#the problem with colonialism isn't that a 'foreigner' is coming to the land. it's the systemic erasure of an entire people.

[shardsofswords]

When it comes to antisemitism among western gentile antizionists (and I'm making it very clear i'm not talking about palestinians themselves here. I'm not demanding scholarship from people who are actively being bombed. I don't feel the same about those of you who are fine and safe and simply not willing to acknowledge your own bigotry) there is a common throughline in the belief in the myth that israelis are all just wealthy americans/europeans/have dual citizenship and can leave anytime, and the vehement opposition to both the idea that jewish people are in some way indigenous to the Levant, and that a non insignificant of people genuinely fled antisemitism and would have died if they hadn't left for Israel.

And I think these things come from the same root. Which is the desire for a narrative where there's foreign bad guys colonizing a land, who could leave anytime and have no reason whatsoever to be there.

And underneath that narrative is a silent assumption, one that confuses me greatly. Namely, that if some portion of israelis did have a good reason to want to go to Israel, both because of a longstanding cultural and historical connection to the land and because they were escaping antisemitism elsewhere, that would somehow make the act of mass murder and supression of palestinians... less bad? As if the existence of jewish people living in the region of palestine, and the state of israel carpet bombing gaza are inevitably connected, and the first can't happen without the second, and therefore, if the first is in some way justified, the second must also be. Except it very clearly isn't justified. It's an active genocide, and for that to be true israelis must have no reason for living in israel at all. The problem becomes not the ongoing mass murder of palestinians, but the presence of israelis, because these two are now one and the same.

Now, it has to be said, a big driving factor of this sentiment is because this narrative, that jewish presence in the middle east recquires that mass murder of palestinians, is one the Israeli government has pushed itself for decades. It justifies its horrific violence by saying that this is absolutely necessary for jewish people to exist safely in the middle east. Or in fact anywhere in the world, because it's also a core zionist idea that jewish people will never be safe anywhere but in a jewish state. This conflation of two seperate things wasn't invented by antizionists.

It is, however, not true. when the israeli state says this, they're lying. And just because antizionists didn't invent the idea doesn't mean we don't need to unlearn it. Acknowledging that jewish people are connected to israel doesn't make what is happening to palestinians not genocide. Nuance doesn't mean "well I guess now it's a little bit okay to bomb refugee camps and cut an entire region off from water, electricity, and the internet" Genocide is bad. Always. Unambiguously so. No matter who's doing it.

"jewish peope are indigenous to israel" also, in fact, doesn't make it inaccurate to call what is happening in palestine "settler-colonialism" because it is. A lot of people- understandably, considering history- have a purely racial view of colonialism. The idea is that there is an ethnic group of people who is indigenous, and therefore has rights to the land, and another ethnic group who isn't, and therefore is an invader who has no right to the land. What this ignores is that what defines colonialism is the material and political reality of one group being pushed out by another. What is happening in israel is settler-colonialism because the state of Israel is, in fact, trying to permanty replace palestinian society with an Israeli one. That's what settler-colonialism is. Their ancestors living on that land centurie and millenia back doesn't change that.

This answer by user starlightomantic explains it better than I ever could. "they locate the crime not in the invasion but in the foreignness" is basically what I was trying to say a few paragraphs ago but way better. But basically, under this purely racial framework of colonialism "jewish people are indigenous to israel" sounds like "the land rightfully belongs to jews (and therefore pushing palestinians out is fine)"

And once again, of course, "jews are indigenous to israel" IS also being used by zionists and the israeli state to justify the ethnic cleansing of palestinians. And they're wrong. But part of antizionism is countering this kind of propaganda and in this case the part that's wrong isn't "jews have a special historical connection to israel" or "a lot of people came to israel because they were facing life threatening antisemitism elsewhere" but "jews being indigenous to israel/facing antisemitism makes the displacement, oppression, and mass murder of palestinians okay"

You don't have to try and prove that jewish people don't have a connection to israel. Because it doesn't change the fact that a genocide is happening and it needs to stop. Trying to argue these points does nothing for palestinian liberation and only helps to fuel the propaganda that all antizionism is antisemitim, or that the ultimate goal of antizionism is to drive all jews out of the middle east.

Stop wasting time falling for repackaged conspiracy theories and continue boycotting, protesting, and speaking out for palestinians. The genocide HAS to end.

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

Is Belos / Philip a "colonizer" ? I see so many people call him that, but I know it's because they hate him (which is fine hate what you want or whatever), but I don't know if they're right / correct. I think it's mostly because he's white and old timey.

Only in the broadest sense of the word since he takes over an occupied land, subjugates its population, and uses its resources for his own personal gain. However, what people are missing is that IRL colonization isn't just one dude, it's entire groups of people coming in and gradually pushing the people already living there to the margins. The purpose of colonization is to exert foreign control of a populace and establish colonies to keep that control.

Belos doesn't do that. He doesn't make any new towns, he only conquers and destroys. This post makes a good argument that the term "crusader" would be a better match for Belos. Of course, crusading isn't a one-man job either, but the show made it so that Belos basically took over the isles by himself, which is a problem in of itself. Here's another post that addresses how nonsensical Belos' rise to power is.

And it's not like kid's shows can't properly represent colonization and dictatorships; it just takes a lot of time and paying attention to the world you're building. Avatar is great at this because it shows how it's not just one guy pulling the strings but an entire system in place that perpetuates the oppression. Ozai didn't start the war but he keeps it going to stay in power and to gain even more power and control. And the Fire Nation isn't entirely evil either, we see kids are indoctrinated from the beginning in school and in daily life and had some of their cultural traditions stamped out in favor of serving the Fire Lord.

