#to a group of people that supposedly care about oppression

[maxdibert]

James is not only the one who didn’t pay, he’s the only one who didn’t have any mitigating circumstances. Sirius is vicious, but he comes from a vicious family, and him deciding he was going to back James in everything makes perfect sense for a boy trying to break from his background and wishing he had parents more like James’. Remus is a coward, but him failing to stand up to his friends makes perfect sense from a boy whose condition meant he’d never been accepted before. Peter? Who cares, he’s a plot device.

But James? James had no excuse whatsoever. He was well loved, well cared for, well off financially. He wanted for nothing. He didn’t learn cruelty at the knees of his parents, they doted on him. Which means he’s just a sadist who enjoyed the rush of power he got from humiliating easy targets. And Lily is of questionable character for thinking him hot boyfriend material when he never displays any remorse.

It’s why I always say that, to me, James Potter is nothing more than a Draco Malfoy with “progresist” parents. He basically has the same abusive, classist, and violent attitude as Draco, except that, unlike Draco, James believes he is morally superior because he doesn’t share the typical pure-blood ideals. This makes him an absolute hypocrite, in addition to being a violent bully and a rich brat who takes advantage of his economic and social position to abuse those who are at a disadvantage.

It’s funny how people defend him with arguments like “he’s not a racist” because he accepts Muggle-borns. So, because he accepts Muggle-borns, are we going to ignore the fact that he’s a classist jerk who actively mocks people for having a lower socioeconomic status than him? Or that he uses his economic and social capital against those who don’t have it? Or that, knowing he has the upper hand, he torments those who don’t have the same resources? Like, why should I care that he boasts about a supposedly progressive ideology that’s entirely fake, and never really shows any understanding of, when his actions in the canon prove he’s just another member of the elite oppressing those below him, simply because he has the capital to do so?

He reminds me a lot of several guys I met during my time in political activism at university. I used to hang around leftist groups with Marxist tendencies, and there was always that typical rich kid raised in a bourgeois left-wing family, who was there because they were taught it was the right thing to do, but had no clue about the root of social problems or the reality of working-class life. In fact, their supposed political commitment stemmed from a sense of superiority, which manifested in incredibly patronising attitudes toward the working class. And yes, they’d date girls from humble families because it reinforced the persona they’d created, but in the end, they were the same rich jerks you’d find in right-wing groups. At least the rich jerks on the right didn’t have the audacity to give moralising speeches while still acting like pricks. They were just pricks, plain and simple.

That’s how I see James, but translated into the magical world. And god, how much I’ve hated, been disgusted by, and fought with guys like him. They’ve always made me sick. I’ve literally had better relationships with people whose politics are the polar opposite of mine than with guys like that, because I find them a cancer to any political group. But anyway, I digress. I don’t think there’s anything impressive about James joining the Order or dating a Muggle-born. It’s the bare minimum expected of someone who has had every single privilege, support, and education needed to choose the right path. I think it’s basic. Just like it would be basic to expect someone who’s had no problems in life and everything handed to them on a silver platter to be a decent person rather than a bully. But James Potter chooses to be a bully because his ego, as a rich heteropatriarchal man, can’t handle the fact that a poor kid with a non-normative appearance by masculine standards is friends with the girl he likes. And for that stupid reason, he decides to use all the power he has, and the other doesn’t, to bully him for 7 years. But hey, we should forgive him because, at the end of the day, he joined the Order. I mean, what? No, that’s not how it works.

I could say a lot about Lily too, but I’m just going to copy and paste something I said the other day because it basically sums up my opinion of her:

Honestly, I don’t know if Rowling didn’t think much about this, or if simply because she herself is a terrible person, she thought it was compatible to portray Lily as the epitome of goodness, a kind of perfect being like the Virgin Mary, while also having her marry her friend’s abuser—because, honestly, she’s not. To me, it seems like Lily was a person of questionable morals and ethics, which is ironic because her supposed moral superiority is what leads her to break off her relationship with Severus. What I find illogical is presenting a character who constantly talks about what’s morally right or wrong when her actions are quite contrary to her supposed value system.

I’ve had friendships throughout my life that have ended badly, for one reason or another, and that happens. But I would never, ever think of dating someone I’ve known for years as someone who abuses others, much less people who were my friends. Sometimes I think this is either a plot hole or that Lily was just your typical superficial “pick me” girl who wanted to “not be like other girls,” but deep down, she loved that a rich, popular guy like James was chasing after her. That’s the only explanation that gives her actions some sense—that deep down, her inferiority complex (being a Muggle-born and from a family that wasn’t even middle class) manifested in the need to be liked, be popular, and end up as the object of interest and admiration of rich and popular boys. That would actually be interesting because it would give her character some depth. The problem is that, in canon, all we see is a girl lecturing others on morality and then acting with ethical standards that leave much to be desired, with no explanation.

Because no, sorry, you don’t marry a bully. You might marry a bully if you meet them at 30 and you’re unaware of what they did as a teenager. But you don’t marry a bully you’ve seen harassing and abusing people for 7 years—like, what kind of sense does that make? And even less so do you do that and then give yourself the privilege of judging other people’s behavior and decisions. Lily Evans had no moral ground for that.

I could rant for hours about why she’s a terrible friend and a hypocrite, but I’ll settle for defining her as the typical basic girl who tries to act interesting. Unfortunately, many female characters in the series are like that: “pick me” girls. But then again, that’s nothing more than Rowling’s internalized misogyny coming to light, along with her insecurities projected into the need to be “one of the boys” and her unfounded hatred of women with traditionally feminine traits. And that’s another story.

[alyrch99]

I think it's fundamentally this:

If you're not a trans women (or transfeminine) I don't care about literally anything you think about eggs, or transmisogyny, or what a TERF is, or what "radical feminism" in the context of transness means and whether or not you think it can be recouped with a trans-inclusive mode of thought or identity, or literally any of this other shit. This means you, he/they obsessively browsing the transmisogyny tag to disagree with people, I block yall wherever I find you but there's always more. Actually it's not even a tag, because this website restricts #transmisogyny, though for some reason not transandrophobia or transmisandry gee I wonder why that is with your opposition supposedly being so similar to ours in scope.

