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Okay so, I saw a post from a pro-Israel blog explaining why Israel was somehow justified in committing genocide, and I left a comment on it and it was immediately deleted. Then I tried to reblog with a response but I couldn’t, so I’m guessing op blocked me. But, as I refuse to be censored I will take the opportunity to talk about it here.
Here are some of the pro-Israel arguments I’ve seen:
“We don’t target civilians specifically”
What about the dozens of Palestinian journalists whose homes were specifically targeted, you don’t think that counts? Giving them “time” and “protection” to flee to the north of Gaza? That’s ethnic cleansing. You’re driving Palestinians out of their homes and forcibly displacing them so you can colonize that land. Israel officials have out right said they want to level Gaza, they’ve been very forthcoming that their goal is an ethnic cleansing.
“It’s a long, complicated history”
No it’s not. It’s colonization. It’s genocide. It’s not complicated. “It’s a complicated situation” is an argument commonly used by the oppressor to discourage people from having an opinion on the situation, or to discourage them from getting educated on a situation so they can’t form a situation. Most of the time, when people actually take the time to learn “the complicated situation, they find it’s not complicated at all.
“They get warnings before we bomb them so they can evacuate”
Do you not even see the irony in this argument. “We warn them before bombing them”.
“Siding with Hamas is antisemitic, because Hamas are antisemites.”
People calling for a ceasefire to a genocide and stop to ethnic cleansing does not make them anti-Semitic. I would argue it’s the opposite. Calling anyone supporting Palestine antisemitic is a way for the pro-Israel side to justify the censoring of their voices. It’s a way of holding onto some semblance of moral high ground, even if it’s an absolute lie because people calling for an end to a genocide has nothing to do with being anti-Semitic.
“The Israel military isn’t trying targeting civilians, they’re targeting Hamas but Hamas is using the schools and hospitals as shields.”
This is essentially saying that killing Hamas is more important to the Israeli government than not killing innocent civilians. Which is sick. They have no value for Palestinian life. Also, the Israeli government can bomb any location, and then justify it by saying hamas was there. They’ve leveled cities, somehow hamas was occupying every single school, hospital, mosque and home in Gaza which justifies the murder of 10,000 civilians.
“Israel is defending itself”
Israel has murdered over 10,000 innocent people. They are committing actual war crimes. They do not have a right to do that.
“When Hamas exchanges the hostages, then this will end.”
They’ve tried. Israel refused because they didn’t want to exchange fuel and resources for the hostages. They value continued Palestine suffering over the lives of their own citizens. Also, those hostages have been killed in the air strikes. They don’t care about the civilians.
These are just a few. If anyone has any more feel free to share. Or feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong. Some of my information might be outdated.
#seeing arguments like these make my blood boil#but I do think it gives important insight into the pro-Israel mindset#these people really think that the murder of 10000 people is justified#nothing justifies that#Palestine#free palestine#save palestine#Gaza#Gaza strip#free Gaza#save Gaza#ceasefire#call for ceasefire#Jerusalem#Israel#anti israeli terrorism#social justice#activism#from the river to the sea palestine will be free#if anyone wants to add something feel free#I usually don’t post stuff like this but I just got so mad#censorship#anti censorship#why would someone try to justify a genocide#I do think it’s important to dismantle these arguments#once you start pulling those threads the pro-Israel stance just falls apart#it makes no sense when you apply logic and empathy#that’s why the us has been heavily censoring anything relating to Gaza#once people do even a little research it becomes startlingly clear how in the wrong Israel is#stand with Palestine
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Come to think of it.. why are the Cullens (exception being Carlisle and Esme i suppose) so unreasonably hostile towards the werewolves? like setting aside a few posts I've seen noting the racist undertones of the discrimination (the white/rich vampires looking down on the indigenous werewolves, as well as the exerpts I"ve seen in MS where Edward uses jacob unintentionally "breaking" the treaty by telling bella about everything as a "valid" reason to be free to murder the Quileute tribe if he wanted which is,,,,gross af), the Cullens don't really have much reason to hate them??
The werewolves on the other hand do have more valid reasons to distrust the Cullens/vampires in general imo. Like isnt it established canon that the werewolves exist because the vampires are in their land? Sam and Jacob in particular had their lives ruined becus of it, followed by the Clearwaters, Leah especially, and that doesnt include the other really young kids who were forced into phasing in BD when the witnesses and the Volturi all gathered (which,,,it's really weird how no one feels guilty about forcing all these kids into a change so early in their lives?? why not just move the meetup somewhere else using all that massive Cullen wealth to buy a different house far away from the area lol?) Not to mention even within the Cullens themselves, many of them have killed humans in their past (except Carlisle). Even if they're doing better by hunting animals now the fact they did have a body count beforehand + the Quileute's history with the Cold Ones is still reason enough for the tribe to be leery of any vampire.
Even if you were to say the Cullens are hostile because the tribe hates their existence, it's still a really weak justification imo. Because again, 1. their existence caused (forced!!) people to phase; 2. their kind is known for killing humans, who the tribe swore to protect 3. edward and rosalie supposedly hate what they are anyway so why are they mad that their self-hatred is given validation skskks
i dunno,,the whole thing just feels like a tacked-on vampires vs werewolves trope which is,,fine...if it were from any vampire but the Cullens.
I think it mostly comes from SM having a vague sense that vampires and werewolves are suppose to be enemies, but I 100% agree with you.
It makes total sense for the wolfpack to hate, resent, fear the Cullens. I've been saying it for years. There are a million reasons. Even if you accept the idea that they didn't know that their presence is what triggers the phasing of the wolves until Eclipse (and I generally do accept this; Edward seems genuinely surprised when Bella tells him this and says he'll have to tell Carlisle; and if there were already wolves in the area when they first came in the 1930s, they'd have no reason to think they were the cause of it), it's still coming back to an area they know they aren't wanted, and even from their own selfish POV, it's a huge risk to their own secrecy. The answer to 'why did the Cullens even come back?!' seems to be 'Because the story needed to happen.'
