#its about freedom as much as catharsis

[coldgoldlazarus]

Also, my RvB binge last night and my Lariska brainrot today are melding in interesting ways.

Cause like, I couldn't help but draw some parallels between Lariska and Carolina. Teal armor, super fast, highly-trained and hypercompetent killers working for a morally bankrupt organization, and having a decidedly... complicated relationship with the leader of that organization?

This, along with a post I saw interpreting TSO's rather... weird... form as a sort of raptorlike shape, plus my own interpretation of Lariska being quite obviously Velociraptor-inspired, got me thinking about the possibility of headcanoning TSO as like, basically her dad? Like the Director with Carolina. Obviously with Bonkle, reproduction doesn't happen and parenthood as we know it thus isn't really a concept, but regardless, the idea could sort of work, still.

Them actually being the same species, and TSO having taken her under his wing a long time in the past, essentially adopting her. Then time passes, she becomes more personally proficient, and he becomes the coldhearted dickbag we know today, and somewhere during that the Dark Hunters are founded, and their dynamic goes from father and daughter to boss and employee. And then it just, breaks entirely when he has her arm removed, and replaced with a bad prosthetic instead of being allowed to rebuild it properly.

And so there's just this sort of fundamentally broken dynamic now where any bridges between them are completely burnt and collapsed, but because of their roles they're still working together, seeing each other every day, seeing the ruins of the connection that once was there and mutually understanding that there's no repairing it, neither of them even particularly want to repair it, but they're just dealing with that because they're still boss and employee. And Lariska fully intends to kill him someday, and TSO fully intends to not let that day come, but they both know it's going to come sooner or later regardless. But it's because there was once such a strong bond there once that this is unavoidable now. There's nothing positive left to be found there, not even a sliver of remorse of "maybe we can go back", yet still the memory of the care that used to exist is why they're so unstoppably at odds now.

Idk, part of me feels like this is maybe a bit too... idk, melodramatic? Soap-Opera-ish? But at the same time I feel like it could really add some additional meaning and emotional heft to their exchanges, in a way that doesn't undermine the inevitability of their arcs.

And unlike Carolina, when finally given the chance to kill her father figure, Lariska would indeed follow through.

[pythoria]

astarion is such a great character but one reason that stands out to me is how he turns the vampire stereotype on its head. vampires from their inception have been metaphors for sexuality, back in ye olden times when religious and cultural dogma repressed people's desires and forbade acting on them. they've always represented latent sexuality and people's increasing desperation. they were a fantasy that allowed people to imagine not being bound by societal rules, but by their internal hunger, giving into it and how that might feel, but more than that, how it might feel to be a victim of that. women, especially, were not allowed to express any desires, so the vampire taking whatever they wanted, as well as being desired for something as intrinsic to your being as your blood - that's a powerful fantasy. at its core, vampirism is about loss of control, and people who hold onto control very tightly in their lives will find themselves drawn to vampires as a form of catharsis.

but that's where astarion comes in and flips it around. he's far from the first character to explore the negative sides of vampirism, but as a long-term fan of many fictional vampires, i think he does it best. primarily because his story delves into the sexual aspect and the loss of control much more, while maintaining a lot of realism. his vampirism is very grounded in reality; he has real human feelings about it. the idea that people would find the powerful vampire overpowering them alluring is contrasted by the very obvious (to us, a modern audience) issues with consent involved. if the vampire cannot control their hunger, if they have no control over the desires they act on, that might sound appealing to someone who has never been allowed to act on *any* desire, but the reality of it is horrifying. it's being a victim of assault at your own hands. it's people using you and you being unable to express any discomfort, because what *you* want is always backseating what the vampirism demands. the liberating feeling of being able to act on your desires turns into the claustrophobia of being unable to deny them at all.

vampirism always came with downsides, of course. not being able to walk in the sun (being exiled from the world and polite society), not being able to see your reflection (a loss of self), dying and being reborn, but not coming back quite the same, never being able to return to the person you once were (giving up life itself, but not arriving in a religious heaven, rather staying on earth past your time, defying god, giving up the chance at eternal bliss for the inherently sinful continuation of the flesh), eternal life (losing everyone you love, seeing everything end) akin to eternal damnation in hell. all of these downsides, and yet, with astarion, even the good bits are tainted, or turned into something negative.

on top of that, the choice to damn himself for any supposed benefits of vampirism wasn't even given to him. he was turned against his will, kept against his will, had his freedom - the only thing worth anything to a vampire - taken away. he didn't escape from a life that boxed him in, he was ripped away from a life he dearly misses. but then again, considering his actions as a magistrate, it's also a sort of divine punishment by proxy, one that is entirely disproportionate to his crimes, in a way only something as extreme as vampirism can be.

obviously the proxy for all this is cazador, but he is merely a personification of the dark force vampires are slaves to. cazador exists because it's much easier for an audience to understand how little control a vampire has over his actions when they can point to someone and say "you're at fault, astarion is innocent, you forced him to do all of those awful things". but the truth is, cazador doesn't have to exist. cazador's compulsion could be replaced by an amorphous urge, coming from inside astarion, outside of his control, and his character would make just as much sense, except it would be harder for everyone (including astarion himself) to separate the actions from the person. imagine a dark urge character who wanted to be good, but the urge wasn't something they could resist. imagine an evil dark urge run, killing everyone, but entirely against your will. would you defend that character? would you be able to redeem them if one day the urge ceased? would you even be willing to wait, to give them time to break free? or would you just kill them, as a mercy on the world? there's no surprise that most people would stake astarion on sight. maybe he can be redeemed eventually, but what about the time inbetween?

yes, this all comes from dnd vampire lore, so it applies across the board, not just for astarion. vampire spawn exist as a different entity from a fully-fledged vampire because it allows the spawn to keep a part of their humanity, their soul, and have their morality exist separately from the call of the blood. all of this makes astarion fascinating, and also somewhat easier to analyse.

[diableasura]

So, MHA is over-

-and the real villain was shonen jump's abusive schedule.

I genuinely believe that horikoshi fell out of love with this manga. He wrote himself into a corner half way through the story that he couldn't find a way out of and shonen jump's ruthless expectations made him desperate to rush towards the finish line. I hope now that the manga is over horikoshi is able to rest and that his health improves in the future.

Now, as for the conclusion of the story.

I also fell out of love with this manga over a year ago, when i realised it wasn't actually going to address any of the many many issues with hero society that had been established early on. But the possibility of any of the villains dying never crossed my mind. I mean, it would be so stupid, after going through so much effort at making them sympathetic, to just kill them off right?? And yet here we are.

I ended up really disliking shigaraki, because he was barely a character at the end of it and his fans were very annoying, but i always assumed that because deku (you know, the mc) wanted to save him, then he would be saved. It's astounding that the main character catastrophically failed at what he set out to do and yet the story bent itself over backwards to try and pretend this wasn't the case.

Also many people have already mentioned it but MHA's handling of abuse ended up being so vile. The fact that rei, who was raped twice by endeavor (if you disagree you're wrong, read the fucking manga again) is seen pushing his wheelchair around eight fucking years later is rage inducing. And don't get me started on takami "the ranking system was useful to me in particular so it deserves to stay, never mind that it made a man abuse his entire family for more than a decade" keigo. What an atrocious end to his character, and the most tragic part is that so many of his fans don't even want to recognize that his arc was ruined and that he was reduced to being endeavors hype man. Actually disgusting what hawks ended up being.

Dabi was the only reason i even glanced at this trainwreck of a story ocasionally, and even though his last scene was dissapointing and obviously ableist and very offensive towards victims of neglect, at least we had that little moment of catharsis with shoto, plus his death wasn't confirmed in the story. It gives his ending some freedom from the depressing state the villains were left in at the end.

TL;DR My Hero Academia ended up being surprisingly depressing and we never saw any significant changes in its world, we were only told about them.

3/10 and those 3 points are all because of the todorokis. would not recomend.

(Touya Todoroki's character was a 10/10 tho, i'll always treasure you my son).

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

This is extremely long and apparently subject to change, which is part of why I'm copy-pasting this version below. I don't agree with significant parts of it (in particular, I take umbrage with some of the delegitimizing language she uses for the Jewish/Israeli narrative and history that she doesn't use with the Palestinian narrative and history), however, I think it's a really really important read, because she addresses a lot of the real problems with the current discourse and real-world impacts that has.

I think this paragraph in particular was something I needed to read:

Arguing with the far left is a waste of time. They have no self-awareness, they are delusional, and they will never stop. They are as fanatical as any of the mob. The only way to make them stop talking is to actually sort this problem once and for all and work for the freedom and dignity of all. And when all is said and done, the ones that will keep complaining will finally be exposed for what they truly are.

She also winds up positing the A Land For All solution as the most likely to succeed, which I do agree is probably correct, for the main reason she argues, which is that it is the option that gives the most people the greatest amount of what they want, the basics of what everyone needs, and hews most closely with answering the competing narratives that exist.

There is No Magic Peace Fairy. Version 2

For anyone who might have read the previous version of this piece of writing, this is quite different from the original. Its spirit and essence are the same, but much has been added. It is very long, but it seeks to understand some extremely complicated and difficult things.

I should have realised when I first wrote it, and then sought to follow its instruction — to listen and learn from a wide spectrum of other people — that it was only ever going to be a working and evolving piece of work. This is version 2. There may yet be a version 3, 4 or 5.

Why did I even write it? Initially — truthfully, and honestly — it has been for myself. It started as catharsis, and it has become a compulsion — the way to “make it make sense.” The way to cope with horrifying scenes across the television and social media, witnessed day after day, and feeling utterly powerless to stop it.

It comes from years of witnessing, and sometimes partaking in long and sometimes very bitter family arguments. Arguments that became spectator sport for friends who would come over especially because they knew they would happen. Arguments that, in retrospect were not actually remotely funny for those of us living through that constant emotional turmoil, nor considering the subject matter. It has been the way to work through those conflicted feelings, and some things that were never really reconciled.

So, yes, it started for myself. But now I have written it, I do want people to read it. I think it may help others to work through some of the same things. And then it would have been worthwhile, especially if it may help some people to find a way to salvage lost friendships and lost relationships from the last few months, because it seems there is a giant rift forming in our communities in Britain.

This has nothing to do with ‘both sidsing’ anything, and it has everything to do with problem-solving. As far as I am concerned, in all of life, you cannot solve a problem that you do not understand. And I really want to understand it. So, I look at both narratives that the Palestinians and Israelis know as the history of their peoples, and think about the lives of individual Palestinians and Israelis, and then I wonder, how could this ever actually be fixed? Is there really any hope for the future?

It is not meant to justify or apologise for anything anyone has done.

I am sure this writing will includes things that almost everybody will take issue with, but it is my hope that by doing my very best to do justice to our collective stories that people can read without anger what it is that I have to say — and please do read to the very the end if you are intending to pass judgement on what that is.

Most of all, I think this will interest people in the diaspora with family, friends, and personal links and connections to the region — Israel or the Occupied Palestinian territories — who wish nothing more than to see their friends and family living in freedom, with dignity and security.

