#if you show up in the notes and are being antisemitic I WILL find you and I WILL bite you

[perfectlyvalid49]

On being Jewish, and traumatized (It’s been 5 months and I want to talk):

Judaism is a joyous religion. So much of our daily practice is to focus us on the things that are good. I know that there’s a joke that all our holidays can be summed up as “they tried to kill us. We survived – let’s eat!”, and you might think that holidays focused on attempts at killing us might be somber, but they’re really not. Most are celebrated in the sense of, “we’re still here, let’s have a party!” When I think about practicing Judaism, the things I think about make me happy.

But I think a lot of non-Jews don’t necessarily see Judaism the same way. I think in part it’s because we do like to kvetch, but I think a lot of it is because from the outside it’s harder to see the joy, and very easy to see the long history of suffering that has been enacted on the Jewish people. From the inside, it’s very much, “we’re still here, let’s party” and from the outside it’s, “how many times have they tried to kill you? Why are you celebrating? They tried to KILL YOU!”

And I want to start with that because a lot of the rest of this is going to be negative. And I don’t want people to read it and wonder why I still want to be Jewish. I want to be Jewish because it makes me happy. My problem isn’t with being Jewish, it’s with how Jews are treated.

What I really wanted to write about is being Jewish and the trauma that’s involved with that right now.

First, I want to talk about Israeli Jews. I can’t say much here because I’m not Israeli, nor do I have any close friends or family that are Israeli. But if I’m going to be talking about the trauma Jews are experiencing right now, I can’t not mention the fact that Israeli Jews (and Israelis that aren’t Jewish as well, but that’s not my focus here) are dealing with massive amounts of it right now. It’s a tiny country – virtually everyone has a friend or family member that was killed or kidnapped, or knows someone who does. Thousands of rockets have been fired at Israel in the last few months – think about the fact that the Iron Dome exists and why it needs to. Terror attacks are ongoing; I feel like there’s been at least one every week since October. Thousands of people are displaced from their homes, either because of the rocket fire, or because their homes and communities were physically destroyed in the largest pogrom in recent history – the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust ended. If that’s not trauma inducing, I don’t know what is.

And there is, of course, the generational trauma. And I think Jewish generational trauma is interesting because it’s so layered. Because it’s not just the result of one trauma passed down through the generations. Every 50-100 years, antisemitism intensifies, and so very frequently the people experiencing a traumatic event were already suffering from the generational trauma that their grandparents or great grandparents lived through. And those elders were holding the generational trauma from the time before that. And so on.

And because it happens so regularly, there’s always someone in the community that remembers the last time. We are never allowed the luxury of imagining that we are safe. We know what happened before, and we know that it happened again and again and again. And so we know that it only makes sense to assume it will happen in the future. The trauma response is valid. I live in America because my great grandparents lived in Russia and they knew when it was time to get the hell out in the 1900s. And the reason they knew that is because their grandparents remembered the results of the blood libels in the 1850s. How can we heal when the scar tissue keeps us safe?

I look around now and wonder if we’ll need to run. We have a plan. I repeat, my family has a plan for what to do if we need to flee the country due to religious persecution. How can that possibly be normal? And yet, all the Jewish families I know have similar plans. It is normal if you’re Jewish. Every once in a while I see someone who isn’t Jewish talk about making plans to leave because they’re LGBTQ or some other minority and the question always seems to be, “should I make a plan?” It astounds me every time. The Jewish answer is that you need to have a plan and the only question is, “when should I act?” Sometimes our Jewish friends discuss it at play dates. Where will you go? What are the triggers to leave? No one wants to go any earlier then they have to. Everyone knows what the price of holding off too long might be.

I want to keep my children safe. When do I induct them into the club? When do I let my sweet, innocent kids know that some people will hate them for being Jewish? When do I teach them the skills my parents and grandparents taught me? How to pass as white, how to pass as Christian, knowing when to keep your mouth shut about what you believe. When do I tell them about the Holocaust and teach them the game “would this person hide me?” How hard do I have to work to remind them that while you want to believe that a person would hide you, statistically, most people you know would not have? Who is this more traumatic for? Them, to learn that there is hatred in the world and it is directed at them, or me, to have to drive some of the innocence out of my own children’s eyes in order to make sure they are prepared to meet the reality of the world?

And the reality of the world is that it is FULL of antisemitism. There’s a lot of…I guess I’d call it mild antisemitism that’s always present that you just kinda learn to ignore. It’s the sort of stuff that non-Jews might not even recognize as antisemitic until you explain it to them, just little micro-aggressions that you do your best to ignore because you know that the people doing it don’t necessarily mean it, it’s just the culture we live in. It can still hurt though. I like to compare it to a bruise: you can mostly ignore it, but every once in a while something (more blatant antisemitism) will put a bit to much pressure on it and you remember that you were already hurting this whole time.

On top of the background antisemitism, there’s more intense stuff. And usually the most intense, mask off antisemitism comes from the right. This makes sense, in that a lot of right politics are essentially about hating the “other” and what are Jews if not Western civilizations oldest type of “other”? On the one hand, I’ve always been fortunate enough to live in relatively liberal areas so this sort of antisemitism has felt far away and impersonal – they hate everybody, and I’m just part of everybody. On the other hand, until recently I’ve always considered this the most dangerous source of antisemitism. This is the antisemitism that leads to hate crimes, that leads to synagogue shootings. This is the reason why my synagogue is built so that there is a long driveway before you can even see the building, and that driveway is filled with police on the high holidays. This is the reason why my husband and I were scared to hang a mezuzah in our first apartment (and second, and third). For a long time, this was the antisemitism that made me afraid.

But the left has a problem with antisemitism too. And it has always been there. Where the right hates the “other”, the left hates the “privileged/elite/oppressors.” It’s the exact same thing, just dressed up with different words. They all mean “other” and “other” means “Jew.” It hurts more coming from the left though. A lot of Jewish philosophy leans left. A lot of Jews lean left. So when the left decides to hate us, it isn’t a random stranger, it’s a friend, and it feels like a betrayal.

One of the people I follow works for Yad Vashem, and a few weeks ago she mentioned a video they have with testimonies from people who came to Israel after Kristallnacht, with an unofficial title of “The blow came from within.” The idea is that to non-German Jews, the Holocaust was something done by strangers. It was still terrible, but it is easier to bear the hate of a stranger – it’s not personal. But to German Jews, the Holocaust was a betrayal. It wasn’t done by strangers, it was done by coworkers, and neighbors and people they thought were friends. It was done by people who knew them, and still looked at them and said, “less than human.” And because of this sense of betrayal, German survivors, or Germans who managed to get out before they got rounded up, had a very different experience than other Holocaust victims.

And I feel like a lot of left leaning Jews are having a similar experience now. People that we’ve marched with or organized with, or even just mutuals that we’ve thought of as friends are now going on about how Jews are evil. They repeat antisemitic talking points from the Nazis and from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and when we point out that those ideas have only led to Jewish death in the past they don’t care. And if someone you thought of as a friend thinks of you this way, what do you think a stranger might think? Might do?

The Jews are fucking terrified. I’ve seen a post going around that basically wonders if this was what it was like for our ancestors – when things got bad enough to see what was coming but before it was too late to run? And we can see what’s coming. History tells us that they way people are talking and acting only leads to one place. I’m a millennial – when I was a kid the grandparents at my synagogue made sure the kids knew – this is what it looked like before, this is what you need to watch out for, this is when you need to run. I wonder where to run to. It feels like nowhere is safe.

