#and also for like watcher reasons probably

[jalo-parker]

So uh.. apparently 3 years does some crazy things to a guy (me)

The old one was done on feb 25th 2022 and the new one was done on feb 27th 2025 (yes i know im posting it a week later) I've been a fan of grian since around the time he first joined hermitcraft but I never made any fanart, so I believe that is my first ever grian fanart :3

[madeofjules]

I'll never agree with the short Peeta/tall Katniss takes because their canonical sizes are both narratively and thematically relevant.

Peeta's medium height and stocky build give him the size and strength to overpower most of his competitors in the arena, yet he rarely uses those traits to hurt people despite being in circumstances that encourage violence. Having the power and motive to be deadly and choosing to be kind instead is what defines Peeta's character.

Katniss's small size generally puts her at a disadvantage in the Games but she's still very deadly. I like that she's earned the skills (bow and arrow, hunting) and survivor mentality that make her a formidable tribute because she's not supposed to be this naturally gifted "chosen one" type figure. She's a regular teenage girl who has some special qualities but still needs a lot of help to win the Games.

Their size difference is also relevant in their relationship. Katniss has had to take care of herself since she was a young girl because of her mother's neglect, and as a result she doesn't trust other people to protect her. She's understandably mistrustful of Peeta's kindness when they become tributes, as one of them has to die for the other to live and he has the ability to kill her with his bare hands if he wants to (which we see later on when he's hijacked). Yet once they become allies, his larger size is no longer a potential threat but a source of comfort and protection; being held by him is the safest Katniss has felt with anyone since her parents held her as a little kid. And after they leave the arena, his strong arms are the only ones she trusts to guard her from her nightmares.

So even though I do think short guy-tall girl couples deserve more rep, it doesn't really make sense for Peeta and Katniss. And tbh viewing the gentle and compassionate boy as short and the tough hunter girl as tall is a little stereotypical lol.

[royalarchivist]

Jaiden: Cucurucho, you have a lot of power, right?

Cucurucho: ...I don't know. Maybe.

Roier: Ah... Yes, you know, don't act like a dumbass, you have it. You have it, man. Eh?

Jaiden: Is there a way for us to protect all the Eggs? Do you know? I don't want anything to happen to the Eggs that happened to Bobby.

Cucurucho: Ha ha ha

Roier: WHAT? [Smacks Cucurucho]

Jaiden: [Bops him] Headpats.

Cucurucho: Maybe.

Jaiden: [Continues to bop him] Headpats. C'mon, I can get it out of you! Headpats! Chin scratches! Belly rubs!

Roier: [Joins Jaiden in bopping Cucurucho, chuckling and laughs]

Jaiden: Yeah? He's comin' around!

[Jaiden and Roier both laugh]

[arctic-bookclub]

oh also one thing that i realized just now: qbagi’s initial suspicion over what’s happening to qphil being tied to the federation is technically not wrong

you know what drew qphil’s deities’ interest to him and quesadilla island? the birdcage. rose said in her earliest message ”I could sense the bleeding heart of the one I once knew, far, far away”. the deities noticed qphil had disappeared, and maybe they were curious to know what had happened, but the thing that drove them to find him was rose’s want to help him. and if she really was the one that freed him from the cage (and it’s heavily hinted she was), that birdcage undeniably was the thing that launched all of this into action.

how the enderking figured out that qphil had been weakened? we don’t know, maybe he sensed it, maybe he had already been observing him, maybe he noticed rose leaving to look for qphil, it doesn’t really matter. what does matter is that the trauma qphil got from being locked in that cage is what gave the enderking the perfect opportunity to strike. and is what led us to where we are now in the story. so even thought the federation isn’t ultimately the one tormenting qphil right now, it can still all be traced back to them and their continual abuses of power :)

[sn0wp1anets]

the thing is if 'jimmy is an adult playing a block game with his friends you dont know him' is something that can be brought into an argument against scott the character being abusive you are implying that jimmy the character has some kind of transcendent knowledge that his true form in real life has acknowledged that he and scott are friends and nothing that happens to his character is real and everything is happy and consensual. and like. if you want to have this interpretation of the life series thats completely fine but itd be pretty fucking boring . imagine if after jimmy permadied in 3rd life scott the character went 'hey its ok that jimmys just died because im having coffee with him next week' and we all just accepted this as part of the storyline. to acknowledge jimmy and scotts irl friendship and consent position you also have to acknowledge every single other cc irl factor and you would then be left with zero storyline other than 'so these people are roleplaying in minecraft but it doesnt matter because none of it is real' which imo is a pretty fucking boring way of analysing/interpreting roleplay.

