#they can’t even remember which groups they genocided when

[kazhanko-art]

You remember when Jamala sang about the deportation of her family and all the Russians were like “typical Ukrainian whining about their history vying for sympathy points” and the song wasn’t even about Ukrainians?

[shadysadie]

Hot take: the Wittebanes were not Puritans

So since Hollow Mind came out there have been a lot of jokes about how the Belos is a crusty old Puritan. And while he is certainly crusty and old, I don’t think he was a Puritan.

I understand why everyone jumps there, when we think of Witch Hunts in Colonial America the very first thing that comes to mind is the Salem Witchcraft Trials. However, the Salem Witchcraft Trials began in 1692, that is 80 years after Masha says the Wittebros showed up in Gravesfield, and 30 years after the events of Elsewhere and Elsewhen.

If Masha’s information is correct, (which it might not be but we’ll get to that) then Caleb and Philip arrived in Gravesfield in 1613, which is closer in time to the settlement of Jamestown (1607) than the Salem Witchcraft Trials. 

The Pilgrims didn’t even land at pride rock until 1620, seven years after the Wittebros arrived in Gravesfield. The Mayflower Pilgrims were really the group responsible for creating the idea of religious charters. They specifically wanted to leave England to create their own religious society. Many other groups followed, (notably the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which later became the home of the aforementioned Salem Witchcraft Trials) but the Mayflower Pilgrims were the first group of religious extremists who came to America looking for their Zion. 

Prior to that, the motivation to settle the “New World” was mainly financial. Ships were chartered through the Virginia Company. Which as we all remember from our favorite wildly inaccurate and problematic 90s Disney movie, the Virginia Company was in it for the money. The New World had resources and Britian wanted them, damnit, Glory, God, and Gold and the Virginia Company.

That meant, if Caleb and Philip really did arrive in Gravesfield in 1613, their family likely made the trip for financial gain, not religion. If that’s the case they were less likely a member of an obscure group of religious extremists, and more likely to be either Protestant like King James and Queen Elizabeth. (They could have also been Roman Catholic, evidence for that comes later).

“But”, you say, “weren’t Puritans the ones persecuting witches at the time?”

Yes and no. 

In the Americas, Witch Hunts will forever be linked to Puritans, but in Witch Hunting long outdates the Puritans. King James himself, was a witch hunting fanatic, he personally oversaw hundreds of witchtrials. He wrote books about finding witches, and it was specifically the King James endorse translation of the Bible that features the infamous “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (in many prior translations the word witch is something more along the line of “sinner” or “evil doer”). By many estimates, upwards of 1500 people were executed for witchcraft as a result of his reign. If we are going with Masha’s 1613 timeline, the brothers would have left England smack dab in the middle of his reign, right after the King James Bible was published.

(^this GIF has nothing to do with the Owl House, I just love sassy Gay King James in his bird mask, look at this cocky ass bastard, you know him and Belos would have been genocide buddies)

However, I can’t pretend to be focused on some semblance of historical accuracy and take Masha��s information at face value, even in the context of the show it wouldn’t add up because according to the sign we see in Yesterday’s Lie, Gravesfield was established in 1635. 

(Granted there is a difference between a settlement and a town, it is possible that 1635 was when Gravesfield was officially acknowledged as a town and the boys just lived there pre-establishment). 

However, in the name of historical accuracy, I have to assume Masha got the date wrong, because the English didn’t even settle in Conneticut until the 1630s. The Conneticut Witch Trials began in the 1640s. By this timeline and demographic, the likelihood of Caleb and Philip being Puritans goes up by a lot. 

However, if we look at Philip’s clothes an his goals, there are still signs that don’t point to Puritanism. First look at the clothes Caleb and Philip wear as children:

Philip’s pants are red and Calebs are green. While it is a myth that Puritans could only wear black, the colors that they were allowed to incorporate into their wardrobe were typically still neutrals (dark yellows and beiges). Green would be pushing it, and red would be unbelievably bold.

Additionally, the ruffles on Philip’s shirt in the journal and Jacob’s book, would have been seen as incredibly vain.

 The blue/black coat that Caleb wore in the puppet show, and Philip later wears in Elsewhere and Elsewhen and King’s Tide has gold buttons and gold embroidery. Gold and Silver accessories of any kind would have been considered incredibly sinful and conceited. 

Which would also make it really weird for a Puritan to choose gold to represent himself. Infact his whole emperor authentic is much more reminiscent of the Catholic Pope. His own role as the messenger of the Titan’s will is also very papal in nature.

Finally there is the term he uses, “Witch Hunter General” is an illusion to “Witch Finder General” which was a rank made up and used by Protestant Matthew Hopkins and not really used by any Puritans. Such a title would also probably have seemed pretty vain.

Now you might say, “It’s a fictional story, why does any of this matter?”

The answer is: It does not, but I am high and have ADHD and this was the rabbit hole I fell down.

[forestdeath1]

When we talk about Snape, the discussion often focuses on how he was bullied at school (aka the Marauders were bad) and how Snape bullied students (aka Snape was bad).

While they are all bad in their actions, friendly reminder that Snape’s most unforgivable act, which often gets overlooked, is his voluntary joining of Voldemort. Voldemort is a dictator and the Death Eaters are not just an underground terrorist group, but a political force that caused a war and genocide. It’s not only terror, it’s genocide. This is so terrible that I can’t even describe how awful this decision was. For me it’s hard to understand how this can be justified by saying he was bullied at school. I will never understand. (And we can’t compare what Draco said about Hufflepuff to what James said about Slytherin as equal "bullying". Slytherin at that time was a place that supported this policy on an institutional level. There’s nothing wrong with speaking out against Slytherin because Slytherin was spreading ideas of genocide).

Although I believe Snape fully redeemed himself, this act can’t be excused by any bullying. I can love Snape as a character, but I can’t ignore this and justify it by his past.

(The Marauders were also wrong to bully Snape, that’s obvious).

Snape fell very deep by his own choice and that makes his redemption more meaningful.

I’m an atheist, but I can’t help but remember these words from the Gospel:

"I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent" (Luke, 15:7)

But nevertheless, it was and remains the most terrible thing he did. And arguments about whose bullying was worse – Snape’s or the Marauders’ – are pointless because any bullying is bad. But it’s not a justification for Snape.