TOH doesn't really have this. Everything bad is pinned on one guy and the oppressive system disappears once he's gone.

[semi-imaginary-place]

ffxiv 4.0 the ruby sea

strange decision that kugane and the ruby sea are connected by that blue dot line instead of a gate guard or ferry like you walk onto the other half of the dock and are in kugane, weird.

lyse... you can swim if you want but why am i swimming there. ah two idiots bobbing in the ocean

both the red kojin and the wolfpeople work for garlemald

well she had quite the intro. established immediately several characteristics, that she is very cruel, she holds domans in contempt, she's physical pleasure/sensation focused. "We can't. Not now." no this is a great opportunity to assassinate the viceroy she's got like a dozen soldiers we can take her. it'll throw doma's government into chaos and if zenos comes that means he isn't in ala mhigo which frees up operations over there. "they'll kill the villagers" see you need to think like a dps: killing you enemies is mitigation.

"we need to keep our presence hidden" dead men tell no tales.

ahh so the confederacy has no military power they're a glorified fishing village. the unused weapons, the moored boats.

im too tired right now but this discussion is interesting. wait for a weaker garlemald even if it costs comrades

i think killing yotstuyu would be easier than killing all the red kojin. if the red kojin are mercenaries seeking treasures their contract can be bought out

diving is pretty cool you can really see the budget for stormblood. modelers did two areas for 1 map. i wonder if its some sort of technical limitation thats stopping the camera from going above water.

wait. why is the turtle village connected to the aethryte network run by the ... i think it was lolorito's company

the underwater stuff just might make the ruby sea my favorite area in the game. I love all the folklore references. and sui village isn't even the only village there's an entire kingdom of raen down here and i love it. raen are just the merfolk/ningyo of othard i guess. kinda weird that they let us in the secret village to begin with, i mean 1.0 and 2.0 players couldn't even get into ishgard

i was just thinking about secret mermaid friends.... and yugiri is one. yugiri was literally some kid's secret mermaid friend…

magatama, mirror, and sword uhhh im forgetting my japanese mythology there's some significance here.

i was just going to talk about primals and red blue. the kojin are depicted just like how beast tribes are in eorzea. you have the bad primal summoning ones and you have the good ones in a different color. really the primals wouldn't be a problem but for the tempering.

the whole kami thing is a localization. my guess is that they added it to make hingan sound more foreign?

why would you bring you treasures on to land where the garleans are

just how big is the undersea kingdom and how old? and why do it, doma, and hingashi share names and a language. By the name hingan I'd expect it to originate in hingashi. is it a trade language and lingua franca like eorzean? is doma a splinter colony of hingashi. further thoughts from when i read encyclopaedia eorzea ii: https://semi-imaginary-place.tumblr.com/post/653912554050027520

[catsnuggler]

I have to admit, the Hawaii thing is a pickle.

I'm an anarchist, right. I oppose the state, all states, especially colonizing states. One of the reasons I oppose them is for restricting immigration. I believe people should be free to move anywhere, provided that they not harm the locals. I believe in full freedom of immigration, while absolutely opposing colonialism.

The UK is a series of islands that, at least in the English portions, is full of xenophobes. They hate immigrants, not because immigrants do them any wrong; they don't, by and large; but because the immigrants are different. The English, and whatever Celtic xenophobes stand with them on this, even as they, themselves, are stomped upon by the English, need to shut up. Their hatred is unjustified.

Hawaii is a series of islands that have been colonized for over 100 years, almost 200 now, yeah? Unlike the UK, it isn't its own country; it's a US "state", which masks its real status as a colony. Hawaiians want people to stop coming to the island, not out of hatred for cultural differences, but because most people who come to Hawaii are tourists, who have no vested interest in keeping the islands and their people healthy, and actively do harm to the islands, even as their welfare is prioritized over that of the locals, particularly Indigenous and Asian Hawaiians. They're not xenophobes, they want to protect their lands and themselves from real, active, long-enduring harm.

It's not that I don't see that there is a substantial difference between Hawaiians wanting people off of their island out of self-protection, rather than hatred; and the English, and some other Brits, wanting people out simply due to prejudice. My problem is: how would I ever get someone to give me the time of day to explain the differences, if all they see is "island people want to kick foreigners out," and they don't bother with the different contexts?

[psychotrenny]

Like in general, there's not much you can say about Japan that isn't (to one extent or another) also true for Western Europe and their settler colonies. They may have started from very different cultural bases (and those differences still persist in a number of forms) but, through both direct influence and convergent evolution as Industrialist Capitalist Imperialist nations, the similarities between Japan and "The West" tend to be greater than the differences. A lot of the more stupid and ignorant things that Westerners say about Japanese media are essentially a response to seeing familiar values expressed in a novel form by a foreign people.

Many criticisms of common trends in Japanese media, from the reactionary nationalist sentiments to the sexualisation of minors, are true enough. But you so often see them presented in a myopic way, with Westerners talking as though their country is any better in this regard when they're very clearly not. Like it's strange to see a US liberal talk about how Japan "hasn't come to terms it's Imperial Atrocities" as though Japan isn't covered in US military bases whose occupants abuse the local population with impunity, or complaining about Japanese age of consent laws when their nation still largely allows child marriage (as young as 15 in some cases). Now I'm not saying it's wrong to make these sorts of criticisms, as long as you do so from a place of actual knowledge and understanding rather than a vague jumble of stereotypes and "common knowledge", but you can't be detaching them from their broader context and treating them as exceptional when they are actually rather mundane.

