#on the colonisation and liberation side of things

[worstloki]

Loki surveilling the skyline of New York from the top of Stark Tower and clocking that his favorite paired set of buildings are gone. sad

[halalchampagnesocialist]

honestly i think one of the most annoying and frustrating things about some liberal zionists is that while they recognise Palestinians are oppressed by Israel through the occupation/wider colonisation of Palestine (even if they disagree it's colonisation) and they acknowledge the asymmetry of power between the two sides, they somehow are unable to reconcile that simple fact?

[aishabellasbigblogofeverything]

Israel has finally come out as an ethno-religious state.

Full article under the cut for those who can’t read it:

In Palestine, we are dealing with a complex situation: We have a settler-colonial project that denies its colonialism and argues it is a democracy and we have its victims whose victimisation has been dismissed for decades and whose national liberation struggle has been defamed. 

The colonisers have been successful in manipulating the narrative on what is going on, rewriting history and whitewashing their crimes. Various countries around the world have bought into their lies and kept a “neutral” stance, claiming their positions are “balanced”.

What is there to balance, when one side has one of the most advanced armies in the world, financed and supplied by an allied superpower, and the other side has been altogether abandoned by allies and well-wishers and has only the determination and strength of its people to rely on?  

But these claims of “neutrality” and “balance” are no longer tenable. Israel has stopped playing the democracy pretence game and has revealed itself for what it really is: an apartheid state. On July 19, the Israeli Knesset voted to pass the so-called “nation-state law” which declares Israel “the national home of the Jewish people”. It is now officially an exclusive ethno-religious state.

Unveiling the ethno-religious state of Israel

For us Palestinians, this law reiterates the obvious: namely, that the Zionist ideology is inherently racist and undemocratic. 

The political goal of Zionism was to engineer a demographic shift in Palestine, making the minority Jewish population (which was just 7.6 percent in 1914) a majority through massive Jewish immigration and settlement building and expulsion of the Palestinians.

Inevitably, the expropriation of land went hand-in-hand with the violation of rights of the Palestinian majority. Zionists have always looked at Palestinians as invisible if not absent, or rather “present absentees”. The identity of those who remained within the boundaries of what was to become Israel was erased through the term “Israeli Arab” and their rights curbed by a myriad of laws (“the nation-state law” being just the latest iteration). 

This is because, contrary to modern liberal thinking, in Israel, citizenship and nationality are two separate, independent concepts. In other words, Israel is not the state of its citizens, but the state of the Jewish people. Thus Palestinians in Israel have Israeli passports but they do not have rights equal to those of Jewish citizens.

With the new “nation-state law”, Palestinians in Israel are now considered “native aliens” or foreigners in their own homeland, because Israel is defined by its law as “ the historical homeland of the Jewish people” i.e. not the state of all of its citizens. This is the direct result of Zionism and its ideology of racism.

It is also the direct result of prevailing undemocratic sentiments among Israel’s Jews. The contradiction between professed ideals and actual behaviour, which has been the engine of political change in many places around the world, does not exist in Israel because the democratic creed, or civic democracy, is absent in Israeli society. 

There is no promise of equality for all citizens in Israeli political culture and praxis. And there is no tradition of civil liberties in Israel because such a tradition is incompatible with Zionism. 

Hence, one can understand the antagonism of the establishment to calls for the creation of one state for Palestinians and Jews, one secular democratic state run by parliamentary elections and majority rule in historical Palestine. This idea has been rejected outright by Israeli Jewish society because it would effectively mean the end of Zionism.

And as Israel effectively turns into an exclusive ethno-religious state, we have to ask uncomfortable questions: does this mean that Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc can also be the basis of modern states? And if we still insist that religion should be separate from state, then where is the international outrage? Why isn’t mainstream media obsessing about the Jewish state, the way it was about the “Islamic state”? How is Israel different from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant that sought to establish a state for Muslims only through violence and dispossession? 

The fight against apartheid is on

The passing of the “nation-state law” should eliminate whatever doubt there still is among “neutral” observers that Israel is, in fact, an apartheid state.

Just as apartheid South Africa gave citizenship to white South Africans and relegated blacks to “independent homelands”, Zionism gives all Jews the right to citizenship in the state of Israel, while denying citizenship to Palestinians – its indigenous inhabitants.

While South Africa’s apartheid used race to determine citizenship, the state of Israel uses religious identification to determine citizenship. Just as apartheid South Africa made laws criminalising free movement of blacks on their ancestral land, Israel controls every aspect of Palestinians’ lives through a military occupation infrastructure composed of checkpoints, Jewish-only settlements and roads, and the Wall, combined with a web of legal regulations.

The parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa are infinite. And probably the only major difference between the two is that Israel gets away with its crimes with unprecedented impunity, as evidenced by its latest war crimes in Gaza.  

So what is left for the Palestinian people after the approval of this blatantly racist bill? Well, we definitely are not foolish enough to expect anything from the so-called “international community”.

Years of “negotiations” created only bantustans in the West Bank and a concentration camp in Gaza. Palestinians are still at the receiving end of merciless assaults by racist Israeli troops hidden in their US-made helicopters and F16’s. 

What all US envoys to the region have been trying to do is reach a “solution” in accordance with Israeli conditions, disregarding Security Council resolutions and international law. Neither the current US right-wing administration nor the spineless EU has a fair plan for how to resolve the crisis in Palestine. 

The only thing that we, Palestinians, can count on is the power of people, just as South Africans did when, through a sustained global campaign, they forced governments to boycott their apartheid regime. 

