#that's what they say actual native americans are doing right now

[reasonsforhope]

Masterpost: Reasons I firmly believe we will beat climate change

Posts are in reverse chronological order (by post date, not article date), mostly taken from my "climate change tag," which I went through all the way back to the literal beginning of my blog. Will update periodically.

Especially big deal articles/posts are in bold.

Big picture:

Mature trees offer hope in world of rising emissions (x)

Spying from space: How satellites can help identify and rein in a potent climate pollutant (x)

Good news: Tiny urban green spaces can cool cities and save lives (x)

Conservation and economic development go hand in hand, more often than expected (x)

The exponential growth of solar power will change the world (x)

Sun Machines: Solar, an energy that gets cheaper and cheaper, is going to be huge (x)

Wealthy nations finally deliver promised climate aid, as calls for more equitable funding for poor countries grow (x)

For Earth Day 2024, experts are spreading optimism – not doom. Here's why. (x)

Opinion: I’m a Climate Scientist. I’m Not Screaming Into the Void Anymore. (x)

The World’s Forests Are Doing Much Better Than We Think (x)

‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief (x)

Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View (x)

Young Forests Capture Carbon Quicker than Previously Thought (x)

Yes, climate change can be beaten by 2050. Here's how. (x)

Soil improvements could keep planet within 1.5C heating target, research shows (x)

The global treaty to save the ozone layer has also slowed Arctic ice melt (x)

The doomers are wrong about humanity’s future — and its past (x)

Scientists Find Methane is Actually Offsetting 30% of its Own Heating Effect on Planet (x)

Are debt-for-climate swaps finally taking off? (x)

High seas treaty: historic deal to protect international waters finally reached at UN (x)

How Could Positive ‘Tipping Points’ Accelerate Climate Action? (x)

Specific examples:

Environmental Campaigners Celebrate As Labour Ends Tory Ban On New Onshore Wind Projects (x)

Private firms are driving a revolution in solar power in Africa (x)

How the small Pacific island nation of Vanuatu drastically cut plastic pollution (x)

Rewilding sites have seen 400% increase in jobs since 2008, research finds [Scotland] (x)

The American Climate Corps take flight, with most jobs based in the West (x)

Waste Heat Generated from Electronics to Warm Finnish City in Winter Thanks to Groundbreaking Thermal Energy Project (x)

Climate protection is now a human right — and lawsuits will follow [European Union] (x)

A new EU ecocide law ‘marks the end of impunity for environmental criminals’ (x)

Solar hits a renewable energy milestone not seen since WWII [United States] (x)

These are the climate grannies. They’ll do whatever it takes to protect their grandchildren. [United States and Native American Nations] (x)

Century of Tree Planting Stalls the Warming Effects in the Eastern United States, Says Study (x)

Chart: Wind and solar are closing in on fossil fuels in the EU (x)

UK use of gas and coal for electricity at lowest since 1957, figures show (x)

Countries That Generate 100% Renewable Energy Electricity (x)

Indigenous advocacy leads to largest dam removal project in US history [United States and Native American Nations] (x)

India’s clean energy transition is rapidly underway, benefiting the entire world (x)

China is set to shatter its wind and solar target five years early, new report finds (x)

‘Game changing’: spate of US lawsuits calls big oil to account for climate crisis (x)

Largest-ever data set collection shows how coral reefs can survive climate change (x)

The Biggest Climate Bill of Your Life - But What Does It DO? [United States] (x)

Good Climate News: Headline Roundup April 1st through April 15th, 2023 (x)

How agroforestry can restore degraded lands and provide income in the Amazon (x) [Brazil]

Loss of Climate-Crucial Mangrove Forests Has Slowed to Near-Negligable Amount Worldwide, Report Hails (x)

Agroecology schools help communities restore degraded land in Guatemala (x)

Climate adaptation:

Solar-powered generators pull clean drinking water 'from thin air,' aiding communities in need: 'It transforms lives' (x)

‘Sponge’ Cities Combat Urban Flooding by Letting Nature Do the Work [China] (x)

Indian Engineers Tackle Water Shortages with Star Wars Tech in Kerala (x)

A green roof or rooftop solar? You can combine them in a biosolar roof — boosting both biodiversity and power output (x)

Global death tolls from natural disasters have actually plummeted over the last century (x)

Los Angeles Just Proved How Spongy a City Can Be (x)

This city turns sewage into drinking water in 24 hours. The concept is catching on [Namibia] (x)

Plants teach their offspring how to adapt to climate change, scientists find (x)

Resurrecting Climate-Resilient Rice in India (x)

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

I was going through your blog and I saw you made a post about Black Indians and how ridiculous you think they are. I just wanted to let you know that it's a historical fact that Africans and Native Americans mixed regardless of how you feel. That's all.

i think you're misunderstanding. (it's okay. there's been a lot of misunderstandings around here lately.)

i wasn't talking about actual black indians. i fully acknowledge that there was some degree of mixing between africans and native americans. though it's important to note that this was only ever in very small numbers and was mostly limited to the seminoles. other examples of "black indians" are mostly the result of former slaves gaining membership within the native american nation they were enslaved by (like the cherokee nation, most prominently). there was a whole legal controversy about this.

no, what i was talking about in that post was this new afro-centric conspiracy theory that insists the original and true native americans were actually african. except they don't believe they were actually africans. as in, they don't believe they came here from africa. they believed humanity (except white people who they don't consider humans) started with the original true "black indians" here in america. and then they spread throughout the world until white people came along and ruined everything and attempted to suppress this "true" histroy.

so yeah, these are two very different ideas. i fully acknowledge the former and i think the latter is outrageous and stupid (though very entertaining).

[headspace-hotel]

There was this post a while ago where somebody was saying that Cheetahs aren't well suited to Africa and would do well in Midwestern North America, and it reminded me of Paul S. Martin, the guy I'm always pissed off about.

He had some good ideas, but he is most importantly responsible for the overkill hypothesis (idea that humans caused the end-Pleistocene extinctions and that climate was minimally a factor) which led to the idea of Pleistocene rewilding.

...Basically this guy thought we should introduce lions, cheetahs, camels, and other animals to North America to "rewild" the landscape to what it was like pre-human habitation, and was a major advocate for re-creating mammoths.

Why am I pissed off about him? Well he denied that there were humans in North America prior to the Clovis culture, which it's pretty well established now that there were pre-Clovis inhabitants, and in general promoted the idea that the earliest inhabitants of North America exterminated the ecosystem through destructive and greedy practices...

...which has become "common knowledge" and used as evidence for anyone who wants to argue that Native Americans are "Not So Innocent, Actually" and the mass slaughter and ecosystem devastation caused by colonialism was just what humans naturally do when encountering a new environment, instead of a genocidal campaign to destroy pre-existing ways of life and brutally exploit the resources of the land.

It basically gives the impression that the exploitative and destructive relationship to land is "human nature" and normal, which erases every culture that defies this characterization, and also erases the way indigenous people are important to ecosystems, and promotes the idea of "empty" human-less ecosystems as the natural "wild" state.

And also Martin viewed the Americas' fauna as essentially impoverished, broken and incomplete, compared with Africa which has much more species of large mammals, which is glossing over the uniqueness of North American ecosystems and the uniqueness of each species, such as how important keystone species like bison and wolves are.

It's also ignoring the taxa and biomes that ARE extraordinarily diverse in North America, for example the Appalachian Mountains are one of the most biodiverse temperate forests on Earth, the Southeastern United States has the Earth's most biodiverse freshwater ecosystems, and both of these areas are also a major global hotspot for amphibian biodiversity and lichen biodiversity. Large mammals aren't automatically the most important. With South America, well...the Amazon Rainforest, the Brazilian Cerrado and the Pantanal wetlands are basically THE biodiversity hotspot of EVERYTHING excepting large mammals.

It's not HIM I have a problem with per se. It's the way his ideas have become so widely distributed in pop culture and given people a muddled and warped idea of ecology.

If people think North America was essentially a broken ecosystem missing tons of key animals 500 years ago, they won't recognize how harmful colonization was to the ecosystem or the importance of fixing the harm. Who cares if bison are a keystone species, North America won't be "fixed" until we bring back camels and cheetahs...right?

And by the way, there never were "cheetahs" in North America, Miracinonyx was a different genus and was more similar to cougars than cheetahs, and didn't have the hunting strategy of cheetahs, so putting African cheetahs in North America wouldn't "rewild" anything.

