hi y'all. i know i don't make a lot of original posts here. however, on may 31st, i watched as my friends and peers were brutalized at the hands of cops from departments across california.
edit 6/12/24: students for justice in palestine at uc santa cruz has published a press release. it is easily the best way to understand what happened that night. please take a few minutes to read it.
uc santa cruz police made a statewide call for mutual aid in order to disband the gaza solidarity encampment located at the main entrance of the campus - initially established at the quarry in the center of campus on may 1, it moved to the entrance on may 20 in solidarity with the UAW strike. on tuesday, may 28, protesters barricaded the main entrance, cutting off the primary way of getting on campus; though the western entrance to UCSC was left unblocked (except for a few hours on tuesday), the main entrance remained obstructed until the raid began late on thursday night. this road blockage is what admin cited as the reason for the raid, along with "campus safety" and "academic freedom".
it's important to note that prior to blocking the road, students had been encamped for 28 days, and had been holding peaceful, law-abiding rallies since october. nothing worked. months of following the guidelines that admin had set, and of course student voices were dismissed and ignored by chancellor cynthia larive and cpevc lori kletzer (the latter of whom, by the way, showed up at 6 am "walking her dog" and smiled while watching her students get suffocated and beaten). the escalation would never have happened if student demands had been met at the very beginning.
hundreds of cops in riot gear from as far out as uc davis showed up to abuse students. over 115 arrests were made, including 3 ucsc professors, transported off by buses that were fifteen years past their intended end-of-use date and had also been servicing the campus prior. is this "campus safety"? is this "academic freedom"?
from just before midnight until approximately 9am on friday, cops kettled, suffocated, shoved, yanked, beat, and bruised students. one got a battery charge for writhing and bumping a cop after another slammed him in the head with a baton. another had a bag placed over their head, leading to suffocation, vomiting, and loss of consciousness. at least two protesters were confirmed to go to the ER that morning; many more have had to seek medical attention for lasting injuries.
arrestees were given a 14-day campus ban, including those who live on-campus (functionally evicting them & preventing access to their belongings), not to mention subjected to horrifyingly inhumane conditions:
you can find more information on various instagram accounts such as ucscsjp, ucscdivest, fjpucsc, ucsc_encampment, & jawsucsc. there's plenty of other organizations and people posting about this, too. please, don't let ucsc brush this under the rug. demand amnesty for the arrestees and protesters. contact any ucsc admin you can find. the uc has been utilizing police brutality to repress student voices across their institution, with ucla and uc irvine also being victims of this violence. do not let them get away with it.
free palestine, from the river to the sea. if seeing this violence sickens you, remember that this is not even a fraction of what the people of palestine have been enduring for decades. we will not let the university silence us, no matter what.
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I don't think I've seen a write-up on various fairy-tale and Russian sayings references in the English translation, so I'd like to make one.
"Puddles make poor drinks" and "Gorkhon water will turn you into livestock": what's up with that?
There is a fairytale about a big sister and the little brother. They walk for a long time and the brother is very thirsty. His big sister keeps telling him to keep going and not to drink from the puddles, like a goat. Eventually the little brother drinks from the puddle.
And promptly turns into a goat.
Rest of the fairytale is about the big sister returning the little brother to his original form.
So, this is where the talks about puddles and water turning you into livestock is about.
The Akela joke did not work at all in the translation.
It comes from Mowgli, which is well known due to the USSR cartoon. In the book (and in the cartoon) the elderly wolf leader Akela misses during a hunt... after which he promptly is deposed as a leader of the pack. Mowgli loses his protection and this is a Big Deal.
So whenever a boss in real life makes a silly mistake (say, throwing a paperball into the bin and missing) everyone thinks it's very funny to say "Akela missed!" implying that they will get a new boss now and the current one will get deposed for this mistake.
Here "Akela never misses" means that Khan being at risk of infection and coming into the nutshell does not diminish his importance at all and his dogheads are just as loyal as before, happily delivering loot to him.
There is a saying: "Better a sparrow in hand, than a stork in the sky."
It means that you should treasure what you have, instead of preferring that which you can't get (so easily).
