#there's really no point asking colonizers to feel the suffering of the colonized

[hussyknee]

"We don't hate Jews and fight them because they are Jews. Jews are people of a religion, and we are people of a religion. We love all people of different religions. My brother even if he is my brother and he is a Muslim—if he steals my house and kicks me out, I will resist him."

— Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin, founder of Hamas.

[deus-and-the-machina]

ffxiv garlemald discourse is so funny because people will go "ugh people just cant stand it when things aren't black and white" and then you look at how the empire are portrayed in stormblood and shadowbringers and its like hm. that seems like a pretty intense and accurate display of violent imperialism to me! Wow I wonder why people in this day and age may find it hard to feel sympathy for them or even hate them on principal. god its such a mystery.

the games like 50/50 to me on how it tackles these themes because I actually like the garlemald arc in EW, I think it has a lot of horrific and powerful scenes depicting how self destructive fascist propaganda and beliefs are, but I also think it doesn't go far enough on some fronts. the garleans' xenophobia is most notably and obstacle to getting them to accept the contingent's help, which is what they're there to do,

but there's never an admission of harm from any garleans on the uuuuuuuuh massive amount of war crimes the nations around them are still suffering from they're just kind of like "we misjudged you...but you actually wanted to help us all along" like yeah thats great now can we get you all some deprogramming because you keep talking about returning to your prime and glory days and I think we need to unpack some stuff you really SHOULDNT return to. im not even really talking about EW proper but the patches where things are a bit more chilled out and people are recovering.

It feels like they wanted to have their critique of imperialism and also have things end with the beauty of human connection and reaching out and these things just don't mesh well because hey a lot of your modern day audience is not gonna like having to treat people yelling xenophobic things at the cast and your character with kid gloves after you showed them hours and hours of the awful things these people's beliefs have done. especially in the present day hoo boy.

[quixoticanarchy]

Finished reading Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara and he does a good job showing how the cobalt supply chain is inextricable from incredible human suffering, near-slavery, rampant exploitation, environmental devastation, and child labor. And it’s very clear that no promise a tech or battery manufacturer makes that their supply chain is clean means literally anything bc industrially and artisanally mined cobalt are mixed into the same supply untraceably. And the book also covers the fact that cobalt supplies are finite and when the DRC’s cobalt is exhausted the industry will move elsewhere, rinse and repeat, and the people in the Congo will be left with the ongoing and unremediated -maybe irremediable - damage. All of this so that we can have smartphones, electric vehicles, iPads, electric scooters, almost anything with a rechargeable battery.

It’s also clear that the tech and battery industries are interested in good PR and making empty statements about human rights when they should be taking responsibility for the working conditions of small-scale miners (and minors) dying at the bottom of their supply chains. What Kara doesn’t really address is the demand side of this equation, not just the demand by companies whose products use cobalt-containing batteries but also the consumers sustaining that demand, who buy every new smartphone and eagerly pin their hopes on electric vehicles to let us keep our car-dependent world without the fossil fuel guilt. The book takes it for granted that cobalt will be required in high quantities for consumer electronics and for “green” tech, and to some extent this is true - as in, none of those demands or uses will cease overnight and in the meantime we should worry about how to address industrial and business practices and government corruption in order to treat Congolese miners as human beings.

But it feels incomplete without also asking questions like: should that demand continue? Can it? Do we need this many devices? What costs are acceptable? Can we really have our cake (smartphones, EVs, etc) and eat it too (slavery-free, non-exploitative supply chains that don’t kill the people at the bottom and lay waste to the environment)? What if - as the book would seem to suggest - we really cannot? If one goal of the book is for people to realize what conditions underlie the extraction of cobalt, what action is then incumbent upon us? Personal consumer choice will not undo all this harm, but it is a necessary step in rethinking or attempting other ways to live. Is it a right to have a smartphone, a new one every year or two, if it comes at the price of other people’s human rights? At what point do we say that it is not an acceptable cost that the extractive industries are perpetuating neocolonialism and near-slavery in order that we should have comfortable lives?

We know we have to stop relying on fossil fuels or we’ll burn down the planet (to a greater degree than is already locked in) but the “green energy transition” is not clean at all. Capitalism seeks the lowest price for labor and the highest profits; obviously these extractive relationships owe a lot of their horror to being conducted in a capitalist milieu. But even thinking about, say, a socialist world instead, if it aspires to still provide smartphones and electric vehicles en masse and maintain the comforts and conveniences of the “Western” lifestyle then we would still be relying on massive amounts of resource extraction with no guarantee of less suffering. The devices are themselves part of the problem. The demand for them and the extent to which “modern” life in “developed” countries relies upon them is part of the problem. It is unsustainable. It is built on blood and it makes a mockery of purported values of dignity, equality, and human rights. The lives of Congolese cobalt miners are tied to how we in the “developed” or colonizer countries live and consume. I do not think their lives will change substantially unless ours do.

[txttletale]

hiii! (hope you're having a great day)

I'm genuinely confused right now about the call out post and the answers you're giving about it

I'm seeing in the call out that the person is talking about a theory of internal colonies and you're not really addressing it in your responses

The posts you're making about the whole situation are coherent and I do agree with them so I am asking genuinly if you could "debunk"? (not sure how to ask that better) the whole internal colony thing because it seems to be the point of disagreement and i'm not seeing clearly here :,,(

i mean 'the call out post' in question is just a comprehensive list of anyone who has ever interacted with tumblr user mozilla-firefucks so i'm not really interested in engaging with it or acknowleding it because i think it is quite silly.

as for the central question / discourse itself -- i am indeed familiar with the theory of the internal colony! i think it is a useful theoretical tool capable of providing useful analysis. but the argument that the internal colony model of usamerican antiblackness precludes Black usamericans from being beneficiaries of usamerican imperialism in any way isn't true. 'colonialism' and 'imperialism' are sets of economic relations, not intrinsic attributes. you do not have a spiritual aura or code flag setting you as 'imperialist' or 'imperialised'. and imperialism is not one monolithic relation either, right, it is comprised of multiple sets of overlapping and interconnected relations, such that you can have multiple different relations to imperialism in different contexts.

