#tagging bc they have also been called out for islamophobia

[scarecrowgolem]

Cut the shit @weaver-z you know what you were doing, you just wanted an excuse to be openly antisemitic. Why bring up judaism specifically when you aren't jewish? You have got to know this is bound to attract nazis.

(The first screenshot shown is the post edited after backlash. The second is the original post.)

[beneaththebrim]

hello! hope it's ok to send this. i came across your post abt banyue arc (tgcf) being islamophobic and i have to agree with that. so dw im not here to argue or anything. im just conflicted on what to do with this information. bc tgcf/hualian is and has been for a while such a huge comfort for me, one of the only things that like still brings me joy, and one of the only fandoms i love engaging in and making hcs and fanart for. (1/?)

Hi anon,

First off, I want to acknowledge that it sounds like you’re hurting a lot right now. Not just because of this cognitive dissonance regarding the banyue arc in tgcf, but the notion that tgcf is one of the few things bringing you joy.

And I feel that. Alone, quarantining for months in the midst of a pandemic, in this current fucked up world we live in, fiction often feels like the only means of escape into a softer world, a world where love can worm in past the trauma, where love can soak in and stay forever.

You’re not wrong for finding joy in that, you’re not broken for needing that, and you’re not a bad person for wanting to hold onto it despite its flaws.

The fact that this can affect you so much, I think, is telling: you really care about the downtrodden people in the world, and you want to support them.

But I personally don’t think that cutting off this one piece of media (which, honestly, is more a symptom than a cause of the disease) will have much effect on people who are affected by racism and Islamophobia. As I said in the original post, I think there are far more productive ways of going about real-world activism--in particular, focusing on things in our own backyards, rather than making call-outs for fandoms that we, as an international audience, are guests in.

Another thing that some people brought up in the tags of that post, which I think is important to keep in mind, is that this sort of racism isn’t exclusive to danmei, or to wuxia/xianxia. Western fantasy also has so many racist tropes, so often constructs non-human ‘races’ that are regarded as essentially different, or less than human, and justifies their slaughter that way. Like, there’s no perfect media out there!

But I also don’t think it’s a good idea to just throw up your hands and ignore issues like this--I do think it’s important to talk about these flaws and problematic tropes. We as individuals can deal a far bigger blow against propaganda by working on how we engage with and analyze media, rather than segregating media into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ boxes and banishing the latter. Propaganda tends to prey on our binary fight-or-flight instincts, our tendency to segregate things into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. But if we don’t want to fall for propaganda in the future, it’s much better to exercise the parts of our brains that can break things down and sit with the discomfort long enough to mull it over.

And maybe it’s ironic, because that’s one of the morals underlying tgcf. It’s Xie Lian’s modus operandi to not jump to conclusions, because reality tends to be more complex than it appears on the surface.

“Collecting trash is better than ascending.”

It’s better to sort through the messiness of the world than to seek perfection.

Now, what can you do? Well, other than the activism stuff I listed in the disclaimer to the other post, I do think there’s some stuff you can do within fandom (although it would be more for yourself, not really activism). After all, in the history of fandom, there’s been plenty of times where fans collectively say “hey, I don’t like this aspect of canon. I’m going to write this fanfic/thread of headcanons to change it”. That’s the power of transformative fandom.

A few months ago, I had a fic idea that I’m not planning on writing (as I’m not really active in the tgcf fandom anymore) so it’s up-for-grabs: What about something about the normal citizens of Banyue, revealing how things *really* were, distanced from the more warlike perspectives of the generals fighting over whether they get to live? What if some of those citizens escape? Where would they go? How would they be treated as foreign refugees? What if, later, Ban Yue meets their descendants and comes to realize that the whole ‘suicide bombing’ plan was only ever something agreed to by the people in power, not the ordinary people who would be expected to go out and do the dirty work? How would she feel, knowing that some of her people survived?

Fiction like tgcf is inherently escapist--so, if there are aspects of it that wreck the escapism of it, why not write your own happy endings?

[larstenobar]

Okay so I mentioned it in the tags but I kinda wanna talk about my experiences with So/uth Pa/rk. I say this as a cis, gay, non-Jewish man. I also say this as someone who used to actually engage with the forums on the main site. I also say this as someone who played. both the two major video game RPGs. So I am speaking not from reaction to other people’s reactions but from my own personal knowledge. This post is incredibly long so it’s under a read more. In it I provide what I believe are the actual effects of South Park on its viewership but I need to stress that I think it’s the wrong energy to blame parents for letting their children watch the show.

Don’t blame the parents, blame the show.

That show is genuinely horrible. I’ve seen a lot of people questioning how anyone could let children watch it - and to that I say you’re not adding anything to the conversation by shaming parents for letting their children watch that show. 