Anyway you're not part of a fucking community with me. You simply aren't. Learn what actual solidarity is (hint: it isn't screaming "where's your solidarity, we should work together!!" Whenever anyone mentions how you're in fact also part of an oppressive group to her) or never try to talk for or with me again. Actually preferably don't do that anyway. Also your gender isn't special or somehow better than trans womanhood, it's not more transgressive, think for a moment about why trans women don't tend to have (don't tend to *get* to have) these "more complex" gender identities - it's because we aren't allowed to, we aren't given the leeway.

This probably won't get any traction, no one gives a fuck what I say on here, but if it does? If you're TME keep your fucking mouth shut in my notes.

[gandalfsbignaturals]

do you also hate terms like gentile on the same grounds or what

this is a bad faith comparison.

gentile is a word with a very clear definition: someone who isnt jewish. there is some blurriness in the lines of "jewish" vs "not jewish," for instance: is someone who has married a jewish person and attends services with them jewish, even if they havent finished their conversion process? if they havent even started? no, but they may still be lumped in with jewish people in the eyes of an antisemite. still, it is a word with a clear definition. there is a process to become jewish if you are not jewish, and otherwise, being jewish is something one is born into.

transmisogyny exempt, as a term, is not well-defined. i have seen it defined most often as anyone who isnt a trans woman or trans fem. but this definitely designates a large group of people who do face transmisogyny as supposedly exempt from it. transmisogynists, as i have said many times, dont care about the specifics of our labels. if someones gender is too difficult for them to parse, they will default to assuming that person is a trans woman and treat them accordingly.

thus, there is no clear group that can be designated as affected by trans misogyny or exempt from trans misogyny. it is a label founded on oppression, but the oppression of queer people is fundamentally a hatred of that which doesnt fit into a binary. the incredibly wide and varied range of trans and queer experiences means that trying to draw clear lines between our experiences of oppression is an endeavor destined to failure.

[fatphobiabusters]

Please help me. My militant, bootlicking sister did a report on Ob*sity in this country and she is showing obvious fatphobia, and I told her about the origins of the BMI system, and she said "I don't support Eugenics, I just want people to have healthier bodies and improved lifestyles!!!"

That is LITERALLY the definition of eugenics.

How can I convince her that she did a school project on why she hates fat people?

The very first post I saw on your blog is in support of a trans person who was harassed by trolls, and yet here you are sending troll messages to another oppressed group.

Despite your troll message being both fatphobic and ableist, despite fatphobia having an immense amount of intersectionality with transphobia (you know, the group you supposedly care about), you'd rather spend your miserable life doing exactly what transphobic trolls do to trans people. It's just okay when you do it because your definition of "equality" comes with asterisks.

Get a life that actually has any sort of value or meaning. Because being a pathetic, bigoted hypocrite ain't it.

-Mod Worthy

[kitkatopinions]

When people talk about how "rwde is mad that RWBY subverts expectations" I wonder how much of what's considered subverting expectations is actually ignoring set up, doing things out of nowhere, and actually doing a popular and very much so expected thing.

Like don't get me wrong, I do think sometimes people have ideas for what RWBY should've been and then think that it was more set up then it actually was. Like, people who took Blake saying she grew up outside the kingdoms and had to learn to fight to mean "I am an orphan and spent my whole life on the streets" that then got mad when Blake had pretty big house and parents. I might agree that RWBY perhaps shouldn't have given Blake the privileges they gave her specifically because of how they decided to use her to tell the other Faunus to stop being mean to their oppressors (though I'd sooner throw that part out than get rid of Blake being the daughter of a leader with a big house,) but I don't think it was pulling the rug out from under people the way some people do.

However, then you have things like Adam, where some people in RWDE are saying "he was set up as this interesting character who would be an ideological foil for Blake that cared about the cause and his people, and it felt like he'd be used as a way to talk about the injustice in the world of Remnant and then was reduced to nothing but a girl-obsessed hate sink two dimensional incel" and some anti-rwde people are hitting back with "you're just upset that the edgy bad-boy isn't getting redeemed, you just wanted Adam to be Zuko, but RWBY subverted your expectations by not redeeming him and instead giving Ilia the redemption arc, and giving Blake and Yang the sympathy."

And there's a lot to unpack, there. Including the fact that redemption arcs and sympathy aren't a zero-sum game in fiction and as someone who loves both redemption arcs and when characters get justified sympathy, it's frustrating when people act like there isn't enough redemption to go around as if it's a pie and Adam getting a piece of it means Ilia doesn't get any.

But more to the point, A. I at least have zero interest in Adam being a Zuko, because so much of Zuko's redemption arc hinged on Zuko confronting his and his people's role in oppression. Adam is oppressed. Zuko was scarred by an abusive father and banished from home, Adam was branded like cattle by a supremacist who he was working for as a child laborer. Although both are incredibly sympathetic, they're incredibly different. Whether or not the writers were trying to harken back to Zuko (which I believe they were,) they seemed to completely miss the differences between the two characters, and also deciding to 'subvert expectations' when the circumstances they themselves wrote were so different is a bad look at best. As if they couldn't have 'subverted expectations' with a different character like Cardin or Jacques or even Roman Torchwick, that wasn't a member of their in-universe oppressed minority group.

B. A member of an oppressed people group that's been hurt by the oppressors of the world and yet spends their time committing horrible cruel acts that force the heroes to stand against them is not some never before heard of thing. In fact, it's very common. A revolutionary supposedly fighting for equality that's actually hurting the people he's supposedly fighting for is a pretty regular every day thing. People have literally been criticizing how it's misused and usually racist propaganda (usually written by white people) since long before RWBY was even concepted. Adam isn't a proper subversion of anything, in my opinion, because you can't do the common thing and then say you subverted expectations by not doing the less common thing. Which in this case, the less common thing would actually be to make the oppressed person who had been branded and was shown fighting for the rights of his people to actually be a nuanced and complicated character who does deserve sympathy and could be redeemed.