If you have read version 1, the stories of the 15-year-olds have only minor additions, but the narratives and the rest of the article have changed a lot. If you get to a bit that sounds very familiar, skip a bit further down — it is very long to read it twice.

~~~~~

What is the most important narrative of the Palestinian people?

(You do not have to agree with this — I am just telling it how it is told).

Something like –

“The defining event of our history is the Nakba (Catastrophe)

Before 1948, we used to live in Palestine. We loved Palestine. We lived there for centuries. We lived peacefully. We had a deep spiritual and emotional connection to the land. Our ancestors are buried there. Religious sites — Christian, Muslim, Jewish — that had great meaning to all of us were there. It was a rich tapestry of different religions and cultures containing a beautiful and sacred shared heritage.

We had wonderful villages and beloved homes that we built with our own hands. We had gardens with trees and plants that our grandparents planted. We had treasured possessions. We had friends and families and good lives. We could go and come as we pleased.

We had neighbours of all faiths, including Jewish neighbours. We lived contendly together. Some of them had been there for centuries just like us and we liked them, we lived there together happily and in peace.

In the 1900s, more and more started to come. They were fleeing persecution. We gave them refuge. We had no problem with them coming. They were being hounded in Europe and they needed somewhere else to go. Where better for them to be but here in Palestine, where the history of their people was born? And many of them were respectful and we had good relationships with them. We liked them.

But some of them wanted a country. Some of them fought with us, and some of them attacked us, and terrorised us. How could they have had a country in our land? We had been there for generations, and what would have become of us if we had agreed to it? Where would they have stopped? The problem was never them. It was them trying to make a country. And if they hadn’t tried to make a country, everything would have been okay. We could have had a country all of us together. What a beautiful country it could have been. But the country they wanted did not include us.

Some of them were clear they would have kept going until they got more and more of our land, and there is no question they would always have driven us away. Some of their leaders where unashamed and brazen in the way they looked down on us, in their statements that dehumanised us, in their disdain for us, in their colonial intent. They under-estimated us.

The Nakba (catastrophe) was a disaster for our people. In 1948, there was a war. During that war, the Israelis attacked us, killed us, stole our property and ethnically cleansed us from our land in order to create their Jewish state. We left in fear of our lives. We were not the ones that started that fighting. We wanted nothing to do with it. That is why we left.

We didn’t think we would be gone for long, surely once the fighting had subsided we would be back. But then days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into years.

Then it finally sunk in — they weren’t going to let us back. And we realised we were divided and dispossessed. That nightmare was only the beginning for us. They have never, ever allowed us back for 75 years. We lost everything. Our human rights are denied to us. More and more of our land is taken every day. We are not free. Some of us have no freedom at all and no rights.

We want to stop being ethnically cleansed. We want to go home, to go back, to see our homeland, our ancient sites, to be back where we belong, where we have always belonged. We want our dignity, and we want our freedom."

~~~~~

You do not have to agree with the way this story is told, but it has, in some form, been passed down through generations and generations of Palestinians.

~~~~~

What is life like for a 15-year-old Palestinian who lives in the West Bank?

You are told this story of your people from the day you were born. You live under a military occupation. More and more violent religious settlers move into the lands around you. They build new homes and can do whatever they want. They come and go as they please, in and out of Israel. You are not allowed to go anywhere except the West Bank. Their soldiers are always there with guns. They are in charge.

The settlers terrorise you all the time. They stop people farming their land and so you struggle to survive. A few weeks ago, a settler shot one of your friends. They never get punished and they never go to prison. But recently your best friend went to prison for throwing rocks at the soldiers. You really miss him.

Your grandparents left Palestine in 1948 with four children, and very few possessions. Your grandmother thought she would be back in a few days or weeks. Your grandmother’s sister ended up in Gaza and they never saw one another other again. She died recently. You have a cousin who is the same age as you. You know you could have been close if only you had even met.

You see no future the way things are now. There is no hope. You want a different life. You want the things your grandparents had. You don’t want to be constantly afraid of being attacked. You dream of leaving. You dream of the day you go back to Palestine where the house you should have had is, even just to see it, to be truly home, to live the life that is rightfully yours.

What do you do? You resist. In the only way that you can, with the only things that you have. You throw rocks at the soldiers. One day, you get caught, and you get put in a prison. You are tried by a military court, and you stay in prison for a really long time. In prison, people do appalling things to you. Finally, they let you out. What do you do?

~~~~~

What was life like for a 15 year old living in Gaza?

You are also told the Palestinian story from the day you were born. There are good things about your life. You go to school, have friends, and family who you love, you can go out and do things. There are hospitals, and you can get a lot of things that you need. You love Gaza. But you can’t leave Gaza. You can’t go anywhere else in the land or the world except Gaza.

Your life is still hard. Your family struggle for money and to survive, to get the things that you all need. There are a lot of things that would make your life better and easier, but you can’t get them in Gaza. You know that if you lived in Israel, you could get whatever you wanted and needed. You have family in the West Bank you have never met, but you know about their struggles. You have a cousin the same age, who is enduring unimaginable hardships.

The people in charge of Gaza are not good leaders. They can be dangerous and violent if you oppose them. A lot of people in Gaza don’t like them, although some people support them. Your own parents really can’t stand them. These people have been in charge of Gaza since before you were even born. You have learned that there was a civil war in Gaza before that and hundreds of people were killed or wounded. There has never been an election since.

You know they fire rockets into Israel because they want to dismantle it. You want a different life, but it’s never really worked or got anywhere. It seems futile. And you know that every few years, the bombs will come. Everyone you know has lost someone or something from the Israeli bombs. You don’t remember that much about the last time, but you do remember being really terrified, and you remember that your Dad cried when his brother was killed.

Then one day you hear news. News that Israel has been attacked by Gaza. Israelis have been killed, and some are even being brought into Gaza. Your heart sinks. You have a funny feeling in your stomach. You know what is coming.

~~~~~

To these two children, these cousins, Zionism can and only ever will mean catastrophic dispossession, oppression, and Jewish supremacy. The only Jews or Israelis they have encountered have either bombed them or terrorised them. Israel is a colonial entity. It never had a right to exist. Israelis are settlers. All they ever do is steal land. How could you expect them to see it any other way? There can never be any nuance, or any grey area about it. It could never have any legitimacy in their eyes. How could you expect or ask them to empathise with Israelis when you consider what they have lived and are living through?

For them, anyone who describes themselves as a Zionist in any form, even a liberal Zionist, could only ever be perceived as somebody that cannot be reasoned with, is trying to justify and support the unjustifiable, and is nothing but a settler and a tool of their oppression.

~~~~~

What is the dominant narrative of Jewish/Israeli people?

(You do not have to agree with it — I am just telling it how it is told).

It may be slightly different for secular Israelis and Diaspora Jews, but it goes something along these lines:

“We are the people of Israel. This is where our religion and our language were born, where we built temples and our ancestors are buried. We have and always have been surrounded by enemies on all sides. For millennia, we have been scattered throughout the world. We were driven from Israel and we went to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Throughout history people have always tried to kill the Jewish people. They didn’t like us being Jewish. There were always pogroms and mass killings. In some places people would hide and pray together in secret. It is our duty to keep the Jewish religion alive in their honour.

In Europe the pogroms got worse and worse. A few of us left Europe for a better life in Palestine. But most of us stayed in Europe. And most of us died in Europe. Six million of us. They did it because they said we were responsible for everything bad that had ever happened in the world.

Most of our so-called friends and neighbours said nothing as we were terrorised and led away. They carefully planned and counted how they could get rid of each and every one of us. They tried to annihilate us completely from the face of the earth. But as a people we lived on.

Jewish people had been coming to Palestine from Europe for years before 1948 fleeing the persecution. We came and we bought land fairly and built our lives there. We were happy. We wanted to all be together again, in a place that had meaning to us, where we would be safe. We knew we needed freedom and independence, so that this time it would never, ever happen again.

People say that we never needed a country, but what do they know? Jewish history has taught us things that they can never possibly understand. Jewish history has taught us that the world will always betray us, and when that day comes, our friends and neighbours will walk on by. We are a minority, so we must stick together, protect one another, keep one another safe. We knew we needed freedom and independence, so that this time we would have a safeplace where we can go and live when the world finally turns us on again, as it always does.

And In 1947, the UN agreed we could finally have a state of our own. We were so proud and overjoyed. What an achievement for us after everything we had been through.

We never wanted to fight with the people already living in Palestine. Yes, before 1948, some of us lived together peacefully. But it wasn’t a Utopia. Some of the people welcomed us and provided us with a safe place to live. We had good relationships with them.

But some of the people didn’t want us there, we were outsiders and they never liked us. Some people went to the British to get them to stop us from coming to Palestine. And even before 1948, there was a lot of fighting between us, and some of us were massacred even in Palestine.

But we could have found a way to live together peacefully, in two states, and they could have lived in our state just as we could have lived in theirs, just so long as we had a State. That is all we ever wanted. We could have divided and shared the land.

But they could never let us have it. Never. And when the British finally left, we saw our opportunity, we declared our state. We had no intention of taking anything from anyone. We just wanted a state. And then every single one of our neighbours, all the countries around us invaded us, from every corner of the land. Enemies on all sides. They surrounded us and we found we were alone, again, just as we always have been.

But this time we fought back. We fought for our freedom and independence and dignity, and our right to live and exist and not just accept to be killed, and mainly, for most of us, because we actually had nowhere else to go. It was a war, yes, we took land yes, but we didn’t start that war. It was existential, because how else exactly do you expect we could have guaranteed our security and safety surrounded by neighbours who were baying for our blood? What would you have done?

Then after 1948 the Middle East erupted. The Jews in the Middle East had always experienced persecution. But this was worse than ever. It was intolerable. They blamed those Jews for Israel. Hundreds of thousands of us were ethnically cleansed out of homes we had lived in for centuries, from Ancient communities all across the continent, and we left to build new lives in Israel. Over half of Israelis today are descended from those Middle Eastern Jews.

Now we live together in Israel. We stick togehter and we fight together. We have fought war after war after war. They have tried to kill us from all sides, time after time. But each time, we fight back harder, and we win. We have and always will be surrounded by enemies, but we will always fight back.”

~~~~~

You might not agree with a single word of this story. But this story, in some form or another has been passed down through generations and generations of millions of Jewish and Israeli people.

~~~~~

Now imagine the life of this 15-year-old born and living in Israel

You have been taught this story since the day you were born.

You live in a Kibbutz. You have friends. You like the outdoors and sports. You get good grades in school.

Your grandparents live nearby. Your Grandad came from Yemen as a refugee, as a child. He told you that his family were being attacked and threatened after the 1948 war, so they left their possessions and homes behind in Yemen, and they came to Israel instead.

Mostly you are happy. You are so excited you have a new boyfriend or girlfriend who you really like, but your parents don’t know yet.

But you really hate the rockets. You have never known any life without rockets. You know that some of the rockets get intercepted, but they still get through all the time.

There are bomb shelters everywhere. At school, in the playgrounds, in the bus-shelters, and at home. The sirens can go off at any time and then you have to run to the shelter. Even if you are busy doing your homework, or asleep, or on the toilet. The noise of the sirens never stops making you jump. You are used to it, but you still get scared and you hate it, and the sounds of the rockets make you shake.

You know in a couple of years you will be conscripted into the army. Everybody goes. You do and you don’t want to go. You want to go because you know it is your duty to protect the State from its enemies, just as everyone in your family has always done. But you are scared about it, and you don’t know what it will really be like. People don’t talk about it.

One weekend, your parents agree you can spend the night with your cousin. They live 40 minutes away. She is like a sister to you. So, you go on Friday. You have fun, watch a movie, chat for ages, and you fall asleep late.

The next thing you know your Aunt is waking you both up. It is Saturday morning. She is in a panic. Something is happening. Your parents have messaged. Something is wrong. She says there are men everywhere in the Kibbutz with guns. You turn on your phone. There are messages from your parents and your brother. They are in the bomb shelter. You try to call them. You can’t get through. You feel the panic rising in your chest. No, please, no. You ring your boyfriend or girlfriend. No answer.

~~~~~

This child has never met a Palestinian that lives in any Occupied Palestinian territory. All he/she knows about them is that they fire rockets at Israel and have done his/her whole life, and once every couple of decades they commit extremely violent and horrific terrorist attacks. That is what he/she knows because that’s what they have been taught and also what their lived experience has taught them.

Many Jewish and Israeli people believe when they talk about Zionism they are talking about, “Somewhere safe for Jews to live where they will not be attacked, where they can call home, and where they have self-determination.” How is it possible for this 15 year old child, given the stories they have been told and the life they have led, to be anything other than a Zionist, when it is defined like that? And if they are told they are a ‘settler’, or an ‘evil oppressor’ and that that is why they deserve to die, they will look at you with wide eyed wonder and assume you are a lunatic.

The reason they can conceive of the Jewish people as settlers who live outside 1967 borders and not themselves is because they do not see them as being in the, ‘Right for somewhere safe to live’ group of Zionists. They are considered to be religious extremists and supremacists, what they see as a distorted and extremist form of Zionism, and they don’t consider it the same.

~~~~~

There are many incredibly sad and depressing things about all of these stories. But the part to me that makes it seem most tragically futile — is that for a very large number of individual human beings that ended up living in either Israel or in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the 1950s -1960s — their stories are almost the same. Most of them were running away from something, and most of the time, the people who are doing the running away are not the people doing the fighting or the massacring.

It is a story of being a refugee, of fighting for survival against all odds, of 20th century dispossession and mass displacement. A story of being blamed for things they did not do and being held to account for debts that they did not owe. The tumult of 20th century history created a shared heritage — that over a very short time hundreds upon thousands of people were displaced — Jews fleeing Europe to Palestine, Palestinians fleeing during the creation of Israel, and almost all the Jews across the Middle East then fleeing to Israel in the few years after it started.