My own parents weren’t even out of their twenties when I watched the show, and many other parents grew up with the show as a non-issue. Young parents make mistakes.

At the time it came out and its early years only extremely vigilant parents realized how problematic the show was and the news was hard to spread without social media. At best you could inform your parent friends and hope they listened.

The show’s main characters are children, many parents found/find it hard to believe that a show with children as the main characters could be bad for those children. If the show were exactly the same but the children were college-aged then it would be another raunchy show they could easily see is not meant for their kids.

There’s a good portion of children who watched the show that weren’t actually allowed to watch it because their parents weren’t as tech savvy as them and therefore didn’t know about pirating/streaming until it was mainstream. We who grew up with YouTube knew you could put in [show] episode 1 part 1 and start watching. (this is gonna be another point later btw)

I know that it’s hard for you guys to even know all the reasons it’s problematic because you all barely scratch the surface of it’s problems. But before we even get into the meat of its problems (Science Denial, Homophobia, Transphobia, Ableism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, etc.) we have to look at the very premise of the show.

The main characters begin in fourth grade. Fourth Grade. There’s a phenomena in our culture where we believe that children saying stupid stuff is harmless, and we forget that when children hear children speak - even animated children - they are hearing their peers. And peers learn from each other. This is why the show is so insidious, because it makes it easier for children to digest the messages.

Another thing that’s very important to note is that - while it’s labelled satire, every single joke is played straight, and the straight man character (usually either S or Ky) are ridiculed by the culture they’re surrounded in. Don’t believe me? Think I’m over-exaggerating? Think about the election episode, where they had to pick between a literal piece of shit or a douche. Our Straightmen were constantly saying how ridiculous the situation was, but everyone around them was telling them they were the ones who were stupid for not particpating in the election until they eventually break and submit to the absurdity. This is a light example, but it’s the typical formula. If they aren’t actively participating in the absurdity around them, they’re ridiculed until they break. What this tells the audience isn’t that the people who were particpating were stupid, but that they were right.

Now that we’ve looked at the show premise, let’s get into the details. A note: This is just what I remember from approximately age 5-18, the latter years I’d been turned off from it slowly so I wasn’t as engaged but it was not any better then. Since this is just what I can remember without looking through episodes or looking up articles, this is going to be a small sampling of things that stuck with me. Be assured, there was much, much, much more.

Science Denial and its effects on the viewers.

This is the lightest thing I can recall, and probably going to be the smallest section as it’s mostly centered around their stand-in for global warming, a cryptid figure called M/an/Be/ar/P/ig. Al G/ore was painted as a desperate, raving lunatic for believing in the phenomena, and was even implied to be making it up by having him dress up as the cryptid. I don’t have to explain why this is wrong, but we need to look at the effect this had.

On the one hand it made fans think that Global Warming (as it’s something A.G. believed in) was a hoax. Furthermore, it made them believe that anyone who believed in it was telling lies, which was overwhelmingly the most progressive people. A direct effect of these jokes (which they apologized for but never stopped propagating btw, MBP was still a joke when I stopped watching) was that progressives were seen as over-dramatic and stupid.

Now, I am not saying people watched these shows and immediately thought “oh wow, how fucking stupid of A.G. I don’t believe in climate change anymore.” It’s more like this: “Oh haha, S thinks A.G. is annoying, I like S so I agree, A.G. is annoying. You know, A.G. is kinda annoying with all that global warming, maybe there’s something to him being over-dramatic? Gosh why can’t these progressives see that it’s not that big of a deal. If they trust A.G. then they MUST be blowing other things out of proportion.” That’s the thought processes it trains its viewers to have.

LGBT+ Characters

Okay so there’s actually a lot of things that go into the Homophobia of S/P. And it goes back to the very beginning of the show, and is both explicit and implicit. There is a huge problem with these, but the main problem isn’t so much that they exist, but the show’s attitude towards their own ‘jokes’ and the ways in which fans suck up that thought process.

Before I get into this, there were some things that I need to say in favor of the show - not because I think the show deserve praise, but because there were some things that I latched onto and showed a surprising nuance. There’s like one thing, really but it is, of course, attached to something that’s a much larger issue within the show, so while it is a small glimmer, it’s in no way outshining any of the problems in the show.

For a while, the teacher underwent gender reassignment when he (the teacher currently identifies as male from my last interaction with the show) got breast implants and presumably bottom surgery (I vaguely remember a surgery but honestly that could be an invention) he was in a gay relationship. His then boyfriend had a very heartfelt and difficult conversation about how he still cared about him and how he’ll never hate him for being the woman that he wanted to be, but there was no way that he could pursue a relationship with him. I thought that this was a very mature depiction of a very difficult situation that is never really talked about. However, as I implied earlier, this is attached to a larger issue. Before any of you start having second thoughts about your ideas about S/P’s portrayal of gay and trans people, immediately after getting broken up with the teacher became violently homophobic as a backlash, I vaguely recall a group being formed.