[sun-marie]

preferring the first poe1 game to Deadfire is perfectly valid but preferring it bc it has better pacing is wild to me ngl

[pzyii]

Y'all ever think about that the like last conversation Buffy and willow had irl in s2 before Buffy ran away was Buffy saying willow was their last hope.

And that the last conversation they had, just the 2 of them, in S5 before Buffy died was Buffy saying willow was her big gun

Yeah.... Me neither (lying)

[spookierz]

getting to the point where im writing self insert joining hermitcraft fanfiction in my head

[violetsquare111]

there are so many areas in the watcher guys..... at this rate i will be done with the campaign in 3 years

(areas i've mostly or fully explored: coral caves, corrupted factory, torrential railway, aether ridge, rusted wrecks, desolate tract, turbulent pump. now onto heat ducts)

[toothlickpick]

i read the conclave book in less than a day and watched the conclave movie twice and i feel like i can say edward berger definitely read the book and thought "you know what the problem here is. not enough benitez as a jesus allegory content"

just a few changes to showcase this:

1. In the book Benitez is constantly portrayed being welcomed by Filipinos, Africans and other nations due to his reputation. Multiple times the book has shown Benitez being dragged into groups and numerous nationals listening intently to what he has to say, which is why he rose so slowly but prominently.

In the movie, Benitez is almost always alone--the scene where Lawrence finds him looking at the late popes turtles alone was originally Benitez talking to a group but deciding to leave to speak to Lomelli instead. The movie frames Benitez in the same quiet but thoughtful work as it does the nuns and all the important female figures in the Church--watching, listening, saying nothing until the spirit moves him to speak the truth. The book shows Benitez still being involved in the politics of the Conclave, dragged around his social groups, whether he wants to be or not; the movie expressly separates Benitez entirely from the politics, placing him in a kind of objective, angelic watcher position.

2. Jacopo Lomelli's name is changed to Thomas Lawrence. The book is likely referring to Jacopo as Jacob, the man who wrestled God, but in the movie he is clearly focused on being Doubting Thomas, the man who interrogates and sees proof of Jesus's resurrection from an abdomen wound. Guess who Lawrence was interrogating about the treatment of an abdomen wound in the movie

3. Speaking of the treatment, the movie changed Benitez's condition from having a fused labia to having ovaries, and also changed the way he found out from a car bomb explosion injury to an appendectomy. Again. This is probably an allusion to Doubting Thomas checking out Jesus's wound. But the fact that even this major detail was changed to fit the "Benitez as a Jesus allegory" narrative is hilarious to me

4. This is my biggest, funniest observation of the Conclave Book vs Movie Benitez. Book Benitez is determined to make Lomelli win. He gets up and speaks after the discovery of the terrorist attack to expressly say that the conclave has already had a majority vote (Lomelli) and that all the 24 people who voted for Benitez should vote for Lomelli instead to strengthen the church. He doesn't outwardly express any disdain for the conclave, just that he wishes they could work together to strengthen the Church. Movie Benitez is VASTLY different because he just straight up says sth along the lines of "all of you are petty and weird and know nothing about the conflict youre getting into and i cannot wait to go back to kabul and do some actual good for this world instead of being stuck here with all of you. " its just such a holy takedown of the church that clearly separates Benitez not as a member of any faction but as a voice of God

I love both the movie and the film for completely different reasons and I think everybody who reads or watches one should check out the other just to get a complete picture of both visions

[asmileforyourscrapbooks]

OMFG THIS COMMENT. GUISE. THAT LAST SENTENCE IS SO FUCKING RAW

edit: i see a lot of people arguing over the 'eat the rich' thing and i'd like to clear up my standing currently! i know they aren't the same kind of fancy multi-million corporation that our beloved phrase talks about, and the reason i agree to a point with this comment is that watcher is evidently trying to become that. they're doing some shitty things in regards do disregarding poorer fans, and are seemingly blatantly ignoring the economic crisis by saying 'everyone can afford that!', all in direct contrast to their entire branding of being leftist and openly supporting things like eat the rich.

