#still really pissed though. why the hell is that show trending???? when there’s literal genocides going on???

[milimeters-morales]

for the strike, i’m only gonna be on tumblr once a day for the week to fill my queue with info about Palestine (ranging from the genocide to the culture) and a bit of what i’ve learned myself , so if a post turns out to be debunked, elaborated upon, or the op turns out to be antisemitic and/or pretending to be an ally to Palestinians, please just dm me and i’ll check it out 👍🏾

[itsclydebitches]

Does genocide/death matter in dbz? What makes Frieza blowing up a planet different then Beerus? Our main cast our friends with the literal gods. We've seen that there is a afterlife and they're multiple ways to bring back the dead. I feel like the ethics of that universe get really complicated and it just doesn't get addressed. Which is fine since the show isn't about that, but something to think about.

The show might not address it but I DO. But no, for real, I’ve thought about this more than I probably should have, anon. Based on those (very broad-stroke) thoughts my general conclusion is that death originally did matter a whole lot, then it didn’t, now it does again in Super. So presenting a very rough timeline: 

During the Dragon Ball era people have notably grown up with death as a permanent thing. Like in real life, they fear it and avoid it and largely don’t know that it can be undone. The dragon balls change this, but at this point they’re a) incredibly difficult to locate, b) often hard to obtain even when located (i.e. at the bottom of an ocean), c) have more rules attached to them (you can only be resurrected so many times), and d) are constantly threatened via the death of Earth’s guardian. So death may not be permanent... but it sure as hell isn’t easy to reverse either. It’s a bit of a pipe dream. 

In the early DBZ era we have this trend continuing. That’s why Goku’s death at the hands of Raditz still has an impact. Same with Krillin’s death as everyone (characters included) are figuring out how the Nemekian balls fit into all this and what exactly they can accomplish with them. It’s important that Krillin died when he did--when death still felt semi-permanent and something of a significant loss--because otherwise we’d have no true motivation for Goku’s Super Saiyan transformation. 

Mid Cell arc into Buu is where I think we start seeing death as a no big deal kinda thing. By this point the dragon balls have far less restrictions attached to them, they can be picked up in just a few hours by our heroes, and the next generation (Trunks and Goten) have an indifferent, “Just use the dragon balls” mentality. Death takes on a slightly different meaning at this point in the story. Part of that includes changing our perspective about death from “They’re gone for forever” to “We just can’t contact them for a long, long time and that’s still pretty depressing”--i.e. Goku leaving for seven years and Gohan not getting to grow up with his father. He might know he’ll see him again someday, but that doesn’t lessen the emotional difficulty of being alone then and there. 

Another consideration at this point is whether someone WILL bring you back--i.e. Frieza fears his hell because barely anyone cares about him + his henchmen don’t stand much chance against our heroes, the ones hanging out around those dragon balls. The conflict of “The dragon balls are only useful if you can get ahold of them” has changed from “Wow these are really hard to find/access” to “Shit they’re now controlled by a small group of very powerful people.” We start to see the balls as a coveted resource. Just because they exist doesn’t mean you get to use them. 

More importantly though, I think during this era the how and when people die takes center stage, not necessarily that they did die. I think a good example of this is when Piccolo thinks Buu killed Gohan and the Supreme Kai is fearful that he’ll die at the hands of his blast. For each there’s a general sense of “This shouldn’t happen”--because dying is horrible and painful and if you care about this person you don’t want them to go through that--but also a sense of “If Gohan dies now we have one less person to fight Buu, so Buu might destroy the entire Earth before we can resurrect anyone, so we might not have a way of bringing ANYONE back EVER.” It’s a domino effect. The conflict now is who is dying, when they’re dying, and whether their death will impact the others’ ability to fix things at the end of the day. We see the same thing happening in Super when Frieza destroys the Earth in his last moments. Death is suddenly a threat again because the heroes’ solution to this problem was erased alongside life itself. No more dragon balls. The gods they know can’t magically make a whole planet and its life reappear. There’s nothing to do... except Whis’ temporal do over. And that has a 3min limitation/can only be used once every X amount of time. Meaning the next time Whis CAN do it far more than 3 mins will have passed, making the technique useless. If they don’t fix things now they never will. 