I mean if you had a family of serial killers move into the next town over, even if they promised they didn't do that anymore and were trying really hard to kill people . . . you wouldn't be happy, right? You'd be upset they were there. Edward and Jasper have killed lots of people, even if Edward specifically went after 'bad' men. And even if the Cullens don't know their presence is what makes the boys phase, the Quileutes themselves do, and are 10000% justified in being mad about it. And then there's the colonialism angle, which IMO SM didn't think about at all, but yeah, these (deathly) white folks coming onto ancestral Quileute land and making a treaty with them is not a great look. I think SM meant it as a 'wow aren't the Cullens nice for trying to live peacefully with them,' and missed the larger historical context and racism like whoa.
I generally like the Cullens as characters and find them interesting, but yes, 1000%, the shifters have every right to hate them. They are dangerous, they are frightening, they are encroaching on their land, they're forcing their children to become wolves. Some people (and kind of Bella??) seem to look at it as "prejudice" like "oh you shouldn't dislike them just because they're vampires," but that's . . . that's not what's going on here. Other than Carlisle they have all actually killed people. They are actually serial killers. The Quileutes aren't making assumptions here. It's accurate.
On the other hand, also agree with you it makes no sense for the Cullens to hate them in return! Their whole thing is "Not like other vampires" so just because vampires naturally hate werewolves (they aren't even technically werewolves!) doesn't mean the Cullens have to do it. They also just aren't the same kind of threat to the Cullens that the Cullens are to them, at least not initially when the Pack is small. And then there's the racism. If you're being generous, you can argue that SM was just going for the traditional "vampires call werewolves 'dogs'" thing, and there's probably a lot of truth in that. It's very common in vampire media, she did not invent it. The problem here is that she chose to make her main vampires white and rich and 'civilized' and they are hurling these insults at 'werewolves' she chose to make poor, Indigenous characters and it looks racist, even if her intention was just run of the will supernatural prejudice.
I remember an interview with the Cullen actors during the promotion of either New Moon or Eclipse, and someone asked if their characters hated the wolves and, paraphrasing here, Elizabeth Reaser, answering for Esme said with a sympathetic pout, "I don't hate the wolves, I just hate that they hate us," and Peter Facinelli, for Carlisle, said something to effect, "I feel really bad our presence made them change, I didn't know." I like to think that's accurate, that maybe they put more thought into it than SM did because an author doesn't have to deep dive into all her supporting characters, but an actor does have to think about it.
The Cullens didn't need to be antagonistic to the wolves. There's no reason for Alice and Edward and Rosalie to be nasty to them. "They're our natural enemies," I mean so what? You aren't a normal vampire. You're trying to rise above the hand you were dealt and be better than your vampire nature . . . but you're keeping the 'hates werewolves' part? Why? As long as you don't kill people or go on their side of the line they'll leave you alone. You should be grateful for that?? You chose to come here, you disrupted THEIR lives??
tl;dr: SM knew about werewolf/vampire feuds generally in other media, thought it was fun, didn't think through the implications when she made all her vampires white and all her 'werewolves' Indigenous.
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Are you gonna make any more Wenclair art? Just wanted to ask.
I want to. I really do. And I've been trying to draw for weeks now, but all the messages being sent to me of pro-genocide people who have been saying stuff like "I really like your work, but what you're saying really hurt me" has been making me so sick to my stomach that I can't draw. To think that there are people out there who would say that murdering 10000+ is justified and have been made happy by my art sickens me. I know logically speaking whoever would be my audience is not something i can completely control, but it's just been so hard to fully convince myself to draw regardless even with that mindset. I've drawn a lot of Wenclair art this past year anyways. Pls be patient while I take a break and just come to terms with all the shitty shit in this shitty world.
I've been writing tho? Maybe read my fanfics instead for now.
#sorry i dont mean to be... unbecoming#but with all the personal stuff im going thru as well im kinda at my worst rn haha
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so many people on ur incel post thinking that a Bad Person doesn't deserve any compassion, and any and all punishments become justified, despite those punishments being totally incompatible with feminist ideas.
this is the same thought process behind denying incarcerated people their rights
Also like... I am 10000% sure that, especially online, there are young boys in those communities who are there because they feel like shit and think it's the only community that they can have that will support them. See this reply by @havinganormalone
Most of these guys are not mass shooters or murderers. There's a good chance they are assholes of varying degrees of severity, and pretty much guaranteed to be some level of misogynistic.
But I don't want anyone to end up hurting themselves out of self hatred!!!!! Sorry but I don't!!!! I want them to stay alive to have the chance to become better people!!!! I don't enjoy wishing for the deaths of people in hate groups. If there is no other way to protect vulnerable groups I'm not against it, but ideally I want them to grow and change as people. And I am committed to seeing people's humanity and suffering, because pain is where the vast majority of shitty actions come from. So we can't deal with those shitty actions without confronting the fact that the people who do them are not mindless robots of evil, they are people who are hurting. We can hold people accountable AND acknowledge their pain.
& people keep saying "we don't hate them for their dysmorphia we hate them for being incels" but why do you think a lot of those guys ARE incels?? A lot of them view themselves as inherently ugly & unlovable. And you are mocking their self-hatred. That's not helpful. If an incel, like, gets punched by a woman for being a misogynist and cries about it online, I am gonna think it was well-deserved. But this is about them self-harming as a result of self-hatred, which is deeply concerning when it happens to anyone. & I very much did see people saying things which encouraged the idea that their dysmorphia was justified or mocking them for not just getting plastic surgery. Just like how people mock incels for being fat neckbeards!! Which people also justify by saying "well they are a hate group!!" so they dont have to think critically about why they are okay with bodyshaming when its against "bad people".
