#at least in this case I am anti them

[foxylady13]

Tamlin Under The Mountain

I think a lot of people forget Feyre herself knew Tamlin played indifferent UTM to keep them BOTH safe. And them even staring at each other got Amarantha pissed off as evidence by this scene:

Also, Rhysand himself knew Tamlin couldn't really help or go visit Feyre because he knew Tamlins every move was being watched. He says so himself here:

So Rhysand and Feyre both changed the narrative and make Tamlin out to be the bad guy for "not doing anything UTM" when previously they knew he couldn't and Feyre knew him playing indifferent WAS to keep her safe from Amarantha, which was him doing something UTM. And funnily enough, Feyre only started thinking Tamlin did nothing for her UTM AFTER hearing Rhysand opinion and starting to think like him.

As for the whole kissing scene, Feyre wanted that just as much as Tamlin. She NEEDED that moment with him and you can tell that by that first picture to. Also, Feyre was the one trying to take Tamlins clothes off to have sex. She's the one who initiated that as evidenced here as well:

[pencopanko]

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are very similar (if not the same), actually

So I was scrolling down the #palestine tag for any updates and important information, and I came across this:

And I think we need to sit down and talk about this.

I am a Muslim. I live in Indonesia, a country that is predominantly Muslim and a lot of Muslims here also support the Palestinian cause. Hell, even our government supports it by not only allowing Palestinian goods enter the country without fee, but also by taking in Palestinian refugees and even acknowledging the status of Palestine as a state while not having any political ties with Israel. The topic of the Palestinian tragedy has been spoon-fed to us at schools, sermons, media, etc., so your average Indonesian Muslim would at the very least be aware of the conflict while non-Muslims would hear about it from their Muslim friends or through media.

However, there is a glaring problem. One that I keep seeing way too often for my liking.

A lot of them are antisemitic as hell. The sermons I would hear sometimes demonize Jewish people. Antisemitic statements are openly said out loud on social media. Some are even Nazi supporters who would literally go to anime cons and COSPLAY as members of the Nazi party. This is not just an Indonesian Muslim problem, no, but this is a glaring issue within the global Islamic community as a whole. Today, this sense of antisemitism is usually rooted in general hatred towards the Israeli government and its actions against the people of Palestine, but antisemitism amongst Muslims are also rooted in certain interpretations of verses from the Qur'an and Hadith mentioning Jewish people and Judaism (particularly the Bani Israil), but in a way that is more ridiculing instead of life-threatening when compared to how antisemitism looks like in the Western world.

As someone who prefers to become a "bridge" between two sides in most cases, I find this situation to be concerning, to say the least. While, yes, it is important for us Muslims to support Palestine and fight against injustice, we must not forget that not every Jewish people support the Israeli government. A lot of them are even anti-Zionists who actively condemn Israel and even disagree with the existence of Israel as a state as it goes against their teachings. A lot of them are also Holocaust survivors or their descendants, so it is harmful to think for one second that Hitler's actions and policies were justified. It's just like saying that Netanyahu is right for his decision to destroy Palestine and commit war crime after war crime towards the Palestinians.

As Muslims, we also need to remember that Jewish people (the Yahudi) are considered ahli kitab, i.e. People Of The Book along with Christians (the Nasrani). The Islam I have come to know and love has no mentions of Allah allowing us to persecute them or anyone collectively for the actions of a few. While, yes, there are disagreements with our respective teachings I do not see that as an excuse to even use antisemitic slurs against Jewish people during a pro-Palestine rally, let alone support a man who was known for his acts of cruelty toward the Jewish community in WW2. They are still our siblings/cousins in faith, after all. Unless they have done active harm like stealing homes from civilians or celebrating the destruction of Palestine or supporting the Israeli government and the IOF or are members of the IOF, no Jewish people (and Christians, for that matter) must be harmed in our fight against Zionism.

Contemporary antisemitism is similar to (if not straight up being the exact same thing as) contemporary Islamophobia, if you think about it; due to the actions of a select few that has caused severe harm towards innocent people, an entire community has been a target of hate. Even when you have tried to call out the ones supporting such cruelties, you are still getting bombarded by hate speech. It's doubly worse if you're also simultaneously part of a marginalized group like BIPOC, LGBTQ+, etc. as you also get attacked on multiple sides. This is where we all need to self-reflect, practice empathy, and unlearn all of the antisemitism and unjustified hatred that we were exposed to.

So, do call out Zionism and Nazism when you see it. Call out the US government for funding this atrocity and others before it that had ALSO triggered the rise of Islamophobia. Call your reps. Go to the streets. Punch a fascist if you feel so inclined. Support your local businesses instead of pro-Israel companies.

But not at the cost of our Jewish siblings. Not at the cost of innocent Jewish people who may also be your allies. If you do that, you are no different from a MAGA cap-wearing, gun-tooting, slur-yelling Islamophobe.

That is all for now, may your watermelons taste fresh and sweet.

🍉

Salam Semangka, Penco

[antoine-roquentin]

Dexter Barry waited 12 years to get a new heart. He saw dozens of doctors, had invasive procedures and moved states to survive. In 2020, his long wait paid off. His new heart allowed him to imagine a healthy life where he could revisit his passion for motorcycles and watch his children grow and flourish in their careers. 

But in 2022, after a misdemeanor arrest kept him in jail for two days without his life-sustaining medication, his body rejected the heart.

Barry’s neighbor called 911 in November to complain that Barry, 54, had threatened to beat him up after a weeks-long fight over wifi access. A fight never occurred, but Barry was arrested on a simple assault charge. 

Barry told Officer Jacob McKeon at least seven times that he needed to take his anti-rejection medications every day to survive, according to body camera footage that was reviewed by The Tributary. The next morning, according to the court transcript, Barry told Judge Gilbert Feltel the same.

“I am on medication,” Barry told the judge. “I just had a heart transplant, and I haven’t taken my medicine all day since I have been locked up, and I take rejection medicines for my heart so my heart won’t reject it, and I’m almost two years out.”

On Nov. 23, Barry died.

He never got his medication, according to his son and a lawyer representing his family. A pathologist hired by the family said he died after his body had rejected the heart he had waited so long for.

Andrew Bonderud, the Jacksonville civil rights lawyer who represents Barry’s family, is worried Barry didn’t get his medications because of the extreme expense to obtain them.

“Records from jail will likely show they made a note of it,” Bonderud said. “JSO recognized it’s an extremely expensive medication and how disgusting if it turns out that this was a business decision for the JSO, that they would rather not pay for the medication. They would rather risk death over a business decision. It’s one of the most outrageous cases I’ve ever seen in this city of JSO misconduct.”

[firein-thesky]

Why is it that dc such as r@pe, sa, and incest is totally okay to write about and romanticize but y’all draw the line at racism, fat phobia, and homophobia *talking about the writings creators make, not personal beliefs*? Whats the difference between these things? All of them are hurtful and affect people in real life, so why is everybody on here choosing and picking one and not the other? Do writers on here think that they are not comparable or that one is okay to romanticize and the other is going way too far?

Im just genuinely curious as I have seen this topic be brought up again and again, which has made me realize this and Id like to see it from someone else's pov.

hi! there is a lot to answer and unpack here and i have every intention of doing so underneath the cut. forgive me if this gets long, but you’ve asked me 4 very massive questions that i think warrant detail, nuance, and thought. there is a lot i’d like to say here.

that being said, mind the content warnings and protect yourself.

cw: mentions of rape, incest, racism, homophobia, fat phobia, discourse in general

firstly, i am going to choose to give you the benefit of the doubt in assuming you are actually curious in hearing another side and you are not simply looking to stir a pot or pick a fight with beliefs you have no intention of changing or having an open discussion on. your accusatory tone in the first half indicates otherwise and kindly, i am not an idiot. but i want to earnestly talk to you about this and again, will think better of you than you perhaps have indicated you think of me.

secondly, you do not have to censor words like rape in my inbox. that sort of censorship has become wildly popular because of tik tok and other money-hungry social media that also desperately want to silence people. do you know why you have to censor words like that on tik tok? or words like genocide? suicide? racism? 1. so that they can make money and market and push their squeaky clean algorithms but 2. and perhaps worse, so they can silence victims. if social media platforms and capitalism and the systems of powers had it their way, you would never utter these words again—whether to call someone out for justice or to have an open discussion like this one. i encourage you greatly to think critically about this and how you choose to use censorship and why.

now, to your questions.

to preface, i am interpreting this ask as being anti-dark content in fiction as you state that ALL these subjects harm people in real life. or at least, you are being critical of all dark content in fiction and the way writers engage with them, effectively ‘picking and choosing’ which are deemed acceptable and which aren’t, when they are all hurtful. i apologize if that wasn’t your intention/what you believe, but regardless, i’ll endeavor to answer you.