This sort of projection, talking about social issues in an "exotic" land as though they have no equivalent in you own, is classic Orientalism and I don't think it's any more justifiable when the target nation is also part of "The First World". Especially because this line of thinking, as a form of racism with a thin veneer of progressive sentiment rather than genuine anti-Imperialist thinking, is never just restricted to other Imperialist nations. Like people who talk about Japan in this way generally don't have a good attitude towards say Korea or China either. Whatever genuine problems Japan has, it's stupid and just plain racist to treat it as uniquely degenerate and no amount of "oooohhhh but the Japanese are racist toooooooo!" is gonna change that

Japan as a nation has a very unique position in the world, being an Imperial Core nation that is neither Western European nor a West European settler colony, which is why you see so many weird and contradictory attitudes towards it especially from Westerners. Like there are avowed White Supremacists who express solidarity and support for it on the basis of shared Imperialist Chauvinism, while many "progressives" will use the nation's Imperialist wrongdoings as a pretense to engage in crude orientalist racism. As a non-European people who are ultimately closer to "The West" than any other geopolitical grouping, they can be rhetorically framed as however "White" or however "Asian" is most convenient for any particular speaker at any particular time. Combine that with the general sort of ignorance and chauvinism with which West Europeans regard any sort of "foreigner", and you can see why the Anglophone discourse around any sort of Japanese politics or culture gets so painful

[mostly-mundane-atla]

Since you mentioned the North and South comic, I've been meaning to ask you how do you feel about pre-contact vs post-colonialism fiction about natives?

The one reason I like atla is because the mixture of fantasy with ancient cultures and seeing glimpses of how people lived in the past. The water tribes had little accurate representation and presence, so I was always up for more in-depth stuff about the tribes after the war.

But with this comic, the tribe faces foreign influences and loss of culture becomes the theme of the comic without really showing it (before the war). Sometimes, I'm left frustrated with a lot of post-colonialism fiction as it defines natives by their oppression and not how they live.

However, like you mentioned, the comic tried to tackle complex topics such as loss of culture, disagreements within the tribe, and exploitation of land and resources. I know that it's a reality for many native people today and that it's good to shed light on these issues from their perspective, not from an outsider's (which is typically what I've seen). Yet, I feel I would have a greater understanding of issues like the loss of culture, if I actually got to know it.

So specifically, I want to ask what comes to mind about these two approaches about natives in fiction? If there's some things you're drawn to, some you aren't, and what you'd like to be considered.

I think a post-colonialism take on Native stories isn't a bad thing, but, as with any story involving or inspired by a marginalized people, it requires an understanding of the culture it's trying to portray. Look at how avatar handles Water Tribe characters, now look at Smoke Signals, Reservation Dogs, Molly of Denali, even Anne with an E did a better job. It's the same as a pre-colonialsm take on stories. Look at Disney's Pocahontas and Brother Bear vs Prey or Atanarjuat: the Fast Runner.

You've framed this as pre-contact vs post-colonialism, but the problems of native fiction written by non-natives are not so neatly folded into a dichotemy like this. It all stems from writing what one doesn't know without questioning one's perception.

It's not controversal to say anti-native racists consider native cultures to be invalid as human cultures. We are not like the Ancient Greeks or Romans to them, but backwater savages. The Greeks and Romans had cultures suited to be aspirational, their philosophies solid, their religions fit for artistic depiction and study, and most compelling of all, their histories were recorded in the written word. Many who held them up as the pinnacle of civilization in the past, and many who still do today, considered our philosophies quaint and primitive, our religions savage and godless, and our histories mere stories for children. It may be a touch controversal to say the common perceptions of us still follow that belief, but that doesn't make it untrue. When writing about us, the non-native tends to consider our cultures too unimportant to "get right" or even try depicting. And when we point this out, they may get defensive and say their story is not a documentary and how could they possibly write characters meant to be one of us as belonging to a people with its own culture.

The thing is, there are many ways to show culture through setting up a scene or character actions, it's just hard to understand when you don't understand things like a cross on the wall or a pumpkin carved into a lantern or buying a sausage on white bread with tomato ketchup, yellow mustard, and occasionally sweet pickle rellish and onions from a vendor cart is a cultural experience and not a universal one. A character having football gear and a job at a burger joint at age 16 tells us about the culture they live in, not just about the character. One of the reasons i keep saying Legend of Korra was a step is that we actually see Water Tribe interiors with stuff.

Take, for example, the opening scene of Legend of Korra:

Look at the background! There's a line to hang things up to dry, a ladder that might be used to get into a cellar space, and what look to be storage containers everywhere. It's so clearly lived in.

And for another example, this shot of Tonraq discussing with the tribe

The walls are lined with tools, decorations, storage and possibly a stack of bedding? Tonraq and his family sitting close to the doorway is a nice cultural touch, though the implications of humility on their parts may have been unintended

Meanwhile, the closest the original series got to this with in terms of domestic Water Tribe spaces was the room Bato was staying it with decorative skins on the walls, shown below.

