether what you're saying makes sense and matches up with history and empirical reality.

Because I've had experience both with Western and non-Western patriarchies, and I'm fairly sure in that regard, I am a minority on this site.

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2022 Reading Challenge - Book 1 of 26

Title: Jade Legacy (The Green Bone Saga #3) (2021)

Author: Fonda Lee

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Female Protagonist, LGBT Protagonist, Third-Person 

Rating: 8/10 

Date Began: 12/01/2021

Date Finished: 01/09/2022 

Jade is a magical substance which enhances the physical abilities of those who wear it. Once the cultural birthright of Green Bone warriors in the isolated nation of Kekon, it now commands international attention as a weapon of war. The Kaul family of the No Peak clan finds themselves in a position to shape the future of jade and their country as a whole. But they must contend with the Mountain, a ruthless rival clan that seeks to destroy No Peak and unite Kekon under a single banner. As the Kauls grow older and decades pass, they must bear witness to the future they’ve wrought— and what this means for the next generation of Green Bones.

On his deathbed, the disgraced king is said to have lamented, “I’ll be remembered not for who I was, but for what I wasn’t. Perhaps it’s for the best. Let the gods judge me for what I did not do.”

Review, content warnings, and (vague) spoilers below the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Depicted-- Graphic violence, gore, death, mass death, terrorism, torture, graphic sexual content, abuse, ableism, misogyny, homophobia, recreational drug use, addiction/ overdosing/withdrawal, non-consensual drugging, suicide, animal death, child death, warfare, war crimes, PTSD. 

Mentioned: R*pe, animal abuse, human trafficking.

Jade Legacy is the definitive conclusion to The Green Bone Saga, and Fonda Lee elevates the scope of the novel to do the ending justice. While the previous entries take place around 1-3 year timelines, Jade Legacy covers a staggering 20+ years in the lives of its characters. It depicts the main cast as they grow older and change, while also exploring the younger generation and their future. There’s so much material that Jade Legacy feels like three books packed into a single entry. It’s an intense, emotional conclusion to the series, and while it took me a while to get through, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I’ve discussed this series’ incredible worldbuilding before, and it pays off to its fullest extent in this book. Jade City focused on Janloon and the island nation of Kekon. Jade War expanded this to an international setting, detailing world powers, their interactions, and impacts on Kekon and the No Peak clan. Jade Legacy continues the momentum via its longer timeline. We get to see the full impact of jade, clan culture, covert war, terrorism, and more as they unfold over decades. Concepts and plot threads introduced in earlier books bring lasting consequences. It’s neat to see how Lee’s world mirrors our own while also maintaining its fantastical elements. Several events have uncanny parallels to recent human history. The story ends roughly at the technological level of the modern day, with Internet and cell phones becoming commonplace. But Kekon’s magic jade and worldwide significance continues to be a central part of the story.

One of my favorite things about The Green Bone Saga is its unpredictability. Jade Legacy takes this to an extreme. Minor characters return to shape the story in major ways. A chapter that begins as a routine board meeting ends with an assassination attempt, a terrorist attack, and a desperate search for survivors. Or a night out partying results in the brutal, tragic death of a major character. There’s always tension in this series, because any sense of security is inherently false. Everything makes sense when you finish and examine the story as a whole, but in the moment, it feels like anything is on the table.

I also liked some of Jade Legacy’s characterization. Perhaps most surprising is how this book made me reflect on freaking Bero. Bero is a (deliberately) unlikable recurring character— literally the first perspective we get. He’s a selfish loser, completely unremarkable… except he shapes many major events in the story. No matter the dire straits (or how much I rooted for his demise), human cockroach Bero always survives. Jade Legacy explores why Bero’s such an integral part of the story. How can he touch the lives of the main cast so often, yet they’re utterly oblivious to it? How does he manage to escape certain death again and again? It’s a level of meta-analysis I didn’t expect Lee to explore, but I’m glad she did, because I appreciate his character so much more. Him being the unnamed taxi driver at the end— taking Anden to the Twice Lucky, no less! — was a nice final jab and symbolic bookend to cap off the series.