C. It might just be me, but if you're going to 'subvert expectations' then the thing you write instead of the expectation had better be pretty freaking good. Because sometimes the expectation is there because it just works well. Like in a group of heroes, you expect them to develop a friendship. If people want to subvert expectations by instead having them hate each other, the story better be golden because the reason people tend to expect friendship is that it's usually much easier to connect to character dynamics when they actually like each other. If you're going to write a story where hope is a central theme, but you want to subvert expectations by making a sympathetic and cool character with a personal connection to the mains look like they're gonna get redeemed but then instead make them just the worst person imaginable, then you better do it super well and make him instead a great well-rounded nuanced and fun to hate villain. So not only do we have to pay attention to why the writers shouldn't have gone that route for Adam, we gotta look at the quality of what they did with it, and... Nope. It sucked. Adam was paper thin and horribly voice acted and honestly if he'd never attacked in V6 nothing would've really changed because it had no real consequences that couldn't have been better achieved in a different way, and introducing his branding scar in the same scene he got stabbed was purely for shock value, and nothing came of his character, and idk if Ruby ever even learned his name on screen or Weiss knew anything about him, and it was so badly done. If you're going to 'subvert expectations,' you gotta do it well, or people are always going to want the thing they expected in the beginning instead. Unfortunately, the RWBY writers didn't write Adam well at all. So I for one can't blame anyone for saying 'honestly, I wish they'd gone with the other thing.'

D. Back to 'sometimes when people say subverting expectations, they really mean ignored set up.' With Adam in particular, I do believe that he was always meant to be a bad guy who did bad cruel things from the very first trailer he appeared in, but that doesn't at all mean that set up wasn't ignored. From Blake talking about him as a mentor, to her crediting him with the Grimm masks, to the ideological differences, to Cinder literally having to threaten and coerce him into working with her on screen, the set up indicated that at the very least, this would be a complicated and nuanced 'villain with a point' and that point was going to matter and be addressed. The set up was that Cinder's coercion was going to be addressed and would matter. The set up was that Blake's complicated feelings about Adam and her desire to help her people and her later established care and compassion for Ilia (who may I remind people is at least just as bad as seasons 1-3 Adam in at least attempt if not execution,) would lead somewhere when it came to Adam. The set up was that seeing a child laborer literally branded on the face with the logo of WEISS'S COMPANY would lead to big discussions and some sort of recognition of just how bad the current system is and how bad the SDC itself as always been. And instead Weiss as far as we know never even heard about it and continued on being angry that she wasn't set to be CEO and calling her grandfather a hero and Blake was completely disinterested in attending a rally against Jacques Schnee and teased Weiss about her family owning half of Atlas. Like ???

E. Doing things out of nowhere is also not subverting expectations. In regards to Adam, this looks like randomly making him totally obsessed with Blake enough that he stalks her for weeks when he literally let her go repeatedly before that. Doing things out of nowhere is making Adam not care an ounce about his people in order to do whatever Salem says when we saw him reject Cinder outright and need to be coerced with threats to his people. Those aren't subverting expectations, that's just doing one thing and then retconning the character to do something out of character.

This post turned out to be mostly about Adam, but there's tons of examples of this, like people saying RWDE are mad that the writers 'subverted expectations' by making Ironwood turn evil when we were sitting there like 'the fact that he wasn't evil was subverting expectations in the first place! And they had to throw V3 out the window to get where they were in V8! And it was super badly done!' People just throw around 'subverting expectations' when it comes to RWBY because it sounds a lot better than 'flying by the seats of their pants doing whatever pops into their heads with no care or consideration towards set-up or emotional pay off' but that's it, that's what the RWBY writers seem to do. When I expect something to happen in RWBY, it's because it's the natural thing that makes sense to happen, and in their supposed effort to 'subvert expectations,' the writers instead made a show with no consequences where you can't expect the writers to make anything that happens matter and you can't trust what's in the show because the writers might say sike and retcon it. It's endlessly frustrating to be like 'hey was any of what was in the show going to matter' and then have people say 'you're just mad because RWBY subverted your expectations.' RWBY subverted my expectation that the show would be good, how about that?

You know, if the show actually was interested in subverting expectations, Jaune wouldn't be in the show nearly as much and he'd be more gender-non-conforming and be a support healer role instead of the man now with like twenty years of experience on the mains who always has his trauma get plenty of focus and gets away with screaming in Ruby's face that she's responsible for all bad things while he mourns the three different women that were shoved in the fridge for the sake of his character development. They could've started with making the white straight cis able-bodied not-faunus man actually not be a basic underdog-protagonist turned Michael-Scarn-esque tragic hero that Weiss lusts after, but whoops. Like what am I supposed to think, that they're super interested in subverting expectations for the sake of women when Jaune is right there guzzling up screen time? Nah babes.

(Before someone comes in here talking about Adam-obsessed fan boys, I do not even like Adam, canon Adam is not only gross but far too two-dimensional for me to even enjoy, and my own ideas for rewrites involve me boiling Adam down to a concept and building him up again as if he was a different character as much 'Adam' as Ruby is Red Riding Hood. Nobody accuse me of being an Adam-obsessed dudebro or I will lose it. Because that's another thing that a lot of anti-RWDE people seem to do, is decide that the only reason anyone would ever talk about problems with Adam is because they're an obsessed incel man. And meanwhile I'm over here as a bi-women who dislikes Adam partially because he reminds me of my controlling 'my happiness is your responsibility' ex-boyfriend who we - long story - thought might've stabbed someone with a sword once. So yeah, not an Adam fanboy lol.)

[crossdressingdeath]

Sera: The Empress is pretty. It'd be fun to drink and kill stuff with Gaspard. Briala is frigging funny. Elves-elves-elves, but it's really a pissing match with an old lover. Don't know the rest, but that explains a lot. [shrugs] They're all lying, but Celene's nice to look at. Good thing we're here to save her neck.

