#this is also not me trying to defend japanese imperialism | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sudensk-the-stallionist · 2 months ago

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hello comrade idk if i can say that but it would feel too strange to say friend. so i’ve been trying to get into theory and learning abt communism and what r ur thoughts on hò chí minh? i’ve been reading a published chronicle of his life from thê’ giói’, one which is communist and a proponent of his thought, which i love.

i agree a lot of his teachings and synthesis of lenin’s work into leading the communist movement in vietnam: as of now i dont feel particularly strongly, but i do have a Lot of thoughts about him. so far, i cannot tell where he made any new strides or really revolutionary departures or realizations from the groundworks set by marx and lenin, though he of course makes really on point assessments about decolonization and the movement of the proletariat globally. i don’t mean this as in he brought nothing new, but i’m thinking that based on what i know of lenin’s works (imperialism and the sort) those sort of ideas were already present (i feel bad im not wording this correctly).

i’m just curious as to if you have any thoughts of him: i feel, seeing his movement to decolonize and its intersection of ML theory and patriotic thought, vietnam is really enviable, but i can’t make a good assessment of him as a leader as of yet. i wonder what your perception of him is, again, i think i can’t really see him as a drastic innovator who gave revelations unthought of prior to his coming (but i have not yet read lenin’s imperialism which is my bad TT i hope to get to it soon) and idk… im thinking guy…

hi, no problem in calling me comrade (i quite like it)

being very honest to you i haven't read all that much from ho chi minh, but i do really appreciate his work as being very important for the adaptation of marxism-leninism to a context of national liberation in the global south; it certainly is not, to me, a departure from the guidelines and thoughts repercuted by marx-engels-lenin, but simply an adaptation to the specific context of vietnam.

i personally think that ho was very important considering how his time period was when the first liberation, marxist-guided struggles in the global south were happening (other than vietnam, as well in korea, in china, and, to a smaller extent, in cuba; also being defended by groups in countries like myanmar, multiple african and arab nations, in other latin american countries, etc). in this time, most anti-imperialist struggles were still guided by vague nationalistic sentiments, like how the Tenentistas acted in the 1920s in Brazil; their move towards active, Marxist-Leninist struggle would only ocurr later (like how in Brazil the Tenentistas would mostly be replaced by actual communists by the 1930s).

i think i need to study more of him, but nevertheless the vietnamese struggle against french, japanese and american imperialism is very inspiring and ho chi minh is certainly a figure to be respected for providing some of the first mainline decolonial adaptations of ML thought in the global south - something we are in desperate need of; we can't keep seeking to be "neosoviets" in a way, but adapt the correct science of marxism-leninism to correctly overthrow our neocolonial capitalist system and correctly establish decolonial socialism that will be able to holistically fight against the unfortunate fruits of our previous ultraexploitative system.

it's pretty cool to see how ho was able to do this and lead vietnam to liberation. i'd say he and kim il-sung are the most respected leaders in this specific regard of early socialist revolutionaries in exploited global south nations for me.

#sdnskpstng #marxism leninism #ml #ho chi minh #vietnam #communism

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miss-rum-hee · 1 year ago

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Hey, it's me again. Since your ask box is rarely open (I'm assuming to avoid trolls and idiots spamming you with nonsense), I feel there's a new problem with bigotry. It's very important.

Since Oppenheimer came out there's been discourse on if Hiroshima and Nagasaki were okay or not. Sadly too many dummies are out here saying they deserved it.

Here's some of the stuff they say as to "why"

"It stopped the war/Japan didn't surrender/An invasion would have been worse": This one I'm not gonna say is right or wrong because official sources and historians debating on these things still so whether you believe that is up to you.

THE BIG ONE I AM SICK OF: Using Japan's wrongdoings as a whataboutism dogwhistle. I'm sick of seeing people be like "But Pearl Harbor/Nanking Massacre/Southeast Asia invasions/Unit 731/Torture!". I get it, those were all awful, but the fact that you justify killing random strangers based on the actions of their military and government, when THEY'RE the actual ones at fault, is stupid and racist. They do this with Russians too and occasionally Chinese people. For them "Dictator = everyone" when it comes to dictatorships (the only one they can tell the difference with is North Korea, any other dictatorship, NOPE!)

To add to the point, many people (Americans and Southeast Asians) forget that America has been menacing them for, like, ever! Ever heard of the My Lai massacre? Just like Nanking, Americans slaughtered and r*ped Vietnamese people. The Pearl Harbor idiots forget that America literally bombed Laos and Cambodia, MULTIPLE TIMES. Filipinos still worship Americans as if America didn't actually bomb Manila when there in WW2 to target the Japanese, yet killed WAY MORE FILIPINOS IN THE PROCESS AND THE FILIPINOS THINK THE AMERICANS "SAVED THEM FROM THE WICKED JAPS". Everyone is rightfully mad that the government has "not said sorry" (they have multiple times but they were hollow because the government is very fringe and they try and make that stuff seem okay and don't tell the whole truth in schools), but nobody is mad or racist towards Italians, nobody seems to care that Italy never apologized for their actions, even the countries victimized by Italy. Even during the war nobody really cared. Despite the fact that Italy also has a very fringe government now and Mussolini's GRADDAUGHTER is in one of the parties and is a simp for her grandpa.

The worst part of all of this, I've seen critics of the bomb and surviviors actually harassed and cyberbullied by Japanophobes. Here's some of the examples: There's a trend of people calling Japanese people who don't like Barbenheimer "nationalists", "tankies", "Japanese imperialism apologists", etc, who "need to cope/get a life/cry about it", and they don't have even mercy on CHILDREN. I saw a quote from a survivor someone shared that was a father talking about watching his son die slowly in front of him. And guess what, some Filipino came along and was like "WHAT ABOUT ALL THE FILIPINO KIDS THE JAPANESE KILLED?!", and my mind was literally BLOWN. Look, that was awful, I get it. But I have no respect for you. The NERVE of you to make it about yourself. This isn't ABOUT Japan vs. the Philippines. THIS IS ABOUT AMERICA VS JAPAN. Go complain on a post about the Philippines. This is a PARENT and his SON who may I say, was 4. Yes, 4. And this fool essentially said "This 4 YEAR OLD is a soldier responsible for the deaths of my people's children!". Dude, the children had nothing to do with it. I don't support defending anyone's war crimes and that includes America, but at least those were adults. CHILDREN can't even process anything that's happening and you're mad at THEM?

America and its simps really need to stop thinking they're good nd that they can't commit war crimes. They wanted to get revenge and kill as many people as possible. They wanted to show off to Russia. They literally had internment camps for the Japanese PEOPLE which has even less excusable reasons and merit than the bombs. There's nothing else to it and no matter if worse could have happened, there's no justifying the killing civilians and children part. These fools are mad at the wrong people.

On the bright side, a lot of the people who used the first point are actually willing to admit that they killed random people and that they wished it didn't happen. And I respect those people because they actually can tell the difference or still recognize Japanese criticism and Japanese survivors and deaths were not just "tankies getting what they deserved".

Look up my reblogs for more info, and check Twitter and Youtube comments under Oppenheimer criticism videos and you'll see the racists in all their glory.

So yeah, if people like Oppenheimer that's fine, it apparently isn't trying to make the bomb seem okay, but the criticism has attracted dumbasses making fools of themselves. And people should watch movies like Barefoot Gen, Godzilla, Tora Tora Tora, and Grave of the Fireflies after for some blatantly and UNBIASED takes from Japanese people, rather than American "Icky Japanese Tankie" movies.

Honestly that whole discourse is a fucking mess rn, I ain't even touching it with a 20 ft pole

#reblog #asks #oppenheimer

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alifeasvivid · 2 years ago

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W, O, X

W - 5 favorite ships and 5 kinks you like best for said ships

top 5 ships:

ukus

usuk

eibei

libertea

the special relationship

top kinks.....oh lawd >.> this is just what I could think of off the top of my head and also what I felt comfortable putting on tumblr >.>

brat tamer!Arthur/brat!Alfred

omegaverse

super human strength kink

sadomasochism - specifically masochist Alfred

consent but it's a kink

EDIT: AND MONSTERFUCKING smh how do I forget these things?

O - Choose a song at random, which ship or character does it remind you of

I cheated cuz I didn't put it on shuffle or anything but it's just been on my brain lately: Only A Game by Scars on 45 and usuk/ukus it's the most THEM song I've ever heard

X - top 5-10 characters who are yoUR PRECIOUS BABIES AND YOU WILL DIE DEFENDING THEM

they've all betrayed me at some point, let them all perish XD

I mean... who am I really going to defend? The personifications of the two 'greatest' imperial powers of all time? A demonic butler? his evil little master? A Japanese crime boss? They're all indefensible and I'd rather prove that beyond a shadow of doubt than try to claim otherwise XD

I think I'd probably go to bat for Tamaki Suoh. People are so mean to him and he doesn't deserve it. He's a good boy who is trying his best, so maybe him. If I didn't have anything else going on at the time LOL

I'd take a bullet for Li Syaoran, though.

#thank!

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canmom · 3 years ago

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Animation Night 91 - Heike Monogatari

Hi friends, it’s Thursday! You know what that means. Unless you followed me just this week in which case hi, welcome, let me move this stack of cels - yes, it’s that night where I show animation on Twitch!

One of the very first people we covered on Animation Night was Naoko Yamada - KyoAni’s star director, renowned for her subtle, beautiful direction taking after the language of live action film. (c.f. Animation Night 13, Animation Night 51). She first caught attention on K-On!, where her storyboards stood out for their clever perspective and extraordinary care in portraying gesture and body language; she soon rose to lead the incredible character animation talent of one of the most beloved animation studios in the world, resulting in incredibly affecting stories like A Silent Voice and elegantly painful ones like Liz and the Blue Bird. At the same time, she played a large role in teaching her fellow animators the art, and generally it seemed that you could say, “Naoko Yamada’s in her KyoAni, all is right with the world”.

Except... that isn’t true anymore. KyoAni is still recovering from the horrific arson attack of 2019 and will never be the same as it once was, and in that context, late last year we got the surprise news that Yamada had left KyoAni to direct a show at Science! Saru, the studio founded by Masaaki Yuasa (Animation Night 12, Animation Night 28). Naturally this set everyone in the sphere who pay attention to such things pretty abuzz - you might read kVin’s article from the time, in which he was eager to see how Yamada’s style would work at the famously experimental studio... but also criticised the management of Science Saru, whose staff were in a tunnel of overwork trying to keep up with far too many projects. (Tragic, since they were once a pretty bold experiment in running studio better).

But all the same, the show got made. And, by all accounts, it was fantastic. So, in keeping with the new program of ‘watch an entire cour of anime in one night’, tonight... we’re going to check it out! (Why the marathon approach? I think it’s a good fit, but more on that anon...)

What’s the deal with this one, then? Well, Heike Monogatari (The Heike Story) is a famous Japanese epic dating back to the end of the Heian period (794-1185). If you don’t have an interest in Japanese history for some reason, you may know the Heian period from a certain meme...

As this implies, it’s known for being a peaceful era in which poetry was a big deal. A huge amount of literature comes from this time, much of the Japanese-language portion written by women because the men were more likely to speak Chinese.

Going back to the time I wrote a gigantic animation night post about the rise of the samurai class, it was also a period of population decline, in which the former criminals who had defended the Imperial court against a series of rebellions were awarded with power and status, and they became the earliest form of military houses and tax-collecting landlords who fought through horse archery. This became further cemented after famines in the 1000s, which the government answered by formalising the feudal tax-collecting estates, becoming the first samurai in the familiar sense.