as such, it's not denying the brutality of usamerican (or indeed global) antiblackness to point out that Black usamerican citizens continue to be usamerican citizens. this does not protect them from antiblackness, nor is it a moral failing on their part (benefiting from imperialism is simply a result of interfacing with the consumer market that broadly benefits from imperialism -- it's not an accusatory finger saying 'you did an imperialism'), nor is 'beneficiary of' in anyway synonymous with 'perpetrator of' or 'perpetuator of' of.

but i've already discussed how, for example, the simple fact of being able to buy a cheap banana is the direct result of usamerican imperialism. the same is true for coffee, chocolate, or gas, commodities which are kept monstrously cheap for the usamerican market via brutal exploitation and military intervention in the global south. or, for example, any cheap good with 'made in china' or 'made in vietnam' on it, because manufacturing capital has been exported to those countries because of unequal exchange. and people who buy these cheap products are benefiting in that moment from usamerican imperialism -- which again is neither a moral judgement nor a negation or denial of any of the ways that the USA might oppress those people.

so i don't know -- i feel like the core disagreements are either a misunderstanding of what it means to benefit from imperialism, or a or a dualist interpretation of imperialism / colonialism, where one can only be 'colonizer' or 'colonized' in totality across all systems conceived of as one totalizing whole machine of omnidirectional imperialism with a strict hard line between beneficiaries and sufferers. and at the end of the day it just doesn't work like that

[tender-hearteddd]

i can’t take any interpretation of bertholdt’s ability of being the perfect doormat being a good thing seriously lol i just hate it and it feels disrespectful to his character and the very mini character growth he did have. idk i also hate this interpretation of him being a dumb dumb shit for brains baby who can’t do anything for himself?? i just hate it. pple act as if he was constantly crying to reiner every time he ran into the slightest inconvenience like he wasn’t the piece of thread that was still connecting reiner to his true reality, so it was more like reiner needed him more than bertholdt needed reiner and if bertholdt were to live, i hope he realized this and had a more concrete character development where he grew out of being a doormat.

reiner had this obsession with being the perfect soldier/warrior to the point where he lost who he was, people would argue annie was the true epitome of what reiner was trying to be but she still couldn’t help but demonstrate her true feelings so in turn, i would argue that bertholdt was really the true epitome of a soldier.

and i don’t mean that in a good way.

bertholdt always kept what they are and what their mission was in mind even if he did enjoy his time in the cadet corps. and i don’t even think most of the cadets truly seen him as a friend, only an extended part of reiner which just makes his character even more sad 👎🏾 he believed that retrieving the coordinate would truly save the world from the genocide eren ended up committing (and it would’ve lol), he kept watch on reiner’s mental illness so he wouldn’t lose his best friend, and during the RtS battle, he carried out his duty as a warrior as he understood war after living through it all his life, both as a victim and a perpetrator that no one was truly in the wrong - so he did what he was supposed to do.

bertholdt wanted to do what was asked of him to put an end to all the pain and suffering of the future generations who now have to rebuild the world due to a global genocide. if the warriors have succeeded, the rumbling would’ve never happened however, marley would’ve used the FT power to further its global domination all over the world. they definitely would’ve used it to eradicate paradis. there were no winners in this at all. the colonized people in the aot world (like ramzi) still would suffer from the colonial empires of marley and eldia. eldians would still be exploited to continue marley’s wrath. but there still would’ve been a world to save instead of one to eradicate.

he understood first hand the failed complexities of aot as a story, being that war only has countless victims, bertholdt being one of them.

[weebsinstash]

I just got home from work a while ago and while Allister is peeing, STILL no poop. If Allister doesn't poop by tomorrow morning they want him back in at the vet to address the issue

I'm gonna try the surgery before we talk about putting him down

I keep thinking about it and. I'm pretty sure I can afford it. I just got some of my first utilities in and they're way lower than I thought they would be. I was trying to save money for bills because I just moved September and some of my utilities I actually haven't been charged for yet, but the ones that are starting to trickle in are significantly lower than I was expecting (I have no frame of reference, you know?)

I just.... if I can afford it and still pay my bills, still have housing, then I'm getting my baby his surgery, and if he needs to be put to sleep after that, then I know I did literally everything I could have. If he backs up again after surgery to empty out his entire colon, it would have to be because his body is giving out from age or the repeated medical conditions or, something that is literally impossible to fix, or, something we don't have enough time to find the answer for. The only other option is if I can somehow give him enemas at home every couple of days, but that's definitely something I have to ask the vet about and probably isn't possible

He um, does seem a little different today though. Maybe he's just groggy because he's super constipated at this point. He looks like he's lost a little weight. He's already got a bad leg but I feel like he's stumbling a little more, although that could also just be the constipation, but it could also be nerves in his pelvis and digestive tract affecting his ability to walk. He doesn't resist as much when I pick him up and just seems, a little sleepy

...But he also started acting really sedated when I had to take him in last week too, you know? So maybe it's just the constipation? Like literally before his second vet visit and he released from the first round of enemas, he immediately went back to loudly, strongly purring, even though a day or so before I was using the weakness of his purring as a sign that "he was surely dying"

I'm going to watch him tonight, and take him in tomorrow morning (because uh, pretty positive he's not gonna poop on his own). Unless the vets OUTRIGHT SAY it isn't a good idea or they don't feel comfortable doing it, I'm getting him de-obstipated, and from there... I have to take everything in stride. Before he gets surgery though I think he gets some tests done to check his vitals, and maybe they might tell us something

Either way... I know I've been buying him time. If I hadn't done anything last week, he'd be suffering right now, maybe already deceased. He's still comfortable. He's still happy. I gave him more time being Him, so, even if he winds up passing on, I know I didn't give up and gave him the maximum amount of time I possibly could have. If surgery buys him another week and I can still safely pay my bills, then I paid to have my cat another week before saying goodbye

I love this little boy so much. I don't want to say good bye until it's his time and even now, he's clinging to me, following me from room to room, nibbling on my fingers, everything he always does. He isn't ready to go yet. I just have to see what my options are.