i personally have drawn no lines about dark content nor spoken about any of these topics specifically really, which indicates to me you have a different narrative and/or are coming from more inflammatory arguments that are always circling fandom lately. in the post i most recently reblogged, i spoke mostly of violence. which, of course, all of those things can be. but i didn’t name one of those topics in particular.

regardless, i don’t believe in the censorship of any dark content in art, but rather advocate strongly for critical analysis on a case-by-case basis. in general, i encourage thinking critically about every aspect of the world around you.

i do not believe that rape, incest, and sa are okay to write about or create art about but racism, homophobia, and fat phobia are not. i believe all of those topics are ones that can, should, and will be explored in the safety of art. all to varying degrees of success, earnestness, impact, and intent. you’re right that these are real things, that can hurt people, and the fictional work about them can have impact on our society that is tangible but the actual art or fiction created is not real. and again, this is all to varying degrees on a case-by-case basis.

art and fiction also historically and massively do discuss these dark content topics and have actively swayed the public’s opinion on matters, whether for better or for worse. throwing away all dark content in art and fiction because it is ‘harmful’ is deeply, deeply dangerous and reductive. a lot of art that engages with dark content actually makes very succinct points about it—i think of vladimir nabokov’s lolita or octavia butler’s bloodchild or speak by laurie halse anderson.

this is where we must exorcise critical thinking. some pieces of work will handle dark content poorly—white saviors making art on racism. men making art about a woman’s experiences that (as you are so interested in) romanticize her pain. etc. etc. and some art will handle it’s dark content incredibly and be transformative, perhaps even revolutionary in how we talk, perceive, or acknowledge systems of oppression, violence, and dark content in this world. some dark content in fiction will have damaging beliefs and effects on society, some will not—we must also look at scope for this, at the writer perhaps, the historical moment, their audience etc.

(for example, there is a significant difference in a main stream male writer, writing of a woman’s experience with rape in a published book in a way that makes it sound romanticized, sold to thousands and thousands of general public vs. a woman using fanfic to explore rape, take control of it, or whatever in a fanfic for a small online community where there are warnings on it. indicating she is aware of its potential damage in a way her male counterpart is not…)

but i still believe in dark contents’ existence in art. of course there is differences between all of these topics you brought up, but i don’t think their differences matter in this answer. i believe in their right to be explored in art. i am talking broadly of media/art here, which i think is the more relevant conversation, but i think you are actually more interested in a much smaller scale of people. ie. fandom. ie. mostly marginalized people in small communities online writing and creating dark content.

people will choose and pick which ones they’d like to create art over and which ones they don’t, which ones they read and which ones they don’t. there’s no ‘hard line’ drawn anywhere. and i can’t control it and neither can you. perhaps you think violence is okay to be explored in fanfic, but racism isn’t. someone else will have different preferences. i do not believe in its censorship.

now, let’s move onto your interest in romanticization and what i think you are more pointing to, which is fandom. you are specifically referring to people in fandom who write about rape, incest, etc. and ‘romanticize’ it—ie. they write about it in a way that is a fantasy. it is perhaps supposed to be horny or sexy. so let’s talk about it.

i must remind you that these topics you’ve brought up (rape, incest, sa) being written are fiction and it is (most often) done by someone marginalized who has either experienced this or is in threat of experiencing this under a patriarchy. i assure you, they are aware of its harm. hence the copious warnings in fandom spaces.

if i can be candid, sometimes i think that people forget how systems of oppression work when discussing fandom and whether dark content being created should be allowed or not.

for example, i sometimes think people who are anti-dark content in fandom believe that a woman or afab person writing a fictional fanfic about rape or sexual violence then influences people to go out and rape people or that women actually like it. when the reality, in fandom spaces, is that rape and sexual violence happen frequently under the patriarchy and then these women in fandom write fictional fanfic in response to cope, explore, take control of, etc. etc.

to insinuate that women or afab people (which fandom mostly is) exploring dark content safely in fiction then causes their own oppression and harm or trauma is rather victim-blame-y to me. fandom exploring dark content does not cause these things to happen in our society….these actions (rape, incest, sa) happen in our society or systems of power and fandom reacts to them in their art by exploring it in dark content. do you understand what i’m trying to say?

it’s not a matter of what is ‘okay’ to romanticize and what isn’t. i do not think the romanticization that fandom does with dark content (ie. my kidnapper actually loves me! or this sexual act that i did not consent to…maybe feels good) is not actually romanticizing but coping because of the systems of power that i described above. and this can be coping with anything—shame of sexuality, shame of fantasies, trauma, fear, etc. etc.

as i said in my tags in that post i reblogged and as plato said, dark content in art is a safe place to explore what would otherwise be harmful and dangerous in real life. it is cathartic. potentially even, a purging.

and even if it isn’t all that—maybe it just is trashy fantasy. it is still playing pretend. it is still fiction and in fandom spaces, it is still most likely being created by a marginalized person. and again, even if it isn’t, we don’t get to censor it. we can be critical of it or wary or whatever, but to censor it, is a slippery, slippery slope. do deem some topics as “acceptable” and others as “unacceptable” is dangerous.

just like kids play pretend where they ‘fight’ or ‘kill’ or ‘kidnap’ or ‘shoot’ each other in games of cops and robbers or heroes and villains, they are safely exploring adventure, dark content, fantasy, tragedy, and higher emotions. adults can do the same in fiction and with adult topics like sex.

and at the end of the day, we don’t get to demand the credentials to do so either. we don’t get to censor them or control them and nor should we be allowed to. i cannot stress enough that i encourage you to be critical of censorship or the absolute disgust in dark content and at those (again—often marginalized people) who engage with it in fandom. i believe it is deeply puritanical, conservative, and dangerous.

you don’t have to like dark content or consume it at all and fandom makes it easy not to with all the warnings and tags, but you cannot control others or police them. nor should you want to.

and at the end of the day, i have some questions for you. you don’t have to respond to this, perhaps they’re just things to think about. what is the end goal here? what is the point in harassing, shaming, attacking, criticizing, or interrogating people in fandom spaces who create or support dark content? do you believe that if it is purged from fandom, it will be purged from our society? if you want it purged from society—shouldn’t you start there rather than in the inbox of marginalized writers in fandom? people in fandom did not create rape, incest, and sa nor do they in their exploration of fiction…they are merely reacting to a world that did create it.

i hope at no point i came off as rude to you, as was not my intention. i intended to stand up for myself and respectfully state my opinions and thoughts on this matter. i’m sorry it got long, but also i don’t believe in being brief on such complex matters. i am a writer who engages critically with the world around me and sometimes, things cannot be made into short, snappy answers. sometimes, we must unpack.

genuinely wishing you well.

[matan4il]

Update post:

Most of this will be about the unprecedented attack of the Islamist regime of Iran against Israel, but first I have to take a second to mourn a 14 year old boy, who was murdered in a Palestinian attack on Friday. At around 6 in the morning, teenager Binyamin Achimeir led his sheep herd out of the farm he lives in, but a few hours later, the sheep returned to the farm without him. At first, it was feared that he had some accident, or was dehydrated, and thousands of people voluntarily joined the search for him. On Saturday, at around noon, the IDF found his body, with signs of brutal violence on it. Based on the forensic evidence, he was murdered by several Palestinian terrorists, and he fought back. The army is still hunting down the murderers. May Binyamin's memory be a blessing.

Right, back to the Islamist regime of Iran's attack on Israel. I posted about it as soon as the news started being aired here, in case someone didn't know about it. The news broke past the normal time when people watch news on TV in Israel, I noticed it by chance right before I was about to turn in for the night. I'm physically okay, but I didn't get that much sleep, I had to wake up early to take care of some stuff, so I AM very tired, which is why I'm not going to do the usual thing I do, which is to look for English journalistic sources for everything, but I have no doubt even the stuff I won't look up can all be easily found online.

On a personal note, I can tell you that at 1:43 in the morning I heard the first explosion, but no sirens went off. A few more explosions followed, and only then did we hear the sirens. It was scary, for a moment we couldn't tell whether we're hearing explosions of missiles from neighboring areas, or whether something went wrong with the sirens, and we need to hurry into the bomb shelter. It seems like in Jerusalem specifically there was some issue with the sirens, I heard a reporter mention it. Also, the alert app didn't go off, even though it should have, at the latest when the sirens did.