I feel like I’ve been lucky in all this. I don’t live in Israel. I have family and acquaintances who do, but no one I’m particularly close to. Everyone I know in real life has either been sane or at least silent about all of this (the internet has been significantly worse, but when it comes to hate, the internet is always worse). I live in a relatively liberal area – there’s always been antisemitism around anyway, but it’s mostly just been swastikas on flyers, or people advocating for BDS, not anything that’s made me actually worry for my safety. But in the last 5 months there have been bomb threats at my synagogue, and just last week a kid got beat up for being Jewish at our local high school. He doesn’t want to report it. He’s worried it will make it worse.

I bought a Magen David to wear in November. At the time it seemed like the best way to fight antisemitism was to be visibly Jewish, to show that we’re just normal people like everyone else. Plus, I figured that if me being Jewish was going to be a problem for someone, then I would make it a problem right away and not waste time. I’ve worn it almost constantly since, but the one time I took it off was when I burnt my finger in December and had to go to urgent care. I didn’t think about it too much when I did it, but I thought about it for a long time after – I didn’t feel good about having made that choice.

The conclusion I came to is that the training that my elders had been so careful to instill in me kicked in. I was hurt, and scared, and the voice inside my head that sounds like my grandmother said, “don’t give them a reason to be bad to you. Fight when you’re well, but for now – survive.” It still felt cowardly, but it was also a connection to my ancestors who heeded the same voice well enough to survive. And it enrages me that that voice has been necessary in the past. And it enrages me that things are bad enough now that my instinct is that I need to hide who I am to receive appropriate medical care.

I wish I had some sort of final thought to tie this all together other than, “this sucks and I hate it,” but I really don’t. I could call for people to examine their antisemitic biases, but I’m not foolish enough to think that this will reach the people who need to do so. I could wish for a future where everything I’ve talked about here exists only in history books, and the Jewish experience is no longer tied to feeling this pain, but that’s basically wishing for the moshiach, and I’m not going to hold my breath.

I guess I’ll end it with the thought that through all of this hate and pain and fear, we’re still here. And we’re still joyful as well. As much as so many people have tried over literally THOUSANDS of years to eradicate us, I’m still here, I’m still Jewish, and being Jewish still makes me happy.

Am Yisrael Chai.

[fairuzfan]

It's the zionist concern anon again. I will say for now that with what you said about prioritizing Palestinians I do agree. The people going through a genocide are a bigger priority than people who are not going through a genocide. I just fear that due to the fact I am neither Palestinian or Jewish that I may end up embracing stances that I do not actually understand and that innocent people may suffer because of it. I do not want to be irresponsible. I am also someone who lives in a country built on stolen land, so that does to some sort of extent influence my feelings on Isreal as I imagine many people in Isreal share my thoughts on the fact we have lived our entire lives on stolen land. As I said before, I also do not know any Palestinians personally so I find it hard to know who I can ask about the history, Hamas, technical details of politics, etc without risking being taught the wrong things. On a much more selfish note, I also struggle with debilitating mental health issues that make it very difficult to navigate moral issues especially if the moral issues do not impact me on a personal level. So if I am being honest, my questions are not entirely selfless as I have very self-centered fears on if I am actually a horrible person. I thank you again for being so understanding, but I figure the right thing to do here is admit I am likely not as pure intentioned in my questions as I should be when a large factor to why I worked up the courage to ask is in hope I am worrying too much about my quality of moral character from a selfish perspective. Again, I thank you for being so understanding and willing to answer these asks instead of just brushing me off as a horrible zionist.

I don't think you're a horrible person at all I just think everyone has underlying zionist biases because it's a product of the society we live in.

And I do understand where you're coming from, honestly. Something that always helps me is remembering something that my parents taught me as a kid: always stand on the side of the oppressed. Now as I grew up I realized you have to define what oppression means and I think exploring that will also help you get a better understanding of how to combat other forms of racism/antisemitism/transphobia/etc.

If you do want to learn about hamas tho, I would suggest taking a look at Tareq Baconi, he has a lot of writings about the history of Hamas and he's Palestinian. There are also Palestinian podcasts and social media accounts. I understand that not knowing a palestinian personally to help you guide yourself through these things is daunting, but there are plenty of resources to help! It's why I'm here on this blog honestly, I don't mind you reaching out to me for questions or anything.

A good principle to remind ourselves with is "how can I ensure that justice can be had?" And to find the answer to that you need to look into multiple types of antizionist thought. Some blogs I like to check out for a diverse antizionist opinion are @el-shab-hussein and @bringmemyrocks as a couple of examples. Plus I'd look to Black American thinkers on antiracism (like Angela Davis and James Baldwin and Kwame Ture) because they do a good job of showing you how to examine your internal biases which we are all subject to.

I don't think this selfish to want to be a good person. I have the same worries. I actually do get worried that sometimes I'm *actually* a bad person secretly without me realizing and I reach out to friends and family to talk it out. Something that helps me through this is realizing that you have to forgive yourself for previous beliefs you've had and promise yourself to do better because at the end of the day youre human and you make mistakes.

But really my biggest advice is to read and listen to a variety of schools of thought and if you can, interact with local communities dedicated to antiracism. Even if theyre digital communities! That will help a lot with identifying any problem points.

Again, feel free to reach out with any questions. I don't think you're a zionist at all! Please don't worry and thanks for reaching out :)

[traegorn]

you never read the lilith question from the first edition of lilith magazine you twisted presumptuous fraud and antisemite

So I'm probably giving you more attention than you deserve, but I also hate leaving someone who keeps repeatedly shouting something at me that's so wrong uncorrected.

You brought this up back in September (yes, this has been going on for that long), and at the time I hadn't read it so I assumed it supported your argument. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and trusted that it said what you said.

But here's the thing, I've since read it.

And it doesn't support what you're saying at all.

(Putting the rest under a cut since this gets long...)

So going to the actual piece we have to remember what "Lilith Magazine" is. It's a Jewish Feminist magazine writing primarily for a Jewish audience. Cantor-Zuckoff is talking about how Jewish women may want to look at her story differently. I don't find anything in there arguing for Lilith to be some pan-feminist icon for non-Jewish people. In fact, in the article Cantor-Zuckoff says:

What we have to explore are the uniquely Jewish aspects of the Lilith story, and how they relate to the Jewish experience, to Jewish history. After all, Jews lived among many different peoples and were subject to a bombardment of cultural and religious concepts and myths from all sides. What they accepted is important because it shows us what Jews perceived as necessary and appropriate to Jewish life and its continuity. How they transmuted what they accepted is also significant for this reason. The account of Lilith’s revolt in the Alphabet is, to the best of my knowledge, intrinsically Jewish; no non-Jewish source tells of a female struggle for equality or gives it as a reason for the vengeful behavior of a female demon. This is especially important to us in exploring how the Lilith myth connects with our unique history.

The only comments about universality in the piece are when Cantor-Zuckoff says that there are stories with some similarities in other cultures just prior to those last two paragraphs:

These legends of Lilith-as-demon, the vengeful female witch, are, of course, not unique to Jewish culture and tradition. Many scholars theorize that vengeful female deities or demons, like the Greek hecatae, represent the vestiges of the dying Matriarchy or are an attempt by men to discredit the Matriarchy.

What Cantor-Zuckoff is arguing here is that there are myths in other cultures that have been influenced by patriarchy and serve some similar functions. This is not an argument for other people using Lilith, only that there are elements she shares. To claim they're the same though is bizarre, as you wouldn't claim that, say, Kinich Ahau and Helios are the same god just because they're both associated with the sun.