Also people think its a good idea to bring back mammoths, which is...no. First of all, it wouldn't be "bringing back mammoths," it would be genetically engineering extant elephants to express some mammoth genes that code for key traits, and second of all, the ecosystem that contained them doesn't exist anymore, and ultimately it would be really cruel to do this with an intelligent, social animal. The technology that would be used for this is much better used to "bring back" genetic diversity that has been lost from extant critically endangered species.

I think mustangs should get to stay in North America, they're already here and they are very culturally important to indigenous groups. And I think it's pretty rad that Scimitar-horned Oryx were brought back in their native habitat only because there was a population of them in Texas. But we desperately, DESPERATELY need to re-wild bison, wolves, elk, and cougars across most of their former range before we can think about introducing camels.

[thegoldencontracts]

Hey! Can I suggest a tired & flustered Azul or Leona? Both are personal favorites

Hihi I gotchuu anon thank you for the requestt <3

also a bit off-topic but im indian-american (not native, like the asian country) and im the same shade as as leona which is why i hate hate hate when people talk about him blushing it'd be vy hard to see and i know its so weird and theyre good writers blah blah blah just a little pet peeve

Leona Kingscholar

You were currently being pulled into the arms of none other than the Prince of Afterglow, Leona Kingscholar. That wasn't particularly new - ever since you two started dating, Leona seemed to have a newfound love of cuddling you. It was pretty cute, actually. He really did act like a big cat sometimes.

Today, though, he seemed especially tired. He was always a bit tired - you knew why, and it wasn't a pretty story, but you had to digress - today, he seemed even more tired than usual.

It made sense. He had to pull an all-nighter yesterday catching up on paperwork for the Spelldrive club, something you still couldn't believe he'd actually done instead of just throwing the job onto Ruggie.

Still, he looked just about ready to collapse. You were getting pretty concerned.

"Wanna go to bed?" You asked, taking the opportunity to card your fingers through his hair. For once, he didn't try to hide the way he leaned into the touch. He pouted, though, and at that moment, you thought your heart was going to explode.

Leona, calm, always composed Leona was pouting at you. He looked almost like a kid right now.

You couldn't help the hearty laugh that escaped you. Leona huffed at you, angling his face in a way that made his dark circles much too prominent.

"Really, though," you said. "Get some sleep. I'll be here in the morning."

Leona mumbled something.

"What was that?"

"Come with me, herbivore," he said, more mumbled, and though it wasn't visible, you could tell he was blushing. The way he couldn't meet your eyes said it all.

He was surprisingly honest today.

He probably took your silence for teasing or the like, because he turned away with a huff.

"You can," he said. "I don't really care either way."

You smiled. It was genuine, not an ounce of teasing. You weren't going to do that, now when it was already so hard for him to be more vulnerable with you. It was overjoying just to know he was being honest.

"I'll take you up on that offer," you said, and that poorly hidden smile made every moment you'd have to spend listening to him snore worth it.

Azul Ashengrotto

Azul was working this evening. That was fine - he'd literally taken you out on a date so custom-tailored to you it made you wonder how exactly he knew you so well yesterday, you weren't going to complain about his performance as your beloved.

But he seemed tired. No, no, that was an understatement. He seemed like he was about to pass out any moment now. And yet, by some miracle, he was still working.

You had to perform well has his beloved, too. And that meant taking care of him when he was ill - or in this case, so tired he might as well have been.

"Azul?" you called out, and the thirty seconds it took him to process your voice and turn to look at you said it all. "Don't you think you should go to bed?"

After a few seconds, he shook his head blearily.

"'Can't," he mumbled, his words slurred. "Work."

You vaguely understood what he was trying to say. He couldn't sleep, he had work to do.

But it didn't seem like he was going to get much done in his current state other than pass out.

"Sleep, please," you said, and you were honestly shocked at how gentle your voice sounded. Being in love with Azul really did things to you, huh?

"But the money!" he whined, and you couldn't help but laugh. The money? That's what he cared about right now? How much money did he actually think he'd lose from sleeping? "'Want money."

This was the love of your life. This man.

Seeing you laugh, he huffed, cheeks bright red.

"Stop laughing," he said, pouting. "Ugh. 'S why you have no money."

Cold, Azul. Cold. Even in his current state, he had to remind you of your painfully broke reality.

"Then you'll have to help me make some, then." You said, trying to appeal to his love of rambling about finance. "Why don't you teach me? We can go to your room while we're at it, more privacy that way."

He nodded shakily, cheeks still a bit pink.

"I'm very-" he cut himself off, trying to pronounce somthing. "'Nevolent. Be-ne-vo-lent. I'll help you."

"Thank you so much," you said, and he followed you to his room.

You couldn't wait to see how embarrassed he'd get in the morning.

Bonus (Of sorts):

"I said what?"

"Yeah, and your face was so red! You kept slurring over your words, too. You couldn't even say 'benevolent'! Isn't that, like, your signature word?"

"Stop teasing me already!"

[fairuzfan]

i seriously don't even have the words to describe what it's felt like as a native person learning about "holocaust exceptionalism" or whatever for the first time during all of this

the first time i saw a tweet talking about how it wasn't appropriate to compare any other genocide (and specifically this person was talking about the native american genocide(s), along with several others i've seen since & most of the "historians" who go this route, too) to the holocaust because unlike in those cases, where there was a clear logical reason for the wholesale slaughter of millions of people, the holocaust was senseless! it was just killing innocent people for no reason, which is completely different from when they got rid of all those dumb indians standing in the way of Progress & wasting the precious resources the colonizers needed much more... i thought they were just some random dickhead saying intentionally terrible shit online for engagement

but then i just kept seeing people saying similar things, and eventually while reading up on palestinian history, i find out that this has apparently been a zionist (and in many cases non-zionist, which maybe feels even worse) talking point for decades now?

(and increasingly, over the last few weeks, i've seen it shift to this more broad claim that comparing any genocide to any other genocide is harmful, actually... which is such a dumb argument to try to pass off as genuine when, among other things, there's literally an entire field called "genocide studies" that it's honestly almost funny)

i can't think of anything in recent memory that's felt like such a brutal slap in the face as finding out the belief that the systematic murder of my people was a completely logical, understandable course of action--arguably a net positive, even, in the long run--is now and long has been this commonly held. i've felt sick since ever since. how do you say shit like that and not understand that you're implicitly rationalizing and, to some extent, justifying it? how do you not hear yourself?

forgive me, i know it must feel very eye-roll-worthy to have someone come yelling to you right now about how badly their people are treated by zionists, but every time i see someone parroting off an argument along these lines, i swear i can just feel my faith in humanity slip a little more lol

yeah, fuck off with this bullshit for sure

oh don't apologize, i totally understand why you would want to talk about this. thank you for sending this, and I'm so sorry that youre going through this. it really is an inconsiderate talking point at the very least.... i wish the best for you and yours in these times.

[leporellian]

actually i'm going to talk about the met's weird thing with the rust belt more because it was definitely one of those things where a few years ago when the new met lucia was in development i was like, oh cool i wonder what they'll do with that, but now that we're here... man does it leave a bad taste in the mouth.

here's a question for you: Why Do So Many Operas Take Place In Seville?

seville is the setting for some hundreds of operas, including many of the famous ones: the barber of seville, carmen, la forza del destino, the marriage of figaro, fidelio, don giovanni (which actually might not take place in seville but given don juan stories up to them did it sticks)... the list keeps going. and there was a legitimate reason for this- for hundreds of years, seville was seen as a seedy and sexualized location where anything could happen. that exoticism carries over into the plot of many of the Seville Operas, which often feature seductions, crimes, and passion stories that fit neatly into the tales of the seedy city.

opera is about, in a lot of ways, EXOTICIZING OTHER PLACES. the spectacle of a setting was often a major part of the excitement of seeing a new opera, especially in the 19th century. but some of these places 'work' better than others, for a variety of reasons that boil down to the politics of representation and who is being who onstage.

seville works as an Exotic Opera Location Du Jour for multiple reasons. for one thing, if you notice, a lot of the seville operas take place 60-100+ years before the composition of the opera. for example, the marriage of figaro and don giovanni were composed in 1786 and 1787 respectively, and both depict 1600s seville. if you were writing a Seville Opera right now, for comparison, it would probably take place between 1890 and 1960- there's enough of a time gap that exploring the world as a more fantastical setting is easier to swallow. for another, seville is in western europe, and many of the composers depicting it were also from western europe. there is an evened playing field. (THERE IS A NOTABLE EXCEPTION about this that I WILL GET TO SOON.) finally, now that these operas are over a century old, we're even more removed from their concept of 'seville' and the 'seville' in operas has been turned into something of a convenient fantasy location in which to put an opera. it's something out of a medieval times dinner and tournament and not necessarily meant to be Actual Real Seville at all, which works fine because Seville Operas work without needing much context about the location. don jose is a soldier, you don't need to know what seville soldiers' duties were. figaro is a barber, you don't need to know what barbers in seville were like. and so on.