The ambitious 20+ year timeline has its positives. It’s full of intricate detail and satisfying narrative payoffs. There’s nothing quite like seeing familiar characters grow old and witness their, well, legacy. Characters we know as children become adults who struggle to find their place in a changing world. We also see how an incremental shift in attitude and culture can change everything. The youth of No Peak and the Mountain don’t have the same hatred for each other as their parents. Much of the second half of the book focuses on the old guard relinquishing the future to the next generation, and the potential this brings for peace and positive change. It’s surprisingly optimistic for an otherwise brutal series.

But I admit there’s some drawbacks to the wider scope. Characterization suffers a little. In the first two books, we got to see the full impact of events and how they affected the characters. While that’s somewhat true in Jade Legacy, there are multiple occasions where something major happens right before a multi-year time skip. Thus we see the immediate reaction to an event, but then miss out on the aftermath. Sometimes characters reflect on past events at later points in the book, but by then, so much time has passed that it’s less real and immediate. It’s like checking in on an old friend rather than experiencing their struggles firsthand. The next-gen characters also feel underdeveloped outside of maybe Niko, which is disappointing considering the theme of legacy and succession.

The time jumps come with pacing issues, too. Every time we skip forward, we get lengthy summaries of what happened over the last few months or years before sinking in to the new story arc. I liked how the first two books handled exposition by smoothly integrating it into the story, or even withholding information until its ideal narrative impact. Here it feels more jarring and infodump-y; a list of things that happened and how that affected other things. Some exposition is inevitable, but it took me out of the story in a way previous books simply didn’t.

Despite these negatives, I think the broad timeline was the best choice. I respect Lee for ending this series on a high note rather than dragging it out. At the same time, it’s clear she had an extensive storyline in mind for her world and characters. Jade Legacy feels like an ideal compromise between ending the series and still exploring the remainder of the story.

As far as I’m concerned, Lee did a great job. I may have some complaints, but Jade Legacy is a fitting conclusion to an incredible trilogy. I can’t imagine how difficult it is to write a book that not only covers so much information, but makes it interesting to read about. Lee weaves so many plot threads and character arcs together that I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. While I liked the first two books a little more, I am clearly in the minority. This series deserves so much more attention than it’s received, and I highly recommend it.

[hotchley]

Congratulations on 300 sumayyyah!! That’s a really great milestone and I totally understand why they all follow you! Could I have 🐚 for Hotch, as well as ⚔️ and 🫀 (bau as teachers) I’m so sorry if the last one is a little overwhelming, and I would definitely understand if you don’t have enough time/ don’t want to do that one!

Aah thank youu!! That’s so sweet of you as well!

🐚 and a character and i’ll write some happy headcanons

so his favourite thing about the house he buys after he retires is that he can finally have the home library he always wanted and every shelf is filled with books from every genre ever

his favourite colour is actually yellow, but being unit chief means he has to look professional so it’s not really a good idea, but Penelope knitted him a yellow scarf that he wears every year without fail

although he may not seem like it, he’s really good at giving meaningful presents and all of the team, including the BAU kids are always in awe of just how good he is- especially when some of them don’t even know what they want

one of his favourite things to do is capture the soft and domestic moments of the team because it reminds him of the reasons why they do things so he just an entire album of them (they all know he does this and subtly take photos when he’s being domestic)

he’s not an idiot, so he knows when Jack is only pretending to be asleep, but he also knows he won’t be a kid forever, so he will always carry him into the house no matter how obvious it is he’s awake

⚔️ and i’ll give you an image from my novel board that reminds me of you

I knew what image it was going to be as soon as I saw it was from you, which makes a change

Because you like Pride and Prejudice, Downton Abbey and this just reminded me of being a hopeless romantic that wants to make things better and light so it was just a vibe <3