[kitkatopinions]

So since you're rewatching A:TLA, do you have any problems with how Jet and Hama, victims of colonialism & genocide, were depicted?

Every time there's a 'revolutionary revolts too close to the sun' plot, I have a 'this again' exasperated reaction and on the general whole, I think that less people ought to make them. More often than not, these plotlines fail and are bad and what they're saying winds up feeling like propaganda. However, on the whole, I think that ATLA does it about as well as I've ever seen.

Please keep in mind that I haven't seen the later seasons of ATLA in a few years, so there might be things I'm not remembering specifically with the Hama episodes. I've never really analyzed this show to the extent that I've analyzed other things, as well, so... Yeah.

But, when looking at these sorts of revolutionary revolts too much plots, there are a couple of questions that I feel are worthwhile to ask:

Are the victims actually treated as victims and is their suffering given weight and understanding? Have the mains also suffered at the hands of this oppression?

Is the show itself and the main characters interested in opposing and dismantling the system of oppression?

How does the show portray violence against oppressors in general?

What is the revolutionary doing that makes them an enemy? How is that conflict articulated?

Are the antagonistic victims treated worse or better than the actual oppressors?

How much time is devoted to fighting revolutionaries who revolt too much compared to the actual oppressors?

I remember the conflict with Hama less than the conflict with Jet since I just watched the first season, so I'll be using Jet as an example, whereas I can't really speak much on Hama.

Jet's suffering at the hands of the Fire Nation is acknowledged and sympathized with, both with Katara and iirc also gone into in the episode where Jet meets Zuko. In fact, Katara compares her situation with Jet's because they've both lost parents to the Fire Nation, and Aang lost his entire people to them. This isn't a case where the main characters are less affected or not at all affected by the oppression that the revolutionary who revolts too much faced. The entire show is built around saving the world from the oppressors and colonizers and restoring peace. The very premise of the show is that Aang and his friends must help dismantle the system of oppression in place. If this was a case of these revolutionaries reacting to their oppression, but the mains and the story not really caring about ending the oppression (or even worse, fighting to maintain the system,) then it would be an instant no from me. But the story is actually about ending the oppression. The show in general doesn't portray violence against oppressors as bad. The gaang uses force when necessary even to the point of injuring people iirc, and the soldiers fighting the Fire Nation are also portrayed as heroes point blank period despite the fact that they're most likely willing to kill even though we don't actively see it (in a kid's show, this is more than fair.) Even though Aang himself wants to follow the strict 'no killing' policy of his people, the others want to kill the Fire Lord and they're never portrayed as bad or even really in the wrong for wanting it and working towards it if I remember correctly. And even then, Aang was more or less coached by other Avatars of the past to kill regardless with them talking about how they should have or did kill for the greater good, and Aang was fully set to tragically disregard his own moral code to do what had to be done until he realized there was a way for him to defeat Ozai without comprising what he believed in (also not bad in a kid's show if you ask me.) What made Jet different from the violence of the mains was that Jet wasn't only hurting the soldiers and leaders of the Fire Nation in order to free people from oppression, he was actively taking the stance that civilians and children (and I think also innocent Earth Kingdom civilians but I could be misremembering,) were a necessary causality to defeating the Fire Nation. Jet - and I believe Hama - were both portrayed as people who had been deeply hurt but who fell into the trap of dehumanizing their oppressors that resulted in them no longer caring who deserved what punishment, or what would cause the least amount of harm. Instead of being villainized for hurting the people who hurt them, they were acknowledged as having gone too far and hurting even children who had no part in the horrors that had happened to them. Jet is treated with much more sympathy and given much better treatment than Ozai. Despite the fact that Jet dies, he's given not only ample sympathy before he does, but a full 'redemption arc' for lack of a better word. He regrets the fact that he hurt innocent people, he's forgiven, and ultimately recognized as a hero. The fact that his early portrayal included him learning not to dehumanize the enemy to the point of killing children didn't mean that he wasn't still a freedom fighter who wound up doing good, it didn't mean he was unforgivable, it didn't mean the heroes wanted him to die, and in the end his actual death was a tragedy. The only reason Ozai didn't die - in contrast - was because of Aang's desire to not compromise his principles and to carry on the traditions of his people. Even Ozai's own son wanted him to die. When he was defeated, Ozai was actively made fun of. He spent the rest of his life in prison. He was treated as an evil vile man. Fighting Jet and Hama and talking about their crimes is devoted to literally two episodes out of sixty two, whereas the whole premise of the show is defeating Ozai. Not much time is expanded to talking about revolutionaries who go too far.

Again, it's been a long time since I've seen the Hama episode, so I can't speak much to that (and if Hama was more mishandled, it makes the Jet storyline feel different.) The problem with ATLA I feel is... Why did they have to have episodes focused on revolutionaries revolting too much in the first place? Why did two white men who have been criticized for their carelessness in portraying Asian cultures feel the need to write it? I don't know. A part of me is of the opinion that it's not wrong to talk about how dehumanization of the enemy isn't going to help anything and can lead to just more active harm. For another example, I don't feel like I have a problem with President Coin in the Hunger Games being a bad guy and even less of a problem with Katniss's struggles with her and Gale's different moral codes when it comes to Capitol Citizens. I do think that maybe they went a little hard on it, like they had to make Jet really bad to try and ensure that the people who get angry at anything that isn't revenge based excessive punishment wouldn't get angry at them. But those people are always going to have a problem with it no matter how it's portrayed, and it made Jet feel a little unrealistic. I can acknowledge that they should've made it something that maybe was less pre-meditated, or that it could involve citizens but not so decimating an entire town... I don't know.