[qqueenofhades]

https://www.tumblr.com/qqueenofhades/742700762243727361/you-can-tell-you-work-in-academia-with-how-much

Hi, sorry, Asshole Anon here (I’m not giving myself that nickname to lash out, I’m saying it because I was an ass)

To clarify: I mean “I don’t know what to trust anymore” in that “people whom I normally respect and would otherwise agree with are now sharing material that I find either morally indefensible or overtly simplistic, and at the same time people on the ground in Gaza are saying that Hamas IS a liberation organization, so I trust their word, but there is also the existence of the “We Want To Live” protests, and the fact that there’s now apparently a protest against a child that got killed that isn’t widely reported, with an attached video of said protest from somebody on the ground in Gaza, but it’s in Arabic, there are no subtitles, I cannot speak Arabic, and I don’t trust Google Translate”

I just want an objective sense of what is happening on the ground. I want to know what is and is not propaganda, because I (white, raised in a liberal(?) household, surrounded by white people) am especially susceptible to it. Once I have that objective sense of what the people in Gaza want, then I will be able to effectively and efficiently advocate for shit. But that also necessitates listening to orgs like Standing Together, B’Tselem, people IN Israel who want this shit to stop, and hoo BOY that ain’t gonna fly with those people I mentioned because of:

1. BDS saying that the org “normalizes the occupation”, but they’re made up of Palestinian activists and anti-apartheid veterans, I can’t discount their statement, not fully.

2. Netenyahu’s… Netenyahu

3. Twitter’s doing a great job of asserting that everyone in Israel is a — quoting directly here from a half-remembered Tweet — “genocidal maniac”, or wants the bombardment to happen. (Which I know for a fact is not the case, if the protests calling for a new election are anything to go by)

That’s not even getting into the domestic stuff. I’m in an org rn and I’m getting the sinking feeling that they’re gonna drop this thing like a hot potato when a ceasefire gets called. Just sucks.

Anyways, back to improvement. Just closing this out

I agree that we're currently in a paradoxical state where there is simultaneously ALL THE INFORMATION EVER and ACTUALLY NO INFORMATION AT ALL, and that's what makes it difficult to sort out true from false. It's also what contributes to compassion fatigue, where we are able to get extensive real-time information and/or eyewitness accounts about pretty much any tragedy or catastrophe anywhere in the world, and social media has created a space where we are expected to both immediately react to all that information and to do so in the "right" and "correct" way. Which is basically impossible, and is also what burns out young well-meaning people so hard, where they insist that there's nothing to be done except The Revolution, because they have been so inundated with this torrent of human suffering and it seems like small steps are in fact useless. I am a historian and I can tell you upfront that humans are simply not made to process that volume of information about ALL THE BAD THINGS EVERYWHERE. It's also impossible to have an informed opinion on all or sometimes any of it, but there is still the pressure to visibly do so and to do it in a way that fits in with what everyone in your peer group is saying, even if you don't understand it. So yes -- that is absolutely very difficult, and it's hard to filter or parse it.

That said, I don't think we actually need to have painstaking piece-by-piece analysis of every single piece of information out there, because there are in fact so many competing narratives, perspectives, fake news, disinformation campaigns, opinions, etc., and it will lead you to the same information paralysis: there's just too much of it to even start processing, and so your brain just gives up and reverts to those same simplistic cliches and things that "feel" right, regardless of whether or not they are. When you're trying to decide on the fine details of something, it helps to have an overall sense of the context and narrative that they're operating in. So for reference, these are some broad and basic analytic paradigms that I personally use when reading or thinking about any material in regard to the Israel/Hamas situation in particular:

No person of basic good faith and human decency wants the current situation in Gaza to be happening. However, the person/group that has the power to call it off -- i.e. Netanyahu and the current Israeli government -- has not done so despite increasing pressure from Western allies, because the situation is beneficial to Bibi personally and he sees more use in continuing it than making the decision for it to stop.

The governments of Western allies, therefore, can voice disapproval of Israel's actions (which they have been doing more and more frequently) but unless Netanyahu himself makes the choice to end the war, it will not stop. The West has recently given more and more signals that they are not prepared to countenance the ongoing destruction and genocide of Gaza, but yet again, Israel is its own sovereign country with its own powerful government, military, intelligence services, etc. The "anti-imperialists" who think the collective West can just reach in and turn off the violence whenever they please, and have just refused to do so because they're "bad people," are not being realistic. Western allies can exert pressure and leverage, but as long as Netanyahu himself wants to keep going, he will.

"People in Gaza" and "people in Israel" are not homogeneous blocs who think exactly alike. Some people in Gaza support Hamas. Some people do not. Hamas support has recently grown as a result of Israel's post-October 7 response, but it is not unanimous or unquestioned.

Hamas is the entity that started the current war by attacking Israel on October 7 and murdering/raping/kidnapping 1,000+ Israeli civilians. Hamas is also associated with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and other terrorist regimes/states, which are often defended by Online Leftists simply for being "anti-Western," regardless of how heinous their actions also are.

Netanyahu was wildly unpopular in Israel for MONTHS before this current war, due to his autocratic attempts to neutralize the Israeli Supreme Court and make the country even more of his personal fiefdom. There were huge, massive, ongoing protests against his naked power-grab for almost all of 2023, and he was so preoccupied with pushing it through that he ignored warnings from the Israeli and Egyptian intelligence services that Hamas was planning a major attack. These anti-Netanyahu demonstrations have continued and ramped up in intensity even in the middle of the war/attacks on Gaza.

As such, painting every single Israeli as mindlessly supporting the current actions of Netanyahu and the Israeli government is antisemitic nonsense and reflect the current Western Leftist tendency to assume that "all Israelis" and "all Zionists (read Jews)" are evil and personally responsible for this.

Israeli Jews have a right to exist and to reside on the land currently called Israel. Modern Israel was founded in 1948, three years after the end of WWII and the Holocaust, the greatest incidence of antisemitic mass murder in history, which is a fact that cannot be ignored and which western leftists eagerly calling for its total eradication and treating it as an illegitimate "white western settler colony" nonetheless do in fact repeatedly ignore.

This is why many Jews do not feel safe in other countries, because there has literally been thousands of years of history proving that they often aren't, and which the rabidly antisemitic response to the current conflict is doing nothing to dissuade.

Jews have had a presence in the land alternately called Palestine, Israel, the Holy Land, Judah, etc., for over 2,000 years, and their entire religion and history is founded around the exile from Jerusalem. That is the history that the current state of Israel is drawing on. It does not vanish just because it is inconvenient for western leftists to acknowledge.

Israel currently has a militant far-right government (after tending toward rightist/right wing domestic politics more generally, partially due to post-Holocaust trauma) that has deliberately erased, ignored, and violated the equally valid claims of Palestine and Palestinian people to that same land, and which is currently committing full-scale genocide against them.

Palestine and Palestinian/Muslim people have the same right to exist on that land as Israel and Israeli/Jewish people (and Christian people, and none-of-the-three people). They both have equally long and historically relevant claims to this land and one of them (in an ideal world, which we do not live in) should not be artificially prized over the other.