Incel ideology as I understand is built on the pessimism of men who feel they are inherently less than conventionally attractive men. They view themselves as inherently lesser people because they don't fit conventional masculine standards. And blame women for this because they are misogynists who haven't critically examined their misogyny and so they ignore the way the patriarchy is the one doing this to them. But if you are going to fix an issue you need to address the root cause. And the root cause here is self-hatred. Incels self-harming because they think they need a certain bone structure to be attractive isn't a coincidence, its fundamentally related to their incel-ness. & again I can't imagine there will never be a young boy who isn't even involved in those spaces who will see that or smth like it and feel like it would fix his self-esteem issues.
& you are very right about the incarcerated thing. The idea that "bad people" deserve no compassion & deserve every bad thing that happens to them is how horrific abuse in prison gets justified. And some of those people are innocent or jailed for objectively stupid crimes, but many aren't. And they don't deserve that abuse, especially since many of them are criminals because of some sort of suffering they experience.
Tumblr in general encourages revenge & dehumanization of "bad" people. Its no better than the criminal justice system in that regard, telling us that revenge is helpful, punishment is helpful, and we should all feed our gut desire to see bad people suffering as much as possible. & I do not subscribe to that. I don't think you can really be a prison abolitionist and subscribe to that (& in a larger sense I dont think you can hope to built a better society than we have currently and think like that). It's hard work sympathizing with people who do awful things but like I said, you can't let dehumanization thought patterns take root in your mind. I am very devoted to having compassion for everyone & once again people are surprised when that includes EVERYONE.
I'm not even really doing this for incels. I don't get in debates with people unless I believe they will actually listen to what I say and consider it in good faith, and many incels won't. But I'm not going to be a person who encourages this kind of self-harm, and I especially don't want to be someone who does that and justifies it to myself because they are "bad people" who "deserve it". I'm no cop or prison guard. And if there is someone who might be open to that kind of deprogramming, I want them to see my blog as a space that has compassion for their suffering. I want them to get better, not kill themselves and never get that chance. You can't have both.
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Oh...then I guess I went too harsh on Cdpr. Also I can read eng without problems, is just writing in it is a bit hard. Now I can at least put some (just some) fate in them.
But that still doesn't disprove my point with the whole 'The oppressed minority's are just as bad as their oppressors' thing. Because they did said: 'We were trying to make everything grey' and that's the problem. This is why I don't think they were trying to show how the military propaganda can affect traumatized soldiers, or how the children of fascist's can be subjected to hateful believes. If you take the oppressors's side, you (Geralt) are not trying to change their hateful believes, there's not even an opinion to do it. The game is trying very hard to justify their actions/motivation. Their whole narrative is 'the dude who does racist things is not racist, he has reasons' and not 'the dude who does racist things is not racist and he can furthermore realize how wrong he is'. Roche and Ves are not affected by propaganda because there is no propaganda. The Scoia'tael are terrorists, they actually do terrible things, and they do pose a threat to Roche and Ves's country. I guess saying there's no propaganda at all is a stretch, but the point still stands. What Roche accuses the Scoia'tael of doing - is true and you can see it for yourself. That's why I cited the example with the elves previously.
You can make an argument that in tw1 there was some sort off metaphorical narrative and how through religion you can propagate hateful believes. And Siegfried is the example. You do actually change his mind and go against fascists. But I don't think that's the case in the second game. Could be wrong ofc.
Maybe I'm taking it at face value lmao but that's how it looks like, to me at least. And I'm not trying to argue with you btw! Just clarifying what I failed to explain. But thank you for this discussion, it was very insightful for me! Now I can at least shit less on Cdpr. And sorry again for bothering you...I always try to explain myself in less than 10000 words but always fail and write even more just to get my point across properly.
Ah I see what you're saying about the 'greyness' that CDPR relies so heavily on. The devs go on and on about how no choice is simple and such, but a lot of the time - and especially in the case of TW2 and their Scoia'tael, this just means an overuse of the "Well-Intentioned Extremist" trope (which I'm so tired of):
A villain who has an overall goal which the heroes can appreciate in principle, but whose methods of pursuing said goal (such as mass murder) are problematic; despite any sympathy they may have with their cause, the heroes have no choice but to stop them. (TV tropes)
Perhaps unrelated, but I feel like there are huge parallels to be drawn with the flat writing in Disney's Falcon and the Winter Soldier:
[The villians] have valid goals— they want a world without borders in which newly-declared refugees can easily find homes, / But following [their leaders] bombing of innocent people / [they] appear to be beyond redemption despite [their] initial good intentions. (Source)
Making a group of oppressed people guilty of horrific crimes related to their search for freedom makes violent retaliation against them much more viable in the world of the story, but it's still bad writing, and it's a loophole that will always favor the comfort of the most privileged viewers.
So yes, within the game, the Blue Stripes are fighting terrorists when they face the scoia'tael. But - !!! I think this is only really true if you take Roche's path.
On Roche's path, the Scoia'tael fade to the background by the second half of the game, their (Iorveth's) long-term motivations/internal operations are never truly uncovered, and Roche's role in non-human oppression is not interrogated, not questioned in the way it should be.
However, Iorveth's path does break this down, albeit briefly if you want to get specific about Roche. Once you commit to Iorveth's path, the game takes on a far more sympathetic lens to the Scoia'tael, and when the 'free pontar' project is juxtaposed to the Blue Stripes 'beat nonhumans into submission' operations, things start to feel a lot...idk?? Less Grey? Black and white? I'm thinking of this conversation in particular:
Iorveth (to Geralt on the topic of the Blue Stripes) : These units recruit only those who have nothing left to lose. They're persuaded it's all for a greater good and are spoon-fed dreams of revenge for the death of their loved ones. (Youtube link, jump to 6:08)
Iorveth says outright that the Blue Stripes are violent maniacs committing war crimes based on lies told to them by kings (aka propaganda, but I've overused that word). You have to be pretty deep into his path to get here, it's an optional line, and there's no way of telling if Geralt really agrees with this, but I'm holding onto it because it's evidence that at least one writer was reading Roche the way I do.
