#which is the other ignorant people you say you’re not racist

[wilwheaton]

In a new interview with the New Yorker ahead of his 70th birthday on Monday, the comedian explained his theory about why there’s no “funny stuff” to watch on TV anymore. “Nothing really affects comedy,” he said, “People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it.” Instead of getting sitcoms like M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and All in the Family, audiences miss out, he said, as a “result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people.” [...] A look back at some of his earlier comments on a similar subject adds some context, if not clarity. In 2015, Seinfeld sat down for an episode of The Herd with Colin Cowherd podcast, where he explained his aversion to performing stand-up on college campuses. “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don't go near colleges. They’re so PC,’” he said on the show. After giving an example of his teenage daughter using the word “sexist,” he concluded that young people “just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist’; 'That’s sexist’; ‘That’s prejudice.’ They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Jerry Seinfeld Draws Right-Wing Praise for Comments on ‘Extreme Left’

This is such a bummer. Tell me you’re a privileged, entitled, myopic Boomer without telling me you’re a privileged, entitled, myopic Boomer.

It’s interesting to me that he says these legendary sit-coms, none of which were cruel, punching down, or hurtful, but were actually satirizing power, celebrating women, changing societal norms through representation, and using comedy to do it all, wouldn’t exist if “the extreme left” had anything to do with it.

Umm. Who does he think created these shows? And is he really that ignorant? Has this guy never read a single interview with Norman Lear? Or literally anyone in the cast of Mary Tyler Moore? I mean. Come on, man!

Teenagers and college students don’t know what they’re talking about when they tell a privileged, entitled, multimillionaire Boomer that his “jokes” can be hurtful, and maybe he could use his tremendous talent to do comedy that is just as funny without being hurtful. Okay. Got it. Keep saying that, and see how far it gets you, buddy.

Hey, Jerry Seinfeld: when blue checks on Twitter are celebrating you being a dick, it’s not because you’re so funny and such a brilliant comic; it’s because they love how you’re validating what garbage they are. You can’t see that, or don’t care, and that’s such a huge bummer.

[fiercynn]

okay, if you have ever made or reblogged a “hold your nose and vote for biden” post, this is for you.

here’s the fucking thing about these kinds of posts. i've been seeing them since i first returned to tumblr in, I think, late 2022? they've certainly increased in frequency since october 7, but they were there before too, ready to counter any kind of opposition to biden that has cropped up. many of them are not just trying to educate people about what positive things biden has done, which, like, at least I can understand the motivation behind those ones? but so many of them are directly in response to people criticizing biden, and their only real point is “sure you’re upset at this thing biden did, but have you considered the election?” starting YEARS before the next presidential election, mind you.

and october 7 only made that clearer. i don’t think it had been a week before i saw these posts cropping up. can you not see how fucking ghoulish that is? to look at the rightful pain and anger of those whose relatives and communities are being slaughtered with active american support, to respond to one of the few pieces of agency most americans have in influencing what their governments do – their vote – by saying “yes but trump would be worse.” as if the primary people you’re lecturing – palestinians, muslims, arabs, black people, indigenous people, disabled people, other marginalized people – don’t remember exactly how bad it was under trump!

and even if you think not voting is an empty gesture – something i, who studied political science at a mainstream american lib college, who has worked as a field organizer on a previous democratic presidential campaign and for several policy campaigns, who currently works in public policy in america, used to believe, but have absolutely changed my mind on – what is in no way an empty gesture is saying publicly that you will not vote for someone. the arguments people usually have about why simply not voting is bad are that you can’t tell why someone is not voting, so it is as likely to be apathy or disenfranchisement as it is a political statement. but saying publicly that you will not vote for someone, and why you will not vote for them, absolutely is a political statement, and potentially a powerful one! but you choose to negate and/or ignore that by trotting out the “lesser of two evils” bullshit.

and then there’s the whole “yes but people will DIE under trump”. PEOPLE ARE DYING NOW. even if you’re fucking racist and have decided that palestinian lives don’t count, have you forgotten biden’s ongoing covid minimalism and dismantling of the CDC’s covid research and prevention infrastructure? have you forgotten his increase in spending for law enforcement scant years after the murder of george floyd and his administration's surveillance of protesters, including cop city protesters? have you forgotten his recent ramp-up in deportations of undocumented immigrants, including the active continuation of many trump-era policies?

maybe you have forgotten all those things and do purport to care about palestinians, but you just think that biden is doing his best to influence netanyahu and is getting nowhere! but then you must have forgotten all of the things that biden and his administration themselves have done to further this fucking genocide, including:

continuing to send arms to israel

putting together a military task force within days of yemen’s red sea blockade and attacking yemeni ships

bombing yemen

bombing syria

bombing iraq

vetoing three ceasefire resolutions at the united nations

testifying to defend israel and its genocide and occupation at the international court of justice

refusing to rescue palestinian-americans stuck in gaza

halting funding to the united nations relief and works agency for palestinian refugees (UNRWA) based on israeli claims that 12 of UNRWA’s over 30,000 staff were hamas agents, even though u.s. intelligence has not been able to independently verify this

lying that he’s personally seen photos of babies beheaded by hamas when he hadn’t because they didn’t exist (and even when his own staff cautioned him that reports of beheaded babies may not be credible)

questioning the number of palestinian deaths reported by the gaza ministry of health (when even israel has not questioned them, since they are in fact proud of those numbers)

perpetuating lies about hamas having committed the attack on al-aqsa hospital

questioning united nations reports of adults and children raped by israeli soldiers while claiming to have proof (that no one else has seen) of hamas doing the same

honestly so many more things that i can’t remember them all but others feel free to add

or maybe you haven’t forgotten any of that, and think that you’re still justified in lecturing people about why they should vote for biden, because you genuinely believe trump would still be worse. if that is the case, you have still failed to see that by saying you will vote for biden no matter what, you are part of the problem of biden continuing to act like this. because biden is counting on fear of trump to win him this next election no matter what else he does. despite his appalling polling numbers, despite the knowledge that he is losing the palestinian-american vote, the arab-american vote, the muslim-american vote, the black american vote, the youth vote – despite all of that, he is secure in the idea that he will still win because he is better than trump. can you not see how that allows him to act without impunity? how it becomes increasingly impossible for his base to influence what he’s doing if he thinks that they will be with him no matter what? this is how you make yourself complicit to biden’s actions, by not affording anyone even the slightest power to hold him accountable for anything.

and in most cases, the “hold your nose and vote for biden” thing is the response of people who aren’t even being instructed by others not to vote for biden. it is their response to people saying they themselves are choosing not to vote for biden. fucking ghoulish.

[stil-lindigo]

Hello, very confused and overwhelmed outsider here. Looking at posts here and on news sites I see such pradoxical views, one saying to not support Palestine is to support genocide and the other saying to not support Israel is to be antisemitic. I wonder, and I am going around asking people on different sides of the war, do you believe it is possible to support both the lives of Palestinian people and the lives of Jewish people?

Feel free to ignore this ask or to point out any ignorance on my part. I hope you have some peace in your day/night, I can only imagine how stressful it is to have so many people asking so many serious questions.

hi anon. I’m gonna try to make this is as concise as possible, since I’m technically writing this on my lunch break. Yes, it is possible and in fact very easy to support the lives of Palestinian and Jewish people because - and this is the important part - Israel and Zionism is not Judaism. Depending on who you may ask, Zionism began as a pure-hearted desire for Jewish people post-WW2 to create a place that would always unequivocally be safe for Jews, but as I am not Jewish myself I feel like any description I might give comes off as insincere and not fully grasping the scope of that mission. But no matter what Zionism once was, it is now the belief that Jewish people have the right to commit genocide against indigenous population so that they can establish their ethno-state. And you can split hairs all you like, but after the past four months, my belief in that has only solidified.

