#tell me your imperialist without knowing your imperialist

[2ndsun1]

Sometimes, people would rather talk about the actual and legitimate American/USA Evangelical Fundie conspiracy than acknowledge the very real agency of the Israeli government and a portion of the Israeli people in an ongoing genocide.

[decolonize-the-everything]

Im an american and I'm so scared of the future. I think I'm gonna die under a trump presidency and I don't what to do.

There are people dying under Biden now and with the supreme court decision to criminalize homeless people I suspect that there will soon be more.

That to say, solidarity will be our salvation in the face of fascists trying to divide us with fear and attacks on our rights. Yeah it is terrifying, but there are more oppressed people than there are oppressors. There is a reason they are attacking our communities one at a time, fear mongering, and trying to make us choose a side all at the same time.

What you need to do is the scary thing and put your trust in activists and leftists who are desperately shouting from the rooftops that the most important thing we can do right now is put our foot down and disengage from a corrupt two party system that only uplifts white supremacist fascists.

We have an awful government because we allow awful people in our government. Point blank. There is no getting around that or making excuses for it anymore. That led us here, right?

Whatever happens, no matter how this election goes the next 4 years are going to be impossible to describe in how bad it will be for people across the planet and the planet itself.

Honestly? You should be scared. Only fascists wouldnt be. But, if you're able to do something about it then let that fear turn into rage and become your fire.

Get mad at the people who put you in this impossible position. Because they knew better and they didn't care about your life or the millions of others at risk everyday! Why the hell should any of us keep playing into a system where our own president (and plenty of other politicians throughout time) can say we should die for the economy, for this country, for them when they wont let us walk down the street holding hands with our trans partner, when they kill our communities for jogging while Black, when they wont even let us live in poverty without sending us to prison!! People work themselves to the bone in this country to get by and you're telling me they'll never own or deserve a home? That even at the end of serving a long war, one of the most patriotic and respectable things you can do for an imperialist country, a veteran's kindest statistic to come home to is still an early death?

Fuck that.

Shits fucked. It's been fucked for a long time. If you're fine now you'll probably be fine under Trump if we're being honest.

But if that chance you won't be keeps you up at night, know that you aren't alone. That fear in your heart, that pit in your stomach is something every oppressed person has in common and it will be what unites us.

Like I said. Let it turn to rage, to fire. A single candle is no big deal to put out, but could they stop a wildfire so easily?

You're not going to die under Trump.

There are too many of us being wronged by the same exact systems. And as long as we focus on that and build on that instead of arguing over which system leader the worst, then we'll be fine. The point is they all suck, right? So find common ground there instead of discourse.

Solidarity can look like:

Donating! to bail funds, Palestinian escape gfms, human rights orgs, grassroots activists circles, directly to marginalized people, etc.

Not advocating for the two party system/voting blue

Remembering that equality will not be gained by stepping on someone else- no more compromising the needs of others. If one person says something hurts then their pain can't be part of any solution to someone else's problem.

On that note: listening when PoC and esp Black women tell you when something is racist, harmful, or oppressive. Listen when you are told that the solution you are considering will still leave people marginalized, isn't accessible, and/or isn't inclusive enough.

Solidarity also looks like not taking it personally when you are told that the action/opinion you just voiced was hurtful or ignorant or even bigoted. You DO have misinformed opinions and beliefs and you WILL be checked on those when they occur (just like you check others probably.) No, not everyone will be nice about it and you shouldn't let that discourage you! You should remember that being checked is exactly what everyone is gonna have to get used to. That is what building a better future is gonna look and feel like for everyone at some point. Everyone is ignorant about something. Just learn to say thank you when you're educated for free.

Get used to discomfort!! A little discomfort now is going to be worth the human rights and solidarity and justice we have later. Solidarity is gonna look like Not constantly centering your own comfort or lifestyle or privileges. It's gonna look like reading the room and knowing what a tone deaf comment/request is and when your silence is more appropriate (This is how you will earn trust in community spaces that've become hypervigilant of bad faith allies)

You figure out what your community needs and seek to provide it through either donations, working with local orgs, labor, awareness, (ex: donating/making meals, cleaning, providing clothes or birth control, sharing MutAid requests, boosting activist groups, etc), and showing up to support your community's movements and protests.

Even my tiny rural area has queer meetups, anarchist bookclubs, and a Mexican activist group with a Facebook page; get involved in your community in the ways you can. Learn the names of the people you'll be standing shoulder to shoulder with when Trump supporters start rallying against us all.

The fascist wave can be stopped but none of us will be able to do it alone. You aren't going to die under Trump because none of us are going to let that happen.

The same way you wouldn't let it happen to any of us.

The community that keeps you safe is the one you build.

[araguaneys]

I cannot believe the complete disinterest, apathy, lack of empathy and disregard of human lives of a lot of people for my country dying. The way we are talked to and talked over, disrespected and gaslighted by probably half the world, or used in THEIR silly politics games of right and left of heartless leaders they keep voting for in democracy/freedom to choose, a luxury we can't have.

So many people only mention us when they want to make a point about themselves, can't help talking about us without mentioning their countries or the us, you cannot decenter yourself you don't care that we're real people you don't know a thing about us or our culture or all we've lost and gone through. And yet all i can't help thinking and imagining ALL THE TIME is how much worse it must be for everyone else who's the same or worse, like every victim of dictatorship, genocide, conflict, poverty, etc in the world and personally everyone else less privileged than me i just want to say i am so sorry this is the world that you got and im always gonna support and defend you.

This is so telling of these people's activism and empathy and how performative it must be for them/you, i really think you dont care about Palestine or Sudan or Congo, Ukraine etc either you may have SOME empathy for them sure but you dont really think of people outside of yourselves and suffering more as truly equal doesn't matter if you're a poc or not if you still have some privilege and you're not in those situations you just fill your mouth with their names so people think you're "a good person" and you're ready to disregard anyone if you think it's "too complicated to get" or from somewhere that gets called a "leftist" government, the idea that a politician might lie and not actually be a leftist doesn't fit in your brain. WE JUST SAW YOU ALL SPENT WEEKS TALKING ABOUT HOW FAKE AMERICAN LIBERALS ARE bc they are, they pretend democrats are left leaning but they're not both republicans and democrats have the same imperialist right wing policies. THEN WHY CANT YOU UNDERSTAND THIS MIGHT HAPPEN IN OTHER COUNTRIES TO A WORSE DEGREE?

Free Venezuela yesterday and today, you SHOULD all be talking about it, trying to help, speaking to venezuelans and trying to understand and stopping misinformation from non venezuelans i'm never gonna forgive or forget you if you don't.

And ofc free the entire world from their oppressors because i can at least imagine how awful it must be i can at least leave my ideologies aside and listen to someone's struggle without thinking it all must be propaganda if it doesn't align with my experiences you really can't say the same for a lot of people.

[concerningwolves]

For this module's final assignment I need to write an exploration of the non-neutrality of art, and it has been really eye-opening.

Initially I conceived of the question in terms of something being politically non-neutral – until it occurred to me that audiences often want to politicise art instead of engaging with it from a place of empathy, interest or artistic and/or cultural appreciation. Most of us online (or in real life) have encountered people who engage with art from other cultures or minorities as a sort of... moral duty, I guess. Not because they're appreciating the art on its own merit, but because they think this will make them a better activist, and therefore a better person. They treat the art as if it is made for their education, their consumption, their political agenda. Little to no thought is given to the people who made it, or to the art itself.

In an 1975 interview, two black South African actors and playwrights, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, try to explain to their interviewers that their play The Island is in no way, shape or form intended as a political play, regardless of the political pressures and movements happening around it. The interviewers really struggle to grasp this. It isn't until page 16 of the transcript that they start to see what Kani and Ntshona are saying.

The Island is about two prisoners who put on a production of Antigone. It is deeply, deeply rooted in the cultural and social context of apartheid South Africa; it was illegal to represent or discuss prison conditions, making this an extremely transgressive and dangerous performance. To the interviewers, who are members of the African Activists Association and A Journal of African Studies, this must surely be a political statement. They even suggest that there should have been more overt or explicit political themes added in. Ntshona and Kani both respond by repeating the phrase "art is life and life is art".

What you’re going to see on stage is never no ghosts, no apparitions; those are human beings talking about their lives, their immediate surroundings. — Winston Ntshona We will invite the people to come and see into our lives, the way it is. — John Kani

For them, The Island was an exploration and expression of "life at home [in South Africa] as blacks" (Winston Ntshona); politics and all the rest are just "labels". More than that, it's about the art itself, and the process of making it. About the South African languages and cultures, and their love of these things, and about the time, effort and energy they put into honing their craft to tell this story. As soon as you make it about politics, you start to lose the all-important human aspects of the art.

