#still pretty awful. because of aforementioned racism

[thisisnotwhathappens]

Hey everyone! This is an older post but it's still circulating. There's been good news quite recently in regards to NAGPRA! It actually got stricter (which is a great thing)!

I am by no means Native American, an archeologist, or someone who's had any experience with the repatriation process, but I do follow the topic closely for my job! So take my interpretations with a grain of salt.

This article is lovely as it's part of a 3 part series on the new NAGPRA updates, and it's published in an indigenous peoples focused journal. I highly recommend it.

https://ictnews.org/news/new-nagpra-rules-a-sea-change-in-federal-regulations

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/arts/design/american-museum-of-natural-history-nagpra.html

This one is more well known, and was one of the first ways I personally found out about the updates. It also goes into the sheer scope of this issue: there's over 96,000 individuals still in institutions across the US, which isn't even including stolen items.

The new rules in place make a couple of major changes:

TLDR; Multiple large museums including the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, the Field Museum in Chicago, and the Peabody Museum at Harvard have all closed down several exhibits to work with community leaders from their respective tribes to both repatriate remains and culturally significant items, as well as re-working exhibits. The Smithsonian is uh, noticeably missing from that list, but I'll get to that down below.

That to display cultural items or to conduct research on aforementioned items or human remains the tribe must give prior, informed consent to do so! Which is a huge new stance and sadly, extremely bare minimum, but it's still a much needed improvement.

Tribes and Native Hawaiian groups are now given more authority and deference in the matters of repatriation then bureaucrats or academics! Again, another huge one. The old NAGPRA law (from my understanding) used to place the burden of proof on the individuals/group requesting repatriation. It also let the museums/institutions have a lot of 'final say' in whether or not something could be returned.

Human remains are no longer allowed to be "culturally unidentifiable!" Culturally unidentifiable meant that they couldn't (or weren't able to) find out where the remains came from/who to give them back to. It kept these remains trapped in limbo, unable to be repatriated properly and the institutions had to hold onto them. This makes that category a thing of the past, and makes it easier for the remains be properly laid to rest.

Collections have to be inventoried and updated by 2029, and both transparency and reporting standards have increased. This one is pretty straightforward, but it is important to have a more accurate count and understanding of where and what institutions have indigenous remains and items.

Remember the Smithsonian thing I alluded to earlier? Well, the Smithsonian isn't actually governed by NAGPRA! It's covered by the National Museum of the American Indian Act (NMAIA). They've been posting job listings looking for a lot of people to help with giving back human remains (likely because they have over 15,000 Native American remains, 2,100 black remains and 6,000 remains with at least partially known names, but how they got there is too big for this post. But long story short, it was racism, among other awful reasons.) The current repatriation manager, Dr. Dorothy Lippert, is a member of the Choctaw tribe in Oklahoma. The Smithsonian has a guide that anyone can access about the repatriation process linked here, and they are actively trying to repair some of the harm that their actions have caused.

While the Smithsonian, and other institutions like it have done some extremely awful things, the future is looking brighter, especially now.

And to the OP, and all the others who chimed in with deeply personal stories, I hope this helps.

Went to the Aboriginal artifact exhibit in Chicago. And it’s interesting. How many blankets and masks and totem poles say ‘unknown source’, because every five seconds my mom would stop and point to something and say. “Pauline’s grandmother made that,” or, “That belongs to Mike’s family, I should call him” because. It’s all stolen

[lostcauses-noregrets]

Hello Ms. Lost! I'm writing to you with a feeling of strange unease. For years I've been following SNK without any wane in enthusiasm. I've been enjoying the story itself, as well as appreciating the sense of conflict in situations and ethics the characters often face. Recently I've noticed an uptick in folks on Twitter accusing the story/Isayama of being any number of unsavory things; anti-Semitic, pro-imperialism, nationalist, etc. 1/?

