#political orientation

[tetedump]

Softness isn't just an aesthetic; it's a political orientation towards the world that believes in our collective ability to heal.

- Anchored: Guidebook, Margeaux Feldman

[asexual-levia-tan]

its interesting to me when people write lily as being fragile and naive and weak to blood/violence when she literally helped defend two vampires who were bleeding to death from cat tribe members. hello? and she wields a greatsword? HELLO???

[bones-ivy-breath]

There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority. It is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status, it establishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it signifies as true, and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces. Above all, authority can, indeed must, be analyzed.

Orientalism by Edward Said

[svampira]

in reference sheet hell and I can't see a way out (artfight)

[rooksamoris]

I just read your thoughts about Scarabia and Leona's arc development in game, and I got very interested.

There's very little info on Arabian culture online, at least that I've seen, and also African. A thing that makes me very curious is about their mythologies, folklore, and also music. We know a lot about food, since it's something so universal, but the rest is hard to get info on, unless it gets popularized or romanticized by someone else.

The scarabia arc is one of my favorites for a reason, and that is because I'm very sympathetic with Jamil, and very sad how his and Kalim's story together got so "twisted" so fast (ehe). Honestly there are so many layers to it that it would take many many chapters, and events, to close the situation. But I think it's good they left the future open like that, since it's something that can't be fixed overnight.

And also, *gets down* PLS PLS PLS PLS 🙏 I love the fluffy fics, are you going to also add Bolllywood songs? They are so good seriously it's so dancing and fun! I love Jamil so much and I MELTED with the headcanon short fic where we are taking care of him. I wanna hold his precious handsome face and just kiss it all over! He is so cute I will go FERAL-

hey qamar 💕 this was a pleasure to read! honestly, i feel like both the scarabia and savannaclaw chapters were too short? of course, we were introduced to the themes and then the whole conflict—resolution mountain for stories, however i just feel like they could have done more with the both of them.

also, i think the reason why the southwest-asian and african themes aren’t covered is because the source material is literally disney films 💀 like we get a warning before rewatching aladdin since they just now realized it was kind of racist (still a major part of my childhood though 😭 “a whole new world” in arabic is delicious). based on how yana has written other characters that are meant to be from south asia, there’s a big chance it would have been disappointing anyways.

plus, with scarabia in particular, there’s too many cultures trying to be represented due to how colonizers deemed all of the countries to be the same thing in different fonts 💀 you’d never confuse a nepali with an omani, but winston churchill sure did not care.

the original aladdin movie was meant to take place in baghdad, a city in iraq, but due to political conflicts at the time (george bush a war criminal regardless of saddam hussein’s crimes. the usa literally gave saddam weapons to kill kurds and then turned around and invaded when he wasn’t convenient anymore 💀). baghdad became agrabah—but the culture is still an amalgamation of west asian, south asian, north african, and like eurasian/turkish culture. im sure they’ve got stuff from central asia too 😭

the issue with this is that from ethnic group to ethnic group/country to country, the culture varies a lot. yemenis and palestinians are both arabs, but our cultures are vastly different, with yemenis having more eastern african influences and palestinians having mediterranean influences. i personally headcanon the scarabia duo as arab, but honestly, they could be from anywhere. for all we know, kalim is afghan and jamil is tunisian—it’s all up in the air due to the original source material. but i digress!! i rambled a lot 😭

ON THE BOLLYWOOD NOTE! omg this brought so many good memories back. we used to watch bollywood films with shitty arabic dubs 🥹 i miss those days. i love that idea and ive always wanted to write bollywood inspired fics, like based on the crazy and unrealistic romantic moments in bollywood. it’s just so much fun lmao. honestly, i think that’s a great idea especially when so many bollywood songs just lead the listener through a story anyways. im so glad you enjoy my fics!!! that’s very sweet 💕 have a great day, qamar, and take care of yourself

[magic-is-something-we-create]

this is your periodic reminder that this blog is run by an aroace transgender man who loves his siblings all across the earth with his whole heart. including every person on earth who has been deemed a non-person by the masses!