Part of that shared heritage became about yearning to return to a Holy piece of land that carries promise and a deep spiritual connection. It really shouldn’t be that hard to explain to one another — and indeed the rest of the world, why we cannot just ‘let it go’.

I am not trying to rewrite history and say that every single person in the years leading up to and including events in 1948 was an innocent bystander. Absolutely not. I am just saying that, generally speaking, as is almost always the case — when it comes to atrocities, it is normally extremists that engage in it, that end up calling the shots for everyone, and it is them that end up dictating history.

And it is extremist ideologies that are plaguing us today. One is an ideology of Jewish supremacy. God’s chosen people, Israel is God’s gift and therefore comes with a right to take land off anyone and everyone. The other is an extreme, dangerous and corrupted version of Islam — a highly repressive ideology where human rights do not exist, and it exalts in the death of Jews.

These people — all of them — they are the mob. ‘Death to the Jew. Death to the Arab’ One or the other in their rightful place, subservient to the other, or better yet, dead in the ground.

Most people are not the mob. Most people are not sociopaths. Most people just want to live and get on with their lives, they want to have their basic needs met, their human rights, and they want their children to grow up happy and healthy with a bright future ahead.

It is important to understand though that the bonds of community and peoplehood are also part of a basic human need. The need to maintain relationships with brothers, sisters, cousins and friends who live in our communities together with us, who have a shared history with us, who support us, and to whom we are loyal — it is part of the human experience.

The stories of our own and our friend’s grandparents, the loss of livelihood and dreams for the future as they packed their bags and fled — these are the stories that make us peoples. And it is these stories that bind us together within our communities much more closely than any ancient religious text or any ancestral DNA test ever could.

And so when people say, “The Jews and Israelis are not a people. They are fakers, they are ‘Europeans’ pretending to have links to a land that has nothing to do with them.” Or people say, “The Palestinians are not a people. They are just ‘Arabs’ who could have gone anywhere, who have no real history and whose only goal in life is to terrorise Jews,” these will both only ever be seen as inherently anti-Semitic or Anti-Palestinian statements that erase and deny large parts of our collective heritage, and neither will lead to any kind of constructive dialogue. Who is anyone to make judgements about what another people is that they do not belong to?

And so we end up where we have got to today –

From the Palestinian side, what I think is difficult for somebody who is not Palestinian to understand, is that telling them that they should give up on the right to return — for many — is impossible. They can’t do it. Understanding and honouring Palestinian history, which is rich, and complicated, and is largely unknown to many people, for them it is part of their identity. Poetry, art, great thinkers, great writers — they are all there for the world to see if only they would bother to look.

And even worse for a Palestinian, to suggest that everything that has befallen them was somehow their fault because they refused to give up on their history, this could only ever be met with fury and be seen as gaslighting.

It is essential as well to remember that this land — it is not just any land. It is not so easy to walk away from it as any other place on earth. It is Holy Land. It has meaning to everyone associated with it, and everyone wishes to be able to walk free inside it.

Having an enduring determination to free themselves from a brutal occupation that does nothing but dehumanises them and steals from them — and a longing, ultimately, to return to their homeland, this is inherent to being a Palestinian. They cannot ‘Un-Palestinian’ themselves.

So the Palestinians will say, “What world would you have us do? You the world have done nothing to help us. You who have been silent and you care nothing for our oppression. You have abandoned us to unthinkable injustice and suffering for decades. You who sit comfortably in your homes have no right to moralise at us or criticise us and tell us what we should or shouldn’t do. We have no means whatsoever to fight for our freedom. No one is on our side. We are alone. We will do whatever must be done to fight for ourselves, our human rights, our land.”

The Palestinians are living in an impossible nightmare. There seems to be nothing they can do to free themselves that doesn’t make their situation worse. What exactly are they supposed to do when they live under an occupation, have no civil rights, no means to fight for themselves, and the people with power that could do something are not standing up for them? And when all means of civil and non-violent resistance are completely denied or futile, support for more violent resistance will become inevitable.

And it was indeed inevitable that 7th October would come. Warning after warning has been given about the Occupied Palestinian territories and the blockade. Warnings about human rights abuses have gone unheeded. Warnings that if Palestinians are not given their freedom what would happen. Warnings that it was totally unjust, immoral and illegal for Palestinians in the West Bank to be under military occupation. Time and again it has been said it is a danger to the security of Israel, and it was ignored.

But the problem for the Palestinians is that terror was never ever going to work — because the people in Israel believe it was established and is needed as security because of the risk of terror against them. So the idea that they could be terrorised into giving it back, or into leaving — this is an absurdity. People talk of ‘Hasbara’, but terror is and feeds Hasbara. October 7th has done nothing but make people believe in Zionism even more (a safe place to live in their eyes). Zionism burns greater than ever with the fuel of the fires from the Hamas rockets. All terror has and can ever achieve is further encroachment onto Palestinian territory — the literal opposite of a free Palestine.

What happened in 1948 is horrendous. But what of it, to that 15 year old Israeli child? Whose own grandparents had nothing to do with it, and were themselves dispossessed, as is the case now for so many people living in Israel. That child who has only ever known Israel as their home.

So Israelis will say, “World, what would you have us do after October 7th? People outside Israel, you can say whatever the hell you want, but we are here alone. We have and always have been surrounded by people on every side who wish to murder each and every one of us until we are annihilated, and in the most painful and brutal possible way, as has just been demonstrated plainly for all the world to see. You, who do not have any understanding whatsoever of what that is like, do not get to tell us what to do. We will do whatever we think is necessary to strengthen our position to ensure this cannot happen again.”

What people are missing is that this conflict is unique to any other case of the ‘coloniser and colonised’ in history, because the people doing the ‘colonising’ are half the people of the land, people who have a genuine existential fear of everybody around them that does not come from nowhere, and is deeply ingrained into most people’ psyche. Most do not have anywhere else to go, because most of their grandparents came to Israel as refugees, and so they cannot perceive themselves as a ‘colonial settler’ in any way. So they will never stop fighting back at terrorism for their right to live without fear of attack.

This links to the Jewish people in the diaspora who support Israel and is extremely difficult for non-Jewish people to understand.

For many Jewish people, memorialising the repeated attempts to eradicate Jews throughout history, most notably the Holocaust, and remembering and honouring ancestors who have died to keep the Jewish religion alive is considered essential.

Every festival, every prayer book, every cultural activity and a very large number of conversations includes this on some level. It is integral and inherent to most people’s identity. So if people feel that their Jewish counterparts, and very often family in Israel are in existential danger, they can and only ever will see it as a moral imperative that they must be supported.

Asking Jewish people to somehow disavow themselves of this notion is impossible. To tell most Jewish people they need to ‘get over it’ because, “they are a coloniser and their needs do not matter,” is completely meaningless to them.

It is not grounded in reality, and something that can and will only ever be perceived as an attempt to ‘UnJewish them’. I.e. to eradicate significant parts of Jewish history and day-to-day life and community, and thus could only ever be perceived as deeply antisemitic in its very nature. The more these things are denied as relevant, the more people will fight back against what they see as gaslighting.

But for those people in the diaspora who have blindly, unquestioningly, dutifully and uncritically supported Israel, while its government drifts ever further into the grip of right-wing extremism and corruption, must surely now see that was a mistake. If you had a friend or a loved one on a destructive path of self-sabotage, would you just let them carry on?

It is great tragedy of Jewish history for both Jews and Palestinians alike that self-determination and independence for the Jewish people, at a time when they needed and wanted it so badly would come at someone else’s expense. Something that is so freely and unquestioningly given to so many other peoples, but not the Jewish people. Yes, it is unfair. But it did come at their expense. I think that most Palestinians only opposed it, not because they oppose Jewish people — it is the bit about it being at their expense.

We can argue forever and eternity about, “Oh, but it never needed to be this way. If only you could have shared with us. If only in 1947 this or that. And if only in this peace agreement this year or that year,” or whatever.

But what of it to those 15 year olds living in Gaza and the West Bank? It is an irrelevance what was ever intended. What was intended bears no resemblance whatsoever to their lived reality. The Jewish dream of Zionism became their nightmare. I know this is an extremely painful and bitter pill for people to swallow, but Zionism since its inception has resulted in nothing other than subjugation for them. And it is not normal for a country to not have any proper borders, and for one people to control another in some parts of it.

And while it continues to happen, Zionism will continue to be seen as Jewish people being allowed to have control over other people. This was never ever how Zionism was originally intended for a lot of people, and it is not what they think it means. Far from it. But this is where it has come to, and intentions do not matter, because it is our actions that count. Once you understand this, it is really not difficult to see how this is fuelling dark and extremely dangerous conspiracy theories about Zionism, which are dragging us back to a place in history that we most definitely do not want to go, and it endangers us all.

We need to open our eyes to reality. As the bombs reign down in Gaza, destroying thousands of lives, after well over 100 days, there are people dying from starvation. This must end, immediately. It is abominable. The rockets are still coming. And even if you stop them today, while there is occupation in any part of the land, they will just come back tomorrow or the next day or the week or the year or the decade after that. And surely from the Israeli side, negotiating whatever terms to get as many of those hostages out alive, going through what must be unthinkable terror, at any cost, must be prioritised above all else.

And I am very sorry, because I know people will not like this. But this ‘war’ — it is not about destroying Hamas. It is becoming increasingly clear by the day that not only is destroying Hamas impossible, but Israel’s government are violent ethnonationalists. The far right threaten to collapse it at every mention of a ceasefire — the only thing that will get most of those hostages back alive — and so it carries on. And extreme ideology is much more widespread within the government than just the furthest right that are propping it up. The very leader of Israel himself is at the heart of it.

When you hear what they are saying, it is very clear that they have far more sinister intentions, and we must take them at their word. Allowing people to starve, making plans to drive them off their land into other places, destroying heritage sites, and yes, mass killing — that is ethnic cleansing. It is the definition of ethnic cleansing. It is illegal under international law, and it must stop.

People say, “Oh, but Hamas are stealing the aid.” Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. I don’t know. I don’t know and I don’t care. I don’t care because it is an irrelevance at this moment in time to that woman looking into the eyes of her hungry child as they wither away and die. It is enough.

Could it ever be solved?

There are those of us that would be willing to give up on the dreams of our respective peoples, and not because we wish to throw them under the bus. But simply because we would just accept any solution, in whatever form, that would bring the suffering of all people to an end, and as quickly as possible. Because we believe that none of any of this is worth the blood of anyone’s children.

Because we look at those dreams of security through self-determination, rights to return, and we look at where we are today, and we see that none of any of it has delivered on its promise. We see that the world is a very different place to what it was in 1948. We recognise that there are people on the ‘other side’ that we would much rather share a country with than the ‘mob’ on our own side.

Because we know that our histories are worthless if they demand that we ‘unhuman’ ourselves.

Because we recognise that we have inherited the most Unholy mess.

But we are few in number, because the majority of most peoples cannot let go of their respective narratives, either in whole or in part. And so the solution that must be found is one that could satisfy the majority of the narrative of both peoples.

Israel already has half of what it wants — it has the state. But it does not have security, and any pretence of it has been an illusion, one that was violently shattered on October 7th.

The Palestinians meanwhile — they have nothing of what they want.

A one state solution — this does not satisfy the Israeli narrative, because it requires the undoing of Israel. It gives many Israelis nothing of what they think they want and everything they are afraid of. If you were that panicking aunt of that 15 year old Israeli child just now, would you be agreeing to open that border?

But I do not think the two-state solution really satisfies the Palestinian narrative. Because in that narrative, things were better before Israel, before Zionism, where everybody just lived together. And mainly because people want to able to walk free across the land — the right of return. The two-state solution may bring freedom and dignity, but I am not sure if it would give enough people what they really want.

Ultimately it comes down to one of the reasons this has been so intractable for so long. The Jewish State and the desire to control and ensure the continued right of Jewish immigration to Israel, and the presumed need to maintain a Jewish majority to enable that, vs the Right to Return of the Palestinians. ‘The War of Return’ as it has been called. The thing that neither side seems to be able to give up, that seem to be in direct conflict.