But I personally do not believe in cold-blooded revenge based violent punishment - especially collective punishment - if it's at all avoidable. However, another part of me is just sick of seeing it in general and is confused about why it has to be said all the time. Writers invent these characters so they can talk about the evils of revolting too much, and it's like... Why? What value did it really have to Avatar? It didn't do much to set up the future conflict of Aang not wanting to kill the Fire Lord, and it didn't do much to establish Sokka's morals imo. So what was it doing there? Just to establish that Fire Nation citizens don't all deserve to die? They do well enough portraying that throughout the whole show. So why would they need the Jet conflict? I go back and forth. There's a conversation to be had about whether or not Jet's storyline or Hama's storyline needed to happen, and I think the end conclusion is that it didn't need to be made. But in regards to Jet in particular, I think it was done about as well as a person can do that kind of storyline. As I said, I haven't seen the Hama episode in a hot minute though, so that one could be a lot worse than the Jet one and I'm just not remembering.

[hindulivesmatter]

Honestly it feels like some people are so afraid of criticizing anything that has to do with Islam/Muslims. I actually do understand, Muslims and Islam as a religion have been unjustly accused and have faced a lot of discrimination for things that weren't their fault, and Islamophobia is a really big issue, but swinging the other way and stopping people from criticizing Islamic imperialism at all isn't the answer either. We aren't criticizing Islam/Muslims in general, and of course they have a place in India, but that also doesn't change the reality of the genocides Hindus in Kashmir have faced and continue to face at the hands of self-proclaimed Islamic terrorist groups.

And I am actually someone who believes Modi isn't blameless, and I actually do agree with the things said about him by the left. I do think the Indian army is committing atrocities in Kashmir, and I don't approve of his actions. But acting like he's the only problem and that we don't have any threat from Islamic terrorists is also wrong. We've heard their chants, the 7 genocides they committed, all the people who were killed/forced to flee/converted. And yet, even as we reclaim our stolen land and our stolen culture, as we are finally getting back our temple in Ayodhya, people are quick to dismiss it as Islamophobia or anti-Muslim sentiment, instead of seeing it as the reclamation of our history and our culture from colonization.

They want to deny our suffering by saying that the colonizers improved India, that Hindus and Muslims always coexisted peacefully. And I am all for peaceful co-existence, but denying the people who were killed, the women who were raped and killed by Islamic invaders who declared openly that it was their holy mission to kill Hindus is so grossly invalidating and just makes me think that some people care more about appeasing the crowd than actually caring about what really happened. Islamophobia is real, of course, but denying history and the real threat of terrorists isn't the answer.

Sorry to leave this in your inbox. I don't always agree with you, but I appreciate your posts.

I feel like you just needed a good vent, lol. It's alright. We don't always need to see eye to eye on things. It's one of the main reasons I don't go on blocking sprees, like the people who hate me. If you agree with me, awesome. If you don't, it's fine. It really doesn't matter to me. You had a lot of good talking points in your asks, I appreciate you dropping them here. :)

[janaknandini-singh999]

neutrality is a much greater threat than taking a side. you can't create balance by putting your two feet in separate boats which ultimately are sailing in opposite directions. your heart is in the right place but instead of using your empathy outwardly to help your fellow people, you are using it to appease yourself and absolve yourself of responsibility. your empathy should not remain a feeling but should transform into action. otherwise your empathy holds no value if it can't be felt by the people you have empathy for. which they can only feel if you do something with your empathy. for them.

if you have the ability to recognize the hateful intentions and actions of hindutva extremists, why then are you saying that the only solution is "karma"? that they will get karma'd? i get that you're religious and all. but ultimately isn't leaving fate to god also inaction, avoidance, irresponsibility. god did not save the jews, and if conscious hindus make excuses like "karma", guess what, god will not be able to save our muslims either.

all this to say, abeyyaaar is right. and you are being wrongly defensive.

"all lives matter" as a slogan would have made sense had there been someone who was denying that notion. but who's denying this stance? no one. all lives matter is a given. hell it is a right. but wonder why activists say "black lives matter", "muslim lives matter", "indigenous lives matter" and why that is important? because the status quo is not in compliance with these beliefs. that is why. muslim people, black people, their inherent right to live, right to be is threatened under the current society. which is why these slogans are raised. because they are not mere beliefs, but demands for something that doesn't exist, something that isn't just a given, yet. get it now?

leftists are not angry. we leftists are afraid. history is about recognizing patterns. and when our powerful politicians demonize maginalized communities, when our foreign minister praises majoritarianism in a country where hate crimes are surging, history would tell us that such happenings form the foundation for some really dark events. dark events like the ones that, well, you know. all of which were avoidable had these "neutral" bystanders hadn't been so neutral about literal hate crimes and discrimination.

you cannot look at the ram temple by ignoring the context in which it has been constructed. you cannot separate muslim suffering from the ram temple just so you as a hindu can enjoy your religion in a bubble. when you separate the two, you are undermining the former. temples should always have way less value than actual human life. if something i like has come at the cost of a whole community i'd be very appalled and disgusted. and ashamed of the people who weaponize my religion for political gains.

okay this was long um. but i hope this msg wasn't in vain.

to remind you the infamous quote by south african activist Desmond Tutu, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

First of all I'm neutral when it comes to lives, not when it comes to sides. Ik the quote very well "nobody is a bystander in a war of Dharma"

If I were born some time ago in history, I'd be against invaders and colonizers but today I'm against violent fascists (be it Hindu/Muslim like in Ram mandir's case it's some Hindus)

I never said karma is the "only solution" but isn't it your karma only when you fight for rights?

When I say neutrality I use it as a perspective for other Hindus to cast aside extremist religious sentiments for a moment and see for what's actually happening and thereby translating it into support

It is not question of religion/taking sides after a point but the question of humanity which can only be raised when people start asking like Arjun asked Krishna in the dilemma of war

I see Palestine and am horrified, no matter what the complicated history of a land is, nobody has the right to commit a genocide

I stand with the oppressed

[arionwind]

So there's a trend I've been seeing, well for a while, but lately it's been grating on me especially hard with regards to the Crimew No-Fly List "hack". It's that genre of post that, often angrily, but sometimes just condescendingly/disappointingly tells people that they aren't taking a topic seriously enough or focusing on the correct part of it. I wanna break down just why I am find it so upsetting, and this event is an exceptional case study for it.

