#there can never be any moral colonialism

[transbeamrooikat]

thinking about how its implied that Paul WILL eventually ecologically destroy dune. how in his quest to bring them "paradise" he will destroy their way of living. the way my heart sunk whenever it was mentioned. the way we see how badly water effects the worms

[puke-ur-gutz]

i will cashapp $10 to the first person who can name 3 real life harmful things bob bryar did without accusing him of thought crime

[hussyknee]

Wonder how far I can prod libs into finishing their full thought bubble behind all this "harm reduction" "genocide is a single issue" "you don't care about marginalized people in the US" "dyou want fascism WITH genocide???" screeching.

Okay, class, say it with me: "I don't want to live in a third world country like the ones we keep destroying."

Because you know. The countries your war criminal leaders keep bombing and starving and destabilising and leeching dry? We don't have trans or gay rights or women's rights or disability benefits or environmental or labour protections. No one would want to live in our countries obviously. You'd kill yourselves before you had to live like we do. Sure, we're only like this because you keep us trapped in poverty and violence and we still have full, happy lives worth living despite it but that's because we're used to it! We don't know any better! Not like you! You know what you deserve and you shouldn't have to lose anything as a consequence of your own political choices! Your government is supposed to happen to other people! Not you! So like, yeah, it's bad that the poors are being massacred wholesale or whatever, but like. That doesn't mean you gotta die with them, y'know? And by "death" you don't mean actual genocide like what's happening over here but "death" as in "having to live like we do".

The trolley problem metaphor is so goddamn attractive to you because you see yourself outside the tracks, objectively assessing the situation and making the "tough" "moral" choice for the collective good. It's imperialist horseshit. You don't have a democracy and it's not a trolley. What you have is an imperial death machine running on an apartheid system that decides who gets fed to it and who gets fed by it. That's your "two tracks"— the colonized and the colonizer, the core and the periphery, the white and the coloured. "Harm reduction"? Have you counted how many fucking millions in and around the world your death machine eats to keep how many of you "safe"? But our losses are a foregone conclusion, a matter of course, a regrettable necessity. The only variable is yours.

Every political choice in 200 years of your settler colony has been "genocide AND". "Genocide AND women's rights". "Genocide AND workers rights". "Genocide AND fascism". "Genocide AND democracy". The difference is that for the first time in your history you're now watching it livestreamed to the entire world in real time 24/7, exactly as your colony is about to capsize under the weight of its own bloodlust. A sea change from when your parents threw parties watching bombs dropping on Baghdad and then spent twenty years watching movies about sad it made the soldiers.

How do you count the victims when we are numbers and you are people? You scream about trans rights in the US while Palestinian trans children don't have the right to reach puberty. OSHA for you but Congolese children have to die in mines. Reproductive rights for the US while Sudanese women are raped in millions. Yes, but it's always been "genocide AND" no matter what, right? Do we want to sabotage the party that has never fucking cared about us and don't now even with half their own country screaming at them on the off-chance they might possibly maybe one day do?? Why are we acting so mad like it's YOUR fault that you're fighting for your quality of life over our corpses?? Do we want YOU to lose your rights over it??

Yes, actually. We do. We want you to have a taste of the reality that generations on generations of your illegal illegitimate white supremacist occupation has inflicted on us just so your worthless hide can sit there and call our genocides a single fucking issue. And let's be real: that's what you're so fucking afraid of.

[fairuzfan]

I have concern that I may still be technically zionist despite claiming to be pro-palestine. This is because I knew very little about Palestine when October 7th happened, so in the time since I have been reluctant to have a stance on a two-state or one-Palestinian-state solution. I know now that almost all of Isreal is stolen land and recognize Isreal only exists due to colonialism, it took me a long time to learn that but I know it now. Before I knew that, I knew that regardless of the prior history that in current day Palestine is being subjected to a genocide. However, I struggle with politics and therefore struggle with understanding how a one-Palestinian-state could be achieved and have concern about what would happen to any genuinely innocent people who live in Isreal. To be clear, Isreal as a whole is guilty and I just have concern about what will happen to the portion of people in Isreal who are just as horrified as the rest of the world at what their government is doing. I do not personally know any Palestinians, so I have not known who to talk to about this especially since I do not want to overstep in any way. Theres more context I could provide but I wont because this is roughly the gist of where I am currently at when it comes to my concerns about whether or not I am still zionist. Do you have any reccomendations as to what I can do about my concerns? I am not sure whether or not I am overstepping right now by asking you this, but I do not know any other Palestians on a personal level that I can go to.

hey thanks for sending this in. i think we all have zionist biases that we have to unlearn, even i catch myself falling for it sometimes. so it's not necessarily a moral failing if you're trying to undo the zionism you've been taught. thanks for trying to undo it!

i do want to correct you a bit thought, in that *all* of israel is stolen land because israel is a settler colonial society. until it is relabeled as "Palestine" it can't not be stolen land.

I guess my advice is that you read scholarship and perspectives on palestinian thought and heritage. i can't tell you what a free palestine will look like but i can tell you what i imagine it to be. but what i can tell you is that the state of israel is fully intent on erasing all traces of palestinian life no matter what.

i guess i can tell you why "two state solutions" don't really work because there is no.... prevention of settlement building in the west bank and they'll never really promote *not* settling in the west bank. like i really cannot imagine a world where there aren't settlers on palestinian land no matter the case. and that's even not allowing palestinians the right of return to their homes and expecting them to give up what they dedicated their lives to. many palestinians in the west bank and gaza are themselves refugees because they were displaced in '48. so no matter what, palestinians will always get the short end of the stick and told to "just deal with it."

plus, why are we concerned with the supposed future danger towards israelis when the current, very real danger towards palestinians exists? shouldn't we prioritize actual events over hypothetical ones? why should we concern ourselves with the future when for palestinians its not a guarantee? i have no idea what's going to happen to gaza, for example.... shouldn't we prioritize that gaza lives on today?

i think i would question why you think israelis are inherently in danger in a one state solution? like do you assume that palestinians will all universally commit violence on all israelis? is it because you believe that hamas wants to kill every single israeli jew no matter what? if so, i think that's where your problem lies — in the assumption that peace can only be achieved through segregation just in a lighter form (because the state of israel relies on segregation as a principal of its existence as a jewish state). what about the palestinians who fear living side by side with the same people who raped, tortured, and murdered them for 75 years, or advocated for their deaths? aren't they inherently in more danger?

i mean palestinians have consistently been painted as the villains for more than 75 years. like in every aspect. i think to really truly be antizionist you need to prioritize palestinian concerns and worries over israeli ones because of how.... unwilling much of the world is to even consider them.

approaching zionism from an idea of an inequality structure is also necessary — rather than assuming its a one off system, we examine it as a perpetuation of multiple types of systems of inequality embedded into one. i recommend the institute for the critical study of zionism (click) for more information on this. There's also this book by Ismail Zayid written in the 80's (click) about the longtime violence the ideology of zionism has done to multiple communities, not just palestinians.

Here's a great reading list by palipunk about different aspects of palestinian thought and culture (click). i suggest looking through them to help decolonize our way of thought.

i might add on to this later if i think of something else to say.

[cloversnstrawberries]

oc intro post ! ! alien!scientist & human teen!reader

masterlist | requests open !

warnings; Dehumanization(?), non-human doesn't have human morals, experimentation, very brief mention/implication of violence/death, possessive behavior, and i cannot think of anymore :( once i write it down, its gone from my brain </3

additional notes; i don't think i've ever spoken about it on here, but i am a SUCKER for retro futurism. i love it so much, it's so funny watching old movies (cough cough blade runner) and get suckerpunched by the fact it's meant to be set in 2019??!? HUH?? i love retro futurism sm,, this is based more on the 50s/60s idea of it, more than the 80s version (cassette futurism) :]

i also had to take a screenshot of the ask, to try and allow the 'keep reading' button to work, please lmk if i should keep doing that!!

! ! introduction blurb & moodboard below the cut ! !

In the grand scheme of things, humans are pretty much the outer-space equivalent of a deep sea creature, in a way. Earth was never on the radar for any other type of people-- it was a place just out of their reach, and the ones who could, in theory, reach it, had no interest in it.

Until the Humans started coming to them, and it was hard to ignore it. Loud, noisy things they were-- it held a certain amount of novelty at first, like you'd feel after hearing that a fish found thousands of meters down in the ocean had suddenly washed up on a Californian beach.

But at some point, when beaches start to become covered in them-- when you could seldom get a look at the sand anymore, covered with what was previously unknown (and now known too well), it's expected to get tired of it all.