"You said 'eat the rich' then handed us the forks, laid on the plate, and expected us to spare you?" at least from my understanding isn't flat-out saying watcher are now the rich we eat, but are well on the track to becoming so, and are quickly developing the same ego.

BUT!! don't like people directly hating on steven like that!! they're all grown men who can make their own decisions, and pretending like shane and ryan are out little baby beans and then calling steven evil and whatnot isn't okay. they can all be held equally accountable. though i do somewhat understand being the most disappointed in shane, as he's the one who speaks on shit like eating the rich the most, and is generally more outward with his ideals, so it's perfectly reasonable to feel betrayed more deeply. but bottom line is they're all equally accountable for this decision.

some shit we can't take back. i probably got pissed and said some weird/uncool shit initially because of the intense emotions i was dealing with, which other people amplified. i do regret some of the things i've said to a point when it comes to being hateful, but i can't just un-say it all, so i'm not even going to try. i'm going to leave everything be and allow it to serve as something to look back on for what not to do in future circumstances. while this new path for watcher is, in my opinion, not the smartest and generally really shitty, they're human beings who make mistakes, and they deserve our acknowledgement of that.

in short, i don't like it but i'll stop being a bitch about it because they don't deserve that. also sorry for the wall of (probably incoherent lmao) text i got passionate <3

edit 2: guys. im screaming. the apology was amazing imo and i genuinely think they really mean it, like it doesn't seem bullshitted. i think they realized they fucked up for reals and feel bad. im so happy for them, but also for us as fans. yay :D

[monstersw1thv1bes]

things the watcher guys could do that aren't CREATING A WHOLE ASS NEW STREAMING SERVICE THAT THE WORLD DOESN'T NEED:

put seasons of their shows out on DVDs. bonus if you can add behind the scenes content or even commentary that would then only exist on those dvds, so people have more reason to buy (leave the originals up as they are, though).

put their shows on already existing streaming services, preferably ones that are already popular rather than really niche ones, though I do understand that maybe getting your stuff on a popular streaming service is harder than on a less popular one so i wouldn't flame them for that.

idk sell more and better merch? like I've looked at their merch before and none of it seemed all that nice to me even though I am an impulse buyer and always wanted everything by the people I'm a fan of (you wouldnt believe the amount of clothes i have that are straight up youtuber merch. we're talking more than 2/3rds of my wardrobe). probably would have actually bought some of watcher's merch if it was better. the only thing I was ever tempted to buy was the professor plushie.

also lowering the price of good merch even marginally (without making it not-profitable) = more people can afford it = you earn more.

create a new show that isn't already available for free and put that on your patreon or something. give your viewers who can afford it a better reason to pay you.

[returnofismasm]

Given how much of the immediate backstory to Dragon Age: Inquisition was found in Asunder and the Masked Empire, I think some people might be wondering if any of the short stories, anthologies, or comics are also "homework" for The Veilguard. Obviously, the game's not out yet, so I can't be 100% sure, but here's my best recommendations based on what we know about the characters (done in alphabetical order because why not).

Bellara: She's new! The Veil-jumpers are in a single issue of the Missing, but she's not any of the ones named there. They investigate magical disturbances around Arlathan forest, and that's kind of all we know.

Davrin: Also new! The reason he seems to have a juvenile griffon (or at least, why there's a griffon at all!) is covered in the events of the novel The Last Flight, but it's hard to say how much any of those specifics are relevant to Davrin.

Emmrich: Emmrich (and Manfred!) is in Down Among the Dead Men in Tevinter Nights, and another, The Eternal Flame released during a Dragon Age Day and archived on the wiki. We learn he's a senior member of the Mourn Watchers, somewhat eccentric, and capable of talking to the dead. Also he's got a last name, Volkarin, so that's neat. All of that seems pretty easy to catch people up on in-game. (Down Among the Dead Men is really good though).