Which leads us to Super as a whole. Overall I think it’s done a very good job of re-establishing the stakes. First we’re shown through that Frieza moment that the level of power these characters hold now means that destruction can happen instantaneously... sometimes too quickly to do anything about it, even when you’d normally have ways of fixing stuff after the fact. Then we learn about the pretty much limitless super dragon balls, but they’re spread across two universes. Good luck getting those in a hurry. Most significantly though, we’re introduced to characters whose power exceeds everything else we know about death. Like Beerus’ hakai. Or Grand Zeno’s abilities. Maybe you can wish people back with the regular or super dragon balls... but that ultimately won’t matter if you’re erased entirely from your timeline and don’t even exist in an afterlife anymore. Or your entire universe is erased, along with any of those magical objects. 

These are the kinds of people that our heroes risk pissing off nowadays. Like the rest of the series, the stakes keep getting higher. If normal death doesn’t mean much anymore--we can wish you back, visit you in Other World, undo time, etc.--then you have to introduce pure erasure instead. A lack of existence across all worlds and timelines. That’s why the Tournament, to my mind anyway, still had weight. Everyone watching knew that the winner could use the super dragon balls to wish things back to normal... but whether the Grand Zenos would let them was the question. For all the characters know they might have used their little wish orbs and then the Omni Kings went, “Nope!” and erased everything again. Their power is just too substantial to combat if they’re insistent on making death permanent. 

(As a side note regarding Beerus and Frieza: Frieza is the exact sort of guy that Beerus is supposed to deal with... but then didn’t. Same with Buu. Beerus’ destruction exists to keep balance. Our DBZ villains’ destruction exists to cause selfish chaos. However, we’re shown time and time again that Beerus is sleeping instead of doing his job (resulting in death that should never have happened, like the supreme kais); he’s destroying worlds not because balance requires it, but because he didn’t like their food. He even threatens his entire universe by picking a fight with Goku. Beerus, bluntly put, isn’t good at his job, but ultimately I like that about him. It emphasizes how fallible and human ALL the gods are. They’re not perfect, etherial beings who appear unknowable to us and therefore exist as characters we can’t connect with... they’re all screwups in their own ways lol). 

[katblaque]

Chris Ray Gun, White Hysteria and Dishonesty

For the past few weeks, we've seen a bit of a shift in white youtubers- especially on the gaming side of the platform. White gamers who generally only offer their (supposedly) funny hot takes on the latest games and the hottest gaming trends have taken the dive into political commentary. They’re inspired by this new presidency and conversations surrounding him and the so-called “SJWs” and “Main Stream Media”. While some are critical of Trump, plenty of them have come out to boldly state that they hold ideologies that are consistent with the leader of the free world. Bravely, they've taken to Twitch broadcasts and Google Hangouts to express their true feelings and one such gamer was JonTron, of the Game Grumps. 

Jon Jafari, a man who self identifies as white despite being Iranian (more on that later), has taken to several broadcasts to express his sympathy with White Nationalism and White Supremacy. This has shocked a lot of his fans, who have now transformed his Reddit page into a mostly anti-JonTron roast fest. While they remain shocked by his out of touch comments like “Rich black commit more crime than poor whites” and “What about the crime rate in Africa?”- I’m actually not very surprised by this at all. Now, confession, I have a bit of a prejudice against the gaming community- if you haven’t been able to tell already. While I know and understand that not all gamers are racists and not all gamers cosign things like sexism and misogyny, I’ve been hardpressed to find a group of people who have the same visibility and influence as someone like PewDiPi or Game Grumps, call these things out. In fact, it seems like often times they side with and sympathize with the times when racism or sexism materialize in their circles. So, I have- what I’ll admit, is a pretty unfair bias against gamers and I’m not surprised when prominent gamers turn out to be racist and I’m even less surprised when they’re defending by other prominent gamers. 