Perhaps the strongest opposition to Israel comes from Jewish people themselves, who’ve popularized “not in my name” as a protest chant. Holocaust survivors have come out in droves to protest the actions of Israel, and they’re often the strongest front of any protest action since - yes, you’re right - mainstream news is very committed to selling the idea that this “war” is Jews vs Muslims which is just inflammatory racist garbage. There’s more to it than I can easily get into right now, but just for a start, it completely erases the existence of Palestinian Jews or Palestinian Christians, and also ignores Israel’s historically abusive and degrading treatment of their own Holocaust survivors in their population.

This “war” is not a war. It’s a genocide, where the total amount of bombs dropped on Gaza is officially over twice the impact of a nuclear bomb. One side is asking for a stop the fighting, for aid to be allowed through, they are asking for clean water and food as their women have been forced to rip off scraps off tents to use as menstrual products. One side has had all 35 their hospitals bombed (a war-crime the first time, and it continues to be a war crime every time it still happens), over 100 of their journalists have been targeted and murdered (more journalists than were killed in all of WW2, and btw this is also a war crime). And the other side films TikTok’s levelling apartment buildings, looting houses, kicking Palestinian hostages, stripping them naked and urinating on them. Israel has rained white phosphorus down on Palestine, they have bombed Palestine indiscriminately, they have destroyed archives, historical locations, they have done their best to rob Palestinians of their dignity and empathy and still, they’re not done.

Oh and the excuse that they’re just doing all of this to save the hostages? Hamas offered them all back in exchange for a ceasefire. And the Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, said no.

In the future, try to get your news from trusted news sources like Al Jazeera, and following journalists on the ground like Bisan and Motaz.

[decolonize-the-everything]

It’s my understanding that the reason we don’t advocate for voting (democratic or at all) is because it takes focus away from more important things that actually will make a difference. That being said, do you believe it is a bad thing to choose the lesser evil while still working to eliminate both evils? I know that harm reduction is not a long-term solution but does it cost us anything in the short term? If the net value is even one more person alive than the other choice is it inherently bad? Keeping in mind that the hypothetical person choosing to vote would also be organizing and donating and all the things that I know are so much more important. This is a genuine question and I’m still trying to work out my biases so if I’m missing something obvious then I would probably agree with the message you’re sending across.

Questions like this ignore realities such as: we did not only have 2 choices when this election started, that Biden was worse than any of our candidates except Trump. Besides that, the time for harm reduction has long since passed, in reality there are NO candidates who would reduce harm and framing it as if there are can't be anything but propaganda. Likewise, there is a genocide happening under Biden that was not happening under Trump so even the people who thought their votes were "harm reduction" votes in 2020 were wrong.

I don't know if Trump would've done the same, but I know it doesn't matter because Biden was elected and Biden did it anyway.

Short term, voting for democrats didn't save any lives at all. Short term Biden has quadrupled the amount of disabled and dying people in the world between his handling of COVID-19 and multiple genocides. Short term he's left queer, Black, disabled, and other marginalized communities alone to fight for our own rights against fascist attacks as white men in power have always done.

And he will continue to do so as long as he allowed to stay in power.

Can you really think one life that would be lost under Trump that isn't already at risk under Biden?

The only demographic of people that I see fitting that description would be people who face much fewer intersections of oppression than the rest of us. It's the kind of people who already live relatively safe and comfortable lives that I see being shaken to their core over mere the possibility of becoming actual targets of state oppression.

Gonna go off track a bit here, but stay with me.

....If we look back at history we can see that the majority of Americans have never catered to the safety or well being of the people they marginalized, especially not of their own free will. Example, Americans could have human rights on the ballot tomorrow but we don't. Why?

Our issues are systemic.

Everyone is too worried about "me" and learned to use identity politics to justify it. "Well I'm queer so I deserve to live"

And that may be true, but if you've accepted that belief doesn't that mean you've also made the mistake of believing in it's opposite; that someone else deserves to die?

Yeah. It does.

Which is why we don't have human rights on the ballot. Or roe v Wade for that matter. Our country is still systemically bigoted, patriarchal, racist, and colonial. If our country wanted us to have rights, we'd have them. If the people in power thought we deserved them, we wouldn't have to fight for them. If people in the 50's wanted Black people to have rights they'd have them! Instead newly freed people were met with Jim Crow laws.

And we can look back and say confidently now "well they weren't scared of anything. They were just racist and didn't want Black people around!"

So if there are this many people saying "but what about me, wouldn't you vote blue for queer people?" then it stops being a personal decision "to protect my own well being" and starts to become evidence of a systematically elected choice from Americans to blow up another country to protect American privileges.

So while I'm glad people care about marginalized people enough to use us as virtue signaling police batons during elections, this rhetoric is still just perpetuating the cycle of white supremacist beliefs that we want dismantled.

Americans don't deserve to live more than anyone else does, even if they're gay (or Black or native). When we choose a "lesser evil" based on this idea, this translates into agreeing with white supremacists when they say some lives are worth less than others, namely you're agreeing that American lives are worth more.

And what a lot of "listening and learning" people don't seem to realize when they say "this is the lesser evil" or "think of (marginalized community being weaponized for votes) at the voting booth!" "Vote blue for just one more election!" is the ideas that they are perpetuating long term for a short term win (that isn't even going to effectively help anyone) are much more harmful than anything Trump could've done, especially if Biden is commiting genocide already anyway

•••

So yeah it is inherently bad. Americans have our whole lives to prepare for elections, years to learn about candidates & to do research, 4 years between every election to help get 3rd parties ballot access. Leftists scream about 3rd parties and changes we need to make every year (let alone every election) if we wanna make progress. so how is it that it's only ever 4 months before elections that voting age american adults wanna ask how we could make things better or ask if what we're doing is the best idea?

We are in this position because we brought ourselves here by being apathetic and scared and selfish.

Those values won't save us no matter how many times we lie to ourselves about it.

How many elections in a row exactly do we need to pick the "short term solution" because we're apathetic and scared and selfish before we realize that nobody is going to save us but us?

I'm someone who organized and planned and protested and it was infuriating that there were more people advocating for voting blue than protesting.

I now understand that to mean that there are more people advocating for the problem to continue at it's current rate, than there are trying to solve it.

And no, I genuinely no longer believe that this is a helpful or meaningful political action to take.

[urmumsgyatt]

thoughts on 'ignoring canon' in the hp/marauders fandom

this may be a socially unacceptable take for certain ppl (ahem hp/marauders fandom ahem) but fanon isn’t there for you to completely change canon characters, it’s there for you to build up on them and explore their characters in a meaningful way that doesn’t suddenly throw away their entire characterisation. i’ve seen people erase IMPORTANT traits from characters which would basically make them unrecognisable (e.g. turning draco, barty or snape from canonically racist and terrible ppl into misunderstood and ‘morally grey’ when the whole point of their characters was that they were terrible and racist). like what’s the point of engaging with a certain media if you’re completely changing EVERYTHING important that made the media what it was. for example, the whole dark harry or slytherin harry au that’s strangely popular in the fandom despite it completely going against harry’s characterisation, morals, and values. like not sorry if this bothers you but the whole point of harry’s character is the inherent good and love inside him, it’s what makes harry harry, him being a part of a blood supremacist house (cause that’s inherently what slytherin is in canon) or ‘turning dark and emo’ goes against everything harry stood for. what makes ppl think that the disadvantaged half blood (unintentional mixed person allegory) who believed in equality would ever join or associate with a house filled with/built off of privileged racists. harry turning dark or joining slytherin contradicts the message of love in harry’s character because those two things are inherently not loving. like idc what anyone says, harry is an optimist. he wouldnt turn dark. at this point, this is just your own original world with your own ocs, it’s not harry potter anymore so why bother calling it that.