Harding: Harding is in the Missing, accompanying Varric on his hunt for Solas. Her buddy-cop-comedy-ing it with Varric is apparent from the trailer. Her apparent magic powers are completely new though!

Lucanis: He and Neve probably have the most backstory in Tevinter Nights of the bunch. Lucanis's story is found in the Wigmaker Job and he's mentioned in Eight Little Talons, both in Tevinter Nights. A Dragon Age Day short story called the Wake seems to have implied that he died, so mayhaps he faked his death? To hopefully set some people at ease, even though he's advertised as "The Magekiller," the mages he's killing are Venatori, so it's all good. I doubt he'd have beef with Neve or Emmrich or a mage PC JUST because they're mages. Also he's got a last name, Dellamorte.

Neve: Neve has a last name too! It's Gallus. Neve is the viewpoint character of the Streets of Minrathous, where she stops a Venatori plot to unleash a giant sealed demon underneath Minrathous. Her story is very Noir-vibes in a fantasy setting. She's also in the Missing for an issue, where she meets Varric and Harding and they work together to help escaped slaves avoid recapture by the Venatori. The giant sealed demon business did feel very "preview of a boss battle" but who can say if it actually is.

Taash: Like with Bellara, Taash herself is new, but the Lords of Fortune have featured elsewhere. They're in a number of stories in Tevinter Nights, as well as in Dragon Age: Absolution. The group doesn't seem to have a formal role, they seem to be sort of "adventurers for hire." Side note though, Ataashi is Qunlat for dragon, so I wonder if that's where Taash got her name.

[masoncantthinkofaname]

Some information about my home reality part 1

As some of you have probably seen by now, me and my husband recently respawned to another reality to put it in your terms. The goal was never to stay away forever, it was to restart, a new home, a new life, and let go of some of our past burdens and mindsets, created by our, at that moment, 'original' realities.

I'm putting it like that, because at this moment the reality we come from feels like our original one. It's where we were born, raised, and spent hundreds of years before we even knew about shifting.

I will likely make a couple of posts with some information on this reality, but in this one I will break down some of the basics, and explain some things about the language I speak there.

The basics:

I'm not human there, neither is Daeron. I'm from a species called Li'rael, he is a Jthe, specifically a Nyjthe. Obviously, that's how it would be written down in what you call English here, where we come from it's a bit different.

Both of us are forest people. Although our purposes in life are not the exact same. This world is completely different from the one you know. Many species exist. Common folk, humans, are around as well, but they're not the leading species. Some are very human-like, others not as much.

Similarly, some of them live in secret societies, hidden away from most other species, whereas others live in villages or towns, some of them ruled by someone.

The world is not divided into countries, but more something like territories. Some areas are widely unclaimed, in some many groups of beings live together, others do have a ruler.

There is magic, and a lot of species wouldn't be able to live without it. But there's also a balance. Magic that gets exhausted in an area, or completely used for the wrong purposes, leads to something called scka, or rot.

Magic mainly comes out of nature. Whether it be magical beings, or plants, trees, roots. There are forests more ancient than many, many things in your reality. Keep the balance, and the flow of magic stays healthy. Disrupt the balance, rot forms.

This sounds scary, but it's natural. The balance is constantly moving. Rot is a natural occurrence, just the amount of it can get dangerous. Rot doesn't only disrupt the magic, it also leads to manifestations of dangerous creatures and poisons.

Species like mine and Daeron are part of the balance. Li'rael are healers, watchers. We fight, when necessary, but we mainly heal. We talk with the trees, we soothe them. Our communities are private and secretive, often based around places where the magic is strongest, and keeping them healthy and strong. Jthe are protectors. They're even more secretive. They don't prevent the rot, they fight it.

Neither of our species is human, and although we might have similar features, there are many differences. Daeron, for example, has two hearts, he has many markings, pointy ears. A lot of myths say that Jthe are the physical manifestation of nature. Not just forests. Where rot is, Jthe exist. Some of them can shapeshift or get into states where they're completely unrecognisable as a human-like being, which is only the start of it.

Li'rael are part of the forest in a completely different way. Differently, my species does only exist in the woods, but we do live in all different kinds. Li'rael are one race, our genes are the same, but there are many different skin colours (and other physical features) among us. From ghostly pale skin to deep, bark like browns. We have double lidded eyes, allowing us to rest while still keeping an eye out, our skin can camouflage, making us able to match the colours of the forest around us, the leaves, the trees. (Which is useful until it happens when you're flustered and it is, for obvious reasons, even more clear than blushing), and much more.

