#that rape isn’t rape when it’s against colonizers

[glassrunner]

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[jewishbarbies]

on one hand jewish people are fully aware, that despite decades long discussions and explanations about holocaust, there very much is a lot of ongoing antisemitism all around the world, nonetheless it still must have been a shocking experience to witness such a strong and sudden wave of it towards all jewish people, simply because of israeli far right government's action. there are no reactions of this scale, when it comes to other countries bombing their neighbors, but as soon as it's about jews, antisemitism jumped out of people immediately. in fact it's very common for people, who claim to support palestinians, to dismiss and mock victims of violence in other places. one could straight up start making a list of unsafe people around them, based on how these people have no problem openly saying such deranged things.

it definitely was a combo of shock and not being surprised at all, because this society has been veering toward high rates of antisemitism for a long time and it’s not at all shocking that it came from the left. however, I think the shocking part is just what it was for. like, the reason for the tipping point, the straw that broke the camel’s back being literal rape, dismemberment, and murder. the one or the other mindset of young leftists is equally unsurprising, but for them to completely turn their backs on women who were so horribly victimized as innocent civilians (not that it’s okay to do to military etc) goes against the very foundations of what they claim to believe and even pointing that out isn’t enough for them. they’ve become so obsessed with the colonizer vs colonized mindset that they forget there will always be innocent people in the “colonizer” part of the equation. world leaders will do what they want regardless of the millions of people in their countries if they want it enough. leftists are angry because of inaction in their own countries so they fuck with geopolitical conflicts, because they won’t have to deal with the consequences only the social benefit of being apart of a “revolution”. it’s a themed costume party and they get to go home after. the long term affects of this with haunt jews for decades, but leftists get to go home and that’s all they’ve ever cared about.

[gas-station-dragon-statue]

I am by no means a David Talbot stan, but I think there is at least one (1) interesting thing about him. I find the scene in TOtBT where he recounts his first couple of days in the titular thieved body in particular fascinating: he wanders luxuriantly around Barbados, visiting gardens, staying at a beautiful resort. He even returns there after he and Lestat part ways to continue this kind of spiritual and emotional overindulgence.

David is extremely Gustav von Aschenbach coded, and not just because he’s a weird old man. He’s a weird old man who is deeply concerned with being a weird old man, with aging and its implications, with his own elevated station in the world and with what, in his perception, he had to give up to attain that status. Aschenbach’s breakdown shows us that rigidity and hierarchy paradoxically make things brittle and unsustainable. The Talamasca are a bunch of regimented, ineffectual nerds, and at the beginning of the book, David is beginning to chafe against that.

David’s time in Barbados after he’s been shunted into the Raglan James body is in a way a perversion of Aschenbach’s trip to Venice. I think particularly of his obsession with the greenhouse he describes to Lestat, how beautiful and “savage” it is and how similar that description is to the way both David and Lestat talk about the stolen body. According to Mann, Eros, or the love of beauty, always drives people to madness and (potentially fatal) self-indulgence. It will always inherently threaten structure because of the “unjust” and chaotic nature of beauty. Beauty is terrible. At the same time, there’s very little worth having without it.

In Venice, Aschenbach encounters and is destroyed by the vastness and exoticism and beauty of the Other. David encounters and consumes pieces of the Other all throughout his life without being “corrupted” by it the way that Aschenbach believes himself to be corrupted by the end of Death in Venice. He uses it for his own purposes in typical colonizer style (learning traditional “witchcraft” from native people and using it to become a psychic cop or whatever, etc.) But like Aschenbach, he is immensely principled—he’s principled in his refusal of immortality, the greatest indulgence in the world, something that cannot be allowed.

So when David finally gets to his “Venice,” his fatal encounter, the fatal indulgence, he makes it out. He is not destroyed. He obtains the thing that should not be possible in the context of the narrative: he becomes Aschenbach absorbed flawlessly into the object of his desire. This can’t stand. It’s a philosophical “Final Destination” where David is that guy in the car and the big log that shoots through his windshield and crushes him to a fine pulp is obliteration of the Self by the Other (good metaphor no notes).

In the end, we find that it wasn’t actually the body that was David's “Tadzio”, the being which his Self cannot stand having encountered—it was Lestat and his promise of immortality. Unlike Aschenbach, however, David doesn’t die in his pleasure; he doesn't give into it even though he's already been doomed by the fatal encounter. He isn’t gently ushered into the other world by his “Tadzio.” He’s brutally (vampire) raped and murdered. I don’t really know what conclusion to draw from that, but it is interesting to me.

[moonliightings]

indigenous rep in modern media sucks and we really need to talk about it.

trigger warnings include: rape, violence, abuse, slurs, and general bigotry against native people

let’s start with the most (in)famous example of indigenous rep in modern film: pocahontas.

pocahontas is the most prominent modern native character and she is terrible, terrible representation. if you’re a part of the native community, i’m sure you’ve already heard of this. but in case you’re not aware, pocahontas is based on a real girl named montauke who was only 11-12 when she was taken from her home, raped. abused, and later forced into marriage with john rofle who she even had a child with. pocahontas was not even her real name, it was a nickname. disney took this story and turned it into a love story between a native girl and her colonizer. even if it wasn’t based on a true story, it’s still incredibly disrespectful and set many terrible stereotypes for native peoples and characters that are still present in modern media.

here is an article on the historical inaccuracies of pocahontas - https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/the-true-story-behind-disneys-pocahontas

now let’s move onto the general problems pocahontas created for not only native characters, but native people in real life.