And here we see Sera's talk about helping the little people and sticking it to the nobles slam right into her anti-elf prejudice and say rather more about her than it was maybe intended to. Remember: Celene burned down the Halamshiral alienage and killed everyone inside. Gaspard is an expansionist who really wants to get back to that whole "forcing all of Thedas under Orlesian control by the sword" thing that was ever so good for Ferelden pre-DAO. But they're fine by Sera! It's Briala, who's fighting to help the elves of Orlais, who's the problem because *checks notes* she used to fuck Celene. Her desire to help the elves of Orlais? Meaningless. Who cares about all those lives ended by Celene to soothe her pride? Clearly it's just a pissing match between lovers and noble nonsense and Celene's got nice tits so what's an entire alienage's worth of dead elves between friends?

I genuinely don't know how people still fall for the Robin Hood schtick when Sera doesn't give a single solitary shit about helping one of the most oppressed groups of people in Thedas and wants to side with the woman who ordered the deaths of an entire alienage of them just because she's pretty. Best case scenario little miss "let's stick it to the nobles" didn't notice that Celene wiped out a whole alienage for the sake of her pride despite supposedly having a network that watches out for abusive nobles; worst case she straight up does not care about all those deaths because it was elves and elves "don't count".

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/756204827274625025/ive-had-to-deal-with-people-in-a-couple-of-my

Yeah one obnoxious thing I’ve noticed in those kinds of Discords is that people will so often bring up the specter of “disability” or “neurodivergence” to defend an oversensitive person who curls into a ball or cries or claims triggers, but never someone who deals with that by getting angry or aggressive in defending their points. Never mind that not only are there are a ton of neurodivergent people in the second group, but if anything it’s the more stereotypical behavior associated with some very common neurodivergences like autism.

(Is this a problem of too many people online claiming to be autistic who clearly don’t have it? Not just being self diagnosed which is fine and can be based on actual diagnostic criteria, but I’ve noticed more and more people who claim it who just don’t seem to fit ANY of the criteria for it and I think they’re confusing people about what autism and such really look like)

Even people who are themselves autistic people who tend more toward the aggressive rather than sad and uwu (and sometimes tbh passive aggressive) response, were lining up behind this person and making those arguments!

This person does that every time they’re ever criticized even slightly and in this case, it was for a racist micro aggression. It was infuriating to watch supposedly progressive people decide what they cared most about was drying the white tears, and instead refocus the conversation on the supposed ableism of someone telling her “I know you likely didn’t mean harm by this, but this is something POC hear a lot and is frustrating because” like in the nicest way they possibly could. I really think fandom spaces full of white neurodivergent people need to do better at acknowledging the privileges they DO have and asking themselves if they don’t prefer to have social justice conversations only when it can frame themselves as oppressed.

--

[fatehbaz]

[C]oncentration of global wealth and the "extension of hopeless poverties"; [...] the intensification of state repression and the growth of police states; the stratification of peoples [...]; and the production of surplus populations, such as the landless, the homeless, and the imprisoned, who are treated as social "waste." [...] To be unable to transcend [...] the horror [...] of such a world order is what hell means [...]. Without a glimpse of an elsewhere or an otherwise, we’re living in hell. [...] [P]eople [...] are very publicly and very personally rejecting prison as the ideal model of social order. [...] [I]nstincts and impulses are always contained by a system which dominates us so thoroughly that it decides when we can “have an impact” on “restructuring the world,” which is always relegated to the future. [...] Cultivating an instinctual basis for freedom is about identifying the longings that already exist - however muted or marginal [...]. The utopian is not only or merely a "fantasy of" and for "the future [...]." The utopian is a way of conceiving and living in the here and now [...]. [W]e’ve already begun to realize it. Begun to realize it in those scandalous moments when the present wavers [...].

Text by: Avery F. Gordon. “Some Thoughts on the Utopian.” Anthropology & Materialism [Online]. 3. November 2016.

---

Something must be done [...]. Haunting is one way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known and their impacts felt in everyday life, especially when they are supposedly over and done with (such as with transatlantic slavery, for instance) or when their oppressive nature is continuously denied (such as with [so-called] free labor or national security). [...] We are not merely reactive subjects but that we are, to use Kodwo Eshun’s word, ‘inaugurating’ ones, and therefore do not need permission [...]. In this, I think, Williams was also right to see that a certain melancholy or what John Berger calls ‘undefeated despair’ is bound to the work of carrying on regardless: to keeping urgent the repair of injustice and the care-taking of the aggrieved and the missing; to keeping urgent the systematic dismantling of the conditions that produce the crises and the misery in the first place [...]. [I]t also involves being or ‘becoming unavailable for servitude’, to use Toni Cade Bambara’s words. […] It’s key to anticipating, inhabiting, making the world you want to live in now, urgently, as if you couldn’t live otherwise […]. To achieve a measure of agency and possibility [...], it is necessary [...] 'to redeem time' [...]. This redemption involves refusing the death sentence and its doom, involves refusing to be treated as if one was never born, fated to a life of abandonment [...].

Text by: Avery F. Gordon. "Some Thoughts on Haunting and Futurity". borderlands 10:2. 2011.

---

[T]his context of enhanced militarism and securitisation [...] has led to more widespread social abandonment and more entrenched inequalities [...]. At the same time, there is widespread, daily, active and open political opposition to all this, at the scale at which people can contest it: protecting this group of migrants from [...] confinement and deportation; organising this strike among teachers in this city [...]. And there are also so many people [...] looking for ways to think and live on different - better terms - and doing it in small ways [...]. [W]hat haunts from the past are precisely all those aspirations and actions - small and large, individual and collective - that oppose racial capitalism and empire and live actively other than on those terms of order. [...] Julius Scott called it ‘the common wind.’

Words of Avery F. Gordon. As interviewed by Brenna Bhandar and Rafeef Ziadah, under the title: “Revolutionary Feminisms: Avery F. Gordon.” As transcribed and published online in the Blog section of Verso Books. 2 September 2020.