Among these various noble houses in the imperial court, the most powerful were the Taira, Fujiwara, Tachibana and the Minamoto. For most of the Heian period, fighting would involve fairly ritualised skirmishes, in which small groups of riders or individuals would be sure to announce their pedigree before getting to it... but this came to a bloody end in the 1180s, with a five year civil war between the Taira (平) and the Minamoto (源) clans. This is the subject of the Heike story - Heike (平家) is a compound word which therefore means it takes on’yomi, but simply means ‘Taira family’.

The Heike story does not have just one author, but rather is an oral tradition first carried by mostly-blind, biwa-playing travelling performers known as biwa hōshi who would perform it in a ritual way which established their own presence in Japanese society. As such, there is not just one version of it, but there is a predominant version of it compiled by the blind monk Kakuichi in 1371. As you can probably imagine for a national epic, it’s a huge sprawling story, and its precise interpretation is a matter of debate. Wikipedia names two major readings:

At one level, the Tale is an account of martial heroism – of courage, cruelty, power, glory, sacrifice and sorrow.[4] Those who emphasise this aspect of the story point to its glorification of the heroic spirit, its avoidance of the realistic brutality and squalor of war, and its aestheticisation of death:[5] a classic instance of the latter is the comparison of the drowned samurai in the final battle to a maple-leaf brocade upon the waves.[6]

Others, while still accepting the importance of the military episodes and of heroic figures like Yoshitsune, would emphasise instead the Tale’s immersion in Buddhist thought, and its themes of duty, Dharma, and fate.[7] Announced at the very beginning is the Buddhist law of transience and impermanence,[8] specifically in the form of the fleeting nature of fortune, an analog of sic transit gloria mundi. The theme of impermanence (mujō) is captured in the famous opening passage: [click through to read it]

It sounds like a work that would be nigh impossible to adapt - but around this time, Masaaki Yuasa is directing another period piece about a musician in ‘darling of everyone lucky enough to see it at a festival’ Inu-Oh. That’s the context for this collaboration. Still, it’s a hefty task.

Yamada’s approach was to make the emotional core of the story an orphaned girl called Biwa, after the instrument she plays and clearly a synecdoche of the biwa hōshi. Her adaptation is self-reflective about the act of retelling and the meanings imparted, with itself as a case in point, as Matteo Watzky relates in a great deal of depth here...

(...) In the hands of Yamada and writer Reiko Yoshida, however, the tale is humanized in a new and important way; namely, in the sense that it is first and foremost a story about “real people”. Remarkably, there are no true villains: even the mythically evil Kiyomori – the head of the Heike and the primary instigator of the conflict – is presented as a deeply imperfect human being. More broadly, while the members of the cast are generally defined by traditional virtues and vices, the show is at pains to depict them as living people in their own right. To that end, emperors and servants alike exist in an unvarnished state, irreducibly unique in their personalities and mannerisms, defined equally by their solemnity and silliness, their cruelty and compassion, their fearfulness and foolishness.

Suffice to say, this sense of dramatic realism cannot be conflated with a false claim to historical reality. Indeed, the very first episode foregrounds the self-evidently artificial and anti-illusory nature of animation by having one of the “real people” ironize over their own existence as an animated character: “Those outside our clan are not real people,” says the hand-drawn image of a person whose very words is an artistic construct. This overt subversion of immersion – which discloses the anime’s (ir)reality as animation by dispelling its claim to naive realism, is an open demonstration of Heike Monogatari’s commitment to the truth of animation as a creative construct. At the same time, the fact that the medium of animation enables the creation of real images, including (un)realistic images of (un)real people, enables it to critically engage in, reflect on and intervene in reality. By capturing the inherently imperfect reality of human coexistence, Heike Monogatari eschews naive idealism in favor of a decidedly anti-humanistic view of political history. In other words, it harbors no illusions to the inevitable rise of an enlightened humanity. Furthermore, the feminist perspective that always permeates Yamada’s work is notably complexified by the politics of the setting, with the prominent threat of (sexual) violence a constant factor and women’s resistance to the ruling patriarchy generally reduced to active forms of passivity, i.e. the deliberately ambiguous act of “exiting society” through either religious seclusion or suicide.

(here’s a swordfight to assure you that it’s not all the sort of thing you can only say in long paragraphs :p ... ok now, skipping forward a bit)

Given this, the anime can be seen to use Biwa’s art of storytelling as a self-reflective vehicle for its own cinematic mediation of the tale. Of course, there is a problem with this: Biwa is not a real historical figure, past or present. In fact, as a “real person”, she is but an image of animation itself. But does this fact signal that she cannot tell the truth, or that her story cannot be a true part of history? Surely not. For Biwa’s story to be false, it would have to paint a false picture of reality. But, as noted, there is nothing deceptive about Heike Monogatari’s reconstruction of its source material. Rather, the show takes inspiration from history, what is known of the original tale and its tellers, in order to spin a mythopoetic yarn about these very things. It recreates history by transforming it into a story – but it also uses that story to show how history itself is created through storytelling. In other words, what Heike Monogatari shows us is not factually true, but the self-evident nature of that fact itself reveals a great deal about the construction, transmission and reception of historical truth.

This approach - making it very much Naoko Yamada’s take on the Heike Monogatari - seems to have paid off handsomely, and I’ve generally seen it receive nothing but praise.

On top of that, it’s also just... incredibly beautiful to look at - a nice demonstration that digital compositing is not in fact the devil and can be put to pretty good effect if you know what you’re doing. The pale blue palette that suffuses it suitably brings to mind scrolls from the Heian period, the character designs are readable and varied with the right balance of complexity to support expressive animation... inevitably, people compare it to KyoAni, and say something like “well the guys at science saru are not quite on that level of godliness but they’re pretty damn good” which honestly feels a little unfair, because they really are damn good. And, of course, the backgrounds lovely, full of beautiful palaces and falling snow cherry blossoms that might inspire you to write a poem.

So, why the marathon approach? Well because of various circumstances intervening I haven’t gotten around to watching this all the way through yet... but also the complexity of the story and all the characters and moving parts strikes me as something that would benefit from being seen in one go, with memories fresh.

So, as such, please join me around 7pm UK time (maybe a little later if circumstances intervene, i’ll post when it starts) to witness, along with Biwa, the tragic fall of the arrogant Heike... and all things are impermanent, so don’t miss it! see you then at twitch.tv/canmom

#animation night #heike monogatari #it's simple to write about animation you see - you just find someone smarter and more insightful than you and quote them at great length

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potteresque-ire · 3 years ago

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This post is Part 3 of the five-part meta series on the Zhang Zhehan (張哲瀚) Incident, based on what has transpired up to 2021/08/22.

1) The 2nd Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) & the Yasukuni Shrine 2) Post-War Sino-Japanese Relations; “Every Chinese should visit the Yasukuni Shrine” 3) The Summer of 2021: The Brewing Storms for One 4) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part A 5) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part B

3) The Summer of 2021: The Brewing Storms for One

Parts 1 and 2 are my very rough, … kindergartenish introduction to the historical background of Zhang’s incident. For the sake of brevity (please don’t laugh), there are so many things I haven’t touched on (such as the role of the U.S., the geopolitics). There are even more things I’ve likely missed from my admitted ignorance (Sorry).

I think a fair summary of what I’ve written so far would be as follows, before we move on to other sociopolitical factors related to Zhang’s incident?

It is true that the Japanese government, while having shown signs of repentance, has yet to truly face its own past.

It is also true that the Chinese government has been taking advantage of its national tragedy to fuel nationalistic sentiments, to spread hatred for the purpose of propaganda ...

... Propaganda that is highly sensitive to timing, the message the regime wants to send at the moment.

In August, 2021, Sino-Japanese relations is at a nadir. The brief thaw in early 2020, initiated by the Japanese government donating masks to Wuhan when COVID first broke out, seemed to be as old as the Chinese poem printed on the shipping boxes: 山川異域風月同天 (“Our mountains and rivers are on different lands, but our winds and moon share the same sky”)—from the 779 BCE work of a Tang dynasty monk who had sailed to Japan as a missionary, affirming the long cultural bond between the two nations. China would give masks back to Japan.

Fast forward eighteen months later, this good will is all but gone in Chinese news, on Chinese social media. The Japanese government had just vowed to join the United States to protect Taiwan, should the Chinese government furthers its military threat towards the island — the People’s Liberation Air Forces had already intruded Taiwan’s air defence zone 393 times between January 1st and August 17th of 2021 — or should the Chinese government attempts to take over the democratic island nation by force.

Late July came, and the Tokyo Olympics presented the opportunity for the Chinese state to broadcast anti-Japanese sentiments among the general populace.

Like USSR and the Eastern Bloc before, the Communists-ruled China saw the Olympics medal count as a matter of national pride. After the Games began, the hot search turned immediately from the Henan flood to stories of the Tokyo Games’ subjectively awful organisation, alleged cheatings by the Japanese athletes, and the perceived unfairness of, in particular, Japanese judges towards the Chinese team that cost the latter more and better medals. This fervour cumulated to the cyberbullying of Japanese athletes by high-on-nationalism Chinese netizens, who brought back Japan’s past as a reason why Japan and its people should be universally hated. Reminders of the horrific brutality of the Imperial Japanese Army eighty years before the Games surfaced in Chinese social media posts. The derogatory slangs 小日本 (“Little Japan”), and 鬼子 (Guizi “demons”), the latter harking back to the nickname of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, populated online Olympics discussions.

Japanese netizens are aware of the derogatory terms Chinese nationalistic netizens use against them. In 2010, they fought back the 小日本 and 鬼子 insults by designing cute anime characters for these names. (Source1, Source2).

August, 2021 is not a good time to be accused of liking the Japanese.

August, 2021 is not a good time to be accused of liking the Japanese, especially if the accused is a celebrity in the c-ent industry. The ongoing Clear and Bright Campaign (清朗行動) includes, as its 8th aim, the “regulation of stars and the organisations behind them, internet behaviour of their official fan clubs”. Possibly as a welcome to the summer vacation for the country’s youth, on June 15th, 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) had announced it would spend the next two months focused on rectifying the “chaos caused by fan circles” (‘飯圈’亂象).

The Kris Wu (吳��凡) case that had exploded in July then turned the public’s attention (and imagination) squarely on c-ent and the alleged “insanity” of c-ent fandoms, particularly those of idols. Wu’s fans had been met with ridicule and cyberbullying, especially those who had tried to “save” their idol by attempting to perform, when the incident had first broken out, what is customary per Chinese fan circle culture—to drown the criticisms with their supportive messages, their defences of their favourite stars; with their offences towards the accusers and in some cases, who the fans point to as the true culprits accompanied by the necessary “evidences”. Widespread reports of Wu’s fans planning a prison break after Wu’s arrest, propagated by the state media despite the number of such fans could’ve numbered to no more than a handful, further fuelled the narrative that c-ent idol worship has become cult-like, with the fans being so brainwashed that they can no longer distinguish right or wrong.

This narrative of “fans would say or do anything to defend an idol” means that if or when accusations fall on the latter, little can be said in their defence even if the defence has its merits. Fans who make the defence are accused of being “brain-disabled” (腦殘); non-fans, of being brain-disabled fans in disguise.