[sanicsmut]

people : its important to be inclusive, yes even of identities you don't understand ! support he/him lesbians !

these same people when its about using multiples contradictory labels because identity is complicated and fluid : if you support this you're actually evil

[noknowshame]

black sails ending possibility #72: whether or not silver successfully 'unmakes' flint doesnt matter because it turns out that after spending a decade in asylums and prison camps thomas has also gotten radicalized as fuck and immediately reverses all of silver's efforts

[xoxo-ren-xoxo]

really weird thing ive noticed lately re: hermits getting critiqued for stuff theyve said or done is that as soon as someone holds a shit opinion (even if it's just them being stupid, or a centrist, or saying a bad word without knowing what it means, or whatever) people immediately seem to flock to the 'this guy should die' 'kys' 'why are we giving this person a platform' rhetoric and like. that's not how meaningful change is made?

like, yeah, if one of my beloved CCs posted a tweet or video tomorrow about how much they hate gay people, or believe in conservative ideals, or they just said a bunch of slurs or whatever (these are hyperbolic examples obviously) then yeah, fuck them, they should go rot. but like, having some dumb takes, or saying bad things in the past, doesn't = evil terrible person...

idk, i feel like we can critique content creators without getting so insane about it. like, shit, there are things some of my favourites do that i don't like, but theyre not even really worth bringing up tbh. unless its something actually important, i feel like it just creates more drama out of nothing and all these assholes come crawling out of the woodwork to tell everyone how much they hate that creator. or find their content boring anyway so clearly they have no real merit to anyone.

more of an explanation of what i mean in the tags but yeah.

[worstloki]

I like the jotun horn jewelry/decoration thing but i think it wouldnt be like. Gold. Bc where are they getting gold from? Where are they mining it and smelting it and stuff? Idk why. It just doesnt compute in my brain, it doesnt seem to fit their whole thing and mentslly i csnt imagine the place having a ton of gold thst didnt get ripped away when they lost the war. Even though aesthetically i get that it looks nice.

I don’t even mind Jotunheim naturally having a lot of gold *in the past*, (or whenever) I just don’t like the way people use it as an orientalism-vibe literary device. There’s often no explanation given for the gold either, especially in a post-colonised world unless there’s a note on ‘this is ALL the gold Jotunheim had left and LOKI has it bc he needs to look pretty (and like a woman)’

[samodivas]

hmm what a nuanced take, I wonder what Georgians themselves think about "selling the country to the EU"

by Talos this can't be happening

[thatstudyblrontea]

Can one divide human reality, as indeed human reality seems to be genuinely divided, into clearly different cultures, histories, traditions, societies, even races, and survive the consequences humanly? By surviving the consequences humanly, I mean to ask whether there is any way of avoiding the hostility expressed by the division, say, of men into "us" (Westerners) and "they" (Orientals).

Edward W. Said, Orientalism

[communistkenobi]

people fawning over the environmentalist themes in tolkien’s work has always made me deeply uneasy but I could never articulate why, and reading orientalism is clarifying a lot of that for me lol

[soldier-lodbrok]

Ifalna @holyguardian and Glenn

I do Wonder how All of it's led To where we are now ? I do Think sometimes What have I done To make you be mine?

[tododeku-or-bust]

So Said's quoting Balfour speaking to the House of Commons about maintaining the British colonization of Egypt, and.... It really goes to show that Whiteness, good connections, and money will get you anywhere, bc this man talks like a Victorian age Donald Trump 🤣 like they really listened to him say this bullshit and it worked, huh 🤣 wow. Okay. This one example solidifies Said's argument in one swoop fr.

[weirdsociology]

i just saw a post saying dune should never have been written bc it's so orientalist and while it is orientalist i resent that post for neglecting to mention all the other desert cultures it appropriates.