Doctor Who has unfortunately been review bombed on IMDb - this is in no way saying people aren’t allowed to criticise the show and people are absolutely allowed to have their own opinions, but unfortunately a lot of the reviews are coming from a private DW group on Facebook who preach racist and homophobic views, and they’ve all collectively decided to review bomb to try and take Doctor Who down. (I’m not in this group, I’ve seen screenshots on X)
If you could spare a minute - and I know it’s a lot of work - but I took two seconds to create an account and wrote a quick, honest review in the hopes of drowning out the blatant hate. I’ll always do whatever to help my little time-travelling show stay safe.
Below the cut is a template email to send to Edinburgh Pride regarding sponsorship from Aegon, who have investments linked to the genocide in Palestine. Please feel free to use this text or edit it and make it your own and send it to [email protected]
Dear Edinburgh Pride,
As a queer person living in Edinburgh, I was deeply saddened to learn that the march partner for Edinburgh Pride 2024 is Aegon.
In December 2023 the ‘Don’t Buy Into Occupation Coalition’ published a report that showed Aegon have US$564million invested via shares and bonds in companies operating in illegal settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories. Source: https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_DBIO-III-Report_11-December-2023.pdf
We are watching a live-streamed genocide every day - over 36,000 people in Palestine have been murdered by Israeli forces, including at least 15,000 children. The brutality of these atrocities are unthinkable, with evidence of torture and targeting of hospitals, ambulances and refugee camps.
We all have a responsibility to do what we can to end this genocide. As queer people, we are part of a rich history of resisting oppression and dehumanisation - of both ourselves and those we stand in solidarity with. Pride started as a protest against homophobia, transphobia and police violence. It is an important moment to come together as a community to celebrate queer joy and resilience.
But how can we celebrate using profits stained with the blood of our siblings in Palestine?
Aegon has $564million invested in companies that have been listed by the UN as “raising human rights concerns” for their operations in illegal settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories, In 1948, 750,000 Palestinian people were displaced from their homes and lands and since then, Israeli settlements have been used to spread this process of colonisation.
In addition to this figure, Aegon also has major investments in Eaton Corp Plc., who supply parts for helicopters and fighter jets to the Israeli military and have recently been the target of major protests at their factory in Dorset. They also invest in Amazon, who support the Israeli military with surveillance technology used against Palestians.
Israel has long used ‘pinkwashing’ as a tactic to justify the brutal repression of Palestinians, using queer people to legitimise this horrific violence. We refuse to allow this to be done in our name.
The tide is turning on companies like Aegon that profit from investments in the companies complicit in genocide. Recently, both Hay and Edinburgh Book Festival have dropped Baillie Gifford as a sponsor after over 800 authors called on them to divest from companies involved in Israel and the fossil fuel industry.
I ask that Edinburgh Pride:
Calls on Aegon to commit to divest from companies involved in supplying technology to Israel and operating in illegal settlements.
Drop Aegon as a sponsor until they are able to show evidence of divestment.
Publicly call for a ceasefire and a free Palestine.
There is no pride in genocide.
I look forward to hearing your response.
XX
Sources:
Investments in companies operating in illegal settlements https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_DBIO-III-Report_11-December-2023.pdf
Investments in Eaton https://extranet.secure.aegon.co.uk/static/sxhub/pdf/client-pen-distribution.pdf
Investments in Amazon https://www.aegon.co.uk/content/dam/auk/assets/publication/fund-factsheet/standard_bkj9zs0.pdf
The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
hey reminder to continue boycotting eurovision and instead turn your eyes on gaza where the last media outlet al jazeera has just been shut down so that Israel can launch its attack on the most densely populated area in the world without scrutiny. Dont stop talking about Palestine
i think I’ll forever be annoyed at how cas’ character arc for a whole series was finding his father and even prayed to him for help a season later as a last resort, but when put in a room with him they will apparently *ignore* each other and not even acknowledge each other’s existence??
I have some thoughts about this one particular moment
I have never, NEVER seen so much emotion and depth just poured into one little sentence.
What makes it so devastating is when you realize this is a child, who was born into a world so dangerous, he had to grow up too fast (literally) and he’s meeting the man he chose to be his father for THE FIRST TIME.
How do you miss someone you’ve never met before?
Simple, when all you’ve experienced since the moment of your birth, is hostility, contempt and suspicion. All jack has at this point is two men, one wants to kill him. The other wants to use him (albeit a bit more kindly than the first). He doesn’t know what he wants in the world but he knows what he doesn’t want and it’s everything he’s getting from the Winchesters. So he misses the only two people in the world who ever loved him. He can’t have his mom, so he misses Castiel because he misses being ‘SAFE’. And safe is what Cas made him feel before he was even born.
I will never get over how soft and utterly relieved but at the same time TIRED Jack sounds in this moment. To finally have someone in his corner. To watch his back. So he doesn’t have to always be on guard anymore. And I can relate with that. I do relate with that. And that’s why this moment always makes me cry. Cad and Jack deserved to go some place far away and should’ve got to live in a lakeside cabin in southern France and been a family.
Watching season 14 and this is my biggest grievance with TV shows where they introduce a certain storyline, establish a certain relationship and then forcefully push the main character into it and make it all about them.
If you were going to create a whole narrative where Castiel first vows to kill Kelly Kline, decides not to at the last moment, begins to care for and protects Kelly and her baby and you have Kelly explicitly say she wants Castiel to raise jack in his image then you HAVE to stick by it in the later seasons.
EVEN if you kill Castiel so you have a reason to keep jack with the winchesters, once he returns you have to respect the narrative you YOURSELF established in the previous season.
You can’t shove Dean in the middle of a father-son relationship that you built between Jack and Cas. It’s okay for supporting characters to have independent storylines. Dean has plenty to do already, not every relationship needs to revolve around him. And I’m saying that as a Dean Girl. It’s embarrassing and almost feels like you’re afraid to give other characters any importance because you’re scared they’ll overshadow your heroes. It’s a disservice to your own characters supporting and mains.
The only show that ever got this dynamic of supporting characters having their own independent relationships among themselves was greys anatomy and that’s why it’s been on air for so long.
We should’ve had more Cas and Jack story withOUT the winchesters and I’ll die on this hill.