So what do we do? Throw our hands up, put it down to a bad job and just give up. (What the world has done). Keep blaming each side’s ‘propaganda’, each side’s education system, each side’s unwillingness to budge. But it won’t work, because it is asking people to let things go of things that they cannot let go of, things that are integral to the history of their peoples.

Human beings have been solving problems since we existed and there is no reason why we cannot solve this one.

There are many possible ways to solve it. The confederate two-state-solution is one example of a way to square the circle: https://www.alandforall.org/.

I suggest it not because I am wedded to it but because it seems to me that it would satisfy enough of both narratives to work. There may be multiple other ways to do it.

How do we get to it? As a possible example. We start with two states. Real states. Not a bit of a state or half a state with the other bit not connected to it and some people still being occupied that could never be acceptable, and was always going to be fought against. A real Palestinian state, whose borders are secured through international peacekeeping. But with that state must also come the promise and the goal that over a reasonably short period of time, everybody who wishes to cross that border gets to cross that border, until eventually, one day, ideally, there isn’t a border. People live wherever they want, but retain citizenship in their own state. And with regards specific land and homes that cannot be returned, real reparations are made. This is just one example of how it could be done.

As we keep hearing — 7 million Israelis, 7 million Palestinians. No one is going anywhere. But at some point, it is my opinion that, probably, for this to ever end, everyone must be able to go everywhere.

Two peoples living side by side. All free to live and move freely across this ancient and Holy land that is so special and meaningful to all and must be shared. Finally able to mix and become humanised in each other’s eyes. Christian, Jew, and Muslim, free to access their ancient and Holy sites. All of us united together in the spirit of mutual respect and tolerance.

Cooperating together to fight the only war that there should ever have been — the only war worth fighting.

Everybody vs the mob.

Not a religious war, not a war of the us or them, not a war over rights to the land and houses. But a war of the moderate and the just against the extremists that have desecrated our respective religions and turned them into something ugly. The lunatics marginalised, silenced and rejected. As opposed to what we have now — the sociopaths leading the charge and everyone else marching dutifully along behind.

People will say this is idealistic nonsense, a pipe dream. But what is the other option? Another twenty or thirty years of failed peace agreements and more of the same all over again? And with every round of violence, the violence gets more violent, the mob gets stronger and more popular on both sides as their ideas are seeded. And the mob is hard to fight, because the mob involves fanatic religion that cannot be reasoned with.

If we keep allowing them to get stronger and stronger, I think they will eventually set each other, themselves, and quite possibly the entire world, alight. Literal World War 3 with Jerusalem at the centre.

“How can you ask us to negotiate with them?” I hear you say. “Them, who are ethnically cleansing us,” or, “Them who wish to annihilate us,” depending on which side you are on. But here is the rub — you cannot terrorise people into leaving and you cannot bomb people into submission. Neither has ever worked. We cannot ethnically cleanse or genocide our way out of this for either people, one way or the other. Any other solution other than a diplomatic solution will lead us nowhere but the abyss.

Israelis and Palestinians are not all inherently genocidal oppressors or inherently genocidal terrorists. (As unfortunately lots of people are saying) Of course they are not. Maybe right now in Gaza most Palestinians do support Hamas in what they see as armed resistance, and most Israelis do support the actions of their government in what they see as a war. But both things have become intertwined with both mobs, and so they are not what each respective side thinks they are. The ‘armed resistance’ — a pogrom style massacre by the ‘death to the Jew’ mob, and the ‘war’ a flagrant breach of international law and an obvious attempt at ethnic cleansing by the ‘God gave us Israel, death to the Arab’ mob.

I am not very sure that most of any of them either know or believe exactly what has or hasn’t happened. The information they are receiving is very different to ours. And in times of heightened escalation of violence, people retract into the respective narratives of their people as they become reinforced. “If it’s a choice between us or them, I choose us. And for me to be able to look myself in the mirror, I must choose to believe what I choose to believe.”

Both believe so deeply within their heart and soul that they are on the side of righteous justice. For one it is ‘the right to just exist’, For the other, it is ‘the right to life, dignity, freedom from cruel and violent oppressors’. So they are both engaging in the collective delusion that because theirs is the side of the right and good, their soldiers/fighters must also be right and good.

Their people can’t possibly be the ones committing the crimes against humanity, and they cannot believe the worst things that are being said about their own side, only the other. But this is not the reality of wars and fighting, and definitely not in a conflict that has gone on for this long where this amount of hatred has become so entrenched, and most of all not ones which involve religion. To me it seems very likely that most of the worst things that are being said about both sides, are in fact, the true things.

As it turns out, many of them were always, are becoming, or have become, the mob.

I think almost everyone, whatever they say, would in fact be appalled if they were actually to see the violence that has happened, and is happening with their very own eyes. But they do not want to open their eyes to see it for what it really is, because they are on the side of the right and the good.

I know there are people of every colour and creed who no doubt I could become friends with, get along with, and love dearly. But also there are people of every colour and creed that I could not stand to be in the same room as. I know this because I am not a racist. Human beings are human beings, that is all we need to know. And if we find ourselves making any collective statements about all of a people, we are probably becoming the very thing we so vociferously claim to the world we are not.

I think that racism may well have become entrenched on ‘both sides’ but I am not sure that it is exactly racism — perhaps a better way to put it would be ‘othering’. “They did this, they did that. They support this, they support that.” And the only way to stop doing it is not to tell each other that we need to unlearn or erase our respective histories and ‘un-brain’ wash ourselves. It is the opposite.

We have to first human ourselves. And then we might have to temporarily UnJewish and UnPalestinian ourselves for short amounts of time. Then we learn each other’s history. Then we will be able to find solutions together.

How can we work together to solve this?

This part of this piece of writing — specifically — it is for us in the diaspora. Hardly anyone in the Middle East is in a place to hear any of this this right now, and too many of them are much too busy trying not to die or get killed.

We in the diaspora, we are trying very hard to do what we can to stop this, and to help. But how is it possible, that all of us who seemingly so desperately want the same thing — freedom and dignity for everyone, and yet still don’t seem to be able to get anywhere without offending and upsetting one another? How can we expect people in the Middle East to co-exist, if we cannot even have a conversation?

I believe we are talking to each other in languages we do not understand, and until we realise this, we will only ever talk past each other. Almost every conversation will have the opposite of its intended consequence, and make the other person believe they are even more right.

We will only ever find it inconceivable that people or friends or colleagues that we thought were ‘nice’ could have views that seem totally barbaric in our eyes. But if we could talk in languages each other could understand, it would get easier. Or at least if we can’t, if we tried to hear what the other is really saying.

We are not listening to, or being respectful of one another and as a collective we are so much weaker and so much less powerful for it. Because the discourse has become so toxic that we cannot work together to find solutions.

I know I myself have been done these things, but even as we try to so hard to understand and explain, it is so easy to offend. I think the reason we are offending each other is because the words in the mind of the speaker sound very different to the ears of the listener.

If the conversations are had respectfully in the spirit of achieving genuine mutual understanding, that is great. But if it is an argument to convince the other person that you are right, forget it.

Take the debate about whether shouting ‘Intifada’ is Anti-Semitic.

If you tell some Palestinians that shouting, what to them means ‘resistance’ against a state which is and has been exercising immense and disproportionate power against them and has done for three quarters of a century, is anti-Semitic, they will inevitably wonder what planet you are living on. How exactly it is that you expect they can possibly fight for their freedom? And why do you continue to engage in this collective delusion that just condemns them to suffer and die?

But if you try to tell most Jewish people, that what they perceive as the indiscriminate killing of Jews in terrorist attacks is not antisemitic, it is inevitable that they will not believe you. In fact, they will see you as yet another of the seemingly innumerable people in the ‘Death to the Jew’ mob.

Every conversation is having the opposition of its intended consequence. Convincing the other person they were more right than they were before.

Think about the way that we frequently use each other’s non-mainstream diaspora voices as a stick to beat each other with. (And this is not necessarily a criticism of those voices — some of them are very important — it’s just explaining how they are seen).

People say to Palestinians:-

“Look, this Palestinian is good, they think Zionism is okay, and you should just accept it. If only you could stop being so silly like them it would have all been over a long time ago. They agree that you haven’t exactly helped yourselves.”

How could a Palestinian ever consider this as a legitimate argument? Views that surely could only be perceived as incredibly anti-Palestinian. Surely they must think something along the lines of…

“You are privileged not to be in Gaza grieving incommensurate losses. You are one of the lucky ones whose entire family is not now dead. You who are not hungry and ill and exhausted and cold and terrified of being killed. All of your hopes and dreams do not lie in ruin before your eyes. You are enabling and emboldening our enemies. You are throwing us under the wheels of the bus of occupation all the while benefitting from living in the countries that side with our oppressors. You do not, and you will not ever, speak for us.”

Equally Jewish people are constantly bombarded with -

“Look at this Jewish person or that one. They are reasonable. They believe Israel is a colonial entity and should be entirely dismantled. They agree you are weaponising the Holocaust and playing the victim. Why are you not a good Jew, like them?”

This is not in any way a mainstream Jewish view because it is mostly perceived as -

“Lucky you, not to be one of almost half the Jews of the world that ended up living in Israel, to not have been born there, to not have a friend or family member that has been killed or taken or mutilated.

Lucky you, who can align yourself with the baying mob, and in so doing throw your Jewish Brothers and Sisters in Israel under the wheels of the bus of annihilation by the people that have demonstrated time and again that they hate them, because it is not your problem. You are not and never have been part of the community, and you do not speak for us.”

If we constantly tell both groups that we don’t hate them, just so long as they agree with something that is a total anathema to them, it will never wash. I am sure it is incredibly offensive to everyone.

“From the River to the Sea.” What do you mean? Genocide the Jews? Genocide the Palestinians? Arab Nationalism? Jewish Nationalism? Or simply freedom and equality for all?

And when it comes to ‘Zionism’. Forget about different languages. We are on completely different planets.

For everyone and anyone else watching the nightmare unfold, who can’t make sense of any of it, they must be thinking, “Surely none of any of this can be okay in the name of human decency?” But they do not know what to do. Because to ‘both sides’ it is to offend everyone and convince no one. ‘Both sidsing’ it has been declared not allowed. You will always be seen as a sell-out or a bus-thrower-under, one way or the other. So they are silenced, their voices not heard, reduced into a despondent, hand-wringing depression.

Yes, in the Middle East, one group has all the power. But in the diaspora, we are more equal. We have equal rights, we mostly live in countries where we are free to speak our minds.

Both sides are busy trying to expose each other’s mob. Both sides have “traitors” who are busy helping. The traitors have totally denounced their own side as either misogynistic, or racist, or both, and have joined the other team. And most of everybody else is on the scale of moderate, somewhere in between the views of the ‘mob’ from their own side, and ‘traitor’ for the other side. None of us even agree with each other on our ‘own side’, and very often, the people on our own side annoy us even more than the people on the other, and amazingly, sometimes the people we find the most annoying are the people we agree with the most.

In the first version of this I wrote, “We are mirror images of one another, yet it seems we mainly hold the mirror up at each other, not at the self.” So we never get to see what it is that we might have been missing.

Maybe is the other way around — we only hold the mirror up at the self and not the other. Something like that.

This is a long and, yes, very complicated story affecting and involving millions of different people across the world, across time and space, with millions of different stories to tell. For there to be any genuine hope of mutual understanding or respect, every single person is going to have to concede that most things about this story they can never truly understand because they have not lived them.

We cannot know, if we have not lived it, what it means to be born and live in a country that has only ever been at war. We cannot know, if we have not lived it, what it means to be born and live your whole life in a territory that is brutally occupied, or is under a blockade, by another people. Nor can we know, if we have not lived it, what it is like to have friends and family caught up on any side of this, whose safety and wellbeing you are desperately worried about.

We in the diaspora, so desperately worried for people in the Middle East, we are all working so hard, but we are not doing the right work. We are digging the hole deeper than ever. The magic peace fairy is not coming. They will not simply just descend from the sky, sprinkle us with magic fairy peace dust and make it all better.

When was the last time we tried to have a meaningful conversation with someone who is saying things that seem incredibly offensive to us? When was the last time we took the trouble to ask them why they think what they do? Or to ask why it is that we have offended them? To ask them about their lives, what happened to their grandparents, and their families and friends, and their parents and the stories that they were told growing up. About their hopes and dreams and aspirations. About their fears for the future.