🫀 and the bau as *insert thing*

I’m doing the “Core 7″ because I... cannot be bothered to do everyone from Gideon up to Kate, I hope that’s okay!! And I only say Kate because I’m still on season 10 whoopsie 

Also, I live in England so I’m doing it based on those stereotypes (I say stereotypes, I mean I’m turning them into teachers I’ve had)

Spencer: the absolute life-saver of a chemistry teacher. It doesn’t matter what day it is, whether it’s Friday after school or Tuesday morning, he’s there to help you. Will never make you feel stupid for not understanding “basic” concepts because he gets that sometimes things just don’t click and will help you until it does, no matter how long it takes or how many different ways you need to try it. Everyone’s favourite science teacher. Sometimes gives you more detail than you need, but it is always so the thing you’re learning about makes more sense.

JJ: the P.E teacher. But not the normal P.E teacher that literally doesn’t care so long as you make some sort of effort. No, she’s the P.E teacher that also coaches the netball team, and is absolutely obsessed with netball as always. Her favourites are the girls that play netball: she’ll gossip with them, tell them to help the others and get them out of lesson whenever needed. So it’s great if you play netball, but not if you don’t.

Derek: Hehe. Okay, so he’s a design technology teacher, but the really nice one that just supports everyone with whatever it is they’re doing. Really big on safety, but not in a patronising way, in a: guys if someone gets hurt it’ll be terrible way. Everyone loves him and hopes they get him for D.T because he’s just the best. Never judges you based off your abilities, only cares about whether or not you tried and will always use his lunch break to try and salvage your project. 

Penelope: So you know how there are always two art teachers and one of them is always insane? Well, Penelope is the other art teacher that everyone genuinely loves. She really cares about the subject, but she’s not pretentious about it and she encourages the students to do whatever feels right. She loves showing the class photos of her cats, never snaps or shouts when people forgets thing and is always willing to demonstrate how to do something, no matter how many times she’s already done it before. Is an absolute angel, that always gets distracted by other more fun projects, and is definitely dating Derek.

Rossi: Your history teacher that was old enough to have actual memories of the things you’re learning about. Is a good enough teacher, but sometimes you do wonder whether you’re actually learning the stuff you need to. Is absolutely obsessed with creating debates over the smallest things, even though he always undermines the people that actually get involved. Unironically says he’s going to play devil’s advocate and definitely says some stuff he probably shouldn’t.

Emily: The french teacher that is somehow terrifying, lovely and somewhat inappropriate, all at the same time. She’s terrifying if you leave your speaking booklet at home, and if you don’t actually try and put on an accent, but will also bring in snacks for the last day of term and definitely has thousands of stories about the time she spent in France. Will destroy you if you don’t hand in your homework, or if you used google translate, but praises the people that hand it in, no matter how bad it was. Also lets you watch French films- defo makes inappropriate comments if there’s a kissing scene.

Hotch: the other history teacher that nobody really knows where they stand with because he’s a bit of a confusing character, but is deep down an absolute angel and is absolutely loved by the people he teaches. Seems to always be miserable and sad, but is actually just a front because when they like you, or when you’re nice, they get really happy and will willingly/deliberately make jokes, but not at anyone else’s expense. Is younger than the other history teacher but has no idea what pop culture is which means references go over his head. Will mark every exam question you give him way too harshly in preparation, but really does want you to do well. Will not accept people saying they’re bad at history, and is definitely the emotional support teacher for multiple people- doesn’t tell you that you’re overthinking when you cry, but will remind you that he has faith in you and is just an overall bean.

This low-key got out of hand, but I hope you liked it!!

[qqueenofhades]

Hi there, I really liked what you had to say about the upcoming election. I was wondering if you have published any articles recently in regards to that? I know you said you were a historian.

Aha, thank you so much, this is very flattering. Alas (?), the book that I have just published is about the crusades, as I am a medieval historian by training. However, one of my main research interests is the role of the “imagined medieval” in modern culture, I have written a book chapter about the role of the crusades in post-9/11 political and cultural rhetoric, and I am developing a research project that examines the current crisis of public history through a medievalist perspective. That, however, is still in draft stages.