We will continue to expand the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and will continue marching to the fence in Gaza until we bring this madness to an end. We will also continue working on an alternative model, both democratic and secular, which guarantees equality and abolishes apartheid, bantustans and separation in Palestine altogether. We will not give up the fight.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

[lapeaudelamemoire]

Something else that I've really been wanting to get off my chest for a while now -

That Kendrick Lamar Superbowl performance thing - every time I see something about it or saw posts about it praising it -

Continuing to praise, glorify, identify with, and solidifying the idea of the 'US' - that's still a colonial entity that is illegitimate, enacted on genocide and disenfranchisement on a literally nearly-global scale, founded and continuing on stolen land.

Like, I understand people wanting to 'reclaim' something that they identify with; but what you're identifying with and reclaiming is a colonial entity.

Black people making the 'US' flag with their bodies is gross, to me. You're claiming an identity that erases Indigenous, First Nations people. People saying things like 'take America back' from a 'liberal'/'Democrat' stance does the same, when 'America' is a colonial entity.

Coming from being on this continent of stolen land on the other side of the world, where the concept of 'Abolish 'Australia'' is really not that uncommon to grasp, it just strikes me over and over that oppressed peoples in the 'US' are not exempt from 'US' exceptionalism and an apparent blindness about their own colonial/settler-occupant position. Despite all the talk about 'wokeness', 'US-Americans' are not 'woke' to the idea that 'American' is not an identity to particularly be proud of.

(This applies to 'Canadians' as well.)

It is so galling to see Black people discussing and feeling proud of an 'American' identity to me, because I don't understand how you are proud of claiming an identity that is based on the genocide of the native people of the land, when they themselves have been placed in a position of oppression by the same colonialism. In part, this is probably because the people who identify as Bla(c)k here are Indigenous people.

I can't say I really get it, and this is not to dismiss the oppression and marginalisation that Black and non-white people face in the 'US'; I don't have that personal lived experience. I can understand the difficult position, and the need and desire to articulate and to stake a claim to connection to the place one finds themselves birthed and grown up in, but - I also don't get the lack of seeing there, like a layer of film that doesn't seem to be seen or acknowledged often.

It's messy - I get that. But from the point of view of a non-'American'/non-'US'ian, and even as someone from a formerly colonised country where we don't see ourselves as settlers either - it just strikes me every time.

[kaizey]

The IDF deciding to take time away from bombing Palestinian children to actually try and compare what’s happening now to Bloody Sunday is definitely interesting because if we’re gonna run with that dogshit, then we both know which side of that tragedy that still haunts us in Ireland Israel is on and how evil this fucking “state” is

A very brief primer for people outside Ireland who might not be aware of this. In ireland, we have a long history of solidarity with Palestinian liberation given the parallels in our history. But because of the pure dogshit brained tribalism nature of Anglo loyalists, this has for the past 40 years precipitated as a reactionary response by Unonists as a blind support for everything Israel does. Because “colonisers have to stick together”

What you then get from this is seeing large amounts of Israeli flying in loyalist areas and apologism for things like, yknow. Illegally demolishing palestinian villages, shooting civilians, maintaining a literal apartheid state etc, because it is their way of validating their own history of ethnic cleansing, social-apartheid, denying catholics of civil rights etc. But if you want to have a stroke, please understand; Loyalists are like the us confederates on steroids (nevermind the amount of confederacy fetishism and ‘pride’ many here show for them). Large swathes of them, including members of paramilitaries responsible for slaughtering irish civilians are/have active ties to the far right and a active neo-nazi groups (e.g C18)

So, yknow. Just trying to process the coloniser-brained scum take of the IDF daring to stir the feelings of Bloody Sunday while actively bombing children and civilians and preparing to invade Gaza for what is likely to be one of the bloodiest acts of mass slaughter in modern history

Foc Israel

Saoirse don Phalaistín

[ji-jii-visha]

Since we're on Desiblr, I'd like to get your help to know the political situation of our country because I have been very deliberately ignorant about it till now, but I dont think its something that I can ignore anymore.

So, I hear about Hindutva people being violent and oppressive towards other people, namely Dalits, Muslim and Christians. I hear about Muslims being violent and oppresive towards Hindus. I hear about upper caste ones being violent and oppresive against Dalits. I hear about Christians converting Hindus through propaganda. I hear about how colonisers molded our history to fit thier narrative, etc.

And all of these things are happening, there isn't much of doubt about it. So, why does our country still have two very popular ideologies taking the narrative of the whole political environment and we all are playing into it? I feel that half of my life, I've been in a strife where I couldn't decide if I wanna be on the left or the right. Which to me was "feminism, equality, being a human being, fighting against oppression" vs "praying to my gods, practicing my religion". (if I'd choose left, I'd have to not be a practicing hindu, coz I'd see examples/narratives of the same being more popular, trash Hinduism if you're a leftist, so it felt like a fight between Hinduism and others instead of liberalism and traditionalist ideals; and even now I sometimes feel like hiding my Hindu identity because what if someone says that its wrong being a Hindu. I don't know if I'm the only one feeling this way or if I looked at the wrong sources?) And I know everyone who follows either of the ideologies won't be completely on either of the extremes. But shouldn't we on a larger scale, try to fight against these trends or am I going in a completely different direction? Because I feel like there's no one good community or political party. So what could be the solution to that? Because I don't support any of the things happening in the paragraph above and I think we (ideally) talk against the bad as a collective despite it being from different communities, that way perhaps we find that famous phrase we used to talk about as kids "unity in diversity"???