So yeah, I agree with you that CDPR was pushing, or at least making a lot of room for a grey or even positive take on the Blue Stripes (which I find reductive even as a concept), but the 'blind tool of the state' narrative that I like to go with is still in there somewhere - but my god do you have to squint.
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thoughts on hawkeye
okay hawkeye is my favourite of the new mcu shows. and this is the only one that relies heavily on existing comics, comics that i care deeply about, so i'm pleasantly surprised to feel this way.
though i do have my gripes-not a huge fan of laura being mockingbird, the lack of credit or payment to the original artists and writers, and a few of the tweaks to kate's character-overall, i had a really fun time with this show.
I've done some thinking, and here's the thing. if we got a mostly direct adaptation of the comics to the screen, it would be a better story than the hawkeye tv show in many ways. but it wouldn't work with the mcu. not with this version of clint, and some changes had to be made to get the story to fit into the larger scale.
and they did such a good job with that. with small-scale storytelling against a larger backdrop. seriously they brought so many characters and elements together so well with it still feeling personal. they finally embraced the comics in a way that made the story thoroughly fun. like the christmas coloured tracksuits on the mafia characters? *chef's kiss* actually just the tracksuit mafia in general.
this show did such a good job with balancing camp and banter and lighthearted fun with serious moments and heartbreaking parallels. this show brought from me both genuine tears and laughter.
echo? stars i cried. so. freaking. good. jack? fricking amazing i love him. just shows up with his sword and is like "hi sweetie." amazing. the way they handle kate's mom? yes. thank you. yelena? please i love her. the macaroni. kate asking her to drinks. all of it. yes 10000% yes.
so many elements of this show were so well done. and their attention to each character? making them all feel real and fleshed out??? even these random larpers???? thank. you.
this show was character-driven and in the best way.
and you know what, all the people who wanted clint to die because they think he sucks and deserves to die for everything he did as ronin? well. i actually think the show redeemed him. it's not like clint's out here still going on murder sprees or trying to justify his actions. he acknowledges what he did and takes full responsibility for his actions, and even though he lives his life in a way that seeks to do good, he still carries this immense guilt and self-hatred and it's actually really well handled. the moment between clint and yelena was heart-wrenching.
this is the first mcu disney+ show i want to rewatch again and again. for the first time in a while, i feel like every character is well respected and given space for their stories.
i love clint. i love kate. i love yelena. i love echo. stars we got lucky the pizza dog and of course i love him. this is the marvel show i was most nervous about and guess what? i love it
#thank you for coming to my ted talk#hawkeye spoilers#hawkeye series#hawkeye#clint barton#kate bishop#echo#maya lopez#lucky the pizza dog#yelena belova#marvel#mcu#marvel's hawkeye#hawkeye 2021#hawkeye the series#hawkeye show#hawkeye tv#also i just really love christmas and having christmas be a part of the show made me happy
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Is Dylan really Kieran? A Theory Dissection:
So I’ve taken the time to process everything that’s happened in the amazing season finale of Purple Hyacinth because I didn’t want to rush into posting about it and I really wanted to let my thoughts about it simmer for a bit. I also decided to reread the entire season over the course of a couple days to get the best idea of how it worked as a whole. Once again if you haven’t read this yet please do yourself a favour and check it out it’s really phenomenal.
I’ll probably make a few posts about PH over the next couple weeks as we wait for season 2. However I won’t post an analysis of the finale mainly because Lanxyuu already did an amazing job of that already. Check it out if you’ve got the time, it’s 10000 words of pure analytical gold. Writing about any of that would be redundant. That being said the first thing I’m gonna talk about is the whole ‘Is Kieran actually Dylan’ theory that’s the new hot thing in the fandom, mainly because I’ve received a lot of requests to discuss it and also because I feel like I can add my own points to the debate.
So let’s just get it out of the way: do I think Kieran is Dylan? As of right now the answer is no. I just don’t think we have enough evidence to prove it, and what’s there is more circumstantial. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy theorizing about it. I’ve found that discussing and sharing theories and ideas is one of my favourite ways to interact with a fandom. So I’m gonna put all of the evidence that I’ve observed in the entire first season both in favour of and against this theory and show why I think we can’t say that Kieran is Dylan. I’m not telling you to not believe it. Believe what you want! Like I said it’s fun to do this. I’ve just been specifically asked my opinion and I want to be able to justify it through what I’ve seen in the comic itself.
For more of my posts about Purple Hyacinth check out my ‘ph posts’ tag!
So with all of that out of the way, let’s get started!
Evidence in favour of Kieran being Dylan:
One of the things I think most of us can agree on is that Dylan probably isn’t really dead. In general if I’m not shown a body, I don’t believe they’re dead. I’ve seen far too many movies and TV shows and have read far too many novels to be fooled by that. As of right now, in my head, Dylan is alive, or at least wasn’t killed in the bombing. So obviously if he isn’t dead then that frees him up to show up in the plot at some point or maybe he was there all along...?
This kind of ties into my next point: what happened to him then? His hat was found at the scene, so he must have lost it at some point before the explosion. This is all speculative, but he could have been snatched up by Tim and the driver in Lauren’s parents car. We heard Tim mention that children were in the car so it’s somewhat plausible that Dylan could have been kidnapped. Maybe he saw something suspicious and snooped around a bit which lead to him being snatched up or something. From there he’s tortured and broken and made into an assassin for the PS. Only he isn’t broken. He steels his resolve and does as he’s told because he’s now set on biding his time and getting revenge on those who robbed him of his life and humanity. It makes for a pretty compelling character arc.
