#they blame the bad shit happening in russia and the bad shit russia does on the indigenous ppls. including karelians

[roakkaliha]

its interesting that the full grown adults whose heads i live in head free, for whatever reason, never actually try to like... have an honest conversation with me abt it. like i get why ppl would be intimidated by something like that in todays internet culture but like. dude.

[transmascpetewentz]

Was talking abt this with my family and decided this needed to be a post on the webbed site:

A fundamental way that antisemitism operates that makes it so difficult to remove from leftist spaces is by taking the broad scope of problems in the world and finding a couple that can be vaguely tied or related to Judaism in some way, then taking "this is tangentially related to Jews" to mean "Jews are 100% responsible for this." It's particularly this sentiment that I see echoed in most of the antisemitic posts that I see on the dash.

It's one of the reasons, imo, why the west is so focused on Israel as opposed to the situation in the Congo, Sudan, or Ukraine. All four of these situations suck and are very clearly, to any person observing, bad. However, only one of these awful situations where war crimes are being committed is one that I hear about every day, that I am told if I so much as block some tags relating to it that I am a bad person. And that's the one where people can blame The Jews for it.

Despite Russia currently committing what I would call a genocide against Ukrainians, many westerners who preach anti-colonialism are completely silent or worse. I thought that silence meant you are directly complicit? Odd, huh? Does this principle of being against historical imperial powers committing genocide against colonized people not apply when the colonized nation has more than three times the relative Jewish population compared to the colonizer?

Yep. And many of the most prominent antisemitic antizionists are completely pro-Russia because Russia claims to be against quote-unquote "western degeneracy," which is literal Nazi shit. As a Russian who regularly speaks out against slavophobia/russophobia/anti-Russian people sentiment on the left and the right, I am horrified by westerners' complete disregard for human life and basic moral principles to defend my country's genocide.

And this idea of blaming all tangentially-related problems on Jews isn't just showcased in how much people focus on Israel, but also in who gentiles tend to call "zionists" and the attributes that they prescribe onto anyone who is labeled a zionist. Zionism is a political movement with historical basis in Judaism, but the actual definition of zionism is irrelevant to the critique I am about to make. My issue is with how some gentiles define, or don't define, zionism.

I have said this before, but when some leftist gentiles are asked to name a few qualities that all zionists share, they might give a list that's something like this: they are pro-Israel, they support Israel's genocide of Palestinians, they are completely anti-Palestine, and they do not have nuanced takes on I/P. Of course, this is a batshit insane and very ahistorical take on zionism, but I would have less of an issue if these gentiles would stick to that definition and only call people zionists if they shared all of those qualities.

Instead, these same gentiles who claim that all zionists share these opinions will claim that any Jew, convert-in-progress, or ally that doesn't hate Jews is a zionist. This circles back to my first point about how antisemitism takes anything where Jews are involved and turns it into "Jews are The masterminds behind this." And that's exactly what this is. The label of zionist being applied to a non-zionist turns their views from nuanced and neutral to racist and genocidal in the eyes of antisemites.

The idea that all Jews one doesn't like must be behind some child-murdering conspiracy is an antisemitic one, no matter how real the child murder happening in Palestine is. Random Jews, even Israeli Jews, are not responsible for the actions of their government (which is being backed mostly by gentiles overseas, btw). Stop fucking taking any instance of a bad thing being tied to Jews or Judaism and blowing it up into calling Jews the masterminds behind it. There is no global conspiracy, no matter how much you wish there was for your daily dose of emotional support antisemitism.

Reading Comprehension Questions:

What do you think that OP means when they say "The Jews" with both the "t" and "j" capitalized? Is he using that language seriously, or is he trying to get another message across?

Is this a post about Israel and Palestine, or is this a post specifically addressing antisemitism within the pro-Palestine movement on the left? Additionally, does OP give any meaningful indication of his views on I/P within the post?

Why does OP talk for two paragraphs about the situation in Russia and Ukraine? How is OP more qualified than the average Tumblr user to have an opinion on Russia?

Why is OP, despite not being Jewish, making a post about this subject? How might OP be more qualified than the average gentile to make a post about antisemitism?

Does OP blame Palestinians for antisemitism on the left in this post? Does OP single out any specific ethnic or racial group as opposed to just gentiles?