Personally, I feel that I’d need to do more research before being able to commit to statements as to what Isayama does or doesn’t believe. As for the story, I’m not sold. I feel it’s inevitable that history inspires the stories people will tell, but that isn’t to suggest the presentation of difficult topics is the same thing as the author/mangaka condoning the behavior or people/events in time. But with this sudden surge of people shutting down the manga or supporting it��� 2/?

I guess I just find myself questioning my still-strong interest in the manga. Racism and anti-Semitism will always be awful and should be spoken out against, there’s no two ways about it. But when I step back to think of SNK through that lens, I just don’t see the story condoning these behaviors, fetishizing people, or whatever else is being claimed in the aforementioned Twitter threads. 3/?

So yeah. I think I’m just writing all this to you because you always speak your mind both respectfully while not sugar-coating things. If you don’t have thoughts on this subject, or just don’t want to answer, I understand all the way. But in case you do, I wanted to ask what you think about the entire Isayama/SNK is anti-Semitic/imperialist/etc. thing.

Hello Anon, I generally avoid answering asks about this because most of them stem back to an old tumblr post that has already been critiqued many times by people who are much more patient and eloquent than I am, and giving it further airtime is not helpful.   However, this latest blow up has been triggered by a different post on twitter, so I’m going to break my own rule and answer your ask as a one-off. 

Like you, I can’t comment on anything Isayama may or may not have said in past interviews, as I’m not familiar with the context and I lack the frame of reference to pass judgement one way or another, and neither is it my place to do so. 

With regard to the manga itself, I appreciate that different people can read the same material and come away with very different interpretations, and it’s not my place to tell anyone how to interpret a text.  I can only give you my opinion on the story as I’ve read it in good faith, and personally I don’t think that it sets out to condone fascism, imperialism, militarism and anti-Semitism.  As I read it, the whole theme of the manga is that war and oppression are bad and cycles of violence are futile. 

Having said that, Isayama is not a subtle storyteller.  I’ve been critical of his handling of plot and pacing in the past and his use of historical parallels and imagery is heavy handed at best.  I have to confess that I winced when I read the Marley arc, it’s really not subtle, and it’s far too easy to take the imagery out of context, which is exactly what has happened.  And fwiw, I have the same concerns about Zeke’s plan and the current eugenics plot line. 

However I don’t think Isayama is glorifying military might; he repeatedly highlights the futility of military power, and the majority of soldiers and their commanders have died horrible inglorious deaths. I don’t think he has dehumanised the Eldians; yes they can turn into monsters, but the whole point of the story is to see them as free individuals.  I don’t think Isayama’s sympathies lie with Marley; their oppression of the Eldians is clearly shown to be a terrible, terrible thing.  I don’t think he is setting up the supremacy of one nation over another either; the whole point of the plot line with Gabi and the Braus family was to show that underneath all the prejudice and indoctrination they have more in common than not.  And I don’t think that the visuals of the manga flirt with fascist symbolism any more than many other military themed series, and less than some.  Also Flocke is pretty much a poster child for the evils of right wing nationalist extremism. 

I confess that like you, this latest round of criticism has left me a little despondent because so much of it appears to be ill informed.  However, I can understand how some people might be offended, particularly if they haven’t read the entire series.  I can only advise that if you enjoy the series then you continue reading and make your own informed judgement as best you can.  That’s what I’ll be doing, and that’s pretty much my last word on the matter. 

Thank you for framing your ask so thoughtfully and respectfully Anon, and for appreciating the sensitivities of responding to a question like this. 

[thefabelmans2022]

A List of Book Inaccurate Things in IT fics That Annoy The Fuck Out Of Me

Richie's parents being abusive/neglectful/alcoholics/general shitty: in the book Richie's parents (Maggie and Wentworth Tozier) are good fucking parents. Wentworth (aside from having the funniest fucking name of all time) has a good relationship with his son, filled with humourous banter. Maggie is a caring, loving mum who is occasionally exasperated with Richie's antics (you would be too if Richie was your kid). There is one (1) instance where she yells at him for breaking his glasses, which is understandable, glasses are expensive. Richie loves his parents and his parents love him!!!!