This is what the Temple Mount looked like from an Iranian attack that could have easily destroyed the al-Aqsa mosque (it's not in the frame, but it's right next to where this was filmed):

Quick background: Iran is the biggest financier of anti-Israel terrorism for decades now, including funding Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, all of which have been a part of a continuous attack on Israel since Oct 7 as Iran's proxies. Iran has sent its own military seniors to help and instruct those local terrorists, in places like Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Israel has eliminated them whenever possible, this is not something new. On Apr 1, Israel carried out such a strike, in which it targeted 7 Iranian army seniors in Damascus, Syria's capital. Iran claimed Israel targeted the Iranian consulate in this city, but diplomatic buildings are all publicly listed. Iran has an embassy in Damascus (in a separate location) and no consulates. That's why the magnitude of Iran's response to this has taken Israel by surprise, because the Israeli strike wasn't that out of the ordinary. In fact, the US assassination of Iran's military commander, Qasem Soleimani, back in 2018, was a far graver blow for the Iranian regime, and yet it did not lead to an attack as massive as the one launched against Israel last night.

It is now known that some of the attack waves against Israel were intercepted by other countries, including The US, the UK, France and Jordan. It's been said that there's at least one more Arab country that helped in intercepting Iran's attack, but it can't be publicized. Many countries denounced Iran for attacking Israel.

We don't have numbers regarding the full size of the attack. Out of all the countries who participated in curtailing this attack, we know that the US has intercepted at least 70 suicide drones and 3 cruise missiles, while Israel has intercepted at least 185 suicide drones, 36 cruise missile and 110 ballistic missiles (that last one is the missile type that causes the most damage). Israel's interceptions are said to have been 99% successful, but like I said, no defence system is perfect. A small number of ballistic missiles did land inside Israel. One hit an Israeli air Force base in the south. There's over 30 people who got injured when rushing to the bomb shelter in the middle of the night (elderly people, including Holocaust survivors, have died from such injuries), and over 30 more ended up in hospital due to severe mental health reactions. On top of that, there's a 7 years old Muslim Bedouine girl who was injured by interceptors debris. A friend of her family that I heard being interviewed said the family wanted to go to the communal bomb shelter, but before they even had a chance to make it out of the house, the girl was hit by the debris piercing into their home, and she is suffering from severe head injuries. The hospital is currently fighting for her life.

The estimate of how much it cost Israel to defend its citizens from this one attack last night is 5 BILLION shekels (which is over 1.3 BILLION US dollars). That's for one night.

Israel will respond. According to one reporter I heard, that was decided as soon as it was clear how big the attack is, so this isn't about how much damage Iran caused, it's about how it crossed several red lines. This is the first time Iran itself attacked Israel itself, it's not an attack on an extension of Israel, nor was it done by using proxy terrorists. Israel has had terrorist organizations attacking it continuously since 2001, but this is the first attack from a fellow sovereign country since Iraq (led by tyrant Saddam Hussein) in 1991, so that in itself is crossing a red line. The size of the attack is also considered an escalation on Iran's part. In 2019, Iran launched a smaller scaled suicde drone attack on Saudi Arabia, and the latter's western allies refused to launch a counter attack, which led to these countries being seen as unreliable, and some Middle Eastern countries renewed their ties with Iran. That's why how it would seen in the Middle East if Israel doesn't react to an even bigger attack, and how it might drive more moderate countries to grow closer to Iran, is another consideration in why Israel must respond. Not to mention that launching such a mass attack basically caused a paralysis of the country once the first intel became known. For example, all educational activity (schools, universities, you name it) has been canceled, Israel's air space had to be closed, every single ambulance across the country had to be manned, and so on. That is not something any country can simply shrug off. Not to mention, Israel financially can't afford this reality to become normalized.

Not to mention, Israel tried to contain Hamas, PIJ and Hezbollah's rocket attacks for decades. What we got for it was the invasion and massacre on Oct 7. The lesson for most Israelis is that containing mass attacks on our population only leads to worse ones.

That said, there's also no desire here of getting dragged into a war on another front while we're still in the middle of one in Gaza and with Iran's proxies on several more fronts. So, Israel is looking for a balanced response, one that won't let this mass attack slide, but hopefully doesn't make matters much worse.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[goth-mami-writer]

POV: You're the quiet intern just trying to make it down these steps⬇️

@short-honey-badger who helped me cough this up a few months ago, and we had a lotttt of fun.

⚠️(absolutely not my art. The artist is @yunonoai on TWT. Thx!)⚠️

《 Your director told you to use the back stairwell after the day was finished with final takes in filming. You were the new intern on set and still learning everyone's roles and names, but you knew the cast well. After grabbing your coffee and bag, then being told by the director to use the back stairwell due to some work being done on the front entrance, your stomach churned.

That's where the cast took their smoke breaks between sets and most of them....didn't know you. You were the newbie, and you saw how some of them looked at you in-between filming takes. All of them towered above even the director sometimes, and intimidating just wasn't the word. Some were very cordial. Or at least friendly. But for others... that just wasn't the case. They were almost entirely like their fictional character. Smug and coarse in interaction.

You took a deep breath and opened the door to the back stairwell. The first thing to hit you was the smell of deep, musky cigarette. It almost gagged you because half of them were avid smokers, often being late to set times from hurrying back from their smoke breaks. The heat from the outside lot met you then, and you squinted your eyes from the bright light that illuminated your descent. But you realized now that it wasn't just a few of them here.

It was all of them.

The villains, the noble protagonists. The anti heroes.

Oh, God. Everyone was here.

"Heyy.." The half of them called out in unison while the others only gave a you side glance from their unenthused expressions.

All of their legs were folded across the concrete steps, making it difficult for you to navigate your way down safely. You swallowed hard and decided to speak up for those who might have not realized you were needing through.

"Uhm, excuse me. Sorry." You said with your hands clutched on the strap of your bag.

Nanami, the upstanding gentleman of the group, was the first to stand. He was sitting right at the front, that being your only sigh of relief. He was one of the oldest, and his presence on set always made everyone feel safe. He was especially kind to women.

"Here, dear, I'll help you through." Nanami said with a charming smile as he dubbed out his cigarette into the concrete. He told everyone to mind their legs, and only half of them listened.

"Oh, come the fuck on, she'll be fine." Remarked Toji, the boisterous asshole who spoke his mind with a sneer no matter who was listening. He rolled his eyes and moved his knees from your path. Nanami held his hands on your shoulders as you began down and you tried not to look at each of them but it was so hard. All of them were so endearingly attractive in their own specific ways.

Sure Toji was snide and downright rude as hell but his cocky grin made all of the girls' knees shake. It leveled everything about his asshole personality.

To your immediate left, was Geto, the quiet protagonist in the show who nudged the man to his side Gojo, who moved his blindfold up, moving out of your way accordingly with a smile.

Gojo turned his head down the stairs and everyone seemed to pay attention when his very telling blue eyes came from beneath his dark blindfold,

"Guys, let the intern through."

"Eat a dick, Satoru." Toji remarked from across the steps.

Everything was going fine. You were about halfway down now with Nanami's hands holding your shoulders protectively until you finally passed Toji by who began to loudly exclaim from behind you once his eyes fell low as you passed him by,

"Goddamn! She can walk past me anyday!"

You felt a very intentional smack to the back of your ass only to be returned by Nanami who you could hear reprimanding the eager man with a vicious grip to his collar before apologizing to you in your ear,

"I am so sorry."

"It's okay." You said with your face painted a blinding shade of red, and you looked down, just hoping to make it down the rest of these steps without being humiliated further.

Gojo and Geto had a little more class, only sharing a menacing look to each other at the sight of your ass so close as you passed and now you were finally closer to the bottom flight of stairs, still being led by Nanami.

Here at the bottom held two of the more unsavory characters that included Sukuna and Choso, two villains, however powerful and / or likable they were. Choso, the quieter one of the pair, only moved his outstretched legs, not giving a word in your direction before looking back down to his phone. His eyes were so catching and dark that you wished he would've kept your gaze. But that stare was only broken as you passed by the last loiterer there on the stairs, Sukuna.

He grew a cunning, mischievous smile and asked you with his voice that purred so seductively like a flirt no matter what he was saying,

"Hm, I've never caught your name on set?"

You told him your name and he hummed with a sultry, entertained rumble in his throat as he reached out to touch your blouse in a clear pass until he was stopped by Nanami, who was determined to not let you get touched twice.

"Hands to yourself, old man." Nanami grumbled before rubbing your shoulder as you reached the lower flight now. He asked if you'd like to be walked to your car as well, but you assured him it was fine, thanking him for being so kind.

"We'll see ya tomorrow!" Toji called down with his eyes narrowed in a haughty expression from his seat above, and you shivered hearing that.