I think this really goes back to the fact that you've started with a conclusion and just reject anything that contradicts it. You really want it to be true. What I have said from the start is that Lilith is a figure who is unique to Jewish folklore. I backed this up with with the evidence we find in the historical record. I debunked the supposed "non-Jewish Lilith" sources.

And I said listen to Jewish people about what's okay or not okay to use from their culture, as they are a closed ethnoreligion, and not listening to them would make someone an asshole. You've been having a bizarre tantrum at me for like half a year now, and it's getting sad.

I don't know why you seem to care that I, a random person you will never meet, thinks you're being an asshole, but this has to stop.

(Context Note: For anyone who is seeing this post first in this ongoing "conversation" -- this anon has been harassing me for months because I dared say in my podcast that Lilith is a figure who comes exclusively from Jewish folklore, and that members of the Modern Witchcraft Movement should listen to Jewish people when they ask us not to appropriate her. That's right -- my saying "listen to Jewish people" is apparently an antisemitic act.)

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Cannot tell you how fiercely glad I am to hear Rosenthal say the line "Jews from Brooklyn don't ride horses" in Masters of the Air episode 6.

Spielberg had no fucking idea what the climate of the world would be when the show aired, but he knows through is own interest in WW2 and his own existence as a Jew how often Jewish resistance to the Nazis is played down or simply written out.

Robert Rosenthal was a Jewish man who went to war and specifically requested to be a pilot so he could personally bomb Hitler. He is noted as saying he'd fly as long as Hitler was alive.

He also said he wasn't doing it because he was a Jew but because he was a human being.

This is a note I find especially interesting because Rosenthal had access to the newspapers that actually ran with the stories of the abuse and dehumanization of Jews for Hitler's entire reign. He was from Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York.

He knew from day 1. He understand from day 1. He understood how little some of his fellow citizens in NYC and the rest of the USA gave a shit about his people.

And he still stood up and said "This is for all the fucking people because Hitler is a danger to us all."

Like. The man's a hero nine hundred times over is what I'm saying, and I'm not saying Spielberg himself made sure a direct and unquestionable remark about Rosie's Jewish identity made it in the show, but I also feel like he made sure it STAYED, you know?

Spielberg has talked about his personal history of his own Jewish identity, rooted in antisemitism from the time he was a child, and it makes me very fucking happy to see an unquestionable recognition of Rosie's Jewish heritage from a director who has done so much work to accept and love his own.

[xx-slug-xx]

Hello! It have been a while since i've heard about the controversies of Viv, especially about some of her views

If you want, can you explain about her transphobia, homophobia, racism and antisemitism, pls?

I’m not an expert by any means, but I can explain a little bit. There’s other sources that are more reliable than my word though, especially since I’m not going to go into huge detail lol. I encourage you to do your own research, my word is not law and there’s a good chance I’m misinformed.

I will give a disclaimer that, despite being proship, I do discuss some of the things she depicts in her fictional works on top of things she does irl. Some of which is just my opinions based on observation of the show. But most of this is in regard to stereotypes being portrayed, which is an area of fiction that actively perpetuates bigotry and I don’t really see it as “just fiction”. That’s just me though. There’s some screenshots of how she treats real people too.

Anyway, antisemitism:

The character Mimzy from HH is a blatant Jewish stereotype. Not only is she someone who’s extremely money hungry, small sharp teeth, short, fat, has a nasally voice, but she’s also got the classic hooked nose that’s seen in antisemitic propaganda, (none are bad things on their own. If it wasn’t for all of them combined, then I wouldn’t think twice about it tbh) On top of that, she’s not a well liked character in the show, being portrayed as annoying, selfish, greedy, and even sleazy to some extent. She’s not a character that has many positive aspects to her

But on top of that the character Rosie is based on the Jewish mother stereotype as well. It’s even in her audition notes.

But wait! There more! She was a fan of the I-hate-jewce blog here on tumblr, as she followed them and did an art trade with them that depicted Hitler as a Sausage Party character. The excuse she makes was that she didn’t believe in I-hate-jewce’s opinions, but admired their way they voiced their opinions. And that it was a different time when making jokes and stating harmful opinions like these were “more accepted”. Which, to me, is a piss poor excuse for being a bigot in the past and/or present.

Onto transphobia:

This screenshot may be faked, but it also lines up with her pfp at the time the screenshots were taken, as well as other viewpoints she’s lauded to. They are from discord, formatting is wierd bc they were taken in compact mode

However, she does misgender her trans associates. There’s been an ongoing (to my knowledge) situation and dispute between someone named Ken and Vivzie. Ken uses they/them pronouns. Vivzie has been seen many times referring to Ken using she/her, despite knowing Ken’s identity quite well. Here’s some screenshots from some times they’ve talked together, Vivzie talking about Ken to others, and Ken voicing their concern twards Vivsies views on their gender. (Sorry for bad quality btw)

In addition to this, Vivzie in the past (when zoophobia was being worked on), has created a character by the name of Jojo who was a direct caricature of a past friend that she clearly didn’t like.

Here’s the character

Plus, folks who have worked with Spindlehorse have discussed that transphobia is an issue in the work place. Not really Vivzie’s fault, she can’t control everything. But still, it’s odd and not cool that this continued to be an issue.

Millie’s trans brother in HB doesn’t have any speaking roles, or even a name. And there was an error in one of the episodes he appears in where his horns indicate that’s he’s cis male instead of being trans (not a huge concern, animation errors happen. I just find it not cool that rep for trans men was overlooked) She also doesn’t credit people who voice the only trans masc character with a speaking part, plus he’s also unnamed. But from the looks of it, his VA is a cis male. Keep in mind the contrast for Sallie Mae being that her VA is a trans woman.

Vivzie has shown a pattern of not respecting trans men as real men. Or any afab person as their gender if it’s something other than cis. It’s a pattern that’s come up that can’t be denied imo. It’s especially obvious when it’s towards people she has some sort of beef with.

Would also like to bring up how her merch sexualizes Sallie Mae. Like, to the same degree that the main characters of HB are. She’s a side character who has minimal speaking parts and appearances. Yet, she’s sexualized to hell and back. I’m all for making trans women feel desirable and beautiful, because they are! I think it’s great! But imo, I find it kinda weird that her trans fem rep is treated like this when she’s not a main character. Plus, her merch doesn’t do that to her trans masc characters. Why do it to one but not the others? But hey, that’s just me and it’s not a rule that everyone has to agree with me on that lmao

Racism:

Valentino is black coded, and is a blatant black stereotype (violent, black, drug addicted pimp archetype who sexually abuses people). I don’t feel like I need to explain why that’s not a great look.

Alastor is “black coded” (ashy skin and he’s white washed to hell). He uses voodoo, which is a closed practice that black slaves created to empower themselves and have a connection to their roots despite their horrible circumstances. He’s “mixed” Creole from some older depicting of him in notes if I recall.

She has supported Blaire White (she did black face and mocked blm) (look up that whole issue lol, too much there to talk about but I’m putting it here anyway) before back tracking when people realized what was going on. Vivzie back peddles a lot on her past though, never making a true apology or owning up to her past actions.