pocahontas sends a bad message to not only young native girls, but all people of color by romanticizing a relationship between a woman of color and her oppressor. i’m aware this trope was around before pocahontas, but it was popularized by this movie, and the effects of it are still around to this day. popular examples of this trope are —

the second big problem with this movie is it’s portrayal of natives. the character of pocahontas is basically a walking “magical native” stereotype who talks to animals and communicates with spirits. it’s also important to note how the designs were clearly designed by a bunch of white men who probably did little to no research on natives. sadly i’m not surprised because this isn’t the first time disney has done natives wrong. i’ll save that for another post though.

now let’s get to the sexualization of pocahontas. as i said in my last point, pocahontas was clearly drawn by white men. pocahontas is hardly 18 in this movie yet she’s drawn as a typical white mans fantasy. she has big lips, curves, and long flowing hair. she has next to no native features of the time. of course natives features can vary, but her design makes absolutely no sense considering the conditions and living state of natives in the 1600’s. this is already bad enough on it’s own, but it’s especially bad considering the true story of montauke. a girl who was raped was romanticized and turned into a sex symbol centuries later…

one of the other effects of pocahontas i don’t see many people talk about is how it popularized halloween costumes of native culture (where the sexualization continues). do i even have to explain why this is terrible? OUR CULTURE IS NOT HALLOWEEN COSTUMES AND WE ARE NOT ITEMS FOR YOU TO JERK OFF TO.

last but not least, let’s talk about how it affects natives in general. as a native person, i have been compared to pocahontas my whole life. it’s easy to write it off as harmless jokes or remarks, but i believe we should call this behavior out. these “jokes” are not only in horrible taste, but they’re deeply harmful to the indigenous community. the name “pocahontas” is one of the most common insults for native people.

all this stems from one film, a glamorized & romanticized adaptation of a real girl’s story. to even call it an “adaptation” is a stretch. this film is an insult to the indigenous community and everything our ancestors went through.

[dcbbw]

Red Pill: Perspective

Fair warning, this is not fanfic. It’s original content that came to me in the middle of the night after a day spent online perusing TikToks and reddit subs on red pillers and divestment groups.  

To provide some context, the term “red piller” is derived from a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix, in which Laurence Fishburne offers Keanu Reeves a choice: “You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

In a nutshell, it’s comprised of the most misogynistic men on the planet, including incels, who gather in online forums and groups to basically see who hates women more.

Divestment refers to the removal of oneself from people, places, and things that are toxic, stifling, and/or a detriment to one’s health (mental, emotional, physical). It is a prominent movement amongst black women.

I’m nervous about posting this, but my skin is thick, and my mind is open. I can take compliments, constructive suggestions, and criticism with equal aplomb. To everyone who read this over and encouraged me to post, THANK YOU! Your feedback was, as always, invaluable.

To those who will read this, THANK YOU! Your reads, likes, commentary, and/or reblogs are appreciated more than you know.

Please excuse any and all typos, extraneous/missing words, and grammatical errors. MS Editor rates this piece as 99% error free.

Song Inspo: Rose Lineage (Yoga Remix), Marya Stark/DJ Taz Rashid, + others

Word Count: 796

I am a black woman, plump lips and full hips

My hues are a rainbow, ranging from the thickest cream to the darkest onyx

Pigmentation a reminder of transgressions against me from enslavement to rape

I make more with less, expected to settle for anything, and apologizing to everyone for not diluting who I am

Who I have had to become

I am held up for public shame and ridicule

Teased for my crown of kinks and coils

Seen as housing projects and food stamps

Smelling of hamhocks and collard greens

Called dumb and ratchet despite being in the most highly educated population

Despised for being strong and independent

Blamed for your cowardice and weakness when you abandon me and your children

Because I do not let you lead

I’ve seen where you go: jail, passport bros, your mama’s house

And still, my back supports you, your seed, my family, the church

And the foot on my neck that unsuccessfully tries to hold me down

*****

I am a brown woman, born of colonization

Speaking languages broken, in an accented voice that somehow makes me a stereotype

You eat at my table, your eyes feasting on my bosom and curves. You celebrate my holidays and try to take what culture I have managed to piece together, but I can’t call it appropriation

 No, it’s cultural appreciation while you call me and my people third-world country names

You try to dim my brightly colored clothing, deny me freedom, and steal my joy

You call my people slumdog millionaires who cross borders to take your jobs

Jobs you neither have nor want

I am considered only a slight step up from my black sisters because my skin is lighter, but not by much

My hair is silkier which is considered a win in your world

But who knows what it would be if the beginning bloodlines had remained undiluted, untouched by interlopers

My anger isn’t off-putting because it is seen as a reflex of sorts, born of my primitive ways

You take it as a challenge to make me submissive

To you

To trust your America: your ways, your English, your culture.

None of which belong to you

*****

I am an asian woman, what you call the model minority because I study hard, and I work even harder

You consider my acts of service to others submissiveness, which makes me both fantasy and fetish

My quietude is mistakenly deemed as obedience

I labor hard in all workforces to make a better life for me and those who depend upon me to not be a disappointment

Yet you not being able to see me beyond the niche you have placed me in makes you the biggest disappointment of all

It makes no difference

I am seen as a doll, malleable and easily manipulated into sexual parts

Here only to serve you, to listen to you, to cater to your every whim and perversion

I powder my face to adhere to standards of beauty you hold dear, close

It makes up for my dark nipples that you conveniently ignore as you go in and out of throes

*****

I am a biracial woman, born of rape or love … sometimes both

I am no one, belonging nowhere

I am not homogenous, which you view as a flaw I refuse to correct

Hated by at least two races, I create my own ethnicity that no one acknowledges

Culture clash at its finest

You say my blood is sullied, my color a mixture that doesn’t blend well

I am an anomaly: different, exotic; fodder for disdain, envy, mistrust

Wondering when you look at me is it love, lust, curiosity

While you’re probably hoping I’m a “pick me”

All I seek is inclusion

In a world of black and white, brown and yellow

Where is the gray?