Because I’m a black woman who blogs about anti-racism and does so pretty openly, I get a lot of harassment and trolling. Now, I’ve been a blogger since I was 15- so honestly these things don’t really phase me, but I’ll be honest and say that sometimes I get trollish myself and at times it’s not always the best recourse. One thing I’ve learned (especially on this fucking website- still hate tumblr) is that often times when you’re in situations like this, it’s best to not respond.. .but hey-probably because I’m a child of the internet, it’s hard for me not to sometimes. 

Racist trolls always dominate my mentions. Any time I make any point about racism, you’ll be sure to find some white troll in my comment section refuting what I’m saying. The other day, I was ranting about JonTron because, TBH, I really find the whole thing quite fascinating. White people have largely convinced themselves that being called out for racism can ruin someone’s career. And you know what- as someone who’s fans have tracked down racists who’ve attacked me and gotten them fired... I get it. That’s not totally untrue- but it definitely is on Youtube. 

JonTron regurgitates white supremacist talking points almost perfectly and one of said talking points is “White Genocide”. If you've never heard of this term before, it sounds like it’s a discussion about the mass murder of white people. I completely understand why people would think that, but that isn't what it means. Here’s a definition from one of the leading White Genocide information websites:

White Genocide is:

Moving millions of non-White immigrants into traditionally White countries over a period of years 

Legally chasing down and forcing White areas to accept “diversity“. This is known as “Forced Assimilation“.

White Genocide is being carried out by massive immigration of non-White people and forced assimilation. As a result we are turning into the minority in America, Australia, Canada, and Europe. 

Now, if White Genocide were the mass killing of white people on the basis of them being white, I would obvious oppose that. Why? Because I don’t believe in any sort of genocide or violence on the basis of race. hell, I’m the same person who defended Trump supporters and Tumblr’s STILL mad about it. 

White Genocide is a concept that’s been around forever. With the hysteria around immigration today, I think a lot of people can connect the dots and see why people like JonTron (The son of an Iranian Immigrant) would easily latch onto these ideologies. This is part of why it doesn’t shock me. Because if you know anything about American History, you know this conversation has come up decade after decade whenever a large group of non-white immigrants come into the country. A central aspect of this concept is a demonization of miscegenation. Miscegenation, if you don’t know is just an old-timey word used to describe interracial relationships. As a black woman with a white boyfriend (who BTW is Japanese and Italian- so pretty much already unpure), I personally find the hysteria to be quite funny. It’s honestly hard for me not to. I guess it’s because I’ve been a minority my entire life and I’ve had to listen to white people- even in this conversation, pretend as though things are completely fine when it comes to how the majority relates to the minority. Hearing all of these white people fear being breed out is funny to me on several levels, but the biggest one being that there’s something so disgustingly hypocritical about it all. White people literally colonized a land that wasn’t theirs, attempted to actually violently genocide an entire race (failed), raped them, forced them to assimilate and then over centuries imported non-white workers and slaves to build their country and now this particular group of white people are upset that.... in 2017, white women have the choice to sleep with men of color. And that’s really what this is all about, but I don’t want to get too deep into describing to you what white genocide is. In summary, many black men were lynched in post slavery America because they were accused of lusting for white women. This was seen as self defense of the white race and black men were often genitally mutilated after they were hung. So there’s a very long and extensive history there,  but I digress. 