There are, obviously, language barriers. Some planets utilize rudimentary vocalizations, their biology not made to facilitate any sorts of complex languages, while others used gestures and body language. Some were telepathic,

'Michael', as he's come to be known, was apart of a race that were highly independent-- spread across the cosmos, not having a specific, designated planet. Their biology is developed in a way where they can achieve all sorts of communication. As long as they learn it, of course.

When humans first started reaching out to other races, many races adapted human names. Michael didn't have a name before, that's not something that his race did. Didn't have a gender either, but arbitrarily picked one for the heck of it.

He didn't particularly like or dislike humans, but found them interesting in a detached kind of way. When given the opportunity to join about 20-or-so other researchers, he didn't hesitate.

It was aggravating, dealing with other people after being happily solitary for so long; having to learn a couple different dialects as well, so he could communicate with who was most necessary.

They were studying human young, children-- in a pool of about 14 subjects, all within the ages of 13-17, he doesn't know what made him chose to take you as his charge.

At first, you were like all the others. Scared stiff, not knowing what was happening-- All of you were snatched from various human colonies, launched by different countries. The higher ups tried to limit any possible overlap in language, to prevent any possible coups and what not.

It's not like you were the easiest, or the most challenging. Some chose their charges on the base that they'd be easy to deal with, or that it'd be a reward challenge to have the charge warm up to them.

You were just there-- at first, he thought there was nothing truly special about you. He hadn't even bothered to learn your language, since it was proving just fine to communicate with you via rudimentary hand gestures and what not.

Until he observed you more closely-- there were some tests they did, to test the intellect of their subjects. You refused to participate, even under the threat of violence, starvation, or even termination.

At first, he assumed you just being stubborn for the sake of it. Until he put two-and-two together-- you were trying to get punished, because you knew they took you into a different sector of the compound to do so.

You were trying a very roundabout way of escaping, or maybe trying to get access to the main console and contact some help. There was a large chance you wouldn't make it, and you seemed to know it.

He caught onto it faster than the others, and had to put into solitary under false pretenses. No one would interact with you but him, unless given express permission.

That same night, he started learning your language. Something about you intrigued him, beyond just scientific reasons. You were probably a dime-a-dozen, humans were known to be incredibly stubborn, driven by emotions and often willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others.

Something about you was just-- he doesn't know how to explain it. His kind don't raise their young, not like humans do, or even most other races did. He'd never understood the instincts other races had toward their young, because, again-- his kind is very solitary.

Something about you made him want to protect you, to hold you close. Maybe he was a defect-- maybe it was him who was different, while you were perfectly normal. Maybe it was just right place, right time (or wrong place, wrong time from your perspective), that it was you he latched onto.

Or maybe it was something deeper-- either way, you weren't a subject in his eyes. Not anymore, you weren't disposable; he hopes he could make that clear in the near future, both by verbal communication, and by his actions.

Your solitary cell was more like a bedroom-- he'd started to have things imported for you, making it look like an average human young's room. He got away with it, because he claimed you were going to be a control group. Have you in an environment most similar to the one you were in before, to see if you got on better or worse than the other subjects. Held in a compound, of the likes they'd never seen before most likely.

It was a lie, in a way. But he got away with it-- you seemed put off by it, but that was understandable. Your language was proving a little more difficult to learn than he'd expected, so he couldn't just tell you the change in plans. You had a right to be wary of it.

[moonlit-bunny]

honestly, I can't think of a single reason to enjoy or tolerate k@t/ang - everything about it gives me the biggest ick. usually I'm not that frustrated by ships, but this one really nags at my "this feels unjust" part of my brain. what likable quality is there?? even before I had any real opinion, I knew it was eugh... the way their interactions were written and shown always made me uncomfortable. "the younger boy has a crush on the babysitter" canonically being the creators' intent for their dynamic is not cute, wholesome or appealing to me whatsoever - particulary when that dynamic never changes throughout the entirety of the storyline, and their fundamental disagreements and conflicts are left unaddressed (to the BOY'S benefit).

the worst part is that the shippers try to make it seem like they're more cognizant of social justice, genocide, interracial relations (especially against zk fans) and a girl's needs. but the thing is, their arguments fall flat because the main character is so clearly the white creators' self insert whose romantic portrayal undeniably gives major "Nice Guy" red flags and treads incel territory: he doesn't need to earn her love - no, he is entitled to it. this is actually anti-feminist messaging and we never saw our girl's needs met in that dynamic. instead, it was him who was one-way benefitting from her mothering (which he wasn't bothered by), and his actions kept pulling her back into that role. in TSR, we see it even more - assuming the worst, lecturing and imposing his beliefs based on his idea of how she should be, not trying to listen or be present when he very well could have due to shared experiences of colonial violence. not to mention the grace, presence and non-judgmental comfort she'd offered him when he lost his bison and lost his temper.

at this point I am reminded that this series was made by white americans, so while the other characters can push the boundaries a little, the main character must be an enlightened boy with a supposedly higher moral conscience (in contrast to the angry, irrational brown girl) palatable to an audience residing in an imperial core (in which the majority of us do not regularly encounter or fight off the horrors of an active genocide). in other words, he unfortunately plays the role of a white man's mouthpiece for lukewarm takes - telling us essentially doing nothing is the correct answer to your loved one learning that an imperial soldier who murdered her family has made no amends and is out there walking free - no haunting, no memory, no consequence.

how does all of this not make one raise an eyebrow? by season 3 I really felt like someone had just thrown a tantrum in the writer's room and that's how we ended up here.

in some ways we got to see a fuller development and journey for zuko: we find zuko confronting his father become a better parallel to her confronting her mom's killer (that he considerately does not bring up on her journey), with both of them overcoming a generational trauma that share the same root cause. maybe we are drawn to this, maybe this feels more gut-wrenching, maybe this makes for a richer character arc because he is not a wide-eyed baby-faced self-insert, journeyed alone, and therefore was not shielded from having to make tough choices (like the main character's s2/s3 final dilemma). to think - his story more closely mirrors Buddha's own origin story! the irony.

it really is mindboggling because there are so many beautiful ways to write a friends -> lovers story, and it doesn't even need to be complicated. (if anyone's read fma, just look at ed/winry - heartwarming, reciprocated, felt natural and earned.)

this one's an unfortunate, utter mess, and season 3 plus the comics and LoK seemed to rub salt on the wound instead of making any meaningful attempts at clarifying previous issues and improving their relations. I just feel like seeing this pair as overall wholesome or something is ignoring certain key moments in the storyline, especially those concerning our girl. you'd really need to AU-ify their dynamic to get to a point where a romantic relationship between them (that is actually mutual) feels right or compatible.

[lady-forest-1142]

hiii I'm reposting my review of cordelia's honor here from my goodreads bc I need more ppl to share in my obsession dammit! (also if I've misspelled any names have pity on me, I read this on audio)

an instant favorite? an instant favorite that I read on audiobook?? in this economy??? unequivocally, yes. holy fuck. this had everything. large cast of compelling characters, fast-paced plot, romance, explorations of war and violence and power and motherhood and disability and morality, tight writing, dry humor - the works. I wish Barrayar had been six hours longer. I need to start the next book immediately. I don't know that I can do it justice in a review.

Shards of Honor: okay, after all that gushing this was only ("only") a 4.5. we've got a survival story, a galactic war, a psychological thriller, and a romance all combined, and the plot shifted tones and focuses just a little too much for me (plus I'll admit the space battle parts lost me a bit). we're following cordelia naismith, a research officer on assignment on a (unbeknownst to her) politically-advantageous planet. cordelia's base is ambushed by a mutineering band of barrayaran soldiers, the enemies of her people of beta colony, and she finds herself stranded on the planet with the notorious barrayaran admiral aral vorkosigan. the plot escalates in leaps and bounds from there - to outline anything more would be a spoiler. needless to say, cordelia and aral fall in love, against a backdrop of the aforementioned mutiny, a war, a scheming emperor on his deathbed, and a masochistic officer. cordelia is a soldier, a captain, a captive, a prisoner of war, a psychic patient, and a lady in the course of 336 pages. and I love her. she's an absolute badass, she's deeply compassionate, she isn't afraid to call anyone (particularly aral) on their shit, she's reckless. she waterboards someone in a fish tank. she utters possible the most metal romantic line I've ever heard ("when he's cut, I bleed"). I want to be her when I grow up. aral falls sickeningly in love with her - he literally admits that he first got a crush on her upon seeing her throwing up in a creek and proposes marriage to her after less than two weeks. he's also a (CANONICAL) disaster bisexual whose idea of therapy is getting drunk in hideous hawaiian shirts with sentimental value and he has a sadistic murdering ex-boyfriend. actually this is a great book to read as a bisexual. I want to be their third so bad.