like there are instances where changing canon is GOOD. for example, changing the way jkr demonised the marauders for fighting against racists (idc what she says, choosing to make the group of ppl who advocated for/were also a part of magical minorities bullies for her racist character is incredibly problematic and only further proves her questionable political views). but it should never be like “oh look! what if i got rid of a very important trait that makes them who they are and contradict the themes and messaging behind their characters”.

this is especially the case if the characters are canonically fascist and racist. you don’t erase important aspects of their characters like that. by erasing a character’s canon fascism or racism, you’re creating a space where people refuse to acknowledge these characters as the oppressors within the narrative and make it seem as though their bigotry isn’t a result of their own beliefs (a.k.a. their fault) which is a harmful message to send to minorities/marginalised ppl in real life who do experience oppression.

and im not saying this to compliment jkr’s writing or anything cause 90% of this was probably unintentional on her part but that doesn’t mean it’s not there in canon for us to see and analyse.

like 99% of the hp/marauders fandom does NOT understand harry’s character (or any other character in the series actually but harry is the most egregious)

[whereserpentswalk]

It’s fascinating that you think trans people’s names come to them like wands in Harry Potter, you can’t just culturally appropriate bc you’re trans

Ok, this is about comments I made like a year ago on a comedy bit. While I stand by my feelings that the bit was bad and transphobic, my reasons why are a lot diffrent.

When I first wrote the comments my arguments were very thermian. I treated the story the comic was telling as if it was real and objective. Which feels right for most people, because stand up comedy is often presented like conversation, where we do treat stories like that as real things. But that's not how comedy works, comedians don't tell stories the way we do in conversation, they're creatives, the stories they tell are basically fictional, the art form might look like real conversations but it's not.

Comedians want to make you laugh, and sometimes want to send a message or make you think about things in a new way, but they have no reason to want to portray events accurately. They might be basing some things off of real experiences, but that's true for everyone, Tolkien might have chosen to explore his experience in world war one in lord of things, that doesn't mean we have to argue about orcs as if they're real entities when we're talking about if those books were racist.

So let's actually look at the skit, and analyze its outlook on trans people keeping in mind its a story that a cis man is telling, and not actual events: So the summery of the skit is that a white trans man comes out to his to his family, and he picked a name you'd expect a black person to have. He has older black relatives (who are implied to fully accept him, which would make him possibly the only trans person on earth with a fully accepting family) who refuse to use this name, and instead call him "the boy". The sketch ends with the comedian saying he should pick a name like Kevin, because even if he's trans he's not interesting (keep your thoughts on that last one).

Now, ignoring how this would play out in real life, what does this as a peice of fiction say about trans people:

First off: it's creating a plausible but unlikely situation where the woke thing to do is to not respect a trans person's identity. A lot of political humor exists to call ideas into question with hypotheticals, and the idea being questioned here is the idea that trans people's identities deserve respect.

Second off: it's creating a situation where a trans person is entitled and arogent for wanting his identity respected. In the fiction this trans person is that. But it's promoting the idea that they are in real life. Transphobes will show you a lot of spooky examples of trans identities that are unreasonable to respect, but that's not useally ever what it's like in real life. (An otherkin robotgirl isn't going to demand you communicate with her through beeps and boops, she probably just wants you not to laugh at her.)

Third off: it's pitting minorities agaisnt eachother. Conservatives love this, but it's super common when people try to convince progressives to a specific group from their advocacy. It shows us a world where trans rights and poc rights are at odds with eachother, in the real world they aren't, in the real world they're part of one larger struggle and diminishing one is diminishing the other. A lot of people do this with different identities, lgb types do it with gayness, terfs do it with womanhood, class reductionists do it with class, trscum do it between trans people. But it doesn't help one oppressed group when you shit on a diffrent oppressed group in their name. It's white conservatives who love it the most when trans people and poc at pit agaisnt eachother, and it's trans poc who suffer the most.

Fourth off: it's feeds into a very old myth amoung queerphobic progressives, which is the idea that queer people are privileged people looking to pose as the marginalized to get special rights. This is a myth we really have to get over, because its been internalized by a lot of people, and we get these hunts for fake minorities. This is why the "you're not interesting" line sticks out to me. Most trans people don't give themselves appropriative names, but trans people as a group constantly get accused of trying to steal other people's struggles. This is a myth that preys on the fact that white skined white colar queer people are more visible, and its one that is based on treating that disparity in visibility as a fact. We have to cut this out, nobody fakes minority status to get privileges because minorities aren't privileged. It's not true for queer people, even the queer people other queer people hate like bi people and ace people. It's not true about mentally ill and ND people, or converts to non Christian religions, or East Asian people, or anyone who gets accused of this. Stop it dearly.

Fifth off: this entire sketch is based in the idea that families can accept their trans kids, but only conditionally, only if they prove themselves to be doing it for the right reasons, and they please their family's whims. This is a transphobic idea, it's a transphobic idea most neolibs hold. Comedy bits are a lot like story books (no shade at either) where a problem is presented at the beginning, and a solution at the end, that the audience is expected to take for their own problems. And the solution here is a form of transphobia, the idea that trans people aren't owned acceptance, they need to earn it. I've seen a lot of trans people tormented by their families over that idea. And when a person of color goes and stage and wraps that idea in racial justice, it's young trans poc who get hurt by it the most.

Sixth off: not a huge point, but I feel like a cis black man, of all cis people, should be the most likely to understand that calling a trans man a boy is dehumanizing and insulting. I guess this goes to show he's not interested in thinking about how trans people's struggles are like his, he stands alongside a lot of marginalized trans people there.

Finally I kind of don't know how to end this. This is long. Really long. I don't know whose going to read this, because its a lot. Hopefully you got a bit of media literacy from reading all of this. Early on in my tumblr career, when I had just moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan, I had read an essay by @wifelinkmtg about a concept called the ditch. The idea was we often argue about media wrong, talking about things in hyper literal cannon obsessed terms, and that was the ditch, the ditch we dig for ourselves when we ignore things like themes and audience experiences. Hopefully this series of words dug less of a ditch than my words did a year ago. Sorry I don't have the actual sketch on hand. Mabye I'm wrong, but if someone wants to prove me wrong I'd rather they do it outside of a ditch. Mabye the ask wasn't even about that post. Mabye I'm tired. Maybe you should be tired too.

Sorry for the long post. Media literacy matters. Black trans lives matter. Goodbye, enjoy your night well.

[loveoaths]

Anakin is not racist

oh, man, that was fast!

listen. i’m gonna assume you’re an anakin fan — great! so am i! — but anakin is objectively an awful person and a canonical space-racist. that’s apparent even if you’re new to Star Wars like i am.

from Legends:

when asked about his view of the tuskens, anakin’s immediate response is “i have no use for tuskens.” i mean, i don’t know what there is to explain about that, because it’s right there. a whole race of people he doesn’t care for because they aren’t “useful,” as if that’s all people are meant to be to him. his issue with them is apparent but he won’t name it.

a’sharad hett directly names anakin’s issue: he is prejudiced. and anakin does not deny this. he “apologizes” but does not specify for what, because he knows he’s supposed to. you don’t just admit you’re a racist, especially not to a Master Jedi. which is exactly what irl racists do, lmfao.

when push comes to shove, anakin outright SAYS it.