On that topic, i think it's more than fair to say this episode is more remembered for the introduction of June and Aang feeling like an outsider than Bato and how he tried to feel more at home. This wouldn't be bad in a vacuum. I don't fault anyone for finding a hot, snarky badass with a neat steed that is also her hound and a whip and skull hair accessory more memorable than the characters' dad's friend, and having an episode revolve around a character feeling insecure in their importance with their friends belonging to a culture and family that they've never really been a part of or have a history with is a good call for a children's cartoon, especially in the political climate it aired in. The problem lies in the fact that they don't get to meet anyone from the Water Tribes again until the North Pole, and at that point, culture is treated as an obstacle rather than a source of identity. When Zuko can succeed as a firebender, a leader, and a morally decent person it's because the Fire Nation was good before suddenly deciding to be an imperial power a century ago and can still be redeemed. When Katara succeeds as a waterbender and a warrior in her own right it's because she called out her own people for bullshit cultural standards that apparently no one before her questioned. That doesn't feel fair to the cultures the creative team took so much aesthetic influence from.

Alright, that's enough zeroing in on avatar and its meh approach to Water Tribe worldbuilding.

Even outside of material things, culture is displayed by living. A quiet smile and nod instead of a wave is a display of culture. Choosing not to whistle at night is a display of culture. Jokes like "as in the feather not the dot" are displays of culture. The act of cooking up frybread for the potlatch is a display of culture. If you can make less direct references to a character being queer, you can do it for characters being native too.

I think another thing non-native creators should keep in mind is why. Why is the character native or native coded? This isn't an attack, nor is it to say you need to justify having a native OC. Natives are a marginalized people and being perceived in odd and othering ways, even subconsciously and sometimes even by oneself, comes with the territory. For a fandom example of why you should probably ask why: I'm in the Homestuck fandom and I came upon a post about headcanon ethnicities for the characters and among them the only one the op considered could be Native American (and only "Native American" while others got to be French and German and the like) was Equius. Now, you can't make accurate assumptions and especially shouldn't circulate rumors based on subjective fandom contributions, but if you're making such a contribution to fandom, you really should ask yourself why the only character you can see as native is an uncomfortably sexual, controlling young man with long hair, a racist sense of superiority, a need to beat things up, and an affinity for archery and horses.

Is the character native just because you felt like having a native character, or do you perhaps feel obligated to fulfill a diversity quota without seeing the need to diversify charcters deeper than just in skintone? Is the character's identity as a native person important, or do you just need a character to be nigh fantastically part of the land they live on? Are you wanting to depict a rich, underrepresented culture with a lot of history behind it and love in the struggle to keep it alive when so many want to tear it from its people and destroy it, or is the outsider's understanding built on stereotypes and exotified to hell and back just too alluring to pass up? Basically, if you are a non-native creator with a native character, how much do they read like the observations of media made in Sherman Alexie's poem "How to Write the Great American Indian Novel"? And what are you, as a non-native creator with a native character, doing to understand why you may be writing them that way?

Stories about natives pre-assimilation can be good, but there's no use if the native characters are needlessly exotified and/or blatant racist caricatures, regardless of if they have a non-native (who isn't the assumed audience) to be compared to. Similarly, post-assimilation native stories don't have to be bad or even racist merely by virtue of having non-natives in a position of privilege. If people weren't so horny for our aesthetics, otherness, and sometimes frankly our bodies, and simultaneously so willing to give into the cultural conditioning to see us as lesser peoples, we wouldn't even need to have this conversation. Unfortunately that's not the world we live in. It really shouldn't be too much to ask writers do their due diligence in an era where most people of almost every imaginable walk of life has a device connected to the internet in their home or at their workplace or on their person. Sending an email or a dm or posting about asking for sources, academic or more personal, is not that fucking hard. With how wide the internet, hell even just tumblr, is you're bound to get at least three possible leads. When everyone understands that, maybe all native stories written by non-natives can be okay. I'd love to live to see that day.

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Ask:

Perhaps this is more about racism/equality issues but I'm creating a fictional African country. It's going to be filled with lots of black African ethnicities plus a minority of European/Asian ethnicities. I want there to be a good amount of Europeans/Asians in power as well as the local African ethnicities. But what I do want to portray it when a white European ancestry is in power as not white supremacism but equality. They treat them as human beings and there isn't much racism around (at least not compared to the US) Would there be other issues that I need to address for such a nation besides just this especially since this is occurring alongside the rest of the world where racism can be more prevalent.

Wootzel: We may not be able to help you very much, because this premise is… fraught.

There is such a traumatic history of colonialism in Africa that the idea as you state it is almost inherently problematic. If you keep most of the colonial history in Africa present in your world and then have this country that has white and Asian people in power but lacks racism, you cannot avoid having it seem like you are trying to portray colonialism as peaceful and/or good.

Unless you’re intending to rewrite a lot of world history in your world (from your description I don’t think you do, but it’s not entirely clear), you could only do something like this by leaning heavily away from problematic assumptions. If your white/Asian people in power are descendants of individuals who immigrated a generation or more previously, AND they are not part of a group of similar nationality who ever made any attempt to take power, AND they are in the minority when it comes to positions of power, then maybe you can remove problematic racial/colonial ideas from your work. If you still choose to write this, I’d suggest making it abundantly clear that there is not a history of violence or oppression in this area.

Hell, it would probably even be a good idea to show that people native to the area are hesitant to accept the white/Asian people in power because, even without a local history of problems, they’d know something about the pain and destruction caused in other places in Africa.

I cannot stress enough that you should keep your white/Asian authority figures as a small minority of those in power.