However, this land is some of the most bitterly and violently contested in the entire world, for the last two thousand years and counting, and there is no one good guy, simplistic answer, or quick way to stop it. The three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have fought bitterly over Jerusalem and its associated territories for a cool few millennia, and human nature being what it is, there is no way for one person, group, organization, government, etc to just step in and make it stop.

The Western/American leftist response to the current conflict has often made absolutely no attempt to take into account any of this troubled and complex history, and has reduced the whole thing down to whichever antisemitic and/or anti-Democratic Party soundbites will get them the most traction on social media. This often rests on whitewashing any moral responsibility belonging to Hamas and defending them no matter what, labeling all Israeli Jews as "evil genocide supporters," and assuming that if Biden wanted to magically shapeshift into Netanyahu and give the order to make it stop, he would, but he's "just not doing it," ergo something something Trump Would Totally Be Better!

These people also often call themselves "anti-imperialist" while thinking/demanding that America swoop in and play Big Global Policeman Daddy (as it indeed has often done in the past) and spank all its naughty children (but if it actually did do this, etc etc it would be evil). Biden could very much do more and has not necessarily done enough, but he has also done more than any other American president in history to shift away from unconditional unquestioning support of Israel only, and to advocate for a Palestinian state, a lasting ceasefire, and other basic precepts of Palestinian self-determination and dignity of personhood. These two things can be true at the same time.

I don't necessarily expect everyone to agree with every single fine detail of these statements, but I do expect them to at least make a basic effort to let all of these facts to inform their response, and not just the ones that they most agree with and which most fit their ideology or preferred conclusion. So that's one way to approach the situation, even if we obviously can't wring every single drop of meaning out of every single competing piece of information or evidence, because there is just too much of it. When we have a broader understanding of the space that we are operating in and the precepts that are factually true, we are able to make better judgments about who is trustworthy, who is worth listening to, what message they are pushing, and whether it corresponds with reality.

Good luck. I'm sure you'll continue to think about this and take the steps that you feel are best. It is all any of us can do.

[geminialchemist]

More Shadow of the Erdtree discussion, because I seriously cannot shut up about it.

God damn, my posts must make it seem like I loathe this dlc, when it’s one of the best I’ve played in my life. Screw this just being a good DLC, this was an amazing Fromsoft GAME with the title of DLC attached to it.

With that said… I still have complaints to air, because I’m a whiner baby, and I find it easier to construct my thoughts around my criticism of things rather than my praise for them.

I’ve seen the idea floating around that some people think that some other people don’t care for the ending because they don’t like that Fromsoft made Miquella a villain. I’d like to utterly dash that idea. I don’t dislike that they made him a villain, I dislike that they made him a bad villain.

What’s Miquella’s motivation? We know his end goal. Become a god, make the world a compassionate place via brainwashing. We know how he put his plans into motion, convoluted and brow raising as the writing choices for that was. But what is his reason for doing it?

Messmer’s motivations, we know. He is, at least outwardly, a brutal tyrant. He leads a genocidal crusade against the Hornsent and any Tarnished he crosses paths with. We also know his motivation. To take the blame off of his mother for these actions. He doesn’t particularly like being so brutal, but has become the figurehead for the worst actions of his country, and has faced a willing exile with his loyal followers to shift the blame way from his mother, who he loves and cherishes, even after she has abandoned him to his fate. His villainy is his complacency in his mother’s conquests. This actually makes him a sympathetic antagonist, which is why everyone paints him as a soft boy in need of hugs. I’m simplifying this a lot, because outside of no plot for Melina, I have no major issues with Messmer’s side of the story in this DLC, it’s good stuff, great writing.

What’s Miq’s motivation? What made him wake up one day and decide he was going to be a god, and use mind control to pacify the entire world? I realized as I was theory crafting that I… don’t really know? I certainly have headcanon and ideas, I just can’t remember it ever being stated in canon. Just that he wants to do it. Did I miss something? I can’t have missed something, could I?

Was he evil all along? Is he doing this to control everyone just for laughs? Is he a broken person, who witnessed the horrors of war during the Shattering, unable and unwilling to fight due to his body and pacifism, showing up after battles to tend to the wounded but knowing that for every living person he found, a hundred more were corpses, and that for every one he did manage to save he was forced to leave a dozen others to die in agony and so decided to end the cycle of violence by any means necessary?

Did he simply want power and a complacent population? Did he want to fix all of his mommy’s mistakes(no, couldn’t be that one, fans would have woobified him to the same level as Messmer)? Or was it overpowering grief that drove him to tear his too-soft heart out and cast it aside? We don’t even know! Or at least I don’t. I’ve scoured the wiki’s for NPC dialogue, and item descriptions, but unfortunately those are still incomplete, and are missing huge chunks. I’m in the middle of my second run of the dlc, too, but haven’t come across anything yet.

Can anyone tell me what I’m missing, if I did miss something? Or is this just another example of the second half of Miquella’s questline being terribly written? If I did miss something, let me know, and make sure to shame me and call me an idiot, it’s the only way I’ll ever learn!

EDIT: Thanks so much for giving me some answers! I’ll go look more into Ymir’s dialogue, I’m curious to if reversing Marika’s Sin is his motivation, or just another endgame goal to add to the pile to ensure “World Peace(tm).” For instance, Hornsent still doesn’t trust or accept anyone in the group for what Marika did, even under Miq’s charm, so fixing that could make his charm sink in easier for the Hornsent population? I’ll go check it out in my NG+ run, I actually haven’t spoken to Ymir yet in that run.

[aronarchy]

The Youth Move Forward

The Palestinians feel betrayed and abandoned by the world. People only remember them when there’s an ongoing genocidal campaign, and even then, everybody is busy talking about how “complicated” the situation is. I’m not sure if they have anyone to trust, including their own “leadership.”

The Shabab, the youth fighting in the streets, the kids erecting barricades against the police and setting trash bins on fire, are completely alienated from any form of political force; they work in small informal groups, and many of them don’t give a fuck about politics at all. They come from the far edges of Palestinian society in 48, the direct consequence of the Zionist attempt to reduce this society to internal chaos. They are gangsters, drug dealers, outlaws of any kind, youth without a future from the poorest villages, towns, and neighborhoods of 48 Palestine, the lumpenproletariat, and—the most important thing—they are completely uncontrollable. The traditional politics of organizations, political parties, respectable religious leaders, and NGOs means nothing to them.

The new generation in Palestine has nothing left to lose. Even according to Israel’s infamous Shin Bet, they really are ungovernable. Whenever a riot or an uprising gets out of control, the authorities and security agencies look for “responsible” adults, respected “community leaders” to pacify the situation. But when you invest so much power in breaking a society from the inside to such an extent, you create an enemy that you can’t negotiate with, because he has zero fear of you and nothing to rely on or hope for. There is no going back to normal.