The tragedy of his character arc could also be supplemented by the fact that when he was young, he wanted to be a doctor and save lives, but they made him into an assassin who takes lives. Brutally. Violently. Painfully. All of this would emphasize why he views himself as such a monster. The person he is now goes against everything the person he once was values. It’s this dichotomy that reinforces his ‘monster’ persona and allows him to justify this view of himself.
Another point is that this could explain why Kieran hesitated when he could have killed Lauren way back in episode 3. Of course he would hesitate to kill someone who was his close friend. Most of his murders were of people he either didn’t know or didn’t know very well. If he’d had a close friendship with her in childhood, it would obviously make him stop for a moment when he realizes who she is, just like he does in that episode. We even see Lauren say that if she knew why he hesitated then ‘everything would be different’. Obviously if she found out that he was her-long-lost-thought-to-be-dead friend, the person who symbolized her guilt for not stopping the bombing, the plot would be waaaaaay different. Just like the line about being the most blind of all in the prologue, the implications of this line are going to play a major role in the story, and this theory could explain that.
Then there’s those god damned purple hyacinths. Obviously Dylan’s knowledge of these flowers, both in their cultivation and meaning, are things that Kieran must know too. We pretty much know that they’re his signature for both their royal symbolism and their use in mourning, and that Kieran must have a stash of them growing somewhere. There’s also the fact that Lauren, who we know is very intelligent and well educated even at 12, doesn’t know the meaning of purple hyacinths other than their use as a symbol by the royal family. This tells me that their symbolism outshines their meaning in the traditional sense within the pop culture. Honestly, I didn’t even know the meanings of most flowers except for roses until I started reading this Webtoon. I’m not saying that people don’t know the meaning at all, I’m just saying it may not be common knowledge.
The final point I wanna talk about in favour of this theory is their appearances, since that will bleed nicely into the points against it for obvious reasons. So many people, myself included, have noticed that if you switch Dylan’s hair and eye colouring for Kieran’s, he’d basically look like little Kieran, and yes, I see it too. You could say that he could be dying his hair, it’s not crazy to believe hair dye exists in this world. How else does Belladonna have pink hair if they didn’t have access to dye? Unless it’s just stains from the blood of her victims… Actually that could be a theory lol but that’s not the point. Point is Kieran could theoretically have his hair dyed black, but it’s a bit of a stretch, as I explain in...
Evidence against Kieran being Dylan:
While he maaaaay be able to change his hair colour from light blond to black, there’s no way for him to change his eye colour from grey to blue. If rectangular glasses don’t even exist in this world yet (thank you Soph for this justification for why you gave him Harry Potter glasses), there’s no way that they’d have access to contact lenses yet. The other argument is that his eye colour changed with age but that feels a bit too... convenient for my taste. Odds are our boy Kieran is sporting the look he was born with. Additionally, with everything going on in his life and his priorities, when would he have the time to constntly maintain this look, and why would he feel the need to disguise himself in the first place? He already operates in the shadows of the night and none of the authorities, other than Lauren, were able to get close enough to describe his appearance. There would simply be no need for all of that extra disguising.
Speaking of his appearance, we’ve seen one of his victims recognize him before he murders them. He says something interesting: ‘You were that boy’. Now this whole thing is one of my favourite mysteries of the series, so you best believe I am jumping on this shit the second we get more info about it. But for now, I want to use it to show that this aristocrat, who were loyal to the crown and presumably hadn’t seen him in years, took one look at Kieran’s face and immediately recognized him from when he was a child. If this man knew he had these same features as a boy, then it’s safe to assume that he’s always looked like this. This also links him to the aristocracy, since there’s no reason why this man of high status in opposition the PS would know anything about him unless he knew him before he entered the PS. Dylan, on the other hand, was the son of a gardener. He was friends with Lauren sure, but he clearly was of a lower station in society than someone like Lauren or the other aristocratic families. It’s doubtful that he’d leave such an impression on this high society man.
On top of all of that, if he were really Dylan and this man really did see through his change in appearance, why wouldn’t Lauren see through it too? She was one of his best friends and thinks about him constantly. If this man was able to recognize him in a single moment but she still doesn’t recognize him after months, then odds are he just isn’t Dylan.
There’s also the fact that Kieran doesn’t lie when he tells Lauren his name. It’s the same name that people like Belladonna know him by and it’s the name he uses when he becomes the archivist in Lauren’s precinct. Like he said before: there’s no need for him to hide his identity. He’s protected by his reputation and the PS itself. I can see an argument where he could have ‘renounced’ his old name because the person he once was is dead and only the monster remains, which is again a cool theory , or you could say it’s to keep people from knowing that he’s actually alive. But there would be no real need for him to change his name. He could have two names just like the hyacinths have two meanings. I will say that this theory about ‘Kieran White’ not being his true name could also work in favour for him not being Dylan too as, if he was an aristocrat, the PS could have changed his name to hide him from his family as well, but that’s neither here nor there, just something to consider. For now we know that he really is Kieran White and there’s no evidence to disprove that (yet).
Finally, many of the points listed in favour of the theory; the motive, the character arc, the knowledge of flowers, it’s all circumstantial. For all we know, Kieran could be Dylan Rosenthal, or he could be some boy connected to the aristocracy or even the royal family. He could be Dylan Rosenthal, or he could be his own character with his own arc yet to be fully revealed who’s connected to Lauren somehow. The meaning of purple hyacinths could come from Dylan’s prior knowledge, or they could common knowledge and Kieran just bought ‘Gardening for Dummies’ or some shit to make sure he didn’t kill them. Any number of different things could really be at play that we simply don’t know yet. But we do know that a man recognized him at a glance while Lauren, Dylan’s best friend, didn’t recognize him whatsoever. We do know that there’s no proof that hair and especially eye colour can be changed in this world. We do know that we still have quite a ways to go in this story and that the answers aren’t what we expect.