Whenever the violence escalates, the historians cash in. Suddenly people have more motivation to understand, so we start reading and re-reading the history books. But mostly history will not give us the answers that we are looking for. It is people’s stories that will do it. And reading books that reinforce things that we already agree with will not give us the understanding that we need. It is the great writers from the other side that might.

Social media has many ills. But one huge positive is that it allows us to connect with all sorts of people whose thoughts and ideas we would never have been exposed to. We can observe fascinating conversations between other people we would never have been party to before. We can gain understanding, share ideas and solutions. It is definitely happenning. None of this was there in any previous attempts to fix this. It might just be the gamechanger that we need. We must make the most of it.

We cling to our positions like shells to a rock, not budging at all, so sure that we and we alone can see this for what it really is. I know I was. We could have been working together to stop this, but we never make any progress, and as a result, inadvertently, each and every one of us is complicit in the most unforgivable human suffering.

People say that there is no point talking about peaceful co-existence because it has never worked — but neither has violence. Ultimately there are only two choices — wait for the magic peace fairy, and die together. Or we can do the work to make the ‘peace’ that we all want, and maybe we can live together.

Addendum

And now I speak “as a British Jew,” to anyone in our community who is willing to listen.

I can tell the story of the Jewish story because I know that story. I have grown up listening to it. I was taught it in the Synagogue, in Sunday school and by family and friends. I have also tried, as best as I can, having not lived it, but by listening to the voices of Palestinians and with the help and feedback of allies, to do justice to their story. I hope that I have. It may not meet the mark, after all, this is only version 2. And anyway, neither ‘side’ is a monolith, we would all tell our histories a bit differently, so I definitely cannot satisfy all.

It is important to say that there is one thing yet unmentioned about these two stories. It may be the most important thing. I think it belies the biggest lack of understanding between us.

I have talked much of the similarities in our stories. But there is one very big difference.

The Israeli and Jewish story is about running away. It is about running away from terrible persecution, and of moving forward. It is about moving on and building a new life. The idea of wanting to go back in time, wanting to turn back the clock — it is unconscionable. There was never anything worth going back to. So, for example, when some of us are suddenly being offered citizenship in European countries because our grandparents lived there before the Holocaust, this is not something that we could ever comprehend wanting.

So many Israelis feel, “Why couldn’t they have just moved on like we did? Why did they spend all of their efforts ruining things for us when they could have just moved forward, let it go, made the best of a bad lot, and made new lives like we did?”

Apart from the multitude of reasons I have already explained as to why it was never that simple and why their material circumstances and the occupation has made that impossible for most people — what we need to realise is that their story is the other way around. Our story starts from a place of misery, and moves onto something better. Theirs starts from a place where they were happy enough, and moves onto something horrific. It starts from being at least content for hundreds of years, running away — something they thought was temporary — and never being allowed to go back.

And I say this part as gently as I possibly can. There is a very deep and particular sorrow that many Jewish people will know. It comes with realising that we do not want to look back, because looking back is much too painful. Knowing that for some of us there is no point going on ‘ancestry.com’ because there is no ancestry left to trace. And is it that sorrow that was felt so keenly after the atrocity that was October the 7th. People do not understand that something cannot be weaponised when it is so genuinely heartfelt — there is no intent behind it.

But for the Palestinians — seeing that people from other countries can go and visit, go on holiday, and walk around in a land where their grandparents built their homes, left with whatever they could carry only for them and their families to encounter ever more worsening horrors on their onward journey right up until this very day — and yet they can never set foot in that land — I think what they experience when they see that — it is a very similar sorrow. And I am sure that they have been feeling that sorrow most keenly with each and every passing day, and most particularly in these last months.

I do not believe, as I have argued, that is the case that Israel must cease to exist with all the people in it, to allow the Palestinians what they clearly want, need, and, I believe, are indeed entitled to. The idea that our millenia-old right of return is still in date but their 75-year-old right of return has somehow expired is completely logically incoherent.

And I am coming to understand that suggesting that it has somehow been indulged is a bit like telling us we are weaponising the Holocaust. I think that nothing could be more insulting.

The problem with our version of the story that we were taught — The story of the Jewish people, our losses, our sacrifices, our spilled blood — it is only half a story. It is history through only one lens.

And that story is not the only thing that is taught in our homes and in our Synagogues and in our Sunday schools. We are taught values. We are taught values of respect, justice, and ‘do unto others’. We are taught the words of the Talmud ‘Whoever saves a life, saves the world entire,” (words that can also be found in the Quran).

Most importantly of all, we are taught, “Do not stand idly by while the blood of your neighbour is shed.”

And because we are taught those values — there is a cognitive dissonance that so many people in our community feel — but don’t quite understand — that parts of this story don’t really make any sense, that what happened, and is happening, is definitely not okay. That dissonance — it will not hold forever. It will tear our families and our community apart. It already is.

Yes, there is a death to the Jew mob. Yes, they are a massive problem. But I think we have no right to make mention of that mob unless in the same breath and multiple times over we are making mention of our own mob. Because our own, ‘Death to the Arab’ mob — they have been running around the Occupied Territories unchecked for decades. And it is both mobs that need to be brought under control before there can ever be any hope of resolving this. The Death to the Jew mob will come back stronger than ever while the Death to the Arab mob roam free. And who are we to lecture Palestinians for not getting their house in order, when it is our side that has all the power and all the resources, and yet we have allowed it to carry on? We who demand that they condemn the “resistance” whilst refusing to condemn the “war”.

And we must understand this — If Gaza is allowed to be resettled — it is over. Ever more untold and unimaginable horror for the Palestinians, and in our silence we will have handed Israel on a plate to those ethnonationalists, to the people that should have had nothing to do with what Israel could have been — and in fact people that have nothing to do with us and our values.

People keep talking about the two-state solution like it is some kind of utopia that, like the magic peace fairy, it will just fall from the sky. It is not that easy. Trying to dismantle settlements in the West Bank to make that possible — it is probably almost undoable as it is. Some of them have been there so long now and the Palestinians have very little faith that it could or would ever be done. In fact a confederate version of the two state solution may in some ways be easier to implement because it does not necessarily require the dismantlement of all settlements, something that looks like it is getting harder to do.

And If we think antisemitism is bad now, it will be nothing compared to what is in store in years to come if the resettlement and reoccupation of Gaza were to happen. Israel, hated among nations like never before, until eventually the world will finally not tolerate it. It is dangerous and it leads I know not where, undoing it, I know not how. An epic holy war ahead of us, and in the process we will see what we are already seeing in Israel — free speech and dissent a thing of the past — and Israel’s democracy — burned to the ground.

We are doing our cousins and our friends no favours by parroting off the same old arguments, and ignoring the occupation that has been allowed to become normalised within Israel. It is high time for a different conversation. It was a long ago, and it is now or never.

We need to speak up, loud and clear. When it comes to armed Jewish settlers running around the West bank and terrorising Palestinians, we are anti — it, and we always have been. But how can we expect other people to know this if we do not have these conversations in the open? If we do not call a spade a spade. Our refusal to use particular words and talk about things in a particular way in front of other people even if we do it behind closed doors has led to a lack of education within our community — and I am sure that there will be some people when I talk about these things, that have literally no idea what I am even saying. This is a very big problem. I hope some of those people are reading this now.

And what exactly is it that we are so afraid will happen if we put our heads above the parapet? It is evidently clear that Israel has not been abandoned by its allies. Put yourself in the shoes of an ordinary Gazan just now. Heartbreakingly, it seems to me, that being abandoned by the world — that that has become their destiny.

And, “What of the far left?” people will say? How are we to do deal with their antisemitism?

Yes, the far left think they are supporting armed resistance but have in fact aligned themselves with the ‘death to the Jew’ mob. They bleat on about ‘Hasbara’ — something they clearly have no understanding of whatsoever because if they did they would realise that they are it. Or at least that they are feeding it. Literally they are walking, talking Hasbara.

But of the multiple problems with the far left — and there are many — to me the worst is that there are those of them who have no connection whatsoever to the lives of anyone in the region — no ordinary Israelis or ordinary Palestinians, and yet they cheer for ever more death and destruction. They cheer on “armed resistance” from their comfortable homes in their comfortable lives, and it is not them who will have to face the consequences.

And maybe this round of violence will be the last round, the round that ends it once and for all — I hope so. But it has come at the most appalling and unacceptable cost.

Who are they to think they have a right to declare that somebody else’s family, somebody else’s child — Israeli or Palestinian — even one — let alone thousands and counting — is an acceptable sacrifice?

Maybe it is because they did not understand that October 7th could only ever have been a suicide mission. Because as a consequence of the rigidness of far-left ideology that does not allow for self-critical thinking, they refuse to understand this problem in more than one way. That you cannot fight evil with evil. That yes, it is more complicated than just ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’, more complicated than their warped version of reality where even children are fair game.

Probably there are some of them that knew what would happen after October 7th, and just decided it was probably worth it if it would eventually ‘free Palestine.’ Either way it is unforgivable because it was not their decision to make. And all that has happened as far as I can see, all October 7th has achieved is all it would ever achieve — to enable an extremely racist, harmful, problematic and untrue stereotype that ‘Palestinians are genocidal terrorists’ to be reinforced in the eyes of Israelis and the rest of the world. Around 3,000 people crossed that border on October 7th, of a population of over 2 million. But undoing that sterotype will be extremely difficult, taking us further away from where we need to be.

You cannot help but wonder where we might be right now if only all those people had used all that effort to lobby for a real diplomatic solution. But we can’t turn back the clock.

Arguing with the far left is a waste of time. They have no self-awareness, they are delusional, and they will never stop. They are as fanatical as any of the mob. The only way to make them stop talking is to actually sort this problem once and for all and work for the freedom and dignity of all. And when all is said and done, the ones that will keep complaining will finally be exposed for what they truly are.

That there are outspoken people within our community that think that the correct response to these people is for us to align ourselves with far right Islamophobes — we who have traditionally been proud of being anti-fascist — this could not be more ludicrous. It will lead us into that abyss. “I think the Jewish Chronicle is the Daily Mail for Jews.” Yes Dad, we all finally agree.

So where do we go from here? We need to start doing that right work. It is incumbent upon us more than anyone. Because it is only us who can help our friends and family in Israel, because it us who share history with them, who love and care about them. It is us who can help them see this through another lens.

We need to change the conversation, and we need to do it fast. Because the Palestinians do not have the luxury of time, and as far as I am concerned, neither do we.

There are people in our communities — both Israeli and Jewish — that have already been doing that right work for a really long time. It is time to listen to them, and elevate their voices. We need to start to be willing to be offended and to listen to other points of view. And unfortunately some of the right work does sometimes involve wading through what feels like a massive steaming pile of anti-Semitic shit, in order to get to the heart of some of the problems. But we also have an opportunity to meet some incredible people, and hear some amazing and wonderful voices that we would never have had a chance to hear. We have to get this done, to fix this once and for all.

We cannot hand this legacy to our children. We have to fight (non-violently) for a different future. This is the chance to do it. The world’s eyes are on Israel, and the time is now.

[hoverboards-and-dragons]

What binds us, your final Peace to my final Catharsis

in my body going to bed for work tomorrow when in my soul I'm drawing Lilith carefully and lovingly slitting Lucifer's throat in the final step to her apotheosis. maybe with that tumblr poem about the beloved lamb to slaughter who you need not even tie down layered on top of it He is her resource to be used, they both need each other so very much, how far will it go, what will he give and she take in the name of staying together? What a silly question, they've already said long ago, everything. They both knew this was coming, this is only logical end point, it always was, from the first time he took the knee at her feet, from the first time she saw the mountain tops on his wings, his power was always hers, one day she'll come to collect. Why would they resist it? When its exactly what they're been doing for the last eternity, this won't even be the first time his blood splattered the ground in her name, nor she stained her hands in red and gold.

This is what they've been waiting for, this is the promise that's held them far past any marriage vows or declarations of faithfulness or freedom, of what Lucifer will give and what Lilith will have.