If you feel that you are up to the task of creating this society without presenting problematic ideas, We’d suggest you start with researching, in detail, the history of European colonialism in at least one area in Africa. Do your best to understand the pain caused and the lives lost and ruined by foreigners coming in and taking what they want or imposing their views on native people. Know that writing a premise that minimizes this pain is wrong, and use this to inform your decisions.

It would also be good to do research about the state of African people before colonizers interfered. Many African countries that exist today were created by invaders, and people who were not interested in considering themselves part of the same group (or even interested in being friendly) have been forced off the best of their land and resources by invaders, to subsist on what little was left.

We’re hesitant to suggest going ahead with this idea, even following this advice. Doing it justice without marginalizing real suffering would take a massive amount of effort and a lot of space in your narrative. There is a lot of risk of messing it up and doing real harm in the minds of real people.

[elenajohansenreads]

Books I Read in 2021

#84 - The Glittering Court, by Richelle Mead

Mount TBR: 70/100

Rating: 1/5 stars

What did I like about this? It was digestible. Having just come off a heavy, plodding, disappointing fantasy read, the easy YA tell-don't-show narrative style went down smooth like a slushie on a hot day.

And that's the best thing I can say about the whole book--it read fast and easy.

What didn't I like?

1. The fact that this touts itself as fantasy when it's not in the least bit fantastical. I don't require my fantasy to have magic or creatures or zombies or anything, but if you're going to call something "fantasy" it should at least be about fictional cultures that the author has invented. This is just England colonizing the Americas with the names changed. The only thing that could be said to be "fantasy" is that the population they're displacing in the process isn't an indigenous one, it was established by previous outcasts from their own country--though that wasn't clear to me until the first time we met them and they were white, blond, and used woad as decoration. So they're not supposed to be Native American analogues, they're supposed to be displaced Picts?

2. Either way, it's still racist and pro-colonization, because even if the Icori aren't meant to represent an indigenous people, they're still clearly Other, and constantly labeled as "savages" in order to justify taking their land, which all of our protagonists are participating in, in some form. Does it matter what color this fictional group of people is, if the narrative is parroting real history and real racism?

3. The second half of the plot feels, at best, tenuously related to the first half. The change in fortune for our protagonists that happens at the midpoint struck me as so flimsy and unbelievable that it was hard to take the rest of the book seriously, and that made it more obvious to me who the real villain was, despite whatever weak red herrings were planted along the way. Seriously--the first half of the story is The Bridgertons but the second turns into Little House on the Prairie. It's too big a genre shift to make the transition seem natural.

4. There were times when I was approaching a reasonable level of sympathy for our heroine, despite her many flaws, but every time the story had a chance to explore those flaws and perhaps let the character do some work on them...well, she just kept being headstrong and selfish and whiny, right up until the LHotP section where after a single pep talk from the hero, she's completely changed, resolved to her new station in life with a determination that seemed half-delusional and certainly out of character. She didn't work for it, so it didn't seem real.

5. I did not know, having picked up this book in isolation, that the rest of the "series" is actually the same time period from the perspective of one of the other girls, specifically the two best friends of the heroine. Now that I do know that, the giant blank spaces in this story where Mira and Tamsin constantly fall out of it without explanation--or with the pointedly obvious lampshade "it's not my business so I'm not going to ask"--make sense structurally. However, that doesn't mean I don't think it's a terrible flaw, because these holes are constant and irritating. For a while in the middle of the book, it felt like every time I turned two pages, the heroine was asking out loud, "Where's Mira?" And pretty quickly I knew that question wouldn't be answered in this book, so why keep asking?

6. I never found Cedric compelling enough a hero to justify the constant sacrifices that Adelaide made for him. I don't think he's a terrible character, and I enjoyed some of their banter and their occasional fights, but I'm also not about to add him to my book-boyfriend list, so it was hard to imagine myself, or anyone for that matter, doing as much for him as Adelaide did.

7. Religion. Woooo boy. I guess this part is the "fantasy" I was lamenting the lack of earlier, because if the accepted and heretic forms of this fictional religion are supposed to correspond to real-world counterparts, I didn't pick up on it with enough certainty to tell. But my problem is that it's suddenly a Very Big Deal that one character is a heretic, when religion had played such a small part in the story leading up to that revelation that I was mostly operating on the assumption that the main religion was socially performative, and that no one in the story was especially devout. Adelaide certainly doesn't seem to be. But since this heresy becomes central to the conflict later on, I wish it had been better established in the beginning, because (again) the second half of the book seems wildly different than the first, and this was another aspect that made it hard to take seriously.

8. Heteronormative AF. There's one token queer person who has a minor role, showing up just long enough for Adelaide to realize other women/cultures don't abide by her society's rigid norms and to feel briefly uncomfortable about it. But there's no follow-up, no depth, no opportunity for Adelaide to grow beyond what she's been taught. To some extent, I'm okay with that--not every story has room for fighting LGBT+ battles, and even more simply put, stories are allowed to be about other things. But parading just that one wlw character out for a moment, and making her a foreigner to reinforce her otherness, strikes me as a really poor choice if the story didn't actually want to fight that battle. Why bring it up at all? Especially as this is supposed to be fantasy, why couldn't the Glittering Court be an institution that provides marriage candidates to both men and women? If the candidate pool was both male and female, and so was the clientele, then many forms of queerness would be covered by it without having to dig into specifics about each character. (It doesn't directly address ace/aro people, but presumably they'd be less interested in a marriage mart anyway, on either side, and self-select out of it.) I mean, I know why, because that would mean that in the New World there would have to be women in positions of power who needed husbands (or wives, yes, but this wrinkle is about men.) And there's no shortage of men in the colonies, so that doesn't track logically the same way the actual setup does. But again, if this is supposed to be fantasy....