Lara Ravel references that she can't be happy with the little she has. She wants to help others and for this she needs more.
"Maybe I could be useful to you" is a classic thing that various animals say to people in fairytales, once they are caught and plead for their lives.
I think, this is a popular trope in English fairytales as well, but the phrasing here is lifted directly from fairytales in Russian, so pointing it out either way.
"Everyone's shirt is closer to their skin" is a well known Russian saying.
It means that your happiness and comfort is always more important to you than the comfort of other people. Hence: your shirt is closer to your skin, so you care about it more.
"Silence implies assent" is another popular saying (it even rhymes in Russian).
If someone proposes a course of action and no one speaks out against it or for it, then people usually say "silence is a sign of assent" and consider the matter settled. (Or, more often, people then suddenly say that they disagree and you get a more lively and productive conversation.)
I can't find another screenshot, but Dankovsky says something similar about "I wore down seven pairs of shoes getting to this town".
It obviously could be taken as a factual statement, but most likely it's a reference to fairytales.
In a lot of fairytales the protagonist will be given on a long journey seven pairs of iron boots. Once all of them break, the hero has reached his destination.
Same here: it's a fairytale way of saying that you had a long and arduous journey (or in Capella's case, ran around the whole town for years).
"I'll just peek with one eye" is another popular Russian phrase.
"Can I look?"
"No"
"How about if I look with just one eye?"
Obviously, it's nonsense, but it's a typical thing to say if you REALLY want to look at something, so you just say "pleeeease, I will just look only a little".
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i always sing the praises of having a beta reader if you want that sort of thing, but actually there are two separate fic-editor types:
alpha reader: just fucking uncritically loves your work. #1 fan. fully obsessed with the pairing you're writing to the exclusion of all good sense. might correct a comma or two but they are there to tell you that you are amazing and that you have never done anything wrong in your life and you should post that shit immediately. you ask them "does this part work?" and they say yes before the question is fully out of your mouth. the golden retriever of writing friends. every writer 100% needs one of these in their back pocket.
pros: THE best preemptive defense against the gaping chasm of self-doubt between "post work" and the first kudos.
cons: this is the reason why sometimes you see a fic that has eight beta readers thanked in the author's notes and the main character's name spelled wrong.
beta reader™️: these friends also fucking love your work, but the way they want to love it is to stick their fingers in your fic like a fruit bin at the grocery store and gently squeeze your characters (and commas) to see if they're ripe.
a good beta reader will copy edit your fic, notice if you've used the same sentence three times, and let you know if your sex scenes seem to contain the intended number of dicks per person.
a great one will highlight for you what's unique and wonderful about your writing, will help you problem-solve and plot through long fic, and will lovingly bug the shit out of you with how did she get here? and would he really say that? and is this what you meant? and when you say "oh shit no it isn't" their eyes light up and they go OKAY! let's figure this out!!!
more of a border collie kind of situation.
pros: the best way to polish your fic and grow as a fic writer. in my experience, it's also an incredible way to work through impostor syndrome. knowing someone you respect has been all up in your fic's junk and still says "it's great and you're great, now post it!" is a game-changer.
cons: if they show you what's not working, you're probably going to have to take time to fix it :/
caveats: not everyone who wants to give constructive feedback can deliver it in a way that works for everyone, so if the experience ends up making you feel bad, this is not a good match! it's also VERY helpful to tell your beta reader what level of editing you're looking for. if someone asks "can you give this a quick once-over before i post?" i know they want me to look for obvious mistakes and reassure them that it's post-worthy. if you ask me to "rip it apart" i'm going in there with a fine tooth comb.
(the primary motivation of both of these editor breeds is, of course, that they want you to write more and they want to read it before everyone else.)
bonus mode:
specialty reader: sensitivity readers and subject matter experts! if you are lucky enough to find and motivated enough to use one of these, their job is not to look at commas or to tell you that you're great, but to give advice on something specific in your fic.
edit: check the reblogs for a correction! turns out “alpha reader” is a pre-existing term in some circles for someone who helps you during the process, a lot like the great beta-reader i described above. taking suggestions for renaming my version of the alpha reader above. i’m thinking “hype man.”
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