Barrayar: yeah this is the book that sealed the brainrot for me. political intrigue, a fancy-dress ball, assassination attempts, high emotional stakes, cordelia being the only rational person in the room 80% of the time, the BEST side characters, all escalating to a civil war that, naturally, involves cordelia beheading people? sign me the fuck up. I'm not gonna talk about cordelia and aral again save that I love them even when aral is being a moron with a horrible father. he doesn't rly deserve cordelia and he knows it. ok. now. koudelka is my babygirl and can literally do no wrong, okay? even though he is a moron of the absolute highest order who needs to be slapped approximately every 50 pages (cordelia usually takes care of it). (actually all the men in this book are morons and the women are perfect. no wonder I like it!) hottest man to carry a walking stick / sword since jem carstairs. droushnakovi my QUEEN, idolizes cordelia (as she should) bc barrayaran society is stupid and misogynist and she's never seen a female soldier before, deserves every good thing in the world (first and foremost a briefing on feminism). bothari....I am clenching my fist in emotion. when we are talking of COMPLEX MORALLY GRAY MEN....look no further. when he calls himself cordelia's pet dog???? gnawing at the bars of my enclosure. he is FAR from perfect and I'd probably want to be at least 500 meters away from him irl but GOD does he get in my FEELINGS. plus also girl dad, so we have to cheer. ohhh my god and I haven't even gotten into the politics and social structure of barrayar and how it is so similar to our own and how cordelia is in the perfect position to critique it bc beta colony is suuuper different and way more advanced, and critique it she does. the conversations about motherhood and the expectation that mothers carry their children to term biologically even when technology exists elsewhere in the galaxy to literally replace and replicate a uterus? actually every single discussion about motherhood and social expectations on barrayar vs beta colony. frighteningly prescient for a book published in 1991!! ALSO the conversations on disability and the validity of disabled life that I am sure will only continue?? (count piotr can go kick rocks btw). can you tell this is my favorite book of the year yet?? jesus christ. I need the next one immediately.

[ghostmoor]

what up it's drone headcanon hours

these handsome guys in the middle are Dove Reki's resident drones - Lazarik, Dalimil, Neveny and Radomir - showing off some of the variation in fully-grown drone plumage. some grow extra feathers around the arms and legs, though not usually full coverage. these fellas are big and somewhat lumbering on two feet, but can break into an impressive all-fours sprint when provoked. you don't want one of them charging at you.

more assorted headcanons

in a healthy colony, drone development is somewhat self-regulating. a small percentage of healthy mudokons in their natural environment will enter drone puberty without any assistance based on a variety of factors (overall population, interactions with unrelated mudokons, presence of other drones, proximity to queens, +more).

in the event of a shortage, mudokon cultures historically had methods of deliberately inducing drone puberty. the efficacy of these varies but most are/were hitting at least a 50% success rate.

in captivity, the homogeniety of labour forces, absence of drones or queens, poor living conditions and warped or total lack of exposure to titillating materials is often enough to suppress drone puberty. mudokons in captivity don't know that queens or drones even exist, and those that manage to get their hands on Materials™ soak up a bunch of complete misinformation about what's supposed to be considered Sexy.

most captive drones never meet the queens they inseminate. it's all done mechanically. don't wanna 1) damage the goods and 2) let the fellas get ideas that this might actually be morally and ethically heinous.

some glukkons have their little pet worker mudokons but if you REALLY want to show off, you get yourself a stud drone. they're a riskier, higher-maintenance investment, but boy, do they look fancy, and there are people that will pay a high price for a batch of eggs from a drone with traits that are desirable to them. it's a complicated business, spanning generations of mudokons, and only divisive because some people see it as an unnecessary waste of time and money when you could just be breeding more factory fodder instead of being picky.

a successful stud drone typically gets a very comfortable life. they're worth the expense! until they stop reliably producing offspring. at that point they're generally sold off. there are very few prospects for elderly drones.

[palms-upturned]

But you can take direct action AND vote harm reduction as much as possible. In fact, you SHOULD be doing that. Yeah there are too many people whose stance ends at "vote for the least bad" but the problem is the worst of the politicians have dedicated followers who will aggressively vote their guys into the office to the detriment to everyone else. So, yes, get involved and march and everything else but please still vote harm reduction. That's all most of us are asking. Because the worse side of this is still going to be doing genocide, they're just going to be sure to bring some of that genocide home and use it to ensure immigrants and queer people here are killed as well.

I think you need to sit with that last sentence you wrote. The point of my post was that if you cast a vote for people who actively participate in genocide in another country because you think their domestic policy is better for you, then you have to be able to understand and sit with the fact that you are breaking solidarity with colonized people. You are voting for the “leopards who promise to only eat the faces of people in the global south” party. You have to be prepared to accept what people extrapolate about you and your politics from this rather than take it as a slight against your morals that you need to defend yourself from.

Immigrants and queer people are already dying here. The Biden administration has not curbed the sudden rise in homophobic/transphobic legislation we’ve been seeing. Roe v Wade has been repealed, and we very nearly lost the Indian Child Welfare Act, too. We’re seeing a covid surge with numbers rivaling the very start of the pandemic, but none of the protections that we had at the start, which weren’t even good to begin with. And now that people are mobilizing across the country for Palestine, this administration is actively making it more difficult to even express anti zionist sentiments in public. Palestinian communities here are facing increased policing. You can talk about harm reduction all you want, but I struggle to see the value in supporting a party whose only appeal is “at least we’re not the other guys,” who can brazenly go against the majority of the American people over and over and over because they believe that they’ll remain in power no matter what because hey, what’s the alternative, let the republicans win? If there are no stakes for them, then what’s the fucking point? Why would they ever accede any demand that their constituents ever made of them? And if not, then what good is it to put them in positions of power?

Personally, I will never forget any of what I’ve seen as long as I live, and you will never catch me voting for any of these people. I won’t legitimize their strategy. I think it’s a fucking bad one, and I think that these people are never going to do anything but toe the colonial line. I can’t stop you from voting however you want to vote, but I genuinely fail to see how trying to rally people to vote against their better judgment is a better use of your time and energy than trying to rally your party to do something that people would actually vote for. In the meantime, regardless of who’s in what seat, the work laid out before us remains the same. It is always the same. We have to protect each other separate from and in spite of the state.

[babelrevived]

Are you fr about silco being a hero?

silco.. The one who's responsible for the usage of shimmer, caused and worsened jinx's mentality, and also kidnaps children and forces them into those shimmered machines to fight the upsiders. Like we get it you like him, but you don't have to delude yourself about his morals and straight up consider him a hero when he's the enabler for the majority of the problems

ya. To be clear my list is not about who has the best morals, it’s about who is the villain and who is the hero, which in this case depends more on ideology than morality because this is a show centered on themes of class division and colonialism. If I was making a list on who’s the most moral, Ekko would be white, Viktor would be light gray, and everyone else would be dark gray/black. Also I’m not defending Silco’s actions because I like him, its the other way around I like him because of his actions lol.

“The one who's responsible for the usage of shimmer” ok and shimmer is also shown to be the backbone of Zaun’s economy, they would literally be living in even worse poverty than they already are without it, since Piltover stopped relying on their mines when they got the hexgates. Silco industrializing Zaun is a good thing idc.

Tbh when I first watched the show I didn’t like the shimmer plot line at all cuz I thought it made no sense and that it was only there to villainize resistance fighters/revolutionaries (it is) but I remember someone on here made a really good point on how shimmer reflects the fact that being oppressed just doesn’t leave you with any good options. And usually the options are 1. Do nothing and slowly watch everyone around you die due to the miserable conditions you are forced to live in, or 2. Do something radical and extreme that will no doubt get a lot of people killed, but in the end you will have a chance to get your freedom, to get a better future. There is no magical solution to end the effects of oppression and colonialism, the scars will always be there and they won’t go away, not until generations and generations pass at least. Anyway back to Zaun. Honestly, if you look at it from their perspective, shimmer was their only choice. Gave them an economy, medicine, weaponry, etc. It wasnt all good of course but, again, that’s exactly the point. And it isn’t Silco’s fault because he never would have had to use it if it wasn’t for Piltover’s oppression. He says it himself when he was talking to Vander; finally they have something to realize their dream, to tip the scales on their side.