"I promise we'll be more behaved if you take this way tomorrow! Have a good night!" Nanami promised as he made his way back up to the very first step, and you hurried now to your car. Your face was red, your arms were trembling, and your blood raced.

You weren't embarrassed or humiliated at all. Instead, it was closer to exhilaration to be so close to them in a cramped space like that. And it certainly didn't help that no one minded their manners. It only made you want it more. You fanned yourself and hoped that the front entrance that you usually took to get to the parking lot never got fixed.

[probablyasocialecologist]

It’s become a real challenge to keep up with every Palestine protest and action happening in this country, but I am going to round-up some of that have occurred in recent days in case you missed them. Over 75 activists shut down and blocked all entrances to Boeing Building 598 in Saint Charles, Missouri. The facility manufactures the Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs) and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bombs that Israel is using Gaza. “We are joining millions of people across the United States and around the world in demanding an end to Israeli’s brutal assault on Gaza and its decades-long occupation of Palestine,” said Ellie Tang, a member of the anti-war organization Dissenters, in a statement. “We urge Congress and Biden to hear the calls of millions of us living in this country, and push for a ceasefire. Until Congress blocks the bombs, we will.” After shutting operations down for 2 hours, the facility canceled its deliveries for the day. 500 protesters with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) took over the Statue of Liberty’s platform, dropped banners, held a sit-in, and chanted for a ceasefire. “HAPPENING NOW AT THE STATUE OF LIBERTY: Hundreds of Jews and allies are holding an emergency sit-in, taking over the island to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. We refuse to allow a genocide to be carried out in our names. Ceasefire now to save lives! Never again for anyone!,” tweeted the organization. Oakland protesters blocked a ship from leaving its port for hours. The boat was headed to the Port of Tacoma to pick up arms destined for Israel. Hundreds of protesters are currently occupying that port and at least one worker is refusing to take the cargo after learning about its use. At a Get Out the Vote rally, Democratic candidate Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) was confronted by a protester calling for a ceasefire. “4,000 plus dead children in Palestine. 9,000 plus dead civilians, get off the stage. … Get off the stage. I don’t care … get off the stage,” he yelled before being escorted out of the building by police. Tens of thousands gathered in San Francisco to demand a ceasefire. “I can feel the momentum of it and that’s why we had to get out today,” one told the local CBS station. “My son’s in Trafalgar Square right now or he was earlier today. Same deal. People who just feel the injustice of the world.” A speech by Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) in New Jersey was interrupted by activists calling on him to back a ceasefire. He quickly exited the stage. Rhode Island Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse were disrupted at event by protesters calling for a ceasefire. Rep. Grace Meng was confronted by protesters asking when she will back a ceasefire. She remained silent and her staff told them, “There’s a time and place for this.”

[chronicallyuniconic]

"You were fine as a child/teen"-Was I though?

I've been told countless times that it's unfathomable, that it doesn't make sense, that I am chronically ill now, because I was "healthy" growing up, I was "active" and "normal."

"you were fine" they say

Frustratingly, they are wrong. I was not "fine" and I masked my symptoms heavily. In a lot of cases I didn't know that what I was going through was abnormal.

I remember the many times a year (every month/every other month) I was ill with cold & flu, tonsillitis, chickenpox, rashes, broken bones, sprains, stomach problems, pain and exhaustion.

I remember the 2 years in my teens where I had chronic knee and leg pain that was blamed on growing pains. It affected me so much my attendance in school dropped to 62% & irritated my mum so much that I failed to continue finding medical care for it and "carried on" as if I was fine.

Growing up, being ill was a burden, almost not allowed. If you were ill, you were an annoyance, a nuisance, forced to get on with it. It irritated the people around you, if you were ill with a n y t h i n g in my childhood home.

I remember throughout my whole childhood that at least one week out of the month, I'd get so exhausted I would come home from school and go straight to sleep until shouted down for dinner and I'd go back to bed.

Many times I remember coming home from school and college absolutely depleted of everything and faceplanting on my bed for 2 to 3 hours.

I remember how much I wanted to be involved in some activities but didn't have the energy and was accused of being lazy, anti social or ungrateful of opportunities.

I remember being hospitalised with chronic stomach pains, they suspected appendicitis, but when they could find nothing I was released home with nothing further done for another 15 years. I was accused of attention seeking or just wanting to skip out school.

I remember being unable to tell anybody how I felt whether it was physical or mental. When I did reach out I was told I'm too soft, I'm being dramatic, I'm just making it all up. When I did say "I'm in pain" I was told its not that bad, I'm not dying and that I "won't get any sympathy" from them.

When I went to University & got freshers flu, I was bed-bound for 9 weeks but told it was depression.

Eventually, I couldn't carry on from all the above. Now I'm bed-bound/housebound for life.

Please, tell me again, that I was "fine"

[ms-hells-bells]

i just found something incredible today while browsing retractionwatch. you know that study that liberals tout regarding 'legalising prostitution decreased rape, and criminalising it increases rape'? well-

After reading an economics paper that claimed to document an increase in the rate of rape in European countries following the passage of prostitution bans, a data scientist had questions. 

The scientist, who wishes to remain anonymous, sent a detailed email to an editor of the Journal of Law and Economics, which had published the paper last November, outlining concerns about the data and methods the authors used. 

Among them: the historical rates of rape recorded in the paper did not match the values in the official sources the authors said they used. In other cases, data that were available from the official sources were missing in the paper, the researchers didn’t incorporate all the data they had collected into their model, and a variable was coded inconsistently, the data scientist wrote. (We’ve made the full critique available here.)

Given the consequences the conclusions of the article could have for people in the sex industry, the data scientist wrote, “I hope that someone takes this very seriously and looks into it the [sic] validity of the analysis and the data they used.” 

In response, Sam Peltzman, an editor of the journal and a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, instructed the data scientist to contact the authors of the article: 

The email raises serious questions but without any specific request. Your questions can better be answered by the authors than editors who, as you must know, cannot give each submission the kind of careful attention reflected in your email. Accordingly, we ask that you contact the authors directly if you have not already done so. If you mean the email as a prologue to a critique, I am happy to discuss our relevant policies or any other question about our editorial process.

The data scientist wrote back with a specific request: 

I have just informed you, the editor, that it appears that the authors made an error in at least one of their models that resulted in a substantive difference in the conclusions of the article you edited … I am requesting you investigate if these models are correct and if so, at very least issue a correction. [emphasis original]

In response, Peltzman reiterated his refusal to investigate: 

I can only repeat what was in my last letter. You should take this up with the authors first. The editors cannot become involved unless your conversation with the authors fails to resolve the issues and a comment is received through the usual submission process.           

The University of Chicago Press, which publishes the Journal of Law and Economics, states on its publication ethics page that

When notified of possible errors or corrections, the editor(s) of the journal will review and resolve them in consultation with the Press and according to the Press’s best practices. 

We asked Peltzman why he refused to investigate the concerns the data scientist had raised. He told us:  

The JLE does not have the resources to investigate concerns about data procedure used by authors.  We select referees knowledgeable about the topic of any submission.  Occasionally a referee might comment on some detail of data used by authors.  more often the referee and editors have to take data details at face value and focus their efforts on evaluating empirical results and analysis.  While I can only speak for the JLE it is my impression that these procedures are common among economics journals that publish empirical articles.

Peltzman also explained that the journal’s standard procedure for considering critiques of published articles, “designed to avoid misunderstanding and excessive burden on editors’ and referees’ time,” starts with the critic contacting the authors directly. 

If the authors don’t respond, or if their response is unsatisfactory, the critic could then submit a comment to the journal along with their correspondence with the authors, which the editors would handle as any other submission. 

“Editors obviously cannot be expected to look at raw data for every paper they review,” the data scientist acknowledged, “but when concerns are brought directly to them it is their responsibility to take them seriously. If readers can’t trust that editors will address serious concerns appropriately, it will undermine their faith in the scientific process.”  

We contacted the authors of the paper, Huasheng Gao and Vanya Stefanova Petrova of Fudan University’s Fanhai International School of Finance in Shanghai, and shared the data scientist’s critique. They responded with an 11-page PDF, available here, standing by their work. 

About the differences between the data and their paper and the official sources, they said: 

the data we have used in the paper were the most up-to-date data available at the time we started the empirical work in 2018 … Eurostat is constantly revising its data. It is possible that the data contained in its current version are different from the historical version

The data scientist was unimpressed, and noted that the authors had not responded to a key aspect of the critique: 

Even if the authors believe it was a reasonable strategy to only assess two years post policy change, the relative year variable for year 2— the year in which they identified a large causal increase in rape in the criminalized prostitution countries and a reduction in the prostitution decriminalized countries — was coded incorrectly (or differently for some reason). When the coding is consistent with their original coding scheme, a reduction in rape is seen in the criminalized prostitution group. I’m not sure why they didn’t address this in their response.