And they are being completely vilified. The media propaganda machine treats them as nothing but criminals, terrorists, savages, bloodthirsty pogromists, and they don’t get to have a voice. The riots are presented as nothing more than an outburst of violent anger from some hooligans, with the idea that our police force, intelligence agencies, and prison system will deal with them. It looks as though everybody decided to continue to push them as low as possible, to sweep them under the rug, to treat them as nothing more than monstrous murderers until the next outburst. Zionist apartheid is also a class system, and they hate poor Palestinians the most.

The uprising is also, of course, a form of class warfare, beyond the regular scope of ethnic conflict. I’ve read somewhere that during the first intifada, in its early days, many of the youth who revolted in Gaza and beyond weren’t very political and most of the attacks were directed against richer Palestinians. This goes way back to the great Arab revolt of 1936, when many of the attacks involved the Falahis, the peasant population of Palestine, acting against the urban elite. This dimension of the class struggle within Palestinian society is always erased from history, in favor of a more simplified ethnic conflict of Arabs against Jews.

This class struggle is always pushed aside once the big parties, the militarist factions, manage to take over; the first intifada, for example, was shut down by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It was quickly transformed from a popular mass struggle to a top-down controlled opposition in the hands of a few corrupted bureaucrats. As we all know, once the militias and the professional revolutionaries take over, the people become spectators in their own “liberation,” and the mass popular appeal of the resistance is lost. The PLO and Fatah crushed the intifada in order to get the Oslo accords going, which divided the West Bank into small cantons and introduced the so-called Palestinian Authority. Fatah became the de facto long arm of Israel and the occupation, managing the apartheid from within. A similar (though not identical) process is taking place now with Hamas, in my opinion.

While I was composing this, the focus shifted completely to rockets striking Israeli cities from Gaza. Nine people in Israel died from Hamas rockets—including Palestinians, like in the village of Dahamash near Ramle. A few Hamas rockets reached as far as the West Bank. Rockets also came from Lebanon. The protests largely waned, and we don’t see large riots anymore. One can’t help but feel that Hamas and the militarist factions interrupted the birth of a popular, mass movement in the streets, in the inner cities of the occupation, which could have been capable of creating real damage to the stability of the state.

We can clearly see who benefits from this. The anarchy within Israeli cities is over, and Israel can sell the same old story to the world about us fighting Islamist jihadist terrorists who are shooting rockets at our cities. It’s a much more convenient story, and much easier to deal with. Perhaps the strategy of weakening the secular revolutionary Marxist fronts of the 1980s and strengthening Hamas has paid off. Reactionary ideologies are easier to control, and whenever needed, they can take over the struggle and kill mass movements.

In this system, everybody plays his part. The left does what the left always, historically, does in times of social upheaval: try to pacify the resistance and absorb its energy in order to direct it towards more “acceptable” (i.e., ineffective) terrain. The same old outdated tactics, boring predictable demonstrations, “non-violent” nonsense, and empty talks about shallow “co-existence,” peace, and democracy. There’s nothing really to expect from what’s left of the Israeli Jewish left, but even the Arab political parties have proved to be completely disconnected from what’s happening in the streets.

The communist “radical leftist” Hadash party from the Joint Arab List and the Ra’am party both got into the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) in the elections of March 23. They urged people to protest lawfully and refrain from violence. No wonder the youth are completely alienated from them. For 48 Palestinians, the Arab parties in the Knesset are the same thing that the Fatah and the PA are for 67 (West Bank) Palestinians: another face of the occupation, sellouts, collaborators, conflict managers, a tool of pacification for the regime. Just like Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain, they appear in mass movements to appropriate the language and the energy of the people revolting in order to channel all of it back into acting within the system—and of course, in the moment of truth, they will completely betray people. I doubt they have any credibility left now.

It has almost become cliché to mention this, but the problem of the Palestinians is not just the far-right assholes, but Zionism. Israeli racist mobs are the direct consequence of a country established on deeply racist roots—a settler colonial project built on the ruins of villages and the driving away of the indigenous population, of a Jewish supremacist state—at the expanse of everyone else. Israel is probably one of the worst examples of a nation state as a way of solving things for oppressed people. It’s a lot easier for Israelis to get disgusted by far-right hooligans attacking a Palestinian, while the IDF’s genocidal campaign in Gaza (let alone the violent birth of this state) either goes unquestioned or is completely accepted. The IDF is the “people’s army,” and it is putting the platform of “Death to Arabs” into practice more efficiently than any grassroots fascist ever could.

Right now, the Gaza Strip is completely in ruins. Military airplanes drop bombs on clinics, a media tower fell down, entire neighborhoods are erased. The situation is unbearable. As I’m writing this, about 250 people have been killed and thousands are displaced. Gaza has been under siege since 2007; it was a hell on earth before the current massacre, the biggest open prison on earth, and now it has reached a situation of human catastrophe. This is mainstream Zionism, not the extremist edges.

(2021-05-29)

[cto10121]

I think it’s understood that Bardugo really wanted to R&J-fy Alina and Mal in their us-against-the-world shtick. But just. Completely did not understand that particular love dynamic at all.

For one thing, the feud in R&J was literally pointless at all levels. In the play it’s a conduit for youthful machismo and posturing. There is no notion of justice nor even reason for the feud; if there were, the houses probably no longer remember. The feud is an internecine conflict between two private families of influence and that’s all.

So when R&J—both the heirs of families, both of similar ages, means, and personalities—decide to fuck it all over in favor of their grand love, we think, “Good for them!” Or at the very least, “Bah, might as well.” Because who the fuck cares about the feud or take it seriously except brain-dead antis? It works, in short, as an obstacle against R&J’s love.

In S&B, Mal and Alina’s star-crossed romance plays out against a background of oppression and de facto genocide of a magical minority. Of which Alina is not only a member, but a mythological Chosen One. Mal isn’t.

This inequality in their relationship goes beyond mere power and status. Book!Mal behaves coldly toward her in ways ill-befitting of a canonical soulmate, and he doesn’t like Alina’s powers. Alina is pulled toward the Darkling, who is actually more similar to her with more soulmate vibes than Mal and has a canonical connection to her. Even Show!Mal cannot redeem this ship, for it’s the narrative that is doing the framing.

A quick and easy fix to retain the R&J soulmate dynamic would have been to equalize the sources of the conflict. Have Mal be a Grisha of a different faction (allied to the king?) in conflict with another type of Grisha (led by the Darkling?). The two groups are in internecine conflict, whose differences are egged on and manipulated by a corrupt monarchy (as in real life!) who fear and hate the Grisha. Establish Mal and Alina’s connection first and then have them separated by these factions and struggling to get together. The Darkling can then finally be what Bardugo tried in vain to portray him as—a morally tainted villain preying on and manipulating a young woman.

Either way, the point is that you can’t slap the “star-crossed lovers/soulmate dynamic” on just any YA couple and call it a day. You have to understand it first.