That said, I absolutely DO have a mini reading list for you (and a lecture to go with it, because as noted, I am an academic and this is how we function!) The topic of today’s class is “Why Accelerationist Ideology Is And Always Has Been Horrifically Racist and Genocidal Throughout History, and White Americans Only Like It Because They Don’t Live In Countries Where It Was Done (By America).” Not very snappy, but there you have it.

The reading list, to start off, is:

The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow

The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia by Michael Sells

These are all hefty books (though the Maddow and Sells books are shorter) but they’re accessible and written for the layperson, and we always have time to educate ourselves. Why are they relevant to the 2020 election, you might ask?

First: the Cold War book lays out in great, GREAT detail the consequences of a global world order absolutely gripped by a competing standoff of ideologies (American capitalism vs. Soviet socialism) and how these two forces gulped up the politics of the rest of the world, destroyed numerous satellite states, and tried to rebuild them from the ashes into new ideological utopias -- precisely what a lot of people are suggesting now with the ridiculous “just burn everything down and it will magically fix itself!” theory that is somehow presented as the Moral Alternative to voting for Biden/Harris. You know what this caused during the Cold War? Yep. Human suffering on a massive scale, and absolutely zero utopian perfect states, whether capitalist or socialist. It also makes the extremely salient point that in the 1930s, German leftists and liberal democrats were infighting among themselves as to who was Less Morally Pure, and couldn’t agree on a candidate or a moral imperative to oppose the other guy, and figured that their flawed liberal idealists were “just as bad” as said other guy. Was that guy’s name Adolf Hitler? Why yes. Yes it was. Is there a lesson here for us? Who can say. Seems hard to figure.

Leaving aside the tragedy and pointlessness of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, both fought as proxy battlefields between Americans and Soviets, let’s consider the Great Leap Forward, in China (1958-1962) under Chairman Mao Zhedong. The idea was to dismantle traditionalist Confucian Chinese society and rebuild it as a modern socialist state, which was the goal of a lot of twentieth-century old-school socialist/Marxist “people’s republics.” Mao took this exact “burn conservative society down and rebuild it according to Enlightened Leftist Principles” approach and it was... a disaster. A total and epic disaster that caused both short and long-term suffering to the Chinese people and, wouldn’t you know it, did not result in a utopian Chinese state. This is also the reason you cannot say anything complimentary about Fidel Castro, especially if you want to win Florida, no matter how “good” you think his socialist principles were in the abstract, because: Cubans and Cuban-Americans fuggin’ hated the guy. You know why? Because he also destroyed their lives.

Obviously, there is a ton of distance between old-school Communism in the 20th century and 21st-century modern democratic socialism such as that run in Norway (and the Scandinavian countries in general), no matter if your racist uncle on Facebook insists on conflating the two and howling about the Red Menace like it’s still 1962. But the point is that radical leftist accelerationist theory hasn’t changed from 1962 (or frankly, from Karl Marx) either. It still figures that by some miraculous principle, the entrenched systems and ideologies will either just disappear or be “torn down,” the Peasants will Rise Up and Overthrow the Aristocracy, and something something socialist utopia. Except that was tried multiple times in the 20th century and it always failed. More than that, even if it was supposedly “leftist,” it inflicted just as much suffering on its own people as fascist right-wing dictatorships. Americans have always been infused with the triumphalist confidence that they “won” the Cold War because socialism was bad, and it was the inherent flaws in socialism as a world order that doomed it to defeat, unlike rah-rah Red White and Blue American Capitalism. So capitalism, ignoring its own fatal flaws, went hog-wild in the 80s and 90s, establishing Reaganite deregulation as the core and unimpeachable tenet of the market, and we’re all living in the increasing wreckage of that economic system now. Obviously the right wing uses “socialism” as a bugaboo to scare us that Things Could Be Worse, but I haven’t seen the faintest trace of historical context or awareness from the particularly deluded breed of hard leftists who still cling onto the magical theory that a Perfect People’s Uprising Will Fix Everything.