Eph and Soph have done an amazing job of revealing the story to us in disjointed pieces so that when we finally get that one piece that fits, may of them fall into place too. How many of us realized it was her parents’ car in the picture before it was revealed in episode 49? Or thought that Harvey was a spy all along? I don’t think we know nearly enough about him to prove he’s Dylan, but what we do have at this moment is enough to disprove it. What we have now is primarily speculation versus hard physical evidence. We need to accept that we don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle yet and that we’ll only receive new ones little by little.
So, until we learn more about Kieran’s past or until we see ‘changing-eye-colour’ join ‘lie-detecting’ as a new supernatural ability, I’m afraid that I can’t fully get behind this theory. Again, this doesn’t mean I’m telling you not to believe it. Thinking about all the implications of Kieran being Dylan is a lot of fun, just like thinking about Kieran’s backstory and motives is fun. And I could be wrong about all of this, who knows? Writing this just got me really excited to see where his arc will lead us and even more excited for season 2!
Thanks again to everyone who wanted me to discuss this! I had a lot of fun writing it and would love to hear feedback from you guys about any thing you may want to contribute that I may not have mentioned. This post was born of a sleepless night into morning and a need to get all my thoughts out of my brain so it could finally turn off and let me sleep. I already have an idea about what I’m gonna write next so stay tuned and thanks again for all the support!!
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WIG REVIEW: VICE
2019 is shaping up to be a garbage fire just like 2018 so let’s get nostalgic for the George W Bush administration! Or expose them as the assholes who got us here. Or both? Vice aims to do all of the above and SO. MUCH. MORE. The style is much like director Adam McKay’s The Big Short which is to say it is the kitchen sink of directing. Just do everything! More is more! But what about the wigs? Let’s discuss.
When it was announced that Christian Bale would play Dick Cheney, the internet basically imploded into a bunch of “huhhhhs?!?!?!” but the film actually covers about 60 years with this idiot so it vaguely makes sense for him to play Dick. Also dude LOVES gaining or losing weight for a part so amen? We first see him as above during 9/11 looking like the pudgy Rasputin he is and then flashes back to the ‘60s where he is a total wasteoid ne’er-do-well who got kicked out of Yale for being the mid-century answer to Brett Kavenaugh and now can barely hold down a job at the electric company. This wig was passably good and not distracting.
Enter Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney (sorry this is the best picture I could find of this wig on the internet - also YIKES birkenstocks!) This wig was actually very ‘60s accurate for the college girl who wants to mold her drunken boyfriend into the eventual creator of ISIS. Lynne has some ludicrous monologue after she bails Cheney out of jail wherein she basically says “you’ve got to get your act together and become a leader because it’s the 1960s and I can’t do it because I’m a woman.” A teenage girl next to me in the movie theater actually blurted out “THIS IS SO CONVOLUTED” and I hope someday that girl becomes president (of the Academy Awards, at least?) This movie is NOT SUBTLE so yep - it basically spells out everything for you in either super convoluted or just blatantly insane terms.
Flash forward a couple years and (somehow?) Cheney HAS cleaned up his act and become a DC intern. I really wish we had been told why or how but this movie HAS NO TIME FOR THAT JUST GO WITH IT. This slightly longer late ‘60s wig is serving some serious muttonchop action and ok? Side note: this section of the movie suggests that Lynne Cheney’s dad murdered her mom and can we get a cold case show on this please? No? Moving on?
Anyway, in DC, Cheney meets Donald Rumsfeld (as played by Steve Carell) and becomes his protege. I have to say that these dude wigs are pretty good because usually dude wigs have this issue where the wig juts out at the nape of the neck and looks weird but these look good. Cheers!
Meanwhile, Lynne is giving her daughters all kinds of Machiavellian advice while sporting this dusty ass cast off from the Nicole Kidman wig collection. This is definitely not the lewk. I’m also really sad that this movie tries to give you ALL THE INFORMATION ALL THE TIME EVEN IF YOU DON’T WANT IT but somehow fails to mention Lynne Cheney’s seminal western lesbian novella, Sisters. It’s out of print but YES I OWN A COPY.
Speaking of lesbians, the Cheneys’ daughter, Mary is one! This is a major plot point in the movie because Mary’s life is in direct contrast to every GOP agenda and Cheney (at least in the movie’s telling of it) foregoes running for president in the ‘80s to shield Mary from any unwanted press about her. Which is nice until about 20 years later when the whole family totally dicks her over. (See what I did there?) Anyway, Mary is played by Alison Pill who is always great and mainly doesn’t wear a wig and instead has these awesome 80s comb-backs and I’m here for it.
Their other daughter, Liz, gets the award for absolute worst wig in the movie (and later, worst sister in the history of the world!) This bleach blonde mess is absolutely recycled from Kate Mara’s reshoot wig for The Fantastic 4 which is to say: THE WORST.
Aaaanyway, by the 1980s, Cheney has become a major DC power player and also has had about 5000 heart attacks (of 10000 total?) This whole lewk is basically off-brand George HW Bush. Lynne is giving me full out off-brand Dynasty and this wig is a definite improvement.
I’d also like to commend whoever was in charge of Cheney’s jowl work.
Finally, we get to Sam Rockwell as George W bush and honestly this is just the best (even if George W Bush and Dick Cheney are the absolute worst). These wigs serve the lewks we’re all familiar with from the early 2000s and also, and I cannot put a finer point on this: absolutely created ISIS. #NeverForget
Oh and Rummy is back to ruin some more hundreds of thousands of lives! I love Steve Carell but his Rumsfeld characterization was definitely: Steve Carell in a wig. There are worse things. Like ISIS!