but there are other opera locations that don't serve this purpose as well- often nonwhite regions appropriated by white composers. the incredibly warped conceptions of egypt that show up in aida and the magic flute, the looking-glass japan of madama butterfly, the brief moment in which la fanciulla del west wherein the opera remembers the existence of native american peoples... suddenly the make-believe of exoticism goes away and is replaced by a sour feeling because in many cases these cultures could not have a say on their own depictions in the operatic world, while the western europeans featured in the operas that exoticize locations like seville or paris could.

carmen is an interesting case study in Opera Exoticism because it features a location that is fine enough to exoticize (early 1800s seville) and a titular character that is not. carmen was- and, in many productions, is still- written as romani. she embodies many negative stereotypes about the culture- she is seductive, morally ambiguous, a smuggler, a femme fatale. yet we as an audience are made to sympathize with her. she is honest about who she is, accepting of the hard truths that are given to her; she is close to her friends and her crueler moments come across as more of an ill-planned joke than a real sense of antipathy. carmen is both a product of how romani people were written by white men in her time, and progressive in that we root for her against the (white) don jose. (and it should be noted that she knows that if he kills her he will be executed for it- carmen is about a mutual kill.) a good carmen production will evaluate all of these features and include them into the work somehow; be it through metatextual commentary, or careful representation, or understanding of what the audience is seeing.

anyway, now that we've covered all that, let's go look at The Met Opera's Current Fascination With Lower Class American Communities and see what we find there.

the rust belt and the sun belt have captured the imagination of the met opera recently, as seen in their current productions of lucia di lammermoor and carmen. these settings are depicted as grimy, miserable, and joyless; women are thrown around by men, men are depicted as one-dimensional monsters that are not to be understood or seen into. the cruelty is the point- these productions do not treat lower-class americans as people to relate to or understand. the sole exceptions are lucia- who is made out to be something of an outsider, so the audience can relate to her- and carmen, who is misinterpreted into being a sad woman who just wants love (god forbid a woman have some other motivation). the racial issues that dominate the cultural conversation in america are unspoken of in these productions, even when there is an opportunity to; this becomes especially uncomfortable in carmen, where the above history of carmen as a nonwhite woman and the opera's setting on the US-Mexico border (with the soldiers cast as border agents!) goes unmentioned in the name of 'heightening the class and gender inequality'- both of which were already in the original work along with the race inequality! these productions are both directed by non-american white people. simon stone is from australia, carrie cracknell is from britain. why would they want to depict this setting? because they see it as a dark, cynical den of seediness and repressed sexuality- a world where we don't have to worry about empathy, or broader implications, because the people in these settings do not go to the met- a world where we can look on with revulsion and unease.... this crosses the line from exoticism into fetishization, in which lower class people become pawns for the met to use as set dressing.

this is especially uncomfortable because of opera's long history being seen as a 'rich people hobby'. opera is characterized as snobbish, useless, reprehensible; an art form that exists only to please the rich and the white and the male-dominated. all of which is not true! i believe to the bottom of my heart that everybody deserves a night at the opera, and that there is an opera for everyone, and everybody should feel welcome in the opera house (or other opera space du jour). and there are so many people working to change the industry from the inside, particularly the work of artists of color to broaden the opera canon and depictions of that canon as we know them. but as long as the met continues to use poor people as set dressing instead of bothering to communicate with them in a meaningful way, as long as the met sees these settings as places where brutes live instead of human beings, that stereotype of the rich man's hobby is going to continue. and the met is going to suffer for it- as i suspect that, as time goes on, the voyeuristic lens of these operas into the lives of abused lower-class women will be seen as more and more revolting.

TLDR

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

Here's the thing that really broke me about the goyische left's response to the Hamas massacre: once again, the uncritical, antisemitic double standard for Israel and Jews versus literally anyone else has now expanded to assume that Jews do not deserve human rights or have lost them by virtue of being Israeli.

Let's say, for a moment, that you have been radicalized to really believe that the Hamas attack on civilians was a liberatory action, perhaps unfortunate that it targeted unarmed civilians, but what else were they supposed to do? Besides, Israel has visited similar and worse attacks on Palestine for years, so turnabout is fair play, especially in service of the struggle of liberation of a brutally oppressed group. [To be clear: I take issue with this and find it morally repugnant. But for the moment, let's accept arguendo this belief as a baseline.]

Do you really include rape, torture, killing children at all but especially in front of their parents, or killing parents in front of their children and taking hostages of the survivors, beheading infants, trapping and burning families hidden together alive, stripping and parading hostages naked through the street, mutilating and displaying the bodies of the dead proudly and celebrating their deaths, and doing all of this on a holy day where Jewish people the world over are supposed to be celebrating the end of the holiday season and the beginning of a new cycle of Torah learning. On a day that people will be resting, with their families, unarmed and in their holy spaces, and are explicitly commanded to be happy.

.......amongst the "unfortunate-but-necessary violent struggle?"

Like even if you believe in your heart of hearts that all Israelis should die or at least are acceptable casualties in the struggle, do you really believe that there is any excuse for the above atrocities? If you do, I need you to ask yourself some things:

Do you think there is any justification for the manner and cruelty of the deaths?

Do you really think that there is anything a person could do in order to deserve any of these actions as a sentence?

Was the cruel nature of this, designed to inflict the greatest amount of trauma on the survivors and the Jewish people at large, actually necessary to accomplishing the goal of liberation?

Would you accept any of these actions being done to any other group?

If you are a white American, do you think you personally deserve this yourself for everything the United States has done to the native population (never mind anyone else)?

Do you think that civilians can be held 100% accountable for their government's actions? Is that a standard you yourself would like to be judged by?

If context is important, how is the last 2000 years of brutal antisemitism from virtually every part of the world not also relevant context? How is the Holocaust not relevant? The Farhud?

Do you think refugees fleeing genocide should be able to live wherever they can and that other countries and peoples have a duty to step up and take them in? If so, would you call refugees of genocide colonists and settlers?

Do you think that children should have to answer for the crimes of adults? That it is ever okay to kill them in cold blood?

Do you think that non-combatant deaths should ever be celebrated?

Theoretically, if the only way Hamas could accomplish its goal (which we will assume arguendo is Palestinian liberation, despite the mounds of evidence against that) is to kill whatever Israelis they could get their hands on, don't you think that a valid liberation force would just kill people as efficiently as possible rather than take the time to brutalize and humiliate them first? Wouldn't that be the more morally understandable thing to do?

Do you think it's ever okay to mock or talk down to people grieving their dead, no matter who they were, especially if they were random citizens rather than, say, high-profile politicians?

These questions to me are unanswerable and the fact that they are even in question at all unjustifiable. The left has either actively participated in this or remained silent in the face of it. And too many friends who I thought were allies have failed to reach out to even ask if we're okay, let alone made even the weakest of condemnations of the brutality my people have experienced this week.

This tells me that you think my humanity, as a Jew, is conditional. That my right not to experience war crimes is up for debate.

How am I supposed to trust you ever again? Feel safe in your presence? Collaborate with you on other issues? Why should I?

For the people who are posting about the situation yet failed to condemn the torture and brutality against my people, please know that I will likely never fully believe you that you are for restorative justice, against the death penalty, against cruel and unusual punishment, against sexual violence, for children's rights and against the murder of children, against terrorism, against civilian casualties, for the rights and protection of refugees, for freedom of movement, support indigenous groups, and certainly certainly anyone claiming to be against antisemitism. There will forever and always be an asterisk next to your statements in favor of universal human rights which reads: *except Jews.

[thrashkink-coven]

Genuine Red Flags in Spiritual Books, Grimoires, Occult Teachers or Mentors

Very often I see folks talking about things they consider to be red flags for beginners when entering witchy or occult spaces. Here are a few of the things that I’ve noticed over the years that will immediately make me put down a book or step away from a practitioner.

1. Claiming they know every thing about every sect of spirituality / occultism or witchcraft

Simply put, there is no one person who knows the deep inner workings of every craft, of every philosophy, of every practice. The guru that claims to know everything from Reiki to Jewish Mysticism to Native American Spirituality to Voodoo to Acupuncture to Chakra Healing, Tarot, Herb Wizardy, Alchemy, etc etc etc. No. They are lying. Even the most dedicated and wise practitioners devote years into understanding a philosophy or spiritual practice. And especially in regards to closed practices, it is impossible for one person to have read and done it all. Either they are straight up lying or presenting brief skimming over texts or conversation as “years of experience and practice”. No.