On that note, let’s move to Naomi Klein. The Shock Doctrine lays out in similar excruciating detail how the U.S. systematically destroyed the economic systems of countries particularly in Asia and Latin America (and the entire shameful history of Uncle Sam in Latin America should be required reading for EVERYONE) and sold them a bill of goods about “free market economics” in the Keynesian model. Guess what resulted from this attempt to destroy entrenched societies overnight and rebuild them in the name of Ideology? If you guessed “massive human suffering and ongoing generational devastation and dysfunction” you’d be right again! This was accompanied with constant political interference from the CIA and the State Department to support right-wing dictators and military takeovers in a way that have left the politics and institutions of Central America in permanently broken disarray, because it turns out it’s a lot easier to keep exploiting those brown people in governmental systems that don’t allow dissent or democracy, no matter the exalted principles you like to preach about Freedom and Liberty. The U.S. likes to act as if the Central American refugee crisis is this unwarranted invasion of these dirty immigrants, as if it didn’t play a DIRECT AND LONG LASTING EFFECT in destroying the infrastructure of these countries to the point where they’ve become incapable of functioning as healthy democracies. If you think “banana republic” is the name of an upscale clothing store, I beg you, research the history of that term.

This hasn’t even gotten to the absolutely horrible history of Africa’s treatment at the hands of white Europeans (see the Kendi book for obvious anti-racism education and also how those racist ideas are directly built into the ideological infrastructure of America). Somehow white leftists, while professing to be allies of Black Lives Matter and proclaiming themselves Woke, have managed to overlook this, and I don’t know how??? (Answer: it’s racism Jan.) First it was the transatlantic slave trade and the large-scale kidnapping, sale, and chattel bondage of generations of people. Then it was 19th-century colonialism and imperialism, where Europe thought it could “civilize” the “Dark Continent” and rebuild it to an “enlightened standard.” This was not a right-wing project; this was solidly mainstream and it was enthusiastically advocated by many liberals and intellectuals who busily composed an entire academic and “scientific” literature to support it. Did the European wholescale destruction of traditional societies in an attempt to build a Perfect Ideological Utopia result in... massive human suffering, by any chance? Leopold II of Belgium might have something to say about that. Then when an overstretched Europe was finally forced out of its overseas colonies in the aftermath of World War II, guess what resulted? Did African society spring from the ashes and remake itself in a perfect image? Nope! It became subject to decades-long civil wars and bloody military dictators because its infrastructure had been so crippled (very deliberately so) by its departing colonialist overlords that it likewise had no sustainable model for development. It turns out when you break things out of the idea that they’ll magically fix themselves, they just stay broken and they get worse. Now we once more have the West acting like Africa is a hotbed of Primitives while ignoring its own role in destroying it (and the situation in the Middle East, but that’s a whole OTHER can of worms! So many cans! So many!)

The Peter Frankopan book is an excellent exploration into the flourishing medieval trade networks across the East, the function of the Silk Road in bringing culture and commodities across the known world, and how Europe’s intervention and eventual ascendancy was marked by profound violence, the destruction of these networks, and the outright pillage of non-white people and riches. Which we know, but... read it. Europe and its heir (America) started the crusades, colonialism, imperialism, two world wars, and other conflicts that always contained a virulent aspect of spreading Ideology and getting people to Believe The Right Thing. These cumulative conflicts have devastated the planet repeatedly and we are still feeling their effects right up to this minute. They were all connected to Establishing Supreme Ideology and Supreme Whiteness (and Supreme Christianity). I’m detecting a pattern. The Rachel Maddow book explores how from the 1980s onward, America went absolutely hog-wild with the military/military ideology as a central way to solve its problems, which was tied to the Cold War, capitalism, and extreme individualism. All of which are tied to our current mess today.