“I know what you are — filthy, sneaking, Tusken! Animals! Hiding behind your masks! Your kind tortured and killed my mother and I’m glad I killed them all!” (Emphasis mine)

like, listen. this is racist as hell. the racist dog whistle is now a racist klaxon, alright. he sees the tuskens as subhuman, as inherently untrustworthy because of their appearance and their culture, and he is not only not bothered by killing them, but he’s happy he did it. you could argue anakin is shielding himself from his guilt with self-righteousness, which i might buy with any other character, but anakin is down right unrepentant.

it wasn’t enough for him to kill the tuskens responsible, which even a’sharad notes would have been acceptable in Tusken culture; anakin wanted them all dead, because they’re all guilty to him solely by virtue of being Tusken. this anger and hatred and bigotry pushes anakin to even lash out against a’sharad, a tusken jedi, fully dropping any pretense that he is okay with a’sharad despite him being half-tusken and a jedi. because you know what anakin is following? the ONE DROP RULE! even a drop of Tusken blood is too much tusken.

and still the wrong lessons are learned. for some godforsaken reason a’sharad learns he needs to be seen as a Jedi first and not a Tusken, which is not only antithetical to the Jedi way, but totally opposite to the point of this encounter, which is that we are all many things all at once, and pretending otherwise leads to destruction. anakin is a jedi and a murderer and a racist and the chosen one. ignoring the unsavory and cruel parts of him, never exposing him to the jedi council, and hoping his “better nature” would win out over time ensured that it never would. a’sharad is a Tusken and a jedi and many other things, but his wrongful assumption that pushing aside his heritage will gain him favor eventually causes more problems for him.

the only reason anakin and a’sharad stop fighting is because a’sharad removes his mask, revealing, tada, a hot human face! now anakin is capable of an insincere apology. but he still assumes the markings on a’sharad were forced on him, because he still believes tuskens are a barbaric and cruel people. then the moment is moved past so they can escape.

and despite this shit-ass “heart to heart,” anakin walks away with zero appreciation for a’sharad or the Tusken culture. he fails a’sharad’s lesson: it’s not that he can’t see a’sharad as human, as a person, as a jedi, it’s that he won’t, because he is attached to his view of the tuskens as lesser than, because it excuses his behavior, because it makes him righteous, because it makes him feel better, because it solidifies his entitled view of the world. which is exactly how irl racism and whiteness work.

and the final word on the subject is this. when all is said and done and anakin is asked if he would kill the tuskens again, knowing what he knows about them now, his answer is a cold, unmoved, “Yes.”

now, i know the Legends comics are not officially canon; the new canon is whatever Disney chooses to use and whatever appears in the movies. however, even if we just look at the clone wars, which are now canon to the Disney SWU, there are several instances in TCW where anakin makes disparaging comments about another species’ appearance, intelligence, and capability. i don’t have those on hand because i am not trawling through 7 seasons for quotes for you, but you can find them if you want to look.

my final thought here is this: i am not disparaging anakin fans (fanakins, if you will); like i said earlier, i am fascinated by his character, and enjoy him as a concept. what i am doing here is asking you (especially if you’re white) to consider the lengths to which fandom goes to ignore the very obvious signs that anakin is not just genocidal but racist. like him all you want but don’t ignore that part because that makes you uncomfortable. he kills kids. that’s not any better than being racist.

understanding the role of racism in his depiction, and his turn to fascism, only aids your storytelling and view of him, because it’s true to life. society is willing to ignore massive red flags if someone is white (and in Star Wars universe, we’ll add “human” to the list), male, and conventionally attractive. obi-wan is willing to ignore these things because he is the same, and because anakin does not treat HIM this way, obi-wan can blindly believe anakin would never treat anyone like this — which is, again, a phenomenon people of color call out often, where white people will say “X can’t be racist because he’s never said anything racist around me!” well yeah. because why would he? nevermind the fact that obi-wan and ahsoka witness anakin treating non-human suspects with extreme prejudice, abusing his power and authority as a jedi to get what he wants, and worse. anakin is and always has been a shitty racist cop on a power trip, but because he worked with “good cops” and knew better than to say anything out loud, he got away with it until he killed them all too.

this all feeds into the concept that while anakin’s fall is tragic, it is by no means unexpected. the only reason the main characters of the prequels are surprised is because they willingly looked away from the warning signs. the characters who didn’t — the Council, Mace, even Ahsoka at some points — are vilified by anakin, and because the main characters love anakin and have an attachment to him being the chosen one, they believe anakin over those who are suspicious of him and ignore or downplay the warnings until it’s all too late. the tragedy of anakin isn’t a tragedy of not being loved enough, or having people fail you; it’s the tragedy of refusing to get help, of refusing to let go of things even when they hurt you, it’s the tragedy of the bitter man drinking poison to kill someone ekse, and it’s the tragedy of the bystander: of what happens when we all stand by and watch people we love do terrible things without stopping them, because we’re as afraid of them not loving us anymore as we are of confronting what it means that we still want to love and be loved by cruelty.

tl;dr: anakin skywalker is racist and prejudiced. you can still like him as a character; this is not a moral judgment. but maybe you should prod at your like at him a little, and investigate the ways in which both anakin as a character and the fandom’s dismissive view of his many faults is indicative of the insidious way racism and whiteness works irl. especially if you’re white.

[tottentz]

🐀⭑ : ❝ don't look the other way ! ❞ ⤹ you can call me tori ⋆ ｡˚ twenty one ! any pronouns ◟in my overwhelmed era.

tell me a secret ── ( n ) sfw + dark content friendly ๑ minors / ageless blogs will be blocked and removed ˎˊ˗ 𓄹⠀𓈒⠀part of @houseofsolisoccasum , @pixelcafe-network & @nereidsrealm network⠀ ꒱⠀⊹

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⸻ 𝐒𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐒 :

✦ › YOU BEGUN TO FEEL LIKE HOME ˖˙ ᰋ ⸻ honkai star rail , multiple character , gender neutral reader 、𝐒𝐅𝐖. ꗃ : cw. reader is shy-ish, very to little mention of injuries on aventurine's, boothill's and blade's part, i don't specified any mental issues, but i do describe readers struggles which could be identified as anxiety ˎˊ˗

↺ ; the feeling was familiar, one that he had organically all the time when thinking of you. it was the one that he shoved down over and over again around you, yet craved more than anything. and here you were, unknowingly returning it to him. you hadn't intended it to be shared and you had no idea you even did.

✦ › KISS ME FROM THE RUSH ˖˙ ᰋ ⸻ honkai star rail , multiple character , reader has no pronouns but has afab anatomy 、𝐍𝐒𝐅𝐖. ꗃ : cw. reader has no pronouns but has afab anatomy, soft dom ! character & inexperienced ! reader ˎˊ˗

↺ ; you whimper; mewl as if language were unknown to you. all you can do is cry, sob, as his splits your little pussy in half. your name echoes from his kiss swollen lips as his fucks you harder into the mattress. his brain is in shambles; cluttered and screwed as if he had lost reasoning, but he was aware of himself; aware of his present endeavor.

✦ › LOSE FACE ˖˙ ᰋ ⸻ honkai star rail , multiple character , female reader with afab anatomy 、𝐍𝐒𝐅𝐖. ꗃ : cw. ambiguous relantionship, threesome ˎˊ˗

↺ ; these two men will be the end of you. you just know it / or, in which sometimes three is better than two.

⸻ 𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐁𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐒 :

✦ › DROWNED AND DREAMT ˖˙ ᰋ ⸻ honkai star rail , aventurine , gender neutral reader , drabble 、𝐒𝐅𝐖 ˎˊ˗

↺ ; you take a breath. there is a moment between that and when you lift your hand from his upper arm to rest it on his head. you comb your fingers through his hair like you are just as unsure about this as he is. it's been a long time since anyone touched him like this.

✦ › HE'S COMPLICATED, HE'S IRRATIONAL ˖˙ ᰋ ⸻ genshin impact , alhaitam , gender neutral reader , drabble 、𝐒𝐅𝐖 ˎˊ˗

↺ ; "sure you are okay? he just doesn't seem like the kind of, you know, to be able to love somebody." you freeze, and alhaitam feels like everything suddenly stops.