Political cartoon from People’s Daily, 2021/08/02, 2 days after Kris Wu’s arrest (English translations by me). The slogan at the bottom says “The Deformed “Fan Circle Culture” has turned cold”. “Turning cold” (涼了) means to lose popularity. (Source)

Last but not least, in August 2021, the online platforms that host the content of state propaganda, of fandom talk, of c-idols’ works are also in quicksand themselves. Without getting into too much details, since earlier this year, the Chinese government has been targeting the tech giants, once considered untouchable with their significant contributions to the economy. Most international fans of c-ent are likely familiar with Tencent. Alibaba is also a major player in c-ent: it’s the owner of Youku, for example; it is also a major investor of Sina (the company in control of Weibo) and also—a piece of trivia for turtles—of Yuehua (Dd’s management company). These tech companies have been charged with antitrust violations, been the target of cybersecurity probes, accused by the state media of hurting China’s youth with “spiritual opium” in the form of video games etc, and their stock prices have been tumbling as a result.

The tech giants, and the online platforms under their ownership, have therefore been extra vigilant, extra compliant to messages from the state, in attempts to gain the government’s favour. Just a few days ago (2021/08/21), Tencent vowed to donate 7.7 billion USD to the government, heeding Xi’s call for “common prosperity” (re-distribution of wealth), adding to the 7.7 billion USD it already donated in April for the government’s “sustainable social values” program. While both donations are officially philanthropic, most political and market watchers interpret the donations as Tencent trying to achieve a less-than-philanthropic goal—to get the state regulators off its back.

Following this line of logic then, these tech giants, and their online platforms, have got to be extra quick on their feet in August 2021 to sever ties with anyone perceived to have drawn the displeasure of the government. If that anyone is a c-ent idol, the loss for removing their works and fandom content is nothing compared to the price these companies may pay if the eyes of the state regulators train upon them: the latest fine Alibaba paid for breaking the anti-monopoly law, in April, amounted to 2.8 billion USD.

All these factors considered, there are better days … far better days than the ones in August 2021, for a c-ent idol to have his Yasukuni Shrine visit become an item on Weibo’s hot search.

===

The Zhang Zhehan Incident Meta Series:

PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 <- YOU ARE HERE PART 4 PART 5

#pie metas

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gayboysero · 4 years ago

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Mansplain Skyrim lore to me. Give me the deets. The Tea.

ohhhhhhhh my god

okay in my defense its been a while since ive actively Read the Wiki (which i used to do for fun) but here are some of my favorite fax and details

if the imperials actually cared, they would crush the stormcloak rebellion. one of general tullius’s dialogue lines is that he can’t get the bulk of cyrodil’s upper ranks to take the skyrim civil war seriously. he struggles to get enough troops to keep the war at a standstill. if ulfric stormcloak succeeded in taking solitude and becoming high king, the full might of the cyrodillic empire and the aldmeri dominion would be unleashed on skyrim. i’m not saying it would be a total victory, the stormcloak have a knowledge of the region and support within skyrim (and maybe an alliance with morrowind or black marsh who are not part of the empire, although i dont see why argonians and dark elves would want to work with modern nords). however, i dont think even the nords could stand up to both the empire and the dominion.

there are a number of great houses in morrowind that are constantly vying for political power. my fave is indoril, house of the nerevarine, for personal (oc) reasons. however, indoril has been unpopular since the collapse of the tribunal, who they were hugely connected to. then the red year fucked up most of vvardenfell (sparing mournhold, the capitol of house indoril), and argonians invaded and sacked mournhold and its surrounding cities. they’re doing better though! they’ve rebuilt mournhold in some capacity and will likely regain their influence in time

another dunmer house got shit on so badly they’re no longer considered one of the Greats. house hlaalu was really close with the empire, working and trading with them n all that. then during the oblivion crisis, most of the empire’s soldiers were called back to cyrodil to defend the capitol, leaving morrowind defenseless against the daedra. house redoran stepped up and defended the country both from the daedra and then the invading argonians. hlaalu was hated for its connection to the empire and taken off of morrowind’s council

that being said, houses hlaalu and dres were the first to try to outlaw slavery in morrowind and were hated by the more traditional dunmer houses, including indoril (not pog)

the akaviri are/were a humanoid race of (fantasy) japanese people originiating from akavir, far east of morrowind. sky haven temple was originally an akaviri outpost from the time they tried to invade skyrim. they had katanas! very cool people. anyways they’re all extinct now, having been literally or figuratively “eaten” by a serpentlike race called the tsaesci (say ess ee) who are also native to akavir. (there are also monkey people and tiger people on akavir. the whole content seems to be fantasy version of east asia, given both its very very far east geography and also everything else about it.)

there are a race of maormer (sea elves) south of the summerset isles. they’re ruled by a deathless wizard and no one knows much about them. im p sure they havent been seen since the 3rd era (skrim takes place in the 4th)

i feel like this is pretty well known, but the wood elves have an agreement with Yffre, the god of forest they live in (valenwood), to not kill or eat any plants. they’re basically antivegans. because of this, they often engage in cannibalism when fighting each other or outsiders.

the dwemer, tamriels dwarves/deep folk/etc were not actually short! they were named that by the giants native to skyrim, who are taller than everyone. dwemer were actually elf-height, probably equal to modern elves. one of the theories ive read about the disappearance of the dwemer is that the heart of lorkhan, which is the magical artifact they were trying to f with, acted as a big ol’ soul stone and gobbled them all up. sad if true!

jflskdfj theres this one book in skyrim, i think its called “ALDUIN IS REAL AND HE ENT AKATOSH” where some nordic farmer who couldnt write too good basically defended the case that alduin existed. (written before alduin came back). you can read it here

the nords are colonizerssss okay? fuck them. they came from a continent called atmora, north of tamriel and even harsher than skyrim. they settled in saarthol and were mostly minding their business when the snow elves. okay so the snow elves did do a massacare on them. which was uncool. so then the nords (then atmorans) responded by doing a near-genocide on the snow elves. all in all it was kind of a shitty situation. also to be fair to the nords, they probably didn’t count on the dwemer using their ~magic mushrooms~ to systematically devolve the snow elves into the race of creatures now known as the falmer. but still im not a huge nord fan lol

this is also probably common knowledge i think but the type of khajiit you encounter in most games is only one form a khajiit can have. depending on the positions of the moons at a khajiit’s birth, they can take up to 16 shapes, from the typical humonoid we’re familiar with to giant sabrecat like beasts to normal looking housecats. regardless of shape, all khajiit can communicate with each other (somehow). this is why house cats aren’t seen in skyrim; im pretty sure the only “housecats” in tamriel are actually just khajiit

i don’t remember the creation story of tamriel that well, but i know that the stars in the sky were created when the aedra (godlike beings) left the mortal plane and literally tore through the sky. the moons were created by two of the bigger more important gods, but i don’t remember who.

pretty much every story about the daedric prince molag bal comes with a huge trigger warning. just in general. he created vampires and no i willn’t tell you how. don’t worry about it, its not a fun story

the ~crazy~ daedric prince sheogorath (prince of madness, chaos, disorder) was actually once the prince of order and logic, and was called jygglag. he was so powerful that the other daedric princes cursed him to be a madman to keep him from getting in their way. once an era he turns back to his true self, but only for a short time.

im sorry this post is so long

#oops #i uh #i really like the elder scrolls #Anonymous

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greatfay · 4 years ago

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controversial opinions?

Cold pizza actually not good. Tastes like angry bacteria.

There’s a completely separate class of gay men who are in a different, rainbow-tinted plane of reality from the rest of us and I don’t like them. They push for “acceptance” via commercialization of the Pride movement, assimilation through over-exposure, and focus on sexualizing the movement to be “provocative” and writing annoying articles that reek of class privilege instead of something actually important like lgbtqa youth homelessness, job discrimination, and mental health awareness.

Coleslaw is good. You guys just suck in the kitchen.

Generational divides ARE real: a 16-year-old and a 60-year-old right now in 2021 could agree on every hot button sociopolitical topic and yet not even realize it because they communicate in entirely different ways.

Sam Wilson is a power bottom. No I will not elaborate.

Allison’s makeover in The Breakfast Club good, not bad. She kept literally and metaphorically dumping her trash out onto the table and it’s clearly a cry for help. Having the attention and affection of a smart, pretty girl doing her makeup for her was sweet and helped her open up to new experiences. Not every loner wants to BE a loner (see: Bender, who is fine being a lone wolf).

Movie/show recommendations that start with a detailed “representation” list read like status-effecting gear in an RPG and it’s actually a turn-off for me. I have to force myself to give something a try in spite of it.

Yelling at people to just “learn a new language” because clearly everyone who isn’t you and your immediate vicinity of friends must be a lazy ignorant white American is so fucking stupid, like I get it, you’re mad someone doesn’t immediately know how to pronounce your name or what something means. But I know 2 languages and am struggling with a 3rd when I can between 2 jobs and quite frankly, I don’t have the time to just absorb the entire kanji system into my brain to learn Japanese by tomorrow night, or suddenly learn Arabic or Welsh. There are 6500 recorded languages in the world, what’s the chance that one of 3 I’ve learn(ed?) is the one you’re yelling at me about. Yes this is referring to that post yelling at people for not knowing how to pronounce obscure Irish names and words. Sometimes just explaining something instead of admonishing people for not knowing something inherently in the belief that everyone must be lazy entitled privileged people is uh... better?

Stop fucking yelling at people. I despise feeling like someone is yelling at me or scolding me, it triggers my Violence Mode, you don’t run me, you are not God, fuck off. Worst fucking way to "educate” people, it just feels good in the moment to say or write and doesn’t help. Yes I’ve done it before.

Violence is good actually.

Characters doing bad things ≠ an endorsement of bad things. Characters doing bad things that are unquestioned by the entire rest of the cast = endorsement of bad things, or at the least, a power fantasy by the creator. See: Glee, in which Sue’s awfulness is constantly called out, while Mr. Shue’s awfulness rarely is because he’s “the hero.” See also: the Lightbringer series, in which the protagonist is a violent manipulator who is praised as clever, charming, diplomatic, and genius by every supporting character (enemies included), despite the text never demonstrating such.

Euphoria is good, actually. It falls into this niche of the past decade of “dark gritty teen shows” but actually has substance behind it, but the general vibe I get from passive-aggressive tumblr posts from casual viewers is that this show is The Devil, and the criticism of its racier content screams pearl-clutching “what about the children??” to me.

Describing all diagnosed psychopaths as violent criminals is a damaging slippery slope, sure. But I won’t be mad at anyone for inherently distrusting another human who does not have the ability to feel guilt and remorse, empathy, is a pathological liar, or proves to be cunning and manipulative.

It’s actually not easy to unconditionally support and love everyone everywhere when you’ve actually experienced the World. Your perspective and values will be challenged as you encounter difficult people, experience hardship, are torn between conflicting ideas and commitments, and fail. My vow to never ever call the cops on another black person was challenged when an employee’s boyfriend marched into the kitchen OF AN ESTABLISHMENT to scream at her, in a BUSINESS I MANAGED, and threaten to BEAT the SHIT out of her. Turns out I can hate cops and hate that motherfucker equally, I am more than capable of both.

Defending makeup culture bad, actually. Enjoy it, experiment, master it, but don’t paint it as something other than upholding exactly what they want from you. Even using makeup to “defy the heteropatriarchal oppressors!” is still putting cash in their pockets, no matter how camp...