[garudabluffs]

who's keeping score of whose war(s) ?

Why protests now? Letter by P. Greenwald "In March, 1945, the United States firebombed Tokyo and killed 100,000 civilians. In February, 1945, British and American bombing of Dresden, Germany killed 25,000 civilians. READ MORE https://www.gazettenet.com/Letter-to-the-editor-52796440 Dr. Jesse Ferris provides Israeli perspective on Israel-Hamas conflict: ‘This is not a genocide’ November 6, 2023 “A member of the audience raised a question about the usage of the term “genocide” to refer to the current situation in Gaza, to which Ferris replied with examples of historic massacres. “If you think of World War II, when American and British forces bombed Dresden for two days, it left 25,000 civilians dead. Consider the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945, in one single night 100,000 people died. None of those were attempts at a genocide.”I can’t even begin to imagine the scale of suffering under those bombings in Gaza, but calling it a genocide? That’s a completely different ballpark,” Jesse Ferris said. "…the West Bank is now home to over 400,000 Israelis. Additionally, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s pledge to advance 10,000 new settler housing units earlier this year has contributed to the ongoing expansion of settlements in the region." +"Following the event, as part of a discussion with some audience members, Ferris was asked whether he thinks there should be a ceasefire. In response, he stated, “No, not yet.” He elaborated, “A ceasefire from the Israeli perspective would leave both sides seriously bloody but only determined to fight another day.” READ MORE https://dailycollegian.com/2023/11/dr-jesse-ferris-provides-israeli-perspective-on-israel-hamas-conflict-this-is-not-a-genocide/ Golda Meir for having said, “You cannot negotiate peace with somebody who has come to kill you.” https://www.gazettenet.com/Columnist-Susan-Wozniak-52794389

A courageous stand at UMass against tide of anti-Israel protests https://www.gazettenet.com/Guest-columnist-Porter-52953396 I agree with journalist Carolina Landsmann, who wrote an op-ed titled, “If Israel must be more brutal than Hamas to win the war, it’s not worth it.” "… the quote attributed to Golda Meir: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. But we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.” https://www.gazettenet.com/Sarena-Neyman-Dangerous-binary-in-Israel-Hamas-war-52939045 The ‘River to the Sea’ Rorschach test by Robert Wright Nov 10, 2023 "But then I remembered a conversation I had a few years ago with a psychologist at Boston College named Liane Young. She and some colleagues had done research on how Palestinians and Israelis view their conflict and found that the two groups have something in common: Both believe that people on their side of the fight are motivated more by love for one another than by hatred of people on the other side, but that on the other side it’s the other way around: there, people are motivated more by hatred of the enemy than by love of one another. Maybe Ahlam was evincing this bias, seeing the love on her side of the conflict but not the love on the other side. And, maybe, so was Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir when she said, half a century ago, “We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” And if Israel gave the vote to Palestinians not only in the West Bank but also in Gaza, then the number of Palestinian voters (including those who live in Israel proper and already have the vote) would roughly equal the number of Jewish voters."

READ MORE https://open.substack.com/pub/nonzero/p/the-river-to-the-sea-rorschach-test?r=2cx3l&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Dr. Ahmad Samih Khalidi provides a Palestinian voice on the Israel-Gaza conflict https://dailycollegian.com/2023/10/dr-ahmad-samih-khalidi-discusses-the-israel-gaza-conflict/ LISTEN 3:31 https://www.wvpe.org/wvpe-news/2023-11-06/notre-dame-expert-says-u-s-is-complicit-in-israels-genocide-of-palestinian-civilians

[eponinesflowers]

Why are we even arguing in the first place? Discourse is pointless when both sides don't listen to one another in order to understand. I get that you think im just a pro Israel anti Palestine troll. Despite the fact that i stated in my inicial message that i was against killing from BOTH sides of this conflict, that every human life is precious. My heart breaks over every single injured child in this conflict both physically and mentally, not to mention about those who died. The reason im on anon is not because im a troll but because i don't want to be personally dragged into this. I don't post or reblog anything from either side. Because i would rather not insert myself into places i do not belong to like so many people from the US like to do. I am neither Israeli, nor Palestinian. Nor Jewish nor Arab. We could argue forever about nuances of what one said or the other because we essentially have a very similar stance in this. The reason i wrote to you is to present food for thoughts. Which i probably failed since your answers derailed very quickly from what i was trying to point out and became generic talking points i see from everywhere. Your blog doesn't need to become this. Frankly, i was surprised you answered. Because you could just, you know, not....at any rate, i hope i will see a lot more about genocide in Sudan for example or hundreds of thousands dead in Ukraine. Almost half a million people were killed there and there are no protests, no posts about it. Maybe that's why so many people are concerned about this whole pro Palestine movement all over the world? I don't remember any Harvard students marching when Ukraine was attacked, unprovoked. Unlike in this case which was started with enormous terrorist attack. The USA went to war half a globe away when they were attacked by terrorists. Just a reminder. Again, no need to argue, these are not talking points, just wanted to provoke some critical thinking. But since i only elicited a defence reaction, i guess i failed. I hope you have a good day.

Sorry that my responses were so disappointing and generic ig🙄 Maybe you shouldn’t tell someone that they’re not able to critically think about a topic if you don’t want to argue? And I never said any of those things about you, I just think that there’s a lot that you haven’t considered based on your asks to me.

I have been vocal about ending the oppression of all people and liberation for all, but I tend to reblog posts that come across my feed and I can’t control the content of those. Additionally, my tax dollars aren’t funding the deaths of those groups of people, the U.S. government is providing aid to the victims of mass violence rather than the perpetrators in those countries.

I do understand wanting to be anonymous, but you have access to my blog and information about me while I’m having a conversation with a faceless, nameless person, which isn’t helpful for discourse imo.

[imagine-too-many-books]

Speaking to the main series it kinda rubs me the wrong way that Setrakus Ra is Loric. Just the fact that the villain leads a genocide against his own people and completely destroys his home.

Like there is no group I can think of whose genocide has been spearheaded by a member of that group. Which makes the decision to make leader of a genocide a member of the victimized group…odd at best.

Reflecting on it, IAN4 isn’t the only series to make this choice (which makes it a different kind of issue - what’s with this trope? Why are people telling it?). But the other series I can think of does a good job of explaining why the person started persecuting his own ethnic/racial group once he came to power that stems from his desire to hold power and prevent an even worse evil from happening and nothing to do with outright hating his racial group.

I admit it’s been awhile since I read the IAN4 books but I can’t remember a compelling reason in the main series for this man to not just turn against but exterminate his own race. So it just ends up coming off victim-blame-y. Especially when you see Nine’s anger that Pittacus didn’t stop Setrakus. It made it seem like they could have avoided the destruction of the planet, which is the exact opposite of what it should have been. Since there’s that prophesy the planet would be destroyed it should have seemed like the Loric were doomed to a fate no one could change.