Our main examples of LGBT individuals in the show are these big four (five?):

The afforementioned teacher

The teacher’s boyfriend, who wears leather gear at school and can’t stop talking kink even in front of the child characters

A character called B/ig G/ay A/l who is just as stereotypical as his name implies.

T/weak and C/raig, who are classmates of the focal characters. There’s a lot of reasons this is problematic, none of them being the age of those involved in the relationship - but the portrayal of them is hugely problematic.

Since I’ve already touched on the teacher, we’ll get into them first. When he was introduced, he was a sort of ambiguously gay character who was very bitchy and spoke with a slight lisp that eventually became a canon gay character with his relationship with the Kink Character. He was violently hateful towards his class, verbally abusing them all the time and often particpating in bullying children. Furthermore he’s seen as incompetent. This is problematic not because he’s a gay man doing this (though it’s not great either) but because this taught children that teachers don’t care about them and that they shouldn’t listen to them because they don’t know what they’re talking about anyways. This goes into their anti-intellectual stance mentioned earlier. It enforces the idea that education systems are useless, not because of the institutional problems they have with racism, but because of the incompetence of the system.

Going back to the point of this, still with the same character, let’s further explore the problems they had when the teacher had an arc as a trans woman. Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but the show made a point to let you know that the other characters were uncomfortable when Mr. G became Ms. G. The most damning thing about this, however, is the fact that Mr. G detransitioned bc he realized he wasn’t a straight woman, just a gay man. I think this is problematic because it frames transitioning as a sexual strategy. I don’t think I have to go into detail on why that’s problematic. And while this isn’t actually a tie into how horrible their handling of this character is, it should be noted that he’s the character that went on to be their T/rump stand-in.

The next character is the Kink Man.

God, the character’s personality isn’t actually all that bad. He’s loving and caring and empathetic and actually usually on the right side of topics, but. He doesn’t separate his kink from his personal life. He’s always strutting around in leather-daddy gear and has a lisp. His name is literally Mr. S/lave. There was an episode where he shoved a hamster in his ass. To viewers, he represents the dirty gays that keep shoving their sex-life down their throats - and this view is never, ever, ever subverted, so since the show never makes fun of people for having that view it reinforces that idea in their minds.

Honestly the least problematic character of the LGBT characters that I mentioned was BGA. He’s still a stereotype, yeah, he has a gay dog and is super flamboyant and constantly talks about how proud he is but honestly that’s not really all that bad. I can’t directly recall anything bad about him except that he’s incredibly flamboyant, speaks with a lisp, and loves to call things he owns “BGA’s Big Gay [noun].” Relatable. That doesn’t mean there was nothing problematic, it just doesn’t immediately come to me.

Now, for the next most problematic “representation” in the show. First, T&C showed no signs of actually being gay before. I do recall them both being my favorite characters before they became a couple, however. T is a coffee addict which has some suspect aspects we’ll get into later, and C used to flip everyone off. This was why they were my favorites. They became gay literally when fangirls started shipping them in the show. I’m sure there was an actual fandom movement, but their getting together was incredibly forced - that was part of the joke btw, that gay shipping is always forced. What’s horrible about this is that this was in an episode about ya/oi.

Now, let’s try to dissect this issue. First off, what this tells viewers is that being gay was not a natural part of who they were, but was an active choice (if you’re being kind) or something society forced on them (if you’re not.) The two were actively fighting with the narrative that they were gay and in a relationship. I think their actual agreement for being boyfriends was more of a mutual public display than an actual relationship, but it’s a fuzzy memory because that whole episode felt like a fever dream.

What’s worse about this, is that the show actually displayed ya/oi depictions of these children within the show. Nothing NSFW, but clearly sexually charged situations were definitely shown. At the time, they were 5th graders. 9/10 year olds for those not in the states. This emboldened actual CT shippers “If the show could do it, then so can I” was the general mentality on the forums I was on. So we can talk on pedophilia to reasons why this show is awful.

And those are just the named recurring characters. Another commonly recurring character is a prostitute with a deep voice who is very sloppy looking that, from my recollection, is implied to be a transwoman. This might have just been a conclusion I drew when I was young however - but even that is reason to be critical of the character, that such a conclusion could even be drawn means it might have played a factor in the character’s inception.

They also “Solved Overpopulation” with a gay orgy. I don’t have the language to define why this sat so wrong with me, but I remember being very deeply hurt by it. I think it has something to do with the idea that homosexuality is a choice and that it should only be accepted because of the potential benefits it has for population control.