Here is what really gets me: It's easy to say that the issue of politicising art is an issue of Western/white/colonial powers viewing the rest of the world through a dehumanising political lens. (In other words, people from privileged nations see art and people from other places as products or as props for political discussion, without considering their worth in their own right.) – and yes! A big part of the problem is rooted in colonialism, racism and orientalism! In the global north we tend to hear about the global south only when the news is reporting on tragedies, politics, unrest and more politics. You know, you get human interest stories from your own country that highlight and uplift your immediate culture, but everything you hear about the global south is overwhelmingly negative and focused on situations and politics rather than people. That, and colonial legacies and current imperialist policies are inherently political, in that they're going to require serious political reforms to solve.

But more than that, I think, it is really really difficult for anyone to transport themselves into someone else's shoes when those shoes are made for very different feet. Within the interview, a commenter from Nigeria says that although they are Black and have lived under the yoke of colonialism, they are probably as ignorant of life in South Africa specifically as an American is. On a more global scale, so much art is informed by the world around it, and unfortunately "globalisation" so often means "imposition of western culture"; the rest of the world gains at least a passing familiarity with the West because they have to, but it's a one-way street. On a smaller scale, two people from two different neighbouring countries in, say, Europe can have very different cultural ideas of how things "should" be done simply because that's how they live and what they're used to. Think about all the discourse about whether you should smile at strangers in public! Crucially, in the interview, you can really see the interviewers grappling with the non-universality of their own experiences, even though there is solidarity founded in racism and colonialism. That's what opens up a more productive conversation. Not talk of politics, but of people – and a willingness to listen to those people.

It takes work. I wholeheartedly believe that humans are by and large inherently empathetic or sympathetic, or at least pack-bonders. But I also believe (and maybe this is the autism) that these are skills you have to consciously cultivate. We have a responsibility to one another to do so. Talking in the abstract and large-scale terms of politics may be more comfortable because it doesn't require you to push fellow feeling beyond your immediate cultural context, but politics aren't everything. People are. And art is the oldest and deepest expression of who we are as people that we have.

[mesetacadre]

Hello!

Firstly, Im USAmerican I’m not trying to be like “oh woe is me,” Im just trying my best to understand what would be the best option for everyone. I’ve heard so many varying things and this is my second time voting, so I just want wanted to know what other people think. This isn’t meant to be malicious or condescending in any way either! I know you can do multiple things at once it’s just that I worry that when I walk into that polling booth, that I’ll be putting more innocent people at stake.

I’ve seen people tell,call,email etc Kamala to say that she isn’t getting their vote unless she stops funding Israel and their assault on the Palestinian people. And I’ve seen some people say that there is literally no point in trying to reason/ransom with her and that she (like all other US presidents) is a monster no matter what.

I’ve seen some other people say that voting 3rd party or not voting at all is the only way to go. But I worry that a 3rd party candidate wouldn’t stand a chance so late in the game. And I also worry that not voting would be a waste of a privilege, especially since so many people don’t have the access to voting inside the US and out.

I’ve also seen people worrying about project 2025 being pushed into place and I’ve also seen other people say Americans are cowards for worrying about such a thing.

I know you don’t live in the US but I also know this election impacts people outside of the states so I just wanted to know your thoughts. I’ve asked this to another blog as well, so if any of your followers have thoughts Id like to hear them too! I just feel a little pulled in every direction and I figured asking around would be a good idea.

Thank you so much and have a nice day!

If I were in your position I would stop going back and forth about who to vote for and start organizing. Were social rights protected with Biden? Very clearly not, since people are already suffering from things that are in that think tank's document. Abortion is no longer protected, trans people are begin targeted across a good portion of the states, the border is going to keep getting bloodier regardless of who wins, etc. Sure, you might argue that these things are not in control of the president, like the Supreme Court or the individual states. So then, how are elections supposed to help? And this is just talking about domestic policy, but the imperialist cogs of the US hegemon will keep turning no matter who's in DC, and you really cannot fucking ignore the current genocide in Palestine, plus the US' entire history of foreign interventions and the suffering that has come from that. You all should really realize the scale of the situation and stop engaging with the US on its own terms. There are class interests to which every mechanism of liberal democracy are subordinated to.

It is extremely unique for you USAmericans to spend this much fucking time and energy on your elections, you can't overstate it. Practically every year is filled with election bullshit. Election periods in basically the rest of the world only last like a month at most, where I live it takes two weeks. Elections aren't even the only or most important way to participate in politics within the very basic framework of liberal democracy. But you're all constantly acting like it's a team sport, always with the election. Don't take this personally anon, I'm not annoyed at you specifically and I appreciate the effort in your ask, but it's so incredibly childish to every single time spend 2 years or more hueing and crying about the upcoming election. Do something about it then! stop hyperfocusing on a single day every 4 years! People were already talking about the 2020 election after Trump won in 2016, that's absurd!

Read Lenin and read decolonial theory, organize yourself and the working class, build political-revolutionary consciousness amongst your class, do whatever you can to strike at the stability of the empire which you live under without getting arrested or killed, and stop legitimizing this pantomime by making it the exclusive vehicle of your political thought. Voting is just a single day, and the run-up (not 3 years!) should be spent campaigning for your own interests, denouncing this bullshit system you all keep saying you also don't "like". "Surviving", which is what some left liberals keep saying they're trying to do (I know you did not say that, anon), looks like organizing yourself and everybody you can to stop relying on the scraps the managers of capitalism and imperialism sometimes throw at you.

Voting as an action and voting as a strategy are two different things. What you're worried about, as I understand it, is the action of going to a booth and putting your choice of ballot in the box. Voting as a strategy, is the decoration and structure so many people build around it. I can't recall exactly who I saw doing this, but a USAmerican mutual of mine who's also a communist got an ask about who they're voting for. This mutual laid out the options in their state, went over their policies, and explained why they'll vote for the candidate they disliked less (I think it was an independent but don't quote me on that). You know why none of us "election interfering foreign agents" jumped at them for this? because they understand the very limited potential for voting, spent a little bit of their time researching each candidate avaliable to them, and then spend the entire rest of their political energy focusing on other things outside electoralism.

Yeah, shit's fucked for social rights, so is basically anywhere else in the world right now. I also don't have good choices in my elections, half the parliament is talking about the islamization of Spain and plans to gut any public service, and the other actively anesthesizes and absorbs any social movement that could combat reactionarism. So I stop worrying too much about who I'm casting my ballot for and I dedicate all my political energy to militancy in my communist party, slowly creating class consciousness and setting up ways to eventually protect our own class from the inevitable strike. All of this while being the 12th economy in the world, and consequently, an integral part of the imperialist NATO and EU, facts that no sector of our liberal democracy even questions. And do you think our siblings in the countries victim of the imperialist doctrine of NATO have it any better? When entire elections and governments have been interfered with not by "social media bots", but by actual bloodshed and terror? They don't spend years yelling at each other about who to vote for, they also organize themselves and attempt to emancipate their own class

[queer-reader-07]

Ok, saw your post asking for nosey asks. Not sure how nosey this is, but…

Info dump on radical hope? Please? Love to hear more of your take on it/thoughts about it 💕

omg i love that you asked this 😭

i'm going to take this as a chance to share a piece i wrote that went up on my ig (hence the formatting)

it was titled "'how do you keep your magic alive?' on radical hope, love, and resistance" and was actually inspired by a post you made a few months back <3

also see snippets from a different piece i wrote on hope:

i do not understand how anyone could bear witness to the atrocities in the united states alone and not be at least a little bit radicalized. how can any of you, especially you white folk, who claim and insist that you are left wing and progressive stand by as though nothing is wrong. as if none of this calls for change. as if none of it is evidence that the united states is routinely on the wrong side of history. as if it isn’t evidence of the united states being an imperialist and racist and oppressive country.

the fact that so many people can turn a blind eye and act like nothing is wrong. the fact that so many people have the choice to ignore the injustices and atrocities in this world. it’s unbelievable to me.

because i never got that choice. some of y’all have been able to move through life like it’s fine and haven’t been forced to grasp desperately for hope.

do you know how easy it is to fall into the pit of nihilistic and cynical despair when you’re worried every. single. day. that you or your loved ones won’t come home safely? do you know? because i know.