Not every villain needs to be redeemed, some of you just never outgrew projecting yourself onto monsters and killers.

Writing teams and networks queerbaiting is not the same as individuals queerbaiting. Nick Jonas performing exclusively at gay clubs to generate an audience really isn’t criminal; if they paid to go see him, that’s on them, he didn’t promise anyone anything other than music and a show. Do not paint this as similar to wealthy, bigoted executives and writing teams trying to snatch up the LGBTQA demographic with vague ass marketing and manipulative screenplays, only to cop out so as not to alienate their conservative audiences. And ESPECIALLY when the artists/actors/creators accused of queerbaiting or lezploitation then come out as queer in some form later on.

Queer is not a bad word, and I’ve no clue how that remains one of few words hurled at LGBTQA people that can’t be reclaimed. It’s so archaic and underused at this point that I don’t get the reaction to it compared to others.

People who defend grown-woman Lorelai Gilmore’s childish actions and in the same breath heavily criticize teenage religious abuse victim Lane Kim’s actions are not to be trusted. Also Lane deserved better.

Keep your realism out of my media, or at least make it tonally consistent. Tired of shows and movies and books where some gritty, dark shit comes out of nowhere when the narrative was relatively Romantic beforehand.

Actually people should be writing characters different from themselves, this new wave in the past year of “If you aren’t [X] you shouldn’t be writing [X]” is a complete leap backward from the 2010s media diversity movement. And if [X] has to do with an invisible minority status (not immediately visible disabilities, or diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, persecuted religious affiliations, mental illness) it’s actually quite fucked up to assume the creator can’t be whatever [X] is or to demand receipts or details of someone’s personal life to then grant them “permission” to create something. I know, we’re upset an actual gay actor wasn’t casted to play this gay character, so let’s give them shit about it: and not lose a wink of sleep when 2 years later, this very actor comes out and gives a detailed account of the pressure to stay closeted if they wanted success in Hollywood.

Projecting an actor’s personal romantic life and gender identity onto the characters they play is actually many levels of fucked up, and not cute or funny. See: reinterpreting every character Elliot Page has played through a sapphic lens, and insulting his ability to play straight characters while straight actors play actual caricatures of us (See also: Jared Leto. Fuck him).

I’m fucking sick of DaBaby, he sucks. “I shot somebody, she suck my peepee” that’s 90% of whatever he raps about.

“Political Correctness” is not new. It was, at one point, unacceptable to walk into a fine establishment and inform the proprietor that you love a nice firm pair of tits in your face. 60 years ago, such a statement would get you throw out and possibly arrested under suspicion of public intoxication. But then something happened and I blame Woodstock and Nixon. And now I have to explain to a man 40 years my senior that no, you can’t casually mention to the staff here, many of whom are children, how you haven’t had a good fuck in a while. And then rant about the “Chinese who gave us the virus.” Can’t be that upset with them if you then refused to wear your mask for 20 minutes.

Triggering content should not have a blanket ban; trigger warnings are enough, and those who campaign otherwise need to understand the difference between helping people and taking away their agency. 13 Reasons Why inspired this one. Absolutely shitty show, sure, but it’s a choice to watch it knowing exactly what it contains.

Sasuke’s not a fucking INTJ, he’s an ISFP whose every decision is based off in-the-moment feelings and proves incapable of detailed and logical planning to accomplish his larger goals.

MCU critique manages to be both spot-on and pointless. Amazing stories have been told with these characters over the course of decades; but most of it is toilet paper. Expecting a Marvel movie to be a deeply detailed examination of American nationalism and imperialism painted with a colorful gauze of avant-garde film technique is like expecting filet mignon from McDonalds. Scarf down your quarter pounder or gtfo.

Disparagingly comparing the popularity and (marginal) success of BLM to another movement is anti-black. It is not only possible but also easy to ask for people’s support without throwing in “you all supported BLM for black people but won’t show support for [insert group]” how about you keep our name out your mouth? Black people owe the rest of the world nothing tbh until yall root out the anti-blackness in your own communities.

It is the personal demon/tragic flaw of every cis gay/bi/pan man to externalize and exorcize Shame: I’m talking about the innate compulsion to Shame, especially in the name of Pride and Progress. Shame for socioeconomic “success,” shame for status of outness, shame for fitness and health, shame for looks, shame for style and dress, shame for how one fits into the gender binary, shame for sexual positions and intimacy preferences, shame for fucking music tastes. Put down the weapon that They used to beat you. Becoming the Beater is not growth, it’s the worst-case scenario.

Works by minorities do not have to be focused on their marginalized identities. Some ladies want to ride dragons AND other ladies. The pressure on minorities to create the Next Great Minority Character Study that will inevitably get snuffed at the Oscars/Peabody Awards is some bullshit when straight white dudes walk around shitting out mediocre screenplays and books.

Canadians can stfu about how the US is handling COVID-19 actually. Love most of yall, but the number of Canadian snowbirds on vacation (VACATION??? VA.CAT.ION.) in the supposed “hotbed” of my region that I’ve had to inform our mask policies and social distancing to is ASTOUNDING. Incroyable! I guess your country has a sizable population of entitled, privileged, inconsiderate, wealthy, and ignorant people making things difficult for everyone, just like mine :)

No trick to eliminate glasses fog while wearing my mask has worked, not a single one, it actually has affected my job and work speed and is incredibly frustrating, and I have to deal with it and pretend it’s not a problem while still encouraging others to follow the rules for everyone’s safety and the cognitive dissonance is driving me insane.

It’s really really really not anti-Japanese... to be uncomfortable with the rampant pedophilia in manga and anime, and voice this. I really can’t compare western animation’s sneakier bullshit with pantyshots of a 12-year-old girl.

Most of the people in the cottagecore aesthetic/tag have zero interest in all the hard work that comes with maintaining an isolated property in the countryside, milking cows and tending crops before sunrise, etc. And that’s okay? They just like flowers and pretty pottery and homemade pastries. Idk where discourse about this came from.

You think mint chip ice-cream tastes like toothpaste because you’re missing a receptor that can distinguish the flavors, and that sucks for you. It’s a sort of “taste-blindness” that can make gum spicy to some while others can eat a ghost pepper without crying.

Being a spectacle for the oppressive class doesn’t make them respect us, it makes them unafraid of us. This means they continue to devour us, but without fear of our retaliation.

Only like 4 people on tumblr dot com are actually prepared for the full ramifications of an actual revolution. The rest of you just really imprinted onto Katniss, or grew up in the suburbs.

Straight crushes are normal. They’re people first, sexual orientation second. Can’t always know.

The road to body positivity is not easy, especially if what you desire is what you aren’t.

You’re actually personally responsible for not voluntarily bringing yourself into an environment that you know is not fit for you unless you have the resolve to manage it. Can’t break a glass ceiling without getting a few cuts. This one’s a shoutout to my homophobic temp coworkers who decided working a venue with a drag show would be a good idea. This is also is a shoutout to people who want to make waves but are surprised when the boat tips. And also a shoutout to people who—wait that’s it’s own controversial opinion hold up.

Straight people can and should stay the fuck out of gay bars and queer spaces. “yoUrE bEInG diVisiVe” go fuck yourself.

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chucktaylorupset · 5 years ago

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Bnha, Captain America AU

I cannot Believe it took me this long to look at Midoriya, a scrawny nerd with a heart of gold who got Jacked and not go CAPTAIN AMERICA AU

So step one is either switching the origin story from WW2 or making everybody American because making him a hero of an imperial japan is uhhhh a bad look

Midoriya is a chronically ill skinny little nerd currently living with his mother in a west coast concentration camp because he, unlike his childhood best friend/bully Kacchan, couldn’t enlist in the military in order to defer detainment.

All that changes when he saves the life of All American Hero, All Might. This leads to him finding out one of The most classified secrets of the American War Effort: All Might was critically injured in battle fighting on the Western Alliance Front

The next thing Midoriya knows is he has been plucked from his camp as All Might’s personally handpicked candidate in a trial to see who will be the successor of the most powerful quirk in America. In that program he is also reunited with Katsuki Bakugou, who despite plentiful discrimination has been doing his best to work up the ranks of the demolition unit

The brass would very much have liked to be the only deciding factor in who receives the quirk, unfortunately for them consent matters.

They would also like if it could be completely forgotten that All Might is white passing half japanese,and they would triple extra like if he hadn’t made a moral tour of the japanese internment camps in the first place. They will just have to be satisfied that there is a zero percent chance of a weakling like Midoriya not washing out of the program

All Might is shadowed by the secret assassin/intelligence gatherer Shouta Aizawa, who was recalled to defend against the infamous infiltrator Toga Himiko

Also part of the honor guard is Shouto Todoroki, whose mother is also interned in different west coast camp. Rei Todoroki escaped with her youngest son from Japan and the crushing sphere of influence of her husband just in time for a post-Pearl Harbor America to get involved in the war and in internment

Her husband, Enji Todoroki, meanwhile is the number one safeguard against the firebombing of major Japanese cities

Midoriya, surprise surprise gets the quirk, and falls into a relationship with Shouto Todoroki. Toward the end of the war, they fall into the ocean trying to stop a plane filled with bombs heading toward a civilian target. Todoroki freezes them inside, to slumber under the seas until they awaken together in the present day

#bnha #mha #captain america au #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #my post

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mr-kamiyama · 5 years ago

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I went on a meme blog the other day, and of course, I saw strange things. I saw conspiracies about a third World War. Now, I knew *trump* was going to start *a war* from the get-go. I assumed with North Korea, but still... (And what he did in Iran looks too much like when America targeted and killed Japan's General/Admiral (?) Yamamoto to make me think this will just blow over. Not that I think imperial Japan was *remotely* good, but the Allies, namely America, Britain, and France, were doing the same thing)

Anyway, I kept seeing things like "women's rights, so why not draft the women?"

I'm a male DV survivor. I had one abusive partner of each binary gender. The relationship with my ex-wife was longer and more recent.

I still run the risk of running into either one, because unless I leave America and try to become a citizen somewhere else/reclaim Japanese citizenship, which I have multiple chronic health conditions and that usually ends that, there's really no work/future for me anywhere outside of the Bay Area (HI is even more progressive, but the climate would kill me in a few years), as most social work in the rest of this regressive country is run by Evangelical agencies, and desperately limited even then.

So I returned to this area. Where I have a chance of running into my abuser. She is a white woman. I am an Asian man. I am also mixed and often get misjudged as Latino or Native unless I give my obviously Japanese name. (Then I'm Chinese, because racism. Even immediately following "I'm Japanese") Asians are more likely to *survive* police brutality, as I already have, and of course, even when we do not, none of y'all will #saytheirnames, because y'all are bloody racist, but anyway

I can't really defend myself against her if it came to that. Everyone loves a white woman in trouble/"trouble," and even though she's able-bodied and almost a foot taller than me, she's a woman, I'm a man, and I would automatically be arrested/killed by police.

Unfair, right? Even though women have all the rights now?