In this end, this movie definitely shows how darksided all these people were and are while also serving up the best dude wigs I’ve seen in a long time! Lynne’s lewks were inconsistent and Liz’s was the pits but I think the dude wigs outweigh these shortcomings. The movie is kind of all over the place and really could have used more focus on that time Cheney shot that guy in the face (and less time with him justifying any of his darksided deeds!) Still, wig-wise:
VERDICT: WURQS
#wigwurq#vice#dickcheney#christianbale#amyadams#lynnecheney#sisters#stevecarell#donaldrumsfeld#wigsthatcreatedisis#samrockwell
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I've been feeling really down on myself lately, feeling like a failure bc I don't have a job or a house or anything like you're supposed to be hitting all these milestones in your life but I'm kind of going in the opposite direction idk existential crisis what if I'm making the wrong decision etc etc but like at the same time literally everyone I talk to (who are all on the right track with all these job+house+social life milestones, the people I'm literally judging myself against,,) tells me they're jealous of me and my life,,,, so like!!!! Get over it bitch you're living the dream!!!!!!!! You literally chose this so fucking embrace it and enjoy it while you have the chance!!!!!! Wtf!!!!! You had a life, you were on the (socially prescribed) "right track" and you were depressed and desperate to escape it the entire time!!!! So like now that you're free stop trying to get back into the cage!!!! Wtf!!!!
Anyway. Gotta keep reminding myself that I'm doing the right thing. Life is short/long so fucking enjoy it and don't try to force yourself into doing whatever you think you're "supposed" to be doing, just enjoy your fucking life. Money isn't real and death is coming for all of us so like stop living in fear and just embrace whatever time we have here on this magical planet ! Kiss people and make mistakes and go camping in the woods with no cell reception and possible murderers bc like I'd 10000% rather be murdered in the woods with no cell reception than live my entire life within the boring prescribed social situations of like, typical jobs and no adventures. Idk. Like some people are into that and they like security and probably by the time I'm 30 I'll be ready to get a regular job and I'll feel silly for waiting so long and it might be nice to have health insurance and a stable house and vacation time and a salary with extra money to go on nice vacations. But like I gotta go be wild and free first. I gotta go live in a van and camp at free wilderness areas and eat cold cans of beans inside my van in the walmart parking lot while it's raining outside. Sorry not sorry everyone has their own life and this is what I want to be doing with mine 🙃 the highs will be really high and the lows might be really low (or they might not be that bad and I'll realize that all my fear is totally unwarranted and everything is actually great bc the universe is a good and loving god and this fear and guilt I'm feeling is just the leftover residue of my ancestor's generational catholic guilt, etc,, and here I go healing that and if I ever have offspring I have done the work to not pass on the same trauma we've been handing down for generations,,,,,,, or I'll be murdered in a parking lot and never have offspring either way not offloading guilt+fear onto a young unsuspecting child so like win/win no matter which way you look at it haha)
Anyway yeah I don't have to justify my life to anyone I'm doing ok this is not even a strange or unique thing to be doing bc so many people are doing it these days and I'm just one of many ~countercultural youth~ and maybe I'll meet some like-minded friends along the way and maybe I'll meet some judgmental people and maybe it'll all just be regular and eventually time will pass and it'll just be another chapter in the story. So relax and go for it and have fun along the way. ❤️
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I fell like a huge problem with both the conflict between how Allura views the Galra and the paladins do, along with how Allura views the Galra and how the audience reacts to what’s on the screen.
As a primary western audience we’ve seen hundreds of shows like this where a character is prejudice against a group of people and how if they’re a good person they’ll be redeemed or if they’re bad they’ll stay prejudice. The problem is that the Galra are a terrible allegory for racism, no minority group has ever taken over most of the world through violence for thousands of years. Allura doesn’t hate the Galra because they’re Galra she hates them because they have an empire that spans star systems with a tyrannical dictator who destroys planets just to further his goals of getting Voltron who betrayed her family, murdered her people, and destroyed her world. Allura is one of three (two at the time) known survivors of an altean genocide, she her distrust of the galra is more than justified in my opinion. However as I said as a western audience we’re trained to think that she’s a racist for not trusting any Galra.
I’m not saying the way she acted towards Keith was in any way okay, but that’s why she apologized, she knew she was in the wrong with him at the very least. And again she works with the Blade of Marmora, we know they’re the good guys as the audience since they’re the rebels against the empire so they’re obviously the good guys and we’ve seen Thace save the team, but Allura as someone inside the story isn’t privy to any of this information doesn’t owe them anything and it does sound very suspicious, they’ve apparently been active for decades seeing as Keith’s mother had a knife and he barely remembers her, but Allura hasn’t been awake for a year after sleeping for 10000 years with the last thing she saw was Zarkon enclosing in on them so she’s bound to be spectacle.
As for the dissonance between the paladins and Allura there are a lot of areas where they miss each other in how they view the Galra and the Galran empire. The paladin’s know that the Galra are the bad guys and they are the heroes brought from far away to defeat the evil threat, it’s a story they’ve all probably heard/seen a thousand times. But it’s not a story to Allura and Coran, who remember the kingdom of Altea and the Voltron Alliance that spread worlds, until Zarkon betrayed them. Zarkon was probably one of Allura’s heroes growing up seeing how Coran went on about how close the original paladins were, she’s probably known hundreds of Galra and is aware there were good ones. Just as she’s aware that the best of them can become monsters and that monster has been conquering world after world for 10,000 years as a supreme leader. As humans we can’t really fathom anything much less a person 10,000 since written language isn’t that old so it’s just unthinkable to humans but Allura has lived it, she’s slept through it, even if she knows good Galra did and can exist, under Zarkon’s hand they most likely didn’t last long, and seeing as the Blade of Marmora seem to be the only Galra rebels against the empire she’s not exactly wrong.