i know how hard i’ve worked to find hope. i know how hard i continue to work to hold onto that hope. because without it? there’s no point, there’s no reason to fight for change. hope is the only thing i have telling me that the change will come. and that the fight will be worth it.

and it’s hard. sometimes i can’t find it. sometimes i do think the world is an irredeemable pile of shit going up in flames. but that isn’t sustainable.

revolutions aren’t won by giving up. revolutions are won by the people who held onto hope, who believed it was worth it. because if it wasn’t worth it, all the death and loss and despair would’ve been for nothing.

and lastly, a piece of something i wrote for trans day of remembrance:

trans day of remembrance is a solemn day, yes. it is a day where i sit in the uncomfortability of knowing how many trans people have died for no reason other than ignorance and hate. but it is also a day to remind ourselves of the importance of liberation. the importance of fighting for trans rights and trans lives. the importance of holding onto hope.

we cannot allow the pain to swallow us whole. we cannot allow the deaths of our siblings, our communities to be for nothing. we cannot and will not forget.

radical hope sits at the core of my politic and belief system. it's why i believe what i do. radical hope is, without exaggeration, the reason i am alive today. as john green once said, "for me, finding hope is not some philosophical exercise or sentimental notion; it is a prerequisite for my survival."

i hope at least some of this resonated with you. i thought about writing something fresh but these pieces are pieces i'm proud of and really sum up the core of my beliefs on radical hope <3

[lord-of-hollows]

The Ongoing Hostilty of the Stormcloak Debate

If you're the kind of person who has their politics dictated to them by social media algorithms, it's easy to write off the Stormcloaks. After all, you were told they were Fascist badmen by a reddit user so clearly this must be correct. However, with things coming to light, I have to say that if you're the kind of person who is Anti-Stormcloak but also supports a free Palestine? You're clearly not putting any thought into your own beliefs and I'm not interested in having conversations with people who don't put thought into their own beliefs.

The Imperial argument has been debunked as far back as 2011. They've changed and modified it how they say it but the core pillars have not changed in the past years.

1. The Empire brings peace and stability to Tamriel.

This one's just untrue. Even at the height of Imperial power there were rebellions, succession crises, wars and large stretches of land in "uncivilised" nations that were just ungoverned. Not to mention, it was under Imperial governance that the Aldmeris Dominion rose. The Empire never brought any kind of stability that lasted more than like, a decade.

2. "The Empire is the best chance for victory against the Thalmor."

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Imperial supporters seem wonderfully willing to assert this and then immediately launch into a non-sequiter and act as if this proves the Empire has a chance.

The last Imperial victory against the Thalmor lead to Hammerfell being abandoned, religious reform being enforced by their enemy, and Thalmor Gestapo being allowed to roam the Empire wantonly executing Imperial citizens with no due process. If that's a victory you better hope you don't find out what defeat looks like.

3. "Stormcloaks are racist."

I don't believe they're extraordinarily racist for Tamriel, but let's assume they are. However I invite Imperial supporters to also look at the Empire.

"Without us to keep order, the provinces would fall to lawlessness and barbarism."

The Empire at the outset feels that a dominant culture is needed for others to function. More than that, they feel that their culture is justifiably supreme to enforce their will on others. If they didn't feel this was true, they wouldn't be an Empire.

You cannot argue that the Stormcloaks are racist and then handwave the racism of the Empire. You have to pick one. Either it's a negative or isn't. Then we have to identify which of these is more racist.

Imperialists like to point out that the Stormcloaks don't like to let Argonians into the city. This isn't true, my Argonian walked into Windhelm just fine.

"But thats just a game mechanic." - Yeah and the Orc strongholds only let a non-Orc in if you impress Orcs. So you're telling me that Bethesda went out of the way to care about the player characters race in the Strongholds but just kinda stopped caring when it came to the major city of one of the two factions in the war?

I mean, they're lazy, but come on. You can't tell me they're not putting in the effort when you can point at a spot they're putting in that self-same effort for content less players will see.

And even if it were true, under the empire Argonians and Khajiit were enslaved in Morrowind because the Dunmer had a superweapon to trade. So the Empire just turned a blind eye to slavery because "Fuck you, got mine."

But again why would they care about the enslavement of what to their eyes were barbaric races of inferior culture. The use of the word Empire isn't an accident.

And this is why it's so frustrating to talk to Imperial supporters. They easily cast aspersions on the Stormcloaks but when you turn a mirror on them suddenly they stop wanting to discuss.

If you want to call the Stormcloaks racist, you can. They are certainly at least as racist as the norm for Tamriel. If you want to argue it as a reason for siding with the Empire then either you don't know about the Empire or you're being disingenuous.

4. "The Empire keeps the Thalmor out of Skyrim."

This one is asserted by many characters ingame. It's a lie.

In Imperial controlled holds Thalmor Gestapo wander around and can attempt to execute you on the spot if they decide to. No trial. Imperial guards do not rush to help you fight them off. They just stand and stare. In a Stormcloak victory these random encounters stop happening in all holds. I'm not sure about the one where they send Assassins as this encounter generally happens before a Stormcloak victory, but it happens.

As Thalmor only show up in Imperial controlled holds, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is the Empire is what keeps the Thalmor in Skyrim.

5. The Thalmor want Ulfric to win.

No they don't. They said that they didn't. Read their dossier.

6. Ulfric is a Thalmor asset.

An uncooperative asset. The Empire is a cooperative asset.

It's been made clear to me over the years that supporting the Imperial argument is unjustifiable on a moral level and irresponsible on the level of governance.

7. Ulfric as a character is power hungry and only in it for himself.

Assuming this is true...

So?

The Empire is power hungry, as evidenced by the fact that they are an Empire. Are they in it for themselves? Well, if they arent then who do you think they're doing it for?

You're not making an argument against the Stormcloaks.

However I argue that the cause is more than its leader. The Stormcloaks are in it for their own reasons and as a ruler Ulfric must satisfy them. Why wouldn't he? They're one of the pillars to his power, if he can't make them happy he loses any status they give him.

Power is not a permanent thing, you gain it, you lose it.

Now on a meta level I take role-playing rules, the true faction you should support is the faction that's right for your character. I have played characters that supported the Imperial cause. My Orc warrior always wanted to be a legionnaire. My Redoran Dunmer felt resentment toward Ulfric so begrudgingly sided with the Empire out of feeling a mutual enemy. My Breton Knight felt loyalty to the Old Empire.

Despite this, as a human looking at a fantasy world, I cannot look at the Imperial argument with any seriousness.

However since 2011 here are some assumptions made about me by Imperialists.

1. I'm racist.

Probably, I hear nobody is completely free of racist thought. I like to think that I'm less racist than most, though I'm open to the idea that I may be more racist than I assume.

2. I like Trump.

I don't. I think he's a wonderful caricature of what an idiot thinks a high power businessman acts like. I find him funny, but I would never want him in charge of my country and I'm thankful to not be American. I think his presidency is a wonderful argument people like me who live in countries with mandatory voting can point at and say "This is why you don't want 100% voter turnout."

3. I was involved in GamerGate

Insofar as paying attention to it and not believing they're 100% wrong. Yes. I've had no faith in journalism since I myself was a child. To know that a journalist was sleeping with the subject of his articles was unsurprising, even expected. You might say its just fucking video games, and you'd be right. I would ask if you can not trust journalists with just fucking video games, what can you trust them with?

And that was my answer to the whole GamerGate thing. Journalism has never been a profession a person with any expectation of realism should respect. The amount of times I've been reading an article and it turned out the writer knew nothing is staggering.

The answer of course, is don't give journalists money. And that's as far as I ever took it.

However participating in a harassment campaign? No. I've never sent a message to any game developer or journalist I didn't like. I have, as a young man, sent cringe fan mail to Hideki Kamiya telling him I'm a fan of all his work. The same goes for Kojima and Yoko Taro.

My disappointment in GamerGate was that it's supporters never made that step into ignoring journalists and refusing them money. They continued sharing their articles.

4. I'm a fascist.

I think in order to make this argument you have to ignore a lot about the Empire. Like, a lot. They rely on exploitation of the provinces, rule by might as evidenced by the Legion being the only thing keeping Skyrim from a full succession, benefited from slavery and were built on the back of a war of conquest. When their power was broken just about the only thing keeping them together was wealth. I do not have it in me to respect power built like that.

They're a mirror of Rome, certainly. I put it to you that Rome was an exploitative Empire that irreparably damaged every culture it touched.