Have I sat with and mentally answered to myself the above questions before I clicked on OP's page to send him an anon telling him to kill himself?

[odinsblog]

Something I need to get off my chest, for old followers and new:

I do not give a single solitary fuck about communism

If communism blew up and died tomorrow, I would not give one shit about it 🥱

If “communism” is your end all be all about what’s right and what’s wrong in the world, then do us both a favor and block me right now. No hard feelings, okay?

And for anyone wondering: no, I don’t give a shit about capitalism, and definitely not neoliberalism either

Look, sooner or later you have GOT to understand something: some people (neoliberals) get all bent out shape if you aren’t constantly falling over yourself to kiss the ass of whoever the current Democratic president is. That ain’t me. When Biden or Clinton or whoever is wrong, I will hold their feet to the fire and at least try to them accountable (see: Biden Title 42)

And when capitalism fucks up (lol, that’s any day of the week that ends in the letter Y), then I will call that shit out too

Sooner or later, ALL of that shit fucks up. All of it. All of it

None of it is beyond critique

If you think your special little rhubarb (communism, capitalism, religion, libertarianism, etc etc etc) is magically the only one that is perfect and good and right all the time, then you’re just like a little baby who still believes that Santa lives on the North Pole. Please grow tf up

But I am very specifically calling out communism today because several long time mutuals lose their shit whenever I don’t kiss Putin’s ass, or when I don’t blame NATO for Putin invading a sovereign nation that wasn’t attacking Russia, wasn’t in NATO, and wasn’t even applying for membership into NATO when Putin decided to attack them

Is America wrong for all the dirt its done all around the planet? Fuck. yes. Does America bad = Russia good? FUCK NO

Look, everyone has their own personal coda; their guiding principles; their “religion,” their rhubarb. For some, it’s a blind, sycophantic inability to understand or acknowledge that simply being marginally better than Trump doesn’t automatically make centrist Democrats above being held accountable (it’s our job as citizens to always demand better from whoever our elected representatives are—they work for us goddammit)

For other sycophants, it’s a rabid inability to call out capitalism and/or Christianity

And for others still, it’s communism

I guess my problem is, EYE don’t measure how “good” something is by how “communist” it is—I measure it by how much good it does without burying poor people, without harming Black & Brown people, without hurting women (trans or otherwise), without vilifying foreigners, and without burning LGBTQ people (the way Russia and America do)

If you can’t understand that, then your particular brand of blind fanaticism (your rhubarb) is communism, and you are no different from the VBNMW, Blue MAGA sycophants who go completely ape shit whenever you say something even slightly unflattering about politicians who happen to wear the letter “D” behind their name—see where that got us??

You’re no different. You just have a slightly different rhubarb

Communism is NOT my fucking measuring stick. I don’t have communism on the brain, and I sure as fuck don’t have capitalism on the brain either

I love Black people, Brown people , poor people, immigrants, asylum seekers, women, the LGBTQ community, democracy, equality, justice and freedom

And dassit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m on the side of the little guy and the underdog

So anyway, fuck communism, fuck capitalism, fuck “Christianity” and fuck all the other little bullshit unimportant distinctions you far too rigidly use to decide if someone is “good” instead of just looking to see if they’re actually doing good or not

Some of you good little “communists” couldn’t even be bothered to speak up about Brittney Griner because you didn’t want to look bad or say anything bad about Vladimir Putin’s raggedy ass. Lol. You guys suck!

And no, this isn’t me taking a right wing turn like Cenk and TYT (or like Jimmy Dore, or Glenn Greenwald, or any number of the other “previously” progressive media types who are re-aligning themselves with conservatives)

In 2016 I had to break ties with people and bloggers who turned out to be dogged Blue MAGA sycophants, and today I’m fed up with people who can’t go more than two minutes without signaling how “communist” they are 🙄

Sorry, but that shit don’t get my dick hard

(And for added clarity: Republicans and Libertarians, go fuck yourselves with a rusty chainsaw)

If this post makes you mad, then here ya go

</end rant>

[coldgoldlazarus]

So... I don't agree with Lilith Farren on a lot of things but she's spot on about the RWDE being full of it. I mean, they want to make her out as the real bigot while not once looking at the company they keep. Even if Lilith holds these secret prejudices... she's got the real receipts on them.