Islamophobia and Racism

Okay so I’m just gonna come out the gate by saying that they fought hard to depict the prophet Mohammad. Like, hard. And they did it twice - one time went almost unnoticed but the second had a huge backlash from the Islamic people. For those who aren’t aware, it’s sacrilege to depict Mohammad. It’s like desecrating a church, maybe worse - I really have no frame of reference for how bad it’s viewed, but however bad it is, it still boils down to being a strict taboo that S/P broke not once, but twice.

Now, as I keep reminding, my memory gets hazy for many things, especially things I wasn’t aware of being insensitive early on. I have vague memories of terrorists being depicted in traditional Sikh garb, and similar instances of directly relating Islam with terrorism. I don’t recall the show ever making fun of anyone for relating Muslims with terrorism, for all those fans out there saying they make fun of everyone.

There was an episode where the characters wore blackface. There’s a black character literally named t/oken b/lack. Sure, that could be satire and maybe even be defended if they subverted the trope, however it should be noted he’s not the only black character in the show! There was an episode where there was a child adopted from Africa whose name escapes me - he was emaciated and devoured food at an alarming rate and generally was a nuisance if I remember correctly.

There was an instance where one of the main character’s father was on Wheel of Fortune. The category was people who annoy you. the letters on the board were ‘N_ggers.’ You know where this is going, the father said the N-word. The word was really naggers, but the rest of the episode was a sympathetic journey with him dealing with being ostracized. He became known as an ‘n-word guy’ which was treated as a worse term within the universe. I say this because a law was passed where the phrase was outlawed and they said you had to have a space of at least 5 words between ‘n-word’ and ‘guy’. Also, the n-word was said multiple times by a number of white characters. Now, I know the argument people make about this episode. They say that we were supposed to find the scanario ridiculous, but the issue I take with it is more that we’re led to feel sympathetic to racists who’ve had their lives ruined for being racist. That’s the issue with South Park’s brand of ‘satire’. It satirizes one issue, but doesn’t touch on the problematic things used to support that satire.

Almost every single Mexican character is a stereotype of some sort. Either a laborer who can barely speak English, a gangbanger, or some other stereotype. There was an episode where they had C’s hand become a famous Latina popstar by singing about Mexican Food themed songs, like the actual songs ‘T/aco F/lavored K/isses’ and ‘T/aco B/urrito’. The hand’s name was Jennifer Lopez, I don’t know of these songs are direct parodies bc I’ve only heard Jenny From the Block.

And while S/P tends to stay away from very direct anti-black jokes, they don’t shy away from other races. There’s an asian character whose business is called ‘c/ity wok’, but he always pronounces it ‘shitty’ because the joke here is ‘oh haha asians have funny accents’ and literally nothing else. I honestly believe that asians receive the WORST treatment on S/P when it comes to facing racism, but I’m not qualified to make that claim. Other examples of anti-asian racism: There was an pokemon episode where they said that Japan was using anime to indoctrinate youth, they literally had the kids operate fighter jets to make an attack on the U.S. What’s worse about this, is that whenever the Japanese execs were questioned about this, every time, they dropped their pants to show how small their penises were and how they should be pitied for it. Another instance, I very strongly remember a depiction of asian characters as being lemon yellow with eyes like this: \ /. There was an episode where they had Asians violently murder whales with glee. They lean into anti-asian racism so much harder than any other form of racism - the only thing they’re worse about is their antisemitism, which will get its own section later.

Antisemitism

God there’s so much. Jew Gold, nazi imagery, the entirety of c/a/r/t/m/a/n as a character and there are so many posts on this website by people much more qualified than me to delve into what exactly is wrong with this and the depictions of it, so I’m mostly just going to catalog what comes to mind and then speak about the actual factual instances of S/P inspired antisemitism I’ve witnessed and been party to.

There was an episode devoted to Jewish people having a secret bit of gold around their necks. This was proven true in the universe when Ky gave up his ‘J*w Gold’ to C.

Ky’s mom is such an overbearing harpy who bulldozes over everyone, this was later explained as her having Jersey-Blood (yes this was a Jersey Shore joke) but before that it was completely because she was a proud Jewish woman.

Ky’s father is depicted as weak-willed and piddling. He always wears a yarmulke no matter the situation.

Ky is often depicted as being whiny and non-commital

OF ALL THE CHARACTERS, KY IS THE ONE WHO IS DEPICTED AS A HYPOCRITE THE MOST

Ky’s cousin with the same name is depicted as in poor health, complains about everything, whines about things not being fair bc they don’t go his way, and has caricatured Jewish features

As mentioned above, there are hosts of Nazi imagery associated with C

C has said every Jewish slur I have ever heard. In fact he introduced me to the concept of antisemitism

Ky, in a Christmas episode, is depicted as wishing he could celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah is depicted as a sort of consolation prize that’s Not As Good.