[lakesbian]

thots on blake's backstory? it may not be real but it still affects his characterization so its worth asking i think

insofar as it did not literally happen in real life it's not real but insofar as he remembers & is impacted by it + his friends remembered & were impacted by it up until he got eated, it's real to him and them. i would not have pegged "cult survivor" specifically but yeah that checks. it's so funny (terrible for him) that miss grandma thorburn was like. hmm i need to make sure he really doesn't like hugs. and then hit him with the double whammy of "survivor of cult where manipulation into sex was used to keep men satisfied enough to stay & entrap women, and also he gets sexually assaulted after he leaves said cult juuuuust in case the cult thing on its own wasn't enough." it's like customizing a picrew but with intense human suffering instead of fun outfits. anyway, yeah, it checks. paranoia wrt other ppls motives, intense discomfort towards touch, funnily enough still not great at noting when something is too good to be true or someone is a little happier than they should be about smth. love how existentially horrifying it is for him that he's really tenacious and vigilant but in a way that leads him to disastrous pyrrhic victories rather than long-term survival and that's Explicitly bc gramma custom-tweaked his brain to make him the ideal meatshield who draws fire and then explodes. i'm really really endeared to the character trait where he Admits to himself that as much as he responds like a cornered animal (one w/ the worlds lamest oneliners) when threatened, if those threats are actually followed through on, he Will immediately start freezing and crying and pissing himself. like he's haunted by the memory of begging carl to take him back so that carl will stop, and he very desperately wants to Never be that person ever again, so even when he runs into someone as big & terrifying as conquest, he refuses to give an inch--he can't stand feeling like he remembers feeling back then--but he very much knows that if conquest called his bluff & started dragging him off he'd instantly turn into that person he never wants to be. his life sucks! both in terms of apparent memories and in terms of the Sheer Existential Horror of why he has those memories! devastating for the guy who has an entire Complex about the sanctity of his body & identity that literally none of his body or identity is his, it was all cobbled together from other people for the sole purpose of using him as a tool. even his own rejection of touch isn't his, it was forced upon him.

which. hm. i will say i think that's why arc 9 is paradoxically a form of catharsis & freedom--despite it being a horrific low point, it's not so much corruption of his body as it is him realizing that the changes haven't been corruption but what his body has been all along being revealed. the form he takes on when he's filled in by spirits is arguably more His than his old body was, because it's something he's gained thru his own choices & life experiences rather than the simulated ones that were forced upon him. he literally described himself as a doll, he's experienced the ultimate violation of autonomy thru being custom-manipulated to serve a purpose--choosing to fuck his own hand up and grow branches in place of false flesh is more Him than the original flesh ever was. his life is going to be awful forever and he will be reduced to next to nothing but it will be His nothing, i think.

[adamworu]

Have you seen Codex Entry's video titled "The End of Evangelion Is (Not) A Happy Ending - An Analysis & Critique"? She makes a lot of interesting points in that.

First things first, it keeps hitting me how numerous the death threats were that GAINAX got. The contempt of man, followed by a disgusting lack of consequence has always been a central theme in Evangelion. Seeing just how painful the imitation of art to life is feels like opening old wounds. They were instrumental in EoE's conception among other things (Anno putting his feelings into film being another). The quick flashes of ire in written form really helps give EoE that unshakable bitter, pessimistic feel.

(warning for strong personal talks of suicide under the cut)

Anno's mental health worsened at the main series' end. People weren't satisfied with how it ended. They drove him to the point of contemplating suicide. If Anno's reflection of himself manifest through some of the characters, this makes Shinji's state before the infamous sequence even more haunting.

The interviewer asked 'What stopped you?' to which Anno replies 'The prospect of pain. I didn't mind dying I didn't want it to hurt.'

I didn't want it to hurt.

As someone with fluctuating highs and lows of mental health, this struck me more than I'd like to admit. During my periods of contemplating ending it all, one of my greatest fears was the pain. That death isn't the peaceful embrace from it all. That your lasting regrets die with you as your loved ones would eventually find you and become horrified at the fleshy shell that once had a name. You hear their faint screams, your strength is all but gone, and that flickering light within you is snuffed forever.

'Faced with the reality, I stopped.'

I think there's something even more painful about the end. There is no pain, but was lies on the other side...if anything?

EoE asks what if self-loathing becomes our being? Who you are affects your very being. And Shinji's self-hatred seeps into the cast, then the whole world. Considering Shinji's status as an audience surrogate, this sort of thing is very much aimed at the audience, especially those targeting Anno and GAINAX.

I personally don't think, however that EoE is an inverse to EoTV (series end). I do agree with her (Codex Entry), however that EoE is the horrifying reality of if the wrong person turns their back on humanity. EoE is more the explicit version on how humanity came to be in Instrumentality. I still wouldn't call it pessimistic even after all these years. EoTV sees the characters with more self-fulfilled arcs in the very end. There's a sense of catharsis from cast and viewer alike from having climbed a mountain of epiphany and acceptance. EoTV feels more convenient, albeit not unnaturally so.

EoE is more explicit with Shinji's flaws. They stare him in the face with no hesitation. These fears are far uglier and portray him less favorably. Less sympathetically. He views the girls and women around him as how they'd be of benefit. His ire isn't just about the realization that they're people with feelings and complexities deserving of empathy. It's also that those girls and women can as well as do hold the right to exist without him. He sentences the whole world to metaphorical death by way of relinquishment of the AT Field due to his own insecurities. His locus of control is viewed externally. His deterministic point of view harms everyone around him. The train scene is shown here and it parallels his talk with Leliel in episode 16. He blames his reality rather than hold himself accountable.

This is the importance of 'What is your hand for?' It's a gentle nudge into the prospect of free will. It's not just a doctrine of freedom, but one that argues that you are culpable.

My one and only pet peeve with the essay is the confusion of happiness and positivity multiple times throughout. EoE isn't happy, but it is positive. If we were to look at EoE as its own universe rather than a metatext, it is intensely depressing. It tells you that with your hands you can better the world around you. With the fact that it's self-aware considered, it acts as a cautionary tale, that intense self-loathing and disdain serves not just to poison you, but others. We don't all have the ability to damn the human race to metaphorical death until to bring them back because we don't exist. Shinji is understood in Codex' video to be an audience surrogate to great detail. EoE is the existence that did not want to be. Rather than being nihilistic and ireful, it grabs the audience with trembling fingers, saying 'For the love of God, be empathetic. It won't kill you! You are ruining everyone around you with your contempt for outside agency and your arrogance. Please...!'

End of Evangelion is Nyquil. It tastes strong and it tastes bad. Everyone needs bad tasting medicine if they want to get well. So drink the damn medicine.

[racefortheironthrone]

I’m not too well versed in the comics history, Has there been clear progress made for mutant rights and acceptance in the marvel universe? Like , between the big events and Orchises of the marvel (and real world) setting things back, is there a big difference with how mutants are treated de facto and dejure across the decades since the 60s? Any particular mutant rights milestones?

Great question!

People's History of the Marvel Universe, Week 22: Anti-Mutant Prejudice and Mutant Rights In the Longue Durée

This is a difficult question to answer, because Chris Claremont was very much of the "torture your darlings" school of comics writing, believing that the way to wring endless drama out of your characters was to keep piling tragedy on tragedy on top of them before finally giving them a moment of catharsis. This was especially true for how he handled the mutant metaphor from as far back as X-Men #99, where even when the X-Men saved the day, it would only seem to further fan the flames of anti-mutant prejudice.

That being said, Claremont didn't present an unchanging portrait of anti-mutant prejudice constantly getting worse and worse - after all, the very beating heart of dramatic structure is variation, without which even the most grimdark tragedy becomes numbing and monotonous. So there are definitely key moments in the Claremont run where the X-Men are able to score a victory for mutantkind.

Perhaps the first and most famous instance of the mutants notching a win comes in the climax of God Loves, Man Kills - Claremont's first great Statement Comic about bigotry. After having foiled the Reverend Stryker's plans to exterminate mutantkind by kidnapping Charles Xavier and using a Cerebro-like device to project lethal strokes into mutant brains across the world, the X-Men confront Stryker on live T.V - again, part of Chris Claremont's endless fascination with the power of media to shape our minds that would recur in Fall of the Mutants - fighting him on the level of ideology and rhetoric. Kitty Pryde is able to bait Stryker into attempted murder in front of the television cameras, ending his crusade of hate:

(I'll do a full in-depth analysis of God Loves, Man Kills and how it both codifies and reveals Chris Claremont's approach to the mutant metaphor in a future issue of PHOMU.)

The next big moment of victory I've already written about in PHOMU Week 20, was Fall of the Mutants. In this storyline, the X-Men face off against Freedom Force and the Registration Act and ultimately sacrifice their lives to save the world in Dallas - once again, using the power of rhetoric and media to strike back against discrimination and oppression.

After that, Claremont's next (and arguably last) big victory for mutant rights came in the "Genoshan Saga." (I'll also be doing an in-depth analysis of Genosha in a future issue of PHOMU.) Beginning in UXM #235 and winding its way through Inferno and the X-Tinction Agenda, the fictional nation of Genosha was Chris Claremont's big Statement about apartheid South Africa. An island nation off the east coast of Africa, Genosha seems to be a utopia free of poverty, crime, and disease - but its entire society rests on a foundation of mutant slavery, where mutants are press-ganged, mind-controlled, and genetically-manipulated to serve the human ruling class.

After a series of clashes between the X-Men and the Genoshan Magistrates, the X-Men defeat Genosha's anti-mutant military and their cyborg ally Cameron Hodge. But whereas most superhero comics end with the heroes foiling the evil plan of the supervillain and restoring the status quo, this time Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson went a step beyond the norm and had the X-Men carry out a political revolution that brings lasting structural change - toppling the Genoshan government and abolishing apartheid.

Under the pen of later writers like Joe Pruett, Fabien Nicieza, and (most enduringly) Grant Morrison, the island of Genosha would be refashioned as a mutant homeland, a prosperous and advanced nation of sixteen million mutants ruled by Magneto. (Yet again, a topic for another issue of PHOMU.) Arguably ever since then, the story of the X-Men has been the story of the struggle to restore mutantkind to the position it was in before Cassandra Nova ended the first mutant nation-state, culminating in HOXPOX and the foundation of Krakoa. (A topic we'll be covering next year when FOTHOX/ROTPOX writes the final chapter in the Krakoan Era.)

[redpenship]

is it okay to talk about your buzzsaw fic!! thinking so hard about how tails’ pov really tied into the themes of isolation and ethical dilemma, about how we were forced to numb some Things out until his freedom. how sonic had been like a ghost haunting the narrative, leading to the catharsis that was the last chapter to be much much more impactful. i imagine tails suddenly being around him couldnt have been a smooth transition. wow you sure are putting them in such dilemmas. i forgot where i was going with this

of course its ok to talk about buzzsaw!!

i like the idea of sonic being a ghost haunting the narrative! even though tails is the one who is allegedly dead lol.

the isolation was really hard to write (i had to find ways to make his situation entertaining) so im really glad youve enjoyed it!

the sequel starts a year after the end of buzzsaw, a few months after they stopped travelling the world together, so i should probably write a one-shot or something showing tails' transition period with sonic. it could be cute i think :)

thanks so much for this message!! it made my day <333

[true--north]

I've been asked about my 💎unpopular💎 opinions about Frozen:

❄ I love F2 ending in all its aspects, I love the sisters separated, Elsa out, I love them being the Spirit and the Queen.

❄ F2 is better than F1 because it's more poetical, magical, epical and satisfying; but at the same time both films are so connected and parallelized and sincere to each other that it's a truly one consistent story.

❄ I don't think that Elsa was a better queen than Anna will be. I think that she had a hard time adjusting herself to the royal job. Because she symbolically had had to find and wear the crown she thew away in the catharsis of Let It Go again.

❄ When I heard "Are you the one who knows deep down that I'm not where I'm meant to be" everything had just clicked so naturally and I fell in love with Elsa. I know that many don't like this line/subplot and praise her as queen of Arendelle but I relate to that, I saw her soul and understood why she wanted to leave.

❄ Elsa as a magical shaman priestess(Noaidi), her bond with Ahtohallan, her freedom in the Forest is something that is so important to me.

❄ F1 Anna did nothing wrong.

❄ F2 Anna was holding Elsa back in F2. She was "cutting her wings"(I understand why, of course). Despite Anna's own words of "When will you see yourself the way I see you?" Anna didn't see the whole Elsa, that reckless magical deep side of her that was awakened by Ahtohallan's voice and the touch of the Forest. The side that wanted to break free. That's why the accepting Anna in "Her love could hold up the world" scene is so important. She understood.

❄ I don't see Kristoff's arc in F2 as a failure. Still I wish Lee and Buck were able to save his "I don't want to change myself for the royal life" lines. Because now we have Elsa and Kristoff who wanted Change, and Anna and Olaf who didn't; and probably it would be fancier to have only Elsa(since it's her Journey") who seeks Change being her leading role, and the rest dealing and coping with It.