I'm asking this, because the current of ongoing politics gives me a headache. There's no side to choose and the side I wanna choose doesn't have that same base, even though virtually everyone talks about it: love, understanding, peace, equality, etc.

[notasapleasure]

I had this draft for the 8 shows to get to know me meme that no one tagged me in, but then @batri-jopa tagged me for this other meme, so I'm doiing them as a mash-up.

10 comfort shows -

- that tell you more than you wanted to know about me. reasons below the cut, but the tl;dr is:

The Terror

Garrow's Law

Ripper Street

The X Files

Utopia

Interview with the Vampire

(BBC) Ghosts

Futurama

Avatar: the Last Airbender

Detectorists

Honourable mentions: Andor (will probably make the list once season 2 is out, but my trust of Disney Star Wars is *so* thin, I can't commit until then, no matter how excellent season 1 is); The Great (it's so good. The script is still one of the most astonishing works of art I have ever encountered. But comfort TV? hell no.); see also, Bojack Horseman (objectively great. Not comfort TV); Grease Monkeys (I've got to get hold of season 2, but I'm really fond of its coarseness, wish-fulfilment and sureallism).

Tagging 10 people if they wanna join in, but others feel free to say I tagged you! @stripedroseandsketchpads, @notfromcold, @notabuddhist, @donnaimmaculata, @erinaceina, @boogerwookiesugarcookie, @elwenyere, @kheldara, @bellaroles, @jimtheviking

List 10 comfort shows and then tag 10 people

The Terror: Like Ripper Street below, I feel this show deep in my bones and think I must be actually insane when I try to explain to people what I like about it (watching it literally made my husband's depression worse so I'm not allowed to talk about it. Jk. Sort of. About the last bit anyway). The sheer ridiculousness of that era of exploration has been a firm fave for years and I love how the show weaves horror and hubris together, how it's not a straightforward 'natives get vengeance on colonisers' story, but the colonisers ruin it for everyone, poison life for Silna, too (all without any threat of sexual violence towards her CAN YOU BELIEVE IT). I love all the attempts to impose 'civilisation' on the life the men try to live as they come to realise how doomed they are, how key the trappings of their life become - objects as tethers and talismans. I love how utterly futile it all is. How much they all care, and the audience cares despite that. Self-destruction and salvation all jumbled up together. Two full crews go into the ice and die. The end. They do everything they can not to die and it happens anyway, it's the ultimate 'the love was there and it didn't change anything'. And no one learns anything. Perfect TV.

Garrow's Law: Sometimes I do want my historical drama to be wish fulfillment actually, and this is the actual og fave. No, most of the cases weren't actually Garrow's, yes, it's a fluffy liberal take on things that played out in a more complex way, but the cast is so good, and Garrow is such a likeable guy, but then you see his flaws emerge in such a gentle way through the four series, and it really does case-of-the-week with characterisation so well, and it's got that amazing British TV character actor cast where there's always someone in the background you know, and the building romance between Garrow and Sarah, and the real repercussions of it for her are handled so sensitively, augh the culmination of the series with their own personal legal cases is so good.

Ripper Street: in my head this show was so much more than the sum of its parts. Season 1 was on the surface a fun BBC historical romp. Season 2 I had to watch through gritted teeth because Susan's situation quicked me out too much, among other reasons. Season 3 leaned into the more sinister side of the protagonist and came through as something weirder and darker, a vein which ran through Seasons 4 and 5, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I live for my alternative reading of the migration stories and nightmarish flipsides of people that we get running through the background of seasons [3/]4/5, but uh. the show's tumblr fandom is not a place for me. Reid is actually monstrous, and I like him despite/because of that. Oh man, I have so many feelings about this show, and I'd love to do a rewatch and blog about all my crazy theories but I'd probably have to go into witness protection afterwards. But rest assured, it isn't a show about the Ripper, and it's all the better for that. It does class and trauma so well, it also captures all the optimistic curiosity and the utter hypocrisy and hubris of the Victorian era so well.

The X Files: I mean, it's a formative influence, innit. Seasons 1 and 3 are the best, a lot of the 'classic' favourites are episodes I actually really disliked, even though the early seasons are the best a lot of my favourite episodes are from later...the beauty of TXF is that there's so much of it you can hold contradictory opinions about what makes it good, though, and my theory is that it's at its best when it's early and still being allowed to take its course, where even the mytharc hasn't tied itself in knots yet so every episode is of a higher standard, and then later, when the actors have wrested control of their characters from CC enough to play them like they want, but the good episodes are really just MotW ones because the mytharc has vanished up it's own fundament and I've lost track of whose turn it is to have a near-death season arc. Not technically the TV series, but still, Fight the Future is just so much of its time, watching it is like having a warm bubble bath in childhood nostalgia. Even the later series have things to recommend them - I always enjoy Doggett much more than I'm expecting to, and it's about bloody time Scully got a decent female friend in the form of Reyes...I haven't watched seasons 10 onwards though, I don't feel I'm missing much. Five fave episodes: 1.13 Beyond the Sea, 3.4 Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, 5.4 Detour, 7.17 all things, 6.19 The Unnatural.

Utopia: Tragically incomplete at 2 seasons, but what a pair of seasons they are. Brutal and uncompromising, horrible and compelling, but also frequently hilarious and full of the warmest, most fascinating characters who are all on a journey to Getting Much Worse. It's not something I've been able to watch since the pandemic *weak laugh* but I know when I do go back to it it will remain painfully prescient and uncomfortable. The longing for a 'balancing' and a righting of a historic wrong that drives it, and the desperate failures between people who are really just searching for love and don't know how to give/receive it...ugh so good.