---

The impetus [...] was to challenge the twinned triumphalism of the [...] ‘End of History’ claim and the [...] claim that the political universe had closed shut [after the 1960s] [...]. The other impetus was to pick up [...] those ‘historical alternatives’ that ‘haunt a given society,’ as Herbert Marcuse (1969) wrote; to find the place where, as Patircia Williams (1991) put it, our ‘longings’ are ‘exiled’. [...] [To invoke] [...] ‘the many-headed hydra of the seventeenth-century revolutionary Atlantic’, those slaves, maids, prisoners, pirates, sailors, heretics, indigenous peoples, commoners and so on who challenged the making of the modern world capitalist system [...] [with their] often illegible, illegitimate or trivialized forms of escape, resistance, opposition and alternative ways of life [...]. [Consider] a standpoint and a mindset for living on better terms than we’re offered, for living as if you had the necessity and the freedom to do so, for living in the acknowledgement that, despite the overwhelming power of all the systems of domination which are trying to kill us, they never quite become us. They are, as Cedric J Robinson used to say, only one condition of our existence or being. [...] [L]iving apart [...]; communing; [...] human, debt, labour, knowledge strikes; [...] non-policing [...]: the ways of non-participation in the given order of things are many, varied and hard to summarize. [...] [A] community [...] of not waiting for another world but of being already there.

Text by: Avery F. Gordon, Katherine Hite, and Daniela Jara. “Haunting and thinking from the Utopian margins: Conversation with Avery Gordon.” Memory Studies. 2020.

[moontheoretist]

This moment when you learn that Adventurine is Romani and that his entire planet is named with a word that in both english and slavic are considered slurs against Romani people... I guess the galaxy at large is anti-Roma if they called that planet Sigonia-IV. If Hoyo doesn't give us info that this planet was actually named differently by the people living on it that wasn't named a giant slur, then I'll have to assume that Hoyo is ok with naming a whole ass planet full of Romani-based people with a slur used against those people. And it's bad. At least Adventurine's clan is named somewhat nicely, but what does it change when every single one of them was killed and Adventurine is the only survivor?

I can't shake the feeling it's a very racist portrayal, because the meta message basically assumes that a Roma-based character can't have anything akin to a normal life. That they have to suffer, lose everybody, and become a tragic character "working" for a huge space corporation that couldn't care less about people. Only to ultimately "die" for the sake of said corporation and possibly never be able to come back from the state of spiritual death. And even if he managed, he knows that all his achievements were monopolized by that corporation and that he has virtually nothing to his name and nobody to come back to. The only positive is that he is supposedly blessed with luck by Gaiathra.

Don't take me wrong disgussing the tragedy that happens to minority groups is important and should be done in media, but there is also a point often brought up that if your group is constantly represented as struggling to get by and opressed and nothing else then people start to internalize the idea that this is the only way those characters and people they're based on can live. That there is no normalcy that they have in life, so no normalcy is expected from their portrayals. This happened to queer people. We all grew tired of being constantly only represented as a group whose only point in the story is to be visibly opressed and that we never got a chance to have normal lives as well.

If he comes back, will Hoyo give him a better life? We will see.

Still... the implications are so ugh. I can't speak more about it as I'm not Roma and I definitely don't understand the stuff enough to say anything substancial, but this just looks kind of bad as it is now.

Fortunately there are Roma creators I can direct you to for better insight in regard to Adventurine and his roma-based heritage:

In addition to the video: When I learned that Adventurine (Kakavasha) is supposed to be Romani his design stopped being ok to me. Because it means Hoyo appropriated a real life oppression of a group so they could then stick it to a white guy in a video game. It says a lot about Hoyo, who already had similar issues in Genshin Impact before. It feels like Hoyo fears melanin, because there are other Chinese video game studios who don't stray from using dark skintone on their characters and those characters are selling pretty well, so what's the issue?

[kaylinalexanderbooks]

What is jedis motives for being morally grey?

Hi! Thanks for the ask! (For the TSP Q&A tag game)

Well, this is a doozy. This entire thing has taken so much of my thought process because it's complicated and making it Make Sense is harder than you'd think, but I've come pretty far! I'll have to go into minor spoilers regarding Jedi's backstory, but I'll avoid anything too big. Here's the short version:

To start off, Jedi starts the series as part of what's left of a group called the Aequales, which used to be a group that rivaled the Refugae, which had taken over some of the world's (Alium's) governments and continues to attempt to do so. Alium is a world of powers and those without powers are called Inutilia, since they're deemed useless by society.

The leader of the Refugae is an Inutilia woman named Raissa Kamanzi, who believed she needed to rebuild the world to where her people were in charge. "You oppressed me, I'll oppress you" mentality. The leader of the Aequales was an Inutilia sympathizer, Atsila McLain. Atsila preached that there could be a more peaceful approach to settle this, and had a bit of a hero complex about her.

Alii get their powers at age ten, but if their blood test comes back without a result, they're declared Inutilia. Jedi was one of those kids, and unfortunately his father was a bigot. His mother Sori fought back for her son and then ran away with him and his sister to a more accepting Sector. To skip over quite a bit, Raissa Kamanzi did recruit Jedi to be a part of the Refugae when he was a teenager. Jedi saw her worldwide announcement, and he also wanted to fight back since he'd directly experienced many forms of bigotry. Unfortunately while he was there, he discovered Raissa's more violent, extreme methods, and deserted them. He was taken in by the Aequales.

At first, Jedi wasn't sure how to deal with a group that opposed the Refugae since he wanted equal rights, but the Aequales were supposedly for that, but with peaceful methods. This didn't change the fact that Atsila was not Inutilia nor did it seem like any progress was being made. Still, Jedi held on to the ideals Atsila gave out of hope for a better future. The person closest to Atsila, Carmen Asghar, was also Inutilia, and she ended up forming a close friendship with Jedi. Carmen's trust in Atsila helped Jedi also trust Atsila a little more.

But Atsila was also scientifically curious, and after seeing the effects Ceteri (the universe connected to Alium that is essentially our world) on Alii development - they seem to develop rarer and more powerful abilities - she wanted to study it and see if she could find practical applications. Unfortunately she was killed before these studies were complete, or even really started. The Aequales didn't disappear, but it caused many to leave.