Any characters that DONT look white washed in the shows are not designed by her. Every poc character that she designs herself is white washed to hell and back. I know they are demons, they don’t look human, that’s a given. But Grim from TGAOBAM is a literal skeleton, but you still know he’s black. There’s better ways to depict bipoc coded characters though, that’s my point. She prides herself on her bipoc representation, when it’s shit representation when she’s the one soully behind it imo. There are really good character designs that depict people of color, but they aren’t Vivzie’s ideas and that credit goes to the character design team!

Sir Pentious is based on another ex friend of hers who she used to mock. She didn’t like him, saw him as a joke, etc. He was indigenous American, his hood is ment to look like his hair (which Vivzie mocked extensively). The whole “inventor” aspect of his character is ment to mock the steampunk aesthetic that her ex friend liked. He’s also the butt of a lot of jokes. Overall, I don’t think it’s very cool that Vivzie has repeatedly shown to make caricatures of real like people who belonged to minority groups.

Nifty’s pilot design depicted her skin as yellow. She’s Japanese. This is on top of being a maid and being boy crazy. That’s not a stereotype at all /sar. (She’s one of my favorites and she did get a redesign in the premier. And she got the best jokes in the show so far imo. She’s silly lol but I still wanted to bring it up, despite how much I like her)

She has ignored bipoc fans when they express being uncomfortable with anything relating to how she depicts poc characters. And it’s blatant that she doesn’t care about the voices of concern from her bipoc fans. If you are going to depict bipoc characters in your show, especially cultural depictions, listen to people who are bipoc and who come from those cultures you are depicting! She as a white person needs to listen to bipoc people when they voice their concerns to her about characters that are supposed to represent them!

Also! During her recent trip to Japan, she ate at McDonald’s and KFC despite there being a boycott due to the companies both supporting Israel. Idk how you feel about it, anon, and it’s not something I’ll go into too much detail over since I’m not super knowledgeable on it. But it’s a really important detail about Vivzie to a lot of people out there, and I wanted to bring it up because of that. (I hate all wars and genocides before anyone makes assumptions about my stances)

Homophobia:

Not much to say reguarding this other than I found that she favors mlm relationships heavily over wlw relationships. HB isn’t a show that focuses on lesbian relationships because that’s just not the way the show is written, and that’s fine. However, she prides herself on the wlw rep she created due to HH being female focused. The main relationship between Charlie and Vaggie feels pushed away in favor of more mlm relationships. They clearly have been dating for a while, and so, their relationship doesn’t need to be explored as much as some others imo. However, to me the show doesn’t do too much with them and there’s a large focus on the male characters and their relationships as opposed to the female lead and her girlfriend.

I will give her credit on her depictions of gay and bi men, I do like a lot of those and I can’t really find anything terrible to say about that or find evidence of how she treats real gay people. Everyone is free to think whatever they want though. However, queer people are the only minority group that Vivzie actively is in support of from what I’ve seen, which is sad imo.

You could say that Angel Dust is a homophobic stereotype (sex loving, drug addicted, drag queen, sex worker, feminine), but there’s real people in the world who share his experiences and it makes me feel like the people who claim such just don’t take into account of the real people in the queer community who share similarities to him. Like, there’s a lot of queer men who do sex work and are addicted to various substances. It’s a struggle and his character is a testament to that.

Anyway, do your own research, come up with your own conclusions, you can still like her work and characters, and all that! This is stuff off the top of my head that I could think of.

(Any Vivzie stans who try to tell me that this is either all faked or rumors will be ignored btw. I’m tired of dealing with y’all every time I say anything about her that’s even remotely negative. You guys can like what you like, even if your attachment to Vivzie is unhealthy imo and you shouldn’t place anyone on a pedestal. She’s not perfect, nobody is. This is my opinion, and it won’t change. I don’t hate her shows or her work. I just dislike her as a person.)

[gu1lty-as-sin]

˚₊‧꒰ა every breath feels like rarest air ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

hii!! ☆ juno ☆ they/she ☆ minor ☆ bisexual ☆ cancer sun, libra moon, sag rising ☆ intp-t ☆ aus ☆ either a celestial god or a pebble ☆ anxious mess ☆ i change my theme way too much ☆ sparkling water > regular water ☆ in love with piercings and wants all of them ☆ professional procrastinator ☆ a humanities/arts/music girl in a science/maths world ☆ wouldnt survive a day without spotify ☆ free palestine!!

͙͘͡★ i love - literature, the arts, queer culture, astronomy + astrology, witchcraft, feminism (no terfs allowed!!!!), fruit flavoured drinks, flared pants, converse, dark red, nail polish, eyeliner, burgundy lipgloss, tank tops, tote bags, brie (always dreaming of cheese), pinterest, spotify, my headphones, the ocean, my grandparents house, spring+winter, very specific shades of pink and green, black <3, fiddling around on the guitar, fantasising about being a famous musician, finding new music, snow, picking silly little outfits, drawing, writing, going to concerts

͙͘͡★ books - osemanverse, the hunger games, books by rhiannon wilde, tim te maro's subterranean heartsick blues, all the best liars, books by octavia butler (specifically parable of the sower and parable of the talents), the last true poets of the sea, acotar, the weight of the stars, the seven husbands of evelyn hugo, the picture of dorian grey, house of hollow, howls moving castle, harry potter (mainly marauders, FUCK JKR), i kissed shara wheeler, red white and royal blue, song of achilles, wings of fire, the secret history

͙͘͡★ movies + shows - dont look up, little women (2019), scream (i like most of them but 1996 is my fav by far), ladybird, barbie (2023), some of the mcu (thor and guardians of the galaxy <33), spiderverse (itsv is my love), gilmore girls, stranger things, loki, heartstopper, arcane, scott pilgrim takes off + scott pilgrim vs the world, mean girls (i love both hehe), dr who, percy jackson (the show, i um havent read the books), gossip girls, do revenge, my little pony (ignore that i’ve never actually watched it BUT IN THEORY-), the bear

͙͘͡★ music - boygenius + solos, taylor swift, glaive, brakence, paramore, ricky jamaraz, melanie martinez, lana del rey, ashnikko, girl in red, billie eilish, doja cat, big thief, adrienne lenker, ethel cain, mitski, remi wolf, cigarettes after sex, ericdoa, tv girl, clairo, the neighbourhood, bon iver, deftones, maneskin, courtney barnett, poppy, the smiths, american football, susannah joffe, renee rapp, mcr, the front bottoms, pierce the veil, flyleaf, gracie abrams, feeble little horse, esha tewari

͙͘͡★ albums - the record, 1989 tv, around the fur, riot, three cheers for sweet revenge, all we know is falling, hypochondriac, girl with fish, doa, things with wings, punk2, songs, masterpiece, guts, lust for life, dykttatuob, punisher, stranger in the alps, i care so much that i dont care at all, collide with the sky, manic, badlands, folklore, trafoamp, k-12, crybaby, portals, this is why, home video, ttpd + the anthology

͙͘͡★ talk to me - asks and dms are open for chatting/venting/whatever, i might take a while to respond ☆ i rarely follow people without an intro post/descriptive bio (with name, age group and pronouns especially) ☆ discord is astraeasparrow (i dont check it often and dont know how it works very well) ☆ i dont currently have any trigger warnings tagged but just send me an ask/dm if you want me to tag something specific!! ☆ dni: people who are: rude, racist, homophobic, transphobic, zionist, terfs, sexist, ableist, antisemitic

͙͘͡★ tags:

#juno.txt -> ramblings, original posts

#asks -> asks ive answered

#ask bait -> send me asks!

#tag games -> tag games ive participated in

#beautiful mutuals -> interactions with my beautiful mutuals!