*****

I am a white woman, worthy of protection but not privilege

I am the standard of beauty … in your eyes

Thin hair, thin lips, skin that burns beneath the sun

It is I you parade publicly on your arm, it is I to whom you will make a commitment

A trophy of sorts

It is I who you want to bear your children

It is I who will never see the workforce unless you want me to

Barefoot and pregnant

Cooking meals, feeding children, leading the Harper Valley PTA bake sale

As long as I remain a size 8

I can’t be tall, that would emasculate your ego

The house must be clean, that accentuates my femininity

Aprons and pearls hide blackened eyes, bruised arms, empty bottles

Social media promotes my smile when you praise my meatloaf

You make others believe they want to be me

That my white skin elevates me somehow

But does it really?

Tagging: @jared2612 @marietrinmimi @indiacater​​​ @kingliam2019​ @bebepac @liamxs-world @mom2000aggie​​​ @liamrhysstalker2020​​​ @twinkleallnight @umccall71 @superharriet @busywoman​​​ @gabesmommie1130 @tessa-liam​​​ @beezm @gardeningourmet​​​ @lovingchoices14 @mainstreetreader @angelasscribbles​​​ @lady-calypso @emkay512 @princessleac1 @charlotteg234 @alj4890​ @motorcitymademadame @queenmiarys

[notaplaceofhonour]

If you believe in the dignity and freedom of Palestinians, what do you believe they should do? Even if the average Israeli is not an active member of the IDF, they are still displacing Palestinians. They are still living in a state that exists because of colonization- they are still a settler. How do you peace-and-diplomacy your way into convincing a state whose mission is to displace and settle until there is no land left for the Indigenous peoples into simply not doing that? Do you think that's what the people of Haiti did? Do you think the Indigenous nations of Canada, to this day, still fights for land rights because they weren't good enough at peaceful negotiations with their colonizers?

I feel like I don’t need to have the definitive answer for how to solve a longstanding geopolitical conflict with multiple conflicting factions that thousands of people who know a lot more than me and are better equipped to solve have not been able to do since long before I was born in order to defend the idea that “Holocaust 2” and “killing & raping unarmed noncombatants” should be off the table. That’s the baseline. Bare minimum. If you can’t even clear the hurdle of “rape is unacceptable”, there is no conversation for us to have, and you shouldn’t be let around children.

I’m not going to participate in this song and dance where anytime anyone says killing & raping unarmed people is unacceptable , people like you throw your hands up and say “Well what else were they supposed to do? Not rape and murder people?”

Because yeah! Exactly! Don’t rape and murder people. Baseline. You don’t have to have an answer to know that isn’t it.

I’m not going to accept this false framework where you act like the only two options are being “nice” & “respectable” or suicide bombing & blowing up schools & synagogues.

I’m also not going to accept the false framework of acting like somehow brutality against noncombatants “just works” or is more effective than actually fighting the people with guns. If that were true, Hamas would’ve already won, because they’ve been doing that for a while, and things are only getting worse.

So I’m not going to play that game.

I’m going to point this out: You are arguing that Jews forfeit their right to live when they occupy the land of Israel-Palestine because that makes them “colonizers”. But the Jewish Diaspora comes from the land of Israel—Jews are also indigenous—so if they’re colonizers even there, there’s not going to be anywhere in the world where they wouldn’t also be “colonizers”—and by your argument, that means you believe they forfeit their right to live anywhere they settle.

Which means you’re just advocating for anyone to be able to kill Jews wherever they go. The logical end of your argument is just genocide.

[callme-alma2]

Why is it exactly women’s issue that men with dysphoria are struggling? Like, why should women give up all they fought for because a percentage of men who still benefit from misogyny, feel dysphoric in their bodies?

You can argue that they are mentally ill but how does that put the burden of care on women? Why should women try to fix these men or let them into their circles to validate them?

You say that they will kill themselves if we don’t let them in and coddle them, but since when is it women’s fault to help suicidal men? So should we also offer sex to men who threaten suicide because of their virginity? (Incels) threats of suicide and violence is nothing but an indicator that these men need psychological help. Not for the whole sex of women to bow down to them.

You can say it’s “common decency” but since when it’s common decency to let someone who oppresses you into your group of the oppressed? Do you let straight people dictate what gay rights are? Do you let whites dictate what BIPOC rights are? Why is it a common decency to let men get away with changing the definition of feminism? Do you let straight people argue what is and isn’t homophobia? Do you let white people argue what is and isn’t racism and colorism? Do you always allow the oppressor to have a say in what’s actually happening to the oppressed? No? So why should women allow it.

When men threaten violence, rape, and suicide to bait women into letting them control their movement, why is that not against common decency? Why is that weird iteration of common decency only reserved for men?

Men are men, but women are a byproduct that needs to bend over backwards to make the men as comfortable as possible, especially if they have a little mental illness.

When women demand to be referred to as women and not some disembodied term like birth giver, or uterus haver, we are unreasonable and we need to be open to words having new meanings but when men are using the word “woman” suddenly it means all the stereotype’s and archaic behaviors that is associated with a woman. What are those “new meanings” are?