Not only our species are part of this balance, but many others are. Some as small as a ladybug, others the size of small giants.

I could talk about this way more, but this post would get way too long. Instead I'll explain some things about Li'shal, my language.

How my language works:

Li'shal is, in theory, quite a simple language. Many expressions are poetic and have multiple meanings. It gets used in two main ways, and sometimes in a mix of both.

The first way is almost a more modern version. It sticks to the structures of the common tongue, mixed with Li'shal words, except written by the Li'shal alphabet. Which makes it easier translatable and understandable. Some words in the common language are also really hard to translate or express in Li'shal.

The second one is an older version of Li'shal, that is way harder to understand if you have not grown with it. Although some words stick to the Li'shal alphabet, there are also many symbols and fused letters that are harder to read if you don't know their meaning.

And example would be this:

The first one is understandable, I assume. the second one, not that much.

Now, most Li'rael will stick to a mix of these two. Some use more fused symbols in their writing, others use an almost completely understandable alphabet that many of you would be able to read and understand as well. But majority of us will be somewhere in the middle.

Old Li'shal mainly gets used for rituals, healing, chanting, or true names. Names have a deep meaning for species like ours, and are often not easily shared, especially with outsiders. I won't share mine or Daeron's either. But most of our kinds have so called 'casual' names that they will use in day to day life, that somewhat resemble their true names, but don't carry that same weight. Which is where you get Mason and Daeron.

Like I said, Li'shal itself is relatively simple, which can make it hard to figure out meanings of certain phrases, especially if you haven't grown with them. I'll give an example here:

This is, probably the closest to an ''I love you'' that we have. It means something like ''You are part of my soul,'' or ''I carry you in my soul.''

The first version is how it is usually said, the second one is is how many would write it.

If you'd directly translate it, you'd get something like ''You soul my,'' which is exactly what makes it hard to translate our language.

Let me know if there are any questions, that's it for now.

I wish everyone a good day :)

[pargolettasworld]

So, because I am incurably, morbidly curious, I watched Jessie Gender's four-hour-and-seventeen-minute-long video on . . . well, the title suggests "Zionism, Antisemitism, and the Left." To her credit, Gender does touch on all three of these topics, though not with the same degree of skill, graciousness, or understanding of the topics at hand. I've just had a very nice dinner, and I'm feeling generous, so let's see how this video stacks up. Strap in. This is going to get long.

I should admit right off the bat that I'm only a casual, occasional watcher of Jessie Gender. I'm not a deep fan, and I'm sure there is Jessie Gender Lore™ out there that I'm not aware of, but I think I've seen enough of her videos to get a general sense of her house style. This video hits a lot of the hallmarks of her style. She speaks very fast and very passionately, occasionally trips over her own words (something that I've done many a time, so I really do feel that), and is inordinately fond of nominalizations. She's especially fond of the word "ostracization," for some reason, which drives me nuts because "ostracism" is right there. So, in style, it appears to hew to the Jessie Gender House Style pretty well.

On to the video itself. The first thing I will observe about it is that it is in every possible way a meeting that could have been an email. There was no need for this to be the same length as the Extended Edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). There's a lot of padding, significant digressions, and a certain degree of repetition. It's easy to forget the beginning of the video by the time you're an hour into the thing.

The major question that hangs over this opus is: Why, and for whom, was it made? I'm honestly not sure who the intended audience for this thing is, nor why Gender felt that she had to make it. She alludes in the first half hour to feeling like she's lost the trust and support of some of her Jewish fans/friends/acquaintances/Patreon patrons, and she chalks it up to a previous video that she made (which I have not seen, and which I am not inclined to seek out). But neither the structure nor the thesis nor the conclusion of the video seem like they would win back any of these folks.