But THEY DON'T

If they did, abortion and frigging contraceptives would be as uncontested here as in Japan, a country with actual separation of church and state (even though the ruling party is misogynist as all get-out) There wouldn't be a pay gap. There would be gender parity in every field and it wouldn't be necessary to help women get into STEM or comic-writing. You'd have a WNFL or just co-ed pro sports. Heck, there'd be high-school girls' football and baseball teams. (And even WNBA sports aren't on broadcast). That "serious" movies are always led by white (cis) men is just as much of a problem for being male-dominated as being white-dominated. (Not *necessarily* cis-dominated, but I've only seen one trans-led piece of media anywhere, and it was an indie project on YouTube, and we can do better than *that,* but we should also have gay stories of people older than *25,* and bi stories where "bi" is actually said instead of "doesn't like laaaabelllssssss" or ace stories instead of "frigid person becomes "normal and straight")

Sure, there are a *few* female CEOs, and sure, Affirmative Action helps mostly white women and not racial minorities of any gender, but contrary to what one can infer by Scarlet Johansen's statement about whitewashing Asian roles being "empowering women," WOC are people enough to be women, too.

And the fact of the matter is...women just *still* don't have equality.

Is it unfair that only men get drafted if there's actually a draft? (which hasn't been since Vietnam War, when America sent unwilling kids to die to aid colonist buddy France, and I doubt the Boomers, for all the headache they've always given everyone, are technologically able to make those memes en masse) Sure it is.

Is it unfair and very dangerous that I can't fight to the best of my ability should my ex-wife spot and attack me? Absolutely!

Was it unfair that cops laughed at an Asian guy and refused to take a report when I called on her? You bet!

But... it's also not fair that there's still a giant wage gap. That Roe V. Wade from *1973* is still being fought. That there's not really a thing of Latina CEOs in the US.

So, yeah...uh, misogyny is like racism or queerphobia. Bigotries that originated in Colonial Europe that should have never existed, but instead were spread around the world, and still aren't over. The feminists have yet to win.

So, I'd say "stop being stupid and bigoted," but if that really worked on anyone, the world wouldn't be turning fascist right now, so, yeah ...

#womens rights #feminism #Domestic violence #dv survivor #current events #history

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sableaire · 5 years ago

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Okay so since we both have context about the earrings and the twitter artist, I want to know another POV you have as a Korean. If you read the comments that the artist got you would’ve noticed that a lot of non Korean, Chinese, or Japanese chose to argue and defend the use of the rising sun flag in cosplay and art etc. did you feel irritated that people from the west were choosing to argue with an actual Korean about Japanese politics and imperialism?

I was irritated, yes-- but not necessarily because it was people from the West. What irritated me was that these people defending the use of the flag in cosplay and art came in with an unwillingness to see things from the other side in the first place.

If multiple people come forth explaining an issue with a great deal of historical weight and clearly say, “I am hurt by this, and there are others who are also hurt by this,” and your (using a general ‘you,’ I don’t mean you specifically, Anon!) response to it amounts to “I don’t believe that” or “You’re overreacting” or “I don’t think that’s as important as this other thing,” then you’ve demonstrated a great deal of callousness towards others.

If you don’t believe what is being said, the right thing to do if you don’t want to risk hurting others is to do independent research to draw your own conclusions, not go off your own whims. If you think the other party is overreacting, again, inform yourself and at least take a moment to try and understand why they might feel the way they do. If you don’t think someone’s discomfort or hurt is as important as “being true to character design” or “historical accuracy” (just because a motif was popular at a time period and not yet harmful doesn’t mean you have to use it in a modern show!) then I don’t know what to say to someone like that.

So yes, I was irritated that people from the West were choosing to argue, but that’s because people from the West are uninformed, both from a factual-historical level and a cultural-emotional level on the issue of Japanese imperialism. I would have been just as irritated if an Asian with absolutely zero historical context decided to weigh in as well. I genuinely do not believe that someone who is informed would be willing to argue for the inclusion of the rising sun motif in cosplay/fanart, especially when there are so many easy alternatives that have been given.

There’s the official alternative, from the version of the anime aired in China (which I actually don’t like, aha). There’s a whole bunch of actual hanafuda card designs to draw from. Some people have just been removing the rays and changing the size of the sun and honestly, it looks gorgeous. There are easy, simple accommodations, and they don’t change anything core to the character in question. But again, this is only my opinion, and I don’t speak for anyone other than myself, really.

Also, just to be clear, it isn’t just East Asians who are affected by this! Many Southeast Asians also have strong feelings about the flag as their countries also suffered great historical trauma during the time of Japanese imperialism.

#sableask #long #Anonymous

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the-end-of-art · 5 years ago

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Anything we talk about - even hell - points back to the possibility of love

Interview // The Only History I Can Claim: A Conversation with E.J. Koh by Jake Uitti | Contributing Writer

Seattle poet E. J. Koh writes with both a delicate and brutal hand. Whether staring into the eyes of a loved one or a murderer, her work is unblinking. Her poems mine dichotomies in homes and languages, shedding light on her own difficult childhood, during which she was separated from her parents for nine years. Koh, who didn’t speak until almost five years old, now wins awards for her poetry and adoration for her translations. A Korean-American, Koh grew up with immigrant parents and when she talks about her history, she does so with a voice saturated in reflection and interpretations. We wanted to catch up with the author to talk about her recent collection, A Lesser Love (Pleiades Press, 2017), to see what she’s working on now and to glean a few insights into her illustrious creative process.

When did you discover your ability to notice well?

I think the honest answer is that I did when other people noticed that I was noticing. I was very young, and it wasn’t praised. Not, “Oh my, what a keen eye.” It was along the lines of, “That’s really weird, that’s very strange.” I think noticing was discouraged. It was more, “Why can’t you be normal, why are you so distracted?”

I didn’t speak until I was much older than other children. I was almost five when I started talking. My parents were concerned and worried about it. It was strange to them that I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t articulate, and I couldn’t focus on things. Today, there are support groups and systems if your child is having trouble. But when you’re my parents, you’re low-income and your kid is not doing something when you’ve sacrificed so much, it can be terrifying. There’s no way to know what to do and you experience grief about it.

So, I had a mix of it early on. Adults around me saw it as harmful, as a bad thing. And that’s how I came to realize it. But it wasn’t until adulthood that I thought, “Wow, this doesn’t have to be something that’s distraught or a pain point.” I didn’t value noticing. It’s not necessarily unique to notice, I think a lot of people do that. What is unique is realizing that it’s of value.

Did you find an explanation for why you didn’t speak as a young child?

I’m trying to write about it now. It’s hard to describe. But one thing I’m sure of is that I have memories from before I was able to speak. Recently, I’ve had a chance to talk with my parents, to seriously recall on my muteness. In early childhood development, if you can’t speak at around three, it’s a warning. A child psychologist told me it’s quite alarming.

But what I recall is being at home and my parents speaking Korean. They were upset that they couldn’t speak to me. My grandmother was speaking Japanese and she was raising me because my parents were working. But outside, everyone’s speaking English. Then, I lived in an area where Spanish was prevalent. There was Spanish, English, Japanese and Korean and none of the words pointed to the same object, despite everyone’s ease about it. Every signifier was different. This tension and anxiety for words—I recall that anxiety for words.

My mother is not a native speaker, so I would go to school and bring cards home of words and my mother would try to tell me it’s “Ehpl” when the word is “Apple.” She would cry so hard. The inconsistencies, the high-risk of what was around me impacted what I could understand, how I was willing to partake in the exchange of language, communication, and expression.

Throughout many of the poems in A Lesser Love, you weave in ideas and references to death, many of which seem rather gruesome. In your day-to-day, how often do you think about death?

That’s a theme that I’m wrestling with. Death was not estranged from my everyday life. It was a constant, a part of Korean culture. It’s in everyday conversation, this concept of dying, it’s in many Korean metaphors. It might be in the way you describe how good a thing is. Similar to English, like, “To die for.” In Korean, there are metaphors and similes, ways to describe that are palpable this way—death is in the language, it’s part of the psyche. It’s not something that terrifies as much as reminds us of the value of the present.

But yes, parts of me were scared. I also grew up in a Catholic household. That part of death—the torture, the suffering, the blood and gruesomeness, the nakedness—that did terrify me quite a bit. And when I went to school, during my teenage years, they put up these gruesome images and we learned about the heaviness of death. To me, there was also lightness to it left unexplained.

You display such a capacity for sadness in the book, especially in the middle “War” section. And often it’s sadness born from what people in power do to those not. Was it hard to mine this dynamic?

Imperialism, colonialism, militarism. The “War” section was difficult. There were poems that I wasn’t sure of including. I’m thinking of those poems and I’m thinking of “South Korean Ferry Accident.” These poems of great tragedies. It’s always on my mind, how to write about an event that a people experienced without fetishization, without assignment, without turning that event and catastrophe into something more or less than what it is, but I am trying to go there and approach as humanly close as possible without bringing harm.

But I think that harmlessness is in tension with what David Eng says, “The mother has history but no memory and the daughter has no history but has memory.” I think that’s true in that me being here—I feel a disconnect from history. What is my history? I depend on my mother’s memory, because my mother has history: she was born and raised in Korea. And for me, I have to make an effort to go backward and follow the traces of her history because that’s my history. Her history is the only history I can claim. And that’s really interesting, perturbing.

That’s why I repeatedly go back to comfort women, Korean women, Korean women feminism. I go back to “Han,” which, loosely translates as ineffable sadness. And that sadness is epigenetic, it’s intergenerational, it’s passed down. There is a part of their trauma in my body. So, I feel responsible for it, an urge to go back into it, and always find my way, move towards release.

In poems like “Antti Revonsuo” and “South Korean Ferry Accident,” you reference the idea of “Americans.” How has the meaning of that word impacted you over time?

In “South Korean Ferry Accident,” the line is, Americans would have jumped. It means anyone living in the States would have jumped. And I think that echoes a freedom that exists here that still is not accessible in the minds of children abroad. I think what was powerful was that I didn’t say that, that came from my mother’s mouth. If I had said that, it would have been different. It would have been more flippant, much more precarious and not something I would be able to write gracefully. It means more that my mother said, “Americans would have jumped.” In a time when she experiences a tragedy in her country, I think that’s powerful.

In “Antti Revonsuo,” the “Americans dreaming” line—I read these things in a book about dream meanings and what’s interesting are the national boundaries in dream meanings. Even with dreaming, which is universal, is also national. Nationality is human-made. It’s a pronouncement made by a people. To say that an American would dream about waking up nude and that means something different to how a Korean would dream about it. Or, if you’re Chinese and you dream another way—there’s a cultural and national intersection.

There’s a line in the poem “Inferno,” where you say, “If we can prove hell, we can want heaven.” It points to an idea regarding our capacity for hard-earned ignorance. What about this idea interests you?

That poem I wrote when I was doing a lot of research into Dante. And there was a moment when something clicked. We’re sitting there and striving and arguing for something horrific and maybe something that’s wrong and painful, to learn that the source of that action or that argument is the desire for love—the desire for compassion or peace—that really changed the argument for me. Because then we’re not talking about what we’re talking about. And I think that, in a way, points to the title of the whole collection, A Lesser Love. There were forms of love that I received that others might not call love. Growing up, I spent a long time alone and now in my adult life I’ve managed to be among a lot of wonderful people that I admire who agree that any parent would not have allowed that to happen. Any actual parent would not leave their child behind in another country for a long period of time. But to me that was, there was love there. However, a lesser a form of love. However, diminished it may have been to others.

What I needed to do was understand even lesser forms of love as still love. It really is up to me to see that. To accept that and accept it as love. And I think I had to do that over and over again. That was my lesson with this book. And even with that poem, we all want the same thing and no matter what harm or what we’re doing right now. I was learning what it means to look beyond. How do you love people that other people don’t want you to love? How do you do these things and when do I say, “Who cares?” Anything we talk about—even hell—points back to the possibility of love. That’s what unites us, what binds us together.