In talking about White Genocide, I obviously made a lot of jokes about it because, at least to me, it’s a laughable concept. A very very laughable concept. After a full day of trolls in my mentions,  did what I kinda tend to do after hours of trying to have reasonable conversations with these people- I flip their logic onto them. So when i got a tweet about how black people a “slave race” because they have “bad genes” this is what I said: 

Now, to me, this is a joke and a very funny one. Why? Because the idea that genes are either “good” or “bad” or “dominant” is fucking laughable Scientific Racist bullshit. Bullshit utilized by white supremacists to argue that white people are just naturally more superior to all other races. There’s a longer conversation there, but if you care, here’s my video about Scientific Racism. 

If you’ve ever followed me on twitter for an extended period of time, this side of me wouldn’t shock you. If you only follow me on Youtube, it might. I’m positive people on this fucking reactionary website are going to be hella pissed off (lol), but this is me. I sit through tons of fucked up shit that I find it HILARIOUS. I find it funny. It’s hard for me to not laugh a white supremacist tweets because, to me, it shows how insecure they are. I’m someone who speaks about race and racism- it’s my job. These people devote their entire days to sitting on twitter and regurgitating racist bullshit....as a hobby. 

ChrisRGun, a Youtuber with almost 300k subscribers decided to share my tweet with this caption:

Chris deliberately removed the tweet I was responding to and presented this a declarative statement I made out of nowhere. Suggesting that it was somehow unprompted. Now, you can make the argument that I shouldn’t have stooped to their level and maybe there’s a part of me in the back of my mind where I agree with you. But do I regret that tweet? Absolutely not. It’s hard for me to feel bad about shitposting when people like Chris regularly defend shit posts all the time. 

Chris was one of these gamers who bucked up to defend PewDiPie when he made his “Kill All The Jews”... “joke”. Now, i’m not Jewish and my understanding of antisemitism is still expanding- but it’s my understanding that jokes like “Kill All The Jews” being seen as normal or inoffensive somehow, is an aspect of antisemitism. But to people like Chris, these comments were taken “out of context”. It’s unfair for the Pewds lose his relationship with Maker and other gigs because “he was taken out of context”. Yet here Chris actually goes out of his way to remove the context from my post- which was that I was throwing back the flawed logic of a racist at him because, at least to me, it’s fucking funny. 

But what I find funnier, actually, is that people like Chris Ray Gun are also the same people who whinge all day long about how “SJWs” are reactionaries who get offended by absolutely everything. Here you have a very clear joke tweet that he looked at in full, decided that the context didn’t matter and cropped it in a way to omit the context fully. He is, quite literally, no different than the strawman SJWs he’s always complaining about. The beginning and end of these’s people’s criticisms of “SJWs” is ‘hypocrisy” But he’s a massive, shameless hypocrite. How do you defend Pewdiepie with the whole “it’s been taken out of context” shit and then deliberately omit context from my post. You could make the argument that BOTH of our comments were wrong, jokes or not. However, if you believe Pewdipie’s comments are a joke, then you absolutely need to make space for the fact that mine was as well and equally deserves you defense. 

But what’s the difference between JonTron and Pewdipie and myself? Well they’re two white men and I’m a black woman. Defending those two and harshly criticizing me doesn’t conceal racial bias. The truth is both Pewdiepie and JonTron are white men and we live in a society that grants white men the full and total access to their emotions. We see them as emotionally complex and nuances. They have multiple sides and have the ability to change and be well-rounded. JonTron’s just a silly fool parroting white nationalist talking points to millions of people. PewdiePie is just a Swedish sweetheart who’s sick of the establishment so he makes funny jokes about killing Jewish people because, you know, it’s funny. But me? I’m a black woman, so I’m angry and spiteful. I have an agenda against white people and this one tweet, sarcastic or not, is the complete and total sum of my work. I am not granted the right to redeeming qualities. I do not get to say or do even an inch of what white racists do to me and still get the benefit of the doubt. What Chris’ bias reveals here is that is isn’t quite the champion of free speech that he presents himself to be. The difference between JonTron and myself is that JonTron actually feels that way, I’m making a joke pointing out the flawed logic of racists. 