It's for these reasons I've now decided that in order for me to engage with an Imperial supporters arguments, they have to first prove to me they put enough thought into their beliefs to justify them. They also have to prove they play the game enough to know things about it. For instance most imperial supporters act like they don't know the Thalmor want to avoid a victory for either side.

That's kind of why I'm thankful the Stormcloak debate got so hostile. It provided a wonderful litmus test on who actually thinks about what they believe. I saw an account posting Anti-Stormcloak arguments, then I clicked on it to see what theyre like and saw that they had Free Palestine posts and I just had to stop and think for a moment. I've been treating Imperials as if they understand their own beliefs. Then I realised they're probably just very young and don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. I can't do that anymore.

And that's really what the Imperial Stormcloak debate taught me about politics. Well, about social media politics. You cannot enter these arguments assuming that the people you're speaking to understand their own beliefs. You have to assume that anyone who wants to talk politics with you online doesn't understand politics. Because most of them don't. You see, I don't listen to people who were right wing up until 2016 and then made the switch as Trump was being elected. They call it a deradicalization, I call it your politics being dictated you by social media. If YouTube algorithm changed the way you view the world, I don't want to hear from you. Your principles are fragile. If your recommended videos can twist your beliefs in such a way, I believe you're not going to say anything I haven't heard before. Go regurgitate Contrapoints to someone else. And it's these same people who will tell you the Empire is the only morally acceptable choice.

I know based on what I've said you've made assumptions about my politics, I'm not going to elaborate on them. Suffice it to say if you're basing your assumptions of other peoples political beliefs based on a choice they believe is right in a fictional fantasy role playing video game, you are probably not really equipped to be having conversations about politics. It also displays a concerning level of assumption.

[rdng1230]

10 things Easily fixable about That thing that happened: look, killing off Izzy Hands was always gonna hurt like a bitch. And it was a stupid decision, but what really made it worse was how many ways they could have made it better and specifically didn’t, so here’s a list in no particular order of general things that I think would’ve made things suck less, and a couple different story fix proposals. Maybe if I write it all out I can move on a little bit.

I know it was for budgetary reasons but it bothered me Ivan was killed off with one sentence and never mentioned again. I think what would have worked is if Ivan had been a little more fleshed out in s1, and then had him die on screen at the hands of a particularly dickish British naval officer in 2x01. Cut to episode 7 and said dickish Brit is Ricky’s number two. Izzy could have willingly and purposefully drawn the fire of officer asshole, as an acknowledgement of his failure to save Ivan and his past failures to be a proper protector of blackbeards crew, and to save the crew he’s now realized is his family that he is willing to die for. In addition I think that would’ve helped set up the British as being an actual formidable bad guy, because up to this point they were the most looney tunes ass villains on the high seas. Also it would’ve been an interesting symmetry to have the loyal pirate first mate vs. the loyal imperialist scumbag first mate. Think of the banter people.

I hate it when bad events in stories are predicated on having highly intelligent characters be complete idiots. You’re telling me Izzy fucking hands didn’t check noseless wonder for weapons? Fuck off. At least have a fellow soldier toss ricky a musket or something, or just have another soldier shoot him.

I think the main issue here is agency. Yes everyone consented to going into battle that way, but Izzy’s shooting was unceremonious, it wasn’t like he charged somebody or acted as bait, he just got hit by a stray bullet (It’s giving “your shirt” and I fucking hate it Iykyk)

Literally no one attempted medical intervention to help Izzy. Roach isn’t gonna stuff a rag in there? Jim isn’t gonna pass a knife to help rip Izzy’s clothes to visualize the wound? Fang and Frenchie aren’t gonna hold his hand? We’re not even gonna fucking try?!?!

if they had to center Ed’s issues with Izzy’s literal dying words, could we have at least have it be a big character moment for Ed to say “yes the crew is my family, but they’re yours too and I promise I’ll take care of them and make amends” like if DJ is so convinced of this father mentor thing (which seriously what the fuck is he even talking about) what’s more par for the course in this trope then the ole “you’re the man of the house now son you gotta take care of the family” routine

look, I know they got a short episode that they have to keep short. Cut a minute of time out of that breathtakingly awkward fishing sequence from the beginning and give Izzy’s death some breathing room. FFS the fallout from Karl’s and Lucius’s finger’s death had more reaction and more airtime than Izzy Hands (and more effect on the story)

Ricky fucking got away and no one talks about it. It would’ve been great if literally anyone had said “yeah we’re going after that guy” or “we may have won the battle but the British are always out there and one of these days we’ll meet again” just an acknowledgement that one guerilla battle at the republic of pirates was never gonna be the end of it.

this one hits close to home for me. I live on a boat, my mother is a licensed 100 ton ship captain. We’re seafarers goddamit and when we shake off this mortal coil we are buried (or cremated and scattered) at sea. Izzy Hands would not have wanted a land burial and he would’ve wanted to be buried at sea like the distinguished pirate he is, by the crew that became his family.

This segues into the burial at sea thing but maybe don’t bury him without his leg on, like just don’t do that. Don’t put his cravat and mothers ring where anybody could just come along and yank it off, Jesus.

I think frenchie being captain was a weird choice tbh. I love frenchie but he is a jester, a troubadour, a fae walking among us, the worlds handsomest grifter, but this dude does not want to be captain. However, if you had to make him captain I think it would’ve been nice to have had a scene post amputation where Izzy deliriously tells frenchie all these bits of advice about being first mate/captain and how Izzy had failed to be a good one in the past. I just loved the frenchie izzy bond in general and I would’ve loved another extra scene with them. This also would’ve lended itself well to frenchie being the one to outwardly grieve (the box opening up finally) during that minute of breathing room post death that I mentioned was needed earlier, maybe he would’ve reprised la vie en rose, or played a shanty/wake song that everyone could join in on.

I’m sure there are other things too that I’ve forgotten, but I think this covers most of it. Let me also say Izzy’s death was hardly the only issue I had with the finale, but that moment was the most egregiously and easily fixable (or at the very least mitigable) plot point. At the end of the day I think Izzy should’ve just not fucking died, but if they were gonna kill him, there were so many more respectful ways to do it.

[burst-of-iridescent]

i’ve gone back and forth a lot on whether to respond to this because the last thing i want is more discourse, but since you seem absolutely determined to put me on some sort of trial, anon, i might as well get my two cents in.

so let's talk.

one, i have said over and over again that i am more than willing to talk to anyone i may have unwittingly hurt or offended, if they came to me directly and off-anon. despite the fact that you surely knew that, since you evidently stalk my blog, you did not do so. instead, you continued to yell at me and accuse me of racism anonymously, rather than actually engaging with me. what this tells me right off the bat is you're not interested in a productive conversation. you're interested in harassing me.

two, i've talked to indigenous zutara shippers. i'm friends with indigenous zutara shippers. i've read what many native and indigenous shippers in this fandom have to say. i know shippers who like the fire lady katara trope, shippers who are indifferent, shippers who dislike it. what makes your opinion any more important than any of theirs? and conversely, what makes their opinion any more important than yours? no singular person can ever claim to speak for their entire community, because people of colour aren't one monolithic entity.

as a desi girl, katara's relationship with aang makes me uncomfortable because it is characterized by patterns of imbalanced emotional labour and misogyny that i frequently see within my own community. and it is my prerogative to dislike the ship because of that, just as it is for any other woc. but it is not my prerogative to say that no one else is allowed to ship kat.aang, or is racist or misogynistic just for shipping kat.aang (and indeed i know women of colour who do ship kat.aang! because our cultural background doesn't mean that we're automatically going to have the same experiences and perspectives, and that's valid).

so am i really supposed to listen to indigenous voices, anon, or am i simply supposed to listen to those that agree with you?

three, i won't deny that the fire lady katara trope can be racist. i've seen it executed in ways that make me profoundly uncomfortable, and which i will never support. but more often than not in zutara fandom and content, "fire lady" is simply the name chosen for the fire lord's female consort, one that denotes katara as zuko's equal and a powerful world leader in her own right with her own title. if the trope is executed problematically, that fault lies with the person who wrote it and their own ignorance/malice/racism - not with the trope itself.

personally, as someone whose people were colonized by the british, and whose home was subjected to japanese imperialism, i completely understand why it can feel extremely empowering and wish fulfilling to have woc in positions of power within the systems that oppressed them. if i saw a desi girl on the throne of england, you can bet i'd be the first to celebrate.

but of course that's just my opinion, so if any indigenous or native shippers have thoughts on the trope, i would love to hear what you have to say, and discuss further.