[absynthe--minded]

Lmao I literally wrote an 18 page essay on racism in his works and like. There's so many excuses but like. Considering he based orcs and Uruk-hai on mongols and asian-centric people in his letters (not to mention a single betrayal from the men of the East in the silm condemned them basically forever, the only time you ever see them are as bad guys. Asking for more POC representation in a euro centric story when like, surprise, they happen to exist in Europe, isn't asking for a whole lot.

(cont) It's literally such a huge shitstorm that people get up in arms over it so if you want to publish it I hope it doesn't cause too much drama. Like at the least it's a white people centric story and literally everyone coded POC is for the most part shoved into evil/opposing sides of the war and is considered an enemy. 

That’s the other big reason why I think a broader, less white adaptation is a good thing.

A lot of people feel personally called out when somebody says something like “hey! Creator X was racist, and his works have racist tropes!” because it seems like you’re saying they’re racist. Except that’s not what’s being said. Nobody is beginning the conversation with commentary on the fan’s personal biases and politics. Acknowledging that something entertaining or fun has racist elements is part of being a critical fan, part of engaging with a text in a way that looks at it as a whole. It isn’t saying “you shouldn’t enjoy this” or “you shouldn’t find meaning from this” or “you shouldn’t like this”, it’s just saying “hey, maybe don’t wholeheartedly endorse all the aspects of this thing?”

Here’s another, less polarizing example. I like the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and other Edwardian adventure novelists. One of the most famous of these guys is H. Rider Haggard, author of books like She and King Solomon’s Mines. I’ll leave She out of it for now (but that book is the origin of the “powerful witchy white lady rules over lesser humans, usually brown or black ones” trope) and focus on KSM.

One of the things that surprised me when I read KSM for the first time is how much of the plot is spent focusing on the efforts of the white adventurers to help a native African prince regain his throne from a usurper who killed his father and kicked him out. This prince is a real character, who speaks in an educated manner and isn’t a stereotypical Savage African like others in the genre were. The white people also aren’t interested in colonizing this guy’s kingdom, and while they do go looking for treasure on his lands it’s with his permission as a thank-you for helping him regain his title and his people. But he’s surrounded by awful racist caricatures - witch doctor types, uneducated stereotypical natives who don’t even know what guns are, etc - and that makes it hard for me to give Haggard props for subverting a typically uncritically expansionist and colonialist story setup.

Could it be possible to adapt King Solomon’s Mines in such a way that didn’t play up the racism? Sure - focus on the prince and his struggles, with the white men as side characters whose efforts aren’t as effective or important as those made by the African characters, and subvert the whole “treasure hunting” aspect in a way that satirizes and calls out colonialism and exploitation of natural resources by foreign powers, maybe. It’s not unsalvageable. But since that version of the story doesn’t exist, we’re left with a deeply flawed if well intentioned product that perpetuates harmful ideas about Africans and their countries at the height of British colonial rule. And if you make the changes necessary to get rid of the racism you’ll have people crying foul both because You Changed It How Dare You Authorial Intent Is A Thing and because of explicit racism.

The same is true of Tolkien, to an extent, although unlike Haggard’s books I don’t think they rely solely on racist tropes or ugly ideas about white man’s expansionism to survive. I don’t think he was intentionally being racist at all. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was, in fact, kind of racist; insisting his works should be exempt from criticism because you like them doesn’t do anything to fix that problem, it just silences fans of color who already feel unsafe in these spaces because they face constant harassment.

Not everybody who feels like Tolkien’s works are fine as they are is a virulent, frothing at the mouth racist. Or a fascist. Or a Nazi. If you like this thing, I am not coming at you and telling you that you’re wrong. I have a Tolkien tag on my blog something like 20 pages long, full of fanart of white characters and graphics using images from the Jackson films which are also full of white people. But the more I watch the Jackson films the more uncomfortable I get with the fact that the only people of color we see are bad guys - I would have rather they all been white, frankly. And I’m also bothered by the fact that people who are literally just saying “this thing hurts me even though I love it because I can see where it’s basing bad characters on me and my ethnic group, can we stop blindly defending it?” are being shouted down.

Yes. There are people who respond to their frustration about Tolkien’s racism by being jerks to those of us who do like his works. They generalize, they make snide posts, they act holier-than-thou because they somehow “see through” the story to the racism below. And they’re generally massive dicks about it. I think the hostility a lot of us fans feel comes from having to defend ourselves from that kind of attitude, or people who say “X Series is way better than that hack Tolkien” and cite diversity as a reason why. That can feel reductive and rude and offensive, because that’s much more of a personal attack. But I’m not talking about those people.

I’m talking about the people who just want to be included and want everyone to stop pretending there aren’t problematic elements to the work. That doesn’t mean we have to stop loving it, or stop finding meaning in it. Acknowledging this kind of thing doesn’t hurt anybody.

[republicstandard]

If Your Country Isn't A Shithole, Go Home.

Ash Sharp Editor

He finally did it, he called all the black countries shitholes. The most based President on the face of the Earth has done it again. Aside from once again controlling the media narrative for an entire week, Donald Trump has cracked open the toughest nut in politics- immigration. As you will see, pro-immigrant liberals around the world have walked into a trap, from which there is only one escape.