Because on the surface, it's entirely understandable. This is public-facing evidence in the government's own hand of a staggering litany of human rights abuses that really does deserve more in-depth discussion than it has been getting. People are absolutely justified in feeling frustrated that more discussion hasn't spawned at all social levels about this and while it's natural to cry out asking why that isn't happening, I think there's a few points that need to be kept in consideration.

A lot of us have been, in one way or another, dealing with this for years. Part of the horror of the No-Fly list is the sheer scale of it - so many people have been and continue to be harmed by their baseless inclusion on the list that it is difficult to even conceptualize how much pain has been inflicted, and that does matter. And I promise you, every single person on that list knows how big a deal both the list itself and this latest (though not the first) leak of it is.

The people on the list know. Their families know. For those lucky and brave enough to try and fight their inclusion in court, their legal teams know. All these people know, viscerally, how wretched this list is and have been bearing up under its weight for years, only talking to the select few they trust. My partner has been open about their inclusion, but I also have professional ties to people who have worked on cases trying to get names removed. Attempting to talk about their work publicly results in harassment by law enforcement and, if kept up, inclusion on the same or similar watch lists.

The angry calls for greater discussion will certainly cross the dashboards of people who are treating this whole thing like a silly meme, but it's also going to hit those of us who have been not discussing but living this constant pressing horror for years now. Hearing people say that, because we are enjoying some levity being injected into this constant source of suffering in our lives we don't "really give half a fuck about tearing down imperialism and colonization" or that we are "laughing and not actually caring" is gut-wrenching. Especially when it comes from people who also regularly talk about the need to avoid activist burnout or for marginalized people to care for themselves.

But I get the impulse to lash out like that. I have had to write and rewrite this very post more times than I can count now to cut out angry and inflammatory phrasing on my own end. And I know that, both in personal posts in the past and in reblogs, I often still fall prey to that thinking of "this is (rightly, justifiably) upsetting so I am going to lash out at people who don't seem to care".

But in this introspective moment, I am trying to stay aware (and want to try to stay aware in the future when I am tempted) that at least some of the people reblogging and posting these things are also hurting and responding to that. And while my first impulse is to cast aspersions on the people hurting me (even in this sentence I had to stop myself from slyly giving an "example" of what I would say if I wanted to lash out and thus satisfying that spiteful desire without admitting to it), I'm also trying to keep in mind my goal here.

I am hoping that at least a few people who have made (or at least reblogged onto my dash) these furious posts - both about this and other issues - will also consider what it is they are trying to accomplish. I also (again) want to keep in mind that I and people like me who are hurt by these posts aren't the only ones impacted by the No-Fly list. That people making these angry posts can be too, and as such I don't want to say that their justified expressions of frustration and rage need to be made more palatable, because they don't.

I do need to point out, though, that I've found the best way to start a discussion of a topic on the internet is to start discussing it in an open medium where others can join in. And when I look in the notes of the inflammatory calls for discussion (or even just awareness), I mostly see people talking about the call itself.

And there's nothing wrong with being angry and wanting to vent. There's not even anything wrong with being angry and wanting to vent in a public space where others can commiserate with you and help you feel less alone. But it *is* going to be much better for everyone - yourself included - if calls for awareness focus on calling for awareness and venting frustrations focus on venting in ways that don't further compound frustrations. Because looking at the notes of all of these more furious posts on these topics, I cannot imagine the constant fighting the OPs wind up doing feels soothing.

[suntears1037]

Initial Thoughts on Avatar: The Way of Water Spoilers

I know I barely post on here, but I really need to get some thoughts I have had about this film off my head since I haven’t seen anyone else mention these things who have seen it. 

Is no one else bothered by the fact that Jake Sully makes his children, specifically his male children refer to him as Sir? 

Ya know, something that is not only a human characteristic, but an American militarized human characteristic?

It bothers me to no end that throughout the whole movie the only time his son  doesn’t refer to him as Sir is after his Oldest Son loses his life to a war that his father started! 

The fact that Neytiri doesn’t ever call out the use of Jakes incessant need for his children to call him Sir is actively infuriating throughout the film and forces her to suffer along with her children as if she is seen solely as the Nuclear Wife in Jake’s eyes, and when she tries to confront him before he forcefully relocates his family to the Metkayina clan all she is met with is Jake saying that “A father needs to protect his family and his people”.  Which evades her point of Jake being too hard on his sons and making them “have respect”. 

When mind you the only reason Jake is seen as the Clan Leader is WOW is because of Neytiri’s father dying in the first film and Jake claiming Toruk (the big sky banshee) to show he is capable of leading the people. Even though they wouldn’t have needed to be lead by him if it weren’t for Jake infiltrating the Omatikaya in the first place and actively playing a role in the destruction and colonization of Home Tree, in the first film. 

Many people seem to forget the moment in the first film where Jake is talking to Quaritch and Parker Selfridge about how to invade Home Tree to get the unobtainium from underneath the roots by blowing up the base root system. Well after he began to have feelings and relations with Netytiri and being accepted by the Omatikayan peoples customs due to thinking Jake was trying to help them save Home Tree/Ewya. 

It makes absolutely no sense to me that you have this character who changed not only species and supposedly customs but then chooses to hold onto the parts of his humanity that actively harmed and is still harming the Native Na’vi people in both films, and have his children all who are born of Pandora, have to abide by military customs. 

This brings me to the second thought I had while watching this film is the character Spider. Who is Quaritch’s son before the RECOM. Is the visceral hatred shown from Jake and Netytiri over him being around their children is baffling to me since Jake was only a human a decade ago! The push and pull of Jake’s human and Na’vi identities clashing is nauseating to say the least and is one of the most boring parts of both films. However, amplified in WOW, due to his interactions with Spider and being unfairly cold to a child who did not ask to be a child of war. Who quite frankly seems to have more of a connection to Na’vi culture than Jake has!