Interview with the Vampire: Just rewatched season 1 and I'm just. No notes, five stars. The way Louis think he's a narrator in control, the way Daniel knows such a thing isn't possible, the way Louis does let himself get drawn on things, the way Armand sees the danger in this but it's not in his control any longer. Memory is a monster. The Odyssey of recollection. Fucking won my heart with those lines alone.

(BBC) Ghosts: Ok, I will say that I think the last season was actually a bit weak. They were in a hurry to finish, and they got away with wringing the feels from the important bits (The Captain's death was perfect and I will say this over and over again), but it felt like it was in a rush to come up with scenarios that would force admissions like The Captain's, whereas the show is at its best meandering around in a buffonish way that suddenly results in a Big Oof moment. Robin's arc in season 4 was a great example of this, as was Mary's. But basically it's still simply perfect comfort TV: silly but not malicious, unfair but kind to its characters. I'm going to miss them all so much, but I'm also going to rewatch so much.

Futurama: bit basic maybe, but I have watched it so often and I can watch any episode (ok, except for Jurassic Bark) again and again and again. I don't think I've binged any TV show so often with so many different people. Not sure how I feel about the immanent revival, but this has always been my favourite Matt Groening product, so fingers crossed.

Avatar: the Last Airbender: without getting into like...fandom discourse, man, this is a really perfect show. No need to say 'ooh it gets good after--!', it's just good from the beginning. A really well fleshed-out world, great characters who grow through the series, enough self awareness that the 'clip-show' episode Ember Island Players actually builds on the characterisation and addresses ambiguities in its own plots. A show that sticks to its principles and doesn't fudge the ending and also consistently looks gorgeous.

Detectorists: I had to put it on because no other show has literally made me fall off my chair laughing. Are the main characters useless? Yes. Is it often perplexing that the women in their lives spend any time with them? Yes. But that's forgiveable, because it's ultimately so kind to its beleagured characters and things work out despite their stupid decisions. Also it just captures rural English eccentricity so well. They're all such freaks (affectionate).

[freedom-barricades-bighero16]

Sorry about painting my whole blog black yesterday. I think I should explain what exactly happened in a calmer manner...

So I'll take that you all know I am from the Chinese-speaking world right? I can tell you that you're basically not allowed to say you sympathise with Palestinians in a Chinese-speaking forum. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, people have decided to side with Israel because:

Israel is backed by the media and governments of the Western World.

As a result, China and Russia will back Palestine just to spite them. Many people believe in the "An enemy of a friend is an enemy" rhetoric so they would immediately side with Israel because the USA is our shared ally (when it comes to combating Chinese oppression)

The vast majority of people only knew about the Hamas attack on 7th October when you ask them about Palestine. So they will buy into the false narrative of "Israel is the one being attacked".

If you understand Chinese, you'll see tons of netizens saying things like "Taiwan should learn from Israel" etc, and repeating everything the IDF has said. There are a few exceptions where someone says Taiwan is actually more similar to Palestine (because they have a neighbour coughChinacoughcough who has been wanting to annex them for decades, and believe me China is already colonising Hong Kong, Tibet and East Turkestan), but everyone replying to them would say "stop comparing us with terrorists" and "no snowflake is innocent in an avalanche. Those with tragic endings must be despicable themselves!" The same thing happened to Namewee, one of my favourite Malaysian artists, when he voiced that he doesn't want Palestinians to suffer, and he was met with people ridiculing him. I'm glad he doesn't seem to be afraid of these comments.

Basically, they are saying that Palestinians deserve to be massacred because they attacked Israel and turned to China and Russia for support. And to make things worse, when it comes to other causes that I'm trying to support, such as Liberate East Turkestan, they say they support Palestine and tons of their followers have said they're a joke.

And, tho it's not really relevant to yesterday, there's the thing with many pro-Palestine netizens suddenly supporting Iran's theocratic regime because it backed Hamas. I've been trying to follow the Iran protests for a year now (in fact it's before I found out about I/P) and this is very demoralising to see.

I already feel alienated enough from my own people when I supported BLM, and everyone else, including my mother, became avid Trump supporters, and anyone who is pro-democracy but doesn't like him would be attacked for their views with nobody else standing up for them. And now with Palestine, I feel even more isolated, from both Hong Kongers as well as my new comrades.

I'm pretty sure that the same things that happened with my Mum will happen to me again if I tell other Hong Kongers that I support Palestine, and I'm afraid that if I tell my new friends that I also support the Iran protests, they will turn against me too... Which I'm sure will happen and I'll be all alone in the world.

[hadleysmis]

巨人傳- 西南戦争

Kyojinndenn- Seinan War

What is interesting about using the Seinan War as the screen equivalence of the June Rebellion in the Shouwa Movie of Les Misérables (Kyojinndenn), is that... I didn't root for either side.

First thing's first, what is the Seinan War? Well, to put it shortly, it was the last proper rebellion from the Samurai clans against the Imperial Japanese Government. Before this war, the Samurai class were being abolished, and thus the Samurai fought to keep their power.

However, this didn't work, and the Imperial Japanese Government took full of control of the country. This was seen as the 'final curtains', if you will, of the feudal system.

Feudal. The system in which a minority of the 'superior class' exists, wherein the lower class individuals, like peasants, worked for them.

Imperial. The government which wished to conquer East, Southeast Asia, and beyond.