The paladins come in as outsiders who know the Galra are the bad guys who need to be stopped, they view themselves as heroes, and while they’re not wrong and Allura and Coran encourage this, I have a feeling that a huge part of the whole reforming Voltron idea comes from Allura wanting vengeance more than almost anything against the Galra. As I said before Allura most likely has known dozens if not hundreds of Galra, including Zarkon who was probably the paragon of the Galra people, the paladins have know barely three counting Ulaz. They view the Blade of Marmora as part of the bad guys team turning good and fighting the bad guys, Allura views them as good guys and allies who turned bad and after letting the bad guys do what they want for 10000 years getting cold feet and want to be good again. It’s obviously more complicated than that, but you could see how a princess who was betrayed and lost everything probably less than a year ago in her memory doesn’t like this idea. Shiro who spoke the most with both Sendak and Ulaz views Sendak as a monster and Ulaz as a savior, he’s not wrong that Ulaz is good, but Allura doesn’t have a reason to trust him other than Shiro vouching for him when he barely knows him. Shiro has a good heart and he was right to trust Ulaz in the end and the Blade of Marmora, it doesn’t change the fact that Ulaz or the whole Blades could have betrayed them as easily as Rolo did a season ago. It was rude of her to still question Ulaz’s sincerity after he sacrificed himself to save them all, which is why she apologized and changed the topic, however she also isn’t wrong when she says that one life matters little to the Galra empire as a whole. Galra soldiers are brainwashed into beleiving there is great honor in dying for the Galra empire to the point where the grunts would rather stay on a doomed battleship than escape despite the generals knowing better and the robeast they just fought was made from Proroks who was a tossed aside pawn for the galra and Zarkon because they believed he was a traitor.
Voltron is a cartoon so of course Shiro is right in the end about Ulaz and the Blades but it doesn’t mean that Allura was wrong to be distrustful seeing as it was pointed out Shiro doesn’t remember much about his time as a prisoner except for this memory that he just so remembers at that very moment that conviently leads them to the one of the few good Galra that exist to fight Zarkon. Hell the Blade of Marmora members are shown to be far more cautious and paranoid than Allura is and aren’t shown to be in the wrong for it for the most part. Allura isn’t right in the way she treats Keith and the Blade of Marmora, but if it wasn’t a cartoon than Allura wouldn’t have been shown in the wrong so much, like her attitude would have kept her alive on Game of Thrones and she does come around. She apologizes to Keith, she risks her life to save him and the other paladins, and she does so by fighting beside the Kolivan and Antok two galra. So the whole issue shouldn’t be boiled down to Allura’s a racist and she’s horrible just like Shiro shouldn’t be seen as an idiot for believing the best in people even when they’re suspicious.
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It's the anniversary of Tiananmen Square, something I was always peripherally aware of but never really knew much about.
A facebook friend of mine, a woman who I like on a personal level, but who has some interesting and extreme viewpoints (I don't think she was an antivaxxer but at the start of the pandemic she posted something about 5g leading to coronavirus), posted an angry and defensive facebook post claiming that there was no massacre at Tiananmen Square.
This seemed to jar with what little I knew so rather than question her directly, it worked as a catalyst for me to do just a little research on the internet.
In under an hour I had found and read three eyewitness accounts, multiple stories of people who were afraid to pass the knowledge of what happened at Tiananmen Square on to their children, the account of a soldier who was there who later became an artist who has been frequently detained for his memorial of the event, and accounts of the way the Chinese Government censors mention of it to make it seem like a non event.
When I started on this path I was open to the idea that maybe, my facebook friend was correct, maybe it had been exaggerated, or only a few people had died, or that violence had been instigated by protestors, not the army, who were mobilised by the CIA. After all, the UK, the US, France, Belgium, the Netherlands etc are and have been known over the past several centuries of history (including very recently) to stir up disturbance in countries when it suits them, actions which have often lead to bloody and painful revolutions.
I read several articles supporting this point of view that it was a hoax or propaganda, in comparison to the eyewitness accounts they were not convincing.
I was open to that idea. I no longer am. Even if you were to discount the eyewitness accounts, the extent of chinese censorship, and temporary imprisonment of activists on this particular topic makes it very difficult to believe the official government narrative. Especially when you have seen similar disinformation campaigns to justify the actions of a government elsewhere recently, for example the Israeli government claiming, against all evidence, that there was Hamas in the associated press building, or the denial of the existance of concentration camps for the Uighur muslims, or the lies told by the Belarus Authorities to arrest a journalist, or the continuous poisonous lies from the UK right wing press trying to blame the EU for predictable consequences of Brexit, when none of the policies are new, they always applied to third countries of which the UK is now one.
Furthermore, if you look at the months immediately after the event, there was a lot of discussion of it in Chinese Press, in an attempt to paint the governments actions as justified. When this wasn't working, then discussion of the event was shut down.
I fully believe that the massacre happened, although there is no way of knowing the exact number killed: the official figure at the time from the Chinese Government was 200-300, but the BBC at the time estimated at least 10,000. I think the true figure will never be known but from what little I've read I would guess that it went into the thousands, but whether that was 6000 or 10000+ there is no way of knowing. Even if the number were as low as stated in the official figures, it is still a horrific tragedy.
The situation, the factors that led up to it, the events of the night itself, are undoubtedly far more complicated than I can parse in around an hours internet research. I intend to read 'The Pro-Democracy Movement: Reports from the Provinces' by Johnathan Unger, and 'The People's Republic of Amnesia' by Louisa Lim to get a better and more thorough understanding.
Now though, I offer up a prayer for the unknown number of people who were murdered 31 years ago, and for those living in China either too afraid to tell their truth, or regularly imprisoned for doing so.
Below I have linked a couple of the articles I read this morning in case anyone is interested.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/witnesses-to-tiananmen-square-struggle-with-what-to-tell-their-children/2013/06/02/a0354d42-c799-11e2-9245-773c0123c027_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_15
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2020/06/ns-archive-bearing-witness-tiananmen-square
https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/tank-man-tiananmen-vox-pop-got-wrong.php
https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/postcard/truth-about-Tiananmen
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2004/03/dr-jiang-yanyongs-letter-calling-for-june-4-reappraisal/
#tiananmen square#history#china#censorship#misinformation#fact checking#tragedy#mourning#rest in peace#sources
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