The liberals claim that Mr. Trump upholds white supremacy by pointing out that Norway has high living and education standards. In a strange omission, I have not seen any leftists leaping into the fray to claim that Norway is a Nordic model quasi-socialist country and therefore good; surely an administrative error to be rectified post-haste.

In fact we are told that shithole countries are the best. They are the most vibrant in culture. In fact, I am reliably informed from our allies on the left that the people and places that Donald Trump denounced are in many ways better than America.

Yes! Thank you once again, the peerless Dan Arel for making a poor water supply under a Democrat administration in Michigan the equivalent of living under a military junta. The general liberal wailing is well reported elsewhere, so let's skip the tears and dig right into the bones of this none-troversy. That's a controversy, but it's based on nothing. Wordplay, my friends. That is gold star writing talent, right there.

“Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said in a statement.  “Like other nations that have merit-based immigration, President Trump is fighting for permanent solutions that make our country stronger by welcoming those who can contribute to our society, grow our economy and assimilate into our great nation.”

That's the quite reasonable view of the Trump administration. Of course to the liberals, it is a racist position to only want immigrants who will be of benefit to your country. As we shall discover, the real racist position is not held by President Trump. Those who value black-skinned immigrants for their melanin content over any immigrant for their skill-set express a disturbing level of racism that cannot be ignored. We will come back to these degenerates later.

First, let's hear from the enlightened continent of Africa.

“The African Union Commission is frankly alarmed at statements by the president of the United States when referring to migrants of African countries and others in such contemptuous terms,” said Ebba Kalondo, the spokeswoman for the African Union. “Considering the historical reality of how many Africans arrived in the U.S. during the Atlantic slave trade, this flies in the face of all accepted behavior and practice.”

BOOM! There it is. You can't say that there are shithole country's in Africa because two centuries ago under half a million slaves were taken to North America. This is logic so flawless and pure I know a trader in Amsterdam who is willing to barter blood diamonds for it. Ms. Kalondo, let us be real. The historical reality is that despite the best efforts of colonialism, much of Africa remains barbarous. I do not use this word lightly. I am left few other words to describe how elderly ladies in Kenya are routinely raped, or the cannibal warlords of Liberia. You can't blame these things on the words of Mr. Trump.

The average IQ in Kenya is 80. The average IQ of a Liberian is 67.

Here's a South African TV presenter weighing in.

Good morning from the greatest most beautiful “shithole country” in the world!!!

— Leanne Manas (@LeanneManas) January 12, 2018

Yes, you're reading this right. The people of South Africa, where Boer farmers are undergoing a literal genocide to the musical score of shocking silence from world leaders, is not a shithole country.

Isn't it just amazing? On the one hand, communists like Dan Arel will call the United States of America a shithole (average IQ: 98) and on the other, he and African leaders will ignore exactly what is being critiqued. Oh, I guess it's fine to criticize America, because of slavery 200 years ago. It's racist to point out that Liberians are literally eating each other and Black South Africans are massacring the Whites right now.

The bizarre overstretch of leftist ideology has now made it possible to be bigoted against reality itself. No matter the crimes being committed, so long as the perpetrators are non-white, it is impossible to denounce them if you are a white person. That's racist and colonialist or... just whatever. Oh God, when we will be free of this utter twaddle?

If you are a developing nation that is riddled with AIDS, witchcraft, homophobic murders and warlords- you are a shithole. Sorry. No matter how much liberals in the West will deny it, it's the truth. Now, you can either recognize a harsh criticism for the truth that it is and work to fix it- or blame Whitey for being mean.

Here's Bill Kristol, who is always good value for money.

Two weeks ago a 26-year old soldier raced repeatedly into a burning Bronx apartment building, saving four people before he died in the flames. His name was Pvt. Emmanuel Mensah and he immigrated from Ghana, a country Donald Trump apparently thinks produces very subpar immigrants.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 12, 2018

Bill values Pvt. Mensah not for his heroism -which we all honor and recognize- but his blackness. He has found a black migrant who did something selfless and heroic, and therefore all critique of shithole countries is deflected. His patriarchal white savior attitude stinks.

Nobody says that black people cannot succeed, except the leftists- who demand more handouts, more welfare. Fewer cops on the streets of Chicago. More lenient sentencing. The thing is, fools like Kristol laud the heroic actions of token blacks like Pvt. Mensah on one hand, and then deny people from the same background their agency. The poor black people whether immigrant or born-American cannot help themselves.

Yet, that is what Pvt. Mensah did when he enlisted. He decided to change his life for the better and gave his life in service of his fellow man- an example to all of us. He took responsibility for his own life and the life of those around him and sacrificed himself to save others from imminent death. The leftists rail against minorities who serve the state. The leftists would have Pvt. Mensah rotting on welfare instead.

Demographically speaking, Pvt. Mensah is anomalous. When the rumored Shithole Country remark was allegedly made, the conversation was about comparative demographics. Here is a question to all well-meaning liberals who have clutched their pearls and gasped about the racist in the White House. You have a choice to send your child to a school in Norway, or Haiti. Where do you send them?

That is what we are talking about here. Norway is a wealthy country that produces highly educated people. The idea of encouraging immigration from Norway (average IQ: 100) is to acquire these skilled people for America. It's not a difficult concept to get your heads around unless you are a leftist ideologue, who despite all evidence to the contrary considers all people completely interchangeable. In this mindset, it doesn't matter if you are a Wahhabist cleric with multiple wives or a chemical engineer from Dortmund. Nothing is changed about American society, regardless of who is allowed into the nation.