Ky’s father was an internet troll, and the trolls were. literal trolls. with certain features that are not great.

The following image is the Prophet Moses:

And there’s more and more and more. I will not accept anyone saying that this is just jokes because I know firsthand how insidious their treatment of Jewish people is because this show literally made me think it was okay to engage in Antisemitism. I made greedy jokes, like saying a got J**ed when i was screwed over, or that someone who was being greedy was being a J*w. I am not proud of this, and I think I grew out of it relatively quickly as I dropped that language in middle school.

But not everyone did. Even some of my closest friends were still saying they got J**ed when we were graduating high school. There were no Jewish people at my school, so there was no humanizing face for the Jewish people for us. Thank god for the Nanny or who knows what kind of person I’d be now. There were people even worse than me, I should mention. There was one person in my school who literally used J*w as a stand-in for loser because of this show. This show was the only interaction with the Jewish faith that most of my classmates ever had, and the same is true of many rural towns in America who have only Protestant populations.

Fatphobia

All the most unlikeable characters are fat. C. Ky’s mom. The gun-toting republican. And there are other specific episodes where they equate fatness to not being healthy. In their episode partnered with WoW (don’t forget that happened, y’all) the main antagonist was depicted as a no-life having loser and he was, surprise, fat. This show draws a very direct line between being fat and being unlikeable.

Sexism

God, the portrayal of women is so horrible, literally my only entry here is going to be one single link:

Note all the other isms depicted in this btw.

Substance Abuse

The prostitute mentioned in the LGBT section would wander into scenes screaming about how she wanted crack. There was an episode where they created a league of basketball players who were comprised entirely of ‘crack babies.’ I’m being generous by not putting that in the racism section because most of the babies were BIPOC which says something about the kind of people that M/att and T/rey think are addicts.

The character T/owelie is supposed to show an addict, but his addiction is literally just weed which means they’re claiming weed is addictive.

I can’t even begin to describe the show’s relationship to alcohol. As a child of an alcoholic, I can say that it’s not fucking cute that they made S’s dad a violent drunk. It’s genuinely scary to see your parent fly into a rage because of their alcoholism and them reducing it to a joke was, I think, one of the points where the ‘it’s just a joke’ mentality started to break for me personally. 

While we’re on the subject of parents, C’s mom was literally a crack addict who was also a full service sex worker. The correlation is not sympathetic in the slightest. And even worse was Ke’s parents. They were depicted as abusive, neglectful, drug-addicted rednecks. This was sometimes played to make you sympathize with Ke, and it worked because even now I can hardly think of how Ke himself was problematic rather than the situations he was in. (He’s the one who gets gruesomely murdered every episode) I don’t know if this is because of selective memory, if he was genuinely just the least problematic in the show, or if I’m waxing nostalgic for the show. Regardless, as I said, his situation was mostly played for sympathy. However, it was also played for jokes almost as often.

Pedophilia

The children are put in sexual situations a nonzero amount of times, they make priest molestation jokes, and they made jokes about MJ.

Slurs

Yeah they said them a lot. There was the aforementioned N-Word Guy episode, but there was also an episode that thinly mirrored immigrants coming to America for work and the people (time-travelers) were called ‘Goobacks’. I think the word ch*nk was used a nonzero amount of times, C used every slur for Jewish people in the book. None of these were censored by the show, any censoring was done by networks.

Why make this post?

Because I know people know this show is garbage, but I think it’s important that people know why it’s garbage with specific and nonspecific instances of why the show was problematic.

[dillydedalus]

what i read in march

several antigones & some other stuff

call me zebra, azareen van der vliet oloomi

oh boy. i really wanted to like this one, but uh. nah. so this book is about zebra, a young iranian-american from a lineage of ‘autodidacts, anarchists and atheists’, still traumatised by her childhood experience as a refugee (incl. her mother’s death on route). when her father dies years later, zebra decides to retrace the route of her exile thru barcelona, turkey, and back to iran. this sounds great! the beginning is good! but zebra is a quixotic figure (don quixote is unsubtly flagged as THE intertext several times), delusional about her own importance, obsessed with some kind of great literary mission and obnoxious & condescending & egotistic as all fuck (she looks down on students but treats her realisation that like, intertextuality is a thing, as this grand revelation when like..... we been knew since Lit. Theory 101) - and this is intentional & part of the quixotic thing & in general i approve of abrasive & bristly & difficult female characters BUT i expected there to be a gradual process of realisation where she sees that a) maybe her entirely male lineage of geniuses ain’t all that, c) her mission is uh.... incomprehensible. instead, once she reaches spain, she gets bogged down in endless pretentious bullshit and a #toxic relationship that takes up way too much space. knowing that all of that is likely intentional doesn’t.... make it good. also the writing is pretty overwrought for the most part & not even your narrator’s voice being Like That excuses plain bad writing, like the  absurd overuse of ‘intone’ and ‘pose’ as dialogue tags. i see the potential and i see the point & i liked some of it but uh. not good. 2/5, regretfully, generously