⸻ 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒 :

SO GIVE ME HOPE ﹙ hsr , sfw ﹚ ٬ 牛乳 𐜤 𑂾 or the things they do when they miss you IN PRIVATE ﹙ hsr , nsfw ﹚ ٬ 牛乳 𐜤 𑂾 or little nasty things they do during sex SOMEONE TO YOU ﹙ zzz , sfw ﹚ ٬ 牛乳 𐜤 𑂾 or little things you do that make them fall in love again

[doberbutts]

Hello, I’m mixed and I know you’re mixed too so I’m hoping for some advice. My mom is white and my dad is Native American (technically he is indigenous to canada the tribe he is from but I just say Native American because it is easier to explain, ‘native Canadian’ sounds weird 😭) and I’m sure you know things r really bad for indigenous people in Canada even more so than in America so when my dad was young his parents managed to save enough money to move to America many years ago, anyway I guess none of that is important besides the fact that I’m mixed.

Basically, I am involved in a fandom with many mixed-race characters that I love. None that are specifically mixed like I am (well besides one character whose mom is native and dad is white, though his mom was never revealed it’s a popular fan theory so I’ll just go with it) and other notable mixed characters are Arab/white, Chinese/white, etc. Writing this out I kind of realize that all of these mixed characters are mostly half white lol. But, that is also kind of the problem.

I’ve noticed a real… I don’t want to say racist but really discriminatory and hurtful attitude towards these mixed characters that really hurts my feelings as a mixed person myself. Basically people ignoring their mixed heritage and opting to just refer to them as ‘Arab’ and ‘Chinese’ and whatnot. Which is fine on the surface, but then I see people start talking about how disgusting it is that these characters have a white parent and that it would be much better if they were ‘pure’ POC. Which is really… hurtful as someone who is mixed with a white parent. Sorry I’m not ‘pure’ enough for your liking?? I guess? What is the point of them even saying things like that? And I guess I want to know how I can bring it up to these people without them getting angry at me. I got really mad one time and said that trying to erase a mixed characters other parent is trying to erase their identity and you can’t just choose to accept half of someone you have to accept ALL of them or you accept no part of them but they just block me.

I don’t know I feel like they’re trying to be well meaning even if it’s in a really hurtful way, but then when I try to correct them they don’t even care so can I really call it well meaning? They outright ignore the fact that the characters are canonically mixed and choose to just present them as ‘pure POC’ which they act like it’s somehow ‘superior’ to being mixed. I already don’t fit in anywhere I go and I feel like neither side will ever accept me and now I feel like this pervasive fandom attitude just kind of confirms all my fears. Sometimes I wish I was fully one or the other. I liked your other posts about being mixed and how you weren’t ‘half’ of anything you were fully all of them and I’m trying to internalize that but all these people and their hurtful comments make it hard. Like they’re not making these comments about me specifically, but I see what they say about fictional characters that are like me so it’s :/

I guess I just want to know how to convince them that mixed people are worthy of telling stories about too and how we aren’t lesser just because we are mixed? How do I tell these people to get over their discomfort with acknowledging the heritage of mixed characters? I’m not very good at articulating these sorts of things.

And sorry this was so long 😢

This is a bit of an older ask, and I've left it sit in my askbox for a while because I'm honestly not sure if I even have any advice for you.

The biggest things I suppose would be

A: remember that fandoms really aren't known for acknowledging the nuance of, like, literally anything that can be polarized. Unfortunately, that includes race and racial mixing.

B: sometimes you have to be the change you want to see. And I know. I know it sucks when you always have to be that person. But sometimes that is truly the only solution. Exist happily as yourself, be content in your own mixed race identity, talk about it when you feel up to it, and those who see it will be touched by you. Perhaps they may even catch on, and start to spread a healthier way of looking at the mixed race characters within your fandom.

C: stop giving a shit what other people think. Be you. You will find people who love you for you. Fuck all the others who reject you for being yourself, and don't force yourself into an easily digestible box for those who would barely glance your way regardless.

[aemiron-main]

“Gay Henry Truthers Are Erasing An Interracial Relationship During The 50s”: No We Aren’t, The Struggles Of An Interracial Relationship Are Still Very Much Present Even With Gay Henry & You’re Actually The Ones That Are Erasing Key Aspects Of Both Henry and Patty

So, it’s weird to see people talking about how gay Henry analysis is “erasing an interracial love story in the 50s” as if people arent also trying to erase the story of a gay kid in the 50s & the HNL conversion therapy allegory & also erase the way that Patty’s feelings specifically being puppy love is a key part of her reclaiming her sexuality/rebelling against Mr Newby, and also the fact that even with gay Henry, the struggles of an interracial relationship are still very much present.

I just think it’s a bit odd and reductive to try and reduce it down to “gay Henry headcanons are erasing an interracial love story,” when a.) it’s not just a headcanon, it’s analysis of canon, and b.) part of Henry’s story is very much being gay and the heavy heavy conversion therapy vibes/comparisons with Hawkins Lab and Brenner and how that ties into Brenner and Henry’s dynamic AND the fact that the struggles of an interracial relationship in the 50s are STILL PRESENT with gay Henry, I’m not erasing a single thing in that regard- Henry still stands up for Patty/joins in with her at the audition after Walter makes racist remarks & Henry still goes on his dates with her & they still experience all of the same things that they would experience if Henry was straight- except with some added queecoding on top.

So, yeah. Enjoy Creelby all you want, but I do think it’s strange to try and twist the fantastic story we have here re: gay Henry and Patty & intertwining queerness with interracial relationship & the concept of “being normal,” into an “us vs them, you’re Morally Wrong for believing that Henry is gay,” debacle.

Like, could they be more obvious than the “I like the gay ones?” line from Patty? It’s not subtle. Not to mention the stuff that IS subtle re: Henry’s queercoding (him basically having his “boys only,” moment when he’s in the boys bathroom & Patty comes in & he says she’s not supposed to be in there), etc etc.

And also, ignoring the queer side of things also erases the intricacies of Henry and Patty’s dynamic with their parents. Here’s why:

So, I talked about this in my other post-TFS gay Henry post, but part of Henry’s reason for having a relationship with Patty/going on dates with her etc is due to Virginia’s emotional incest and the fact that Virginia doesn’t want him to be with Patty & that Virginia is jealous of Patty.

Now, you might be saying “but Em, isn’t rebelling against Virginia and being with Patty just a testament to Henry’s romantic love for Patty?” To which I say: no! And I say “no,” because Henry’s key “romantic” interactions with Patty happen after Virginia tells him not to be with her- it’s not that he was already asking her out on 5 million dates and super interested prior- he was happy to be around her & trying to be “normal,” etc prior to Virginia’s complaints about him being with Patty, but the main date etc happened AFTER that conversation between Henry and Virginia. Henry’s date etc with Patty is a response to Virginia’s controlling behaviour and emotional incest and Virginia’s jealousy towards Patty- Henry straight up asks Virginia if she’s jealous of Patty after Virginia says that she doesn’t want Henry around patty anymore.

So, this demonstrates how Henry may have not pursued a romantic relationship with Patty if he wasn’t a.) trying to be normal (which, Virginia literally makes him repeat “My name is Henry Creel and I am normal,” all the time), and b.) if he wasn’t trying to rebel against Virginia’s emotional incest and controlling behaviour.