I've generally avoided talking about this, but here we go, I guess.

I'm so fucking tired of receipts, and discourse, and debating whether or not RWBY is good, (it's not perfect, neither is it the animated spawn of satan or whatever) or debating whether or not Rooster Teeth is evil, (they are, but they ain't special) or the suspecting everyone and their mother of secretly being a bigot or creep over their opinions on fiction, and just the endless pointless fighting over shit that really doesn't matter at the end of the day.

The world is burning down around us, queer people are under constant fucking attack, racism and antisemitism are having a resurgence, (not that they ever really went away in the first place,) the politics of imperial countries like Britain and America and Russia still have outsized ability to ruin the lives of people all over the rest of the world, and neoliberal capitalism is slowly killing us all with the constant monetization of basic survival. And yet, some people apparently have nothing better to do with their lives than either bitch about a show, or bitch about the people bitching about a show. It's so. Fucking. Asinine.

I will be honest, I do not particularly like or respect Lilith Fairen, any more or less than the 'rwde' people she's constantly picking fights with. I did follow her for a while at the start of 2021, because I was in a different headspace back then and that stuff felt like it mattered more, but honestly? Even when I was following her and considered her 'cool', something didn't sit right with me about the way she talked.

Whenever she was dunking on rwde takes, there was an even mix of really strong points she made, and arguments made purely using in-universe information without considering the OOU reasons for those things, then needlessly hostile assumptions being made about the other party. Sometimes they were retroactively validated, but not always, and either way they were usually completely insane things you would't just assume of someone out of the fucking blue.

It's really only since the big RT controversy that the why has come into focus. Because at the end of the day, with her response to that it's become clear to me that she cares about RWBY and defending everything about it, even the genuinely bad stuff, more than she cares about real people. She talks the social justice talk, but does not walk the walk.

I don't completely agree with the people who have gone the other extreme as a result of the controversy and insist continued engagement with the show makes you just as bad, (because like I said, RT are awful, but they aren't special in this) but I do still get where they're coming from and agree with them on not supporting RT financially in any way anymore. (Whether V10 should or shouldn't be greenlit, I'm still conflicted on, but also that's ultimately out of my hands to decide, so I plan to just roll with whatever does or does not happen there.)

LF's response, from what I saw, (for better or worse, I wanted to see how she was faring after the news broke and still offer some kindness if needed, hoping to see better of her I guess, so I logged out to go check her blog since I was blocked by that point) was to wring her hands a bit about how this would impact the show, then insist rwde were to blame somehow and go right back to her usual behavior.

Do I think she's secretly bigoted or something? Not really. (And the recent claim by someone that she was totes a neo-nazi definitely raised some eyebrows as a result, that's a very serious claim to make.) I don't think she has the capacity to care enough about real-world issues to have those kinds of beliefs, honestly. And on the flipside, I don't think she cares about social justice as much as she claims to; it's all props for her to justify harassing people over a show.

Which brings me to the other big reason I don't particularly care for her, which is her behavior in the magical girl community. I won't belabor the point, since I really don't want to make this some big callout post, (deserved or not, those have already been made about her, and I don't like the concept either way) but between her awful takes on PMMM and fans thereof, and actual harassment campaign against the creators of Sleepless Domain, she's been consistently pretty unpleasant-at-best over here.

I don't disagree with everything she's ever said, and I do agree that a lot of the post-Madoka grimdark Magical Girl trend has been pretty bad on the whole, (though at least some good stuff has come of it, like Symphogear) but her hardline refusal to see anything good in it, along with her sometimes completely insane bad-faith readings of Madoka in particular, is such an ironic echo of the same sort of behavior she claims to hate about rwde. And even then, it would be fine, if annoying, if she didn't then also go and mistreat people over it. It really boils down to the same thing as with RWBY, just in the opposite direction; "I like this show, show is good, people who don't like the show are bad and evil" and "I hate this show, show is bad, people who like the show are bad and evil", and then using social justice language to justify and prop up her arguments.