Obviously, the most extreme examples of putting ideology above people result in outright holocausts, which is why you should read the Michael Sells book about Bosnia. Everyone knows about the WWII Holocaust of the Jews (and we have already seen how that is busily being denied along with the return of anti-Semitism, which never goes away), but the Bosnian holocaust was happening while most of us were alive. The West deliberately ignored it, because it was framed as the “last crusade” against Muslims in Europe and they needed to be removed in order to create a Pure Christian Europe; hence the Bosniaks were apparently an acceptable sacrifice in achieving this. I have some words on my tongue, I think they start with “massive human suffering,” and how that is constantly what results when an existing society, no matter how flawed, is attacked by ideological zealots who see huge amounts of death as an acceptable price to pay for their brave new world, as long as it’s not theirs (and sometimes even when it is). In fact, the accelerationist theory of social change is so profoundly racial and genocidal (and is indeed being used in exactly that way by the neo-Nazis and white paramilitary elements today) that it’s even more shocking to see supposedly progressive and moral people advocating so enthusiastically for it. It is a white supremacist Nazi wet dream of an ideology in which all the “flawed” people just vanish (spoiler alert, they don’t vanish, they are brutally murdered or allowed to die from deliberate and arrogant negligence) and the Aryans cavort in paradise. Just replacing that with some socialist jargon buzzwords doesn’t change the underlying framework.

And this is STILL NOT GETTING to America’s own history, and you know, the fact that this continent was occupied when white settlers arrived, declared it “terra nulla” or “empty land,” and set about slaughtering the existing advanced civilizations and their people in the name of! You guessed it! SUPERIOR IDEOLOGY! Funnily enough, destroying the Native Americans “for their own good” didn’t result in utopia for them. It resulted in.... yeah, I think we get it by now, but just in case, one more time: MASSIVE HUMAN SUFFERING.

Tl;dr: The accelerationist theory of social change (just destroy everything and it will magically rebuild according to our preferred ideology) is a racist and genocidal fantasy of orgiastic destruction that has caused untold damage throughout history. White Americans whether on the right or left are fond of it, because they have never lived in a country where this has been repeatedly and horribly done to them (often by America itself) and which has cost uncountable Black, brown, Muslim, Jewish, Latin American, Native American, etc lives. The deliberate or deliberately negligent destruction of society does not lead to regeneration. It leads to long-term and unfixable damage, and the people who profit the most from deliberate disaster are the capitalist corporate overlords that the left professes to hate. This country is a racist garbage fire and nobody denies that it needs to change or die, but buying into this theory about how you should just stand back and let it burn/obstruct efforts to work within the system and mitigate the damage IS BULLSHIT and RESULTS IN MASSIVE HUMAN SUFFERING AND DEATH. Which, so far as I know, wasn’t supposed to be a progressive value, but hey, I could be mistaken.

Learn some history. Wear a mask.

Don’t be a whiny pissbaby that makes the rest of us die.

Vote Joe Biden and Kamala Harris 2020.

[vaspider]

Okay, we need to back up about six fucking steps because I generally respect a lot of y'all, but like, this post was fucking disgraceful and I'm really embarrassed to have read that ask and the response. Holy fucking shit.

First of all, I'm gonna say up front that I do not disagree even a tiny bit with the idea that goyische queers need to chill on the Holocaust comparison, and also, in case anyone missed this, I am also Jewish. Cool? Cool.

What do you think they are trying to destroy right now?