“Woman” as a word is supposedly evolving, but somehow it’s becoming nothing but bimbo attire and anal sex. Men want women to be walking two holes and a mouth they can fuck, so that’s the “evolved” definition. Because it’s them who decide what a woman is and isn’t. To them, a surgical hole made from colon tissue is identical in function to a vagina because all it is to them is a place for their penis to get into. So why can’t someone with a surgical hole call themselves a woman? In that logic, it’s completely valid for a man, to call himself a woman because he now has two holes and a mouth, thus becoming what a woman is in function to men.

This is what allowing men, regardless of excuse, into feminism has led into. The very concept of “women’s rights” is currently unacceptable. You can’t acknowledge women’s suffering, because men wouldn’t like that, and since feminism has now “evolved” into allowing men to dictate what is and isn’t acceptable, real issues can never be discussed.

[esther-dot]

all those hype posts about house of dragon and it's all just...colonizer core 🙂

Colonizer core 😂 I can’t even make myself watch the HOTD trailer. I’m so extremely disinterested in Targs. I know people are into the history because it provides the backdrop for the main series, and since Martin is involved, we may get interesting info, but I find it so off-putting that HBO knows exactly how valuable dragons are to them, so this is the story they chose to tell, the one about the feuding blood purists. 😑 And to top off the romanticization of people who think they’re gods among men, a bit ago I saw people mocking some quotes from the showrunner/director who is already out there defending the sexual violence against women that the show will feature with some very strange takes. I’m not sure that deleting consensual sex but keeping sexual assault is learning the lesson we had hoped they’d take from criticism of GoT?

(quote below the cut)

“House of the Dragon” co-showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik previously addressed the differences between predecessor “GoT” and the prequel series, based on Martin’s “Fire & Blood” series.

Director Sapochnik told The Hollywood Reporter this production instead “pulls back” on the amount of consensual sex in the series; however, sexual assault is still very much present in the script. According to Sapochnik, the approach is done “carefully and thoughtfully” when bringing the stories of sexual violence to the screen, following criticisms of “Game of Thrones” portrayals.

“[We] don’t shy away from it,” Sapochnik explained. “If anything, we’re going to shine a light on that aspect. You can’t ignore the violence that was perpetrated on women by men in that time. It shouldn’t be downplayed and it shouldn’t be glorified.” (link)

Honestly, I find this more troubling than otherwise because why, if looking to improve on GoT, would anyone think, “What we really need is to fix the ratio of our sex scenes and minimize the amount of sex that women have because they want to and make sure a much higher percentage is rape.”

What kind of logic is that?

And, in one of the articles @lupinusalbus linked to, they already have the actresses out defending the sexual violence, and I know they used the GoT actresses to defend it in Game of Thrones, so this is just their plan. Use women to defend what they do to women in their shows which I find really gross. The actresses have no power over what is or isn’t in the story, so using them to run cover for these decisions, especially after what we know about the industry is just...pathetic. It was nice to see so many people mocking the excuse that this is historically accurate (ya know, something about this show having dragons gave it away that this is fantasy), but I’m just repulsed by everything about this!

[simonalkenmayer]

Complex emotions are always alright.

I hate the British Monarchy so much I helped behead a king. Doesn’t mean I didn’t regret that when I saw what got put in its place. Doesn’t mean I don’t see an elderly lady, sometimes kind as a person, who was loved by her family. I hate imperialism. I hate colonization. I participated, but I came to regret that. I saw death and destruction first hand. Doesn’t mean I cannot see why it was done, and what it meant to the people doing it. What was devastating and a crime against the indigenous, led to hope and discovery for the colonizers, an emotional memory that permeates to this day—and it changed the world. We can both condemn imperialism, colonization, racism, while also being being sorry for a family. We can recognize that her government murdered indigenous babies in schools, but that she was a staunch (if reserved) advocate for ending apartheid. We can see that there are dozens of personal stories of her kindness, while also knowing that she treated Diana poorly. We can see she was racist while also worrying how the trauma affects her grandchildren. We can decry an expensive funeral that we see as wasteful, but also recognize that some people need that funeral to distance themselves from that aspect of their identity—a ruler who has been a constant for their entire lives, and indeed that of their parents. The queen, for some, represents continuity for some, while still being a figurehead of racism.

People are not simple. Their lives are not reducible. They can be behaving in simply terrible ways for complex reasons, or kind ways for simple reasons. As much fun as it can be to selfishly vent my frustrations by over-simplifying a person as evil, that’s in fact the same dehumanizing crime they’re guilty of. I can see that a narcissist’s behavior is bad and harmful, while also recognizing that their actions come from deep self-esteem issues. I can pity them while discussing with them.

Complex emotions are fine. Simple emotions are fine. Please don’t debate emotions. They’re often not rational, and people are capable of having irrational emotions while logically knowing otherwise. That’s how phobias are a thing.

What’s my point?

Stop fighting over complex emotions. Embrace them and ask questions. Allow people to have theirs while also recognizing yours. Bad things can still be fought properly, even when the participants have mixed feelings. Remember how many of your impressions and ideas first formed in childhood, and know how strongly emotions affect the developing brain. Recognize that their emotions aren’t the same as their rational knowledge. You can actually both have your ideas, and converse about them in respectful ways. You can respect each other enough to discuss the truth, but also indicate why your emotions are mixed.

Maybe the queen was a fixation of a parent you loved who died. Maybe you had a special fixation on monarchy for a while. Maybe she’s a distant relative. Maybe your parents were treated terribly by her government. Maybe imperialism raped your people. These are all true at the same time, you see. And they have nothing to do with the actual character or personality of Elizabeth

Truth is complex. It’s the amalgamation of all the versions of a moment, and then a decision as to whether or not that history is behind us, or indeed leading to something ahead of us.