This plays into the blatant racism and erasure of Indigenous voices that is at play here and I want to make a longer and more articulate post with sources from Indigenous peoples on why this movie is flawed both on a writing level, but a political level as well. 

Simply put this is just another White Savior film made by James Cameron to inflate his own ego for being a celebrity “activist”. 

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i think one of the biggest reasons i refuse to take anything LL presents to me in good faith morality-wise is that just, everything about the vatborn--completely leaving aside the trueborn or mogadorians as a whole--is a hundred percent on par with what happened to lorien for sheer scale and depth of tragedy and horror. in very different ways, yes--apples to oranges, i'm not going to say one is worse--but on par.

and not only do neither the heroes or the narrative ever acknowledge this. they act like it's a good thing.

[cw: genocide, war crimes, racism, fascism, slavery, torture, child abuse, dehumanization, apologia for all of it after the cut. basically, the usual lmao]

or at least, a totally neutral and casual one (although they will still never call it what it is by name). the vatborn, who are universally abused, beaten, tortured, brainwashed child soldiers and actual fucking chattel slaves, aren't people. they are subhuman. their suffering doesn't matter. they can't be rehabilitated for any kind of peaceful life. they are barely more than mindless animals. they are vermin to be disposed of without a thought, while their actual slavers get far more mercy, compassion, and humanization than they do (which holy shit is saying something).

the only, ONLY person in the entire series who thinks it matters that they're people; that it's fucked up to have been taught that killing them in front of him as a small child was unremarkable; who feels uncomfortable with ordering them around and is worried about getting one of them in trouble; who questions the ideology he grew up in that said otherwise; is a deluded, naive, easily-manipulated, selfish race traitor who is treated with rabid murderous hatred for it for the rest of his life.

they and their culture--yes, culture, we see that they have developed some of their own under the trueborns' noses--are eradicated from existence because they 'didn't know any better,' and no one bats an eyelash before or after. it's fine because without their extinction they'd eradicate everyone else. and the method of their creation, both knowledge and resources, is lost.

there will never be another living vatborn again.

all of this is true, say the writers. all of this is fine. and to that i say: does any of that rhetoric sound familiar?

like. honestly, there are some REALLY strong foils and parallels to be made between the loric and the vatborn, right down to the scars versus the tattoos:

(which, of course, no one has jack shit to say about. in the slightest. then or ever. 🙃)

what they should have done--and i don't mean 'here's a way they might have handled it,' i mean the only thing they could have done, period--to make any of the protagonists actually decent people would have been to make them have a massive group-wide crisis the INSTANT they found out what the vatborn are. that should have been one of THE central conflicts in the series from that point forward. 'we are having to slaughter child soldier slaves, who have no choice in the matter, en masse in self-defense. we have no idea how to make it stop without letting ourselves be overrun. we have been doing this for a long time and we never even knew. fuck. jesus fuck' should absolutely fucking haunt a good majority of your protagonists, even if it takes until after the war when survival mode disengages for it to hit, or else you have a cast full of just plain evil cunts and i am not going to root for them no matter how many planets they save. fuck that.

like. for all the writers and characters hammer on about how ~we're not like them uwu,~ they ARE. the perspective we're meant to sympathize with IS the mogadorians, just reskinned with craft-beer-and-brick-pizza-ovens-appreciate-nature-uwu neoliberal fascism instead of ham-handed right-wing stereotypes.

(which, the 'respect for the planet and nature' thing? bullshit. the entity colonizes and terraforms the ENTIRE EARTH. it does this without asking a single ass human if they're okay with it; marina even points this out, which is immediately dismissed lol. the entity destroys pretty much the entire fossil record of the earth, all the way down. the writers don't give a fuck about respecting or preserving nature. it's just a cover for the sky-high platter of genocidal ecofascism they're trying to push through.)

one of the central themes of lorien legacies is supposed to be 'mourn the dead, fight like hell for the living.' and one of, again, the central conflicts of the series from RoS onward should have been the moral dilemma of realizing that the vatborn are some of the living to fight like hell for, and having no fucking idea how to do that without giving everything else up for lost. instead the moral becomes 'fight like hell for the living, as long as they look enough like me and aren't Icky and i don't have any personal baggage about them, and also as long as they came out of a vagina.'

and like. the really insidious thing about how they frame the mogs versus everyone else--how they try to excuse and distract you from the evil shit the protagonists and their buddies say and do--is that they go 'well i mean sure, they're racist and ableist and genocidal and [laundry list of awful], and have less than no basic fucking decency or compassion toward the Acceptable Group of People, but also they're kind and caring and heroic and nice to other people!' whereas the mogs read as the authors having looked up a Traits of Fascist Societies checklist to hammer into their story without actually understanding how fascism works.

actual fascist societies aren't cartoonishly hateful, joyless, loveless, and sadistically rubbing their hands together over their Evil Plotting on every level of society, every day, with everyone around them. like. it doesn't fucking happen. i don't care how cultish it is, i don't care how rabidly hateful you can whip a movement up to be, you can fuck a society and its norms up horrifically but you CANNOT do that with 99% total success rate on that scale. you know what happens with actual fascism? with hate groups, with colonialism, with genocide?

most of them are, in some aspects of their lives, 'good people.' they pet puppies, they're loving spouses and parents, they're kind and respected members of their community. i'm nice, they think. i'm a Good Person. i care.

and they are completely caught off guard when they are held accountable for the other things they did with their lives, because it doesn't fucking matter how many puppies you pet when you make yourself complicit in genocide. you extend basic human decency to your family and people you happen to find likeable and acceptable, and none of whom you have emotional baggage toward as a group? cool motive, still a war criminal, still blood on your hands.

which, by the way, is another vile thing they try to push through here. 'i'm racist because muh war trauma so i get a blank check to commit atrocities, cut me some slack' is, y'know. famously not a justification used for any horrific mass war crimes in countries invaded by, say, the U.S. in the last few decades alone. vietnam? iraq? are those some kind of chopped liver?