Eddie is the purest cinnamon roll: lmao okay. Eddie is a tiny ball of anger. He can and will yell at you. He cannot fight you but he'll fucking try. The scene when he finally stands up to his mother he legitimately scares her (and scared me a little tbh) and it's one of the best scenes in the book. Eddie is not weak, he is brave and strong and awesome and by characterising him as the "pure pastel cinnamon roll" you are doing him a disservice.

Stan has no sense of humour: Stan is fucking hilarious. Not to most people, but to some people. Stan has a weird sense of humour that very few people get aside from the rest of the Losers (especially Richie, who is canonically Stan's best friend). He makes strange jokes and does a great Paul Anka impression. Being "an adult in a child's body" doesn't mean he doesn't know what a joke is.

Ben Hanscom is..........there??: god I can count on one hand the number of fics I've read where Ben does something other than crushing on Bev. It is true, he likes her a lot. He's a little 11 year old romantic. You know what else he is? Intelligent, a good friend, a successful architect, the actual purest cinnamon roll. Imagine how beautiful the world could be if we were all a little bit more like Ben Hanscom.

The Losers' parents are The Worst: Nope. Aside from Bev and Eddie, we have the aforementioned Tozier parents, the caring and loving Mrs Hanscom (a young woman who can't catch a break and just wants to do what's right for her son), the Hanlons (two VERY MUCH ALIVE farmers who love their boy even more than I do), the Urises (there isn't a whole lot about them but I don't remember anything suggesting they were shitty parents) and the Denbroughs (who are kind of neglectful and not hugely emotionally supportive to Bill but that's only because their other son was just brutally fucking murdered, you wouldn't be a model parent after that either). For the most part, the book is full of parents who are trying their best to do what they can for their kids.

Religious stuff: oh boy. So firstly, Stan as a kid isn't a super devout Jew. Stan only becomes connected to the religious aspect of Judaism as an adult. Richie is Catholic. He goes to church on Sundays and youth group on Thursdays. He rationalises the weird shit happening around him because weird shit happens in the Bible all the time. Mike is a Baptist, or at least his mother is. He goes to a Baptist school away from the others (NOT home schooled) and encounters a lot of racism there from both other students and teachers.

Everyone was woke af for kids in the 50s: nope. Nope nope nope. This is the 1950s. They're 11 year olds. Some of the things said in the book (by the kids, their parents, other adults, other kids) are racist, sexist, and anti-semitic. Richie and his Voices are probably the worst culprit. The boys can be sexist towards Bev (although she totally calls them out on it and it's awesome), the whole smoke hole thing can be considered kinda racist, Richie can also be a little anti-semitic sometimes. And while I'm at it, this doesn't make them bad people. In context, this is pretty normal. It's awful, but the 1950s were a bigoted time and this is all these kids would have been taught their whole lives. They've grown out of it by the time they're adults (although they're still not what we in 2017 would call progressive because, again, historical context, it's the 80s) and the bigotry and hatred of the 50s is never presented as being okay.

Thats all folks! (for now at least i might find more tbh)

Please dont hate me for this

[theunderratedgamingarchive]

Lost to Time: Zone of the Enders

Are you old enough to remember a time when mecha was everything? When nothing was cooler than giant robots, regardless of what shape they came in? You probably are, because admittedly that era wasn’t that long ago.

Gundam, IGPX, Zoids, Medabots, Armored Core, yada yada yada, etc. In the late 90s and early 2000s, mecha was the shit. And personally I think they still are, but I’m a minority.

One series in particular has been lying very quietly despite initial success, and that’s Zone of the Enders. A mech game in which mankind settles the far reaches of its own solar system, only to turn against each other as the lines between Earth-born humans and everyone else is drawn, Zone of the Enders stood out to me for being a lot more political than most of its competition.

Granted, not everyone likes that, but I find that a good political scheme makes for an interesting plot line.