2. Constantly trying to convince the reader that they are a God, deity or some inhuman creature like a cosmic elf, mermaid, or angel

Now I don’t mean to confuse this with the idea that some Luciferian or Satanic spaces may adopt that all humans are gods in their own right, or you are the god of your own existence. I’m talking specifically about books that try to convince you that you’re actually a lost race of alien who has been trapped in a human body, or has been mistaken into believing they are human. I’m not going to get into my opinions on star seeds or deity ancestry, what I will say is that very often, and I mean uncomfortably often, these ideas are intrinsically tied to supremacist or xenophobic rhetoric You do not have to be an angel to be special and cosmically significant. You don’t have to be an elf to explore herbal magic, people who push these ideas are very frequently praying on those with delusions of grandeur or other dissociative mental disorders and that’s not cool.

3. Using pseudoscience to push miracle remedies. This includes denying things that are provable to push a narrative, like the fact medication can help the mentally ill.

My dears, please fact check what you read. Please see what educated people have to say about these authors before you take everything they say at face value. As many problems and rightful distrust as there is in the medical industry, usually, if a concoction is commonly dismissed by 99% of medical professionals, it’s usually not because they’re trying to cover up the holy grail, it’s because they know it’s… probably not that good for you or simply doesn’t do what it claims.

4. Trying to convince the reader that with enough practice, willpower, and a donation of $9.99 per month, you too can obtain some incredible power that will allow you to airbend, waterbend, firebend, and basically defy all the laws of physics in general!

The point of most occultism, spirituality and witchcraft is not to defy the laws of physics or to obtain some godly power. There most certainly exists the belief in many sects of spirituality that one can influence their reality through training, but I promise you, anybody that is promoting that they can walk on water is trying to make a fool out of you

5. Inability to disagree, contest, or dissent from the opinions of the mentor, teacher, high priest(ess) or leader

This is how cults form, guys. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug. If the presentation of different ideas or even questions are met with harsh backlash and censorship, you need to get the fuck out of there.

6. Them automatically making the assumption within a very short time of meeting you, usually presented as psychic intuition, that you are suffering and have a “deep sadness” or energy blockage in your soul that only they can fix.

I understand that damaged people often seek mediums and whatnot for help, and sometimes it genuinely brings them ease, that’s fine and good. But so often I have been approached by people online that claim that “the angels have a really important message for me that they can only give after they’ve received an epayment of just a few dollars”. These are obviously scams, but often people who have been trusted for a reading or service in the past will fabricate these stories to trap a costumer in a loop of service. Some of these claims may be genuine but I guarantee you most are not.

7. Sprinkles of Fascism

No you are not superior to other people because you’re spiritually “enlightened”. No you should not separate groups of people or decide who should and shouldn’t procreate. No mainstream society is not being being deceived by the devil, and the devil is not more prevalent in any one group of people, sex, sexuality, gender, or race. You are not the only enlightened one in a world full of lost people. Mentally ill folks are not demons and trans people aren’t energetically unaligned. You will not inherit the Earth while everyone else dies. Uuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh shut the fuck up.

8. The claim that ancient societies of people were aliens. Presenting hoaxes and proven scams as evidence of a conspiracy.

This includes things like using documented hoaxes as evidence that aliens built the pyramids. I’m going to be so for real with you guys rn. This is just racism. It’s insane to think the Egyptians were smart enough to build the society they literally lived in, but nobody doubts the validity of the Roman Empire. Crazy concept but maybe Indigenous people of color aren’t savage idiots. And maybe white people aren’t the only ones capable of having societies and interesting architecture. The thing about this that annoys me the most is that… Egyptians still exist today, and the ancestry that dates back to ancient Mesopotamia and Canaan still exist today too. These were human beings, just like us. The alienation of black and brown people proves how little some people see us as normal people.

9. The promotion of practices that are directly harmful. Self mutilation, disorderly eating, or rituals that can induce psychosis or states of mania.

Guess what you actually don’t have to sit on a mountain naked and eat nothing but sunlight to be enlightened. You can definitely do religious or devotional things like fasting within a healthy degree, but I so so often see people promoting things that will very obviously lead to mania and hallucinations just by design. Starving yourself for two weeks while constantly blasting mantras and doing a bunch of psychedelics isn’t enlightenment… it’s a manic episode. While some devotees may feel comfortable offering blood to deities, this should always be in very small ways, a needle poke, not self mutilation.

10. Trying to do business with minors or promote occult topics to children specifically

Just no. I really dislike the idea of selling spells or promoting deity communication to kids still in grade school. They’re trying to manipulate a young mind into believing their dogma or spending their parent’s money. If a parent wants to share their craft with their child, that’s cool, but people who specifically target a younger audience are suspect to me. This isn’t to say spirituality isn’t for kids, it’s just that content that is created for kids is often created to be surface level and profitable in the algorithm.

11. Shitting on New Age Spirituality

Yeah I said it. This to me feels very much like a let’s hate on anything women, especially young women enjoy. Let’s delegitimize their experiences and paint them all as ditzy girls just clanging their crystals together.

There are some things that New Age Spiritualists do that I’m not a fan of, all of the things in this list. However, that doesn’t make this form of spirituality and witchcraft any less legitimate just because it’s somewhat trendy right now. Go fucking howl at the moon and have bon fires with your besties while you do tarot and talk about angel numbers, I don’t give a fuck.

New Age spiritualists aren’t inherently doing anything wrong or different than what ancient cultures have been doing for centuries, it’s just trendy and profitable now. But anything that young women enjoy will inevitably be exploited by the capitalist machine and that is not their fault. Wicca is still a legitimate form of spirituality and witches are not inherently doing anything wrong by being young women. So much of the criticism against NAS is literally just misogyny.

“I’m not into new age spirituality I’m a REAL witch”

omg please shut up

[mightdeletelater]

A speech made at the Academy Awards by Jonathan Glazer, along with the subsequent reactions, sheds light on how people tend to distort others' words to portray themselves as victims and, more concerning, their willingness to reside in a dystopian bubble as long as it doesn't affect them directly.

Rather than idolising Hollywood, I've previously posted about the complexities of my evolving parasocial relationships. But to disregard the influence wielded by these elites would be naive. It's frustrating to witness those in power facing backlash when they attempt to bring attention to pertinent issues.

While the Oscars' prominence in Western pop culture is waning, the ceremony and the fervour surrounding the nominees and winners, especially in the major acting categories, still hold significant sway in film culture and the broader world.

So when such a speech is delivered at the Oscars, it's bound to garner attention:

All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present — not to say, “Look what they did then,” rather, “Look what we do now.” Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the — [Applause.] Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist? [Applause.] Aleksandra Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk, the girl who glows in the film, as she did in life, chose to. I dedicate this to her memory and her resistance. Thank you.

Glazer highlighted in his speech that victims of the ongoing situation and the last 75 years, whether Palestinian and Israeli, all stem from the occupation and are casualties of entrenched ideologies like Zionism. But when he said this on stage and was immediately misquoted online on social media and by reputable news sources, alleging that he simply renounced his Jewish identity.

He also faced considerable backlash from those indicating a persistent conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. It really parallels previous speeches of resistance at the Oscars. Boos rang loud and clear during Michael Moore's opposition to the Iraq war (which we know was a colossal failure by Geroge Bush and the US Government who perpetuated and pardoned multiple war crimes in the region after lying to their own people about evidence of weapons of mass destruction).

There was also Sacheen Littlefeather's advocacy for Native American representation and the direct of attention to the Wounded Knee Occupation, a speech that had bodyguards having to restrain people from getting on the stage and attacking her.

And, of course, Vanessa Redgrave's aim at “a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression”, which still feels relevant today.

Turning to Glazer's film, I am baffled at those who vehemently objected to it: Did they actually watch it? Because if they had any negative feelings towards Glazer's speech, especially after watching his film, it suggests, to me, a deficiency in critical thinking.

Glazer's film portrays a chilling atmosphere where genocide becomes normalised, echoing real-world situations like the ongoing conflict in Gaza. The film serves as a stark reminder of humanity's ability to coexist with atrocities, often turning a blind eye for the sake of comfort.