four, despite your alleged care for katara and indigenous women, anon, you have never once engaged with my criticisms of the show for its depiction of kat.aang: a relationship where katara's partner is visibly disgusted at her cultural food, acts disrespectfully towards her cultural artifacts, attempts to dissuade her from finding justice for her mother (a victim of imperialist aggression), and tries to impose his own cultural/religious beliefs upon her without considering that she a) has no obligation to follow those beliefs and b) her own culture's beliefs are vastly different. all of which, by the way, he is never shown to apologize for or learn from. add to that the fact that 2/3 of katara's children show absolutely no connection to her culture and, in fact, seem to heavily prioritize their father's instead - to the extent that all of her grandchildren seem solely air nomad instead of paying respect to both sides of their heritage - and a very troubling picture is painted.

keep in mind that this isn't some fanon trope or problematic fic created by a small subset of shippers within the fandom on an internet space meant primarily for adults; it's a canonical depiction of a romantic relationship with a woc on a show written by two white men and broadcasted to an audience of millions, targeted primarily at young, impressionable children. what are the messages being sent here, and to whom, about interracial relationships featuring indigenous women, and the role said women are expected to fulfil within those relationships?

but instead of criticizing the white creators who did that, you chose to take out your anger on me, a fellow poc descended from colonized peoples, because... i'm an easier target? because i'm accessible, and they're not? because maybe, just maybe, this isn't actually about indigenous people at all?

five, being a shipper (or an anti) isn't the same as being an activist. it just isn't. people can read and write and enjoy things in fiction that they would never support in real life (though ofc sometimes people just suck and that bleeds through into what they consume and create - but my point is that you absolutely cannot decide by their taste in fiction alone whether they are bigoted or not) because if our fictional takes translated to real life, most of us would probably be mass murderers by now. the only thing you can really judge anyone on is what they say and do and how they treat others in real life.

and you made that abundantly clear with this ask you sent me after i reblogged posts spreading awareness of the fires in hawai'i and sharing links to donate:

so just to clarify here, you would prefer that i don't use my platform to try and help actual indigenous people, people who have lost their homes and families, who are actually suffering, who actually require assistance and money and resources... because you don't like my headcanon for a fictional indigenous-coded person?

(yeah, i'm sure you'll understand why i'm skeptical about this entire crusade being in any way about the welfare of indigenous people.)

ultimately, i know none of this is going to change your mind. if you ever intended to genuinely speak out for indigenous issues, or make me see what i was doing wrong, you would have messaged me personally and stood by what you had to say. but that was never your real aim, and you know that as well as i do, so i'm certain i'll see you in my inbox again tomorrow talking about my racism or lack of accountability or whatever else you can find to disparage me.

i wish you the best. have a good day.

[bioethicists]

DO NOT TRY TO FIND THIS POST TO HARASS THIS PERSON

you can see the person being held back by the chain of "health moralizing is condescending" but then they just do. the exact thing they are saying they won't do. it's borderline pathological like they CANT talk about how vapes contribute to imperialist resource extraction without ALSO emphasizing how bad vaping is.

to be clear, idc at all about ppl sharing information about the health risks associated with vaping, depending on your audience that might be meaningful. but to couch it in this much "i know the medical industrial complex... not to be healthist... do whatever you want with your body but!" when the point of this addendum is clearly to tell people that vaping is bad because it causes lung problems... it's comedy to me. tell ppl what to do with their bodies or don't (again, telling people vaping is harmful is truly not that controversial) but don't wring your hands + fret over it + pretend like that's not what you are doing.

this is just like how people cannot contain themselves from talking about how being fat is bad Sometimes or how to lose weight ~healthily~ because they cannot shake the desire to moralize health even when they think they are shaking that desire. i know they mean well + i know they just want people to be happy but if they know to type that all out they know to start hitting the backspace on their keyboard.

because they are "promoting healthist discourses" here + they know they are because the equivocation in this post is agonizing.

[aladaylessecondblog]

Lil Nerevar

Author's Note: Haj-deek is discovered much earlier and is taken to Red Mountain along with Im-Kilaya.

-----------

There was no mistaking the little face; they had all seen it before it pressed shyly back into Im-Kilaya's neck. Lord Dagoth's blood, and no mistake. The ring she wore on two fingers was the final clue.

"Where did you get that?" she had been asked.

"It was my mama's. She's gone now."

After a lengthy pause Haj-deek spoke again.

"I'm scared," she mumbled against Im-Kilaya's scales, "They look scary. They gonna eat us?"

"No, child, they're not going to eat us. They think...they think you are someone very important to Dagoth Ur."

She gasped.

"Everything is going to be alright."

They'd been placed in a side room, the door of which was being guarded by an ascended sleeper. He seemed to hear their conversation and floated forward.

"We have no plans to eat you, child. The Sixth House is not a house of barbarians. We are simply unprepared to receive you."

"What's dat mean?"

"It means that Lord Dagoth did not know of you."

"Why the vol-cano man care?" Haj-deek seemed unsure of where to look.

"Does she not know?" the sleeper looked to Im-Kilaya, who though frightened was masking it well enough.

"We hadn't yet told her, no," Im-Kilaya said, "Because we were afraid she might let it slip...and even in an Imperialist town like Ebonheart..."

"Im-kiwaya says the temple doesn't like me! Or my mama!" she said. "Or my mama's ring."

"And where is your mother?"

A new voice rang out now, one stronger than that of the sleeper, who immediately dropped into a bow at the new entrant's feet.

Haj-deek looked at Im-kilaya, a question in her little red eyes.

"I'll talk to him, little one."

Then she hid her face against his neck again.

"Her mother is dead," Im-Kilaya said, "She passed birthing Haj-deek, and asked us to care for her."

Silence. The taller figure drew closer, and now Haj-deek actually turned to look at him.

------------------------------

The stranger was wearing a big golden mask.

"That...IS...a very pretty ring," he said, gesturing to it. "It was your mother's, you said?"

"Yes," Haj-deek nodded, "Yes, it was my mama's. She gave it to me when I was born."

"She does not know all," Im-Kilaya said, repeating what he had to the sleeper, "A chattering child may share news to the wrong person by accident, you understand."

"You should be kneeling right now," the strange man said, "Why are you not? Do you think yourself my equal?"

"I stand on my feet before you because without me she would not be here either," Im-Kilaya said. He was shaking, still holding closely to Haj-deek, "Because without me, and the others of the mission, her mother would not have made it far enough to birth her."

"I am a xal-toh!" Haj-deek spoke up suddenly, "It means say-kred secret."

"They gave you THAT as a name?"

"No, no. My name is Haj-deek. Im-kilaya says it means I hidden child!" She paused and looked over the mask again. It felt familiar. She felt like she'd seen it before.

"Yes," Im-Kilaya said, speaking to her now, "Because your mother loved you very much, and wanted you to be safe from the Tribunal faithful."

"Surely her mother would have known she was safe with me, and the rest of her House," the stranger said.

Haj-deek was put on her feet, and told to go play with the tentacle-face man. He seemed like fun - he said he used to have a daughter, and so he suggested a tea-party, the supplies for which were soon gathered in a corner. Im-Kilaya was telling her it was alright, so it must be.

------------------------

"Her mother," Im-Kilaya finally said, "Never told us it was you herself...we learned that from the journal she kept after she died. She was weak, you understand - her wounds would not heal by spell or potion, and she did not dare make the attempt to leave Ebonheart in her delicate condition."

"And she trusted you?"

"As much as her daughter does." The fear seemed to be leaving the lizard, as he now stood a bit taller, and wasn't shaking as much. "That business you had the Dren slaver - all but kidnapping us, that scared her. If I were to meet with an unfortunate end, I have no doubt you will not find what you seek here."

There was a pause.

(The Hist had told him it would be so.)

"I would like to propose a trade," Im-Kilaya finally said, "I can give you several things, but I want some in return as well."

"I should smite you where you stand. Would you like that, lizard?" The golden mask held no emotion but his voice certainly made up for it. "What more could you give me that I do not now have?"

"Her mother's ashes. I guarantee that should I meet an unfortunate end, those of the Mission would not be inclined to cooperate with you. And without their help you would never be able to find her ashes on your own. Undoubtedly you want your daughter to see you as what you are to her - I can help you there as well."

"And in return I suppose you wish the end of slavery? For the beastfolk to rise above their--"

"That and more," Im-Kilaya said, "But I must remind you that in her mother's darkest hour it was not Sadara's fellow Dunmer to save her, but the beastfolk you so despise."