in the distance, hernan diaz

i don’t really go for westerns or man vs wilderness stories but damn i’m impressed. despite the violence & deprivation and sheer amount of gross shit, this story of a swedish immigrant getting lost in the american west for decades remains at its core so human, so tender, so sad (honestly this book is SO SAD, yet sometimes oddly hopeful), so evocative of isolation, loneliness, and the desire for human connection. 4/5

notes on a thesis, tiphaine rivière (tr. from french)

god, if i ever considered doing a phd i sure don’t anymore. this is a short graphic novel about a young woman’s descent into academic hell while writing her dissertation about labyrinths in kafka. it’s funny, the art is expressive and fanciful, and it is incredibly relateable if you’ve ever tried to actually write your brilliant, glorious, intricately constructed argument down, battled uni administration or had a panic attack over how to phrase a harmless email to a prof. Academia: Not Even Once. 3.5/5

red mars, kim stanley robinson

this is a very long hard sci-fi novel about mars colonisation & terraforming, discussing the ethics of terraforming, the potentials of a truly ‘martian’ culture, and how capitalism will inevitably fuck everything up, including outer space. all of this is up my alley and i did really like the first half (early colonisation efforts), but the 2nd half (beginning of terraforming, lots of politicking) was a slog - i liked reading about how terraforming was going, but the rest was just bloated, scattered and confusing. also there’s a tedious love triangle the whole time. 2/5

dragon keeper (rain wild chronicles #1), robin hobb

i love robin hobb she really can write a whole 500+ page book of set-up, characterisation and politicking and make it WORK. anyway, this has disabled dragons, a quest for mystical city, lots of rain wilds weirdness, a dragon scholar in an unhappy marriage, liveships, a sweet dummy romance, and uh... a lil penpalship between two messenger bird keepers? not much happens but it’s so NICE & so much is going to happen. also althea & brashen & malta turned up & i screamed. 3.5/5

season of migration to the north, tayeb salih (tr. from arabic)

this is a seminal work of post-colonial arabic literature, a haunting tale of the impact of colonialisation, especially of cultural hegemony in the education system, the disturbing dynamics of orientalism and sex, and village life in a modernising post-colonial sudan. it’s important, it’s well-written, it’ll make you think, but fair warning, there is a lot of violence against women - it has a point but still uh... wow. 3.5/5

dune, frank herbert

SOMETIMES.... BOOKS THAT ARE CONSIDERED MASTERWORKS OF THEIR GENRE.... ARE WORSE. so much worse. the writing in this is atrocious (”his voice was charged with unspeakable adjectives”), herbert somehow manages to make court intrigue and plotting UNBELIEVABLY DULL and sure, it was the 60s, but i’m p sure people knew imperialism was bad in the 60s! the main character, the eugenically-engineered chosen one or whatever, literally spends years among the oppressed & resisting natives of a planet ruled by a space!empire and at the end he’s like ‘i own this planet bc imperialism is Good Actually’. emotionally neglecting/abusing your wife, who you (!!!) decided (!!!) to marry for political reasons bc you’d rather marry your gf is also Good Actually (cosigned by the protag’s mother....) the worldbuilding is influential for the genre, sure w/e, but mainly notable for there just.... being a lot of it, the whole mythology-science makes No Goddamn Sense, all around this is just Bad. Bad. 0.5/5 i hope the Really Big Worms eat everyone 

dragon haven (rain wild chronicles #2), robin hobb

this healed my soul after toxic exposure to dune. anyway w/o spoilers: everyone is very much In Their Feelings (including me) and there’s a lot of Romance and Internal Conflict and Feelings Drama and Complicated Relationships and Group Dynamics and also dragons, which are really like very big, very haughty cats who can speak, and a flood and a living river barge with a mind of his own (love u tarman!). it’s still slow and languid but so so good. also: several people in this have to be told that People Are Gay, Steven, including Sedric, who is himself Gay People. 4/5

an unkindness of ghosts, solomon rivers

super interesting scifi story set on a generation ship with a radically stratified society in which the predominantly black lowerdeckers are oppressed and exploited by the predominantly white upperdeckers, mixed in with a lot of Gender Stuff (the lowerdeckers seem to have a much less stable and binary gender system than the upperdeckers) and neuroatypicality. it’s conceptually rich and full of potential, but just doesn’t quite stick the landing when it comes to the plot. 3/5

sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass, bruno schulz (tr. from polish)

more dreamy surreal short stories (ish?). i didn’t like this collection quite as much as the amazing street of crocodiles, but they are still really good, even tho you never quite know what is going on. featuring flights of birds, people turning into insects, thoughts about seasons and time, fireman pupae stuck in the chimney, and the continuing weird fixation on adela the maid. 3.5/5

angela merkel ist hitlers tocher, christian alt & christian schiffer

a fun & accessible guide to conspiracy theories, focusing on the current situation in germany and the current boom in conspiracy theories, but also including some historical notes. i wish it had been a bit less fun & flippant and more in-depth and detailed bc it really is quite shallow at points, but oh well. also yes the title does indeed translate to ‘angela merkel is hitler’s daughter’ so. yes. 2.5/5

the midwich cuckoos, john wyndham

fun lil scifi story in which almost all women in sleepy village midwich are suddenly pregnant, all at the same time. the resulting children, predictably, are strange, creepy, and possibly a threat to humanity. i get that it was written in the 50s but it is strange to read a book where almost all women, and only women, are affected by A Thing, but all the main characters are men & no one tells the women ‘hey we think it’s xenogenesis’ -  like realistically 80% of women affected went to the Neighbourhood Lady Who Takes Care of These Things like ‘hello, one (1) abortion please’ and the plot just ended there. i still liked it tho! 3/5

antigone project

antigone, the original bitch, by sophocles (tr. by fagles)

god antigone really is That Bitch. that’s all i have to say. 4.5/5

antigone, That Bitch but in french, jean anouilh

the Nazi-occupied france antigone. loved the meta commentary on what tragedy is and how antigone has to step into the Role of Antigone, which will kill her “but there’s nothing she can do. her name is antigone and she will have to play her part through to the end”. i didn’t really like (esp. given the ~historical context) the choice to make creon much more sympathetic, trying to save antigone’s life from the beginning. hmm. 3.5/5

antigonick, anne carson

look, antigone really is That Bitch and you know what? so is anne carson. best thing i’ve read so far this year, don’t ask me about it or i’ll yell the task of the translator of antigone at you. 5/5

home fire, kamila shamsie

honestly i really wanted to like this bc politically it’s on point and an anti-islamophobia antigone sounds amazing, but it just doesn’t succeed as a book/adaption. it spends way too much time in build-up/backstory (the play’s plot only starts in the second half of the book!), waaayyy to much time on the weirdly fetishistic antigone/haimon romance, and even the most interesting characters (ismene & creon) don’t fully work out. sad. 2/5

currently reading: the magic mountain by thomas mann, but i should be done in a week or so! also: the paper menagerie by ken liu, a collection of sff short stories

[filthyjanuary]

I posted 31,051 times in 2021

761 posts created (2%)

30290 posts reblogged (98%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 39.8 posts.

I added 8,789 tags in 2021

#spn - 2174 posts

#waterparks - 1525 posts

#dbh - 1255 posts

#prince of everything - 798 posts

#hockey - 628 posts

#loki show - 593 posts

#jared - 498 posts

#jerk - 477 posts

#fob - 428 posts

#mcyt - 413 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#it's genuinely the only angel x human ship i like in the show and thats bc it like... just works so seamlessly like zero effort went into it

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

last night (june 6), a white man drove his truck into a muslim family who were taking a walk in london, ontario, canada. of the five members of the family, only a nine-year-old boy survived. his 15-year-old sister, his parents and his grandmother are all dead and authorities are pretty confident it was premeditated and the family was targeted because they were muslims. three generations of a family gone for the crime of existing while muslim in public.

violent hate crimes against muslims have been on the rise in canada, like they are around the world. it’s exhausting being muslim and seeing it day after day.

to my understanding, the little boy’s extended family is keeping his identity private and i have not come across any way to donate to him directly, but if i do, i will update this post. for now, i ask, if you have anything to spare, to please donate to the national council of canadian muslims’ assistance program for victims of islamophobia.

edit: here is an approved fundraiser for the 9-year-old boy.

119 notes • Posted 2021-06-07 21:49:56 GMT

#4

I have no side, I was designed to stop deviants and that's what I intend to do.