I don't think that Jewish viewers are her intended audience -- certainly not with the way she talks about Jews throughout the video. I'm also having a hard time believing that really committed leftists are her audience, either, since I don't think she's really saying much that leftists haven't already heard, or offering new perspectives on her topic(s). And anyone who has made it this far into the year of 5784 and is still undecided about the contemporary iteration of The Jewish Question is probably not going to be interested in sitting through nearly four and a half hours of relentless lecture. So I'm still left wondering why, and for whom, did Jessie Gender make this video?

Gender assures us, her viewers, of several things that are meant to be reassuring. She's done lots and lots of research, for one thing. And she's asked some-of-her-best-friends-who-are-Jewish to be sensitivity readers. We're given to understand that we are hearing the nitpicked, edited, and polished version of the script. I'd hate to see what the first draft looked like . . .

She also tells us that there are going to be lots of Foreign Words And Names, and that she and her mouth-hole have A Hard Time pronouncing Foreign Words And Names. Her loyal staff have made her a pronunciation guide -- which appears to have been used perhaps as a drinks coaster, since there are some howlers here. The Jews originating from the MENA regions are the "Misrai" (Mizrahi) Jews, the first Prime Minister of Israel was "David Ben-Gron" (David Ben-Gurion), the Revisionist Zionist leader was "Zeeeeeeeeev Zarbinsky" (Ze'ev Jabotinsky), and the Palestinian uprisings of 1987 - 1993 and 2000 - 2005 go by the name "Infitada" (Intifada).

You know that phrase "If white people can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Schwarzenegger, they can learn to say [your name from an African or Asian language]?" I agree completely with the conclusion, but I question the premise. Jessie Gender makes me question the premise harder. If she had any real interest in the topic, she would have practiced those names, but I don't think she does, so she didn't.

Moving on to the actual content of the video. It's . . . weird. Jessie Gender begins the video believing that Zionism is an evil force for colonialism, White supremacy, oppression, and genocide. She ends the video believing that Zionism is an evil force for colonialism, White supremacy, oppression, and genocide. But along the way, she's confronted with quite a lot of inconvenient facts that threaten to complicate this perspective.

Gender devotes roughly two hours and fifteen minutes of her video, a smidge over half of the runtime, on three segments that offer a history of Zionism, the iterations of Zionism as a political ideology, and what she calls "Zionism as emotion," which is a condescending way to refer to the importance of Zionism to Jews. I'd guess that her research for these segments might have surprised her. It turns out, per Jessie Gender, that there is both a reason behind and a context for nineteenth-century Zionism, quite a lot of logic behind why the Jews wanted to go to Israel, and ample evidence that a majority of Jews have some kind of stake in both Israel and some variation of Zionism.

The reason I think that this research might have surprised her is that she ends each of these segments with a small diatribe about the evil colonialist, capitalist, oppressive, genocidal force that is Zionism, even as the segments suggest nuance, logic, and reason behind the philosophy. We can't have that on a good lefty video, though, can we? The more Gender confronts evidence that there is more to Zionism than meets her eyes, the more she doubles down, digs in her heels, and refuses to accept even the barest shreds of non-negativity about Zionism. Every now and then, she comes up with a lovely sentence or two that shows some understanding of a Jewish perspective on the world, but then furiously backpedals -- we mustn't forget that this Jewish perspective of oppression, mass murder, and international blame has only led to the Evil Of Zionism, after all.

What's really fascinating is how hard she works to avoid blaming actual Jews for all of this evil. I think she's doing this with the best of intentions. A for effort. C for effect. She wants to make a distinction between "Zionism" and "Judaism," in the sense of "Zionism does not equate to Judaism, so being antisemitic to Judaism because you hate Zionism is bad." She tries so hard that she loses sight of the actual people involved. There are a lot of places where she talks about "Judaism" where what she actually means is "the Jews." Or, as she calls us, "Jewish people." Which isn't bad, and it isn't really wrong, but it doesn't quite communicate the sense of Am Yisrael that is at the heart of Zionism.

In fact, she's so desperate to separate Zionism from Jewish people that she starts to talk about it almost as an individual character in the story, with agency, desires, wishes, and goals of its own, totally disconnected from the people who created it. Zionism demands the genocide of Palestinians, Zionism needs colonialism, Zionism has a nice lunch date with neoliberalism and spends the afternoon browsing department stores with capitalism. In effect, Zionism becomes the dragon, and Gender really wishes that the passive, easily-led Jewish people would unite behind some White Knight and slay the dragon so everyone could be happy and free and leftist. Despite the two hours she spent on her deep dive into the history and meaning of Zionism, she cannot fathom why the Jewish people don't just do this.