After you write a draft, how do you edit it before you know it’s done?

Before this book, I would write a poem and I would rewrite it again and again. 10-15-30 times. I would just rewrite it until I thought every single word or line was something you couldn’t argue with. I wanted to arm my poems. I wanted to give them the opportunity to defend themselves. I was militaristic in how I went about writing and editing my poems. They were in a way an ensemble that I mobilized and put out in the world to fend for themselves. I think we do that a lot when we raise children, and there are other similar analogies.

But much of the later poems in that book function differently. ¾ of the way through, I just stopped doing that. As the book goes on, I was learning in real time. I’m making these things and I’m learning the lessons with the poems as I go along with them. As you go into the latter portion, the poems get messier and take more risks and become more vulnerable and some are overly sentimental. I changed. I decided I didn’t want to mobilize. Especially after the “War” section. I saw the pain in being armed, in defensiveness. These things are never productive. They should take risks, they should be completely vulnerable and open. And if they go out that way, that’s okay. And I have to practice trust. Someone will take this poem and they’ll figure it out.

Some of these poems I wrote in one draft. “Clearance” in one sitting. “Beyonce” I wrote in one sitting. “The Wind,” too. Some of these poems I wrote so quickly. “Alki Town of Dreams,” that was one poem I wrote before I even moved here. I was in such a dark place and I wanted to write what I envisioned what my future might be like. A future that I wanted. The way I write now is similar to the latter half of the book. I allow the words to lay, I let them be alone.

What are you working on now and HOW are you working on it?

I’m working on an experimental memoir that includes translations of my mother’s letters that she wrote to me during the time we lived apart. You see a sort of mothering across long distances. It’s called “How to Age with Grace.” It’s based on one of my mother’s letters she wrote to me about a book she read with the same title. She says in the letter she wants me to teach her how to do this. At the time, I’m 15 and she’s writing me from South Korea. She’s in a place where she needs my help. There’s space in the Korean-American experience for satellite families. The adoption narratives and parachute kids and satellite families are consequences of our world economy and what happens with capitalism and how those things change the dynamic of the immigrant narrative structure, especially in families. I’m learning as I go, really.

In all of my Poetry Northwest interviews, I ask the author for a writing tip or trick. Do you have one you can share?

One that was important for me to realize was that on the actual page, during the writing of poems or stories, I’m careful not to categorize. To say, “This is my immigrant family” or “This is strictly a Korean thing.” Because I think the dangers of that is you introduce a box, a border, a dark line around your experience and it can create division where you want to create universality. It comes down to leaving room, having space for others’ stories. How much space am I leaving around my work for others? As a translator, that’s something I’m wary of—whether something is culturally specific, or something is universal. So even if we talk about genres and subjects, on the page, the best thing to do is just describe and show the scene and to leave it up to the language and not call it one thing or another. That’s something I didn’t know for a long time.

Aside from being a poet, you work as a translator. Besides the literal turning a word from one language to another, what goes through your mind as you translate?

When I translate Korean poetry into English, or my mother’s letters from Korean to English, I want to keep the Korean intact. So that when you read the English, it doesn’t feel like you’re reading English necessarily. There’s a fine balance and every translator makes their own choices about this. I can still make it accessible, readable, but the astute reader should be able to hear Korean. To notice, that’s an interesting way to say something, that’s an interesting tone or color of the word, that repetition, rhythm, or percussive, primal element. I’m thinking of the words just as you’d think about music. Even sentence structures, long waves of crescendos, decrescendos. You’re reading it in English, but I want you to hear Korean behind it. I want to maintain that, I want to protect that. For me, it’s to honor both languages. That’s how I respect both of them. I never want to neglect one language or keep it hunched behind the other. Both need to be on the page and I need to be the person that gives them room, gives them space to be there together.

(https://www.poetrynw.org/interview-the-only-history-i-can-claim-a-conversation-with-e-j-koh/)

#ej koh #jake uitti #poem #poet #poetry #interview #korean #korean american #asian american

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leftpress · 5 years ago

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louisproyect | July 10th 2019 | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

On their Gray Zone website, Max Blumenthal and his mini-me Ben Norton (aka Ned Borton) have just come out with a 5,600 word diatribe against the Socialism 2019 Conference in Chicago. Most people still tethered to the planet would understand that the main political questions raised by the DSA/ex-ISO conference was whether support for Democratic Party candidates is tactically permissible. Instead, the two geniuses were playing Vishinsky-like prosecuting attorneys making the case that “Socialism is now apparently brought to you by the US State Department”.

They dug up every connection that conference speakers had to inside-the-beltway NGOs and government agencies like the NED to read the DSA and ex-ISOers out of the radical movement. One would think that these two nitwits would put more energy into helping the left put together a conference that did not have such nefarious ties. I can recommend some left groups that are as unsullied as them: Workers World, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Socialist Equality Party, the Spartacist League and Socialist Action. These five groups have never been implicated in smoke-filled room deals with officials of the Deep State, to be sure. In fact, if all of them got together to stage a Communism 2019 Conference, they wouldn’t need to line up a Hyatt hotel. A church basement would do just fine.

To turn NED funding, or any other such body, into a litmus test as to a group’s leftist credentials is a problematic methodology. Its main problem is that it turns the nation-state into the unit of analysis rather than the social class.

For example, they excoriate the China Labour Bulletin for taking money from the NED but do not say anything about what it stands for. If you go to their website, you’ll find articles, for example, on coal mine safety in China that contains such data:

The Daping coal mine in Zhengzhou, Henan province, where 148 people died in a gas explosion on 20 October 2004, had been inspected and approved for an annual production capacity of 900,000 tonnes. In 2003, the mine produced 1.32 million tonnes of coal, and from January to September 2004 it had already produced 960,000 tonnes. Similarly, the Sunjiawan coal mine in Liaoning province, where a gas explosion killed at least 214 miners on 14 February 2005, had been approved for a production capacity of 900,000 tonnes, but its actual output in 2004 was 1.48 million tonnes. The Shenlong coal mine in Fukang county, Xinjiang province, where 83 miners died in a gas explosion on 11 July 2005, had a safe production capacity of only 30,000 tonnes, but during the first half of 2005 alone it had already produced almost 180,000 tonnes of coal.

You will find absolutely nothing about “regime change” in the CLB. It is simply one of the few voices Chinese workers have making their case. If the NED provides funding for their work, there is no stigma as long as the money comes with no-strings-attached.

The truth is that the NED and similar bodies from George Soros’s Open Foundation to Human Rights Watch will always try to take advantage of protests in every corner of the world in order to influence them. Why would anybody expect anything different? To be consistent, you’d have to condemn the student movement in Egypt in 2011 in the same way you condemn CLB. In fact, Global Research—Gray Zone’s closest relative—did exactly that. Tony Cartalucci put it this way in an article titled “The US Engineered “Arab Spring”: The NGO Raids in Egypt”:

It is hardly a speculative theory then, that the uprisings were part of an immense geopolitical campaign conceived in the West and carried out through its proxies with the assistance of disingenuous organizations including NED, NDI, IRI, and Freedom House and the stable of NGOs they maintain throughout the world. Preparations for the “Arab Spring” began not as unrest had already begun, but years before the first “fist” was raised, and within seminar rooms in D.C. and New York, US-funded training facilities in Serbia, and camps held in neighboring countries, not within the Arab World itself.

In 2008, Egyptian activists from the now infamous April 6 movement were in New York City for the inaugural Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) summit, also known as Movements.org. There, they received training, networking opportunities, and support from AYM’s various corporate and US governmental sponsors, including the US State Department itself. The AYM 2008 summit report states that the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James Glassman attended, as did Jared Cohen who sits on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of State. Six other State Department staff members and advisers would also attend the summit along with an immense list of corporate, media, and institutional representatives.

Can you tell the difference between Tony Cartalucci and the Gray Zone? I can’t.

Much venom is sprayed at Anand Gopal and Dan La Botz for the same kinds of reasons. Gopal is an acclaimed journalist who has made repeated trips to Syria from Turkey without Baathist approval. As with other reporters who refuse to write propaganda for the dictatorship, he had to find other ways to interview Syrians. He would crawl beneath a barbed wire fence on the border and follow painted rocks that were place there by villagers to avoid land mines. In a talk on Syria recently, Gopal argued that part of the explanation for the failure of the revolution was that the leadership were small proprietors in the local governments of rebel-controlled territory that insisted on preserving private property relations. If this book is nearly as good as his book on Afghanistan that was a Pulitzer prize runner up, it should gain widespread attention. Meanwhile, Blumenthal’s reporting on Syria is the same as Vanessa Beeley’s, just regime propaganda. At least Beeley went to Syria, even if was limited to 4-star hotels and tea parties with the dictator. Can you imagine Sidney Blumenthal’s golden boy crawling under barbed wire fences and stepping close to land mines to get a story? I can’t.

The attacks on Dan La Botz are just as apolitical. I am just as opposed to La Botz’s special pleading for the reactionary student movement in Venezuela as Blumenthal and Norton but I wouldn’t dream of smearing him as a State Department tool. In fact, this kind of attack has roots in Stalin’s demonization of his opponents who were supposedly trying to overthrow the USSR because both they and the capitalist media described him as a ruthless dictator.

In channeling Stalin, these two pinheads make sure to use the word “Trotskyite” throughout, a term that is a dead giveaway for politics that have largely died out after the collapse of the USSR and the transformation of the CPs into Eurocommunist type parties, except for the KKE in Greece that is cut from the same cloth as Gray Zone.

Looking back at the history of the radical movement, you will find many attempts to take advantage of imperialist rivalry. For Blumenthal and Norton, the only imperialist powers in the world are those in the West. China and Russia are clearly seen by them as anti-imperialist states even though the subjugation of the Uygurs and Syrians that Gray Zone defends are clearly imperialist in character. If Uygurs and Syrians are expected to pass their litmus test, it would mean suicide since the world is divided into two major geopolitical blocs. For all of their ranting against the White Helmets from receiving funding from the West, you would be hard-pressed to see how else they could have assembled a first responder team that has saved thousands of lives. Obviously, Gray Zone must believe that bombing hospitals is warranted in rebel-controlled territory since all the patients are likely carrying the dread sharia-law virus.

Fortunately, people like Roger Casement and others trying to exploit the differences between Anglo-American and German imperialism didn’t take Gray Zone type advice.

Who could blame Irish freedom fighter Roger Casement for trying to strike deals with Kaiser Wilhelm to get weapons to liberate his people? During a period of inter-imperialist rivalries, it was not considered a betrayal of socialist principles to look for such opportunities. In Roy’s case, there was the added dimension of his writing the theses on national liberation adopted by the Comintern. How could you cozy up with imperialists and then write such classic statements of Marxist policy?

This is not to speak of V.I. Lenin’s stance with respect to the same bogeymen. In “To the Finland Station”, Edmund Wilson describes the uneasy feelings that some of his comrades had that were by no means as disgusting as Gray Zone’s attack on Socialism 2019:

In the train that left the morning of April 8 there were thirty Russian exiles, including not a single Menshevik. They were accompanied by the Swiss socialist Platten, who made himself responsible for the trip, and the Polish socialist Radek. Some of the best of the comrades had been horrified by the indiscretion of Lenin in resorting to the aid of the Germans and making the trip through an enemy country. They came to the station and besieged the travelers, begging them not to go. Lenin got into the train without replying a word.