Specifically, I’d like to talk about the 2001 GBA installment, The Fist of Mars. Why that one specifically? Well, the Game Boy era was dominated by a very small handful of game titles, and for that reason a lot of good GBA titles got little attention. A lot of the games mentioned on this blog will actually be GBA games, and you know, it’s not hard to give them a try with today’s technology.

Back to the game at hand, Z.O.E: The Fist of Mars isn’t an ‘outstanding’ game. It’s wasn’t on the level of the GBA era Fire Emblems or the Pokemon games. But it was definitely good enough to warrant playing and appreciating.

The genre of the game is difficult to describe. Movement was turn based, similar to those aforementioned FE games, with different craft having different movement ranges, weapons, and abilities. You moved all of your units, and ended your turn when you were done doing everything.

The way combat worked was where it got interesting, because you could either leave the combat to chance or take control of both attack and defense personally. If you leave it to the game and RNG, it’s almost exactly like Fire Emblem. There’s a hit chance for both you and your enemy, and whether or not you hit or get hit is determined by that.

However, you can manually aim and evade attacks if you choose to, through a sequence that allows you to aim your reticule at the moving enemy target, or to dodge the targeting reticule of the enemy.

The cool part about this is that there are a lot of little details that affect this manual aiming system. Your hit chance still matters, because the higher it is, the larger you reticule is. The amount of time you have to aim and fire is determined by the kind of weapon you’re using. Whether or not you balance your mech for accuracy or firepower determines the size of the ‘critical hit’ box on the target.

Now admittedly, once you get the hang of this manual system (which was pretty cool for a GBA game), the entire game is pretty much a breeze. Even if you crank your firepower up to maximum (lowering your accuracy), you will rarely ever miss your target, and running circles around enemy attacks is usually really easy too.

No, the game is certainly not noteworthy for being sufficiently difficult. And in fact, it’s probably not even noteworthy for its specific characters. The main character, Cage Midwell, is someone you’ll want to punch in his crybaby face four times throughout the game. Everyone else is centered around one defining archetype. Deckson is the old reliable guy who’s been through some shit but is still kind and level-headed. Razma’s a sleaze but reliable when it counts. Semyl is the rough and tumble tomboy who’s still really sweet. You get it, most everyone is based on one defining trait.

And yet, the story is actually really damn good (and way longer than you would expect). Right from the beginning you’re thrust into a political conspiracy that’s downright fucked up. While there are obvious foreshadowed events you’d have to be an idiot to miss, there were also some twists that take you completely by surprise, because they were well hidden by that more obvious event you thought was supposed to be the only twist.

Moreover, the game doesn’t pull any punches with the dark reality of human evil. Blatant racism is everywhere (against people born in space maybe, but the concept still stands). There’s riots. Cold-blooded murder. Bombing orphanages. Not very subtle abusive and deceitful relationships. A big part of the game’s message is that humans can be pretty damn awful, and I actually like that, especially since this was aimed at kids playing GBA. No, it doesn’t get graphic at any point, but the fact that the game is even willing to gun down innocent civilians through text is pretty hardcore.

So yeah, the game is old. GBA era old obviously. But even though it’s not difficult, it’s pretty fun, and the story is impressive for a game aimed at a younger audience. The themes and subtexts are even more amazing all things considered.

So if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t mind kicking it old-school for awhile, fire up your old device (*cough or an emulator *cough) and give Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars a try.

[dunandtwenty]

tyler + josh + some race things

this ended up being quite long, so I’ll leave it under the cut, but it would mean a lot to me if you read it! 

p.s. there’s a lot of other claims out there of ableism/sexism/homophobia/etc. both within twenty one pilot’s music and/or in tyler and/or josh’s personalities...I don’t delve into that in this post, but that’s not to say that there’s at least some partial truth in them.