He looked at Haj-deek, engaged in her mock tea party with the sleeper, who seemed to be quite enjoying himself.

"We only wish you to remember that."

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

If you had to capture Silicon Valley’s dominant ideology in a single anecdote, you might look first to Mark Zuckerberg, sitting in the blue glow of his computer some 20 years ago, chatting with a friend about how his new website, TheFacebook, had given him access to reams of personal information about his fellow students:

Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuckerberg: Just ask. Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS Friend: What? How’d you manage that one? Zuckerberg: People just submitted it. Zuckerberg: I don’t know why. Zuckerberg: They “trust me” Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks.

That conversation—later revealed through leaked chat records—was soon followed by another that was just as telling, if better mannered. At a now-famous Christmas party in 2007, Zuckerberg first met Sheryl Sandberg, his eventual chief operating officer, who with Zuckerberg would transform the platform into a digital imperialist superpower. There, Zuckerberg, who in Facebook’s early days had adopted the mantra “Company over country,” explained to Sandberg that he wanted every American with an internet connection to have a Facebook account. For Sandberg, who once told a colleague that she’d been “put on this planet to scale organizations,” that turned out to be the perfect mission.

Facebook (now Meta) has become an avatar of all that is wrong with Silicon Valley. Its self-interested role in spreading global disinformation is an ongoing crisis. Recall, too, the company’s secret mood-manipulation experiment in 2012, which deliberately tinkered with what users saw in their News Feed in order to measure how Facebook could influence people’s emotional states without their knowledge. Or its participation in inciting genocide in Myanmar in 2017. Or its use as a clubhouse for planning and executing the January 6, 2021, insurrection. (In Facebook’s early days, Zuckerberg listed “revolutions” among his interests. This was around the time that he had a business card printed with I’M CEO, BITCH.)

And yet, to a remarkable degree, Facebook’s way of doing business remains the norm for the tech industry as a whole, even as other social platforms (TikTok) and technological developments (artificial intelligence) eclipse Facebook in cultural relevance.

To worship at the altar of mega-scale and to convince yourself that you should be the one making world-historic decisions on behalf of a global citizenry that did not elect you and may not share your values or lack thereof, you have to dispense with numerous inconveniences—humility and nuance among them. Many titans of Silicon Valley have made these trade-offs repeatedly. YouTube (owned by Google), Instagram (owned by Meta), and Twitter (which Elon Musk insists on calling X) have been as damaging to individual rights, civil society, and global democracy as Facebook was and is. Considering the way that generative AI is now being developed throughout Silicon Valley, we should brace for that damage to be multiplied many times over in the years ahead.

The behavior of these companies and the people who run them is often hypocritical, greedy, and status-obsessed. But underlying these venalities is something more dangerous, a clear and coherent ideology that is seldom called out for what it is: authoritarian technocracy. As the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley have matured, this ideology has only grown stronger, more self-righteous, more delusional, and—in the face of rising criticism—more aggrieved.

The new technocrats are ostentatious in their use of language that appeals to Enlightenment values—reason, progress, freedom—but in fact they are leading an antidemocratic, illiberal movement. Many of them profess unconditional support for free speech, but are vindictive toward those who say things that do not flatter them. They tend to hold eccentric beliefs: that technological progress of any kind is unreservedly and inherently good; that you should always build it, simply because you can; that frictionless information flow is the highest value regardless of the information’s quality; that privacy is an archaic concept; that we should welcome the day when machine intelligence surpasses our own. And above all, that their power should be unconstrained. The systems they’ve built or are building—to rewire communications, remake human social networks, insinuate artificial intelligence into daily life, and more—impose these beliefs on the population, which is neither consulted nor, usually, meaningfully informed. All this, and they still attempt to perpetuate the absurd myth that they are the swashbuckling underdogs.

Comparisons between Silicon Valley and Wall Street or Washington, D.C., are commonplace, and you can see why—all are power centers, and all are magnets for people whose ambition too often outstrips their humanity. But Silicon Valley’s influence easily exceeds that of Wall Street and Washington. It is reengineering society more profoundly than any other power center in any other era since perhaps the days of the New Deal. Many Americans fret—rightfully—about the rising authoritarianism among MAGA Republicans, but they risk ignoring another ascendant force for illiberalism: the tantrum-prone and immensely powerful kings of tech.

The Shakespearean drama that unfolded late last year at OpenAI underscores the extent to which the worst of Facebook’s “move fast and break things” mentality has been internalized and celebrated in Silicon Valley. OpenAI was founded, in 2015, as a nonprofit dedicated to bringing artificial general intelligence into the world in a way that would serve the public good. Underlying its formation was the belief that the technology was too powerful and too dangerous to be developed with commercial motives alone.

But in 2019, as the technology began to startle even the people who were working on it with the speed at which it was advancing, the company added a for-profit arm to raise more capital. Microsoft invested $1 billion at first, then many billions of dollars more. Then, this past fall, the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, was fired then quickly rehired, in a whiplash spectacle that signaled a demolition of OpenAI’s previously established safeguards against putting company over country. Those who wanted Altman out reportedly believed that he was too heavily prioritizing the pace of development over safety. But Microsoft’s response—an offer to bring on Altman and anyone else from OpenAI to re-create his team there—started a game of chicken that led to Altman’s reinstatement. The whole incident was messy, and Altman may well be the right person for the job, but the message was clear: The pursuit of scale and profit won decisively over safety concerns and public accountability.

Silicon Valley still attracts many immensely talented people who strive to do good, and who are working to realize the best possible version of a more connected, data-rich global society. Even the most deleterious companies have built some wonderful tools. But these tools, at scale, are also systems of manipulation and control. They promise community but sow division; claim to champion truth but spread lies; wrap themselves in concepts such as empowerment and liberty but surveil us relentlessly. The values that win out tend to be the ones that rob us of agency and keep us addicted to our feeds.

The theoretical promise of AI is as hopeful as the promise of social media once was, and as dazzling as its most partisan architects project. AI really could cure numerous diseases. It really could transform scholarship and unearth lost knowledge. Except that Silicon Valley, under the sway of its worst technocratic impulses, is following the playbook established in the mass scaling and monopolization of the social web. OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and other corporations leading the way in AI development are not focusing on the areas of greatest public or epistemological need, and they are certainly not operating with any degree of transparency or caution. Instead they are engaged in a race to build faster and maximize profit.

None of this happens without the underlying technocratic philosophy of inevitability—that is, the idea that if you can build something new, you must. “In a properly functioning world, I think this should be a project of governments,” Altman told my colleague Ross Andersen last year, referring to OpenAI’s attempts to develop artificial general intelligence. But Altman was going to keep building it himself anyway. Or, as Zuckerberg put it to The New Yorker many years ago: “Isn’t it, like, inevitable that there would be a huge social network of people? … If we didn’t do this someone else would have done it.”

Technocracy first blossomed as a political ideology after World War I, among a small group of scientists and engineers in New York City who wanted a new social structure to replace representative democracy, putting the technological elite in charge. Though their movement floundered politically—people ended up liking President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal better—it had more success intellectually, entering the zeitgeist alongside modernism in art and literature, which shared some of its values. The American poet Ezra Pound’s modernist slogan “Make it new” easily could have doubled as a mantra for the technocrats. A parallel movement was that of the Italian futurists, led by figures such as the poet F. T. Marinetti, who used maxims like “March, don’t molder” and “Creation, not contemplation.”

The ethos for technocrats and futurists alike was action for its own sake. “We are not satisfied to roam in a garden closed in by dark cypresses, bending over ruins and mossy antiques,” Marinetti said in a 1929 speech. “We believe that Italy’s only worthy tradition is never to have had a tradition.” Prominent futurists took their zeal for technology, action, and speed and eventually transformed it into fascism. Marinetti followed his Manifesto of Futurism (1909) with his Fascist Manifesto (1919). His friend Pound was infatuated with Benito Mussolini and collaborated with his regime to host a radio show in which the poet promoted fascism, gushed over Mein Kampf, and praised both Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. The evolution of futurism into fascism wasn’t inevitable—many of Pound’s friends grew to fear him, or thought he had lost his mind—but it does show how, during a time of social unrest, a cultural movement based on the radical rejection of tradition and history, and tinged with aggrievement, can become a political ideology.