Even after Hitler took power, some nationalists continued in the same vein, the most notable among them Subhas Chandra Bose who relied on both German and Japanese support for an army that could liberate India. Despite this marriage of convenience, Bose was politically on the left and an admirer of the USSR. Indeed, Stalin’s nonaggression pact with Hitler served his policy aims well as indicated by his 1941 Kabul Thesis written just before he travelled to Germany to consult with the Nazis:

Thus we see pseudo-Leftists who through sheer cowardice avoid a conflict with Imperialism and argue in self-defence that Mr. Winston Churchill (whom we know to be the arch-Imperialist) is the greatest revolutionary going. It has become a fashion with these pseudo-Leftists to call the British Government a revolutionary force because it is fighting the Nazis and Fascists. But they conveniently forget the imperialist character of Britain’s war and also the fact that the greatest revolutionary force in the world, the Soviet Union, has entered into a solemn pact with the Nazi Government.

While some sought advantage by aligning with the axis, others found the allies more amenable to their broader goals. While he would eventually find himself locked in a deadly struggle with American imperialism, Ho Chi Minh had no problem connecting with the OSS during WWII as recounted by William Duiker in his 2000 biography “Ho Chi Minh: a Life”:

While Ho Chi Minh was in Paise attempting to revitalize the Dong Minh Hoi, a U.S. military intelligence officer arrived in Kunming to join the OSS unit there. Captain Archimedes “Al” Patti had served in the European Theater until January 1944, when he was transferred to Washington, D.C., and appointed to the Indochina desk at OSS headquarters. A man of considerable swagger and self-confidence, Patti brought to his task a strong sense of history and an abiding distrust of the French and their legacy in colonial areas. It was from the files in Washington, D.C. that he first became aware of the activities of the Vietminh Front and its mysterious leader, Ho Chi Minh.

The next day, Patti arrived at Debao airport, just north of Jingxi, and after consultation with local AGAS representatives, drove into Jingxi, where he met a Vietminh contact at a local restaurant and was driven to see Ho Chi Minh in a small village about six miles out of town. After delicately feeling out his visitor about his identity and political views, Ho described conditions inside Indochina and pointed out that his movement could provide much useful assistance and information to the Allies if it were in possession of modern weapons, ammunition, and means of communication. At the moment, Ho conceded that the movement was dependent upon a limited amount of equipment captured from the enemy. Patti avoided any commitment, but promised to explore the matter. By his own account, Patti was elated.

Right now, the biggest question facing the left is class independence, something clearly of little importance to Ben Norton who is a big Tulsi Gabbard fan. In this interview, he is positively glowing about her political growth even though she had “odious” views in the past.

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Trying to stake out a position that will stand out in a crowded “anti-imperialist” left will be tough for Norton and Blumenthal. You can read the same sort of thing in Consortium News, Moon of Alabama, Mint Press, Off-Guardian, 21st Century Wire, DissidentVoice, Information Clearing House, et al. To separate themselves from the pack, my advice to the two careerists is to find some sugar daddy that can throw some money their way. Ron Unz of UNZ Review not only has deep pockets but lots of sympathy for their tilt toward Russia and Syria. That is if you can put up with his neo-Nazism.

[Read More On LeftPress.org]

#conspiracism #mechanical anti-imperialism #News

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minblush · 6 years ago

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I hope you dont mind me asking but what is right wing? Is it like the conservative side

japanese right wing ideology is kinda specific and has been on the rise, it’s tied with radical nationalism and japan’s imperialistic history, which is a topic very sensitive to koreans because they suffered greatly because of japan (the issue of comfort women) etc, current japanese right wing ideology is re-writing history and trying to suppress the knowledge of atrocities japan has committed in favor of blind patriotism (monuments for imperial war criminals, propagation of the rising sun flag which is to east asian countries equivalent to the swastika, removing mentions of war crimes from history books), that’s why korean fans are mad and hurt, and others are also worried about it impacting the image of bangtan in korea

Anonymous said:apparently japanese fans are also really mad so this was undoubtedly the dumbest decision ever bang pd can fucking choke

i haven’t seen as many reactions from them so i can’t comment on that fully, but stupid decision it really was.. can’t get out of my head that bang pd literally said he admires the world view of that man.. what the fuck

Anonymous said:If bts has the amount of artistic freedom and get to make the choices like they say they do there are seven members surely they can stand up and say hey I won’t work with this producer…. I know we don’t know 100% how it all works and what is going on but if they can’t do that then a. They don’t have the freedom they say they do or b. They don’t have the integrity or awareness/right stance on social issues like they make out they do…

you are exactly right

Anonymous said:But not going to lie yoongis work is nice

yes i agree

Anonymous said:Do u think bts need to gives some sort of feedback or something on how toxic the fandom has become?? Do u think its necessary for an artist to respond? Just want to hear your opinion about it. (And i know its not ideal for artist to do that, they basically saying to some of the fans that theyre wrong etc etc, and it will definitely hurt their ego) sooo despite that do u think they actually need to?

do they need to? obviously not because they can keep going just fine without it, should they? would it help? yes, i believe so. i don’t think artists are responsible for what their fans do, but if something you could say would make a difference for the better, then why not? majority of fans adore bts like gods and blindly believe everything they say, were they to speak up it might influence a very good portion of them

Anonymous said:I agree with your post so much I literally love bts to bits but also like,,, I don’t know how to say it you said it better than me but specially with the ‘saying things about any real substance’ not to get too deep but I’ve suffered with bipolar and ADHD my life was absolute shit when I was 18 years old and songs like sea are really genius impactful, I love them and they help me but they’re never the FACE of their album which is disappointing since we hold them up to THAT standard

yes exactly, i’ve had songs that were very meaningful to me as well, but they are getting further and further away from these songs being the focus and instead we keep getting issues like this and i’m just so tired

Anonymous said:I’m so sorry but being an old crusty ass man and defending obvious sexual abuse and harassment because it gets his sick dick hard is the most vile thing I’ve ever seen. I love bts but If they keep this dude on the album I am not touching that shit it can flop hopefully for all I care lmao

same… like really it’s more important to bang pd to get the media buzz than having any integrity.. ugh

w0n-rabbit said:Hi there!! I hope yoi dont mind me bothering but I have been following youre bolg for quite some time now and I have always valued your opinion on all the issues happening because well I like the way you voice them out and your honesty is 😶 quite charming. On a different note, I find it extremely hard to support BTS right now. I mean was a huge fan at first but became less and less of one solely because of the fandom and now this. Sorry to bombard you like this 😶

hi you’re not bothering me at all! thank you for sharing your thoughts as well and for thinking nice things about me (dakjsd i disagree but i appreciate it ofc

Anonymous said:Hey so I’ve been reading your replies and it kinda opened my eyes a bit but I was just wondering on where you stand? Like are you still a fan of bts or you just don’t agree with bighit?

i don’t know anymore honestly, i’ve been continuously disappointed and hurt by things surrounding them for a long time now and the negatives have been outweighing the positives.. i still am fond of the boys and the their group dynamic and the song that meant to me a lot before still do now.. it’s just hard? how can i call myself a fan when this all is what they stand for now? when the company’s priorities are so skewed and painful? so i don’t know, i am still fond of them as people though

#w0n-rabbit #ask #anon

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mediumcutsteak · 4 years ago

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Again, let me start off with AoT is not innocent. I'm fully aware that despite my own reasoning mentioned in my original post, that it doesn't mean Jewish people, Korean people, or any other group of people can't or shouldn't feel uncomfortable with the way the story is told. That's their prerogative, especially as people so thoroughly oppressed.

The idea that the manga is somehow in the wrong by showing Eldians first as Pure Titans, and THEN as people is not only a wildly subjective opinion, but one that is actually factually wrong. The people in the walls are ALSO Eldian. Eldians are portrayed as people before a titan even showed up on panel, because EVERYONE IN THE WALLS ARE ELDIAN PEOPLE. Even ignoring that, the purpose of showing the titans as people later is specifically so you can rethink the show up to this point. These WEREN'T MONSTERS. They ARE PEOPLE, being used as war machines, and slaughtered by their own people ignorantly. In the context of the story being told it's supposed to be tragic, and HUMANIZING of the titans. Because thats what they are: exploited humans.

In the context of the wider WW2 allegory, I 100% agree that giving the Jewish stand in a reason to be persecuted in the fiction is fucked. My point was that if a Japanese citizen can't recognize a Swastika, than there's room for me to believe that this wasn't done intentionally, but a fuck up in writing. Since apparently I need to clarify, THAT DOES NOT MAKE THE WRITING OK. If it makes you uncomfortable, nervous, etc that's valid. It isn't handled well, even if I believe it wasn't done maliciously considering my own beliefs regarding Isayama and the aforementioned historical obfuscation. It is not just BAD writing. Its HARMFUL writing that stupid people will use as an excuse to bury their head further in their own sand of conspiracy. Like I said, I'm not here to defend it blindly, I just don't believe it was intentional, at least not yet.

Speaking on the topic of stupid people using AoT as a means to justify or support their anti semetic white supremacist bullshit, it's true that AoT has found a place in alt right circles. Lets also not forget that the same thing has happened to things such as Pepe the Frog, the Ok hand sign being used as a symbol for white power, and in fact anime in general having an extreme infestation of incels and chuds who hate the 'watering down' of their content by people who want things like a little less fanservice and an end to lolicon. Just because something becomes popular in an alt right circle doesn't necessarily mean the content in itself was ever FOR them, just that they latched on.

Let'a talk about the idea that Imperialsim in AoT is considered grey, because this is a lie. No form of Imperialism, from the ancient Eldians oppressing anicent Marley, to the present Marleyans oppressing Eldians, to Eren's mass genocide of all non Paradisians is EVER considered anything but evil. While there are certain sympathetic characteristics, such as Eren's genocide being rooted in his desire for his people to live freely, that is NEVER an excuse for their actions. These sympathetic reasons are always fought back against, never being enough to justify the horrors committed to the reasonable characters who just want the suffering to stop, or the average reader who doesn't want the baby thrown out with bathwater so to speak.

Is it fucked up that in the context of this quickly unraveling WW2 allegory, which I believe was crafted ignorantly without thinking through the full consequences of their writing choices, the fantasy Nazis have a sympathetic reason to oppress the fantasy Jews at all, regardless of whether the imperialismis supported in text? YES. EMPHATICALLY SO. But that doesn't mean the imperialism is treated as good, or even grey. After they fought back, they took it out on Eldia, and the moment they shifted from trying to get out from beneath ancient Eldia's thumb to trying to get Eldia under there own, they became unquestionably evil. The same can be said about Eren when he went from trying to help Paradis be free from Marley's bullshit, to murdering every single person. If you're reading the imperialism in the show as anything less than evil, I'd sincerely like to see in text examples that make you believe so, because reading the manga, I never once found reason to believe that.

As far as shifting the allegory to imperialist Japan and the rest of Asia, that's a really weak reading of the text, and it seems you agree, considering how even when you were laying it out, you added a paranthetical indicating that Eldia is FAR more jew coded than asia coded. I agree that the whole Pan asia rhetoric is indeed fucked up, but compared to the Nazi allegory, it really doesn't hold up as an Aot reading, and since as i just discussed the IMPERIALISM is never shown as being write or anything but evil, it kinda falls apart.