Do you think maybe it's community and culture that they're trying to destroy by taking aim at the places where we gather (drag shows, public queer events, Pride)? Do you think maybe it's community and culture they're trying to destroy by banning books which discuss who we are, our history, our shared culture? Do you not remember that like 90% of the arguments that older queers have with younger queers on here result from a loss of continuous culture because so many people fucking died from a deliberate attempt to wipe out our culture via medical neglect that our communities collapsed and fell apart, and had to be slowly, painstakingly reconstructed, an act which is still continuing? Have y'all forgotten how the vast majority of discussions on Tumblr 5 to 10 years ago were us olds dredging up lost writing and paperwork, giving people reading assignments, because the culture was so effectively decimated by AIDS? Has it slipped your mind that the big issues we're having with transandrophobia and transmisogyny in general stem from a loss of historical understanding, because these younger queers have no fucking idea how much they've bought into political lesbian/gendercrit bullshit, since they don't have that continuous cultural knowledge? Have you forgotten that the first books that the Nazis burned were trans and queer books, the books which documented research into our lives, the books which wrote about our lives, our memoirs, our stories, our fucking culture? And that this happened because they called queerness 'the Jewish disease'? Like, what the fuck, y'all. Either we hang together or we all hang separately.

Yes, they are trying to stop trans people from coming out, they are trying to prevent us from getting medical care, and also a lot of these things are specifically aimed at destroying queer culture, a thing which so verifiably exists that we had to create an entire set of disciplines -- Queer Theory and Queer Studies -- to document and discuss it.

How fucking disrespectful can you be to respond in such a way to people's terror about the destruction of a community, of a culture, which is just starting to recover from the absolute decimation it underwent four decades ago? Like, of all people, you'd think that we'd get it. How ironic, that you're dismissing people's fears over destruction of culture like this. How fucking heartless can you be to see a community and a culture fearing for its future, while being a part of a culture which prides itself on its internal diversity and tenacity, and say 'well, even if they kill all of you, there will be new queer people born, and if they kill all the Jews, there won't be a community to induct-- '

Like, do you hear yourselves? At all? Even a little bit?

Yes, there will be new queer people born -- into a world without a queer culture to care for them. Into a world without a queer culture to make sure that they have the chance to figure out who they are. Into a world without a queer culture to give them somewhere to land if and when their birth families reject them. Into a world without a queer culture to fight for their civil rights, to defend their civil rights. Into a world without a queer culture to provide them with a place to experience queer joy, into a world where they have to recreate queer culture from the ground up. In that world you so casually dismiss as 'oh well more queers will be born, so it's fine actually', the queer culture we have now? It's dead. It's gone. That would be an unspeakable loss, even if a new queer culture could be created, because the queer culture we have now, the culture of Leslie Feinberg (z''l), Betty Berzon (z''l), Lesely Gore (z''l), the culture of Claude Cahun (z''l), Harvey Milk (z''l), Magnus Hirschfeld (z''l)... that would be gone.

How can you listen to old stories like the gay person who used to call a local queer bar and just listen for a minute or two to the sounds of queer people being allowed to be together, joyful, and use the knowledge that this culture existed to survive even though they couldn't be part of that culture safely, and respond like this to people's fears?

Holy fucking shit, I cannot believe you. There is no excuse for your own hurt feelings -- however justifiably hurt they are, and however badly someone else behaved -- turning into you ... doing this. It is -- shocking, I know -- possible to call someone out on their bad behavior without engaging in this kind of absolute shit take yourself.

There is a space in which we -- goyische and Jewish queers -- can discuss what's going on right now, the attempts at genocide which are in fact ramping up right now, without being disrespectful to each other or dismissing each other's fears. This? This was shameful, and it was especially shameful because you should know better, and because I know you're better than this.

What goyische queer people don't get is that if anyone in history had been successful in their goal of wiping out all the Jews in the world, there would be no more Jews. Forever. Even though we have conversion, you can't convert without a community. The Jewish people would become extinct like so many other ancient people that historians today struggle to interpret and reconstruct.

Nobody will ever be successful in wiping out the entirety of queer people because queerness is random and not inherited. Queer people will always be born.

That's the difference. That's why there's at least more than ten times more queer people in the world than there are Jews. That's why so many Jews have severe extinction anxiety. Because eradicating Jews entirely from the world is possible- eradicating queer people entirely is impossible.

this is such a good point!!! and it’s something i really don’t think queer gentiles grasp.