The horrors adjacent to the characters' lives evoke contemporary parallels, particularly in regions like Gaza. With over five months of relentless violence, Israel's defiance of international court orders, and Western governments passively reprimanding while fueling the conflict with arms shipments, the spectre of genocide looms ominously. It risks becoming a mundane backdrop to daily existence. It is a stark portrayal of how affluent lifestyles can be linked to neighbouring atrocities, challenging the notion of denial and complicity.

The film doesn't centre around the Holocaust (Glazer's own words), with its specific historical context. Instead, it delves into a more universal theme: humanity's ability to coexist with atrocities and even derive some form of reconciliation or gain from them. The discomforting reflections are on purpose. It prompts us to acknowledge that the threat of annihilation of any people is always closer than we might imagine.

One of the most poignant moments in the film occurs when a package filled with clothing and lingerie pilfered from the prisoners of the camp arrives at the Höss household. The commandant's wife decides that everyone, including the servants, can select one item. She claims a coat for herself and trys on makeup discovered in one of its pockets.

How can the people who are so staunch against Glazer not draw parallels with Israeli soldiers who have recorded themselves rummaging through the lingerie of Palestinian women and slut shaming them? (Why are Israeli soldiers obsessed with Gaza women's underwear?) Or proudly displaying stolen shoes and jewellery for their partners back home (Israeli soldier loots Palestinian homes for his engagement party). Or celebrating International Women's Day with a photo of women soldiers posing for selfies against the backdrop of destruction (How an AP photographer made this image of Israeli soldiers taking a selfie at the Gaza border).

The film is rife with these parallels that it feels like a documentary. It is a grim reality: the potential emergence of the first live-streamed genocide, captured by its very architects.

Gaza doesn't mirror the systematic mass murder machinery of Auschwitz, nor does it approach the scale of Nazi atrocities. However, the entire purpose behind establishing the postwar framework of international humanitarian law was to equip us with the means to collectively recognise practices before history repeats itself on a large scale. And disturbingly, some of these practices – such as the construction of walls, creation of ghettos, mass killings, openly stated intentions of elimination, widespread starvation, plundering, gleeful dehumanisation, and deliberate humiliation – are recurring. And have been long before October 7th.

How do we disrupt the cycle of trivialisation and normalisation? What actions can we take? There are persistent protests and acts of civil disobedience to "uncommitted" votes, disrupting events, organising aid convoys, fundraising for refugees, and creating radical works of art.

And as genocide fades further into the background of our culture, some people grow too desperate for any of these efforts. I am certainly one of them.

Yet, these efforts seem insufficient, particularly when those in positions of power remain indifferent. It's insufficient when I watch a video of a little girl saying that the violence has made her feel less beautiful before she talks about her father being kidnapped by Israeli soldiers or of the orphans visiting their mother's burial spot in the street. It is insufficient when the death toll rises to exceed the daily death toll of any other major conflict of the 21st century.

Perhaps it's unfair of me to prioritise one tragedy over another, given the multitude of suffering in the world – the ones that are in the news cycle and the ones that are not. Yet, my connection to Palestine and its plight feels as personal as it can be without me actually being Palestinian, fostered from childhood teachings and further enriched through my own research. I have loved ones directly impacted by this conflict: friends in the diaspora grappling with survivor's guilt, friends in the West Bank enduring the daily hardships of occupation. And my friends in Gaza are all either dead, dying or being pushed straight into the arms of death.

The realisation that my efforts to help them are insufficient fills me with frustration. I'm angered by the indifference of those in power and by the hostility encountered by those attempting to bring the truth to the forefront.

[jewishbarbies]

you’re so right like, the argument of “only indigenous people deserve human rights in the Israel/palestine region” is so weird to me because… everyone deserves human rights. What’s so funny about that is that it’s mostly white Americans who say that, sitting on their couches in their houses that are built on Native American soil busy saying that only indigenous people deserve rights… hmmm. And I know that over time, many words and phrases lose their meaning but how did we go from Zionism/zionist = wanting/believing in Jewish homeland to Zionism/zionist = terrorist child killing trafficking colonising blood sucking demon??? Like I’m sure that everyone who is pro Zionism or anti Zionism (using the actual definition of Zionism) has their own reasons for why they believe what they believe, like when I first learnt of Zionism, I was under the impression that it meant wishing for a theocratic state and I’m completely opposed to theocratic states of any religion due to my belief of separating religion from government, but when I learnt more about Israel, I was like ohhhhhhhhhhh that makes more sense. And it’s like, it doesn’t really matter whether you believe Israel has the right to exist or not because… Israel already exists. It’s already a state. It’s been one for decades now and it’s not gonna stop existing just because you want it to. I don’t know why people are arguing about this. Lots of people are so thirsty for an unnecessary revolution, like people are actively wishing for the Hunger Games to be real and are attempting to draw parallels between THG and real life lol. I remember they were doing that with the met gala. Being like “this is like the Capitol, look at these rich people dressing up and playing pretend while people die” not realising that these rich people are there to preserve the art stored in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Culture because preserving and maintaining art is actually really fucking expensive and art is history that is necessary to be preserved. You know what will actually be like the Hunger Games??? Project 2025.

[phantom-of-the-memes]

is it okay to learn gaeilge if you aren’t irish but most of your heritage actually is from ireland? i totally get what you were saying with your other post about barely having irish heritage and making it an aesthetic but if that’s not the case it’s not like a closed language right?

Ok so I’m going to go on a bit of a rant here and explain my post and my feelings about this.

First and foremost, it’s not a closed language.

More people learning Irish is always a good thing. However, I think you should ask yourself your intentions for learning Irish. This is where Irish people’s annoyance at US Americans can come in.

Firstly is regards to my posts about my frustrations at Americans making my post about Ireland and our relationship with Irish and efforts to preserve it, about themselves. Sometimes the best way to be and ally to a cultural group that you are not in, is to say nothing and to simply listen. This is something we deal with on the daily, and have dealt with for centuries. Having lived in the USA for centuries and now culturally being an American, you do not feel this.

I think because America is such a mish mash of DNA, you guys have a different idea of race than we do. We identify as nationalities rather than race. Yes we are black or white, but first and foremost we are Irish or Nigerian or Korean or whatever!

An Irish person is someone who lives in Ireland, who is immersed in our culture, who is affected by our laws and politics. Not someone who had a relative centuries ago that was Irish, but is now part of a different culture. You can have zero Irish ancestry and be Irish because you live on the island! Minimising a whole culture down to blood percentages is weird and not at all how it works.

Here is when the “celtiboo” (Celtic weaboo, ie, someone who is obsessed with and fetishises the Celtic nations such as Ireland) issue comes in. Someone could have ten different DNA percentages of different European countries, yet they focus in on Ireland. This is because of the fetishised idea that people have of us and our culture. People refuse to listen to Irish people, and will only believe their idea of what our culture and history is. I know this first hand living in a city that is inundated with tourists on the daily. My sister is a tour guide at a massive historical site here. US Americans won’t listen to us.

You don’t really see this with these same people who might have French DNA for example. And there is a massive difference between our Languages. French is a language that is far from endangered. It is itself a colonisers language. You learn French so you can go to French speaking countries and use your skills. With Irish, realistically you won’t get to use it. We only get to use it when studying in school or in Gaeltachts (Irish speaking areas), and they aren’t that common.

So you have to ask yourself why you do you want to learn it? Is it for a gimmick or party trick? Something you can pull out that other people in your country won’t have heard of?

When we say we want to preserve Irish, we mean that we want our people in Ireland to be able to speak it. We aren’t trying to spread that language around the world. We just want to restore things to the way they were before England colonised us.

Anyways, in conclusion, just please don’t claim to be a nationality that your aren’t and try to speak on our issues. Please be respectful of native languages and when people from the affected group speak on our troubles, just listen! Please don’t reply making it about yourself and your whatever percentage DNA that put you in “exactly the same position” as us, because it doesn’t.

[matan4il]

Im currently doing a simple poll on my other account what Tumblr thinks of a Free Palestine and I say the results so far are a little concerning

And then two comments so far:

ardwolff: That's like saying we give a small chunk of land back to the indigenous American people and keep the rest for ourselves while we "live in peace" -- y'all do realize a Palestine historically was home to Jewish people and can be again if we abolish the Israel - backed apartheid ethnostate. No theocratic ethnostates should exist. They are inherently unjust

beigale-shtuchim: hey buddy what happened to the jewish population in MENA states?

Hi! First off, sorry that it took me so long to reply, I am getting so many asks, and I do not have as much time to reply as I would like, despite doing my best to find it... But I hope you know that I appreciate everything you do!

Thank you so much for doing this poll, and for sharing the temporary results. Do you have the final ones? If so, I hope you consider adding a link to them here.