Arguments around this are pointless. Discussions are the recognition of others feelings and are very important. Being able to see the Queen as a person doesn’t mean you support her decisions or her reign. Saying you don’t want to celebrate a death, isn’t a declaration that you approved of her life.

Do you see?

Groups fragment when the narcissism of small differences begins to pop up. Once you begin subcategorizing members of the group, saying we all agree but this one tiny detail divides us, you are creating categories that people will settle into as identity, and then defend.

Groups that embrace complex emotions with supportive and compassionate focus, like group therapy, manage to do fine. Groups that subdivide or form cliques, inevitably collapse without mitigation.

Knowledge is built. It’s not produced by tearing everything down and walking away. Give people space to think and refine. Given them a chance to change. Accept them if they do. Don’t be so quick to make enemies out of allies.

[menalez]

girl you just refuse to interact in good faith with any points sb raises. a dozen people have told you that yeah white men are bad and yeah shit is not easy for women in the west either. but that doesn't mean women should just shut up about their experiences with muslim men, many of who will treat any non muslim women as whores. that's not even just white women ffs. i don't know what your deal is with white women anyway but you conveniently forget that half of europe has a history of sexual slavery and war rape while under muslim (ottoman) rule. just like women who have been colonized by western powers and have been disproportionately affected by european men's violence have every reason to not trust white men so do many "white" women from countries under muslim rule when it comes to muslim men

this is so stupid,,, yes and also lots of us have a history being colonised by the Ottoman Empire too??? hello??? and on top of that being colonised by various European countries??? and women in our lands being oppressed by European men??? like. what kinda stupid argument is that. “the Ottoman Empire partook in sexual slavery centuries ago which means racism against MENA people is ok 😤” as if almost all of us weren’t also under their rule lmao 😐 as if they didnt also enslave african & north african women, women from the demographics you guys keep talking shit about. 

as for the rest, the fact that u wanna claim bad faith when u guys are the ones who think speaking on ur experiences and being racist can’t be mutually exclusive. i somehow managed to talk plenty of what ive faced from men both muslim & non-muslim without making racist white supremacist arguments about white supremacy and crying about how people of certain races are more criminal / more prone to rape / more violent etc. another thing thats “bad faith” is the fact that u freaks literally switch goalposts and lie about what woc have said about the racism u spew and even say we’re getting in the way of class consciousness. it’s not hard to talk about these things and criticise them without being a white nationalist. it really isn’t. a lot of us have done it and have been doing it for years. y’all love using us as ur tokens when u wanna act like ur feminism isn’t white or western but when we speak up against racism suddenly we’re insane and dramatic or whatever. hypocrites & liars tbh.

[eremosjournal]

Catholicism vs. Culture

Any Filipino knows the importance of faith. Or how important faith is supposed to be. It is the glue of family life, the legacy of our devout Lolas, and the passion project of our mothers. Catholicism seemed to bolster the pillars of Asian family life that already stood so firmly at the center of my elders’ beliefs: tradition, discipline, and superstition. We never missed mass. My siblings and I attended Catholic school, received all our sacraments, and participated in church activities like choir and youth group. The picture of faith was painted for me.

It was also important to my dad that we knew Philippine history. He would give mini lectures about Magellan and the indigenous Filipino soldier who killed him, Lapu-Lapu (who for some reason is super ripped in all of his artistic renderings). I would picture Lapu-Lapu and weigh his image against that of Jesus, and somehow he felt more real than Jesus. Having been (erroneously) inundated with images of white Jesus, it felt deliciously naughty to think of Lapu-Lapu slaying white, Catholic Magellan, the Spaniard who claimed my parents’ homeland against the grief and rage of all of its rightful Filipinos. When hearing the gospel or doing saint reports at school, I wished there were characters as cool (and swole) as Lapu-Lapu. I wondered, Why isn’t he a saint? He did a good thing. He risked his life for others. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?

Then I realized Lapu-Lapu couldn’t have been a saint because he wasn’t Christian. And it hit me: no one in my family would be Catholic without Spain. Without colonization. Without exploitation and rape and torture. The practice that is held so dearly in the hearts of my mother and her mother and my father’s mother was borne in an act of theft. How could my parents know our troubled heritage and still impose this filthy faith on us? With all the homeland pride I was taught, how could we perpetuate a tradition that is so reflective of our ancestor’s pain, so rooted in cultural robbery, so…Euro? Did the diaspora…betray me? My faith and my heritage were at odds. I pictured my ancestors looking down on me in my white first communion dress, shaking their heads and eating mango.

Now, as a non-practicing Catholic adult, I understand my parents’ choice to raise me in the church. As immigrants, they chose to implement the part of their culture that grounded them, even if it was a symbol of cultural erasure. The feeling of home - balay in my parents’ native Cebuano - is a kind of faith in itself. We follow that feeling, through people, through customs, and sometimes through religion. Though the church failed to give me this feeling, I see now that, with all its insidious colonial history, Catholicism gave my parents a piece of the home they had to leave. As badly as I wish I could know who my family would be without colonialism, I have to accept that religion - voluntary or otherwise - doesn’t work against my culture. It’s part of it.

by Elise Letrondo

[13thpythagoras]

abortion bans coming

I can’t believe the audacity of colonizers pushing abortion bans in statehouses these days. 

They wanna talk about how a heartbeat begins at 18 days. Ok. So? They also have gills at that stage. You wanna call it a child, a baby, but it’s literally got gills and can’t survive outside the womb. It’s not a fucking child at that point, it’s a fuckin zygote. Nomenclature matters as they try to gaslight you into thinking this if a full-grown child because it’s got a heartbeat. If you actually CARE about CHILDREN:

MORE than ONE IN FIVE children in America struggles with hunger. 