Carmen refused to, and while the Refugae essentially ignored them after Atsila was gone since they were nothing without her but loose ideals, Carmen decided to focus on Atsila's last task: the study of Alii on Ceteri. Jedi helped her out with this because he had nowhere else to go and cared greatly about Carmen, having known each other for about thirty years at this point. As this goes on, Carmen hopes the results help her to discover new ways to defeat Raissa and get the Inutilia to be seen as equals.

How does this make Jedi morally gray? Well, the study is on Alii development which means teenagers/preteens are the subject, and they take advantage of the fact that adolescent Alii are naturally drawn back to their original dimension. The Aequales is also more based on ideals with no real action behind them. I won't unpack Atsila's psyche or motivation or anything since this is about Jedi, but she wasn't exactly what was needed to solve the issue.

Jedi wants to do what is best for people like him. He wants to stop the violence on both sides. However, he's become lost in what to actually do. He has values that he holds onto, and he wants to do whatever it takes to make those values real, but he's spent so long following other people who have not-good methods that despite the potential to be able to do so he's stuck, and the man doesn't have enough self-reflection to realize his mistakes, that this isn't working, and maybe using kids, even if those kids just kinda see this as a cool club to practice their powers and learn how to defend themselves, is bad and he shouldn't be doing it. He should actually be looking for ways to accomplish his goals, not the goals of others, especially if those others are dead.

So that's basically Jedi. Good morals, less than ideal methods.

TSP intro

TSP tag list (ask to be +/-): @thepeculiarbird @illarian-rambling @televisionjester @finchwrites

@nebula--nix @literarynecromancy @honeybewrites @the-golden-comet

[dykesynthezoid]

You know there are a lot of ways that an American person in the military could protest the actions of their government. Quitting their job is one of them.

To turn this man into a hero boggles the mind. As if everyone is not already deeply aware of what’s happening in Gaza. As if he has done anything to improve the lives of Palestinians. As if he did not have any other impactful way to protest. As if, frankly, any of the minds he was trying to change are really going to be able to feel the impact of one more death amidst so many. Who is this message supposed to be for? The US and Israeli governments? Why would they care? How many people have already died and they haven’t cared? Do you really think they’ll give a shit just because he’s a white American? (Look at how our country treats the veterans it supposedly reveres so much).

Self-immolation has its own complex history as a form of protest throughout various cultures, but for this man— a man from a country with free speech, where protestors have been getting away with following around the president— a man in a position of power over the people he is supposedly fighting for— to say, “the only way I can help you is to violently end my life”?

His death is a tragedy. I think of his family’s grief. I think of that grief adding to an already endless well. You can say it’s a “correct” response to an untenable situation all you want, but the fact that he was a white American serviceman and not, in fact, a member of the oppressed group in question, should tell you a lot. The focus becomes his own feelings of grief, not the actual suffering taking place. “I feel bad, so I have to do this.” It’s not the same thing as actually changing anything.

I pray for a day the left starts to care more about repairing the world and caring for others than they do destruction and empty statements. May he rest well.

[fatphobiabusters]

Fatphobia is so popular and normalized that you don't even need to watch fatphobic shit for YouTube to recommend it to you.

Making fatphobic shit is also so lucrative that you can get 500,000 views on a less than two minute video made by AI, meaning that you didn't even have to do the work yourself. All you have to do to get half a million views is put a picture of a fat person as the thumbnail and make the most unoriginal garbage pile of a pun that you can think of to slap on the video as a title.

And you want to know why?

You want to know why everyone and their mother loves to freely harass fat people? You want to know why this makes half a million views on a video that doesn't even meet the two minute mark?

It's because fat people are one of the only oppressed groups left who you can abuse and oppress with zero backlash. We aren't protected by anti-discrimination laws. There's a single organization that gives a damn about our oppression, and it's not even a powerful or well-known organization to people outside of the very small community of fat liberationists. You won't even be shamed on social media beyond a tiny percentage of accounts like this blog. I can't begin to describe how many fatphobic bigots I have dealt with over the years who were people who claimed to be "progressive" and said they supported equality. So many fatphobes I have dealt with had pride flag icons and argued to me that fat people aren't oppressed because "[insert whatever other group here the fatphobe was using this time] has it worse!" Fat people have even been thrown out of the body positivity movement that WE. STARTED.

So if I can't even rely on "progressive" people who give a shit about everyone else to give a shit about me? People who claim to care about equality and all of my other oppressed identities but treat me like the dirt underneath their feet as soon I'm not "fuckable" to them? You can see pretty fucking clearly how this world has a strangling hold on fat people and refuses to let go of their last punching bag that has zero consequences for pummeling into the ground.

The world knows that you will endure consequences (legal, financial, and/or social) for being bigoted against any oppressed group with a mainstream activism movement, so that's why conservatives and progressives alike wipe their brow in relief that there's at least one group they know is okay to harm as much as they want without having to worry of backlash.

And for the people who never developed their reading comprehension skills, no where did I say that other oppressed groups don't have it bad. No where did I say that other oppressed groups aren't still harmed today. Stop it with your bad faith takes and attempts to make this another "piss on the poor."

There's a major difference between what I endure as a fat person and what I endure for my plethora of other oppressed identities. If you discriminate against me for being gay, there's anti-discrimination laws and policies. There's financial losses to your business by the people who will boycott you. There's loss of reputation. There's loss of relationships, social status, and trust. People have even lost their jobs for being homophobic. It's not perfect, but it's far from lacking consequences.

But when I'm discriminated against for being fat? All those people who supposedly cared about me for being gay are not only silent when I'm discriminated against for my fatness, they often actively support the fatphobia I faced.

That is the fucking difference.