#spotify -> my music obsession

(im working on a better taglist with my moots tags)

͙͘͡★ socials: pinterest ☆ spotify ☆ carrd

͙͘͡★ sideblogs: @likeasugarcubeinateacup (notes app poetry) -- @slowrotburiedinthepark (web weaving and random art) -- @stabbingstarsthroughmyback (writing) (im not that active on them though)

͙͘͡★ notes/updates:

☆ previously astraeasparrow

☆ last updated: april 26th 2024

☆ dividers by @dollywons, @v6que, @chilumitos

thats all!! stay hydrated and have a wonderful day/night everyone <3

[1863-project]

I've been seeing screenshots of this tweet making the rounds lately:

I did a thread on Twitter adding some historical context, but it's easier to write long-form stuff on websites like Tumblr, so I'll do it here, too.

This is a screenshot from a 1944 election propaganda film called Hell-Bent For Election. The locomotives do indeed represent FDR (left) and his rival, Thomas E. Dewey (right). Dewey would famously try to run again in 1948 and was considered the favorite against Harry Truman, leading to the famous Dewey Defeats Truman newspaper headline. The film was directed by Chuck Jones (yes, that Chuck Jones) and distributed by United Auto Workers. It was made amidst WWII, and it isn't subtle about making sure the viewer knows a vote against FDR is a vote for Hitler. (Weirdly enough, there's a character that can easily be read as an antisemitic caricature trying to get the protagonist to vote for Dewey despite what we know was happening in retrospect; this is actually quite jarring and uncomfortable from a historical perspective.)

OP probably doesn't know this, but FDR isn't being depicted as a bullet train. The Shinkansen doesn't show up until the 1960s, and at any rate, the US was very much at war with Japan at the time this film was made, so there's no way FDR would be depicted using Japanese railroad technology even if it did exist at the time. What he is being shown as, however, is a streamliner.

Notice this gap here? Streamlined steam locomotives usually still had their drive wheels exposed to a degree to make maintenance easier. In particular, FDR resembles a New York Central Mercury (4-6-4 Hudson) with his chin as an added cowcatcher.

The streamlined cladding for the Mercury was designed by Henry Dreyfuss, who would go on a few years later to design arguably the most famous streamlined NYC Hudson locomotives: the Dreyfuss Hudsons.

You can see a bit of influence from these in the FDR locomotive, as well, as it has a ridge along the top. These pulled prestigious passenger trains known for high speed, including the flagship 20th Century Limited. FDR was, of course, from old money and could afford that sort of thing, but that's likely not the reason they depicted him as a streamliner here.

Streamlined locomotives emerged in the 1930s despite the economic hardships in the United States at the time. They were designed to evoke a sense of speed and modernity, and they represented a society moving forward. By depicting FDR as one, it projects a sense of strength, especially in comparison to the tired old Dewey locomotive, which looks nearly half a century old. This was a crucial portrayal considering that FDR had polio (or possibly Guillain-Barré Syndrome, another explanation) and due to ableism he had to hide that affliction to avoid being seen by opponents (both political and wartime) as "weak." Additionally, Dewey's consist (the train cars he's pulling) is made up of outdated policies, including a caboose labeled with "Jim Crow."

I find the use of a streamliner rather ironic because at the time this film was made, many streamlined locomotives were being un-streamlined so the extra metal could be used for the war effort. It's a bit of an odd choice from that angle, but it's clear that the imagery of streamliners and what they represented in the minds of the public was still going strong.

Also worth noting: yes, FDR won the November 1944 election and began a fourth term in office. He died only a few months later, in April 1945, and was succeeded by his Vice President, Truman, who finished his term and then, as mentioned above, beat Dewey again in an upset to win a full term in 1948.

(Truman gleefully holding up the incorrect Chicago Tribune at St. Louis Union Station, 1948)

So that's that, I suppose! You can watch the film here, as it's in the public domain:

(If you enjoy my historical writing, consider donating to my Ko-Fi so I can keep AGI running as smoothly as the 20th Century Limited! Thanks for reading!)

[commander-writergirl]

Passover Lesson

Synopsis: Marc still had trouble when it comes to the smallest things in Judaism. But Steven and Jake are there to remind him that you would never hurt him and that being there for you can be more powerful then the trauma left behind.

Pair: Marc Spector x Jewish!fem!Reader, Steven Grant x Jewish!fem!Reader, Jake interaction

Rating: PG-13

Warnings:  light angst

Word Count: 1,263

Notes: Once again please keep any negative comments or antisemitic comments far far away from here.

Tag: @romanarose​

------------------------------------------------------

Jake rummaged around the kitchen looking for the bagels he had hidden.  None of the boys enjoyed Passover, Marc didn’t remember one happy moment of the holiday except for the meals at the beginning and end of the week.  

“Come on, I know I hid them.” Once Jake looked through the last cabinet without a piece of bread in sight, he slammed the door. “Fuck!”  

He turned to see you leaning against the door frame with arms crossed and a brow raised. “Seriously? You didn’t think I learned how to find things hidden in my apartment.”  

You said it as more of a statement than if Jake was questioning your intelligence. But then again, this is what he gets for showing you Marc and Steven’s hiding places for food... which means they were also Jake’s hiding spots.

“I was hoping you would leave them alone.” Jake gave you a sly grin.  

“Jake, I told you just like I told Marc and Steven: If you want to eat bread, do it outside this apartment. I don’t care if you three keep Passover with me. But respect me enough to not do it in the apartment.” You walked over and stood in front of him.  

“We told you it was a bad idea.” Marc grumbled.  

Jake ignored him, “Can you at least tell me what you did with the bagels?” Jake asked you.

“I burned them in the fireplace, cause you brought them in after I already did my full clean.” You said smiling at the look of horror on his face.  

“You burned bagels?”  

“They were store bought Jake, get over it.” You gently patted his cheek and began to grab things for your breakfast. “Want me to cook you something before work?”  

Jake blinked and watched you for a moment. He knew you were sweet and caring and stubborn but now he was slightly intrigued to find you terrifying under all that.  

“Sure,” Jake took his cap off and went and sat at the bar. He watched you as you cooked moving around the kitchen humming to yourself.  

“We told you she was cute.” Steven said.  

“Shush, she doesn’t need all three of us being in love with her.” Jake mumbled to the other man.

“Steven said nothing about love, Jake.” Jake could feel Marc smirking at his use of the word.

Jake groaned and laid his forehead against the bar surface. He sometimes wished he could just beat up his feelings, but he was learning that holding all the trauma made it hard for him to be good with people. And the one person he needed to be better with was you.  

“Here’s your food.” Jake lifted his head to watch you slide a plate in front of him. He blinked a few times. He always liked his eggs over easy. Something the other two didn’t want and yet here laid a perfect pair of over easy eggs and turkey bacon, laid out for him.

He looked over at you to see you cooking your own eggs. Maybe he was falling for you, but he would keep that to himself until you showed you shared the same feeling. And if you never did, he would take what he could get from just being in your life and able to protect you.  

As the week went on Jake found himself fronting more and more. It confused him until he realized Marc was treating this like being sick and Steven was trying to push you and Jake to spend more time together. But you were busy, and Jake took this chance to do more work. Meaning you only saw each other for breakfast and dinner.  

And Jake did what he always did, he made himself a bed on the couch. He never wanted to push your boundaries and he knew where you both stood on the relationship front. Though it seemed things were changing by about the fifth day.  