I would be interested in knowing more about the lore around this. Is there a completely different reading of the situation if you read the novellas?

[imfromthemiddlekingdom]

I’m a galaxy of over a trillion people how could 10,000 Jedi (this number includes padawans and elders too remember) feasibly make a difference. Logistically it cannot happen as the republic, which they bound themselves to with the Ruusan reformation (I have thoughts about the army of the light giving up their holdings, land and military, to become beholden to the senate but we’re not talking about that now) to the republic and the republic are the ones that decide on their funding and jurisdiction and it is only through their agreement with the republic are they allowed to act with any sort of authority in the wider republic/galaxy as a whole.

Since some people bought into in universe propaganda that the Jedi are supposed to do everything and fix everything in the galaxy and since they cannot they need to die and have their cultures erased, let me begin by connecting this to a real world situation. Imagine that it was still the 18th century, slavery is ripe throughout the world and the Shaolin monks have actual authority inside China to make peace with warring clans and peoples. Some idiot westerner comes into our country and demands that the Shaolin monks go across the Atlantic and free the slaves because “something something warrior monks need to do something good with their martial prowess”, and they say “we only have less than 2000 monks in this monastery, we only hold authority in this very specific region of China and if we were to start an international incident with one of the most technologically advance societies now without backing from the Qin Dynasty they will rain holy fire on us and our children will starve.” And this entitled westerner goes “oh but if you don’t do anything to solve the slavery problem no government around the world is willing to do it must mean you want to be genocide!” *quickly rings up the eight nation alliance and says to them that China is ripe for the picking and 圆明园 should be bombed because a group of monks half way across the country said they do not have the manpower to free slaves*.

Knowing what I know about online audiences some might still say that “but this isn’t comparable to the situation in a GFFA!!!” and I will then say that this scenario that I thought up in the past 5 mins played out almost exactly the way it did during a conversation with a separatist two years ago. “China deserved to be hooked on opium and have our people put under indentured servitude within our own country because some monks in buttfuck nowhere cannot be assed to free slaves they can’t even get too.” Do you guys hear how unhinged you all sound when your argument is applied irl?

Back in universe it’s the same. The republic has dealings with the Hutts, it’s very clear that the senate cannot care less about their empire built on slavery when they rescued Janna’s son just to access their hyperlanes. It’s not unreasonable for us to then assume that they would have more dealings with the Hutts that would make them took the other way just to get profit either. 10,000 monastic peacekeeping warriors are expected to free all the slaves in Hutt space, the newly reformed Zygerrian Empire (their OG empire was destroyed, absolutely decimated by the Jedi btw so suck on that) and wild space because *checks notes* they are warrior monks who preach compassion and serenity and therefore it makes them obligated to take on entire empires with the money to hire the best bounty hunters in the galaxy (Boba Fett anyone?) and run the risk of starving their children or being exiled from their temple which has been their place of operations for ages, just to satisfy some people on the internet that cannot be bothered to think of the ramifications that would befall the Jedi order should they wage active war on slavers without the blessing of the senate???

Now just because the Jedi order as a whole do not *advertise* the fact that they free slaves and have freedom paths all over the universe, does not mean that they do not. Jedi master Nico Diath is canonically regarded as a freer of slaves along with his nephew Tae Diath. Shock horror a civilization that has been around for 25,000 years have different personalities in them and *gasp* the Jedi council look the other way when Nico frees slaves!!!

What do you think would happen when the senate comes knocking and demanding that the Jedi council hand over Nico Diath because he freed a bunch of slaves from Hutt Space??? Plausible deniability is a thing. If the masters who free slaves on the DL do not report it, the Jedi council would not have to satisfy the senates need to suck up to slavers when they demand said masters head on a pike to satisfy their own greed.

Plus there is no such thing as a “grey Jedi”. Jedi may have morals that are loser than the norm but they are still good, and light. The whole point of having balance within the force isn’t to have everyone become “grey Jedi” No matter what some fans wish to think. It’s to achieve balance within yourself. To master your fear, anger and greed, is to truly achieve balance, to know these emotions and let go of them is to be balanced in the force. The dark side corrupts. This is well known. No matter how you try to spin it, GL never stated that the dark side of the force was the natural state of being, instead he goes out of his way to say that the dark side corrupts and twists your desires into what they are not.

And the fact that you think Anakin was the only child in the order who has either a) been enslaved or b) been rescued from slavery and bought to the temple. Shows how litter you know about the source material. Either you support the Disney ruling that EU are no longer cannon or you just straight up nitpick what material you view as cannon. Either way you’re wrong. Does Aayla Secura no longer ring a bell in peoples minds??? A person who was sold into slavery (Hutt slavery same as Anakin) by her family because she was force sensitive? Bandomeer and Obi-Wans time I. The deep sea minds no longer matter because I guess you MUST spend 10+ years in slavery to be considered a slave.

Tell me how 10k people are supposed to free a slave population in the billions without pissing off their own overseers and having their children’s starve?

I feel like the ‘the Jedi were too strict with Anakin and it was abusive and that’s why he fell!’ is telling of a certain … power fantasy some Star Wars fans have.

Because Anakin didn’t have to be a Jedi. We know he could’ve left the Order, because that’s what Dooku did. The man’s the most skilled fighter pilot of his era, a capable combatant, has experience with diplomacy, has worked as a bodyguard, etc, etc, he would not even remotely struggle to find work, even without taking into account that his wife is a wealthy senator who could easily support him. Hell, while he’d probably have to give up his lightsaber, it’s not like it’d be impossible for him to build another one – it isn’t illegal for a non-Jedi to own a lightsaber, and it’s clearly possible to acquire lightsaber crystals outside of the Order because, again, Dooku has a lightsaber. It’s not even like he’d have to give up his friendship with Obi-Wan – Obi-Wan has friends who aren’t Jedi, he has a whole bunch of them. So does Yoda.

(Hell, it’s not even like non-Jedi aren’t allowed to use the Force. As Palpatine points out in the Revenge of the Sith novelisation, it’s not even technically illegal to be a Sith Lord.)

The only reason Anakin can’t leave the Order is because he doesn’t want to. He wants everything: He wants the power, prestige, excitement, and community the Jedi offer, but he also wants to not have to follow their rules. 

And I think for quite a lot of people that’s a very relatable thing, right? We want to have it all. The fantasy of being a cool Jedi is, for a lot of people, ruined by the addendum that there are things you would have to forego to do that. That’s one reason why the idea of Grey Jedi, which fully is just that ‘you can have your cake and fuck it too’ is so appealing to so many fans.