I said earlier that quite a lot of this video consists of padding. Gender identifies herself as a lefty anarchist, opposed to nation-states, capitalism, neoliberalism, the United States, the British Empire, Israel, Joe Biden, "Ka-MAH-la" Harris, transphobia in Western societies . . . the usual suspects. Frequently, especially in the back half of the video, she'll wander off into long fantasias about the crimes against liberty perpetrated by the West at large, as well as their character Capitalism, and then remember that this is supposed to be a video about Zionism, and then finish with the equivalent of "Peter Rabbit did sort of that kind of thing, too."

One of the alleged purposes of this video is to discuss Antisemitism On The Left, but Gender . . . pretty much elides doing that. She gets close a couple of times, and she does grudgingly admit that some leftists coming from some branches of leftism might sometimes say things that might be antisemitic, and that's Bad, and it makes Jewish people feel Unsafe and Not Inclined To Agree With Leftists that The Dragon Known As Zionism Must Be Slain Heroically. But don't stress about it. The important thing is that Israel Must Stop Its Genocide and Palestinians Should Have Self-Determination (which is only withheld from them by Israel -- excuse me, by Zionism -- and certainly not by those eminently-justified-if-a-little-uncouth plucky fighters, Hamas.

There are quite a lot of lengthy quotes from Sources, read by guest stars, which is a nice touch to break up the video. The vast majority of these Sources -- especially the ones in the "history of Zionism" segment -- are not actually written by Zionists. You get a lot of academic pontificating about the failures, shortcomings, and nefarious activities of Zionism, but you hear almost nothing from actual Zionists, especially contemporary Zionists. This does not look nearly as good or as well-researched as it's meant to look.

So what do we get in the end, after four hours and seventeen minutes of watching this? Honestly . . . not much. Gender gives enough background on the history of Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish attitudes toward Israel that hardcore leftists watching will be more annoyed than convinced. She condescends to both Jews and Arabs, mentioning repeatedly that she, as a White Gentile, really doesn't have any business butting in on these complex questions -- but that's not going to stop her from butting in like the lefty shiksa she is! She's too mealy-mouthed to come right out and say anything blatantly antisemitic, but disdain for Jewish concepts of homeland, belonging, origin, and self-determination pervade the whole thing.

I don't think that Jessie Gender is an idiot -- she seems to be pretty smart, and has both a firm sense of her own political philosophy and the stick-to-it-ive-ness to do far more research into things like the development of Zionism and the history of antisemitism than one might expect. But the video really is, to bring up a playwright from the hated West, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

[hadesisqueer]

Honestly as someone who hasn't read the books I think part of the reason why they made Francesca stutter and be attracted to Michaela right of the gate is precisely for those of us who haven't read the books. Casual watchers, mostly.

Like, if she'd simply been introduced as John's cousin and she simply said her name is Michaela and stuff like that, people who have read the book would have immediately connected the dots and know what was happening. Casual watchers —such as my mom or my best friend, for example, who know nothing of the books and have done no research and don't care about them— wouldn't connect any dots, they'd just be like "oh, Francesca's husband has a cousin", and that's it. And in a later season (because this shit always happens in every show lmao), when it is made clear that they're gonna be a couple, a certain section of casual watchers would have been like 'this came out of nowhere blah blah blah'. Now, by making Francesca get nervous and stutter when she met Michaela and therefore directly referencing what Violet said earlier —that she'd gotten very nervous when she first met Edmund—, where the story is going will be more obvious for the audience. It's like 'oh, so-- there's gonna be something going on with the cousin?', it is clear now from second 1 to the general audience that Francesca is queer and is going to have a queer storyline in a future season.

Also, I still think Michaela liked her first. She went in, acted flirty while only staring at Francesca and her face fell when Francesca said her name and realized she was John's wife. She probably assumed it was Eloise —which was why she didn't even ask for her name— and you can literally see the disappointment when she is told that the pretty woman that caught her eye was married to her cousin. So, yeah, definitely liked her first.