And there’s also the Brenner aspect of all of this. I talked about this in another post, but in TFS, many of Brenner’s conversations with Henry tie heavily into themes of sexual assault and conversion therapy in a way that’s SPECIFICALLY tied to Henry being gay and Brenner talking about how Henry can never be “normal,” specifically in the context of going to prom/being around girls, and Brenner also talks about how “I know you like it,” re: trying to claim that Henry likes killing, but it’s written and set up in such a way that the subtext is definitely tied to “I know you like being assaulted by a man/by me because you’re gay and nothing can fix that/I’m not trying to fix you, because you can’t be fixed, and I know you like it,” which then later ties into Henry and stockholm syndrome vibes and Henry wondering if he belongs in the lab, and again, that stockholm syndrome and self-hatred vibe with Henry is specifically tied to his queercoding.

And when it comes to Patty, trying to act like her and Henry are this end-all-be-all true, reciprocated romantic love & ignoring the references to it being “puppy love,” and the direct Mileven parallels erases a key part of Patty’s dynamic (and trauma) regarding Mr. Newby, as Patty is afraid to perform in The Dark of the Moon not only because of the sexual aspect of the play, but SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE Father Newby would have an issue with her performing in a play with explicit material.

So, Patty’s puppy love with Henry/her feelings for him/going on dates with him are also rooted in rebellion against Mr Newby, just like how Henry going on dates etc with Patty is rooted in rebellion against Virginia and her emotional incest. Ignoring Henry’s queerness & how Virginia’s emotional incest pushes a queer boy towards being in a relationship with a girl AND also ignoring the way that Patty rebels against Father Newby by pursuing a rebellious puppy love relationship rather than “waiting for marriage/waiting for a relationship that’s Approved By The Church And Me Newby/a True Love Moment TM” really reduces the depth of both characters.

Like, one thing I actually really enjoy about the puppy love side of Creelby on Patty’s behalf is that Patty doesn’t have to justify her relationship with “oh but it’s True Love-“ instead, she’s simply doing it because she wants to, because it makes her happy, she’s finally getting to make her own choices and break away from Mr, Newby’s controlling behaviour. She doesn’t plead with Mr Newby about how “oh, it’s True Love, please let me be with Henry, I want to marry him and spend my life with him-“ instead, she takes matters into her own hands, and enjoys her little puppy love/fling without that “justification,” of “oh but it’s True Love,” and without continuing to try and appeal to both religious standards and Mr Newby’s standards.

And again regarding how Patty’s feelings for Henry/going on a date with him etc are tied to Patty’s dynamic with Mr Newby, Patty even has a line that she says to Henry, where she says “what are you, my dad?”

So, not only do we have the familial coding there coming from Patty, but we also have a connection between Henry and Mr Newby created via that line, which reinforces what I said about how Patty initiating a relationship with Henry isn’t just because she’s “deeply romantically in love with him,” but instead, is also very very connected to Patty’s dynamic with Mr Newby & the way he punishes and controls her & the effect that Mr Newby has had on Patty’s expression and understanding of relationships and sexuality.

There’s also the emotional incest aspect between Patty and Mr. Newby, as Mr Newby’s wife left him for Ted Wheeler’s dad- and so, Patty ends up filling that void in a weird way, and Mr Newby treats her more like a controlled wife than he does a daughter/child.

So, yeah. It’s just a little frustrating to see people try and claim some sort of moral highground re: interracial relationships and Creelby vs gay Henry while also ignoring the conversion therapy aspect of Henry’s story and how that plays into his dynamic with Brenner & Brenner’s abuse towards him, and while also ignoring the way that gay Henry/puppy love Creelby plays into both Henry and Patty’s dynamics with their parents. Frankly, that sort of attempt at moral highgrounding comes across as a “grasping at straws/trying to cope and find a moral highground because the evidence supports gay Henry,” approach, which again, is frustrating.

Like, gay Henry doesn’t erase the interracial aspect/struggles of Creelby at all- but people are trying to use Creelby’s status as an interracial relationship to sweep Henry’s heavy handed gay coding under the rug and sweep the fact that Patty’s feeling being puppy love is a key pert of her character under the rug, and prove that Creelby is a reciprocated, endgame-esque romance, which not only then erases key aspects of Henry and Patty’s characters and dynamics with their parents and with Brenner, but also frankly comes across as people trying to use the struggles of an interracial relationship as a way of “proving,” that a ship they like is endgame, while also erasing key aspects of those characters & it just feels disingenuous to try and use the fact that Patty and Henry are an interracial relationship as justification for why they’re endgame/as an attempt debunk gay Henry when that doesn’t work & when they’re reducing the depth of Patty and Henry’s characters in the process.

Like, is it just me, or is it weirder to flatten out the characters of an abused black girl and an abused gay boy simply because you want Patty and Henry to be endgame?

Hell, I ship romantic Creelby in a fanon way!! I have a bi Henry au!! But when we’re talking about analysis & trying to claim some sort of moral highground in that regard, I think it’s really important to consider what elements of character dynamics and story get erased when we remove key aspects such as the puppy love dynamic and Henry’s gayness.

[demonqueenart]

Evie, hi! First of all I want to thank you for spending your time and energy to write all those answers and posts. I'm amazed that you're still able to keep them understanding and kind, which makes it much easier to have this conversation. Thank you!

Your frustration with DnP's lack of reaction is justified and the next thing I'm about to say isn't me coming up with excuses on their behalf or telling you to stop talking about it. It just hurts to see a kind and gentle person like you get upset, so I'm trying to give some consolation, but I'm not too good at that, so sorry in advance if I fuck it up.

Please have patience. Not for their sake, for your own. We won't stop trying to make them acknowledge the racism, but it might take some time. Since their comeback our way of interacting with DnP has been kind of a black box - we talk about stuff on different platforms and then they suddenly mention it. So we know they saw us talking, but we don't know exactly when.

The last 2 weeks have been pure chaos: the leak, the rushed announcement, the wrong dates in the promo, the venues not giving enough info or giving wrong info. After tickets went on sale they only had 4 days before they fucked off to have their just-the-two-of-us-ranch-ingredients vacation.

What I'm trying to say is: their current silence doesn't necessarily mean that they saw us talking and chose to ignore it. Maybe they haven't seen it yet, maybe they are thinking about what to do and what to say. Also, unfortunately white people do need a bit of time to go from "this is an unreasonable attack, I'm not a bad person and they are just haters" to "it's not an attack, it's reasonable criticism and I was being the asshole this whole time". I went through this process myself (and you were the one who helped me understand). Sorry it took me that long.

This isn't me saying it's fine that they haven't addressed anything so far - it's not. Just please don't give up hope yet. They listened to us when it came to Palestine, I'm sure they'll listen now too.

Oh, and ignore all the fuckers who are telling you to either leave or shut up. You make the phandom a better and kinder space. I want you here and many others do too. Plus it's not like anyone gets to gatekeep the community in the first place. You have the right to be here.

From beautiful hellscape with love 💜

Anon 🥹 I felt so cared for because of you. Thank you so much 🫂🫂💞💞 I always want this space to be gentle and kind, even when I’m hurt and angry, I still want to understand where everyone is coming from. I believe that everyone deserves to have their voice being heard. Even when our voices clash and don’t always go together, we can still come to a new understanding, try to mend and build a bridge together. Fighting isn’t always the end of things, it’s when two sides trying to express how unfair the situation is so that they can come together.

And of course, you’re right. They might be quite busy as you’ve pointed out, it doesn’t always mean they’re not going to do anything. I think why I assumed for the worst is because this is very much a new territory for them to cross. They have never brought up their racist remarks, never tried to address or take accountability in things. I’m just afraid it’ll end up just like any other time before.

But having you speaking this to me have reassured that I’m not fighting alone in this. In some way or the other, I have cultivated the most understanding and generous people of all who’re willing to support me during the toughest time, and for that, I’m so grateful. Thank you for reaching out and giving me some consolation to reassure me. Your words will not be wasted :) Thank you so much for everything 🫂🫂💖💖

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Some guy on Reddit: When the government bulldozed neighbourhoods to build highways, they were much more likely to be black neighbourhoods. This was racism.