In October, the venture capitalist and technocrat Marc Andreessen published on his firm’s website a stream-of-consciousness document he called “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” a 5,000-word ideological cocktail that eerily recalls, and specifically credits, Italian futurists such as Marinetti. Andreessen is, in addition to being one of Silicon Valley’s most influential billionaire investors, notorious for being thin-skinned and obstreperous, and despite the invocation of optimism in the title, the essay seems driven in part by his sense of resentment that the technologies he and his predecessors have advanced are no longer “properly glorified.” It is a revealing document, representative of the worldview that he and his fellow technocrats are advancing.

Andreessen writes that there is “no material problem,” including those caused by technology, that “cannot be solved with more technology.” He writes that technology should not merely be always advancing, but always accelerating in its advancement “to ensure the techno-capital upward spiral continues forever.” And he excoriates what he calls campaigns against technology, under names such as “tech ethics” and “existential risk.”

Or take what might be considered the Apostles’ Creed of his emerging political movement:

We believe we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop, and drive them both to infinity … We believe in adventure. Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community … We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature. We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt. We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us.

Andreessen identifies several “patron saints” of his movement, Marinetti among them. He quotes from the Manifesto of Futurism, swapping out Marinetti’s “poetry” for “technology”:

Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Technology must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.

To be clear, the Andreessen manifesto is not a fascist document, but it is an extremist one. He takes a reasonable position—that technology, on the whole, has dramatically improved human life—and warps it to reach the absurd conclusion that any attempt to restrain technological development under any circumstances is despicable. This position, if viewed uncynically, makes sense only as a religious conviction, and in practice it serves only to absolve him and the other Silicon Valley giants of any moral or civic duty to do anything but make new things that will enrich them, without consideration of the social costs, or of history. Andreessen also identifies a list of enemies and “zombie ideas” that he calls upon his followers to defeat, among them “institutions” and “tradition.”

“Our enemy,” Andreessen writes, is “the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable—playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.”

The irony is that this description very closely fits Andreessen and other Silicon Valley elites. The world that they have brought into being over the past two decades is unquestionably a world of reckless social engineering, without consequence for its architects, who foist their own abstract theories and luxury beliefs on all of us.

Some of the individual principles Andreessen advances in his manifesto are anodyne. But its overarching radicalism, given his standing and power, should make you sit up straight. Key figures in Silicon Valley, including Musk, have clearly warmed to illiberal ideas in recent years. In 2020, Donald Trump’s vote share in Silicon Valley was 23 percent—small, but higher than the 20 percent he received in 2016.

The main dangers of authoritarian technocracy are not at this point political, at least not in the traditional sense. Still, a select few already have authoritarian control, more or less, to establish the digital world’s rules and cultural norms, which can be as potent as political power.

In 1961, in his farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation about the dangers of a coming technocracy. “In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should,” he said, “we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system—ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”

Eight years later, the country’s first computers were connected to ARPANET, a precursor to the World Wide Web, which became broadly available in 1993. Back then, Silicon Valley was regarded as a utopia for ambitious capitalists and optimistic inventors with original ideas who wanted to change the world, unencumbered by bureaucracy or tradition, working at the speed of the internet (14.4 kilobits per second in those days). This culture had its flaws even at the start, but it was also imaginative in a distinctly American way, and it led to the creation of transformative, sometimes even dumbfoundingly beautiful hardware and software.

For a long time, I tended to be more on Andreessen’s end of the spectrum regarding tech regulation. I believed that the social web could still be a net good and that, given enough time, the values that best served the public interest would naturally win out. I resisted the notion that regulating the social web was necessary at all, in part because I was not (and am still not) convinced that the government can do so without itself causing harm (the European model of regulation, including laws such as the so-called right to be forgotten, is deeply inconsistent with free-press protections in America, and poses dangers to the public’s right to know). I’d much prefer to see market competition as a force for technological improvement and the betterment of society.

But in recent years, it has become clear that regulation is needed, not least because the rise of technocracy proves that Silicon Valley’s leaders simply will not act in the public’s best interest. Much should be done to protect children from the hazards of social media, and to break up monopolies and oligopolies that damage society, and more. At the same time, I believe that regulation alone will not be enough to meaningfully address the cultural rot that the new technocrats are spreading.

Universities should reclaim their proper standing as leaders in developing world-changing technologies for the good of humankind. (Harvard, Stanford, and MIT could invest in creating a consortium for such an effort—their endowments are worth roughly $110 billion combined.)

Individuals will have to lead the way, too. You may not be able to entirely give up social media, or reject your workplace’s surveillance software—you may not even want to opt out of these things. But there is extraordinary power in defining ideals, and we can all begin to do that—for ourselves; for our networks of actual, real-life friends; for our schools; for our places of worship. We would be wise to develop more sophisticated shared norms for debating and deciding how we use invasive technology interpersonally and within our communities. That should include challenging existing norms about the use of apps and YouTube in classrooms, the ubiquity of smartphones in adolescent hands, and widespread disregard for individual privacy. People who believe that we all deserve better will need to step up to lead such efforts.

Our children are not data sets waiting to be quantified, tracked, and sold. Our intellectual output is not a mere training manual for the AI that will be used to mimic and plagiarize us. Our lives are meant not to be optimized through a screen, but to be lived—in all of our messy, tree-climbing, night-swimming, adventuresome glory. We are all better versions of ourselves when we are not tweeting or clicking “Like” or scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

Technocrats are right that technology is a key to making the world better. But first we must describe the world as we wish it to be—the problems we wish to solve in the public interest, and in accordance with the values and rights that advance human dignity, equality, freedom, privacy, health, and happiness. And we must insist that the leaders of institutions that represent us—large and small—use technology in ways that reflect what is good for individuals and society, and not just what enriches technocrats.

We do not have to live in the world the new technocrats are designing for us. We do not have to acquiesce to their growing project of dehumanization and data mining. Each of us has agency.

No more “build it because we can.” No more algorithmic feedbags. No more infrastructure designed to make the people less powerful and the powerful more controlling. Every day we vote with our attention; it is precious, and desperately wanted by those who will use it against us for their own profit and political goals. Don’t let them.

[jewish-sideblog]

Tell me you’re talking out your ass without telling me. I’m literally a communist. If your dumb ass had taken five fucking minutes to research the history of global antisemitism or five fucking minutes to look at my blog you’d realize that nobody said that.

I’ve actively advocated for the support of Israeli Jewish communist parties. The post this comment came from referenced a Jewish communist in the tags and included the phrase “none of this automatically deems you an antisemite.”

A baseline fucking understanding of modern antisemitism would tell you that communist line was referencing the hundred-year-old canard called Judeo-Bolshevism, which was a foundational theory of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It served as justification for our murders at the hands of Russian Imperialists in the 1910s, and then served to help justifiy Shoah in the 1940s. Then the US turned around and used it to blacklist, incarcerate, and execute Jewish Americans in disproportionate numbers during McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Do you even know what any of those words mean?

Judeo-Bolshevism is, I swear to G-d, the most basic antisemitic trope. If you can’t recognize it when it appears or when it’s referenced, you should not be interacting with Jews on the internet. And certainly not with any sense of authority. The uneducated and the ignorant on the left have been sharpened by their zeal for Palestinian liberation, only to get weaponized against Jewish communities. It’s frankly sad to watch, because this kind of behavior could be used for the benefit of peace in the Levant instead of blind antisemitism.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

I like your blog but I was disappointed to see you say it would ever be okay for Zutarians to have Katara and Zuko cheat on Aang and Mai in their fics if they acknowledged it is bad. Somethings can't be done right and need to just be kept out of any story. It's completely disrespectful to the Kataang and Maiko fans.

Also if I were you, I'd block the anon who said they could understand the appeal of Zucest even if they claim not to ship it, and in case you don't know, a blog you reblog from a lot hello-nichya-here likes that cursed shit so there's another one for your block list. Incest is gross and immoral even if it's fiction, and you'd be better off not interacting with that kind of people.

Buddy, I'm brazilian. I was raised on soap-operas. If I gave people shit for enjoying any media that involves the main characters selfishly cheating on their partners to be with each other, I'd be the world's biggest hypocrite. That kind of stuff is an easy source for drama, and it will always be part of romance stories - regardless of the quality of said romances.

As for it being disrespectful to Kataang and Maiko, yeah, I could see it, but only if it's combined with a bunch of slander towards these characters, and pulling stuff like "How I Became Yours" did by saying Mai was a terrible, abusive person for being angry that her husband cheated on her, or if it's shit like Zutarians constantly harrassing shippers about how Aang/Mai is totally being cucked. But if they're just writing as a source for drama in a story, without demonizing the characters that are clearly being screwed over by Zuko and Katara, I don't mind it.