“caused and worsened jinx's mentality” No I’m pretty sure being on the bridge when she was like 6 and watching enforcers kill people, including her parents, is what caused her “mentality” and accidentally killing her whole family and being “abandoned” by her sister is what worsened it. Ok I’m not going to say that their relationship was healthy or good, by all means it wasn’t, BUT I think Silco was good for Jinx in a way that he kind of knew how to deal with her trauma because he has had a similar experience. I can definitely see Jinx being in a much worse state if it wasn’t for him. Although of course the way he dealt with his trauma was far from perfect, and with his mentality he ended up (unintentionally) preventing Jinx from moving on from her trauma. Sucks to say it but I think him dying at that point was the best thing that could have happened to her. I can imagine him being very awful if he did survive lol.

“and also kidnaps children and forces them into those shimmered machines to fight the upsiders” girl we’re just making shit up now ROFL

“he's the enabler for the majority of the problems” No, he is not. And if he didn’t exist then there would have been another Silco to take his place. Because Silco doesn’t exist in a vacuum, his environment (that Piltover created) is what caused him to be the way that he was. He was a monster and felt the need to become a monster because he was forced to grow up in monstrous conditions. Yk “if the environment shapes humanity then the environment must be made human”. Basically, no Silco was not the cause of the problems, Piltover was. And that’s the real tragedy of Arcane; none of these personal problems between the Zaunite characters at least would exist if it wasn’t for Piltover’s oppression. And Jinx knew that, and that’s why she bombed the council. Not to avenge Silco and not as an act of revolution. She did it simply because it is what they deserved, for better or for worse.

[zedecksiew]

(Don't) Incentivise Ethical Behaviour

In the ongoing project of rescuing useful thoughts off Xwitter, here's another hot take of mine, reheated:

"Being good for a reward isn’t being good---it’s just optimal play."

The quote comes from Luke Gearing and his excellent post "Against Incentive", to which I had been reacting.

My thread was mainly intended as a fulsome nodding along to one of Luke's points. It was posted in 2021, and extended in 2023 after Sidney Icarus posed a question to it. So it is two threads.

Here they are, properly paragraphed, hopefully more cleanly expressed:

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(Don't) Incentivise Ethical Behaviour

This is my main problem with mechanically rewarding pro-social play: a character's ethical choice is rendered mercenary.

As Luke Gearing puts it:

"Being good for a reward isn’t being good---it’s just optimal play."

Bear in mind that I'm not saying that pro-social play can't have rewarding outcomes for players. Any decision should have consequences in the fiction. It serves the ideal of portraying a living, world to have these consequences rendered diegetic:

The townsfolk are thankful; the goblins remember your mercy; pamphlets appear, quoting from your revolutionary speech.

What I am saying is that rewarding abstract mechanical benefits (XP tickets, metacurrency points, etc) for ethical decisions stinks.

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A subtle but absolutely essential distinction, when it comes to portraying and exploring ethics / morality, in roleplaying games.

Say you reward bonus XP for sparing goblins.

Are your players making a decisions based on how much they value life / the personhood of goblins? Or are they making a decision based on how much they want XP?

Say you declare: "If you help the villagers, the party receives a +1 attitude modifier in this village."

Are your players assisting the community because it is the right thing to do, or are they playing optimally, for a +1 effect?

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XP As Currency

XP is the ur-example of incentive in TTRPGs. It began with D&D's gold-for-XP, and has never strayed far from that logic.

XP is still currency. Do things the GM / game designer wants you to do? Get paid.

Players use XP to buy better mechanical tools (levels, skills, abilities)---which they can then in turn use to better perform the actions that will net them XP.

Like using gold you stole from goblins to buy a sword, so you can now rob orcs.

I genuinely feel that such systems are valuable. They are models that illuminate the drives fuelling amoral / unethical behaviour.

Material gain is the drive of land-grabbing and colonialism. Logger-barons and empires do get wealthier and more privileged, as a reward for their terrible actions.

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If you want to present an ethical choice in play, congruent to our real-life dilemmas, there is value in asking:

"Hey, if you kill the goblins you can grab their treasure, and you will get richer. There's no reward for sparing their lives, except that they are thankful."

Which is another way of asking:

"Does your commitment to the ideal of preserving life outweigh the guaranteed material incentives for taking life?"

The ethical choice is the difficult choice, precisely because it involves---as it often does, in real life---sacrificing personal growth and gain. Doling out an XP bounty for doing the right thing makes the ethical choice moot.

"I as the player am making a mechanically optimal choice, but my character is making an ethical choice!"

A cop-out. Owning your cake and eating it too. The fictional fig-leaf of empathy over a calculated a decision to make profit.

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Sidney Icarus asks a question which I will quote here:

"... those who hold to their beliefs of good behaviour don't feel rewarded, and therefore feel punished. And that's not a good feeling. It's an unpleasant experience to play a game where the righteous players are in rags, and the mercenary fucks have crowns and sceptres. So, what's the design opportunity? How do we make doing the right thing feel pleasant without making it mercenary? Or, like reality, do we acknowledge that ethical acts are valuable only intrinsically and philosophically? I have no idea how to reconcile this."

I would suggest that the above dichotomy---"righteous players in rags, mercs in crowns"---is true if property is recognised as the only true incentive.

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Friends As Property

Modern games try to solve the righteous-players-in-rags "problem" in various ways. Virtue might not net you treasure or XP, but may give you:

Contact or ally slots, which you can fill in;

Relationship meters you can watch tick up;

Favour points you can cash in later;

etc.

How different are these mechanical incentives from treasure or XP, really?

Your relationships with supposedly living, breathing beings are transformed into abilities for your character: skills you can train; powers you can reliably proc. Pump your relationship score with the orc tribe until calling on them for reinforcements becomes a once-per-month ability.

Relationships become contracts. Regard becomes debt. Put your friend in an ally slot, so they become a tool.

If this is what you want play to be---totally fine! As stated previously, games say powerful things when they portray the engines of profit and property.

But I personally don't think game designers should design employer-employee relationships and disguise these as instances of mutual aid.

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Friends As Friends

In the OSR campaigns I'm part of, I keep forgetting to record money. Which is usually a big deal in such games, seeing as they are in the grand tradition of gold-for-XP?

In both games, my characters are still 1st-Level pukes, though it's been months.

I'm having a blast, anyway.

My GMs, by virtue of running organic, reactive worlds, have made play rewarding for me. NPCs / geographies remember the party's previous actions, and respond accordingly.

I've been given gills from a river god, after constant prayer;

I've befriended a village of monsters, where we now live;

I've parleyed with the witch of a whole forest, where we may now tread;

I've a boon from the touch of wood wose, after answering his summons.

I cannot count on the wood wose showing up. He is a character in the world, not a power I control. Calling on the wood wose might become a whole adventure.

Little of this stuff is codified my stats or abilities or equipment list. They are mostly all under "misc notes".

Diegetic growth. Narrative change that spirals into more play.

This is the design opportunity, to me:

How do we shape TTRPG play culture in such a way that the "misc notes" gaps in our games are as fun as the systemised bits? What kinds of orientation tools must we provide? What should we say, in our advice sections?

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A Note About Trust

The reason why it is so hard to imagine play beyond conventional incentive structures has a lot to do with trust.

Sidney again:

One of the core issues is the "low trust table". I'm not designing just for myself but for my audience. For a product. How much can I ask purchasers and their friends to codesign this part with me?

Nerds love numbers and things we can write down in inventories or slots because they are sureties. We've learned to fear fiat or player discretion, traumatised as we are by Problem GMs or That Guys.

The reason why the poverty in Sidney's hypothetical ("righteous players are in rags") sounds so bad is because in truth it represents risk at the game table. If you don't participate in the mechanics legible to your ruleset (the XP and gear to do more game things), you risk gradually being excluded from play.

You have no assurance your fellow players will know how hold space for you; be considerate; work together to portray a living world where NPCs react in meaningful ways---in ways that will be fun and rewarding for everybody playing.

You are giving up the guarantee of mechanical relevance for the possibility of fun interactions and creative social play.

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The "low trust table" is learned behaviour--the cruft of gamer culture and trauma.

When I game with folks new to TTRPGs, they tend to be decent, considerate. I think there's enough anecdotal evidence from folks playing with school kids / newcomers / etc to suggest my experience is not unique.

If the "low trust table" is indeed learned behaviour, it can be unlearned.

Which rules conventions, now part of the hobby mainstream, were the result of designers designing defensively---shadowboxing against terrible players and the spectre of "unfairness"?

How can we "undesign" such conventions?

Lack of trust is a problem that we have to address in play culture, not rulesets. You cannot cook a dish so good it forces diners to have good table manners.

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This is too long already. I'll end with an observation:

Elfgames are not praxis, but doesn't this specific dilemma in the microcosm of our silly elfgames ultimately mirror real-world ethics?