For context, LESS THAN ONE IN FIVE AMERICANs even voted for *rump, yet they wanted to overturn the election, end democracy, invade the capitol with impunity, and give him the election on a silver platter. 

A greater percentage of children in America are CHRONICALLY HUNGRY than the percentage of humans in America who actually voted for Donald Trump. 

So when we see these abortion bans backed by only wytpipo, opposed by the Indigenous Caucus, and these bans force an unnecessary transvaginal ulstrasound that has no medical merit, and that transvaginal ultrasound is against the woman’s will, how ISN’T that yet another a rape by the colonizer? 

They want to force women to get a police record to be eligible for an abortion in the case of rape, yet police officers often won’t give such a report, they only ask “Well what were you wearing?” Police reports take over 3-6 months to generate, if the cops even want to do their job which they often don’t, by which time an abortion becomes impossible. They want to ban contraception and abortion so they can create scabs who are desperate for work and bust labor unions. 

I’m just saying even if you’re a racist, and you are afraid of your race disappearing, then go have some fuckin kids; don’t force everyone else to do that. If you care about children, feed them. Don’t force more to be born. 

[nerdylilpeebee]

"Even if that’s true, you’re on stolen land too. Every living person is. No one, least of all the native americans, is where they were when they started. If anyone alive today is a “tresspasser�� then so are native americans." Are you for real? They're Natives ie there from the start natively then white people came in calling them savage's while raping and murdering them. Its not your fault but don't be that fucking dense

"And honey, I was born here. This land is as much mine as any natives. How about instead of t trying to make everyone but you seem like villains for existing, you stop being a pathetic whiney bitch and actually try and improve conditions for Native Americans?" If thier land wasnt stolen then you would've been born elsewhere? You're bootlicking and standing up for the government that committed genocide? What are YOU doing to help or doing to improve the land or community? You're a disgraceful immature dumbass self centered cuckold

1) Not one, not a single native clan is on the land that is theirs. They are on land they stole from other natives. It’s hypocritical to act like them dirty whities are villains while natives aren’t despite them both performing the same actions.

And white people DIDN’T come calling “raping and murdering them.” Natives were already doing that to eachother, and then a stronger force came along and colonized the land, many attempts of which were in cooperation with natives (not all, but many). Hell, a lot of native clans even sided with the colonists against stronger clans that were oppressing them (the most notable example being the Aztecs). For someone acting like I’m being dense, you sure ignoring a lot of nuance in history.

2) I really don’t care. If we’re going to go by that logic, then it applies to natives too. You could’ve easily been born as a different race, but you weren’t. What could have happened if history took a different route is COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY irrelevant. This is my land just as much as ANY natives.

And I ain’t bootlicking, honey. I’m not defending any government. I’m calling you a whiney bitch for complaining about how everyone who isn’t native is a villain for daring to be born here after what happened in history happened instead of doing something to make things better for natives. Not my fault you’re CHOOSING to view that as me defending the government

I’m none of those. And what am I doing? I’m voting in people who will make things better. I’m donating (when I can) to people in need. I’m educating myself about important subjects instead of letting personal biases dictate what I believe. I’m not hating my neighbor because they were born with a certain skin color. I.e. A LOT MORE THAN WHAT YOU’RE DOING “CUCKOLD.”

[kariachi]

I posted 13,737 times in 2021

1120 posts created (8%)

12617 posts reblogged (92%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 11.3 posts.

I added 434 tags in 2021

#fanfic - 197 posts

#bugs - 102 posts

#achi's fakedex - 35 posts

#ben 10 - 19 posts

#kevin levin - 15 posts

#unfortunate neighbors - 15 posts

#long post - 15 posts

#osmosians - 13 posts

#dragonriders of pern - 12 posts

#achi writes - 11 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#so yeah if i did this step one would be figuring out a fucking baseline for clothing inspiration that isn't 'all western europe all the time

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Stories of desperate parents-to-be turning to magic, mucking it up, and being horrified when they have monsterous children are out, from now on our magical-muck-up parents embrace monstery parenthood wholeheartedly because they waited too long and worked too hard to have children to get turned off by some scales or what have you.

45 notes • Posted 2021-05-07 23:22:34 GMT

#4

The ‘two nickels’ meme but with Kevin and “every time someone made me think they cared and were on my side only to use their powers to fuck with my head, revealing they only ever thought of me as a tool to be used against the Tennysons”

47 notes • Posted 2021-04-04 13:35:54 GMT

#3

An Avatar that isn’t found for ages. Their village remembers stories of Avatar Aang- who ended the Hundred Year War but also proceeded to help in colonizing the Earth Kingdom and gave less of a thought to the commonfolk than to the local insects- and they remember Avatar Korra- who saved the world while following in her prior life’s footsteps, just with more threats of violence- and they see this little Avatar in their midst and say ‘fuck no, this one isn’t ending up like that’.

They learn airbending from the trees and birds, earthbending from a local farmer, firebending from the man who provides the village with power, waterbending from the village healer. They’re the local secret, and every time someone comes by searching them out the villagers lie. Say they’re older than they are. Say they aren’t a bender.

The Avatar reveals themself when they’re good and ready, with no lessons from the elite, no dark trauma in their past, and a firm understanding and respect for the commonfolk of the world.