There are different strategies researched in psychology about how to persuade people to come around to your position. It actually started out with marketing, but can be applied to any campaign aimed to get the public to subscribe to a specific position. One of them is the "foot in the door" strategy, a term that comes from those salespeople who show up on your doorstep, trying to sell you stuff you weren't even looking to buy. Their first challenge is how to keep you from slamming the door in their faces. If they right away offer you to buy something big and expensive, which you don't even need, you're likely to do exactly what they don't want. But if they get you to agree to something small, then they "got their foot in the door," you won't slam it in their faces 'coz you agreed to something small, and now they have you engaged. And the more engaged you are, the more invested you become. If you've already said yes to the small thing, you're now invested, and they can start talking you into why, if you're gonna buy this thing anyway, a bigger and more expensive version makes more sense.

The way it is defined here: "The foot-in-the-door technique (or FITD) is a strategy used to persuade people to agree to a particular action, based on the idea that if a respondent will comply with a small initial request then they will be more likely to agree to a later, more significant, request, which they would not have agreed to had they been asked it outright."

That's what the anti-Israel movement basically did. They started out with a smaller, more reasonable request, for people to care about the "Palestinian problem" (which means they were getting more and more people invested in it), and agree to a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish one. That wouldn't be as hard for people to agree to, especially since Jews themselves had agreed to that notion back in 1947, when they accepted the UN partition plan. Then, once people are invested in caring about the Palestinian problem, the discourse switched to how Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state, and the only solution is to destroy it. Now all of a sudden, if you really care about Palestinians, then it's not enough to support a two state solution, you have to be against Israel, you have to be against Zionists, you have to be against the Jewish right to self-determination, anything less than that, and you are failing the Palestinians (who by now are depicted as the world's greatest victim, even though there is plenty of comparison data to refute that notion). And you do care about the Palestinians, right? So you gotta be against the Jews. Sorry, Zionists.

Also, I would love to hear what chunk of the land @ardwolff lives on they gave away to native people, while they're so willing to distort the history of Israel and erase the native rights of Jews here, making us the only native nation to have returned to its ancestral land, only to discover the world wants to displace it again. First it was done by the Romans 2,000 years ago through colonialism, now it's "in the name of" anti-colonialism (as its been packaged by your friendly FITD seller), but by punishing a native population, it's playing right into the hands of colonialists still...

I hope you're doing well! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[shakespearean-dream]

last of the big five yall!!!!

happy late fourth of july! remember to keep boycotting, speak out and listen to palestinians, the people of congo, native americans, queer/trans people and women currently being oppressed this independence day because america fucking sucks!!! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅🔥🔥🔥

here are a couple good places to donate! please remember to do your own research and take care of each other, it’s getting scary out here.

ohhhh nimdok, where to start with you….

i have been dreading doing him because he pisses me off so bad but i actually had some decent fun with him :D. designing him and branching out farther away from his canon self was nice, but im not touching his backstory or personality really, that stays about the same for me in my head.

speaking of whichhh! like benny, i understand how the game makers had a short amount of time to fit an entire character arc of an old man undoing his deeply internalized racism/xenophobia/ableism in a singular short scenario, but unlike benny i actually somehow like his better?? nimdok had a lot more to get over (well not saying being a dickhead murderer isn’t a lot but 😭) and i enjoyed seeing him actually help out the people he would’ve previously turned in. it still feels a little hollow/unrealistic because again, he’s been like this his whole life, but considering how much AM takes him away from the group to (most likely) psychologically torture him for his actions he’s probably had a bit of a revelation.

doing his scenario was unfortunately funny at times because of the strange way we had to go about redeeming him with the golem guy😭giving him a smooch caught me off guard but ykw? i’ll take it for being able to kill mengele like immediately afterward. also speaking of whichhhh…

i would go into more detail about nimdok and mengeles relationship to give it some depth because god i love me some queers, but that is??? a real fucking guy???? a real life monster???? im less than comfortable picturing the fucker in my mind, much less giving him depth with a character who i also don’t like. like why ship ur essentially OC with a REAL LIFE N/AZI??? just another one of the reasons harlan elision creeps me out. (if that just pissed you off google search him s/a-ing 2 people, marrying a 19 year old when he was in his 40s and defending a child r/apist i really don’t feel like arguing with you. the guy was a horrible fucking person and he makes me sick, i just like this franchise.)

i cannot cough up anymore thoughts about this fella pls forgive me; these past couple days have been rough on my 3 brain cells. AM will for sure be next and after that fully rendered/decked out full bodies are in order!! so look out for that:]]]] i may also start posting some art fight things since i was just complaining about the lag a post or so ago☺️ jk ily artfight. team seafoam lets goo

ok i love u guys!!! if u have any requests for me drop a comment or an ask, and thank you so much for the continued support on my art❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ lots of links on this post but one more quick reminder to take a look at my commission page if you’d like!!! yolanda is still in the shop because they cannot figure out what’s wrong with her :(

have a good night friends 🫶

[stardust-sunset]

We always talk about the Curtis bros, but do you have any Johnny hcs? ❤️🎞️

Oh absolutely!

(tw for suicide and s/h mentions)

He used to feed the stray animals of the lot-he’d be walking to the Curtis’ house and there would be an army of kittens and puppies following him

He names them all too, he has favorites but he won’t admit it

His favorite is a black lab he named Mocha and a dark brown cat with green eyes that he named Cinnamon (he loves his food related names)

He has the biggest appetite out of everyone in the gang-when the Curtis brothers would host thanksgiving they would make two turkeys for that reason alone

He’s very light footed and will sidle people by mistake

He hates bio because he hates dissecting things (more so after bobs death- i refuse to accept that Johnny died)

He knows karate because he would watch through a window (tying together Ralph Macchio’s roles lol)

His hair is canonically super fluffy not greased back (in the movie at least) and he secretly loves when people play with it but will never let anyone actually do it unless it’s a gang member

He always makes sassy little quips under his breath and no one gets mad because they’re actually kinda funny and original

Before their deaths, Johnny was super super close to Mrs. Curtis

Like she would leave slices of cake or leftovers from dinner on the windowsill because she knew he was too prideful (and too worried about bothering anyone) to actually ask

He doesn’t get bloated no matter how much he eats. Soda is insanely jealous

He’s not big on cuddling because he’s just jumpy but sometimes he’ll snuggle up with Pony in the lot

He’s one of the shortest in the gang, right after Sodapop (i’d say he’s 5’10’’ or so)

‘He is undefeated in burping contests and he’s proud of it (unless he’s in public then he gets all shy. Dally gives him shit for it like “come on we’ve all heard you before! don’t get all chicken on us now!”)

He isn’t subtle about being hungry either. He by far has the loudest stomach in the gang (coincidental for him being so quiet)

Him and Pony were inseparable as kids and Soda was insanely jealous (he got over it after Mrs Curtis explained Johnny doesn’t have anyone at home like Pony and that Soda has him all the time while Johnny doesn’t)

He never drinks. Ever. Even when he’s of age because he’s seen what it’s done to his parents and it scares him

The rest of the gang know this and they don’t drink around him or come near him when they’re actually drunk

He’s the prettiest crier you’ll ever see

He was an oops baby and his parents have no shame in telling him so. Because of this he often feels like a mistake and takes it out on himself in very bad ways

He has an older sister but she ran away and left him behind. He used to resent her for it but then started wondering if he would’ve gone through with it if she had gone with him

He loves croissants

He isn’t a fan of chocolate and swears sour/gummy things are better (him and Pony have bickered about this)

He has no problem standing up for himself against the gang if he thinks they’re being unfair to him

He’s not really competitive but he’s oddly good at making bets

He doesn’t bother taking a lunch period in school because he never has food anyway

He gets easily embarrassed when people know he’s hungry because he feels like he’s being a burden or something

His mom is Hispanic and his dad is Native American

He’s fluent in Spanish because of this and knows a bunch of insults (mainly because his mom used them on him)

He has a high spice tolerance but spicy stuff makes him burp and hiccup like crazy

He’s a quiet crier. Like he’ll just put his head down and you’ll hear teeny tiny gasps. He kinda trained himself to be quiet though

He loves ducklings. He’s rehabilitated a number of animals because he has genuine care for them but ducklings and birds were always his favorites

He’s on the ace spectrum (Demisexual)

He has the biggest brownest eyes imaginable and knows when to use the puppy eyes to get what he wants (even Dally can’t so no to those puppy eyes)

He often makes jokes absolutely degrading himself and the gang always sits him down for a “101 reasons why we love Johnny” session