❄ I like the trolls. Their lore is cool and they are funny. Grand Pabbie was good.

❄ I like Agduna as a couple and as parents despite their mistakes. They are sympathetic. Iduna is a tragic heroine.

❄ Sometimes I think that Hans wasn't that handsome. Something in the way his appearance was animated in the second half of the film looks unpleasant.

❄ I don't think that Honeymaren was that important.

❄ I may ship Elsa with some, even with that Wolfgang if he's young in the podcast, but I think that she is going to remain aroace in canon.

❄ I think that Hans's arc could have been much more interesting and deep without the twist, but I didn't feel betrayed by the shock of it.

❄ Some part of the isolation and separation's pain and trouble was caused by Elsa herself. Some traits of her psyche kept her in that reclusive, full of fear and self-hatred state of mind more than could and should have been for any other person.

❄ I feel sorry that Lee is gone and have doubts about the new director.

❄ Concept arts outfits are better than the actual versions.

❄ I don't quite like that F2 outfits lost their 19th century spirit. Anna doesn't even wear stocking anymore(just like Elsa).

❄ Anna doesn't need to be like Elsa, to do what Elsa does to be cool and worthy, she doesn't need to be with Elsa all the time.

❄ I have trouble understating the concept of Anna as the Fifth Spirit in its full magical spiritual sense. But at the same time I can sense what they were trying to say.

❄ I love when the sisters are arguing, when they have a conflict, when their opinions and worldviews clash. Because they are so different and it's compelling and interesting.

❄ I think that Elsa can (or at least must theoretically) rule the nature elements, in the literal sense.

❄ I feel sorry that Runeard was simplified in the Polar Nights.

❄ I prefer Elsa's Harvest Festival and Spirit dresses over Ice Dress.

❄ And, SHOCK! I don't like the way Elsa's braid was drawn. It wasn't a lush and carefree natural braid from concept arts. The braid is too thick and these frozen unnatural large strands... I felt happy when Elsa let her hair fall down in F2. She needs more wild and untamed hair.

[edwardsissyhandsthtdanceslikeabb]

im high pls dont make me name my batjokes meta

this post may be implicit/common knowledge, but having not seen much discourse around the mechanics of batjokes' dynamic compels me to catalog. there's sm to unpack here, so excuse lapses in structure or flow.

first off and most importantly, joker's battle with bruce is an existential one, he wants to justify himself in the eyes of his maker, his reshaper, whose perpetual control and prowling enabled, and ultimately exposed, the failure of his veneer of heroism and ability/adeptness, and birthed a distillation of that failure. the failure to circumvent criminality and violence, continually indulging retaliative brutality and unresolved anger, edging catharsis in assuming a protective and dominant role as to compensate for his loss and pantomime vicarious past reclamation and authority. constantly stagnant, incessantly unfulfilled, an everlasting outburst if you will, addressing not his material conditions but feeding his metaphysical ones. joker moulds himself around bruce's worldview, concerning himself with the salvation eternally eluding bruce, achievable through the violence that birthed batman and reinvented joker in turn.

this is a dialectical affliction, one desperate in nature, to validate that he wasn’t a mistake, a deviancy, to prove that a singular, perhaps seemingly insignificant element can transform anyone, unchain them, and joker refuses alternatives because batman forever dances, is forever chained by both his insistence on normalcy, but also his neglect of it. joker wants foremost, to matter to his creator, to break perfunctory monotony and elicit true understanding and oneness, have his existence be purposeful and intentioned, proving himself worthy, the one that finally cracks the elusive figure and chiefly, achieves ordainment in the eyes of his saviour — embrace, his personhood returned to his creator’s hands as to ascend batman into godhood, inextricably coalescing them.

it’s a labour of love, devotion, joker truly loves THe BaTmaN, bleeds and lives and offers up gothamite sacrifices as to resuscitate his vacancy, bless him with unadulterated purpose, validate the meaningless of the earthly. ultimately, batjokes are cyclical, that: from ash you were birthed and to ash you shall return, sh1t. what confuses that however, is how dialectical they are (as aforementioned), they embody a yin & yang dynamic after all. however, ultimately, joker wants to birth the batman who laughs [like when you think about it — batman realizing joker's philosophy and transcending humanity], to eliminate bruce's restraint and contradictory morality as to, ironically, create a pure, militant reaper encompassing gotham's brutality and abandon. joker is fighting for gotham's soul in more ways than one, on the physical level — crippling its normative function, inundating it with senseless violence, and on a metaphysical level, fighting for its symbol of order and constraint, someone who arose as an abstract embodiment of gotham's institutional enforcement, a distillation of authoritative fear, gotham’s punitive restrictiveness, the abstraction of otherworldly, insurmountable power, an inverted reflection of the very thing bruce is and was unable to overcome, aiming to strip them of their defences as to coax their primality, a violent denuding as to be sculpted anew, the same enlightenment he was afforded. to be broken so thoroughly that you become pure. to shatter pretence and baptize gotham, or its seemingly intractable moral paragon, in hedonistic freedom, uniting them with his gory rebirth. and joker, with this hedonistic perspective, recognizes that capacity in batman, recognizes it as his truth as one who was born from that brutality and violence and continues to endure it, seeing it as the purest form of expression and the underlying nature of existence.

he glamorizes his own death at the hands of the one who rebirthed him bc it will rebirth his creator in turn, allowing him to fully embody his godhood. it will afford the joker true meaning — once again my metas coming back to the struggle for existence but universal themes gonna universe [with the melody] — however, bc of the dialectics of batjokes, the struggle is a testament to their bond, it’s a seduction, a courtship, its authenticity and potency dictated by scale and intensity (aka their Stockholm is mad), the commitment to enduring joker’s forcible conversions, and foremost, to joker martyring himself to batman’s perpetual aggrieved ministrations, the irony in trying to fix someone through cruelty, conflict everlasting in one’s subjugating machinations. the more joker seizes, the further his cost sinks. bruce becomes steadily entrapped with and by the one person who can never leave him, the magnitude of those around him continually strained against the joker, the onus to humanize a sadistic, inhumane murderer forever ballooning. joker’s mortality, his humanity becoming further pathologized, his undying ceaselessness a type of consolation, a mark on bruce’s own consciousness, to save the one person forever bound to him, justifying his heroism and the incongruity between them, the fundamentalist moral dividing them: do not kill. batman's consideration, thusly, is birthed from a deep resentment, the flagellation of abstinence, maintaining the one thing delineating human from unfeeling instrument [of violence]. that resentment festering into a neurotic sort of dependency, joker acting as his NorthStar of morality, subsuming his sense of self, entrancing and ensnaring him. without the joker, batman is slowly cannibalized, unable to exist. whatever, i’m tired. this better be good enough cause its going up either way.

to conclude, this song [pay for it by jeff and the mindful selfless chastites]

encompasses batjokes perfectly. the eternal struggle, the damned position and conundrum batjokes find themselves saddled with, their respective lives being their sort of penance, an inability to ever truly connect without eliminating the other, love transmorphed into a twisted, destructive passion disinterested in its untainted iteration and consequently further estranging them.

(there was another song too but i forgor 🤷🏿‍♂️ [AN: not bc i was high, i could not conceive of this high)

[ausetkmt]

Quartz: Burning Man's wealthy Burners got the wakeup call they needed

As a touring musician, I’m partial to festivals. After all, if an album drops and nobody is around to hear it live … did it really happen? As a climate activist, however, what I’ve read about Burning Man this year has given me pause.

Billed as an orgy of “self-expression” and a display of orchestrated self-reliance, Burning Man is meant to be a utopia-in-progress for disaffected, deep-pocketed “Burners,” including billionaires and assorted tech bros from all over the world. This small slice of supposed freedom wasn’t ever free, with attendance costing thousands of dollars. And now, it’s not even guaranteed. Thousands of Burners got trapped when two-months’ worth of rainfall dropped in 24 hours and turned the festival grounds, situated on a dried-out lake bed in the Nevada desert, into a muddy nightmare.

One conservative politician mused that this was divine retribution for a famously debaucherous event. I prefer to see it as a climate comeuppance. Extreme heat scorched last summer’s Burning Man. This year, the ultra-polluting parade was rained on just days after police broke up a protest by climate activists blocking entrance into the festival.

It isn’t just Burning Man, of course. Festivals around the US and the world have been affected by extreme weather events. It was more than a coincidence that I finished writing this article on my way to Greece, where my bandmates and I ended up having to drive through a flash flood in Athens to reach our performance venue as the rooms back at our hotel took on several inches of water. If musicians continue to tour, we clearly need to work around a changing climate, and we need to employ more sustainable ways of doing it.

But what happened to the Burners at Burning Man this year also gives me hope, if only because we are finally witnessing a wake-up call that we—and they—have needed.

Black Rock City

At the Burning Man venue of Black Rock City, which ironically shares a name with a financial behemoth wrestling with its own sense of responsibility to the environment, “decommodification” and “radical inclusion” are the watch-words. Outside the festival grounds, in the so-called “default world,” there is an opportunity for those messages to finally stick.

Burners are drawn to this pop-up town in the Nevada desert because they see it as a blank canvas for their utopian aspirations. Those who can afford to attend have the financial and political capital to make that difference outside of the desert, too.

Though many Burners, especially the lifers, don’t fit the Silicon Valley mold that has become synonymous with the event, the Black Rock City census shows they are overwhelmingly well-educated, relatively politically active, and on the high side of the median income line.

They also are prime targets for the “eat-the-rich” catharsis so frequently found on social media. One tweet goes: “Influencers at Burning Man are unable to fulfill sponsored content agreements and you’re laughing?” Others point out that after spending a week in an encampment, many Burners will go home and ask the police to clear the unhoused encampment next door.

Let’s forget for a minute the gross emissions footprint of an annual event with its own improvised private airport. Or that, despite a “Leave No Trace” ethos, the festival leaves behind an environmental clean-up nightmare for nearby communities. There is a lesson here about what needs to change alongside our responsiveness to climate change. Let’s make better lifestyle choices, sure. More importantly, let’s stop sowing the seeds of inequality in our quest for lifetime passes to a destructive dream-world.

The luxury of avoiding climate-change risk isn’t available to anyone

The fortunate few have always found escape away from society’s inconveniences. But try as they might, they’ll find that no amount of money will keep climate change out of their lives. Away from the grind and grime of city life, many have sequestered away in luxurious gated communities or chic palatial homes at the edge of society. These expensive vanity projects are now at high risk of natural disaster.

As a realtor on Netflix’s Selling Sunset recently pointed out, a $19 million mansion in the Hollywood Hills is a lot harder to offload when insurers need an additional $200,000 a year for coverage against wildfires—if they’ll offer insurance at all. And rather than reading the signs, like warnings that sea-level rise will destroy $100 billion of beach-front property within the next 20 years, those who can afford fortified luxury housing in flood-prone areas like Miami are still moving in, driving housing prices higher as mobile homes are washed away.

And what about that get-away weekend to Tulum, or Turks and Caicos? As local communities in vacation destinations have said for years, and as the tragic fires in Lahaina on Maui recently demonstrated, tropical paradise may be short-lived even for the most undiscerning tourists. That bottle of Champagne you’d like to enjoy in the hot tub while on vacation? That will be gone, too, as heat and drought damage vineyards and flavor profiles. Climate change is coming for it all.

On the drive into the festival, Burners were met with demands from climate activists to reduce their carbon footprint, for example by cutting down on plastics and private jets. Let’s hope that, as the mud dries and the roads clear, they will have taken stock of the bigger picture on their exodus out.

This is a group that, by and large, can exert influence, and not just in where they choose to live or how they choose to travel or what they choose to drink. Steered effectively, their invested fortunes and political connections can actually move the needle on climate action, in ways that also benefit those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

While the climate deniers are fewer and farther between than ever before, we are at a tipping point, where those who recognize the problem need to be pushed over the edge into action.

Perhaps the Burners’ mud-caked belongings will remind them of the value of making their money and power work not only for their own future, but a mutually beneficial collective future. It just might bring them closer to the utopia they were looking for in the first place.