57 notes • Posted 2021-03-18 23:35:41 GMT

#2

Okay, but, if you like Pern but are unhappy with... how much it is shit? I really do recommend Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series. It’s ain’t perfect (rep can be middling at best, you will be sat there going ‘if I see another age-gap romance I swear to the gods-’, ‘divine right of kings’ is there and makes sense in-universe but also will niggle people, there is so much rape and it’s a bit more graphic- though that one is tempered by her actually treating it as a horrible, evil thing and being really fucking open about it, you will not see ‘but she liked it so it was fine’ in the Valdemar books) but it is still so good.

Things Valdemar does better than Pern

Companions. The angel bondmate horses may not be as cool as dragons, but damnit if the relationships between them and their Heralds isn’t better than the rider/dragon ones

Also, they’re the reason the Divine Right of Kings thing works- in-universe the reason Companions are around is the first king of Valdemar prayed to the gods for some way to ensure his kingdom would always be under the care of good, trustworthy, moral people, and so Valdemar was given the Companions, who only bond to good, trustworthy, moral, incorruptible people who would throw themselves into fire to ensure the health and wellbeing of others, and the ruler must be Chosen by a Companion

Seriously, finally some good fucking ‘divine right’

Leans hard into it’s fantasy setting, so you don’t have to deal with smug ‘everything here is based on science’ bullshit when the science is out a third grade textbook. Is shit weird? Yeah, it’s magic, move along.

The rep is there, which if you’ve read Pern you’ll know is a big jump. POC exist outside of backstory and get to be main characters, queer peeps get to be main characters, everyone gets stories

There are even a-spec characters! One is specifically because she traded her sexual desires, urges, and interests to her goddess in exchange for becoming a holy warrior of protection and vengeance (which her goddess made damn sure was something she honestly wanted to do in the depths of her heart, with full understanding, first, because the gods in this series are Good) but still!

Woman. Characters. Done. Right. There’s a lot of bullfuckery going on, but the women have agency, lead stories far more often, don’t get pushed aside (in their own stories, thank you Dragonflight) for focus on male characters, aren’t pitted against each other in ‘not like other girls’ bullshit

Seriously, all I can picture is if Mercedes had written Dragonquest. Brekke would’ve been the main character and we would’ve gotten her entire fucking story from pre-Search to while F’nor was healing (and he wouldn’t have fucking raped her, not and remained a protagonist, and the dragon shit wouldn’t be nearly so bad, and just it would’ve been so much better)

And I know Pern doesn’t have gods or religion (which, ugh) but y’all I enjoy the gods in the Valdemar series so much? Like, they aren’t generally involved in shit but it’s also very much because they value the free will of their followers? They’ll only get involved if their followers ask it of them. This even leads to differing relationships with differing gods by differing people.

‘But Achi that sounds like a recipe for disaster‘ It is! Karse spends centuries in holy war against Valdemar because a group of fuckers decided to use their religion for power and this hands-off method means Vkandis (their god) couldn’t do anything until the people were in such fear of their own religious leaders that they started asking him for help, and by then it was so bad he had to 1) literally perform the miracle of animating a giant statue of himself, plucking the crown off statue-him’s head, shrinking it down, and using it to crown his chosen Son of the Sun (basically fantasy-pope but Moreso) while granting her all the power one would expect a sun god to grant his mortal representative; 2) burn every corrupt, high-ranking priest in the country alive simultaneously, just to get shit to where something could actually be fucking done before the world ended

We call him ‘Vkandis the Unsubtle’ for a reason, the other one being that when, millennia ago, a kingdom prayed to him for protection from threat outside their kingdom he erected a fuck-off-tall wall of magical fire around their country that only allows those who can be trusted to do no harm and keep their mouths shut in

btw there are gryphons behind the wall of fire. Does Pern have gryphons? No, because Anne was a pansy.

And the thing with the gods leans into something else I love about this series- the characters are people, with virtues and flaws. They make mistakes, those mistakes have consequences (some of them far reaching- why does Valdemar not have magic? Because the last magic user, in an attempt to protect the kingdom from enemy mages, set up a security system that ended up driving every magic user in the kingdom mad and so guess what), and people get called out on them. Sometimes good people do bad things, bad people can have good in them and that doesn’t make them right, the characters are just more well-rounded than Anne’s. Right up to the gods themselves.

It’s not the perfect series, but I really recommend it to anyone who’s read Pern and wanted something less... that.

60 notes • Posted 2021-03-08 15:40:36 GMT

#1

The Omnitrix but it tells time and what aliens Ben can become are determined by when it is.

There shall be no Diamondhead outside of the hours of 10 to 12

65 notes • Posted 2021-01-14 00:21:05 GMT

[transrightssokka]

(long post. tw for war crimes and imperialism, if there’s anything else i need to tag let me know and i will tag it)

ok the fire nation was an imperialist colonizing power in atla and that’s shitty but i feel like a lot of y’all are going overboard with the whole “fire nation evil” thing.

just because somebody’s from a country that does shitty things doesn’t mean they’re a shitty person. y’all americans should know that.

i’m gonna use a real world example here: japan. i’m using japan because i know how little sympathy we all have for america. japan did some fucked shit in the 30s and 40s. if you didn’t take tenth grade history here’s a short little summary: korea, manchuria, the eastern coast of china, the philippines, more islands in the south pacific than i can count with my fingers, and don’t even get me started on nanjing. it’s called the rape of nanjing for a reason. tldr: imperialist, militarist colonizing power. 

does that mean that every japanese person alive during that war was a bad person? no. fuck no. that’s common sense. does that mean that the us imprisoning japanese people during ww2 was justified? no. of course not. if someone lived in a japanese town and regularly kidnapped and tortured japanese people, we all understand that that’s a bad thing, but when hama does it in the fire nation suddenly all that real world knowledge disappears and half the fandom defends her with their lives. and don’t try to tell me that her past mistreatment at the hands of the fire nation justifies her actions, because i thought we all agreed that a tragic backstory isn’t an excuse to commit war crimes. or does that only apply to characters we believe we’re morally superior to?