-Mod Worthy

[girlactionfigure]

On May 15th, the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, along with the United Nations and millions of their supporters around the world, will commemorate Nakba day. They will beat their chests, cry inconsolably, hold rusty keys to buildings that don't exist, and shout out to the heavens about the injustice of colonialism and occupation. People around the world will weep with solidarity at the injustice of what has happened to them and curse the cruel European colonialists that kicked them out their homes. But it is all a lie, a farce, a whimsical tale woven in fiction and fantasy. Nakba day, or the 'Palestinian catastrophe' is not about the loss of a land that was never theirs. It is not about the destruction of a state that never existed. And it's not about the fictitious tale of Arabs being chased from their homes. It is about one thing only - the failure of the Arab world to commit mass genocide against the Jews of Israel and thereby add another 'glorious' chapter of Arab history. Chapters that include events such as the massacre of the Jewish community in Khaybar in ancient Medina, or the pogroms against the Jews in Hebron in 1929, or the slaughter of thousands of Jews in Morocco in 1465, or the many anti-Jewish rioting in the 1940s in Iraq and Libya and Egypt and Syria and Yemen that led to thousands of Jews being killed. Now many people, maybe some with good intentions, say we must recognise the pain of their loss and show sympathy and empathy to them. We must understand them and their side of the story so that we can go forward and build a better future together. But I will not be one of them. I will not recognise that 'pain' and I will not show empathy to a people whose leaders instruct their citizens to stab you and rip your heart out. I will not show sympathy to a system that indoctrinates children to hate from the very moment they can even open their eyes. I will not show any understanding to a society that honours those who commit mass murder by rewarding them with money and murals. To me, it doesn't matter how 'upset' the world is. It doesn't matter how many 'sad' stories from dishonest media like the BBC show. It doesn't matter how many fantastical headlines the New York Times invents. And it certainly doesn't matter how many groups jump up and down and criticise and threaten Israel - groups like some church bodies who support BDS, or university terror supporters masquerading as student bodies, or naive so-called Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, or IfNotNow who know or care little about being Jewish, yet miraculously find their Jewishness when it comes to bashing Israel under the banner of some warped understanding of the term tikkum olam. Even as I write these words, the Arab 'pain' has manifested itself in the form of over a thousand rockets being launched against innocent civilians - each of them with the intention of killing innocent people. But many world leaders, who love issuing statements, are not recognizing the pain or the suffering of my people forced into bunkers, often with just a few seconds warning before the terror rains down on them. Instead, they are naively calling on groups, recognised as terrorist entities, to restore calm and respect humanitarian law, as if terrorists have ever respected any innocent lives! Yet, there are so many who want to apply moral equivalency between terror groups who set out to murder, and a country trying to defend its civilians. It is mad. It is insane. It is crazy. And absolutely anyone who has any shroud of justice or decency knows that - yet are too scared to admit it. I do not blame innocent Arabs who are trying to provide a future for their children - instead I blame their corrupt leaders who live lavish lifestyles of luxury while reaping in the financial benefits of being 'oppressed.' I blame them for manipulating and corrupting and indoctrinating the minds of all those they supposedly rule, consigning them to a bleak future of nothingness. And I also hold those international bodies who do not seek to resolve the conflict, but perpetuate it, encouraging the lies and falsifications of history of an Arab narrative that never existed, while denying Jewish history that did. So no, on this day, I will not recognise their 'disaster' at all, because their 'disaster' meant my Jewish homeland lived and that means the Jewish future is brighter than it's ever been before. That is something we should never apologize for.

Justin Amler

[unpopularfanopinion]

if your defense of ao3 ignores the racism and zionism displayed by both users and staff then you are in no position to call people white supremacists. protecting bigotry under the guise of "free speech" while belittling and shouting down opposition is exactly what conservatives do. don't act like the people who disagree with you are republican adjacent when you've used their ideals to make your point as well.

i hope you snap your neck falling off that high horse lmao.

I am going to try to say this as simply, bluntly, and kindly as possible. I have not compared anyone demanding additional content moderation than the current legal stand they use to being white supremacists. I have compared them to conservative authoritarians. If you think being a white supremacists, or supporting white supremacy is inherently or intrinsically tied to conservative authoritarianism you are sadly mistaken.

A Frank Wilhoit gave one of the best description of conservatives and conservatism ever

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect

There is no marginalized group that is so inherently good and pure that they will not have members who desiring, power and control over others will try to place themselves as the protected in-group and others into the subjugated outgroup. (and oddly enough you're complaining about one such example of an oppressed marginalize group that successfully turn itself in a group of conservative, authoritarian oppressors. If you can't tell yes I am talking about the Zionists. While tight media control and propaganda helped them get away with it for so long, part if was also "Oh they were so harassed and oppressed in so many places and for so long. They has a people understand the pain of oppression. They wouldn't go harm another people.)

As I have mentioned in the past being conservative is more about a way of thinking and HOW you come to your positions rather than about the positions themselves. Studies have demonstrated that conservatives have a much stronger disgust reaction than liberals. So when an idea or concept triggers a feeling of disgust they immediately assume that thing to be evil, immoral etc. . . without truly taking the time consider if it’s actually harmful(or even disgusting sometimes it’s just different) This winds up making them fearful of change and non-conforming behavior.

This feeling of disgust also makes them feel justified in certain forms of bigotry making up all manner of excuses to call whatever disgusts them immoral. Such as supposedly leftist progressives being ablelist and claiming that any disabled person is basically a child and therefore featuring disabled people having sex(fictional or live action)is no different than CSEM.

Conservatism is more often less about the specific position a person claims to hold and more about how they got to those positions, and how they intend to fix the issues and problems that they find.

Conservatives hide behind claims of free speech when they wants to spam, harass, and troll people(and often using other people's equipment such as servers to do so) And I have noticed that when people like you actually seem to care about free speech on Ao3, when you want to spam comments, troll people, and harass people using Ao3's comment features either on news posts or on people's stories.

There is a lot to criticize about Ao3's response to reports of racist harassment, and how they resolve interpersonal disputes between volunteers, however none of that can or would be resolved by them even trying to make additional content rules or attempt to ban "bad fic" Because despite what you think someone writing a bad fic, or using certain tropes(tropes are tools, tropes are not bad) is not in and of itself harassment.