Some other guy: That doesn’t prove racism. Maybe they just bulldozed poor neighbourhoods.

Some other, other guy: No, housing disparities are a clear sign of racism.

Me: I don’t think repeating the same argument the other guy had a problem with is very convincing, when it could just be random chance. Do you have any evidence?

Literally a half-dozen randos: But it was clearly racism!

Not a single one of these folks actually addressed the alternative explanations that I or the other guy came up with. Not one. The best they could do is move goalposts; say racism is responsible for housing disparities and poverty.*

I think the silliest one was the guy who said I should read one of four different books to learn about racial housing disparities...which still wouldn’t prove the highway bulldozing was racist.

He didn’t include an actual argument, of course.

Or maybe the guy who assumed I “don’t even believe racism exists.” and was looking for an excuse to ignore racism.

When I had just told the other other guy to provide more direct evidence so he could be more convincing.

Also, the original other-other guy just repeated the exact same claim with slightly different wording for three posts. I really, really wanted to call him an NPC by the time I gave up.

Just another example of people who don’t know how to convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with them.

*Reminds me of BLM. “Police kill disproportionately high amounts of black people because police are racist!” 

“Black people are more likely to be violent criminals.”

“They’re only more likely to be violent criminals because of racism! So it’s still racism!”

You’re just supposed to ignore that they’re making a very different argument.

[communistkenobi]

if you don't feel like taking the time to explain this to a random person I totally understand lol I will continue to look elsewhere to form an opinion. but I'm torn on not voting for biden, because I do understand the motive. he's terrible, teaching the democratic party a hard lesson is overdue. they need to be taught once and for all that they need to actually fucking deliver on their lofty virtuous promises or they will lose all support. on the other hand if you're following closely the shit trump's people are spewing right now he just keeps getting worse and worse and overtly fascist and ambitious, it's incredibly frightening atp, it's obvious that he will only make everything that's bad now in the usa and in palestine and everywhere else 10000x worse for a long time to come, I just don't know if the damage from another trump presidency is a worthy price to pay to stick it to joe

I’m going to be blunt, but I genuinely do not mean this in a rude or condescending way, I invite you to think about this deeply: do you legitimately think that if the democrats get re-elected they’re going to stop any of the horrific shit the republicans want to implement, either domestically or overseas? Has their track record given you any hope that that will happen? If you vote for them as they gleefully, openly carry out a genocide, literally what incentive do they have to stop Republicans at all? If their voter base is that secure, that loyal, what incentive do they have to protect their constituents or address their needs when in power? Protecting Roe v Wade was what made voting for Biden an existential necessity in 2020 and that still got trashed! People are still in cages at the US-Mexico border! Cop city is being built in Atlanta! Police brutality against Black people continues unabated! Pipelines are still being built on indigenous land (DAPL happened under Obama)! The threat against minority populations, the truly disadvantaged and oppressed people inside the US, are already living with this violence on a daily basis and have lived with it regardless of who is in office. To assume the threat of fascist violence has not yet arrived, has not yet been developing for decades, is to ignore these things.

I do not think the democrats need to be ‘taught a lesson’ or that you need to ‘stick it to Joe.’ The Democrats are not failing to deliver on their promises - these are their promises. Even on a purely self-interested level, ignoring the genocide currently happening, you are not going to be protected from fascists domestically by voting blue no matter who. Certainly there are local elections and movements were there is genuine progressive potential (Ohio just voted to legalise weed and support abortion, a legit good thing that was absolutely worth going out and voting for), but that is not the reality of the national party. The primary language available to voters as voters is to stop voting for them.

The fascist right in the US (both ‘populist’ groups like qanon and the proud boys, as well as institutional groups like the federalist society, the heritage foundation, etc, the list is endless, not to mention evangelical churches) is organised and developed enough that they will continue to hold power and influence regardless of who is in office. The genocide happening in Palestine right now, carried out by a democrat, is not a neatly contained far-away thing that can be separated from domestic politics (I am not claiming you’re making that argument, only trying to articulate my own point) - it is already having a profound and measurable impact on the US population in the form of increased racist, islamophobic and antisemitic violence, mass police brutality, institutional silencing and firing of anyone who even says the word genocide, etc. I think it’s productive to view those actions as developing fascist actions, actions which are being stoked by a democrat. And if they are not outright fascist, they are certainly a precursor to it. In the last couple years there have been a lot of stupid, incompetent demonstrations by the far right in the US - Unite the Right rally, the storming of the capitol, Qanon-motivated assaults and murders like the attempted plot to kidnap the Michigan governor, that one mob guy who was murdered by a Qanon follower in New York I think, Alex Jones being a national figurehead for the conspiratorial and openly fascist right (although he’s probably not going to continue to be that now that he lost a billion dollars in his court cases lol), the “stop the steal” legal attempt to contest the results of the 2020 election - these are ridiculous and on-the-surface ineffective attempts to express a fascistic will onto USAmerican institutions (“inchoate fascism,” a fascism not yet fully formed, a fascism in an experimental phase). But I think the genocide in Palestine is allowing for the effective version of those things to be done in the US. The hysteria, the rage, the violence that this genocide is producing “at home” is not going to dissipate if a democrat continues to hold office, and the Palestinian genocide is both an organising force for the current fascist right and an inciting force for it to further develop and grow. This larger debate about voting or not voting seems to be operating on the (correct) assumption that foreign policy is not a meaningful realm of difference between democrats and republicans, that the only space to battle over is domestic affairs. But absent from this debate is that these two things can’t be neatly partitioned, they are not separate, not just because you should view all human life as equally worth preserving but because we are seeing the mass domestic response within the US about Palestine - the popular resistance to it on the one hand and the institutional support for it on the other. The early 2000s US culture (“post-9/11”) is widely regarded as incredibly right-wing, and that was because of the war in Iraq! Foreign policy produces and shapes US culture, and the genocide in Palestine a colonial and fascist project.

This is not an argument for despair, or to do nothing. Fascism is not defeated by voting regardless of who you’re voting for, and so we can dispense with that idea. If you want to exercise your civic responsibilities, there are many other avenues - labour unions, community work, protests, boycott organising, and yes even voting in local elections when there is a strategic advantage to do so - things that are meaningful and do legitimately help people. But I do not see any strategic calculus in voting for democrats. Biden already told everyone this - “nothing will fundamentally change.” There should be no surprise, no expectation that they will do anything except what they’re already doing, which is business as usual

[stiffyck]

Hey Stiff,

@scittiesenjoyer here (why won’t Tumblr let me ask from a side blog)

I kinda went off in the tags of two anonymous asks you got implying you were racist for giving Scar a big nose in your art

I’m here to double down

Because I love your art and seeing you in the community and it makes my blood boil to think that some dickhead accusing you of something you didn’t do will make you feel less welcome here (honestly I wanna be a lot meaner to that anon, but I’m choosing to believe that they were coming from a good place and are just ignorant rather than malicious)

Anon has taken a very real issue and over applied it to the point of almost parody. I would like to make it clear that I am white myself and was raised Christian (agnostic now not that it really matters), so by no means an expert on the issues faced by others. But I do listen to Jewish people and have read into the topic of harmful Jewish stereotypes seemingly more than anon. Prepare for me to give you two whole sources more than that anon