Look, my point is NOT that AoT doesn't have harmful writing. It does, I mentioned it before, and I mention it now. My specifc point in all this is to fight back against two specific notions that your original post seemed to imply as fact. That aot is UNQUESTIONABLY deliberate in it's wrong doing, which i feel ive made enough of a case for to cast some doubt while still leaving room to show that I could be wrong, and that all AoT fans are completely ignorant and unwiing to grapple with the flaws in it's writing, which by using an AoT fan to debate me, you've already proven to be false. You can like aot without supporting all it does. And if talking to people who do makes you uncomfortable and treat it as a red flag, while i can't say i agree, I can't say I don't get it.

But the smarmy, self righteous tone you take in your previous posts rub me the wrong way. So I wanted to respond.

if you can reread a 100-400 chapter manga and binge watch an entire anime in one sitting then you can definitely read an article about how a particular series has imperialist undertones and caricatures that takes 5 minutes to read instead of mocking the article writer's actual extensive research about the history of the mangaka's nationalistic views and preference for wwii germany but you don't bc you hate criticism and lack reading comprehension i guess

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 3 years ago

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Disciplining the Mind – North Korean style

Sun Myung Moon was in North Korea from 1946-1950.

Ron Paquette spoke to one of Moon’s sons about indoctrination: “And I said in many ways it reminds me sometimes of the communist camps, and at that point he said: ‘Yeah I know,’ he said, ‘and Father learned that when he was in prison camp,’ and I kept trying to make the point that no, no, the way we bring in people, and the way we control people is kind of like the way this goes on in North Korean prison camps, and he kept saying ‘I know.’” from “Reverend Sun Myung Moon: Emperor of the Universe” TV special (Ron Paquette speaks at 23 minutes)

Review: “When the history of North Korea is discussed, the focus is usually on the division of the peninsula, the installation of a pro-Soviet regime, and the application of communism. But Charles K. Armstrong went far beyond this approach in this work.

Armstrong went through several aspects of North Korean society, touching upon even art, to show how the government’s authority and ideology touched upon every aspect of daily life and every imaginable segment of society. To his credit, he highlights the communists’ significant overturning of traditional Korean classes, as the communists placed the peasantry on top.

A sound work free of political bias which examines what the North Koreans did between August 14, 1945 and June 25, 1950, in their attempt to revolutionize their half of the peninsula.”

The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 By Charles K. Armstrong

Series: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Cornell University Press; 1 edition (February 19, 2004) ISBN-13: 978-0801489143

North Korea, despite a shattered economy and a populace suffering from widespread hunger, has outlived repeated forecasts of its imminent demise. Charles K. Armstrong contends that a major source of North Korea’s strength and resiliency, as well as of its flaws and shortcomings, lies in the poorly understood origins of its system of government. He examines the genesis of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) both as an important yet rarely studied example of a communist state and as part of modern Korean history.

North Korea is one of the last redoubts of “unreformed” Marxism-Leninism in the world. Yet it is not a Soviet satellite in the East European manner, nor is its government the result of a local revolution, as in Cuba and Vietnam. Instead, the DPRK represents a unique “indigenization” of Soviet Stalinism, Armstrong finds. The system that formed under the umbrella of the Soviet occupation quickly developed into a nationalist regime as programs initiated from above merged with distinctive local conditions. Armstrong’s account is based on long-classified documents captured by U.S. forces during the Korean War. This enormous archive of over 1.6 million pages provides unprecedented insight into the making of the Pyongyang regime and fuels the author’s argument that the North Korean state is likely to remain viable for some years to come.

pages 210-214

Disciplining the Mind In the North Korean surveillance regime, social discipline was ideally not something to be imposed by outside regulation and coercion. Discipline was to be internalized through self-examination and reform at the individual level, and “thought struggle“ leading to “thought uniﬁcation“ at the collective level, North Korean communism shared with its counterparts in China and Vietnam, as well as (with a different ideological content) prewar militarist Japan, a strong emphasis on drawing the wayward individual into political conformity through reeducation and reform rather than physical coercion and punishment. The most dramatic example of this was the public ritual of “‘self-criticism” (cha-a pi’p’an or chagi pip’an).

Originally a Soviet technique, self-criticism was used to a much greater degree by the North Koreans and Chinese, and became well-known in the West during the Korean War as part of communist “brainwashing.” It may be that in cultures deeply influenced by neo-Confucian notions of the innate goodness and spiritual malleability of human beings, all deviants are in theory capable of being reformed through self-reflection and reeducation. Self-criticism was the public expression of this reform, through which the genuinely repentant individual could be reintegrated into the community. Its quasi-religious nature has often been noted, although the public nature of self-criticism is much more like evangelical Protestant “testimony” than Catholic confession.

What the Korean communists called “thought unity“ (sasang t’ongi’l), or what the American observers in their characteristic fashion called “totally conditioned public opinion,” was a theme the state and every social organization in North Korea constantly stressed. This stress on ideological conformity derived not only from Soviet influences, but also was clearly resonant with the relentless “thought policing” of the late colonial period, albeit with a very different political content. The North Korean regime put enormous resources into propaganda, as we have seen in the previous chapter, both to encourage support for the regime as well as to uproot subversive ideas that might aid the Americans and the South Korea agents who were suspected behind every corner. Thought had to be free of all reactionary taint and politically pure. The undisciplined mind was a thing to be feared.

Disciplining the Body One final object of discipline stressed in the North Korean literature was the human body. Immediately Following the creation of the DPRK, there was a considerable emphasis on hygiene, sports, and physical purity. The individual had a duty to perfect his physical condition in order to strengthen the society and better serve the state. In particular, there was an emphasis on large, coordinated group sporting events, the precursors of the “mass games” that would in later years be a hallmark of North Korean entertainment for visiting foreign delegations. In North Korea of the 1940s, images abounded of parades of young athletes carrying flags, group calisthenics, and public drills celebrating holidays and events of all kinds. This too had a resonance not only with the Soviet Union and other communist societies, but also prewar Japan and, further aﬁeld, the mass-mobilizing states of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

The extent to which society was portrayed as an organic unit to which the individual contributed his entire physical and spiritual being, in which “all hearts beat as one” (to use a later North Korean phrase) was probably closest to Imperial Japan. But, as John Dower has pointed out, the Japanese government chose to portray such a rigid image of national unity precisely because many feared that the masses did not share in the virtues the state espoused. The state seemed to be attempting to create a sense of unity and political cohesion in part through the active involvement of the individual in public, physical displays of bodily conformity. These would not be the “docile bodies” that Foucault refers to, but “active bodies” moving in choreographed unity, sports reflecting the indivisible purpose of the nation in all areas of politics, economics, and culture.

The well-trained individual body was a synecdoche of, and a prerequisite for, a well-functioning body politic. Both had to be disciplined, strong, and determined. The inaugural issue of Inmin ch’eyuk (People’s Physical Education) in February 1949 proclaimed that physical training “will help realize complete national uniﬁcation and democratic development.” Physical education was the “firm foundation” of the people’s economic development and the defense of the Fatherland. Although there were already more than 60,000 members of 11,208 athletic groups in the North, there was still a need to “permeate physical education more broadly among the people,” to replace the antiquated Japanese physical education system, and to educate all people in the workplace, farm, and school to become good comrades. Everywhere the nation was supposed to walk in step, both literally and figuratively.

Internalizing Security After the creation of the Democratic People’s Republic in 1948, the North Korean documents show an increasing concern with external dangers to the nation and social discipline appears increasingly militarized. Although references to “reactionary elements” and “national traitors” within North Korea diminishes, criticism of reaction and national betrayal is increasingly focused on South Korea and talk of “defending the Fatherland” ( chogukk powi ) escalates. At the same time, there is a move away from the negative elimination of “bad elements” to the positive creation of “thought unity” within the party and local People’s Committees and the spiritual and physical training of individuals, all linked in turn to the defense of and integration into the state that represents the “national subject,” the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. There is, in short, an unbroken continuum from the internal discipline of the individual to the external defense of the nation.

Local counties and villages were linked to the national security/military complex through the Self-Defense Units ( chawidae ), supervised by the Procurator’s Office, which was in turn part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Self-policing institutions were a common feature of traditional Korean villages, but it was the Japanese colonial authorities who first linked these organizations effectively to the centralized police forces and the state.86 The North Korean state also drew on this system of local self-defense, but the social hierarchy was reversed: rather than being headed by the village elders, held in respect due to their age and perhaps a modicum of Confucian education, the local Self-Defense Units were run by local peasants who were generally both poor and young. In the village of Tongmyon in South P’yong’an, for example, most of the twenty Self-Defense Unit members employed in the local police substation were in their early thirties, all were poor peasants, and two were women.87

The responsibilities of the Self-Defense Units were broad, including the dissemination of state policy (including foreign policy), protection against “infiltration of reactionary elements,” and security from fire and theft.88 At the first meeting of the Tongmyon Self-Defense Unit in October 1949, the members promised to “work for the benefit and productivity of the local people,” to “expose and smash reactionaries and puppets and their helpers,” and above all to “overcome all difficulties and discipline ( hullyonhada )” themselves “for obedience to the demands of the state.”89

86. Likewise, the Japanese in Taiwan made effective use of the traditional Chinese baojia neighbohood family system of local security. See Chen, “Police and Community Control Systems,” 226.

87. RG 242, SA 2005, 4/36. “Personal History of Each Village Guard,” Tongmyon Police Sub-Station, 1949 (“top secret”)

88. RG 242, SA 2009, 8/58. Poster on responsibility and mission of Self-Defense Units, belonging to Cell Section, Kangwon Provincial Public Procurator’s Office, 4 November 1947.

89. RG 242, SA 2005, 4/36. “Record of the First Meeting of the Self-Defense Unit,” Tongmyon Police Sub-Station, 12 October 1949.

90. RG 242 contains a “handbook” on self-criticism, a translation of a 1927 Soviet document, which states that “self-criticism [ chagi pip’an ] is a method of promoting revolutionary consciousness of party members, cadres, and ordinary working-class.” RG 242, SA 2009. 7/32. Propaganda Section Chinnamp’o Korean Communist Party Committee, May 1946. Party members also circulated translations of Chinese articles on “Thought Guidance” by Mao, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, and others, indicating the mix of both Soviet and Chinese influences in postliberation North Korea. See RG 242, SA 2009, 6/73.

91. Prewar Japanese tenko (conversion) of “thought criminals” used techniques quite similar to later North Korean and Chinese “reeducation” See Mitchell, Thought Control, 127-47. As mentioned earlier, many Korean communists had themselves been objects of tenko campaigns during the colonial period.

92. For a brief description of self-criticisim in North Korea see Schramm and Riley, “Communication in the Sovietized State.” 764.

93. State Department, North Korea, 91.

94. John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 31. For an interpretation of North Korea as a “corporatist” organic state, see Bruce Cummings, “Corporatism in North Korea,” Journal of Korean Studies 3 (1983): 269-94.

95. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979), 135-169.

96. RG 242, SA 2008, 10/122 Inmin Ch’eyuk 1, no. 1 (February 1949): 1.

Moon: “… you must know the knack of holding and possessing the listeners’ hearts. If there appears a crack in the man’s personality, you wedge in a chisel, and split the person apart.”

United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization

Politics and religion interwoven

The Resurrection of Rev Moon

#Sun Myung Moon #North Korea

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