He made a joke about offing himself one time. Did not end well. The gang panicked and wouldn’t let him be anywhere alone for months because they were so worried

Speaking of, he’s attempted a number of times but was obviously never successful

He always feels a lump in his throat when he sees anyone with s/h scars because it means they’re hurting in a similar way to him

His parents tried to institutionalize him once but the gang got there before anything could actually happen

His response she to fear tends to be snap back. It’s all he knows. So if he’s afraid or feels threatened he will snap and yell at you

He hates feeling like a pet. The soc girls at school would treat him like a quiet shy pet until he snapped back at them

He despises nearly every soc (before he met cherry and expanded his thought process)

He has a pine allergy and once Darry had a pine scented candle and he almost died (Darry felt awful because he didn’t know)

Whenever the gang roughhouses they go light on him and make a point to not insult him because they don’t want it to turn into something his parents would do

I kinda like to headcanon that he has vitiligo but on his arms and back and such but he’s really insecure about it so he hides it

He has pretty bad PTSD and his panic attacks are intense

He has told the gang to “shut the fuck up” when they got too loud

Coincidentally he despises johnnycakes (he melts when it’s used as a nickname for him tho)

He’s kinda big on pet names because he didn’t get that a lot as a kid from anyone besides Mrs. Curtis. But he also doesn’t like to feel babied

That’s all I have for now-really went on the angst train…woof-anyway-hope you enjoy!

[blindseer0]

Jenna During Carl's Route

(Spoilers for Carl’s Route)

(New analysis, now formatted for Tumblr. I swear they won’t all be about Jenna, but I needed to get this one out of my system. If you haven't read my last post about Jenna, I'd recommend it since I'll be referencing it here.)

https://www.tumblr.com/blindseer0/757394083370123264/who-is-jenna-and-what-is-her-route-about?source=share

In my last post I talked about how Jenna is one of the characters people have the hardest time getting a handle on. Part of that is because she mostly features in two routes: 1) her route, which I’ve already talked about, and 2) Carl’s Route, where she’s possessed for most of it; so she’s obviously acting out of character, right? Well, no, I think Jenna is actually still herself in all the ways that matter, and Carl’s Route is both a great look into her and just as much her route as his.

Between the possession by John and the influence of the Hum, how can I say that Jenna is still herself? Well, let’s look at how the possession works. John and James can influence their descendants, Jenna and Carl, and their ability to do so increases as the week goes on, being at its strongest in the dream mansion. James is able to “control” Carl while he sleeps during the early parts of his route, making him ram the wall and hide evidence of what James did to John. Otherwise, we don’t see any other effects until the Hysteria is in full effect and they’re in the dream mansion.

While in the dream mansion, James is able to communicate with Carl in his dreams, and, if not talk to him, “hint” to him what the “correct” course of action is. Carl describes this as making him feel powerful, confident, all the things he’s not normally able to be and feels he lacks. Most importantly though, Carl knows James is separate from him and can choose not to do what he wants. The pivotal route choice is whether Carl should let James take full control or fight his influence. If you choose “Fight it”, James loses all influence over Carl for the rest of the route, and Carl describes it as “easy”.

If Carl, whose defining traits are a lack of confidence in his ability and an overreliance on others to make difficult decisions for him, is able to fight the embodiment of privileged, colonial overconfidence that is James, why is Jenna, who everyone says is the strongest person they know, so easily influenced by John? The answer is she lets him, because, like Carl and James, John gives her something she’s always wanted: the permission to get fucking angry at the injustices in her life.

Jenna doesn’t hate Carl, but her family does. They blame him (and his family) for everything that is wrong in their lives, for why they’re the messes they are, and for why their lives are miserable. But Jenna has defined herself in opposition to her family. In this narrative they’re the victims, and nothing that is wrong is actually their fault, so Jenna refuses to let her family’s past define her and refuses to be a victim (which I talked about in the last post).

AND TO BE CLEAR, western expansion and genocide is a huge fucking factor in her family’s current state (and the lives of real Native Americans). What James did to John even more so. They don’t have to forgive and forget what was done to them, and neither I, nor the game, think Native Americans should do so. Jenna is still defined by her heritage and cares about it, as shown by her grandmother and chiding Flynn for going to the casino, but the anger her family has isn’t something she lets out.

Jenna and Carl are foils in more than just their heritage though. Jenna grew up poor, in an abusive, controlling household that offered her no privacy (in Route 65 her door is literally removed) or autonomy (she doesn’t have a car and doesn’t seem to have a cell phone in Route 65). Her parents seem to be chronically unemployed, she’s watched her brothers literally and metaphorically killing themselves, and she has no future if she stays in Echo.

Carl, on the other hand, grew up the only son of rich and decent, if absentee, parents who don’t go through his stuff, control what he does (we know he played M rated games as a child) and didn’t really care where he went (like the Route 65 party). Unlike Jenna, who is probably the first person in her family to go to college, Carl is expected to go to college as a matter of course and has a guaranteed, successful, career ahead of him.

This isn’t to say that Carl doesn’t have his own problems or that they’re not serious issues, but to point out that, to Jenna, he has everything she has been denied. It’s also important that he’s a man and she’s a woman, and the societal pressures they feel are different. (I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that he’s into Western Comics and wants to be an artist, while Jenna is into Manga/Anime, something she views as a luxury. They both use comics to escape from the real world, but in very different ways.)

Chase and Carl tell us that Jenna yelling at Carl during his birthday party isn’t like her, but I think the stuff she’s saying is perfectly in character. We see her say similar things in her route about Leo and Heather (which Chase says sounds rehearsed) and in Flynn’s route about Flynn. She’s taken her life in her own hands, left Echo against all odds, and is making something of herself. She’s done this all by herself with no support (or so she tells herself). For Jenna, college is a way to leave Echo, and the fact that Carl would just give up and stay there, to rot away like they both know he is, is inconceivable. If she could leave and make it, then he, with all of his privilege, can do the same and it’s completely unfair that he’s choosing to waste it.

No, what I think is actually unusual for Jenna isn’t what she’s saying, but the fact that she’s saying it aloud. Jenna talks about how Socketman usually appeared “when I was sad, or angry, like when dad was having one of his…moments.” People who grow up in abusive households like that learn not to talk back, not to get angry or sad, because it will just make the abuse worse, so Jenna made sure not to let any of that out (I’d love to go into how Socketman plays into this, but that will be its own post). Making herself seem calm and personable to the outside world was also a survival method, because she didn’t want anyone’s pity or scorn. (Again, gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity play into all of this).

And despite being her closest friends, because they’re her closest friends, Chase and Carl don’t know about this side of Jenna because she made sure they wouldn’t. She didn’t talk about her home life, she didn’t tell Chase in Route 65 why she had missed school, and she didn’t tell any of them about the situation with Heather, even when Leo directly asked her.

So, when the Hysteria starts effecting her, Jenna lets out everything she’s been holding in. All of the negative emotions, her anger at the injustices she’s faced, her frustrations with her friends and the unfairness of life, she unloads them all on Carl, a symbol of rich, colonial privilege. It’s not fair to him, but she’s not wrong to feel that way either.

She’s grown-up hearing about what the Hendricks did to the Begays, and she pushed it down. She grew up seeing Carl have all these things she was denied, and she pushed it down. She saw Carl wasting his life despite all of that and she (tried to) just push it down.

And when she ends up in the dream mansion and John tells her it’s all Carl/James’ fault, that they can be angry at the injustices that have been done to them together, that they can let it all out, she lets him take control of her, because it’s exactly how she feels.

(This is also why I think Carl's route is a great exploration of colonialism, generational trauma, what the descendants of the colonizers owe the people they genoicded, and the stories they tell themselves about those actions, but this is not the post to go into that and I am arguably not the person to do so.)

To summarize, I think Jenna is perfectly in character during Carl's route, even when she's possessed by John (an action she lets happen) because it is the route where she gets to vent all of her frustrations, personal and generational.

Carl's route gets a lot of flak as skippable or most boring, but I think there is a lot more to it on second read than most people give it credit for. I think the character work for Carl, Jenna, and even Chase are all top notch, and it has some of the most interesting overarching themes in the game. If you haven't played it recently, I recommend going back to it and giving it another try; it's rough and definitely not perfect, but there is a lot of good there as well.

(If you're a certain type of brain rotted, it's the "Stay/Night" to Leo/Jenna's "Unlimited Blade Works" and TJ/Flynn's "Heaven's Feel".)

Remember, all of this is just my read and interpretation of the text; if you disagree, that’s ok. I just wanted to explore some of the nuances I don’t often see talked about and give people another perspective on this game and these characters.