Jake was asleep on the couch, music playing in the background to tune out the others. He woke up when he felt a weight on his chest. He slowly opened his eyes to see you moving to curl into his side. When you looked up at him, you started to move to get up.

“Sorry,” You mumbled trying to get up, but Jake simply pulled you back down.

“You came out here for a reason, what is it?” Jake asked as you nestled back into his side.

“Bed was cold.” You mumbled nuzzling against his chest. In the back of your head, you could hear your little voice reminding you that this was Jake. Jake who went the extra mile that Marc couldn’t. Jake who didn’t love you, but at this moment you didn’t care. He was warm and comforting and you were so tired, and you just didn’t want to feel alone.  

Jake stared at the ceiling for a moment before looking back at you to find you fast asleep. He smiled lightly and brushed your hair away from your face. “Dulce luz de las estrellas.”  

His sweet starlight.  

[drpepperhateblog]

The Hogwarts Legacy boycott is the most counterproductive internet activism I’ve ever witnessed

Note: I’m not playing Hogwarts Legacy because I think the author is overrated and hasn’t been good in years. And well, again, feeling concerned about some of her opinions on transgender people.

With that said, finding it very interesting how everyone are harrassing anyone who dares to touch the game, whether by purchasing it or by playing a free copy or by pirating, due to the transphobic views of the author... On Twitter. Which is ran by Elon Musk. A transphobe. 

Not just that, but Twitter most certainly on the regular hosts and spreads more antisemitic and transphobic views on their site than Hogwarts Legacy ever will...

I especially find it fascinating when tweets show they were sent from iPhones. You know, iPhones, primarily made in China, likely helping fund the genocide of Uighur Muslims.

If you choose to boycott the game for concerns over transphobia or antisemitism, then I do commend you for that. I’m a big proponent of the idea that people need to show their opinion with their wallets more often. Rejecting something you could’ve enjoyed because you don’t want to contribute to making the world a less safe to live is commendable. For the same reason I have a lot of respect for vegetarians and vegans. I could never do it. More power to you.

With that said, no one consumes cruelty-free in reality. You’ve probably eaten meat. Or used Twitter. Or had an iPhone. All things that you didn’t actually need to do in order to survive, but things you chose to do anyway.

Why did you? Likely because it’s impossible to care about all causes at once. No one is capable of doing so. 

When deciding what to focus on, it’s likely a competition between what is easiest to give up and what cause you care the most about. Hogwarts Legacy is probably to most very easy to give up. To others, not so much. Which may sound silly, but then again, so is choosing Twitter (created by a transphobe) over going outside and touching some grass (created by Mother Earth who is likely not a transphobe). We all have something we’re attached to that we don’t actually need.

There’s an additional angle to this, though. Not only is it hypocritical to shame others for consuming in a way that could potentially fund something you consider harmful, but it’s also ineffective.

An aggressive approach is counterproductive.

Similarly to how you’re probably not going to make someone stop smoking by putting a cigarette out on their skin and yelling at them how they’re going to get cancer, sending death threats to people for playing a video game is unlikely to be effective either. Chances are they’ll double down. Note how some responses to this organized bullying has been “well then, I’m going to buy two copies”? Congratulations, the hydra grew two more heads and now the game earned even more money. Odd how you’d want to contribute to that if your concern is genuinely that buying the game could cause transgender people to die en masse.

Hogwarts Legacy became the best-selling game on Steam before even being released. Not just in spite of the boycott, but also in spite of the bad reputation of early access game releases.

Perhaps the biggest irony of it all is J.K. Rowling’s fear of transgender women surpressing cis women are now as a result of the boycott suddenly not looking so unwarranted. Women streamers have been pushed to tears. Girlfriend Reviews being an especially sad case, where a Jewish woman received a free copy of the game, donated any money earned from it to transgender charity, and yet was harrassed, threatened, blacklisted, and even had some accounts on social media shut down due to said boycotters making deliberately false reports of hate speech. I guess it wasn’t enough that J.K. Rowling herself got death threats and had a book written about her in which she dies a gruesome death. No, instead activists doubled down on the misogyny. 

And it’s sad. It’s genuinely sad. A movement that should be about the freedom of loving and respecting people for who they are and who they choose to be has now instead become an authoritarian movement against wrongthink and a breeding ground for bullies and oppressors.

[creature-wizard]

The Strange Claims of Svali, the Fake Illuminati Defector

For anyone who happens to be new here, Svali is a fake ex-Illuminati programmer who claimed that she was part of a global conspiracy that was deliberately inducing dissociative identity disorder in all of its members. If you've ever heard of stuff like color/metal/gemstone programming, or fictive programming, that comes from Svali.

I have an update on Svali's own sources of inspiration, though - a lot of the stuff I initially thought that she'd come with herself appear to be sourced from How The Illuminati Create An Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave by Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler. This book proposes that the Illuminati is deliberately creating alters in people for the purpose of turning them into perfect slaves, and claims that modern media is used in the process.

My general statement that the conspiracy theorists in the DID community are sourcing their info from Svali is still accurate, because it's clearly quoting directly from her rather than from Cisco and Springmeier's much longer, more elaborate work. However, a lot of stuff that I initially believed came from Svali is definitely sourced from this book, which taking a glance at it, is even more ridiculous than the shit Svali claims. (And yes, she clearly got the idea that autism is caused by SRA from this book, which claims that autism is increasing because SRA is increasing. Fuck you, Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler.)

And once again, Svali's claims are also clearly influenced by discredited people such as Mike Warnke and Lauren Stratford. At the core, she's pushing the same Satanic Panic bullshit Evangelical Christians were cooking up and pushing in order to demonize anyone who wasn't a conservative (and particularly Evangelical) Christian, and scare people who already were conservative Christians into remaining such. Most of the claims were basically repackaged antisemitism and witch panic, just updated to be more plausible and relevant to audiences of the day.

In part six of the second part of her... interview, I guess? She claims that Bohemian Grove is an Illuminati thing. For those who don't know, conspiracy theorists basically believe that satanists perform human sacrifices to Molech there, whom they claim the giant owl represents. As far as I can tell, a lot of this goes back to a man named Paul Bonacci, who claimed to be a victim in the Franklin child prostitution ring allegations, which was purely a product of the Satanic Panic. Bonacci apparently claimed that he'd seen a snuff film made there. Worth noting, the Satanic Panic was big on the idea that all of these snuff films were being made, but there is literally zero evidence of such a thing.

Svali complains about people refusing to believe that SRA is real and dismissing the "evidence." For example:

You can show them a site with pentagrams, buried bones, and other evidence, and they would say, "Oh, that is just teenagers playing around".

Uh, yeah, Svali, it probably is just teenagers playing around. Teenagers do that kind of thing. Also, if the Illuminati was so good at covering its tracks, why would we find evidence like this? Seriously, why would a hypercompetent global cult leave such a mess?

Didn't think this one through, did ya?

In part seven, Svali talks about alleged Illuminati symbols. She claims that phoenixes and eagles (especially the German eagle) are symbols of the Illuminati, and claims that phoenixes symbolize the resurrection rituals where members' hearts are stopped and restarted with CPR, then told that Baal or another demon brought them back.

Next she claims that butterflies symbolize monarch programming. For those who don't know, a lot of conspiracy theorists believe in Project Monarch, which allegedly evolved out of MK-Ultra. Conspiracy theorists claim that any time you see a picture of a model or a celebrity wearing a butterfly, that means they're under monarch mind control, because they believe that the Illuminati has some weird spiritual obligation to tell the public what they're doing, even if it's not in a way the general public will understand. Or they supposedly do it to mock so they can giggle at them for not understanding the symbols they allegedly put "in plain sight."