The authors also did not directly respond to the data scientist’s concern that if they had incorporated every year of data they had on rape rates into their model, instead of only the two years following a change in prostitution laws, they would not have gotten the same results, the scientist said. 

To check whether data values had indeed changed since the authors started their work, the scientist went to the website of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, where the survey data the authors used is available for download, and found that no substantive changes had been made. 

The scientist told us: 

If they did something wrong or made a mistake they should just take accountability and retract the article.

let me simplify and repeat the core of this to you:

the scientists not only missed out data points, but if the scope of the study changes from the first two years post law change (whether criminalisation or decriminalisation) to all years of rape records before and after we have, THE RESULTS REVERSE AND THE CRIMINALISED SIDE HAS DECREASED RATE OF RAPE COMPARED TO SWITCHING TO DECRIMINALISED.

not to mention the fallacious belief that being forced to have sex or starve/be homeless, with an abusive pimp taking most of your money, is somehow not rape.

this whole study is near worthless. the only worth is having access to the data points they used, so we can see actual results.

[ohsalome]

the intention of comparing the reaction to Palestine vs Ukraine is typically not to criticize Ukrainian victims of war. The criticism is directed at American spectators, because the people in power here are insanely anti Palestinian but have made overtures to help Ukraines resistance efforts despite comparable situations. Regular citizens also mostly support Ukraine but many hate Palestinians. People are just comparing palestine to Ukraine as a point of reference to try to make those people understand.

As kindly as possible, I do not think you can educate people out of islamophobia by appealing to their conscience, at the very least because if they had one they wouldn't be islamophobic in the first place.

And when it comes to people in power, appealing to their empathy in the case with Palestine is fruitless because the help Ukraine got wasn't motivated by emotion either. I do not expect you to know the history of current russo-ukrainian war well, so you probably don't know that the western world was perfectly happy to watch russia roll all over us punishment-free as long as they felt that other "properly european countries" won't be involved. Russia has been butchering us since 2014, and nobody gave a fuck about it. Even during the first few weeks of the full-scale invasion NATO refused to send us any military help, because they expected us to fall and were okay with it.

The current support we have did not fall on us from the sky by the graceful kindness of "our american overlords" - it is a consequence of the cumulative effort of our diplomats, pre-existing agreements with NATO countries, and the economical ripples the full-scale war caused (Ukraine being one of the major world exporters of grain being one of the most relevant).

This is why, sadly Palestine cannot follow the Ukrainian scenario of foreign support. The surrounding circumstances of both of our wars are way to different, and while it is easy to ignore them while making simplistic quick-dopamine-hit posts on hellbr dot com, they do influence the real-world situation on the ground. Which is what posts like the one I replied to do - they create a no-nuance misinformed image of the war in Ukraine. Which amplifies the problem even more, because even though "most americans" can agree on a generic "war in Ukraine bad", their idea of what is going on here is hugely misinformed as it is. And this has harmful real-life consequences on which our very survival depends.

Look. I understand that the war between Palestine and Israel has been going on for decades. I understand that there are many contexts that are obvious to the people in the respective countries that I am oblivious to by the virtue of never being there and not speaking arabic nor hebrew. I understand that there is a lot of propaganda that I may accidentally spread out of my ignorance, and therefore I try to be careful to avoid doing so, out of respect to the people living there. So why is it too much to ask you to give the same respect to us?

Like I have said before, the biggest issue with that infographic post is that it spreads misinformation. In the simplest of terms, misinformation is bad. People are trying to do any smallest thing to help Palestinians - who are currently barely surviving in inhumanely horrifying conditions - and out of ignorance they are spreading anti-ukrainian propaganda. Downplaying the number of ukrainian victims (and, as a result, making russian war crimes look "not as bad") is anti-ukrainian propaganda. Making it seem as we are getting "too much american help" is anti-ukrainian propaganda, because USA is our biggest military exporter, and getting less ammo/vehicles/etc will have catastrophic effect on the amount of death.

Which is why am not staying silent on this, even if your collective intentions are noble and good. Because, I will repeat myself again, your intentions do not matter if the consequences of your actions are harmful. And if (a) comparing Ukraine and Palestine is uneffective; (b) it portrays your ignorance of either one or both of the wars; and (c) simultaneously with spreading support for the palestinian cause you are spreading harmful anti-ukrainian pro-russian propaganda, I do not think it is too much to ask you to stop.

[jinkieswouldyoulookatthis]

Anti-destiel Wank (sorry but I have to)

If you hardcore ship Destiel, please just scroll on by. Please.

Ok, I'm gonna get myself in trouble, I'm sure, but I gotta get this off my chest...

Destiel may be a perfectly fine ship,

but,

IT'S JUST A SHIP.

In the actual context of the show there IS NO ROMANTIC OR SEXUAL TENSION/RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEAN AND CAS.*

Full fucking stop.

Subtext can be interpreted in ANY WAY YOU WANT. It is subjective. You will find whatever you look for in it. Please stop waving subtext interpretations around as if they were objective facts, they aren't. Subtext, by its very definition, relies on implied meaning and understanding, this means it is a subjective interpretation of the media that varies from viewer to viewer. The inherent variations are what make it fanon/headcanon instead of canon.

If you see tension of that sort there and it makes you happy to postulate the what if, then go ahead, that is what fanon and head canon and fan fiction is all about. But if the fact that the tension you think you see isn't being addressed in actual canon makes you grumpy, maybe you need to take some of the fanatic out of your fanning. If you are beginning to think the show creators are actively trying to repress Dean's "true sexuality and feelings" because they are evil, you might need to consider that you've dug in too deep.

Because, like I ship wincest. Yeah, I said it. But I am aware that canon doesn't actually include any level of sexual or romantic (in the modern sense) relationship between Sam and Dean. Wincest is not canon.

Now, are Sam and Dean the real "love" story of the show? Yes, yes they are. That has always been 100% the entire point of Supernatural, the great love story of two brothers struggling to save the world together. It's about family and everything that means, but at its heart, it is about Sam and Dean WInchester. Not all kisses and cuddles and sex kind of love, but love nonetheless. Full stop.

Now, the fact that Destiel is such a popular ship is not surprising to me in the least. Jensen and Misha are two gorgeous guys who share a lot of chemistry on screen and off. And, it is canon that Cas loves Dean. That has been evident since Lazarus Rising (4x01) when Cas was introduced. Castiel's love of Dean Winchester has been his character's main motivation all along and culminated with Cas sacrificing himself to save Dean, after telling him that he loved him in Despair (15x18)

But Dean's main motivation has always been to watch out for his brother. And though Castiel became Dean's best friend, he still comes second to Sam. Nothing against Cas, he just isn't Sam.

So why are so many people so absolutely convinced that Destiel is so real within the context of the story?

Well, I'm pretty sure that it is the same reason that they are so opposed to the idea of wincest.

As we all know, incest is bad, mmmkay? Incest is probably one of the biggest, strongest, cultural taboos we have. So it makes perfect sense that the idea of two blood-related brothers having sexual or romantic feelings for each other is considered icky. It's so off putting that it is a complete no go for even fantasizing about for most people. And that's probably a good thing, tbh, incest should be taboo. But where does that taboo spring from? Why is it so deeply off limits? There are several reasons, but the two main ones are:

That incest can lead to inbreeding.

That incest too often involves molestation or rape of children.

Both of these are seriously bad enough that we all pretty much collectively agree to avoid incestuous relationships. But, do either of these two reasons really apply in the case of Sam and Dean?

The short answer is no. Primarily this is because they are fictional characters that are being played by unrelated actors. But to humor the objectors we'll look at it closer.

We can take the first one right off the table. As two cis men, neither of them is capable of becoming pregnant, so outside of the mpreg (male pregnancy) or gender bending subsets of fanfic tropes, this is not applicable.

The second reason only becomes an issue when talking about the characters earlier in their lives, pre-show or flashbacks. Weecest or teencest, or whatever, are things, but these typically have separate ship names for a reason, because even when dealing with fictional characters this squicks a lot of folks who are otherwise down with the wincest ship. So most content is tagged or labeled as its specific flavor, so anyone can find it or avoid it. But wincest that involves adult Sam and Dean (the specific pairing I'm referring to in this post) doesn't apply to the second reason listed above.

So there really is nothing morally wrong with Sam and Dean having sex with each other. I know that statement is going to bother a whole lot of people, but it is true. Just because something is taboo does not automatically make it morally wrong. Being gay used to be taboo in our culture, and is still taboo for way too many people, even though there is nothing morally wrong with homosexuality.