Yes overly large noses (often also hooked) are used in caricatures of Jewish people, but never in complete isolation. Here’s a post on Jew-coding, the practice of applying character traits that make you think of Jewish people. Which can be good or bad, depending on what is making you think of Jewish people

https://www.tumblr.com/roach-works/703234602671751168/on-jew-coding

It doesn’t touch on large noses, though it is often brought up in discussions around art and animation. Especially as villains are often negatively Jew-coded. Think big hooked noses, curly hair, bankers/moneylenders (or otherwise tight with money), and of course stealing or harming blond haired, blue eyed children. Here’s an article that goes more into that for Disney especially

https://www.heyalma.com/why-do-so-many-disney-villains-look-like-me/

I think something important about most of what you will read on this topic is that it’s never a single trait in isolation. It’s the layering of bad Jew-coding that makes something racist. A college student being frugal is not a racist stereotype. But if that college student also had curly hair, was cowardly, antagonised others, and had a thick New York accent then we’d need to be concerned

You giving a character with no illusions to being Jewish a big nose is not racist. You’re not making him the villain, or greedy, or part of some shadow council or otherwise applying any negative (or positive for that matter) Jew-coding to him. You are just drawing a guy and having fun with your art style

I know nothing I can say will take away how you’ve been feeling about that initial anon, it feels horrible to be accused of something like this. Especially when it comes out of nowhere, and in this case is quite unfounded. I know I would have been scrambling trying to figure out where I went wrong. I hope knowing some of the context helps alleviate any distress you’ve been feeling

Please keep playing with proportions and your art style. There is nothing wrong with exaggerating only select features while leaving the rest proportional, the implication that there could be baffles me. I totally understand you wanting to take a break from posting art for a bit. This would be a massive blow to anyone’s confidence. But I think it’s important that you not let this steal away your joy in creating the art you want to

I’m happy to talk more on this or anything else if you wanna reach out, sending love and artistic inspiration

Hi, thanks for the ask!

I think I can see where the anon is coming from when it comes to some of the stuff I drew but I genuinely never thought it would come off as anything bad? Like to me my design just sorta looks like a character you'd see in a cartoon, which is why the ask took me so off guard.

I also feel that since I'm white and I can't really talk about this because I'm not really well educated when it comes to this sorta stuff? Like I don't want to argue with someone or try to defend myself when I don't know enough.

I've been meaning to read up on some stuff but adhd has been making it hard to do literally anything tbh. I need to get medicated so I can read non-fandom related stuff and in general actually do more productive stuff (more art, other stuff i enjoy I haven't been able to do because executive dysfunction) but I'm getting off track here dkvfkdjge

Ive been real anxious lately and that ask really got to me so I don't know about any art for now. I just need some time I guess for the anxiety to ease up idk.

Basically. What I'm trying to say.

I dont know enough about this and in no way would I ever want to do something that's bad or comes off as a racist stereotype or something.

Thanks for the sources and thanks for the nice words

[chevelleneech]

@alligatorjesie

I was talking about my experience with a portion of the fandom, not the entirety. I was there, I saw the things people were saying and how things were twisted to excuse the racism. Especially the push that John had no respect for and was over sexualizing Daisy.

Again, ship whatever you want, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Reylo. It doesn’t do it for me, but that’s fine. However, as I pointed out, a portion of that same fandom is now clinging to Oshamir and seemingly projecting their long lost Reylo wants and entitlements on to them, and it’s not fun for me to see. Which you only further prove my point of, by dismissing what I’m saying.

“Why would racists ship PoC?” because some of them don’t care that Osha and Qimir aren’t white, solely because to them it’s a matter of vindication. They don’t see them as new characters, but as Reylo stand-ins. Which is why I also said, if either Amandla or Manny say a single thing the racist and entitled fans don’t like, they’ll be hit with the same backlash as John. Don’t play the fool.

Back to the point though, I’m wasn’t talking about every single Reylo out there. I’m enjoying the fan art and theories, and a lot of it is coming from Reylos, but that doesn’t erase what was. A lot of the hate John got was purely racist, and some of it did stem from him not shipping Rey and Kylo. In fact, a good example of that brewing again is the fans who are trying to uplift Osha/Jecki over Oshamir, in negative ways. Not everyone, but we all saw that account on Twitter (and the many who co-signed) trying to make it seem like killing off Jecki was to sideline a lesbian ship. When really, Jecki was underage, was she not? But also, Dafne Keen is white, which speaks to the fandom racism overall.

The Star Wars fandom as a whole is not welcoming, which I also stated. Amandla is being talked down upon solely because they’re Black, and Kelly Marie Tran was treated horribly during her run as well. Not by Reylos to my knowledge, so I’m not pretending like they were the ultimate toxicity within the fandom. They weren’t, but to act as if it was 100% in defense of Daisy is disingenuous.

So if we focus on what I said, which was seeing so many of them on my feeds now, and seeing how a lot of them are using Oshamir as a sort of shield to ignore how things went down, rubs me the wrong way. It makes the Oshamir fandom not as fun, for me. It doesn’t mean every Reylo here was a weirdo back in the day, but maybe you’re white and simply don’t get it? I don’t know.

Either way, the topic of the post wasn’t up for debate. It was me expressing my thoughts about being an Oshamir shipper.

Lastly, yes, Reylos party in the Oshamir tag, but you can’t expect people not to tag Oshamir posts accordingly to avoid angering other shippers. The “Oshamir” tag is Osha and Qimir’s playground, and while I will be sure to not go out of my way to offend anyone, I’m not going to not post my thoughts. So if you don’t want to read anything else I’ve got to say, that’s fine. Block away, because biting my tongue to avoid potentially offending Reylos in a tag that does not belong to their fandom, is not happening.

To other Reylos who may read this, understand I’m not coming for your ship nor your entire fandom. I’m talking specifically about how seeing racist undertones from some Reylos in the Oshamir fandom is reminding me of what happened in the past. If you aren’t or weren’t one of those people, this post nor my previous one is referring to you.

[russilton]

What do you think about all this George hate? Lately it’s been a mess lol.

Not to be the annoying middle ground guy— but the whole team is a mess.

George hate has been high since ZV 22 and it’s not going to go away now. The team addressing it would only drive conspiracy theories worse and frankly if I were George I wouldn’t want them to. It’s sometimes better to continue acting unbothered than have your team say something for you, and feed the idea that you are weak and need coddling. People posting hate replies aren’t going to stop because a twitter admin told them to.

They should step up blocking in the right direction, blocking dumbasses who think they’re making a winning point shouting about Lewis to ferrari at you only makes them feel vindicated.

Focus on the actual hate, of which there is plenty, and it applies to BOTH drivers. Yes certain lewis fans have stepped up the name calling and I’ve seen a shameful amount of violent threats over fucking twitter posts even on tumblr. BUT I have also seen a genuinely sickening amount of George fans spouting anti black rhetoric and doing their own bigoted conspiring about Lewis, and that’s disgusting, especially as a fan group who acts high and mighty about being better than other fans because their driver receives abuse. Seeing people bully your guy gives you no right to act like ignorant fucks. Want to act aloof? Stop giving a voice to you shitty thoughts.

And STOP. LOOKING. FOR. HATE. It’s always going to be there, the comments will always be a nightmare. George is not uniquely effected- I have been a Lewis fan for twice as long as George now and lewis’ comments have always been filled to the brim with racist verstappen fans spouting shit. Mercedes didn’t do much shit to address them either. You can keep calling for Merc to address this without constantly going to look for the bad stuff then dragging it back here and being glued to it for days.

I know the routine of how each race goes perfectly now - race was fine, probably painful, Lewis fans will blame George for being a driver, George fans will say that his comments are once again untouchable, neither driver will care and we’ll get a photo of them standing next to each other in an interview. It’s like clockwork.

The only hate I see anymore is the stuff people drag back here. It’s like people complaining about a trash smell at their job and then bringing the trash bag home and dumping it in your living room so people can see what you’re complaining about. Trust me I believed you will you just leave it..

I am frankly resigned about this getting better before next year, I’m just sitting down and doing my own personal analysis of the boys interview pieces, and then waiting for the next race. Lewis leaving is painful enough as it is I don’t need to add seasoning