This sophomoric and myopic view is at the root of the seismic social and demographic problems afflicting Europe today. Cultural equivalency is a myth, and only a fool believes it. Western civilization is the preeminent force for the genuine progress of humanity on planet Earth, and it must be defended from such fools who would destroy it for the sake of their liberal guilt.

Finally, if we accept the argument that there are no shithole countries- or that it is America which is the shithole- then there is no reason for people to leave those countries. Moreover, there is no reason for migrants already in the United States to refuse to return home. I'm willing to accept the liberal argument in that case, the USA is terrible- much worse than South Africa, in fact. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

If Haiti, Liberia, and Venezuela are not shitholes, please feel free to unburden the American taxpayer of the responsibility of supporting you. Help the poor and needy American people to raise their nation out of the shithole it is in, and return home to your paradise land of origin. I'm sure you can crowdfund the ticket if you need to.

If you aren't from a shithole country; feel free to go home if it means that much to you. Nobody is stopping you from returning home. Consider this also. If you disagree with President Trump but are in the West fleeing a dictator, or poverty, or hardship; ask yourself; who is the bigot? Is the nation that took you in bigoted against you for criticizing the hell-hole you fled? Or is it you, for standing up for your shithole homeland despite all the evils in it?

Maybe you do come from a shithole country after all.

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[the-quiet-fire-of-defiance]

This is actually a topic I've been thinking about for a while but dithering back and forth about discussing. I fully expect to get some stupid responses and I'm not sure if people will 'get' it, but I have to try.

Anon, this isn't a criticism or rebuke of you. I know that you meant well, and you're certainly far from the first to say that Aotearoa is Middle Earth. But that's kind of the problem.

Many foreigners think of Aotearoa as real life Middle Earth. People pay obscene amounts of money to come here and get the fantasy that they're actually in Tolkien's world, whether that's through location tours or Hobbiton or other tourist experiences. I don't think those tourist experiences are a bad thing. But the "New Zealand is Middle Earth" thing has long made me uncomfortable, although I haven't been able to express why.

Then a few months ago I read this article called "Aotearoa is not Middle Earth". It's an excellent article and it pins down exactly what was bothering me.

Aotearoa is not a blank slate to reimagine as a white European fantasy. Colonisers have always seen us as a pristine empty canvas for European desires, but our history and culture is inseparable from the land. The people who come here and try to imagine it as Middle Earth often mentally erase what was already here and rebuild it to fit their image.

When people come here and imagine themselves being in Middle Earth, who do you think they imagine populating it? The white elves, white men, white hobbits and white dwarves of the movies? Dragons, monsters, orcs, river daughters? There is one thing that is almost certainly not in their imagination: us. Somehow, there are never any Maori people in Middle Earth.

It takes our land and re-imagines it as Europe (but with dragons!). Worse, it takes our land and imagines it without us.

To take a quote from the article:

By making Aotearoa a proxy for England, you say Aotearoa is England, and by saying that, you’re recreating the mindset of the people who stole our land, who beat our language and culture out of us, who signed a treaty swearing to keep our sovereignty intact then left it to rot in a cellar in Wellington after a judge decreed it null, and Māori “primitive and barbaric” savages with no legal rights.

This is made even more complex and painful by the racism in the books and the films. Like the writer of the article, I don't think Tolkien was a bad person and I don't think he was consciously or intentionally racist. But the racism and colonialism in LoTR is so deep that it's an integral part of the story.

Then there's the casting of the films. The casting of the 'good' peoples was exclusively white (in fact, potential extras were turned away during casting for The Hobbit because "hobbits can't be brown"). The orcs, evil creatures, and so on? Overwhelmingly Māori. To a truly insane extent. That was the only role open to us, to make Māori into animalistic monsters. So yes, it's painful.

When I hear people call Aotearoa “Middle-earth”, I see my people once again turned into monsters on their own land.

Look, I love Lord of the Rings. I love the movies even with the pain of the racism. I love my airport's stupid Tolkien decorations, the sleeping Smaug and noodle-canteen-crushing eagles (RIP to the terrifying giant Gollum though). I love watching the movies and seeing the beautiful backgrounds, my heart filling with a love so deep that it hurts for this land and this people and my home. I'm proud that the movies were filmed here. But Aotearoa isn't Middle-Earth, and I'd like people to stop saying that it is.

---

(A small note: the article uses some te reo Māori (Māori language) words that might confuse people outside of Aotearoa. Kākā = a species of native bird. Tangata = people. Whānau = family. Tangata whenua means the indigenous people of the land, and used in the Aotearoa context means all Māori people. Mana whenua means the tangata whenua who have tribal authority over a particular area.)

HOLD ON A MINUTE!!!

I HAVE CONNECTED THE DOTS!!!

Everybody knows that New Zealand is Middle Earth.

So doesn't that mean

That Old Zealand

Is

Beleriand

I hope I don't come across as a spoilsport but it's my understanding that there's currently a debate going on over whether this country should be known as New Zealand vs Aotearoa (which is the Maori name), which has brought to my attention that this is a more sensitive topic than I had previously known. I'm not accusing you of being insensitive or anything, but since my understanding of the issue is very, very superficial, I am not entirely sure how appropriate it is to make this kind of jokes. Maybe it's fine! But I Don't Know so I'll err on the side of caution here and not riff off your joke