Ryouma's (Marius) grandfather was a Samurai, and he sticks to his bloodline duty and fights in the Seinan War. He survives, Chiyo (Cosette) is by his injured side after he's brought to her by Oonuma/Sannpei (Jean Valjean), and he promises her he will never enter another war again.

Now, the "never do war again" part could be alluding to the rising tension as the movie was made in 1938 (and also to some historians state that 1937 was the beginning of World War II given what (Lugou Bridge incident) Japan did to China); so it could be some sort of a stance in the looming or already begun war.

Even if the Second World War had not begun, the Second Sino-Japanese War had. So it might be in reference to not desiring the said war.

However, it is romance-based of Chiyo and Ryouma, and it does not linger long on the consequences of the wars. Instead, it is used to show how much Ryouma and Chiyo cared and loved each other.

But if we take a step back for a second consider the bubble of the Seinan War... Were we supposed to root for Ryouma?

If we think about who lead the war, it was Saigou Takamori (西郷隆盛). He has shrines and statues dedicated to him (you can see it on his wikipedia page in Japanese), and thus is safe to say he is held somewhat highly. He embodied Bushido, and showed honour in the system that relied a lot on loyalty. So it's understandable why he was pardoned after his death by the Imperial government, as he showed the masculine, ideal way to fight for a cause and die in your stern belief.

So, then we must wonder if it was pro-Samurai, and thus used as the equivalence of June Rebellion.

The June Rebellion's equivalence never has to be exact to make its point. Kundan portrayed the Quit India Movement-- a fight which was successful, and also had actually planning and a National committee which predated the event by many year and thus was not as sudden as the French event-- it still portrayed the themes of June Rebellion. And, oh, you knew which side to support.

Or with the official Korean translation of the English version of the musical using terminology from the years after the liberation of Korea from the Japanese Empire. Even though this version focuses on pride of the National identity and the anger against the colonisation in history, it still portrays the June Rebellion equivalence because there is a side that is being treated unfairly, and a side which abuses its power.

Not to mention many Koreans bringing up events such as the Gwangju Uprising as a direct parallel to the June Rebellion. Gwangju Uprising being yet another student protest which demanded democracy, but was brutally suppressed by the military government.

There are many instances where the equivalence is not exact and precise, but due to the themes, it makes it good, or perfect. It's okay to talk about colonisation in Les Mis-inspired story. It's okay to talk about another student uprising in another context to the French history.

But if we were to choose any period in Japanese history to parallel this event, would people truly choose the Seinan War?

I think this whole thing boils down to what we think the June Rebellion is about, and what makes a good adaptation of the battle. Whether it be a war or an uprising or a battle or a rebellion, the themes in play seems to be the most important component.

So, when it comes with the choice of using Seinan War to tell the tale of Les Misérables, I must admit, I am still scratching my head about it.

[brotheralyosha]

Because people, including a few people I ordinarily respect, who I know to be capable of being non-stupid, are being incredibly fucking stupid about this. You could observe that this nightmare is the culmination of decades of Israeli cruelty. You could point out that the IDF was caught off guard because so many of its soldiers were busy in the West Bank, guarding settlers as they rampaged through Palestinian villages. But that’s not enough; you psychos are actually endorsing this. You are directly identifying resistance and liberation with a slaughter of unarmed civilians. I know why you’re doing this, of course. You are trapped in a little game of meaningless discursive gestures, in which you have to constantly affirm the eternal righteousness of whatever side you’ve chosen, or else people online will make fun of you. And so you end up saying that atrocity is resistance, this is what it will always look like, and anyone who has any reservations about it does not belong to the cause. You end up aligning yourselves with the ugliest, most eliminationist strands of Israeli fascism, and you don’t even realise it! I promised myself a long time ago that I wouldn’t ever use this thing to have one-sided arguments with cretins on Twitter, but as far as I can tell nobody’s attempted to express this cretinism in prose so I don’t have much choice. Look; look at this stupid, stupid shit:

I know the lines, obviously. I’ve used plenty of them myself. The things you’re supposed to say when the side you support does something monstrous, the rhetorical flourishes you bring out in the face of mass murder. The small acts of intellectual blackmail you carry out against yourself. Lines like this:

This is the most basic, brute-force gesture: for everything monstrous that has been done here, remember that Israel does the same stuff too. Resistance fighters kill children in their homes: well, what do you think an Israeli missile does? Resistance fighters kidnap dozens of civilians: do you know how many ordinary Palestinians are trapped in Israeli jails, convicted by the farcical military courts? And you’re right: for everything that was done over the weekend, Israel really has done worse, and it will probably continue to do worse in the future. There is nothing Hamas could do that would be equivalent to seventy-five years of violent dispossession and occupation and apartheid. But for a few golden days, the famously lopsided ratio between Israeli and Palestinian civilian casualties went the other way. Is that enough for you? Does that satisfy? Is that justice? Is that all you were really after, all this time?

. . . .

In the end, I think all these lines are doing the same thing. They’re a series of mental tricks that allow those who know that murdering defenceless people is wrong to pretend that sometimes murdering defenceless people is fine. Your stomach turns, the way mine does, at the thought of pointing a gun on someone who poses no threat to you and suddenly ending their life. But you know that this is being done in the name of liberation, which means you have to be seen to support it. And so to smooth over the gap, you produce this bullshit. You produce evasive bullshit about the misdeeds of the other side or the priorities of other people. You produce intimidatory bullshit about how your own conscience is politically irrelevant. You produce the utterly shameful mystifying Fanonian bullshit about the violence of the oppressed, how much nobler and more defensible it is than the violence of the oppressor. And yes, there is a history and a context here, but violence is violence is violence. What actually face each other are not oppressor and oppressed, or coloniser and colonised, or even Israel and Palestine. It’s not a context or a history. It’s a person with a gun pointing it at a person without a gun, and killing them. And that’s what you’re trying to forget.