Also I fully disagree with you on the "Somethings can't be done right and no one should write them." No topic should be forbidden in fiction, and what people should discuss is "Does this make narrative sense?" not "Is this a morally correct thing for people to do?"

How would that even work for the Avatar fandom anyways? "Sure, the original show is literally about war and genocide, and it is constantly praised for having an imperialist prince redeem himself and befriend the people he sent a hitman after, but if we write characters doing immoral things like cheating or sleeping with a relative THAT is going too far"

Sounds like one hell of a double-standard to me. And I've literally said it in my pinned post: This blog exists solely to point out the kind of behavior that made Zutara become such a hated ship, not to bully people that are just minding their business, or to tell them what tropes they are allowed to like. I don't like the idea of Zuko and Katara together at all, especially not with it involving them hurting Mai and Aang. But if the people writting these stories weren't constantly forcing it down everyone's throats, I wouldn't mind them adding that trope to every single fic they wrote.

As for the second part of your ask, I guess there's only one way for me to make my stance on Zucest VERY clear, so you and anyone else who could be bothered by it can decide if you want to keep following this blog:

Hello, Nichya here. I'm not going to use this side-blog to block my main, as I feel it would be kind of pointless to block myself considering the content in both accounts is coming from the same brain.

And see Zutara fans? It's super easy to only bring up your OTP when it is relevant to the conversation and without trying to force other's to like it, and it tends to get you far less hate too, no matter how "problematic" your ship is.

[quinloki]

howdy, new fic writer who just started writing smut here 👋

is there any way to get rid of the embarrassment you feel when you write sex scenes?? like I always feel like there's a voice yelling that what I'm doing is cringe or weird, especially doing anything x reader?? I can't shake off the vulnerability that comes with it, like this is what I fantasize about I guess ._.)

thank you btw, you're a huge inspiration for me starting to write again ❤️

first off, you're welcome ❤️ - I'm glad I could help inspire you to write!

Hmm... I think there's a few things to consider and possibly unpack here, but I won't be able to help much aside from getting you started on the process. (I will, certainly, help clarify anything and answer any other questions as best I can!)

First, the biggest hurdle, and probably what's at the center of your embarrassment is social and/or cultural. I don't know where you live, but a lot of places have really weird (read: christian/imperialistic/puritan) hang ups about sex. The core of these ideas is literally to be able to control people, and it's a large part of why they're so pervasive.

Enjoying reading and writing smut are then, by definition, a kind of rebellion all their own. (Seriously, I could write as may words about how awful Puritan ideals have fucked over the world as I have written words of smut (750k for the curious), but I'm not going to get into that here).

It's going to take work, because it's very easy to say "It's okay for me to do this." and a lot harder to actually believe it.

For what it's worth though, I don't think there's anything wrong with being cringe. Embracing that what I was writing was Cringe As Fuck is part of what helped me write it. Screw people who decide my enjoyment is worth less because it makes them cringe! If that's how they're going to be about it, then I'm going to write Specifically to MAKE THEM CRINGE! \o/

Bow before my power! [insert evil laughter here]

... Once you're re-writing the way a feel works, it's easier, I think. Be weird. Be cringe. Write while you feel weird, and write even when it feel cringe as fuck. Fuck the people, the society, the whatever, that put it into your head that you should be ashamed or embarrassed about what brings you joy.

Sure, some people aren't going to like it. There's not a single thing on this PLANET that pleases everyone. It's okay. Some people might be fuckasses and decide to tell you they don't like it - eat them. They're .000000000014% of the population - their opinion means jack and shit.

You've got a finite number of days in this life, and there's no reason to let other people dictate how you spend that time.

You're not going to please everyone, so just make sure you're pleasing yourself. And if that means writing x readers and smut and using all the most over-used tropes to ever exist - then do it. Do it with your head held high too, because I promise someone else will appreciate it, even if they're too embarrassed to say so.

As for the technical side of writing smut, that's going to take practice, but really the best thing to do is read lots of smut by a dozen or so different writers at least. Don't read it for the smut, but really break it down. What works for you? What doesn't? There's writing styles that make me laugh instead of turn me on, and the person who writes them isn't doing anything wrong. It's just not a style that works FOR ME.

There's going to be stuff that works for you, and stuff that doesn't. Maybe fade to black is what you enjoy writing - that's perfectly fine \o/ you don't have to be raunchy or blunt, you can use euphemisms, you can allude to sex happening without even saying words like sex and orgasm.

Read what you write a few times, over a few days - self-editing is hard, but if you can get a program that reads to you I think it helps. It helps highlight what's repetitive and clunky, and any misspelled words. Don't feel rushed. There's no deadlines. Take your time, but start as soon as you can.

Starting is the hard part, everything else will fall into place after that.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Hello.

You and gay-jesus-probably have successfully made me question everything with your view that Tears of the Kingdom is imperialist propaganda, so that's been fun.

Anyway, I decided to share this discussion with the Zelda fans on reddit, and perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of them disagreed. Here is what they said (I'm Alarming_Afternoon44):

So what do you think? Have I and all these other people just been duped by the game's manipulative framing? Or do they actually have a point?

And if you'd rather not answer this, or would prefer if I censored the usernames, just tell me and I'll delete this.

Hey! Thanks a lot for reaching out, and I'm glad it made you think stuff through!!

Honestly, as I mentioned in this post, I am not super interested about in-world conversations about who oppresses who, because what can be assessed from the game is super vague and more vibes-based than evidence-based. Within the text, of course that the Good Zonais are good and the Bad Ganondorf is bad! But that's my whole point! The narrative has been deliberately crafted so that the zonais and Rauru (and Hyrule) are as blameless as possible (and it's not doing a great job at it overall to be frank; we would not be having these conversations about how offputting it all feels for a non-zero number of people if it did do a great job). More importantly, I want to focus on what sort of real-life narrative it all parallels. Because people make stories, and people live in the real world.

Not going after everyone's throat here, gamedev is hard and the hydras that are AAA game production do end up doing super weird stuff, especially since the thematic ramifications are absolutely never prioritized (and it's also always the same kind of people who make the final calls and push out what can and can't be talked about also). And as fans, we tend to have trouble stepping outside the lens of lore and take a look at the bigger picture sometimes; not as an attack on any individual part of that decision-making process but to just pause, stop, and question our standards, our priorities and the kind of reality (or skewing of reality) the stories we tell each other reflect.

Again: do we want to take videogames seriously or not? If we do, then we need to accept they are a vehicle for ideology, just like any other artform. And sometimes, you push out questionable ideology, sometimes without meaning to, because you didn't unpack your own biases as you did. And it's even fine to do it, nobody is perfect, a 300+ people team spread over 6 years certainly will not be that. But that it wasn't prioritized is, in my opinion, a problem. As a narrative designer, I want games (at least the narrative side) to be held to a higher standard than this. It's literally my job to work with the industry so it can hold itself to higher standards of quality --so the whole TotK situation is quite frustrating to witness from a very pragmatic, work perspective where I already spend my days trying to convince people that things mean things. I have a vested interest here in not having the companies I work for being given a free pass by gamers to do literally whatever as long as it's fun, especially when we're talking about a billion-dollars company suing its own fans left and right for any perceived slight. Nintendo are not underdogs here. It's fine to point out they cut corners and maybe promoted messy ideologies, voluntarily or not.

So long story short: no I don't believe anyone here has a point in regards to what I think is actually important, which is why these choices were made in the first place. If you look at an imperialist text expecting the text to tell you that it's imperialist instead of recognizing a framing used for propaganda by yourself, you're never gonna find any imperialist text ever, obviously not!! I'm sorry if I sound a little gngngn here, but I don't know why audiences have, at large, this feeling that lore and story beat decisions materialize themselves already formed and without any human bias, meddling, intervention, internal politics or approximations (it seems that people can only conceptualize this part if they have actual names to attach to the story, but without clear authors it's like there are no authors and so no bias, which is... a very strange bias in itself). I can promise you that it does not work that way in practice: every narrative department on every big game is a battlefield --some nicer than others, but all of them very emotionally draining either way.

So yeah, I guess that on these grounds, I disagree with every point raised here. Sorry Reddit :/

But thank you for the ask and sorry if I didn't go more into details as to why. The big Why I Dislike Rauru Post and the Gerudo Post might have some more specific rebuttals, but I am not super interested in debating small detail stuff tbh. I feel like it's no use if the frame of reference isn't being understood in the first place.