Now, I wasn't in the fandom back at the beginning of the show, but I've heard tell that the very first Sam/Dean fic was posted just a few hours after the pilot episode aired. A few hours, that's all it took for some highly motivated fan to type out a story where they were more than just brothers. The story is called Reunion. If you watch the pilot, even with your anti-incest goggles on, the chemistry between Jared and Jensen is palpable throughout. There is a reason the show lasted for 15 years, and that reason is that Sam and Dean just work on screen so well together. So if it only took one episode for that ship to be born, what did all the future destiel shippers do? Well I imagine they felt somewhat uncomfortable for the first 60 episodes.

Flash forward to season four and the introduction of Castiel. Finally there was another male character for fans squicked by the notion of sweet, sweet brother loving to focus on! Cas was clearly fixated on Dean more than Sam, which followed the plot since Cas had been instructed to rescue Dean from Hell. As it would turn out, the brothers were destined to be the meatsuits that Michael and Lucifer wore to the big prize fight to determine the fate of the world. Prepping Sam for Lucifer involved him consuming demon blood, which made most of the angelic host view him as an abomination, a factor that Cas had to learn to get past in his relationship with the younger brother. But Dean was ready to go right out of the box, no assembly required for Michael. Castiel, and many of his angelic brethren, as well as a lot of Demons, seem to be drawn to Dean in a way that they just aren't drawn to Sam. Is this fair? Hell no. But I mean, look at him! Jensen has sexual tension with literally everything he comes in contact with, people, food, his car, the man oozes sexual attraction. Don't get me wrong, Jared is a sexy fucking ball of sunshine, and our Sammy is a damned attractive man, but he tends to be more repressed and less openly sexual than his brother, so it is what it is.

Where was I going with this? That's a good question. I got a bit distracted, sorry. Oh right...

At its root, destiel is a reactive projection. There is undeniable tension between characters in the show. Since all of the main cast are male, that tension is highly homoerotic. The two main characters, who are undeniably emotionally enmeshed and co-dependent with each other (a very well established canon fact btw), happen to be blood-related brothers. Oh no! Where is all that tension coming from since we cannot admit or accept that it's coming from them? Ah ha! Here is a new male character that we like, yes, it is obviously coming from his interactions with one of the brothers, even though he wasn't in the first 60 episodes. Yes, it all makes perfect sense now, all that tension was merely foreshadowing.

I've read through all the destiel subtext posts. I've gone back and watched all the scenes they reference multiple times with the express purpose of finding destiel. I'm telling you it is just a fanon ship. Which is 100% fine and good, ship that ship, just stop declaring it more canon than canon, because it's not.

And if you don't like fictional incest, cool, cool, you don't have to. But the underlying sexual tension existed in the first 60 episodes prior to Misha being cast on the show, so it was coming from somewhere. And it'd be cooler if you learned how to scroll past people shipping wincest, like I'm sure you do for all the other weirdass, squicky shit that people post all over the internet. But if it makes your heart beat a little faster to imagine that Dean and Cas have eyesex but that Dean and Sam don't, that's fine. I think it's delusional because neither ship is actually canon and both are 100% A-Ok in fanon, and honestly Jensen doesn't seem to be able to control his eyes, which is not something anyone should feel bad about (it's fucking marvelous) but you do you.

*Castiel does love Dean. He confessed as much, but Dean did not reciprocate. What I am referencing is a mutual romance or attraction, which does not exist.

[darkcircles4lyfe]

This doesn't have anything to do with anything, but i had a talk with a friend a few days ago, about shonen biasis and the way this shapes our expectations, and mha came up so i remembered how so many people apply those biasis HEAVILY into the manga, to the point that they sound like they're looking for a different story.

And one of those things that it seemed to be MOST talked about is exactly bkdk's relationship.

I have seen many times people from the fandom (sometimes really angrily) point out how in most cases Katsuki seems to basically take up not one, but four roles in Izuku's life and this includes putting him in situations that people associate with the MC's love interest, and it is weird that, despite Izuku "having a girl" for people to make assumptions about, he seems to completely repulse any female character that could be the counter part to Izuku's.

And this made us wonder if Katsuki's placement in those roles and lack of interest was made specifically because the author precisely did not want the actions that both do for each other as romantic but a whole another thing entirely, as a subversion for the these classic tropes, as he did by making the conflict between Ochako and Himiko not a "rivals fighting for the affection of a boy" but something that is connected to the plot of these characters instead.

Oh you bet! I am always down to talk about this, because I think about it a lotttt.

This reminds me, recently I remembered a funny habit I used to have with books I read. Like, back in middle school. I used to start by flipping directly to the last page and reading the final sentence. Usually this did not spoil anything whatsoever, but sure enough, by the time I read through the whole book, that sentence would take on new meaning.

So I started musing about what it would be like if only I could do this with bnha, if everything was already out. It made me feel so nostalgic…

Will the last panel be something grand, or something small? Hopeful or sad? Distant? Intimate? A parting message to the reader? Will it look like almost nothing of consequence to the unknowing eye—yet burst with hard-hitting subtext?

Of course I wonder about all the twists and reveals that might be still ahead of us, but it’s kinda soothing to think about how the whole thing could be put to rest. Because then I realize I’m not worried.

For once, this is not because the story is following so many tropes so predictably that I know exactly, in so many words, how it will end. It’s more like the story is a close friend who I’ve gotten to know well enough that everything they do is so “them” it makes me smirk. I'm often marveling at how Horikoshi has managed to pull all this off. How is it that (at least here in the west) people who aren't really paying attention call it basic and cookie-cutter. Even a Japanese animator called it "classic," and this interview shows such obvious dissonance between Hori and the interviewer, just... wow. But it's so clear that bnha has broken just about every rule in the book at this point, so much so that I struggle to condense it into words. I'm like--*gestures broadly at everything*--why haven't more people picked up on it??

Yet we still get bombarded with people saying "it's a shonen, c'mon, we all know how this will end." Um. No you don't. I KNOW there has to be a bunch of people who are secretly frustrated by Kacchan taking up all the roles and getting all the moments. It's not even in a mysogynistic way, because Kacchan is the most anti-dudebro character imaginable. Bkdk's relationship isn't intended for them and they know it... and you know what, I'm starting to ramble. You've heard all this before. The thing I should really be focusing on in your ask is the part where you mentioned how you and your friend were speculating about bkdk ending up as "a whole other thing entirely" rather than simply romantic.

Well, fuck it, I've been biting my tongue, but now might as well be the time I talk about this. I got into a bit of a disagreement with someone over it once and then I shut up. Because it's very difficult to approach the subject without being lumped in with those people who see bkdk as "brotherly" (ew) or otherwise try to push some "crisis of male friendship" agenda, or at the very least without being accused of enabling people to make excuses against bkdk being canon ad infinitum. So let me be clear that I do NOT want bkdk to have an ambiguous or open ending. I want their complexity and importance to be acknowledged. I want them to use their words. I think we may have created a bit of a false dichotomy there.

I am aromantic, and to suggest romantic relationships are inherently the most important and intimate goes against every fiber of my being. I also reject the idea that cut-and-dry gay representation is more desirable just because it is more easily understood by the masses than aspec representation or representation of relationships "beyond" both romantic and platonic. We recognize how ridiculous it is for people to expect Izu*cha at this point, right? Well, the reason they're so confident anyway isn't just because of heteronormativity. It's also because of amatonormativity, the assumption that romantic attraction trumps all: no matter how much focus bkdk get, Izuku blushed at Ochako, so that automatically makes them more "important." THAT is the notion that I want to challenge most. More than anything, I want bkdk's relationship to be fully acknowledged because they have so much more going for them than just attraction.

You and your friend make an excellent point, that it would be very much in line with Horikoshi's taste and the patterns of his writing so far if he chose to subvert the shonen romance trope not just by giving it to two boys, but also by disregarding its premise entirely. It's unlikely he'd try to stuff them into such a copy-paste ending right at the end.

So maybe they won't get the blushy confession, the obligatory kiss, the wedding, the 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. That's fine, we shouldn't pretend those tired tropes are suddenly revolutionary just because they're gay. But don't be disappointed! Without them, we have more room for things that are actually personally meaningful to bkdk to stand out and receive the nuance they deserve: talking through their feelings openly, building each other up like no one else can, understanding each other like no one else can, smiling at each other, embracing, holding hands, rushing to the other in the hospital, being glued at the hip (or even closer), healing mutual trauma, putting each other first in all things. Maybe we'll also get confirmation on Ochako's side as she moves on from her crush on Izuku. You know what other shonen manga took this exact angle as a way of subverting tropes and presenting genuine complexity? Blue Flag! There are so many ways to do bkdk justice.