144 notes • Posted 2021-03-05 09:25:12 GMT

#3

otto wood + snow globe

176 notes • Posted 2021-03-01 07:37:01 GMT

#2

fandom racism is so much harder to swallow when you're interacting with media that goes out of its way to feature characters of colour and they still get sidelined and erased

like when something revolves around predominantly white characters, you can almost like reassure yourself that the only reason the fandom is racist is because the source material doesn't give them much to work with

but when you're in a fandom that DOES have characters of colour and white people just blatantly erase them it fucking sucks so bad lol like nothing matters no matter how much progress is made, at the end of the day people see you as forgettable if you're not white

like ok sorry again to be talking about dbh on main in 2021 but like there's something incredibly depressing about the fandom of a game that is explicitly (to the point where it's often hamfisted and kind of cringey) about rising up against oppression, and that heavily features characters of colour, including 1/3 main characters, deciding their top three pairings are all white m/m pairings, including the second most popular pairing literally being a character that a) has no canonical personality or dialogue b) appears for 30 seconds at the end of like... one variation of a playthrough, and pairing him up with a cop that is also pretty insignificant in the broader game universe and who explicitly hates his kind. like yes we're going to put energy into developing this but completely ignore one of the actual lead characters who has infinite shipping potential and really interesting dynamics to explore with the characters around him but oh whoops! he happens to be black </3 but if anyone calls us out we're just gonna say his characterization isn't nuanced enough, like white robot with no personality or dialogue is somehow developed character.

and then like if we're gonna be #fandomprogressive and include a f/f ship, we're ALSO going to sideline another pretty important black character by erasing his existence so we can hook up the white character he bonds with over the course of the story with a different character who she's never met before, because again what the fuck is intersectionality, we have white lesbians so we've hit peak woke, even though if you really want a f/f ship, there are lots of other options that don't involve literally erasing a black character from his very important place in the narrative

anyway being a woc in fandom is a fucking nightmare <3

249 notes • Posted 2021-02-24 01:09:43 GMT

#1

little bitch (self-diagnosed) 

2095 notes • Posted 2021-05-21 04:28:51 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[feelingwonderfultoday]

Tagged!

makeThank you @bllueart for tagging me! :3

Preferred/Nick Name: I have like a million nicknmes, from Bambie to Ambrosius and from Verlepte Albatros to Abmer the demon child underneath ur bed, and honestly I love all of them just as much. I like a little variation!

What’s the most cockiest thing you said/thought: That I was smarter than those three dicks together, and honestly still convinced it was the truth

What’s a super power you would like to have? Flight! But I thought it all out and there are like ‘rules’ and stuff. For example: That I am able to fly as easily as walking, and that I can start and stop whenever I want That I don’t need to make weird movements That my body will in no way be negatively effected by the height and/or speed That I can turn/twist and go in every direction I want (and summersaults bc heck yes) And there’s lots more cuz I fantasize and dream about this way too much lol

What’s a super power that you think you will have based on your traits?  I would like it to be healing consisting of 2 parts: 1. healing the body/tissue etc. 2. taking pain away It‘s okay if it costs me my own energy but it would be more convenient if it was based on ‘asking’ the patient’s body to put some more energy into healing on a specific place, speeding up the process, or something like that.  There’s nothing else that I can think of if it has to be based on my traits.

What object would you be, and why?  I think I would be like a flowering plant. Not a specifically pretty one, just a nice one, that brings a bit of colour to a room or garden. I’ve been through a lot of personal growth the last couple of years, and even though I’m still a bit fragile mentally, I will stay standing. I think you’d be able to make tea of the leaves, tea that maybe soothes or comforts, in large amounts maybe make people hallucinate, and I think that it would be fairly easy to keep me alive and flowering. 

Imagine a ball floating in mid air. What color is it/? What is it made out of? It’s light blue and simple, made of some kind of plastic? Idk pretty boring.

If vehicles such as cars as buses/bikes did not exist, how would you get around? I would love to fly, if my wish of fav superpower was granted, or teleportation would be neat, but realistically I would probably be forced to walk lol.

What’s one thing you wish was real, but isn’t? Holy shit there is so freaking much that doesn’t exist but I wish was real. At the moment I would really like for Loki to be real and come take me to Asgard tbh

What’s something that really pisses you off? Unkindness, doesn’t matter why or how. It’s especially infuriating if it’s to act tough or cool. Yeah, laughing about someones insecurities or hitting an animal makes you really fucking cool, sure. Unkindness here also includes homophobia, xenophobia, islamophobia, and all those traits that really make me want to punch a fucking wall. 

What were some things you were interested in being? From ages 8 to 12 I was sure I wanted to be a (marine) biologist, but then I started to doubt and there were lots of other things: zoologist, microbiologist, macrobiologist (honestly any kind of biologystuff), neurologist, psychologist, camarawoman for National Geographic and documentaries and stuff, author, chemist, forester or forest ranger or whatever you call it, artist, that person that does special makeup stuff and molds for films and series, fashion designer, film director/producer, actress, game designer, animator, illustrator, florist, interior designer, and probably lots more I can’t remember rn

I tag:  @bluenightingalee @scienceofdeducjohn @margoteve @lasvegasmotel @makemeyourhercules @scarletrupee