Sam Kriss in with the only good take (see also @dostoyevsky-official, @triviallytrue et al.)

[hoursofreading]

In the end, I think all these lines are doing the same thing. They’re a series of mental tricks that allow those who know that murdering defenceless people is wrong to pretend that sometimes murdering defenceless people is fine. Your stomach turns, the way mine does, at the thought of pointing a gun on someone who poses no threat to you and suddenly ending their life. But you know that this is being done in the name of liberation, which means you have to be seen to support it. And so to smooth over the gap, you produce this bullshit. You produce evasive bullshit about the misdeeds of the other side or the priorities of other people. You produce intimidatory bullshit about how your own conscience is politically irrelevant. You produce the utterly shameful mystifying Fanonian bullshit about the violence of the oppressed, how much nobler and more defensible it is than the violence of the oppressor. And yes, there is a history and a context here, but violence is violence is violence. What actually face each other are not oppressor and oppressed, or coloniser and colonised, or even Israel and Palestine. It’s not a context or a history. It’s a person with a gun pointing it at a person without a gun, and killing them. And that’s what you’re trying to forget. In the Mishnah it is written that Adam was created alone to teach his descendants that the entire world can be contained in a single life, and that to destroy a single life is to destroy an entire world. The same principle is repeated in surah 5 of the Qur’an, al-Ma’idah. ‘We ordained for the Children of Israel that whoever takes a life, it will be as if they killed all of humanity.’ We have always known. I am an anti-Zionist because I believe that murder is wrong. The state of Israel was born bathed in blood, and its continued existence depends on regular slaughter. Unlike most of the people cheerfully excusing this massacre, I have seen the occupation of Palestine with my own eyes; I have met the people living under its shadow. I know that something very, very ugly might be coming. Since Saturday, Israeli jets have repeatedly bombed Gaza, levelling entire towers, killing hundreds, for essentially no reason other than to shock and demoralise and inflict suffering. There are two million people crammed together in that tiny wedge of land, and half of them are children. But this is just a kind of holding pattern; Israel lazily commits mass killings while its leaders and generals work out what they actually want to do. They were perfectly happy with the status quo in Gaza: a population kept just above starvation level, occasionally emitting rockets like an alarm clock, reminding them to mow the lawn. Hamas’ massacre has, at least, made the status quo untenable. It’s hard to imagine that what comes next won’t be worse. Whatever it is, all responsibility will belong with Israel. But the fact remains that the only just future is one in which Israelis and Palestinians live with each other, however uneasily, and not with ghosts. Every massacre of civilians makes that outcome more unlikely and the situation more hopeless. I respect the oppressed enough to acknowledge that while they might be disempowered, they are not powerless, and they have a responsibility too. THOU SHALT NOT KILL is a commandment. It is not partial. It does not admit excuses. And if you only believe that murder is wrong when it aligns with your anti-Zionism, then you are already lost.

Sam Kriss

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

hi! i just saw your analysis of the “treasure of my heart” quote and omg you have a GIFT for analysis! In that post you mentioned the “Rare Spices” billboard Inej talks about in CK; I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on that!

Hi, thank you so much!!! I personally think that the “Rare Spices” advert is one of the most important pieces of information we get to further both worldbuilding and charactisation, so let’s talk about it.

The advert is massive sign painted on the side of a warehouse in Ketterdam, near Sweet Reef, and alongside the words “Rare Spices” it depicts two young Suli women in “scant silks”, mimicking those that Inej was forced to wear at the Menagerie. When she’s first liberated from Tante Heleen, Inej begins to explore Ketterdam and one of the first things she sees beyond the city centre is this advert. It terrifies her. It terrifies her so much that she stands there just staring at it for an unspecified amount of time, before turning and running back to the Slat faster than she has ever run before. In fact, it terrified her so very much that she has a nightmare about the girls on the billboard that night. In Inej’s nightmare the girls come to life but are trapped in the paint, banging on the billboard to get her attention to ask her to free them, whilst she is powerless to help them. Inej at the time comments on the horror of seeing this scene mere miles from where “the rights to her body” were bought and sold and haggled over (I think most of that is quotation but I don’t have my books to hand so I’m not 100% sure), and it tells us so much about how the Suli culture is exploited and fetishised within this community; whether it’s Ketterdam, the rest of Kerch, or the world at large (we could argue this is highly implied through Zoya’s POV, but it’s a whilst since I read KoS and RoW so if anyone wants to weigh in on Zoya in this then please do I’d love to read it 😁).

In my post where I mentioned the Rare Spices poster I was specifically focusing on the way Inej’s culture was sexualised for the purpose of being at the Menagerie, and how we know that other cultures are appropriated and fetishised by the Pleasure Houses as well (the Fjerdan girl at the Menagerie wears the wolf mask, an animal sacred to her people, and Nina wore a fake Kefta that was made in Kerch and is described to be a pale imitation of real Ravkan-made Kefta). But for Inej, up to the point of seeing this sign, that was a small part of the world; the actions of the few, a localised evil that she understood to be the opposite of the rest of the world because she still viewed everything with a childlike innocence. Seeing this sign breaks that façade for her and is arguably the first step towards what she views as the ultimate corruption of her innocence: murder. Because once she knew that the world on mass would see her and her people the way she was forced to present them, to appropriate her own culture, and to be fetishised for her “caramel” skin and “farcical mockery of a Suli caravan” she was forced to admit to herself that there was no way of returning to the person she used to be; not only someone who had been violated, exploited, and abused but also someone who believed that on the whole the world was a good place and that as long as you avoided the small parts of it that were dangerous you’d be okay.