Even a kiss isn't out of the question, if the right opportunity comes along. A perfect example of what I'm talking about is Good Omens (major season 2 spoilers) because the kiss between Crowley and Aziraphale was not at all about canonizing them. It was an expression of pain and desperation that just made sense at that particular moment. Neil Gaiman was adamant that if it took that kiss to understand the context of their relationship, you really weren't paying attention. I respect the hell out of that.

Recently I was even daydreaming about bkdk getting something similar to the sort of uh, shall we say tasteful nudity, that togachako got, because of how Izuku appears in the vestige realm.

Ya know like not in an nsfw way but in like a "this is so deeply intimate and soft that I feel like I'm intruding" kind of way... yeah. Because it represents vulnerability and openness and acceptance of someone as they are. And I don't care if people call that bait. It's not. It's beautiful. It’s honest.

[kitkatopinions]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[saintarmand]

gonna post some screenshots from a particular user in the vampterview community and the users liking their garbage posts, just in case some of you haven't heard. should become obvious why i'm highly suspicious of anyone who interacts with any of these users.

please just read the posts. sorry i'm not providing image descriptions, please dm me if you need them and i'll add them when i can!

the first post is just one example one of many on this blog, the second one might seem innocuous if you see it on your own but in combination with the others, not so much. please pay attention to the people liking these.

then we have an anon complimenting the wisdom and maturity of this person, who then replied with several paragraphs:

and got likes from two of the same users and two others.

then they self reblogged one of the posts from earlier and continued:

obviously this last post is the most egregious, and not everyone is bold enough to press like knowing that likes are public and could affect their reputation in the fandom. but i am going to assume that the people liking the other posts, which weren't all in public tags, are this person's followers and have seen all the other posts and believe this kinda shit is acceptable. and that speaks volumes about them as people.

i'm personally not going to assume that everyone who's ever liked or reblogged from any of these users did it knowing what kind of people they are (i didn't always know that either, and have probably reblogged from at least one of them before i did) but i am highly suspicious of anyone reblogging from them or interacting with them in a friendly way, and if i see people i follow doing that, i am going to unfollow unless i have very good reason to believe they genuinely had no idea, in which case i will message first.

i hope none of my followers need me to actually explain why what they're saying is absolute garbage but if you genuinely don't get the problem, dm me and i can find you some links about racism 101 i guess

EDIT/UPDATE:

someone asks nalyra what's going on

she later adds this, linking to a post that links back to this very post you're reading right now

track you UNliking something? GIRL WHY DID YOU LIKE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?

i do love how if you read this and don't bother clicking the link she sounds kind of reasonable, and even like she's taking accountability (she's not denying anything! she's linking to a source so people can judge for themselves!) just not SO much accountability that she'll actually say what she did. gotta click those links to find out, and let's face it, the majority of the people who see her post are simply going to assume she's being unfairly targeted again. i mean, she posts about it all the time! why bother even checking, it's not like she would ever link to, say, screenshots of her liking a post that says affirmative action is the only system of oppression based on race and anti-white racism is real

EDIT #2:

another screenshot i forgot to include from the same day of nalyra liking another untagged post from cosmic

[thefatedthoughtofyou]

So, had an idea for a fic. Ranted about it. Never gonna write it. Had a breakdown. Made a moodboard. Here ya go. 👍🏻

Mob Son Steve!

Who's father wishes he was better at it. His heart is too big.

And retired Mob Man wayne, raising Eddie. The mob family he belonged too was wiped out, Eddie's dad was leader, but he got everyone killed pretty much, so Wayne took Eddie and never looked back. Moved to a new city and opened a mechanic garage. Eddie fixes cars like he was born to. He takes after Wayne so maybe he was. And of course, Steve is sentimental about his car, his mom left it to him in her will. But it's old. Breaks down a lot. So he takes it to Munson's Garage. And meets Eddie.

Mob Boy Steve is still a bit of an asshole. But it fades fast, especially once he really starts talking to Eddie. And then mentions him to Robin one day and she's like,

"who's this now what's ahppening???"

Because Steve's face is a goddamn open book and he looks... mushy!

His assholishness is his shield. Because if he isn't an asshole, and hardened, the other guys would tear him apart. But can you imagine, his combed back hair and nice suits.

And Eddie is ALWAYS a mess. And Steve literally just wants Eddie to fucking grab him and ruin all his nice clothes and just make HIM a mess too. And like, it's only partly sexual, this grabbing, he just wants to be able to touch Eddie. And to be able to be dirty and not perfect and put together all the time.

Maybe Nancy works the front desk for the Munsons on weekends and Robin comes in with Steve once cuz she's with him when the car breaks down and her and Nancy meet and Wayne comes back from lunch to see Nancy and Robin all smiley at each other, and Eddie is fucking smiling at the ground and tucking some hair behind his ear as Steve laughs at something he'd said and Wayne's just like,

".... am I running some kind of fucking mob dating garage?" To himself of course, but what the fuck???? Why are there multiple Mob Babies in his shop??? Flirting with his NON mob babies!!!

~°~

Lets say he's definitely still a big ol flirt in this. But Robin always knows when he's flirting for info, and to be formal, and to like.. please his father and "the family" and when he's flirting for real. Cuz he's quiet and sweet when he's being real. And he gets just as flustered as who he's flirting with. And Robin has never seen him more flustered than when he's talking to Eddie.

And Eddie, bless his little anti social, awkward self, genuinely, for the most part, has no idea Steve is flirting with him. He just think he's interested in how Eddie is fixing his car. Thinks maybe he's trying to learn a little bit at least, so he can try and keep her together on his own.

And THAT makes Eddie a little flustered, because most people just want their shit done so they can leave. But Eddie thinks he wants to learn so he tells him stuff. About his car, and then also about cars in general. He's a fountain of car facts and Steve, bless his heart, drinks them up like he's fucking desperate to drown.

And he actually does retain a lot of the info, does actually get a bit interested in the work after he fixes a breakdown on his own once, the radiator needed water and Eddie showed him how to so that on his own in case it happened again cuz Eddie didn't have the part to fix it right then. Had to order it. But Steve remembered, and got it fixed and made it home on his own. And the grease on his hands made him feel like he actually did something of value.

So he listens more closely when Eddie talks after that, always leaning into his space cuz he does have trouble hearing. He loses a lot of fights. But you have to fight where he's from or you just get killed. So he leans close, both he and Eddie getting flustered by the closeness, but he likes it there, next to Eddie.

Because Eddie explains things, looks at Steve, and if he seems confused still, he'll explain it a different way. He'd done that 4 times one day for Steve. He'd been tired, and unfocused, and just a little lost. And Eddie just kept talking until it clicked, and Steve's eyes lit up, and he waved his hands all excited and was like,

"oh oh ok! It's like when-  yeah yeah yeah!!"

And Eddie gave him this huge beautiful smile as he nodded and moved on. And Steve was... not used to that. He wasn't used to anyone smiling after he got all excited like that either, but he tried not to think about THAT too much. He was already much too red in the face from Eddie's smile to be thinking about that.

Anyway. Like we said, Wayne would definitely try to keep them apart at first. Intercepting when Steve came by. Grabbing the keys from Eddie and meeting Steve out front when his car was done.

But one day, Steve shows up covered in blood. His own blood, his face all bruised and battered like someone had used him as a punching bag. He shouldn't have been driving, probably, but he'd made it. Wayne and Eddie had watched his car roll slowly into the lot, watched it stop. Wayne's arm out in front of Eddie stopping him as he tired to move toward the door, a small smile on his lips.

And then Steve opened the door, pulled himself out of the car, and almost fell into the dirt. Eddie was around Wayne in a second, breathing out a worried,

"Steve." as he shoved through the door.

He catches Steve easily, and Steve just leans into his chest, lets Eddie hold him there. Eddie almost crying trying to ask him what happened. Steve just mumbles,

"You should see the other guy." and gives a bloody smile before he sways on his feet, his eyes rolling back.

Eddie has him half way to the door when Wayne slides under Steve's other arm, helping Eddie get him inside, into the back building, which is technically their house. Eddie guides them to the bed in the living room, they set him down gently. Wayne watches Eddie push Steve's blood stained hair off his face, tears slowly dripping down his cheeks as he looks at Steve, and heads for the door. Eddie's on his feet next to him in a second.

"Don't hurt the car. It was his mom's. She's... she's gone." Eddie whispers it.