Either way it's really ridiculous, and basically comes out of conspiracy theorists making something out of nothing. Since there's never any real evidence for these conspiracies, they have to fabricate it by claiming that things you can find anywhere are actually secret conspiratorial symbols.

She also claims that the Great Seal of Solomon is used at the "highest rituals" to invoke the demonic. Which, I mean, this is a symbol used in the context of demonolatry, but like, it has nothing to do with any kind of conspiracy, and much less originates from a global satanic conspiracy cult.

She claims that earth, wind, and fire (but somehow not air?) are Illuminati symbols?

Earth, water, and fire: these three are used in a lot of ceremonies. Check out how many Saturday a.m. cartoons use this concept. You'd be amazed. In fact, "The Fifth Element" movie was based on it.

Ma'am, you're gonna be shocked to learn that the classical elements were literally just what people used to reckon the natural world was made out of. It's been part of culture outside of occult contexts for thousands of years now.

She claims that the Illuminati is big on Greek and Roman symbols like... lightning bolts. Like uhhh yeah Zeus is associated with lightning bolts, but since when are lightning bolts, per se, a major Greco-Roman symbol? I dunno, this is very ridiculous and thank goodness we're getting closer and closer to the end.

Next she claims that the Illuminati runs the porn industry and produces CSEM, and claims that, "If a profit is being made off of human suffering, you can trace the chain back somewhere to these people."

She claims that they have money and lawyers for years and have infiltrated the governments and the media, and that they "run our financial institutions." Ma'am you're literally just spreading repackaged antisemitism here.

Oh and of course they're working on bringing in the Antichrist:

They are working towards bringing in a new leader, who will usher in a Luciferian reign of joy, prosperity, and rewards to the faithful. Almost an Elyssian type paradise. Of course, the brutality would continue, and those who oppose his reign are to be hunted down and converted or destroyed, but the followers will be so happy and content that they believe these holdouts will want to come over to their side. Sounds unbelievable, but true.

But she claims that they can be defeated because they are arrogant and believe they can overcome God. And also because a lot of them really don't like all of the abuse they're doing and can be persuaded to leave by telling them that they don't have to hurt people anymore.

In part eight, she claims that another name for the New World Order is "the Fourth Reich." So basically she's proposing that everyone who isn't a conservative Christian is secretly a Nazi, or might as well be.

Bluhhhhhhh.

Anyway we're finally getting to the more entertaining bits of this e-book - the demonic shapeshifting. Hang in there, it's coming next post.

[the-rainbow-daycare]

hello!!!!! my name is Duck and I'm a syskid in the system... the only one actually...

anyway I think I'm an age slider because even as I write this I can tell my "big words" ability change

but the point is I have no friends and I want friends to play with I like minecraft and kinetic sand and goblincore and dinosaurs and slime rancher and worm on a string and I'm not human I actually am a goblin myself, in fact here, this is me!!

I love this picrew!!! anyway sorry I look so cranky, it's the only mouth that showed my tooth gap that I liked, I'm not usually cranky, and my eyes have little black rings in the yellows of them

Charlie says I'm the holder of all the "quirky" aspects of our neurodiversity (Charlie helped me with that word) as well as the anxiety and fear responses from our past traumas (Charlie also helped with those words)

I'm @redstone-voidling and new to interacting with the outside world

also why is goblingcore being renamed to gremlincore? what does everybody have against goblins? Charlie keeps saying it's antiskepticism but I think she's insane

(side note from Charlie: be nice she has no idea what racism or antisemitism or any of that is, literally)

I wanna keep talking but I've run out of interesting things to say so bye bye!!!

Hi duck! I hope you are able to find some friends to play with, you have a lot of very cool interests :D your picrew looks awesome, I actually didn't know it was changing to gremlincore I'll have to look that up, you're free to come and talk about any thing you find interesting whenever :)

[grey-sorcery]

Free Palestine!

وقف الاحتلال الإسرائيلي

ציונות היא פשיזם

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Greetings, I'm Grey—an autistic, disabled, queer, non-binary (Agender) anarcho-socialist. I also grapple with mental illness. As an autistic person, I often struggle to explain concepts and processes in a casual or non-academic manner. Consequently, my content can come across as insulting or challenging to digest. To assist me in improving, I have started using ChatGPT. I kindly request that you take the time to read my content before forming any conclusions about me. Additionally, I encourage you to engage in conversation with me. This post may expand over time, but let's hope it doesn't become more obnoxious than it already is.

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[goingrampant]

The Boys #1 notes: cover to page 2

Alright, so The Boys was written by Garth Ennis, a man who hates genres and tries to end them with satirical fiction. The Boys is his attempt to end superhero comics. Alan Moore previously attempted that with Watchmen by portraying everything with deadly seriousness. Obviously, he failed and Watchmen was ultimately subsumed into the DC universe, but his effort shows genuine human empathy as comes from understanding the genre, recognizing how people actually behave, and presenting something people would develop a real emotional response to. Garth Ennis basically shits all over that and that's what The Boys is: Watchmen covered in shit. I don't usually get so graphic, but the sheer repugnance of The Boys demands a bit of rhetorical oomph.

Darick Robertson does the illustration. He also deserves some of the blame for making everything look like a fascist's satirical representation of degenerate art.

The first issue, released in October 2006, is given the appropriate title "This Is Going to Hurt".

Cover: Oooh, we're so edgy! Look at these tough guys and one girl ready to beat up the viewer in a bit of gangland violence. You'd have to be a reeeaaal tough guy to read it, right?!

Title page: A parody of Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia's depiction of Wonder Woman stepping on Batman's head, here distorted into a gross image of a boot (Butcher) stamping down on the face of a Captain America knockoff (Soldier Boy) and seriously mashing up his face in horrific gore. Like, this is completely unnecessary, just "Oooh, we're edgy!" to start off the edgelord book and let you know you're in for an edgy time.

Thematically, it nods to the communist idea of the working class rebelling against the oppressive capitalist class. Butcher's boot is the working class leather lace-up used as a symbol of the hard-working common man often seen in communist propaganda. However, it's also consistent with fascist art about a Volkish uprising against Jewish elites (national socialism borrowing various actual socialist concepts and grafting them to far-right antisemitism). A lot of stuff in The Boys feels fascist-friendly, if not centering them as the target demographic.

The title card tells us this arc is called "The Name of the Game: Part One".

Pages 1-2: We're introduced to Billy Butcher, an assholish looking black leather-clad man on a park bench with his bulldog named Terror. For some reason, female The Boys fans love this dog. Like, they love this dog. I guess he's kind of cute before Butcher reveals how he's trained him, but... I don't get it.

Butcher looks up at some superheroes flying overhead and pledges to get revenge on one of them (Homelander), calling him a "cunt". Now, the word "cunt" has different levels of obscenity in the U.S. vs. the U.K. In the U.K., it means something like "asshole" and is regularly used against men, while in the U.S., it's a misogynistic slur exclusively used against women with the connotation that they're only valuable for sex and shouldn't be considered real people. I think if a man were to call another man a "cunt" in the U.S., it might be taken as a rape threat because the concept of being used for penetration is bound up in it.

Butcher is a working class man from England, so he can use "cunt" in the freer way, but I really get the sense that Ennis (from the U.K. himself) specifically included a character from this demographic so that he could get away with plastering the pages with what American readers would read as a misogynistic slur. It's set in America and marketed to Americans. Ooh, edgy!