And consider the wording of the sign. “Rare spices” next to two young Suli women wearing “scraps of mint-coloured silk”. There is a long history in our world of sexualising the so-called “exotic”; even the English/British idea, that I assume is what led to this same idea in the USA and much of the English-speaking world, that blonde women are more attractive, often leading them to be over-sexualised, can be drawn back to the Roman Colonisation of England because the vast majority of Romans were brunette or dark-haired and they saw the blonde Anglo-Saxons as “exotic” and attractive. (To be clear, in our own society this long history sexualisation has been mostly aimed towards people of colour and I’m absolutely not ignoring that, I’m just using this example because it’s the furthest back in history that I know of being as the colonisation was around 43 CE). The presentation of not only the spices but these women as “rare” to increase their sex appeal enhances this idea of ‘the exotic’ and by comparing them to the spices it, very similarly to all of the language surrounding Inej at the Menagerie, labels the women as stock, as produce, as something consumable like spices.

But something that I personally find really beautiful that Leigh Bardugo does surrounding this sign as well, is that Inej never condemns the girls on the billboard for the ‘suggestive’ outfits they wear, as long as they are worn by their own choice. She imagines that when she has her ship and begins to hunt slavers that the paint will peel from the sign and that she will have finally succeeded in freeing the girls, that they will “dance for no-one but themselves” and this is so beautiful but also so important as a declaration of female empowerment and autonomy because they have every right to dance and wear whatever they want to, but no-one has the right to force them to do that.

[pegaace]

Analysis on Witch from Mercury, Colonialism, The Tempest, and Caliba(r)n

Okay I know this is my first post ever but I was tryna find somewhere to put my thoughts after seeing a bunch of people everywhere slander Caliban and why that is not it and how my boi is innocent, good actually. For qualifications I did an undergrad lit class that covered The Tempest like 2 years ago so that's fine right (apologies to my profs if I fuck any of this up)

Okay so for starters yes by now everyone knows WfM is The Tempest, Prospera is Prospero (or Prospera actually, there was a 2010 film adaptation that had the gender switch already), Aerial is Ariel, etc etc. So therefore Caliban has to be this villainous, "monstrous" creature right?

Haha no sit down cos no that would be boring. (and also kinda racist as I'll explain) Notice how in the original Prospero isn't the villain of the story, not really, he's just getting revenge for being wronged years ago and trying to ship the kids together. But if recent gwitch is any indication, Prospera truly is the villain of this story, breaking hearts and stopping at nothing to destroy the Benerit group AND earth. Now I wonder which other adaptation of The Tempest has Prospero as the big bad HMMMM :thinking:

Enter Aime Cesaire and A Tempest. Written in 1969, it deals with a lot of the more unpleasant connotations of Shakespeares play. Let me lay it all out for you. So you're saying Prospero, a white dude, comes to this island, uses his western magic to overthrow the native witch (Sycorax), wrecks the land of its magic, and then enslaves her son to do his work for him, constantly insulting his appearance and intelligence? HMMMM seems pretty sus (racist and colonial) to me.

Cesaire, writing during a time of decolonial movements throughout the world, was rightfully really mad at colonizers for forcing their way upon natives with violence, and especially with the use of language to control said populations. Caliban has also been repeatedly dehumanised through previous adaptations of Shakespeares work slowly turning him from a man into a monster, not even human. This is similar to how non-european people have constantly been treated in the past.

Now like wait... Forcing communication through a set language? Dehumanisation? Colonisation of oppressed peoples? Where have we seen that before...? HMMMM

(its almost like... permet scores and gundam technology... Calibarn being free of permet links is like Caliban refusing language...)

And here's where I see the great potential of a Gundam Caliban. Gundam is certainly no stranger to decolonial movements (shoutout to my fave Gundam ZZ and the bois in Blue team and the African liberation front) and I think having Caliban as the Gundam to finally end Spacian oppression (perhaps in a sequel idk if Suletta is getting that far after bonking her mom by the end of the season) would be a great take.

As a side note, Aerial is kinda portrayed negatively in Cesaire's work for choosing to work for Prospero in exchange for their own freedom, as kind of a sellout who makes things worse and is ultimately tricked and trapped anyways and... hey! She's in a giant coffin now and Suletta is unhappier than ever! Oops.

Also like I qrted this on my twt but like its important to remember that Caliban is human too, and will respond to accordingly. They (and this might be where i disagree with @adracat a lil on their otherwise excellent posts) arent just a violent unthinking monster, thats just unfortunately how racism often portrays people of colour. If Suletta shows compassion and humanity towards Calibarn, like how she did to Aerial, and how Eri was able to connect with Lfrith in the prologue when Vanadis had failed, I'm sure she'll be able to bring Calibarn over to her side. And because they can connect so fully via human emotions and love (this is where I do agree with adra that love is the answer and key to open the door) (wooo yeah another love powered robot!! G Gundamming time) I dont think Quiet Zero will be able to stop them, as Suletta will have made the ultimate, unmediated connection between woman and machine, becoming one with it in the way Cardo Nabo had always truly hoped for. To don Gundam and live in space.