and the fact that they try to hide this shit behind 'well they're genocide survivors and teenagers, you can't expect them to be mature about their war trauma 🥺' is just contrived bullshit to get away with this rhetoric, which is even more obvious when every now and then they try to act like the characters are in their mid-20s or something instead of, you know. 15-18. teenagers are not the ones making these calls irl, pal. they're not the ones devising war tactics or taking out tons of people by themselves in one go. they're not the ones making legislation about what to do with the enemies after the war. are there garde who have to wear a bikini for their photosynthesis legacy too, by any chance

(this is an ESPECIALLY bad look in the context of the vietnam war in particular, considering how frighteningly, violently, genocidally racist these books are toward every fucking east asian country in their line of sight lmao. like holy shit dude it's BAD and this is just another shit in the bucket)

(ETA: HOLY SHIT WOW THE VIETNAM PARALLEL MAKES THE THING WITH JOHN CATCHING A LARGE CONCENTRATION OF MOGS OFF GUARD TO INCINERATE THEM ALL WITH HIS FLAMETHROWER POWERS--BECAUSE 'NOW THEY KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE CAUGHT BY SURPRISE,' NO LESS--SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE EL EM AY OH)

anyway yeah, despite supposedly being a critique of fascism these books are fascist as shit, and it is impossible for me to look at the protagonists being Caring and Compassionate, and Fighting for Peace and Justice and Preservation of All Things Good in the World, without just seeing this:

as usual i have many, many more thoughts about this, and as usual they are for other posts because this one is hella long already, but tl;dr the vatborn deserved better and are pretty much the perfect distillation of why my approach to this series' authors and what they are trying to communicate with their story is 'stay back slut' lmao

[bravo-four-seal-team]

Unspoken Tattoo

A/N: So, I was thinking about this for a while, the Semi-colon tattoo,  people who get this tattoo usually do it to honour someone, whether that's a friend, a relative, or yourself—or to raise awareness of mental illness, suicide, addiction, or self-harm.

The Sawyer siblings will have this tattoo, firstly to honour the lives lost, but also because of their background and what they’ve been through.

It also has this meaning:  “A semicolon is used by an author who could've chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to.”

Please if you are struggling and need help, reach out to one of these hotlines, the blog has many countries listed. International Helplines

Now, i posted a fic : The Mind is a dark place  so this fic somewhat ties into that one.

​

They don’t speak about why they got it, but they don’t really speak about it, Metal was still with Alpha, and Amelia was working. It was after Ashley had been cleared for duty, they got talking about the past, about the lowest points in their lives, then again they had gotten drunk to talk about it all, it ended up with the siblings stumbling into a tattoo shop, asking for a specific tattoo.

Trent's is on his wrist, Ashley's is on her upper arm. They aren’t to big so won’t draw much attention, but they are clear, they are there.

It's the only tattoo they won’t explain to their partners, their friends, though others who have the same one, or know the symbolism behind it, know they chose not to end their story. To continue. 

It wasn’t until Naima had been talking at the barbecue, when she saw one of the sawyers tattoos, asking her husband about it, later when he asked about how she knew about it his wife explained the symbolism of it, explaining the importance of it, about how it could be used to honour someone, whether that's a friend, a relative, or yourself—or to raise awareness of mental illness, suicide, addiction, or self-harm.

Ray wondered what pain his brother had suffered, what he never told them. He walked over to Trent listening to him talk with Brock before saying quietly, “Glad you decided to continue your story.” 

While Brock was confused, Trent's heart stopped looking at his friend, offering a small smile, for the first time feeling able to breathe, someone understood, he resumed talking about what had happened and how Clay lost a bet. 

Ray smiled listening, wondering what made the Sawyers get the tattoo in the first place, and what their story was, but it didn’t matter to him, or anyone else, that was their story.

[rapha-reads]

@stelly38 asked me:

ooooh, that's going to be fun, thank you!!! Here we go. [Edit: this is going to be long]

Top 10 worst moments in American History

Alright, I'm French and Moroccan. American bashing is like, encoded in my DNA, lmao. Also I've studied History but I'm a Literature specialist, so.

10. the Kardashians. Why are you making us suffer these guys? Please stop. 9. Reagan's administration, how AIDs was handled. 8. the assassination of John Lennon. What the hell, USA? What did Lennon eve do to you? 7. the assassination of MLK. That one is unforgivable. And obviously, George Floyd, Emmett Till... Remember their names. 6. the imperialism in Middle East. That one is not just on you guys, but dammit, you are digging your own grave. And taking the rest of the arabo-muslim world with you. 5. creating Ben Ladden, the war in Irak. Do you guys realize that if Bush hadn't gone to Afghanistan and tried to imperialize it, we wouldn't have the so-called "war on terror" now? 4. the entire Vietnam war. Napalm and senseless violence and the constant glorification of war ever since. 3. bombing Japan. What the hell was that about, Truman? (aka you watched Oppenheimer this summer) 2. Trump. That was like. Globally traumatizing. The whole thing. The heck were you guys thinking? Macron is horrible but Trump was like, majorly nightmarish. 1. the colonization and genocide of the Natives. I know Colombus is not your fault, but everything that happened and keeps happening now. As another indigenous people (North Africa's original people, the Amazighs), I feel a great kinship with the Native Americans. Though to be fair my people has not been as exterminated and pushed back to the recesses of history like you. But yeah, I really think the most important conversation the US should be having today is about the Natives, their lands, their rights, their history, their culture, their justice... I think your country can only progress if it faces its own history and this history starts and ends with its native people.

Oof, let's get into something a bit more light-hearted!

Top 5 favorite songs ever

List changes all the time. Let's see the ones that stay always, the classic ones that almost never make the list because they've been with me for so long.