But those words tell Wayne the parts of the story he was missing. When you're in the business Steve's in, a dead mother isn't something you talk about with just anyone. It's also in that moment he realizes he's maybe not as good at keeping tabs on Eddie as he thought he was. He just gives Eddie's shoulder a squeeze and says,

"I won't hurt it. But we can't leave it out front. If anyone's after him they'll know he's here soon as they see it. I'll take it to the back lot. Move some stuff in front it. Cover it up". Eddie nods enthusiastically and Wayne nods back, once, before he gets to work.

He comes back to find Steve sitting up, his back agaisnt the wall, his jacket and waistcoat in a pile on the floor. Eddie's between his knees wiping at the blood on his face. Grimacing in unison with Steve everytime he hits a sore spot. He's got a bowl next to him on the floor, full of water. The water is red now. Wayne leans down, takes the bowl, and then gently takes the rag from Eddie's shaking hands.

"Lemme change this. Get a new rag. You sit with him. Make sure he doesn't fall alseep." Eddie's on the cot next to Steve immediately. His hand in his hair again, Steve turns slowly to look at Eddie, his lips a small smile though the two splits in them have to be stinging.

"Are you okay?" Eddie manages to not sound too choked up, his fingers reaching for Steve's face and then pulling back multiple times. Steve huffs a laugh and grabs Eddie's hand, drops them both to his thigh as he nods once.

"I will be. Sorry for makin a mess in your place." His voice is strained, from one of his many injuries, Wayne sets a new bowl of water in Eddie's lap as he says it, and Eddie's not sure which of them he's talking to, maybe both. Wayne dismisses him with a wave, tells Eddie he's gonna go back out front and watch the shop. Steve manages to mumble something about Robin before he sags into Eddie's side again. Wayne nods, says,

"I'll keep an eye out for her."

She shows up with Nancy when she arrives for her shift, both of them looking nervous. Her and Nancy both force themselves to stay calm as they walk to the back, both of them running as soon as their out of sight of the front window.

They find Eddie still sitting on the cot, Steve's head is in his lap now. He's awake, but just staring across the room. Eddie's fingers are in his hair. Robin hugs Eddie the best she can, thanking him for taking care of Steve. Eddie can tell she wants to hug Steve too, but doesn't know where to touch him. She settles down by his legs, Nancy squeezing in next to her. And they all just stay with him.

He stays there for a while.

Once Wayne finds out what happened, Steve tells them when he's back up on his feet. His father basically gave up on him ever being part of the family, "the right way". And had sent his little lapdog Billy to "deal with him"

Robin had shown up just in time. Done something dumb to distracte everyone, like set a fire. And her and Steve had both bolted. Going in different directions to lessen the chance of being caught. Robin had run to Nancy. Steve to Eddie.

They're a little predictable, Wayne thinks, but then again, he's not sure either of them have anyone else besides each other. And no one shows up to get Steve. So he thinks they're probably okay. For awhile. But he does know one thing.

If anyone lays their hands on that boy again, they'll have to deal with Wayne. And Wayne's got a past so drenched in blood it turns his stomach to think about. And he'd put it behind him. Raised up a good boy, for his sister. But he's got another boy now, and two girls as well, and he'd be damned if anyone was gonna hurt them. He watches Eddie and Steve making lunch, just pb&j's for everyone, but they're laughing, and bumping into each other and Wayne watches his boys and thinks, just fucking let them 'em try.

[hero-israel]

As a black person I actually find the logic of many Zionists to be audacious.

My people were sold and kidnapped. We were enslaved for hundreds of years. We had the most despicable things happen to us. I’m sure you may relate, we were put into breeding camps, they used our parts to make clothes and furniture, allegedly they ate us, they tortured us, etc.

There is more than enough proof I am indigenous to Africa hell I found and reconnected with the family one of my ancestors was taken from. I am very lucky.

At no point have I ever thought about going to West Africa and taking the land back, stealing property, imprisoning, and murdering people who’ve lived there for centuries and still live there today. Even though there’s a possibility that they’ve participated in the selling of at least one of my ancestors.

Just because I can trace my heritage there doesn’t suddenly mean I have a claim on the land. I have heard so many Zionist say they belong there more than Palestinians, that there claim on the land is stronger. Maybe it’s not all of them but it is enough to be concerning.

Also bring up Liberia if you want. We didn’t ask for that.

This is a fair critique and it brings up one of the most important aspects of Zionism, and of all Jewish life in the modern era and from now on: that Zionism was always morally RIGHT, but it did not have to be morally NECESSARY.

For decades there was a raging, controversial, legitimately two-sided intracommunity debate over Zionism, like nothing you see among Jews today, memorably portrayed in Chaim Potok's novel "The Chosen" (and subsequent film version). The Reform Jewish Movement, our largest denomination, was governed by an explicitly anti-Zionist platform for over 50 years..... until they changed their minds in 1937. The Jewish people always trace their heritage to Eretz Yisrael, always could claim a rightful place there - but things should never have been allowed to get bad enough, fast enough, that in the truest sense their only choice was to create a state of Israel or die.

As early as 1920, Hitler said his goal was total extermination of the Jews. Nobody cared. America sealed its gates to Jewish immigrants in 1924. Germany began visibly prepping for genocide around 1935, again nobody cared. At Evian 1938 - "the great betrayal" - pretty much every powerful state in the world acknowledged that the Jews were about to be wiped out, and knowing that, refused to allow refugees to enter (except for the Dominican Republic, the mensches). England bowed to Arab terrorism and sealed off immigration to Mandate Palestine - which was a violation of international law under the League of Nations but, again, nobody cared. Nobody, not one single country, fought to protect the Jews or to help them escape. The Allies couldn't be bothered to bomb the tracks into Auschwitz, but they would heroically sink refugee ships. After the war, 250,000 Jews lingered miserably in displaced persons camps for YEARS, with not one single country being willing to admit them, and in nearly all cases there being nothing to return to anyway. There were still Jews kept in Dachau, guarded by Germans, until 1951.

From a 1945 report to Truman: "Many Jewish displaced persons … are living under guard behind barbed-wire fences … including some of the most notorious concentration camps … had no clothing other than their concentration camp garb…. Most of them have been separated three, four or five years and they cannot understand why the liberators should not have undertaken immediately the organized effort to re-unite family groups…. Many of the buildings … are clearly unfit for winter…. [Author contrasted these conditions with the relative normal life led by the nearby German populations and wondered at the contrast] ...We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops. One is led to wonder whether the German people, seeing this, are not supposing that we are following or at least condoning Nazi policy...."

Those who attempted to return to their former communities were routinely murdered (seen at the end of "Maus"). There was a massacre of Holocaust survivors in Kiev, Ukraine in September 1945, another in Kielce, Poland in July 1946.

The Jews saw Palestine as their only hope, because it was. And when they saw their enemies there were led by actual red-handed Nazi war criminals, and heard that the stakes were once again their total genocide? Well, that's when you fight.... damn hard... to build the state and the military that will, FOR ONCE, protect you.

You talk about "At no point in my life have I considered claiming a part of Africa and fighting the people who I find there". Well - what if it was extremely obviously that or death?

A popular saying among Jews: "Israel was not created because there was a Holocaust. The Holocaust was created because there was no Israel." It's true - but it should not have been necessary to have an Israel to prevent the Holocaust. The rest of the world should have done that, and they didn't so much fail in preventing it as much as they succeeded in enabling it. You are correct to say that African-Americans did not ask for Liberia. The concept was made up by white people to try to get blacks out of America (though it gained popularity with black people after "milestones" of new cruelty such as the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, and I believe Marcus Garvey is well-liked to this day). Well, Jews did not ask to have no government in the world grant us equality or defend us from genocide. We did not ask to have no choice. And we do not ask for our response to the latest attempted genocide to be condemned by the same nations that enabled the last several.

Today about 90% of Jews are Zionists. Not just out of the everlasting moral principle, but because of the life-or-death reality that when we needed ANY OTHER OPTION TO WORK, NOTHING DID. And since then, there has been even clearer demonstration of the tenuousness of Jewish survival and the depths of inhuman hatred we face from our enemies, as the 3,000-year-old Mizrahi Jewish civilization was successfully uprooted and purged from dozens of countries (which had already been oppressing and massacring them long before Zionism) as collective racial revenge against Israel. The mere fact that that was logistically possible - that it could be done, quickly and repeatedly - speaks worlds about the normalized culture of eliminationism surrounding us. What do you really think are the chances that African-Americans could be altogether physically purged from the USA or some of its states? Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea finished their Jews within the last 5 years.

As "critics of Israel" have made it extremely clear that all Jews worldwide remain legitimate targets, that all "colonizers" (unquestionably including Americans like me) "deserve it" ("it" to include infanticide, rape, kidnapping, and mass murder), and as America visibly decays into algorithmic racist authoritarianism and climatic desperation.... you should not expect that 90% to change.