But that’s not what life is like, in reality or in fiction. And Anakin’s fall brings that crashing in: He tries to have everything, and he ends up with nothing. Less than nothing, because at the end of it, not only does he not have any of the things he wanted in the first place, but he’s also lost his freedom (because let’s make no mistake, as much of a terrible, gleeful executor of cruelty and misery as he is as Vader, he is also Palpatine’s slave) and his body.

It’s easy and in a way quite appealing to shift the blame elsewhere and go “Well, he could’ve had it all, but people more powerful than him stopped him from doing so.”

[leportraitducadavre]

What’s your response to people who criticize Sasuke’s choice to destroy Konoha? That he should be more thoughtful of how complicated the situation was?

The problem is that Sasuke challenges the violence monopoly the shinobi system has. So them using violence and torture to accomplish their objectives is “the way it is” or “uhm wrong I guess?” but Sasuke claiming that same violence in order to react to them it’s “going too far”. 

They can’t ask those wronged to fit the aesthetically pleasing way to fix things for the rest of the people to support them, they can’t ask them not to react violently to being approached destructively. They are more focused on their methods than what they’re replying to -they’re more concerned about how uncomfortable their reaction makes them rather than what they’re rising against.

Stating “violence is not the way” is just giving the oppressors more tools against those they put under them (remember, there’s no natural order -no natural occurrence of things, a group collectively chose to establish an entire portion of people to live by and under their rules and mercy), as they’re the only ones with the power to forcefully suppress them, while at the same time it gives them a convenient argument in order to deligitimise their uprising.

It forces those oppressed to endure discrimination until a change is reached through time -it’s condemns those wronged to keep living in the same manner under the premises of a promise; it’s basically telling them “well, you suffered a lot already, what is it to you to suffer a little bit more?”

The “situation” is complicated because people like Sasuke exist, if he hadn’t pointed out the wrongdoings and hadn’t wanted to bring a change, nothing would’ve even been discussed -they blame him for reacting violently to the state-sanctioned genocide of his own people. What are they expect him to do? Sing kumbaya with Konoha’s council? Having a tea party to calmly discuss matters? Why would he trust Naruto who said over and over again he wanted to become Hokage (thus, he never questioned the structure in which such position is constructed)? Why would he wait until he reaches power when he can try to change things now?

They like violence (I don’t know what they were expecting to see in a Shönen -if they didn’t like violence in the first place, maybe they should read another type of story altogether), they just don't like minorities having access to the violence they pretend to monopolize.

[miredinmiddleearth]

Rings of Power, Ep. 6 Review - All Sense of Sanity Has Departed

I swear I wasn’t going to watch another episode. I even planned a hangout with friends so I’d have a reason not to. What I hadn’t accounted for was the fact they knew about my reviews, and they wanted to watch the next episode with me, specifically to laugh at my misery. My friends are so cruel. 

So here are my thoughts on episode six:

1. There are so many speeches to crowds in this series meant to get people riled up. One, they’re kind of boring and forgettable. Two, even the orcs get one? Goody.

2. The group of humans magically transport far from the watchtower to safety without being attacked by orcs. And they don’t keep running away?! Oh no. They want to defend their village. Fine. 

But then Arondir says, “Our position gives us an advantage,” meaning the village is the advantage. I’m sorry, what? Tiny village in the middle of an open valley? Amazing tactical advantage. These villagers are idiots.

3. I’m so tired of the writers taking pieces of lines from Tolkien and twisting them into something that just doesn’t hit the same. That’s not paying homage. They’re stealing and mutilating. 

4. Oh yes. I care so much about a romance between two people who combined have as much personality and character motivation as a carrot. 

5. Dang! This episode went full-on gore.

6. They did the Galadriel beating the guards thing all over again. Start a battle with impossible odds, cut away to something else (in this case, Arondir and giant orc), cut back when it’s all over, because showing the actual fighting would be too unbelievable. And yeah, I STILL don’t buy their initial victory. 

7. Man I was so disappointed Bronwyn didn’t die. On another note, their method of saving her is to remove the arrow, shove some seeds into the wound, then cauterize it? I have absolutely no clue why the seeds are necessary. What am I missing?

8. So the Numenorean cavalry has arrived in the Southlands and is rushing at full speed toward tiny village. Let me ask one more time, HOW DO THEY KNOW THE VILLAGE NEEDS HELP?!

Seriously, I want to know! Let’s recap. Galadriel gets sent away when all is calm and the elves are literally about to leave the south because it is so peaceful. She gets taken to Numenor and convinces them evil is returning without proof. Without sending a single scout or having ANY communication with the mainland (that I remember), they just take their whole cavalry to save the people who must surely be dying. All 30 of them in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere. 

9. Galadriel looks less and less like an elf every episode.

10. Adar IS something of an orc! Sweet!

11. So they’re making Galadriel out to be pretty much evil (straight up murderous and maybe genocidal?!). I understand the want for character arcs and growth, but this feels a bit extreme. You can start a character from a dark place without turning them into a full-on villain.

12. Celeborn, come save your love from whatever is happening between Galadriel and Halbrand!! Like, I get it. I could fall for Halbrand’s face. But if this is Sauron, the implications are AWFUL. Galadriel goes from being a strong, heroic woman who chooses to fight for good for its own sake to a spurned girlfriend who has a beef with her ex.

13. More impressive than Bronwyn’s recovery is the fact that Arondir leads her around by holding her injured arm. Excellent nursing, dude.

14. Ohhhhhhhhh nooooooooooo. THE ENDING. The moment of ultimate idiocy. Are you ready?

MOUNT DOOM HAS AN ON SWITCH.

Oh but wait. It doesn’t just have an on switch. Mount Doom gets activated by WATER.

Insanity of all of that aside, at no point is the moment foreshadowed, which is such a shame! No lingering shots of a mountain in the distance or panning away to the mountain with a sense of foreboding. Nothing. Mountain just explodes because some water fell in the lava.

Sorry, I can’t believe Mount Doom has an on switch. 

15. If the end isn’t a vision, I have so many problems with what’s happening. If the ending is a vision, I have so many problems with what’s happening. A sign of truly great writing.

Final thought: Something finally happened! Stupid something, but something! It took, what, six hours?

[fouryearsofshades]

some rants

1. A country could includes people of different ethnicity.

2. One country, one ethnic group is a stupid theory and have caused too many genocides in the last century.

3. People could have inhabited in a region for many centuries while the regime and country border change.

4. Immigration and emigration happen.

5. The government should recognize the existence of such people and celebrate (or at least, respect) their heritage, instead of like, killing them all or forcing assimilation.

so. Jilin province, which is the province located beside North Korea, have a sizeable Korean population that some areas are independent from the provinces to be governed by the local people, i.e.the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and the Changbai Korean Autonomous County. and so when the Olympics were held in China; and the provinces would send teams to participate in the ceremonies; and of course they would bring programs that represents the local people and local culture. For Jilin to not recognize the existence Koreans and their heritage as part of their identity would be cultural erasure.