To be moral is to trust in a better world; to be amoral / immoral is to hedge against the guarantee of a worse one.

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Further Reading

Some words from around the TTRPG community about incentive and advancement in games:

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However, the reason there is a big debate about this is that behavioural incentives in games clearly do work, either entirely or at various levels. This applies outside gaming, as well. Why do advertising companies and retail business use "rewards" structures to convince people to buy more of their products? Why do people chase after "Likes" on social media?

A comment by Paul_T to "A Hypothesis on Behavioral Incentives" from a discussion on Story-Games.com

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the structure and symbolism of the D&D game align with certain structures and values of patriarchy. The game is designed to last infinitely by shifting goalposts of character experience in terms of increasing amounts of gold pieces acquired; this resembles the modus operandi of phallic desire which seeks out object after object (most typically, women) in order to quench a lack which always reasserts itself.

D&D's Obsession With Phallic Desire from Traverse Fantasy

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In short, my feeling is that rewarding players with character improvement in return for achieving goals in a specific way impedes some of the key strengths of TTRPGs for little or no benefit in return. 

Incentives from Bastionland

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When good deeds arise naturally out of the players choices, especially when players rejected other options that were more beneficial to them, it is immensely satisfying. Far more than if players are just assumed to be heroic by default. It gives agency and meaning to player choice.

Make Players Choose To Be Kind from Cosmic Orrery

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Much has been made about 1 GP = 1 XP as the core gameplay loop driver of TSR D+D. But XP for gold retrieved also winds up being something of a de facto capitalistic outlook as well. Success is driven by accumulation of individual wealth -- by an adventuring company, even! So what's a new framework that can be used for underpinning a leftist OSR campaign?

A Spectre (7+3 HD) Is Haunting the Flaeness: Towards a Leftist OSR from Legacy of the Bieth

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Growth should be tied to a specific experience occurring in the fiction. It is more important for a PC to grow more interesting than more skilled or capable. PCs experience growth not necessarily because they’ve gotten more skill and experience, but because they are changed in a significant way.

Cairn FAQ from Cairn RPG / Yochai Gal

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Thank you Ram for the Story-Games.com deep cut!

( Image sources: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/neuron-activation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majesty:_The_Fantasy_Kingdom_Sim https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/special-reports-pdfs/10490978.pdf https://varnam.my/34311/untold-tales-of-indian-labourers-from-rubber-plantations-during-pre-independence-malaya/ https://nobonzo.com/ )

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PS: used with permission from Sandro, art by Maxa', a reminder to self:

[storkmuffin]

i love The Leaders i’m glad you mentioned it! never looked into the lyrics but i love the threatening aura (wooyoung’s whispers are SO COOL i will not rest until they let him do more villainous and evil things)

if you don’t mind, could you share what you think about the korean lyrics? <3

선도부 / The Leaders is the most problematic song for me, and I'm so glad you asked this question. I tend to get haunted by this song, because it's damn catchy and fun and significant bits of it are such earworms and stay with me, but I also find the whole vibe and lyrics so extremely uncomfortable. I'll try to explain but TLDR, I kind of never want to see them perform it or make an MV for it.

I'm using the translation into english available on the Genius.com for 선도부 (The Leaders) as of today's date, April 25, 2025. I also have things to say about how wrong a lot of it is.

Here goes:

Seon-do-bu (선도부) Are Not Your Friends

선도부다 wait wait (yes, sir) /손들어라 wait wait (yeah yeah)

It's the leaders, wait, wait (Yes sir)

Raise your hands, wait, wait (Yeah, yeah)

Starting with the word 선도부, mistranslated as Leaders, there's an immediate problem. I can't think of what exists in the West that is the equivalent but 선도부 (Seon-do-bu) are not leaders in the normal sense of understanding the word in English. Hall Monitor maybe, except those kids were not given the power that seon-do-bu had. They're more like the Iranian morality police portrayed in Persepolis:

These are not people elected by peers to represent the student body - that's 반장 (class president) or 회장 (student union chairperson). What Seon-do-bu do is they enforce the dress code and rules of student decorum and behavior against other students, because they are empowered to do so by the teachers. They are children who have been delegated adult supervisory powers over other children, and it never works out well, because kids empowered over other kids never works out well.

Oh, to any assholes who have never been to Korea and are about to get racist and weird about the special oppressiveness of Korean society, you can eat shit and die, honestly. Children everywhere are oppressed, and teenagers especially are subjected to dehumanizing, controlling rules in almost every place I've ever heard of.

Anyway. This system of having Seon-do-bu exists because of two legacies:

1) military dictatorship culture, which was a direct legacy of the militaristic terror that Japanese colonialism inflicted on Korea for 30+ years leading to basically the whole society functioning like one giant totalitarian army and the massive population well into the 1990s, and

2) the post Korean war baby boom in South Korea coupled with the new rules for 100% mandatory education for both boys and girls as well as all social strata of persons, which led to absolutely overpopulated schools for a long time. There would be 60 kids to a class, 12 classes per grade, and every school was like this. Given the extremely strict rules for attire (hair can't be longer than however many cms, clothes must have a specific, military-clean fit, no personal accessories, etc etc) it became impossible for teachers to do all this monitoring themselves, and hence they selected children who were especially intimidating to take on the task of being enforcers.

These are not, I repeat, the smartest or most accomplished or popular students. These are the toughest, most rigid ones that enjoy exercising power over others. Some cynical teachers were said to have picked the children most likely to be rule flouters and problems for the teacher and instead made them this quasi-military morality police and unleashed them on other students. By getting to be seon-do-bu, the troublemakers hid (not abstained, but hid) their problematic behaviors from the teachers and therefore made it not the teacher's problem. They instead channeled their aggression and destructive energies on other children instead.

So just imagine, a teenage boy or girl chosen for their ability and desire to tell off other students, wearing a fascist armband (more on the damn armband below), authorized to give everyone who comes to school a once over head to foot to see if they have non-regulation personal jewelry or their hair is too long, giving you that examination every single morning you come to school. EEK!

In fact the word Seon-do-bu created such a negative set of feelings that they started to call it something else: 학생생활지도부 (Student Life Guide Group) or 또래지킴이 (Peer Guardians - as in, these guardians guide their peers away from paths to ruin, I guess). But according to articles I found questioning why we still have this system as of 2018 students still complained of feeling intimidated and afraid when they had to walk by these kids.

In at least one performance, Ateez make it clear that they are the negative image of seondobu that I have, and they like it. The little 'acting bit' that happens right after this intro (this is during the Kingdom Final performance, air date 21.06.03), Hong Joong does come to the 'rescue' of some dancer who is a kid being bullied, but it goes by in 2 seconds before they start "The Real." But they had to put that in there to stave off criticism that they were glorifying a thing that people like me would really object to.

The swagger about the Confucian Fundamentalist Fascist armband with both Seonghwa and San almost punching their own arm with glee, like they're 'powering up,' enacting being the tough kids who don't look like they've ever held a book never mind pay attention class, and nevertheless being seon-do-bu ordering people around? Yikes.

And yet the song is bouncy and fun (but I mean, I've read that Neo-Nazi songs are also very catchy), the boys are all Idols so they're beautiful and hot, and styled within an inch of their lives, so it's all aesthetically quite fun, you know?

I am suffering.

And it plays into a stereotype about Gyeongsangdo men being toughs, gangsters, criminals, enforcers etc. Moreover, the delivery of the words Seon-do-bu-da wait wait - where they don't pronounce the T on WAIT on purpose? It comes out to a Korean listener not reading along to the official lyrics like 선도부다 왜왜? - which is I'm Seun-do-bu why why? literally, but it the why why in our language context basically means, What are you gonna do about it, loser? I'm sure they did that on purpose.

The New Kkondae Situation

나쁜 건 나빠 man (yeah yeah)/ 말 들어 뉴 꼰대 (yes, sir)

Bad things are bad, man (Yeah, yeah)

Listen to me, new kkondae (Yes sir)

First off, if anyone actually said, 말들어 to me to my face I would straight up throw a chair at their face in the hopes of causing grievous harm. It's so rude and so condescending. It doesn't just say, "listen to me." It says "You're wrong, and I'm right, and you are moreover stupid and I'm superior, so you need to shut your mouth entirely and obediently listen to what I am teaching you." Again, the compression of Korean is very hard to explain in English, but 말들어 is a form of imperative for which the only non-abusive use I can imagine is a mom talking to a 2 year old having a meltdown in the supermarket, rolling around on the floor screaming because she won't buy them a 5 kg bag of brown sugar they are suddenly obsessed with.