Okay sorry for the disorganised post but like one last thing I know I said it'd be nice for Calibarn to show up again in S2 but the other theory I have (which might or might not be true cos lets be real gwitch only rhymes, never copies, and i dont even know where schwarzette fits into all this [goatmom gundam my beloved i miss schwarzletta theory still]) is that the ending of A Tempest has Prospero send the girlies off as usual, but then still choose to stay on the island to fight with Caliban forever, till he can finally fully dominate him, cos racists are shit like that. This continues for a rlly long time cos his magics kinda prevent him from just dying of old age and he lives on, like a vampire sucking life from the island (wow capitalism huh) and its implied he and Caliban are just locked in this long struggle to the death until the day he finally croaks and the colonized can finally be free. Now what other gundam has an eternal struggle with fascism hmm?

idk just thought it might be cool for the gundam sisters to push suletta out of the way (maybe out of quiet zero?) whilst trapping prosperas grudge within it for all time, that would also be dramatic and neat lol. Come to think of it if Prospera does it itd be like ZZ again too lol with Haman pushing Judau away.

[bluespiritshonour]

On second thought: I'm guessing you asked 'cause I said I'm sure maiko would get back together in comic?

I said that because avatar studios have shown time and time again that they don't give a flying fuck about Mai (she's the only one who doesn't have a profile on the official website)

I don't think they'd dedicate a book to her if it wasn't to get her back with Zuko to tidy things up before the movie drops.

But there are things I'm afraid of:

They're gonna pull a Smoke and Shadow and not have them get back together explicitly but end on an ambiguous note. I want something concrete. I've had enough of the "there wasn't time/scope" argument. "Ashes is about Mai and the academy—" well, The Promise was also about colonisation and not only was the politics of it tone deaf and liberal trash, they still managed to make maiko actually toxic. They're never lacking time and space where Zuko disregards Mai and they fight and break up. Only when it comes to him proving that he'd treat her right does the "there wasn't time" argument crops up.

They're gonna act like it was Mai not getting enough character development (which is true to a certain extent, she was a side character) that needed to be fixed for them to get back together and not Zuko's many kinds of mistreatment of her. He never even apologises to her on-screen/on-panel. I want him on knees groveling for her. And not necessarily to take him back either (because what has he done to deserve that?) but simply because he's consistently mistreated her

Basically Zuko doing nothing to disprove a pattern of behavior the writers have written him into (whether on purpose or accident is immaterial) where he only cares about her when it's convenient to him. The moment things get hard he drops the ball.

Because frankly, I don't want that kind of fate for Mai. She'd actually be better off single than settle for a man like that. Besides, she has friends too.

Did you see a leak from Ashes of the Academy?

No. I haven't 🤔

Shall I go looking for them or something 👀👀👀

[werewolfetone]

Funniest thing is when white liberal usamericans make anti-england memes & say they hate england as a historical insitution & then in the next breath they mock irish names & say scots is a funny silly joke & talk about how disgusting food created by british poc is & say that actually immigrants to england aren't english they're Other & get mad when people talk about how britain colonised their country & make fun of the dialects of working class & poc english people & idolise the aesthetics of 19th century colonisers &c &c. like can u pick a side please lol

[kaijubluu]

PLEASE YOUR COD OPINION as someone who also comes from oppression seeing crackers day in day out fall prey to cod propaganda is so. So FRUSTRATING!!!! my people aren't as vilified, but I've seen it with Cuban and African characters in these games- it's so OUGHHHHH. Seeing people praise lazar and then turn around and post pro Palestine content too (when Lazar is a confirmed Israeli coloniser.) ! I just. GOTDAMN!!!! I feel for you, it's so stressful seeing what people do

(rant not directed at u my dear latinstalin im just glad someone understands what im feeling at this moment /gen)

(also mutuals this isn't directed @ u if i had a problem w yall i woulda blocked n unfollowed <33 /gen)

YES GOD YES

it's so fucking EXHAUSTING seeing official content tout this stuff, fans tout this stuff, the general populace tout this stuff. i am fucking tired.

GOD don't fucking get me started on lazar (and park to an extent, never really liked her)

lazar - isr@eli, mossad, the exact fucking thing these asswipes claim to hate in their pretty little aesthetic allyship posts. like, shut the fuck up, man! your ''caring'' doesn't mean jack fucking shit to anyone with half an ounce of sense when you turn around and coo over the propoganda curated to make you sympathise with murderers and colonisers.

and fucking UGH the villifying of my people (any minority present in these games tbh) vs the "i'll make him better" mindset surrounding white characters/villains.

look at hadir, salazar, the federation as a whole. I don't see anyone defending 1. a rebel trying to liberate his people, 2. a soldier choosing his countryman over another nation, or 3. the other, not much worse, side in a war.

funnily enough, when makarov (a war criminal with no qualms killing innocents) or adler (a cia agent who brainwashed someone, a complete violation of their personhood) are the characters in question, these people salivate at the opportunity to pretty up their stories, brush away their crimes, make what they've done to innocents seem like funny little quirks. richtofen, the nazi from vanguard, they're just worse version of this phenomenon.

why isn't this luxury afforded to middle eastern characters? latin american characters? asian characters? black characters? why do we have to see ourselves as savages, villains, terrorists, time and again, deemed utterly irredeemable? why can these people can wash the muck off of their favourites and parade them as remorseful and forgiven?

it disgusts me. these people disgust me.