why do you think there were entire episodes dedicated to showing sympathy for fire nation civilians? why do you think sokka defended the old fire nation man in the jet episode? why do you think katara had bloodbending outlawed after seeing hama use it on civilians in the hama episode? why do you think katara committed ecoterrorism to help a fire nation town in the painted lady episode? why do you think zuko exists? because the fire nation has civilians too. the fire nation has victims of the war too. 

even soldiers in the army of an imperialist, militarist colonizing power aren’t inherently bad people because they’re soldiers. there are a lot of reasons someone would join the army--they’re from a low-income background and the military guarantees them job security, they’ve been fed propaganda since the day they were born and they genuinely believe they’re doing the right thing, they were drafted--a lot of american soldiers are recruited in these ways. are they bad people? no. they’re bystanders who were backed into corners and thought they had no other options. 

if you want to acknowledge that iroh committed war crimes, you have to acknowledge that hama and jet committed war crimes too. if besieging an earth kingdom city is a war crime, kidnapping and torturing civilians and destroying civilian towns are definitely war crimes.

hama and jet were victims of colonialism and imperialism. hama and jet committed acts of violence against civilians. those two statements can coexist. iroh and zuko and lu ten were soldiers for an imperialist, colonialist nation. iroh and zuko and lu ten were capable of doing good. those two statements can coexist.

(why are you so up-in-arms about fictional war criminals? because fiction, more often than not, has real-world applications. critical thinking 101. your english teacher has a point.)

tldr: not everybody in the fire nation was evil, and not everybody hurt by the fire nation was justified. 

[queendom25]

Thanksgiving: The Rape of the Land 

    Alexander Pope may be the master of the mock-epic and the unrivaled wordsmith  at “flipping the bird” to the ill morals of high society, but  America reigns supreme at turning cultural tradition into stereotypical tripe. Welcome to Southern Oregon where you are more likely to find a white girl that says My great grandmother was a Native Princess, than a shred of history about the Takelma People of the Rogue River Valley in a standard textbook. While America is the land of the freehand dreamcatcher tattoo and home of the Braves racist logo, I would like to explore just how equitable the “Blue” state of Oregon actually was to our Native neighbors. 

    Once upon a time in 1819, some fur trappers from the Northwest Company met some Umpqua Natives and killed many of them- because racial profiling is vital to manifest destiny. Before the process of white male rage took full effect, there were an estimated 3,000-4,000 Natives in the Umpqua Valley and around 500 along the coast, estuary, and estuary tributaries. By the mid 1850s the fur trappers nearly wiped out the future official state animal-the beaver; so they uprooted and set up shop elsewhere while upsetting the balance of nature and the Indigenous peoples’ way of life. When I first came to Southern Oregon there was a saying that I often heard, If you don’t like the weather just wait 15 minutes and the Natives made it work 8,000 years prior to the appearance of colonizers. In fact, the Indigenous peoples that lived along the Umpqua rivers and the surrounding areas had rich and complex traditions that relied on the natural cycles of the land. They had permanent cedar homes in the winter and seasonal camps for food sources the rest of the year. There are about four tribes that lived in the Umpqua River Basin each with their own traditions and rites of passage, but today native speakers of their languages no longer exist.

    I remember I was at a protest in Rogue River, Oregon where a white guy was holding up a sign that said The Whites Built the West, and I truly could not stop laughing! While this is a prime example of why defunding public schools breeds toxic ignorance, we have to explore why that fallacy sums up the attitudes of some of the locals. It all started with the Organic Act of 1848 and a branch for the Office of Indian Affairs later to be called the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The harmful effects of white supremacy isn’t without its liberal moderate to smooth over its jagged edges temporarily. Joel Palmer was the “bleeding heart” that wrote the first Oregon tribal treaty in 1853 and just like the liberal moderates of today, his proposal was declined by the “minorities” who knew it was a scheme designed to get them booted out. So what was our white knight going to do in such a conundrum? He arranged temporary reservations throughout western Oregon until establishing a permanent Coast Reservation in 1854. My recent summer trips to the coast has taught me quite a few things about the end result of manifest destiny, and that is hearing white men say there is no racism in Coos Bay because Mexicans live there. This is honestly the epitome of putting a hat on a hat but I digress, the treaty for the coastal tribes including the Coos was signed in August 1855 but never ratified by the U.S. Senate. What exactly did that entail for the ancestors of our Native neighbors? Basically the U.S. government thanked the Natives for their generous donation to white hegemony by offering land to white settlers at $1.25 an acre on December 1, 1855. The painful irony is that the descendants of these white settlers are concerned about violence and looting from people protesting against state-sanctioned murder.

    This anti-fairytale ends with stolen land infected with cultural appropriation and the blissful ignorance of “patriots” complaining about a mask mandate and calling it oppression. As for our Native neighbors it’s written that with specifically the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua, they used their payment from the colonizers in 1984 to establish a bingo parlor in 1992. As an outsider looking in, I can’t help but wonder if it was worth the extinction of a culture and the genocide of a people for a casino in Canyonville.

Sources:

https://u-s-history.com/pages/h1543.html

https://ndnhistoryresearch.com/2018/12/16/the-temporary-cow-creek-umpqua-reservation/ 

 

https://oregonexplorer.info/content/history-native-americans-the-umpqua-region?topic=167&ptopic=140