Also the translation in Genius adds this false comma, "Listen to me, New Kkondae" because whoever did that didn't like what the song was actually saying. Ateez are not addressing the New Kkondae here as some sort of 'other,' they're calling themselves new kkondae. They're reclaiming the word kkondae, and declaring that they are carrying on kkondae values.

The explanatory note contributed on Genius lyrics says:

kkondae loosely translates as a “condescending older person”, the kind often found in a middle or upper management position in the workplace. So they’re trying to tell their “kkondae” to stop ordering their youngers around.

The first part is not wrong. That's generally what kkondae means. But of course, that's not all, and that's not the most important thing. Kkondae has acquired more color and more context over time, and now means something close to Someone Who Demands Fundamentalist Confucian Values Which Are Behind the Times. Why are such values behind the times? Because they are directly against concepts like, oh, democratic free speech, the assumption that everyone is equal and therefore everyone has an equal right to speak, that speech will not be met with physical violence, things like that. It's not just feminist women who don't like Fundamentalist Confucian values - any man who wants the right to disagree with someone older or richer or higher up in the hierarchy should rightly also hate it. And MOST DO.

The last time we lived in a truly Confucian society was during the Victorian era in England, OK? So these are people who are espousing Victorian values. Not even Edwardian but Victorian.

Millennial Korean men especially have been very loud from Day 1 of their adulthood about how much they hate it. And moreover, people born in the 1960s and 70s also hate the idea of kkondae, and fear becoming kkondae. Kkondae also means close minded. It was very important to have this word that insults and corrects this type of mindset. I'm very alarmed at the attempt to have kkondae be 'hip' in any way by reinventing some 'friendlier' version of it. This is too alarmingly close to the horrifying repackaging of the oppression of women as being a relaxing and feminine lifestyle that's been recently happening in the US.

The most trad-values guys of the Ateez group have also filmed this content, where they proclaimed themselves the new kkondae, more or less, which cements this perspective. The most traditional values guys among Ateez are Seonghwa, San, Jongho and Wooyoung.

The ones that did not show up for this are important to consider too. Yeosang, Hongjoong, Yunho and Mingi aren't here. I can't get into it here but this video - and especially Jongho's attitude, remain a sharp pebble in my shoe about my fandom for this group.

Aint a Bad Thing Still Bad?

Hold up / 널 이끄는 황야의 리더 / Hold up /나쁜 건 나쁜 거 아입니까

Hold up, I'm your leader in the wilderness (Ooh) / Hold up, ain't bad still bad? (Ooh)

This is going to be yet another Gyeongsangdo moment, but they give this line to San, who says it in his regional accent. 아입니까 is technically speaking dialect, and not proper grammar. Proper grammar is 아닙니까, and even that formulation is down south dialect, and most people would say 아닌가요? 아입니까 is regional dialect, and it's also reaches back to something I don't want anyone reaching back to.

When a patriarchal Gyeongsangdo man says this phrase, and they do say it, it sounds neutral but the neutrality is a false cover. When I hear it, it makes me feel really violent, because it is one of the rhetorical tools used violently on me as a child, which helped make me the eruptive, verbally scary person I am today. It's phrased like a question - May I just confirm that a bad thing is in fact bad? but that isn't what the phrase is really SAYING.

It's saying, instead, I have decided what is good and what is bad, and those are the only two options. If you keep yapping, I am going to decide that you are a person who can't distinguish between good and evil, and moreover, may not be on the side of the good, which I have defined and my definition is the only one that is possible. So are you, in fact, someone who knows the difference between good and evil, and if you can, are you on the side of good or not?

It's a silencing rhetorical tactic with a threat of violence behind it, and it's in this song. I hate it so much.

Wait a second, woo / 숨이 턱까지 딱 / 아파 내 맘 / 아픈 데는 빨간약

소리는 악 / 따가워 소리 질러 / 오늘도 nah / 나쁜 건 나쁜 거다

Wait a second (Ooh) / Breathe to my chin (Woah) /My heart hurts

Red medicine for the pain (Bad) / Say “Ow” (Ow) / It stings, shout out (Freedom) /Today again, nah / Bad things are bad

위에 더 위에 / 서 차렷 서 집합해 yeah/ 전부 내 뒤에 /쉿 조용 쉿 따라 해 (yeah yeah) /집중해 지금 / 내 시도가 도시를 바꿔놨지 / 그 말마따나 조용히 시키는 대로만 하면 돼 / 용기 패기 객기

Higher and higher, stand up straight, gather around

Everyone behind me, shh, be quiet, follow my orders

Focus now, my actions changed the city

Just shut your mouth and do what you're told

Be brave, brash and bold

I can't do a word for word analysis but there is a typical Hongjoong Korean pun in here: 내 시도가 도시를 바꿔놨지. sido - dosi . Sido for attempt, dosi for city. Very cute.

The English translation says "shut your mouth, do you what you're told" but that's inaccurate. The lyrics actually say, All you need to do is obey my instructions in silence.

The Damn Arm Band

몸엔 black suit and tie / 오른팔엔 완장 tight / 롤리 대신 롤리팝

지금부터 긴장 빡

Wear a black suit and tie / Tight armband on my right / Lollipop instead of rollie / Stay nervous from now on

To show that they were empowered to oppress other children, Seon-do-bu wore armbands. Who else wears armbands? Nazis. Italian Fascists. The terrifying, destructive monstrous children of the Red Guard. The Military Police of most armies.

The whole purpose and design of armbands is supposed to cause a frightened shrinking in the person not wearing it, in order to silence them into meekness.

The Genius translation has this note which...

Armbands on the upper arm are of significance in a lot of cultures: in Japanese society, it’s often a method to identify the leader of a club/group. In soccer as well, it’s a symbol of captaincy which shows the crowd and the players where to look for inspiration, as the Captain has a responsibility to be a role model.

....I am supposed to say stuff like whoever this is meant well and they were trying to help and so on, but Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh fuck it nah, this is my blog, and I am just going to say it:

If anyone ever ever EVER EVER tries to explain anything in Korean society at all whatsoever by going, "In Japanese society" just cut out their tongue. They have no idea what the fuck they're talking about. This note is every kind of entirely wrong and stupid. Why even say anything if you're going to be this goddamn WRONG? I hope they have painful poops from constipation every day until they die.

Wooyoung has a killer delivery of this line - the whispering is so menacing and sexy it's sickening.

But at the same time?

The word for power tripping in Korean actually literally says "the shit that happens when the wrong person wears an armband" (완장질). Feral, out of control young men in armbands have and always will be really bad news for women. And I can't let that go, unfortunately, which interferes with my capacity to enjoy this song.

8th Grade Syndrome and ATEEZ TRANSLATION FAILS

무슨 말을 해 / 안타까운 게 / 하나도 안 멋져 / 중2��� 같아 / 내 몸에 딱 맞는 옷이 제일 예뻐 aye

What are you talking about?

You're such a pity

It's not cool at all

You're like a chuunibyou

Tight clothes are the prettiest

Chuunibyou (中二病 / 厨二病), often shortened to chuuni or chuu2, is an often-derisive Japanese slang term for the embarrassing behavior of 13-to-14-year-olds. The term literally means “Middle [School] 2[nd Year] Syndrome”.

So in this line, they’re trying to say that their haters or “kkondae” (as previously stated) are like immature children.

The last line is a bit wrong. The lyric is not 'tight clothes are the prettiest.' It means the clothes that are tailor made to you, that is, the clothes that fit you, are the ones that look the best. There's an English phrase for this concept too - Getting Too Big For Your Britches. That's what they're talking about.

중2병 literally means Second Year of Middle School Disease. Again the compulsion to shove Korean things into a Japanese frame - I WILL SMACK. OK to be fair about this one- this particular phrase, 중2병 is actually an imported phrase from Japan, but the meaning is now rather diverged from the OG Japanese concept. It used to mean teen angst or behaving like an angsty teenager but now it means something different - it means, in short, cringe. It means, someone who is pretentious, but also deeply ignorant and uninformed, and therefore transparently unable to sustain the pretensions to which they aspire.

And obviously, I disagree that Ateez are disavowing kkondae altogether. They want to be Reformation Kkondae. They want to be Renaissance kkondae. They're not rejecting it altogether, and made reality content in support of this desire to perpetuate Confucian fundamentalist behaviors, while staying stolidly silent about how, like all fundamentalisms, it was absolutely shit to women.