5. Renaud, Société tu m'auras pas. A classic from my childhood. Anarchist French angry song, anti-society, anti-capitalism... Used to jump and shout the chorus with my brother when I was under 6, visiting my paternal grandfather in the house my father grew up. 4. U2, Magnificent. There was a period in my early teenage years where my mother, my middle sister and I would often drive from the city to the village and back every other week-end, a sort of mini road-trip (60kms only), and we'd listen with my mother this U2 album. 3. Dire Straits, Romeo and Juliet. At this point, everyone who knows me a little knows of my huge obsession for R&J, that started when I was barely 10. This song is everything to me. Also Dire Straits is a shared taste with a part of my maternal family. 2. Manu Chao, Clandestino. My mother is a Spanish teacher, Spain is on the way between France and Morocco. Spanish's always been one of the languages spoken in my house, despite none of us being actually, you know, Spanish. Been hearing this song for as long as I can remember. 1. Anne Sylvestre, Les grands migrateurs. Anne Sylvestre is a French singer (she died this year) who did feminist songs in the 60s-80s, and also various tapes of nursery rhyme (kinda) for kids. This one is about migratory birds. I used to listen to these K7 all the time as a child.

Top 5 favorite desserts

I have a huge sweet tooth!

5. Lemon pie. 4. Red fruit cheesecake. 3. Apple pie. 2. Chocolat mousse. 1. Chocolate cake (marble cake, brownie, classic gâteau... If it's chocolate, it goes in).

[silenthillmutual]

🍊, 🍑, 🍏 for the fruit-themed fic asks

Who’s a character you don’t write for that often, but keep meaning to write for more? (They’re so interesting! But maybe you have trouble pinning them down, or keep getting distracted by another blorbo…)

I know I've only written one Saw fic so far, but I'd love to try writing for Amanda Young at some point in time. She's my favorite apprentice, and I think it would be fun to try my hand at her inner workings. She's a complex character, a poor little meow meow, all that jazz. Unfortunately this might require me to have a better grasp of the Saw timeline, so that is kind of holding me up.

If you could make a connection between your favorite character and another work you care about (whether a crossover/fusion or a wonderfully “pretentious” literary reference) what would it be? How would it work?

Oooo okay well, I recently read a fic that was taking the Burakh family home and some ideas from Kitty Horrorshow's game Anatomy to create an idea of how the house becomes remodeled. I liked that a lot! But it got me thinking, since I've recently read it, about the Burakh family home being a sort of Navidson affair. Or maybe comparing the Town itself to the ever-growing labyrinth of the house on Ash Tree Lane. I feel like that would be a step to the left from Silent Hill AU. I feel like the idea of the town as the ever-expanding labyrinth would work really well with a Marble Nest situation... something about the town morphing to fit the psyche of whomever the protagonist currently is. Hell, the theatre could be that kind of a liminal space. If the whole game is a play production, who's to say we ever left the theatre to begin with? It's something I can put on the backburner :)

Is there something you overuse, whether it’s a certain phrase, trope, or piece of punctuation?

You know, I'm not sure! I actually make a concerted effort not to repeat myself in my writing, at least from piece to piece. I even try to make it so my paragraphs don't begin the same way page by page. I think I'm getting worse with useing semi-colons, though, and dashes. I don't want my sentences to be too short. I feel like that's boring. So I've wound up reusing those punctuation marks a lot... I think my OCD fics also suffer from looking too stylized. I personally like it, but I can see how it wouldn't be appealing to others. To each their own!

[allbeendonebefore]

i decided to open a new blank doc to go at the ruperts land thing from a different angle just for fun and i’m already suffering from scope creep because. yknow. balancing characters all with their own unique histories that i could go super in depth on each but that’s not the point.

so for the sake of avoiding scope creep lets establish what this is and isn’t if i actually ever do bother to do anything about it

- dominion day was about the founding four provinces that Did join confederation AND the two that did Not; likewise ruperts land is about the provinces and territories that came out of the nwt (3 in the 19th century, 3 in the 20th)

- so, back in iamp the ruperts land fam was treated as siblings even though they were never established as such by sherry. this treatment bothers me for a lot of reasons and it’s not a reading that i bring with me because i just feel like its an extension of the Canadian tm view of a place that was full of very different people lumped together for convenience and colonization. i do treat them like found family, sure, but they are ambiguously related because again its. a Lot of different people and cultures that kind of are treated in canadian history as “land we Wanted and land we don’t care about but need to have or else”

- the reason i bring that up is that in nwt’s bio she’s referred to as everyone’s big sister, and you could take that in a literal or a metaphorical sense. i Personally like the idea that part of her character arc was being alone and independent since ‘birth’ and then her like. mellowing out and learning to actually take care of others as she encountered them. so her relationship with NT is completely different from how the others remember her growing up lol, with nunny she is like you’re sure you’re ok? are you eating enough at home? and yukon starts talking about how when she was growing up it was just nonstop chores and occasionally fighting lol.

- i think the central focus of this story is how nwt is hella ambiguous, i don’t think she came into the world knowing who her people were, she knew that there were people like her but they already had meaning. so it’s kind of the story of her getting definition (mostly from others but i think she finds herself too)

- like its also obviously the story of the others but mostly its about her. and how. right after all the drama and politics of dominion day. she was literally. bought. and the others just appeared as part of the package deal. and that sets the tone for all of western and northern canadian politics up to now, and a particularly big elephant in the room is the numbered treaties.

- ALL THIS SAID i know i have a tendency to lose sight of the big picture because i am so invested in this history and its somewhat personal to me so i need to not do a deep dive. i have to sort of imagine it from an outsider perspective too, so the next thing i need to decide is how to tell the story and what questions to answer and what questions that just get hinted at or asked without being directly addressed. one of the smaller ones that still is pretty big is what is the difference between a province and a territory, and while i want to be cynical about it i guess that’s really the root of the story im telling at the end of the day

- i was initially going to do it chronologically and pick up from where i left off with dd but it occurred to me it would actually make more sense to bookend it with more contemporary history, because again Nunny’s relationship with confederation is also entirely different from the rest of rupert’s land. so really i’m also structuring it around her too.

- anyway that’s enough rambling for now shout if you have questions and i’ll do my best to answer. none of this is or should be considered Canon it’s just how i personally view the history so [radical guitar solo] nothing matters! :)