And also no, Ao3 staff telling one volunteer not to harass, and abuse another and reminding them of the professional code of conduct they expect from ALL volunteers is not proof of Zionism among Ao3's staff. Pretty much everyone involved in that fight on Slack on reprimanded for it but only one went crying to the internet about it. If that had happened between a Ukrainian volunteer and Russian volunteer and the Ukrainian volunteer quit would you be accusing Ao3 of being pro-Russia?

[azhdakha]

Honestly, I'm just fucking exhausted. I've never been more dissapointed by the people who claim to be for human rights than I am now. The mental gymnastics that these people do to justify massacres of Israeli civillians is insane.

"They were settlers"

"That's a valid form of resistance"

"Israelites should have seen that coming"

"Palestinian terrorists grew up watching their dear ones die, that's why they go berserk mode"

"That's just fake"

"Well, just a few Israelites compared to thousands of Palestinians"

"Well, I'm not saying that's good, but what about Palestinians?"

"You care only when it's white people"

"The beheadings have been debunked"

Stop. Just stop, shut up, look me in the eye and listen. Not a single argument in this world justifies massacring and torturing civillians and raping women. That's not a resistance. That's not liberating anyone. Massacres are not to celebrate. Two bads doesn't make a good. And false decapitation claims do not undo more than a thousand of deaths.

The whole west has been chanting Free Palestine for ages and you claim that no one cared about them. Do you think the government officials of different countries care about the "white" Israelites? Surprise - they don't. They care about their own safety and strategic points, and Israel is a strategic force for the USA in the Middle East. Are you trying to punish USA for that? No, the ones who are targeted are Israeli people. Jewish people all over the world.

If your whole reaction to the murder of civillians is "well, akshually" or "well, that's sad, BUT", or "what about", you don't care about human rights. You care about your narrative. If you keep trying to justify terrorism and blame the responsibility on someone else, you don't care about human rights. You care about your narrative.

If you have cared about people, you would have understood that murder of a civillian is wrong, rape is wrong. Point blank. Regardless if they're white people or not. Regardless if they are from the oppressed group or not.

"The both-siders" - is your brain binary? Are you are not able to comprehend and fit any nuance in it? Realizing and aknowledging that terrorism is inhumane without trying to justify and shift the blame AND caring about the Palestinian people and being against Israeli occupation is not mutually exclusive and can coexist.

If you do realize that the ones behind the idea of creating the state of Israel and turning a blind eye or even supporting the genocide of Palestinian people are the Western states led the USA, why do you want the solution to happen at the expense of Israeli commoners and Jewish people that you direct your hate on?

Palestinian radical Islamic terrorism is wrong. Western via Israeli occupation is wrong. Point blank. Both kill hundreds of people including their own that they claim to be protecting. Point blank. No but, not what about, no actually, no its their fault, no they were provoked, no they didn't have a choice.

You can live in your world of binary solutions and idealistic fantasy dreams about justice while more and more people are killed, or you can finally be realistic just one and actually care to find a solution that's achievable and that will finally stop or at least reduce deaths of people.

You don't care about people. You care about your narrative.

And one last thing: an proof check of the materials published about the war by Bellingcat.

[velbsy]

Tw: War, Death, sickness, general terrible things happening.

People need to know though.

Feel like I should give my two cents on what’s happening with Gaza and the people of Palestine, and how I feel about Hamas and Israel

I will never fucking understand how someone can support Israel in what’s happening right now. How can you?? I don’t care if you think Boycotts don’t work, because they do. I don’t care if you think that speaking up doesn’t work. And I DO NOT care about what the people of Palestine supposedly had done to deserve the pain and trauma they’re going through. I will NEVER understand how you cannot put yourself in someone else’s shoes and think about what YOU will do.

There are innocent people who are being killed and trapped under rubble. There are parents in Palestine RIGHT NOW who are searching for PIECES of their children under heaps of building rubble and dirt and dust. What would you fucking do?? What would you do if the people who were supposedly meant to keep you safe and supposedly want peace for Israel and the people who live in and around it, were turning a blind eye to what is happening to you right now??

What if your family members were trapped under the rubble like that? What would you fucking do??

What hurts even more is that there are people who have felt oppression like this, or are part of groups who have dealt with it in the past, and even THEY are turning a kind eye to this.

How can you do that?? They need help.

Anyways. Gonna stop before I start ranting and this becomes an essay of a post.

Point is. Israel sucks, they aren’t doing anything good for anyone and aren’t helping anything, and anyone who supports them or their lack of caring for Palestinian citizens and the people of Gaza, are complacent in the harm and terror that they are going through right now.

Be better. Do SOMETHING even if it’s just speaking out about the issue.

And with Congo too. How many people do you think are dying mining Cobalt?? Do you know how sick they’re getting? So many children and adults getting sick and DYING because companies like Apple need cobalt to make their products. Not only that but the mining areas they’re working in aren’t safe either, and they could either get sick or get crushed over mounds of dirt and rubble.

I am still doing my research on it so even I don’t know the full extent of the problems in Congo right now, but I’ve heard enough so far to know that we cannot ignore what is happening.

AT LEAST SAY SOMETHING INSTEAD OF TURNING A BLIND EYE AND CHOOSING NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT. I know that that’s the easy way out, but that doesn’t make it right. At least say something, tell people about it. If you’re unable to do anything substantial other than that, that’s okay. Because if you tell someone, maybe they will know someone who might be able to help. Even if just a little bit.

Anyways yeah. I’m gonna stop now, but I just wanted people to know that I feel this way.

And DO NOT interact if you are pro-Israel. I will block you. I don’t care.

But, if you want to help free Palestine and help the people in Congo, and you maybe saw something wrong with this post involving that and you may know more than me, please talk to me and criticize me, or give me more information on it that I may not know of. Because I want to be knowledgeable and learn more about it so I can tell others and do everything I can to help the people who are in need of it, and are being silenced. I’m only eighteen and I can’t do much, but if I at least know more, I can help others who are ignorant or uninformed/misinformed to learn more too.

Thank you for reading if you got this far❤️