Yeah, I'm the leader, both captain

남달라 성이 / 멋대로 줄 세워도 우린 항상 처음이지

기준 앞뒤 좌우로 나란히 / 다 정숙해 정숙하고 손들어 찔리면

너는 겉멋이 죄 너는 언행이 죄 / 별점 받기 전에 벌점이 답인 애

후덜덜 손바닥 맴매 /난 여기까지만 선생님

I'm the leader, both captain

My family name is different / Cut in line, but we're always in the front

Attention, front and back, from side to side

Everyone, be quiet, shush, raise your hands up

If your'e caught, your fashion is crime, your words and actions are crime /Bonus points, no, minus points are your cure

You're shaking, let's hit your palms / I'll be your teacher until now

The translation for this in the English is also off, and it also seems to have a nostalgia for something that was actually quite vile.

손바닥 맴매: Corporal punishment, quite serious, quite violative, enacted by teachers upon students was a major method of pedagogical abuse and control in Korean schools until the early 2000s.

기준 앞뒤로 나란히 - is not Attention front and back etc. It says line up straight. You know like the military does, all the time? Line people up in straight blocks of interchangeable humans, and then make them march. This is yet another Fascism has cool aesthetics though, kind of a vibe.

손들어 찔리면: If your conscience is pricked, raise your hand to turn yourself in, is what he actually says. Obey in advance, in other words.

난 여기 까지만 선생님: This is blatantly wrongly translated. It doesn't say I will be your teacher until now. What he says is, This is as far as I a go, and then is calling the teacher to take over.

So in sum, what Hongjoong says is this: Your pretentiousness is your crime (can also be SIN because this group has really Catholic lyrics all the time), your speech and behavior are criminally bad/ sinful. The way to deal with a kid like you is penalize you rather than coax with praise. You should be given corporal punishment. Teacher, take over please.

And now to be a total killjoy about an enjoyable song

The fundamental problem with this song, and what it shows me, is the VAST GULF that still exists between Korean men and women, about where we are as a society. This song that looks with cheeky nostalgia at the era of Seon-do-bu, at the era of kkondae who did whatever they wanted without limit because there wasn't a word to critique such behavior, and reappropriates it for a fun time is only possible if that era is completely over. An entertainment company that created an all male group for whom the writers of the songs are also all men and they call their CEO Papa (I am not ever letting this go) that thinks the era of fascistic patriarchy is entirely over is not with it. For Korean women, we are still fucking in it. This is happening to us, -ING, in present tense. There is no nostalgia possible. It's not cute to me. And it's disturbing that they're using such charismatic boys to sing me this song.

All that said, there probably is some sort of justification in their lore for why this song exists. Maybe it is intended as subversion. But that just doesn't come through. And moreover, we're in a worldwide era of a resurgence of fascism. Men the same generation as Ateez elected an openly anti-feminist president into office in South Korea. That man then tried to criminally declare martial law, had to be fought off by a lot of young women protesting (using kpop lightsticks instead of candles!) and the very sturdy S. Korean democratic process and courts, and is now being tried as a criminal. And he still has MZ generation young men fans weeping for him and supporting his blatantly anti democratic tendencies. Confucian fundamentalist fascism is not cool. I don't want it.

But the song is really so catchy and fun, and performed with such panache.

Life is so hard, sometimes.

[hero-israel]

I mean, sandy hook wasn’t perpetrated by indigenous Americans

I see your point but it’s not necessarily an accurate comparison

Nothing prevents Native Americans from buying AR-15s. Native Americans absolutely physically could have committed Sandy Hook, along with every other school shooting you've heard of.

Why didn't they?

And if they did it, would you have less of a problem with it?

If "colonizers" "deserve it," then why was Brett Kavanaugh wrong for what he did to Christine Blasey Ford? Or are his actions only wrong based on whether or not he said "This is for the RESISTANCE!", and we have to stand patiently and watch him finish and listen to hear whether he says the magic words before we can judge?

Gonna blow your mind with this - maybe the entire frame of "liberating struggle" as mutated through a strongly culturally normalized lens of antisemitic violence and exterminationism is not a good basis of moral principle. The only thing "not the same" about any of these crimes is that some involve Jews, making those crimes understandable, and some don't, making them obviously pure evil.

To quote myself from exactly one year ago:

You never see Tibetans or Uighurs massacring hundreds of teenagers at a rock concert in China then packing the women onto rape trucks. Yezidis do not send suicide bombers into Arab old age homes on major holidays to kill off 3 generations of families. There is no way to view this topic without confronting the specifically anti-Jewish chauvinism, supremacism, and genocidalism that has been the norm in Arab and Muslim societies for a millennium or more. The entire "well, what do you EXPECT Palestinians to do??!" frame is pure colonialism. It says only Palestinians know how to have problems, only their tactics count, and anyone who doesn't bomb school buses either doesn't have problems or is doing it wrong.

You shouldn't feel like you have to rush to respond to this. Really, really think about it first. How normalized has society made it for you to listen to the excuses of people who torture and slaughter us? How are those excuses any better than those of anyone else who commits other crimes? Really think it through.

[aphidclan-clangen]

Wait- if starclan is like god in this universe. And sometimes clan cats say “ star damned” instead of “god damned” dose that mean pearls stars pronouns are: god and godself!?

I mean, if a Saint Tine made their pronouns glow/glowself it would definitely be a bit awkward lmao

(shine/gleam/light/glimmer/radiance/etc. pronouns would be fine however)

In that case it would be closer to giving yourself god/godself pronouns (which I’m certain is a real thing!), but in my mind Starclan, as an Aphidclan-specific religion, isn’t really…a religion so much as it is a generalized belief that 1. nature and the sky are interwoven with mystical, spiritual forces, and 2. belief in souls/an afterlife. (infodumping mode activated /lh /affectionate) As a wild cat colony, they’re just naturally very strongly and culturally connected to the spiritual side of the wilderness and the cosmos, more so than a kittypet or city cat ever would be. They don’t believe in any god or any central force controlling or designing the world, I don’t think they even have a “creation myth” or an idea that there could ever be a sole “god”/deity-like figure. They believe in souls and an afterlife because their ventures into the spirit realm showed them the souls of their ancestors, friends, and even complete strangers. They know the dead can go whenever they please after life, because some cats have reported seeing these spirits in the woods with them, or standing out amidst the plains. But they’ve also seen the spirit realm largely resemble the sky, so they probably assume the souls of the dead live up there, and may fly down to earth whenever they please.

(plus the sky is also just generally a very..incomprehensible, mystical, “larger-than-life” powerful force to look at, especially when you’ve got 0 light pollution and look up to see a whole wide galaxy of beautiful unknown above you each night)

Perhaps the souls of their loved ones can even grant gifts and boons, or even curses, since the spirit of the wilderness and the sky is woven everywhere, and can surely influence the movement of a log, the calling of rain, the way of the winds, and maybe even the sickness of the land. Nonetheless, the wilderness takes lives as it gives food and water and a home, they believe this to be an entirely natural cycle. The wilderness gives, the wilderness takes, the wilderness eats and devours whole, and when you die, you’ll fly up into the sky, where you might even get to speak with your loved ones again someday, either through random sightings in the woods, in dreams, or intentional astral projection in more…energistically charged locations.

Even the Saint Tines don’t believe in The Glow as a person, but nonetheless a more congealed, solid entity than what the clan cats believe. It is a force of nature as well, but a specific one. The force of decay, of sickness, of life, of glory and triumph in living, that is hungry and gluttonous and never satiated. In AphidClan, you’ll never have to prove your worth or character to the way the winds blow, but to a Saint Tine, if you are impure enough, the Glow shall eat you whole, and you shall rot for all of eternity (and this is a bad thing). It is a strict and demanding force that will punish the unworthy and the impure. It is all very morally attached, very heavily wrapped around the idea of sin and repentance and innate existential value. The Reverend has a very large influence over the doctrine and the opinions of The Glow, as its speaking voice and the head of the church. (In reality, “the glow” is just the nuclear radiation they saw in the power plant the colony used to live in, before the power plant horribly collapsed for reasons unknown.)

In that way, the Saint Tine Church is a closer analogy for a Christianity-like religion, while Aphidclan’s beliefs are closer to that of general pagan spiritualist beliefs. The Saint Tines are a god-fearing people, while Aphidclan just believes in the innate spiritual power of the earth and the universe, who would be confused by the idea of a central god or entity controlling the name of the game.