TL;DR BOTH TYLER AND JOSH ARE WHITE AND REGARDLESS OF RACE THEY SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR ANY/ALL INSENSITIVE THINGS (NO MATTER HOW UNINTENTIONAL) THEY’VE SAID/DONE. ALSO 21P FANS PLEASE ACCEPT THAT EVEN THOUGH TWENTY ONE PILOTS HAS DONE A LOT OF GOOD THINGS, THEY’RE NOT PERFECT ANGELS. PLEASE BE CONSTRUCTIVELY CRITICAL, NOT JUST OVERTLY DEFENSIVE.

this post was brought along largely by this post that I recently commented on; many other fans (and non-fans) have commented as well, primarily asking why this is an issue or using it as another reason to dislike the band, respectively.

to precedent my spiel, I’d like to note that, firstly, I’m not white - I’m half korean + half chinese. additionally, I love twenty one pilots with my whole heart, and it’s because of this that I’m spending the time to send a critique out into the bottomless internet sphere. I’m not trying to start any arguments here, and quite frankly, if you’re white, I don’t want to hear it.

let’s begin:

1. (A) josh dun does, technically, have asian heritage. as noted in this instagram post, his great-great-great grandmother was japanese. from what I can tell, there’s no other asian blood in his family, making him 1/16 japanese and 15/16 white. honestly, I don’t care that “french, german, swedish, welsh, etc.” is, in the most literal definition, a “mix” - he’s white. he’s white passing, and really the only thing that makes him look even a little bit east asian is his eye smile. josh is white, you guys.  (B) a spinoff of this is the comments section on the aforementioned instagram post. here are some good ‘uns:

      “ur not Asian. ur kawaii”       “YOUR AN ASSSSSSSSIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN”       “his swinty eyes. lol he's asian”       “SQUINTY BEAN”       “Aw I knew it. You look gorgeous anyway.”       “ You're such a beauty tho so thanks Edwin dun”

the issue with most of the comments on this post is that it’s everyone @-ing their friends saying “look, I knew it!” I know these comments don’t come from a place of malicious intent, yet it’s also important to note that that “guess the ethnicity” isn’t some fun game...it’s offensive and stereotypical. there’s also a number of comments that are like “you’re still hot!” which - while also probably not meant to be offensive - implies that there’s something less-pretty about people with asian heritage/looks. also, “squinty” is derogatory. there’s also a lot of comments from asians (mostly half- or full) saying how cool it is that they sort of share ethnicity with a member of their favorite band; this is no way should be taken as “josh dun is asian representation in the mainstream media” because guess what? he’s white.  (C) there’s word of josh being racially insensitive himself - primarily that’s he’s preformed blackface. I can’t find any real documentation (likely because it’s been removed either by josh/management/fans/etc.) but regardless of any of that: blackface is wrong. i don’t give a fuck that josh has asian heritage. even if he was a poc, blackface is wrong. even if josh didn’t do blackface, blackface is wrong. there’s also controversy surrounding his and tyler’s black neck/hand paint - they’ve discussed in interviews before that the paint is a symbol of their negative emotions/insecurities, though it could be argued that this perpetuates our subconscious “black=bad” that’s been created thanks to years of institutionalized racism...this post is long as is, so I’m not going to get into it.

2. (A) tyler is half-Lebanese, but he’s still white. claiming that lebanese people are ethnically arabic is a vast generalization. (you can read more about this here and here.) even if he is ethnically arabic, tyler is incredibly white passing. his name is tyler joseph, for christ’s sake.  (B) I mentioned at the very top of this post claim that twenty one pilots is appropriating (for lack of a better word) black culture because tyler raps without real recognition of the origin of the genre. I don’t want to get too far into this - firstly because there’s already lots of commentary out there on this (here’s a really good post and another really good post) and secondly because I’m not black and therefore have no real authority to speak on this issue. what I will say is this: there’s a ton of twenty one pilots fans out there saying “rap isn’t just for black people/you’re just trying to divide people/this isn’t actually offensive/learn how to deal” if you’re a fan who believes that, you need to back off. you’re right in that there’s more than black rappers now - eminem’s white, dumbfoundead is korean, pitbull is latino. that being said, it’s of utmost important to respect what you’re using, something that twenty one pilots really hasn’t been the best at.

thanks for reading  - amy AKA @dunandtwenty