He made a few more tweets:

What a lot of white people seem to constantly underestimate is the persistent racism that black people and people of color deal with their entire lives. When you’re used to being called a nigger and you’re used to white supremacists saying to you that you’re inferior, these things don’t actually phase you. What we’re seeing right now with white people like Chris is that they are reacting to something that most people of color in white dominant spaces reacted to when they were children- Othering. These are people who are not used to being see as white. They are not accustomed to people saying negative things about whiteness or white people. When I was a child, my otherness was very clear to me. I was a black kid in (at the time) a mostly white preschool. I had to learn fairly easy that not only was I different from the other kids, but that people saw these differences as inherently negative. So what did I do through my formative years? I learned to be comfortable, proud and content with myself. That my blackness isn’t a negative and my skin, hair texture and body are all beautiful as they are. When you’re accustomed to being seen as the default, being othered is scary. Interestingly enough, this ties directly into White Genocide, which is largely the fear that immigrants and miscegenation will displace white people and make them a minority. That idea requires one very real and central emotion: Fear. These groups have to prove to white people that they are at risk, that they are being attacked, that people are trying to suppress them. To use anti-sjw jargon, they need to sell them a victimhood narrative. They have to convince them of something so devastating and so hurtful that they have to mobilize. They have to stand up. They have to fight. And people like Chris Ray Gun serve it up to you on a platter. They willingly feed misinformation to their, generally young and impressionable audience and convince them that their ideas are not only unpopular, but being repressed. But this isn’t true.

Chris Ray Gun has  296,473 subscribers

JonTron has  3,117,693

Pewdiepie has  54,299,958

I have  118,125

My channel, my content and my platforms are all smaller than theirs, but they sell you the idea that my content is so successful and influential that it needs to be stopped. That my ideas are so damaging that they should be suppressed. Think about that for a moment. The fact that these people have platforms that cast a very very large shadow over mine and they have to sell you the idea that somehow someway, people like me are the real problem. That people like me are influencing culture in a way that’s damaging and divisive. We aren’t. We are small voices that are often drowned out by the status quo- but every good story needs an antagonist. Every good story has a challenge. And to rally their base, the need to frame me as that villain. And guess what, it’s successful because their ideas are the status quo. Most people agree with and cosign them. Because their ideas, in truth, aren’t actually unpopular or edgy or unique. They’re common. And this is why you’re seeing so many more of these gaming channels pander to this ideology. Because in a world where everyone wants to be the Next Pewdiepie, they have to get a new shtick and right now, this works. 

Chris Ray Gun commented on a Kevin Logan video about him and claimed that his friend was the one who sent him that tweet (classic Machiavellian tactic) not him. 

I don’t believe him,but mostly because I perhaps give him too much credit. I would like to believe that people like him who make such bold statements and decided to redirect their fanbase to my page to explicitly attack me would do a bit of research and find the actual tweet to see if it were real. Imagine if someone photoshoped a tweet and put my name on it (something that’s happened) and sent it to him and he posted it. That would not only be dishonest, it would be unethical and he’d be a massive hypocrite. That aside though, if true, what this means, at its base is that he didn’t do his legwork and sheepishly posted something because he didn’t agree with me. I know, and I’m sure plenty of you know that i was making a joke and that these are not my beliefs, but he believed it. He fell for it. He wasn’t critical and didn’t try to see the full picture of what was said. That should still bother you. And to his point about “if a person of the opposite persuasion made the same tweet”- well they did. The one I was responding to. And all Chris’ posts did was invite more white supremacists to my page to talk to me about the natural inferiority of black people. But we know that both him and his buddy JonTron do carry that belief. They spend time defending that idea on their pages constantly. In conclusion, what this ultimately is, is them not quite holding white supremacists to the same standard. I went through Chris’ page. He isn’t making posts fighting against white supremacy. He isn’t countering it, he isn’t trying to. He’s coddling and pacifying it. And that, to me, says a lot.