As for Pearlstar, I think like…they’d be totally chill with pronouns, names, or titles that call back to the spiritual nature of the wild in some way or another, and in fact, it’s already a common thing interwoven into the culture. I mean, they call their designated spiritual leaders of the colony “star,” to honor their leader’s connection to the spirit realm and their initiative to walk between both worlds. If anyone is expected to revere the spiritual and integrate it into their daily life and identity, it would be the spiritual leaders of the colony. Cats are given prefixes and suffixes to reflect aspects of nature that they see themself reflected in. If names are viable territory for integrating the wild, the natural, the spiritual, then why not pronouns? A cat with breeze/breezeself pronouns is respected as a reflection of the wind, a cat with star/starself pronouns is respected as a person with a strong connection to the cosmic aether and the universe beyond. I imagine their kintypes work under similar beliefs as well, as the creatures or entities or energistical forces they see themselves very strongly in. A cat could tell their clanmates that they believe they were once a bird, and feel such a strong connection to flight, to soaring through the air, the clouds, the breeze on their wings, and that before their life as a cat, their soul once resided in an avian animal, and that’d be a common precedent that would totally work with the general cultural belief system.

So to summarize, glow/glowself pronouns would definitely result in getting odd looks and judgemental comments from Saint Tines (not Aphidclan cats though), but star/starself pronouns are totally normal, common, respected, and even a little expected in Aphidclan, and are…pretty much on the same level as giving yourself leaf/sky/cloud/tree/growth/breeze/etc. pronouns. S’just another factor of one’s identity that the wild may influence and make its home in, as it often does

[thedreadvampy]

I mean fundamentally the thing about Israel/Palestine that makes people uncomfortable is not that "it's complicated" it's that it's extremely fundamentally morally simple, it's just difficult

there is not a morally acceptable solution that will be accepted by the expansionist Israeli government or its allies in Europe and America

the balance of power has remained basically the same since Balfour handed the country over. Israel has the power to displace and kill Palestinians without accountability because it's backed by the majority of major world powers. there's fundamentally no back and forth of power. Palestine and its people were sold from the control of the British to the control of Israel for the political convenience of a bunch of people on different continents. there's no retribution or wrestle for power. Israel has had power over Palestine for decades and Palestine, despite Palestinians occupying the land for millennia, has never had power over Israel.

the fundamentals of the situation are discomforting because Israel is in many ways the last surviving bastion of the type of turn-of-the-century colonialism which the contemporary economy of Britain, America and much of the West is rooted in.

that's why the media and political classes are so invested in the Israeli party line - not because Israel ~controls the media~ or whatever but because the fundamental existence of Israel is the interests of the British ruling class, for example. It is in the interests of the British ruling class that we accept as a basic precept that there are Civilised and Uncivilised nations, and that it is right and good and natural that the Civilised nations should be able to decide the fates of the Uncivilised nations, for their own profit, without brooking any complaint from the Uncivilised Peoples. The structure of Western capitalism requires, as well, that we accept that any number of deaths and any amount of suffering among the Uncivilised Peoples is an acceptable price to pay for the comfort of Civilised Peoples. That's why the media classes are more interested in pearl clutching that somebody slashed up a hack painting of a famously antisemitic and genocidal British lord than in the loss of swathes of priceless and irreplaceable artworks, historical relics and Human Fucking Lives in Gaza.

it isn't complicated. it's just uncomfortable because fundamentally it lays bare the basic reality of colonial capitalism, and generally we in the UK are sort of trying to pretend we're over that whole thing even though we're obviously not, politicians just try to be a bit less obvious about it. so it's discomforting to people to be faced with the rawness of Israel's open colonialism, and so those who can't or don't want to divest from Britain's own ongoing colonial endeavours end up tying themselves in knots trying to justify why it's Fine Actually.

while obviously Israel is a Zionist project so it can no more be decoupled from Judaism than the British empire is decoupled from Christianity, the conflation of Jewishness and Israel is a mostly irrelevant (and harmful) distraction from the underlying Problem With Israel, which is that it's an incredibly 19th century European style of colony in 21st century Asia, and the nature, consistency and ferocity of its colonial project has been pretty unchanged for like 3-4 generations.

but it's a very successful distraction because

a) a lot of people do actually hate Jews a whole bunch so yeah antisemitism is a genuine and legitimate fear, but it doesn't connect to the core issues of genocide, oppression and colonialism (and conflating Israel with Jewishness does play into existing antisemitic ideas of the Jewish perpetual foreigner and perpetual dual loyalty)

b) people want it to be complicated. They don't want it to be simple in a way that would create discomfort for them. We don't want to acknowledge that to free Palestine we'd have to take a hit to our own economies by not selling arms to Israel. We don't want to acknowledge that what's practiced openly in Israel is the same structure of systemic injustice underpinning almost all British and American foreign affairs, but with more of a veil over it. We don't want to challenge the underlying assumption that there are those who should rule and those who should be ruled over. But with the assertion that Israel=Jewishness, and the rewriting of history to say there's an Endless Cycle of Violence on Both Sides, Who Can Say Where It Started Really, you're off the hook! It's Complicated! Who Can Really Say?

(this Who Can Really Say thing is fascinating in itself. It's not like it's ancient history! it's been slightly over a century since the birth of the Israeli project! you can look it up! we have the news articles! we have the correspondence! this is my grandparents' generation not the distant mists of time!)

but yeah like fuck 'Israel controls the media' bullshit. It does not require a Shadowy Jewish Cabal of Puppetmasters to create mass appeasement from the media and ruling class, and if you think that's the best explanation you're fucking gross. The media and political establishment of Europe and the US are not being Controlled By The Wicked Jews. They are colonial projects. Israel is a colonial project. Their interests are aligned. It's not complicated it's So Fucking Simple. Our ruling classes, whether in Tel Aviv, Washington, Westminster or Berlin, are enthusiastically invested in the project of global apartheid. It makes them money. It maintained them power. It is in their interests to preserve the impunity of the occupying state where it shores up the civilised West vs barbarian East paradigm. It is not "too complicated" it's just huge, implacable and miserable to recognise.

[heavenb3nt]

World enough and time / the doctor falls and the transgenderism of the master

So yes the master is a freak but I think a lot of his flirtatious (??) demeanour towards missy was a reaction to meeting his post transition self, especially when by that point he’d become a lot more cold and calculating, he’d long since given up on any kind of fulfilment not fuelled by sadism (“doesn’t that just take all the fun out of cruelty” “like a thousand burning worlds on fire” he sustained himself purely on suffering) so to see missy, who, well she’s not exactly the peak of morality, but she’s finding some kind of meaning and value in other things, she is definitely happier than him, even if it’s not by much and is short lived.

She is his future and as much as he detests her wanting to stand with the doctor (I refer again to cold and calculating, it wouldn’t benefit his chances of survival and to him, it would make him seem weak and desperate for wanting the doctors approval) - there is definitely a level of jealousy, he doesn’t see any of her personal struggles with remorse or conflict with anyone, he doesn’t know she was kept in the vault. He just sees a woman who seems a lot happier than him, who the doctor actually seems to regard as on a similar level to them (the masters inferiority complex has killed millions). Especially before missy decides she’s going to stand with the doctor, his perception of her is very much 1) what the fuck 2) you know, that looks like a pretty good way to live tbh.

All this to say, she’s his post transition self and he admires her and is scared of the changes to her attitude that have come with her regeneration. Making it all the more tragic when he can’t handle having changed for the better, and decides to kill her. He seemed almost okay with it until she revealed her reason for stabbing him, then he switched up real fast. He can take dying, he can take dying by a version of himself he likes especially, we can see he admires her tact and comments “glad to see I haven’t lost my touch” but when it comes to it, no amount of hope for the future can possibly compete with his hatred for what he perceives as weakness.

See, the doctor left him. He doesn’t want the doctor to hold power over him ever again, he clearly has power over missy (they’ve always had a shit ton of power over the master but he’s not self aware enough to realise that) so missy making this decision is telling him “forgive them like they’ve forgiven you a thousand times, move on, you know you want to” and he responds by fucking killing her. He is bitter and has been alone for a very fucking long time, pre Bill that is because she was lovely company. Before that he was on the colony ship for god knows how long, and in gomer’s asylum on gallifrey before that. All the isolation has solidified his anger to the point no one is going to convince him of anything. He knows on some level he wants what he thinks she has, but he’s never going to admit that, and we all know how the master handles jealousy (badly).

Saxon’s “do you want to see what happens when you’re too late?” Is just as much about himself than it is anything. The doctor was too late to help them. They left them on gallifrey, he’s helping missy but he doesn’t consider that good enough. It’ll never make up for it. It’s also, because that’s the point of this, very trans. “Do you want to see what happens when you’re too late?” Do you want to see what happens when your anger and hatred stops you from growing. Do you want to see what happens when fear keeps you from changing. Do you want to see what happens when you don’t transition

Anyway, there is still time.