Going to try and work on the post about “Leo, Jenna, and College in Echo” so that I can actually write about “Leo and Conservatism”, but I saw people talking about Carl’s Route and had to get this out of my system. Until then, continue to imagine people, and characters, complexly.

[artist-issues]

Hi! I've seen you comment a bit here and there about Pocahontas. This movie has had this quite messy reputation attached to it since it came out and hasn't been able to escape from it since then. Personally, I've always liked Pocahontas, but I do acknowledge that it has its glaring issues, especially when it comes to the context of what actually went down and Pocahontas's true story. I'm interested in reading your thoughts on the movie and what Disney could have done better regarding the whole "diversity" and historical accuracy thing. I genuinely believe Disney had the best of intentions when it came to the themes, message and depiction of Native American culture, but the execution unfortunately did not seem the most appropriate at times. What do you think?

I don’t know. I don’t have a settled opinion on Pocahontas. I will say I really enjoy it, and I think maybe the aesthetics of the movie are what appeal to me the most because it’s the one I want to have on in the background most often.

When you say “what Disney could’ve done better regarding the whole ‘diversity’ and historical accuracy thing” and “did not seem the most appropriate at times,” I don’t know if I understand what you mean. I don’t know if I understand what anyone means when they say that.

There are almost zero cold hard facts about the historical Pocahontas that EXPERTS agree on. Almost zero. So when people say “oh no, it wasn’t historically accurate,” it’s like, “no, of course it’s not. It’s a fairy tale based on a historical person that we know very little about to begin with.” Seems like what they’re mainly mad about is that Historical John Smith’s version of Historical Pocahontas saving him is the framework for the animated film, and we all generally agree that his version was fake. And people are mad about that?

But…why? If it’s already supposed to be a fairy tale loosely inspired by a historical person we know very little about…I mean, nobody is furious with the Robin Hood stories and going “how dare you misrepresent Robin of Lockersley, 1160, and King Richard I!!” Because we all know that they’re stories loosely based on—anyway. You get my point. Why would you have beef about a fairy tale being based loosely? Moving on.

You can say “because now generations of kids are growing up thinking that’s the real story of Pocahontas!! What an outrage!”

…All right, well, then you’re doing a terrible job teaching your kids discernment as a parent. When kids I’m responsible for watch a movie, I tell them “it’s a movie. It’s not real.” If it’s a movie about historical events, I tell them, “If you want to know more about the real story, let’s learn about the real story.” It’s not on Disney to teach your kids that a fairy tale is a fairy tale, it’s on you.

Anyway, you get it. Moving on.

Thing is, the Pocahontas movie’s message is “Love tries to understand, not to possess.” Great message. Especially good when applied to the problem of prejudice.

So then, they just shift the events, the character motivations, and the depictions around as needed, like they would any fairy tale in order to send that message in the best way. And because it is a fairy tale, not a documentary, great. Do it.

If Historical John Smith’s fake story makes that message more compelling, great. Use pieces of it. Why not? After all, they never claimed that this was the true, accurate history of colonization, the Anglo-Powhatan war, or John Smith’s interactions with Pocahontas. If they had made that claim, sure, let’s talk about historical accuracy. But they didn’t, so let’s not.

That’s all I had to say about the “historical inaccuracies” thing. Now let’s talk about “representation.”

What is it that people have an issue with here? Did they really want Disney to animate hundreds of Powhatan’s people dying of disease? Did they want Disney to animate heads getting chopped off and women getting raped? What’s the argument? That Disney should’ve made the colonists the clear and undeniable villains, the monsters of history, and the Native Americans 100% pure and innocent, wronged victims?

They’re not mad that Disney did a bad job representing Native Americans in a movie that was supposed to be a fairy tale. They’re mad that Disney didn’t represent Native Americans the way they would’ve.

Far as my eyes can see, people who call Pocahontas racist or misrepresentative just don’t want the story to be “Love tries to understand, not to possess.” They want the story to be “White colonists were unredeemable racist monsters and sub-human tyrants who deserved to rot in hell, while the Native American people were entirely innocent victims who did nothing wrong.’

The problem is that’s just not a true, or even helpful message for any movie to have. Sorry. The statement I just typed out up there in bold is not a true or helpful statement. And thank God the Pocahontas movie didn’t make it.

There’s nothing racist being said in the Pocahontas movie. There are depictions of the sin of racism in the Pocahontas movie. There is a difference. Characters in the Pocahontas movie talk and sing about each other as if the other people group is sub-human. That is a depiction of racism. But the message of the movie, and the way it treats Native Americans, is to treat them like human beings. Therefore, the message is not racist.

In terms of who is good and who is bad, who is right and who is wrong, the movie very clearly shows that the Native American characters did not start the violence. The Native American characters did not want war. The Native American characters were willing to be friendly and willing to defend their land and each other. The Native American characters were the first to try and make peace with the colonist characters. And they were all (Kocoum included) entirely human characters. They were even the good-guy-coded characters, in the movie’s conflict. All of the Native American side characters are noticeably smarter, kinder, drawn more carefully, and are more heroic than the white characters. (When Thomas is thrown overboard the other white side characters leave him behind. In contrast, when Namonteck is shot the other Native American side characters rescue him immediately and fall back.) And, not a caricature among them. Meanwhile, Wiggins, Ben, and Lion are all drawn with exaggerated characteristics. The heroine is Pocahontas the Character, not John Smith the Character. So what is the issue you have?

What people think is racist is the “idealization” of a Native American woman falling in love—or, as they like to say now—“committing herself to a white colonist.” But that’s like…a gross oversimplification of the movie. John Smith (the character) committed himself right back to her, nobody wants to talk about that? Also, they low key didn’t commit themselves to each other at all costs—he tries to, at the end of the movie, stay with her or have her come with him, and she won’t leave her home and her people?? So what’s the argument?

Not to mention, why is anyone even upset that the character Pocahontas falls in love with a white colonist character? Are you saying that this sort of thing would never happen? That a young woman who’s people are embattled with and mistreated by invaders would never find one invader who comes to an understanding with her, and then they fall in love? You’re mad because that would never happen? Incorrect. It happened all the time in history. It happens all the time in other stories you love, like West Side Story.

Who the heck cares if it didn’t happen exactly that way (even though maybe it did) with the historical Pocahontas? We already established that this wasn’t supposed to be a historically accurate retelling, it was supposed to be a loosely-based fairy tale. And the message “Love tries to understand, not to possess,” works perfectly with a fairy tale where the girl from one side of a racially-charged hate war understands and falls in love with a guy from the other side.

I mean people who talk about Pocahontas, the historical figure, with reverence and respect, all usually agree on one thing: she did help maintain some kind of peace between colonists and Native Americans. Whether or not you think the colonists should’ve even been there in the first place is beside the point—sorry, but it is; they were there, now let’s deal with the reality.

So when Disney makes a movie where the goal is to tell the message “Love tries to understand, not to possess,” and they have to be true to the universally-agreed-upon “Pocahontas probably helped bring some peace…” in their fairy tale…why on earth do you have a problem with Pocahontas the Character falling in love as a reason for bringing about that peace?

It’s because you don’t find “falling in love” to be anything other than demeaning for a woman. And it’s because you don’t want John Smith, or any white colonist character, to be depicted as human. You want them all to be unredeemable racist monsters.

The goal is no longer to have movies that say what Pocahontas said. We don’t want movies where there’s messy racism, but then it ends with attempts at peace and understanding. We want movies where there’s entirely one-sided racism, and then revenge for that racism. That’s what we want. We want endless apologies and zero forgiveness.

And for better or worse, Pocahontas is not a movie about endless apologies and zero forgiveness.

IN CONCLUSION: 1. None of the “you” statements were directed at you, idiosyncraticrednebula. 🫡

2. Anyone who wants to teach me where I’m wrong is welcome to, but you have to show your work, and you have to be consistent, you can’t just say “lol imagine thinking Pocahontas isn’t racist. You are the problem.” and then block me. 🙄 all right, well, you can, but all you’ll get out of it is an echo chamber.

3. If you want me to talk about the art, the storytelling, the quality of the movie outside of all this (and it should be outside of all this, because this was a fairy tale, not a historically accurate documentary) it’ll have to be in a different ask, and I’m happy to.

4. Should Disney have made it more clear that this was a fairy tale, a stylized story based only loosely on historical events? …Yeah. Definitely should’ve done a Prince of Egypt-style title card or something. But they didn’t—so now show me why it’s racist or misrepresentative.