Now, what Butcher says is "I'm gonna fuckin' have you, you cunt." With the American connotation, that sounds like a rape threat. Our hero, everyone, starting things off with a rape threat.

Something I'm going to be saying a lot is "The show spins this progressively." The show is genius, finding the good parts in the dung heap. The "cunt" thing is spun in an interesting way commentating on American culture, challenging notions of obscenity, and fits into a pattern of musing on gender roles. Thank you, Rebecca Sonnenshine.

Next time... page 3!

[softlyspector]

could i ask what you don't like ab the actor who plays bucky? im in the same boat and i think that's what's made my entry into oscar isaac and pedro pascal characters' fandom so refreshing (that i can consume both character and actor content)

Hoo boy how do I begin to answer this -

I want to start off by saying that I love Bucky Barnes. I love him. That character, and by extension the fandom and getting to write for him, has gotten me through a lot over the years. I very literally may not have been here without it and him.

However, over time his actor has become unbearable to me. And fans excuse the behavior because they equate the actor to the character. He is not Bucky Barnes, he plays the character.

There were a lot of things over the years that just added up to too much - accusations of several girlfriends he's had over the years of being racist. Not one. Several. (Even one isn’t okay, but one is an outlier. You don’t always know everything about someone when you start dating and it may have come as a surprise. But several is a pattern.)

The islamophobic personal assistant that he didn't speak on and took so much time to fire.

Then. THEN. The Pam and Tommy show. Admittedly I was excited when the show was announced. And then, info just kept coming out about how it was being made. No consent from Pam. The press photos of having dinner with real-life Tommy who is a notorious racist, abuser, and antisemite. It's one thing to portray someone who is horrible, another to hangout, especially when PAM was not involved in the show.

I haven't followed anything about him in a long time now so I'm not sure if anything else has happened but these are the things that stick out in my mind.

On a more personal note, which is like whatever honestly, I started to find him incredibly annoying. Like grating. And so I just unfollowed.

Edit: One more thing I just remembered was the scandal last summer wherein he liked a video on Instagram (or Twitter I can’t remember) where a podcast host said white people should have a pass to say the n-word.

[perfectlyvalid49]

Entering your asks because I have seen your post about Jewish trauma and replies all over my dash (and only doing it on anon because of how stilted and awkward I always am with strangers that I admire). Your patience and earnest attempts to educate and inform those too stubborn, arrogant, and convinced of their absolute moral correctness is astonishing, and I am sorry the world's once more in such a state of hate that you had to make that post in the first place, let alone deal with a mess of antisemitic BS in the notes. (I am sorry we goyim on the left are failing the Jewish community as badly as we are. We never seem to learn, no matter how patiently you hold our hands through the explanations.)

You seem to be all kinds of awesome.

First, thank you!

Second, I’m sorry for being all over your dash. It was a long post to begin with and it only got longer as everybody yelled at the anti-Semite. It was all over my dash too, and *I* was beginning to find it annoying.

It feels weird to be admired, as I think my most notable qualities are “good at remembering rules to TTRPGs,” “incredibly stubborn,” and “does not know when to shut up.” If you feel more comfortable on anon, that’s fine, but if you ever want to put your name on things, know that most of my friends (myself included) are in the “neurospicy and have less than awesome social skills” group, so awkward isn’t going to bother me any.

The patience comes from having two elementary aged kids. If I can deal with a toddler, I can deal with an adult acting like a toddler. Also, I used to be a receptionist at a pediatrics office – so I actually have a lot of experience customer servicing adults acting like toddlers, to be honest.

As for a willingness to educate, I genuinely believe that hatred in all its forms comes from ignorance. It’s much easier to hate a faceless entity than a real person, and it’s easier to hate a group that you have no experience with than to hate a member of that group that you’re having a conversation with, especially when they’re being reasonable. I’ve been a LOT of people’s first Jew, and I don’t mind being the person to show that Jews are just normal people. Even if the person I’m in conversation with isn’t getting it, my hope is that someone on the sidelines – either their followers or mine, will.

There are two Jewish concepts at play here. The first is “tikkun olam,” or “repairing the world.” The idea is that the world is not perfect, and it is our duty to make it better. I feel like educating people, and hopefully reducing hate is a way of doing that. The other is a quote from the Talmud - “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” I don’t have to teach everyone, but when presented with the opportunity to teach someone, I have to at least try. The way I see it, doing this is part of how I practice Judaism.

As for the goyim on the left, a lot of them have let me down. But every once in a while I get an ask or a message like this from someone who seems to understand. Or I’ll point out someone’s antisemitism, and they’ll actually listen to the criticism and try to do better. It gives me hope. Since I made that post, I’ve received kind messages from a handful of people privately, plus there’s been some love in the tags on reblogs. Between that and getting all that off my chest in the first place, I honestly feel better now than I did a week ago. Thanks to everyone who helped with that, including you, Anon.

[theclearblue]

When reading a book or watching a series, have you :

a. Finish a book or a series, even when you dislike the mc until the end but love the story (What's the title?)

b. Finish a book or a series, even when you dislike the story but love the mc (what's the title?)

c Finish a book or a series, even when you dislike the mc and story but love the worldbuilding (what's the title?)

d. Finish a book or a series, even when you dislike the mc, story, worldbuilding but still finish it for whatever reason (what's the title?)

The thing about me is I will drop a series very easily, if it can't hold my attention I'll be usually just drop it and move on lol. A and C are automatically out because I'm a big character reader/watcher, so if I find the main character boring or annoying, it's not for me. Not that the main character needs to be my favorite, they often aren't, but this is the character that the reader spends the most time with and it's through their POV usually, I should find them likeable or interesting enough to continue to care about plot/worldbuilding/everything else. There are exceptions to this in the form of I grew up reading the same YA slop that everyone my age read, so looking back I completed a lot of series that weren't very good and had main characters I found annoying. Harry Potter, Divergent, Maximum Ride, Pendragon series, Cinder, none of these hold up unfortunately (main exceptions to this being PJO, Hunger Games, and the Uglies series <3).

For the second question, the only one that comes to mind is Legend of Korra. LOVE Korra, I think she's a really interesting avatar and her character journey is really great to follow, but the series does get hampered by convoluted romance plot lines that I didn't care about, production issues that greatly rushed the pacing in season 4, and I didn't really care about the plot by the end because it was so all over the place. I don't think Korra herself is an issue in the series though, she gets way too much shit.

The last scenario where I finish it without liking anything is usually when I've invested a lot of time and love into a series and then it just falls on it's face at the end. Voltron comes to mind instantly where I just hated everything about Season 7 and 8, but I'm on Seasons 7 and 8 so I might as well finish the damn thing. Same exact scenario with Game of Thrones (the tv show). Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu is a 10/10 series until the "twist" with the open ending, it was soooo unnecessary and like. It wasn't crashing and burning like Voltron and GOT, it just abruptly slaps you in the face with it before leaving lmao. So maybe it doesn't fit because I DO love everything else about it, but this ending would color how I view the series on a reread, and that sucks. Other series like this would be Blue Flag, Death Note, Attack on Titan (kind of, the series is mostly fine I just got really grossed out with the antisemitism in season 4), The Promised Neverland season 2, Darling in the Franxx (idk why i started let alone completed this), Eragon series, Allegiant (looking back I hate the entire Divergent series, but this is the first time I remember finishing a series and hating the ending). There are probably more than this as well lol.