[boyfridged]

hey! this is just a random question so please don't feel pressured to answer, if you're uncomfortable! basically, i was thinking about writing a story about jason and alcoholism. i wanted to explore it in a way, because i wanted a little bit of catharsis in exploring my own relationship with my preferred form of escapism, but also because i read quite a classist take on jason and catherine, and how he's 'doomed by the narrative' to never escape the cycle, and i kind of wanted explore how that's not the case, and especially how damaging it is to refer to addiction as something that is 'dooming' someone. however, i am quite new at writing more complex stories. i was wondering if you had any advice as to how i could avoid classism in such a story/if that is even possible?

oh dear, it's been a month and i was somehow convinced i replied to this ask! although, honestly, i don't think you need much help here. you are already aware of all the implications of writing a story about such a difficult topic.

i think there exists a certain freedom of self-expression, self-insert, and even plain indulgence in fanfics & headcanons that should not be held to the same standard as canon is. what i mean is that if dc gave jason an alcohol problem i would be dismayed because there is not a considerable array of characters with a similar background as his, and so associating addiction with it to such an extent (after already retconning willis to have issues with alcohol) is questionable. so i guess one thing i would probably avoid is such a portrayal of willis, but i'm not in your head and it's fully possible you would handle it respectfully and with the sensitivity that lobdell obviously does not possess.

but i think first and foremost you have to simply trust yourself with it. it's your experience. and i'm assuming jason is a character that is dear to you too. maybe this experience would not be more appropriate to be explored with a different character if it were a published comic book, or maybe it would fit jay just fine and you would be able to draw out the nuance like no one in dc has ever bothered to. but as i said, you're not really working within a complicated framework of an editorial puzzle wherein you have to take that all into account. there are certain cliches that might be normally avoided for the sake of creating a more nuanced and wider array of representation, but these cliches might ring true for your life, for instance; and you are free to include it all in your story. it's just the recognition of the dangers of stereotyping that should come through.

also, what you described as your source of inspiration already sounds exceptionally good! addiction is a health issue first and foremost, and challenging its status in storytelling (and common consciousness) as a piece of fate's machinery and a "fatal flaw" is so important. it'd be especially interesting to see it explored not just against jason's (past & cultural) socio-economic background but also irt his later trauma & the mode of social existence as a vigilante/superhero (which i guess was attempted with roy once.)

if/when you write it (or if you have already written it, since it's been a while) and if you're planning to post it, i'd love to read it!

[amummy]

This is by far not a new take but I feel as I get older the divide between too very loud voices online has made it a much more frustrating place to be in the middle of.

Queeritans and shock culture.

Those who draw discomfort about topics as something that is inherently evil and wrong, especially those who enjoy and engage with morally grey or downright repulsive content. This is almost entirely young people who have much of there socialization done online and a lot of critical thinking concerning media is lost. People talking online have a detachment to the other “usernames” as other people and instead are a set piece for there experiences and ideas. And if against them it is obviously wrong or bad. A lot of this is someone in need of self reflection and growth. Sometimes even lashing out against concepts they don’t necessarily understand themselves and aren’t able to process in a healthy, emotional manner. Dogpiling is an unfortunate consequence of this.

The other side of this is the cynical, shock value culture. Those who throw around the word “triggered” like it’s a slur and seek to demean others for simply being something they don’t agree with on a political or even social level. Posting things because there idea of “freedom of speech” is cruelty and filterless. That they have a right to say it and if you point out that even with a legal right, there is social consequences to one’s actions that should be accounted for.

And here I feel in the middle. I won’t ever claim to be perfect but what I do know concretely about myself is how to not be reactionary. I very often think before I post. I think about the consequences of my words and the reactions it can pull from people. I also know that not engaging is a completely valid and healthy response to content I don’t agree with or like.

I don’t usually engage with morally questionable media because applying morals to a fictional story… characters… is an exercise in futility. Damning a villains actions by attacking the creator very much misses the point of having a conflict in a story at all. But demanding things be created without concern of how they affect others(let’s say protected groups) is another recipe for disaster.

Critical thinking is something I feel sorely is missed in todays landscapes. I feel very blessed to be surrounded by like minded individuals. And this is my moment to say it is a completely valid and healthy response to block individuals instead of attack or engaging with them. It is alright to not like something. It is alright to be uncomfortable about it too. But the block button is right there.

And an even better response after is to move on from it or even try to improve upon the thing you saw. “A was something I really didn’t like so I made my own story and made sure A wasn’t in it. Instead I put B” even if it’s for yourself and not the public. Working through ideas and concepts in this way is a very healthy response. Idealization through fiction is healthy. Catharsis through fictional conflict and even violence is healthy. The importance is its done in a manner that is constructive and isn't used to lash out at real people(very often strangers)

This is a bit rambly but TLDR; Please use more critical thinking online when engaging with other people I stg.

I love you, bye

[entomolog-t]

Some of my favorite tropes have already been asked, but if we’re wanting a super specific G/t trope:

Athletic giantesses with hearts of absolute gold.

Like, we’re talking pro athletes, CrossFit herbos, Herculean female powerhouses. Women who could catch a falling skyscraper on their back to save a crowd, then sweep up their sweetheart and smother them with kisses.

Talk me through it, doc. What’s up with that? Why do I like that so much?

Back at it again !!

Its a pleasure to be back in office.

There are quite a lot of interesting concepts to break down in this trope; Gender role subversion, muscle and size and their relationship with power dynamics and sub-dynamics (trust, security, submission) and parental modeling.

Lets proceed in order.

Gender role subversion

The typical societal norm for women tends to be airing towards the more submissive, and less physically intimidating. A *ahem* "giantess muscle mommy waifu," as the kids say, is a significant subversion of typical societal norms. This creates two intertwined themes; subversion/role reversal and taboo. There is something very intriguing about things that go against the grain. There are many theories as to why this is such as repression and expression of free will for example. Free will is particularly interesting, as it really emphasizes the rebellious nature of humans, despite us being a pack/group/society driven species. Essentially, by going against the societal norms we reinforce our own individuality. Normally this is not a conscious thought, and instead something that manifests within what we repress (the shadow, for any of you who enjoy Jungian philosophy). When something is repressed from our conscious to subconscious, it tends to manifest in strange ways; dreams, fantasies, desires, and even what we project onto others.

Fatigue within ones own role is also a driver for these kinds of role reversal fantasies. The societal expectations of ones gender can be overwhelming. Men are expected to remain stoic emotionally, and strong physically. While the roles are not as clear cut as they were decades ago, the expectations can still leave many people weary, as they can be forced to repress parts of themselves (emotionality, weakness, fear etc..) and the circumstantially forced reversal of those roles in fantasy acts as a form of catharsis. A reprise from the demands of those around them, and the freedom to be accepted as you are.

I would highly recommend you list out traits you associate with Giantesses in fantasy; do they correlate with what you assume people expect from you?

Muscle and Size and their relationship with power dynamics and sub-dynamics

The distinction of muscularity is very interesting, as these kind of fixations tend to have a notable overlap within G/t. Muscularity and G/t both have a great deal of fixation on body parts, size difference, power, fear, intimidation and trust. The combination of the two is very concentrated power dynamics.

As a warning, I will be discussing the next bit with a focus on animal behavior (a subject I specialize in) and the context of mate selection and genetic potential. I will try my best to use appropriate language, but keep in mind this is referring to subconscious processes, and there is so much more that goes into attraction and relationships than genetic potential.

We have done quite a bit of size exploration in previous sessions, so I do want this to emphasize muscularity. First and foremost, muscularity (less so lean-ness) is a marker for good health (indicator of strength, access to resources to cultivate said muscle, predictor of fitness etc..) while muscularity doesn't exclusively determine any of these, our brain likes to make judgements at a glance, and statistically, its a pretty good indicator, despite outliers. In that sense, indicators of good fit are enticing as the brain perceives them as potential desirable traits. Regardless of ones sexuality, our neurology has developed to pick up on certain traits and perceive them as attractive, both as a learned behavior and as a genetic driver. There are some extremely interesting studies on people subconsciously being attracted to those who have traits that could improve genetic potential.

This might indicate that you subconsciously feel physically weak/inferior, and your brain is trying to mitigate this by seeking out those with complimentary traits.

In a more human psychology sense, we see a physical and aesthetic manifestation of a power gradient, further emphasized by over all size. As mentioned earlier, the physicality seems to act to further concentrate aspects of power dynamics already seen within G/t; trust, safety and submission.

Having someone so much larger and stronger with a "heart of gold" very much seems to fit the sub archetype of the protector for the Giant. This emphasizes a possible yearning for safety and security in ones day to day life. If one feels unstable, the image of someone so powerful and immense taking care of them could be extremely reassuring and soothing.

What aspects do you align with Giantesses in your fantasies? This could be indicative of traits you are comforted by, and it could help to stabilize yourself if you cultivate them within yourself or act as a roadmap to traits that you value within others.

A little more on the negative side, we often find comfort in what is familiar. This can be seen in sad examples of friends from difficult households seeking out less than savory spouses. The same can be seen at times within our own fantasies. Being seen as smaller and weaker can make one feel less than or insignificant. However, having a loving giantess counterpart may be a way to cope with these feelings, especially if there is the continuous theme of "I love you as you are." Thus begs the question(s); do you find comfort in being seen as insignificant?

Or

Do you find significance through being seen as your whole self, despite certain perceptions of being small/weak etc..?

Parental Modeling

Gender role related fantasies and tropes have a tendency to have origins in early childhood, namely from parental figures (parents, aunts/uncles/teachers etc..).

Another warning, this topic is a bit weird and takes a more animal behavior analysis, which just sounds a little strange when applied to humans.

In early childhood we may look towards parental figures as models for gender roles as well as attraction. While this may sound Freudian in nature, its more so just early knowledge acquisition of what is expected of us, and what we expect of others. A normally gendered fantasy may imply specific traits associated with the mother, ranging from making one feel small, to being extremely nuturing and a safe haven.

Particularly negative traits of the parent may be twisted to turn into coping mechanisms as well (such as combining the two themes above; my mother made me feel at times small and insignificant, and thus I cope by envisioning a massive being caring for me and protecting me in spite of my stature).

Evaluating parental relationships (both the negative and positive aspects) and comparing them and contrasting them to what you seek in G/t may offer greater insight.

----

Thank you for your time today, please see my secretary on your way out to set your next appointment.

[pyrriax]

O!Krow and Oc of your choice for the head cannons?

AAALRIGHT LETS GO!

c!Krow

1. It used to ask the people in clearing two a lot of questions when it first woke up in the maze because it didn't know a lot about the world 2. After the whole prison incident it has a horrible fear of enclosed spaces 3. Loves winter (yes this is because of that moment where it first experienced snow and that was a happy moment it had with Magic) 4. Oh! See also: Fear of water / drowning. Wonder why. 5. Did I hear paranoia swag? Paranoia swag 💪 6. It mimics people's speech and small phrases, kind of parrot-ish but like okay. I project a bit. 7. It once dyed its hair like. Blue. In the maze, and absolutely just vehemently hated it so much (even though it was kind of funny) 8. Once everything was like. All said and done and it was out of the maze (this is assuming STARR isn't needlessly cruel and like. yknow. it's given some flavor of freedom) it immediately delved into learning all it could about the world it's practically never experienced 9. I headcanon it listening to a lot of artists like Enon and Apes of the State (highly recommend btw) 10. Another post-maze headcanon: It kept a book where it wrote down everything, and once that book was filled out completely, it burnt it :) [Something about catharsis because good LORD it needs that] 11. It never stopped wanting to be better / be a good person, and a while later, it wound up trying to move on, starting over again (it wasn't easy, and it was still angry, so angry, but it didn't want to live in the past anymore)

aaaaaaaand an OC of my choice? OC of my choice!

Lyra (WTDS)

1. Loves quarterstaffs and pikes as weapons, does not use them because she hates close-quarters combat 2. Has trouble with emotional regulation and also has no clue what the fuck a "healthy coping mechanism" is 3. She absolutely used to collect quotes in a notebook, both from conversations she had and from books she read 4. I think she has a nasty habit of getting really close to people when she talks to them and unintentionally intimidates everyone 5. Actually has a soft spot for taking care of people, even though she hates to admit it 6. She fights before anything else! I think she'd refuse to back down even in a losing battle 7. Well versed in unconventional means of communication (e.g. flowers) 8. Loves the smell of lilacs!! 9. Favorite color is purple, absolutely 10. HATES goodbyes. Like actually hates them. She will not say goodbye to anybody eever. Ever.