This post was written because I recently read a post that appeared in the hanfu tag. I blocked the user so I can’t remember the exact words but the OP said that China shouldn’t celebrate Korean culture like the US shouldn’t celebrate Chinese culture and recognize Chinese culture is part of the US. I have to disagree. There are many people of Chinese descendants that have been in the US and Canada for centuries. They are part of the US and Canada. They have contributed to the country. And in turns the country should appreciate them and celebrate their cultures, instead of erasing them. When US and Canada promotes their countries, they better mentioned the Chinese. Chinese Americans also have developed their unique culture away from China - for example in the gastronomy side, the fortune cookies and the General Tso's chicken. Those people deserved to be seen.

Personally I am so angry with the post because I am a Chinese diaspora. My parents aren’t from China. We are born here. My ancestors had emigrated from China before the fall of the Qing Empire. We have been here for this long. We even have our own unique celebrations and food that are not found in China. (Chinese people from China found us interesting, really.)

We have build this country. We resisted the Japanese during WWII and fought for independence from the colonizer. TOGETHER. I am proud of my Chinese heritage and I like my nation to recognize this fact that the Chinese population had made up of a sizeable population of the country and we are part of the nation identity. Our culture shouldn’t be erased.

As someone who is part of a group of people who was recently accused by the leader of my nation, again, for being unpatriotic because we use chopsticks to eat, reading post like that really hurts.

I hope the OP could keep their opinion to themselves. And stop spilling hatred into the hanfu tag and tumblr in general, you insensitive Richard.

[edenfenixblogs]

This is so horrifying. I read Zinn in high school and I didn’t like him then, either.

There are so many issues here

1. The idea that it is ever acceptable to speak about a one group’s suffering when asked explicitly to discuss the suffering of an entirely different group is absurd.

Imagine that he had done this in any other context. This is just whataboutism?

When asked to talk about Black Lives Matter in June of 2020 suffering, what if someone talked about the Nakba instead?

When asked to talk about he Nakba, what if someone spoke about the Armenian genocide instead?

When asked to speak about the Armenian Genocide, what if someone chose to speak about the Trail of Tears instead?

When asked to speak about the Trail of Tears, what if someone chose to speak about the African Slave Trade instead?

When asked to speak about the African slave trade and chattel slavery in the United States, what if someone talked about the Holocaust instead?

I think (I hope!!!) we can all agree that this is intensely insensitive in every instance. It is never ok to respond to someone’s request for you to acknowledge their history of suffering and the ongoing legacy of that suffering that survivors and succeeding generations endure by saying that it doesn’t matter and other suffering is more important.

This man, was invited to a Jewish event hosted by a Jewish group to discuss Jewish issues.

Likely because the members were familiar with his advocacy in other areas and wanted his insight as an activist into Jewish issues.

Instead, he told a group of Jews that their suffering was both over, irrelevant, and pointless. Even in Jewish spaces, Jews are vilified by leftists for remembering our own tragedies in a way that no other group is vilified. When queer people discuss the enduring impact of the aids crisis; when Palestinians talk about the enduring impact of the Nakba; when Black people discuss the enduring legacy of the slave trade and Jim Crow; when Japanese-Americans talk about the enduring legacy of internment camps, when Indigenous American groups talk about the horrors of being moved to reservations or forced into boarding schools; and when Japanese people talk about the lasting legacy of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leftists generally agree to give these groups the space to discuss their own traumas and the legacy of pain these traumas leave in both subsequent generations in those groups and in the prejudices that carry through into modern society.

But not Jews. We can’t talk about the Holocaust ever. Not in Jewish groups devoted to Jewish issues. Not when modern political issues give us pause as a direct result of the aforementioned trauma. Not publicly and not ever.

2. I don’t give a shit that Zinn was from a Jewish family. He does not get to speak for all of us just cuz non-Jewish leftists like what he has to say about other issues. Especially in an example where an entire group of fellow Jews demonstrated a strong objection to his words and actions. To elevate his opinion over other Jewish voices is tokenizing him to further oppress Jews.

3. Who the fuck is this guy to decide that discussing the Holocaust had no value unless it could provoke anger about other issues?????

How about these purposes:

unpacking how and why Jewish people specifically became an acceptable target in so many countries

identifying ways in which society at large failed the Jewish community, why those failures occurred, and how to prevent recurrence

identifying areas in which nations involved in the Holocaust can provide restitution, reparation, and lasting safety for survivors and their descendants

developing productive and effective tools for leftists to engage in antiracist work specifically geared toward systemic antisemitism

Just to name a few off the top of my head!!!

3. This idiot was willfully obtuse. The issue wasn’t that he chose to “extend the moral issue of Jews in Europe to people in other parts of the world in our time,” and I’m sure that if he had really examined the letter he received and summarized it in good faith in his own writing rather than paraphrasing it dismissively, he would have realized that the objection wasn’t about extending sympathy and understanding from Jewish issues to other issues.

Rather, the issue was REMOVING validity and pain from Jewish issues in order to reallocate that validity to other issues, as if validity and acknowledgment are somehow finite resources.

Taking away empathy for Jewish trauma in order to address other trauma is always an unnecessary step. Just address other trauma with care. And if the legacy of the Holocaust comes up as a point of tension during the advocacy for those other issues and traumas, then address that too!

It’s not that fucking hard!!!!!

Submitted by @gerrysherry:

I clicked on one of the links ...

Respecting the Holocaust by Howard Zinn The Progressive magazine, November 1999 Fifteen years ago, when I was teaching at Boston University, I was asked by a Jewish group to give a talk on the Holocaust. I spoke that evening, but not about the Holocaust of World War II, the genocide of six million Jews. It was the mid-eighties, and the U.S. government was supporting death squads in Central America, so I spoke of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants in Guatemala and El Salvador, victims of American policy. My point was that the memory of the Jewish Holocaust should not be circled by barbed wire, morally ghettoized, kept isolated from other atrocities in history. To remember what happened to the six million Jews, I said, served no important purpose unless it aroused indignation, anger, action against all atrocities, anywhere in the world. A few days later, in the campus newspaper, there was a letter from a faculty member who had heard me speak. He was a Jewish refugee who had left Europe for Argentina and then the United States. He objected strenuously to my extending the moral issue from Jews in Europe during the war to people in other parts of the world in our time. The Holocaust was a sacred memory, a unique event, he said. And he was outraged that, invited to speak on the Jewish Holocaust, I had chosen to speak about other matters.

Not sure what I was expecting.

(I'm sure many of you are already familiar with these names and texts, but all this is new to me).

[reanimatedcourier]

How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.