It was all that stuff, not so much the RWBY discourse, that led to my disillusionment with her, and her eventually blocking me. I guess if one good thing came of it, was spite powering me to work on my own magical girl stuff again, and the resurrection of a friend's dormant story that I proofread for. But on the whole, that period of life where I was really paying attention to what she had to say, just feels now like a waste of time.

I don't hate her, and I don't think she's secretly evil or whatever like that one person suggested, and I definitely don't think she should be harassed, despite her own behavior. I just think she's a kinda mediocre human being who really needs to get her priorities straight, and probably work through some insecurity issues or something. (It's not my place to diagnose, but like, therapy could probably help with whatever she has going on, if she ever becomes receptive enough for it to work.) As much as rwde people can annoy me too, her whole moral crusade against them feels like a waste of time and energy that could better go to other, bigger things, and her moral crusade against dark (or even moderately-toned like Sleepless Domain) Magical Girl stuff, her response to the RT controversy, and how she ignores or speaks for other marginalized people, shows it all to be ultimately hollow and shallow, more about opinions on some shows she likes or hates, than anything meaningful.

In the end, she's just not worth my time.

[timetobeaghost]

Oct 7 was definitely horrific but you can't be against what happened to those innocents and then go and act like all of the people the IDF has murdered since then deserved it

Also, if the attacks on Palestine are about what Hamas did, then why are Palestinians in the West Bank (not run by Hamas) also being attacked by the IDF?

There's two bad sides, but one is obviously way worse if you look at the stats from before and after October 2023

If you still need to guess, it's not the one you're constantly meatriding.

It is not at all complicated. Terrorists who slaughter innocents, rape young girls to death and stream it on their phones. For their families and friends. Terrorists who take innocent children as hostage and torture them by showing them scenes of the slaughter of their people and threaten to shoot them if they cry, who burn signs into they skin, so they are marked as the property of their captors. Those are the bad guys. I do not know if you enjoyed any moral education whatsoever. But that is what evil looks like.

You think bombs are also bad? I don't know why you would even need to consider bombs as well in the face of such evil so obvious, Sauron is moping in Mordor all jealous of the black and white reality. But then I guess you would disapprove of the people who continuously throw all the bombs they possibly can on exclusively civilian targets with the declared goal of killing civilians. Start this when there is actually a ceasefire. And this also from civilian areas where 20% of the bombs actually fall on their own civilians. Yeah, I guess that is also a way to see who the bad guys are.

YOU WOULD LIKE THE ISRAELIS TO ACT LIKE THAT? THAT WOULD BE BETTER?

Now the West Bank is where things are complicated. No one knows what is going on. On the one hand obviously terrorism flairs up, as Palestinian wannabe terrorists try to get in on the action and Israelis are right to defend themselves harshly. On the other hand there are losts of hardline asshole Israeli settlers there and they might start trouble in an also emotionally agitated state, maybe even seek revenge. The IDF might then come to the defense of Israeli citizens who actually started shit or at least overreacted. Here we would have to look into the details of everything that happened to know how bad any person acted and whether innocents were hurt or not totally innocents still treated unfairly. It's a mess and a half.

A mess that was also intensified by Hamas STARTING A GD WAR in the absolutely worst way and with the stated goal of killing all the jews. Actions and attitudes like that do tend to cause problems.

A mess that DOES NOT TAKE AWAY from the very clear cut fact, that Hamas, the terrorist jihadist evil government of Gaza, started a total war against Israel and Israel has the duty to defend itself. A duty to defend its citizens from the bombs that fly out of Gaza directed at civilians nonstop. Which is pretty hard to do without using bombs yourself, is it not? A duty to do their absolute best to free their innocent civilians who were taken hostages and are still mistreated by a hateful evil enemy. Which is exactly what they are doing. Should they like... not?

This victim blaming is absolutely despicable, Where somehow, just because Israel has to fight against barbarian terrorists, you try to drag them down to that level. They are absolutely not on that level. You do not have to be perfect to be a victim of terrorism. Obviously. As no country is perfect.

And yet, and still Israel tries to ACTIVELY AVOID killing civilians. Warning them where it's unsafe - which obviously does not help their war efforts. One side Actively tries to kill civilians, one side actively tries to avoid it. It couldn't be any more clear who is the problem.

Just imagine for one second this absolute atrocity, worst terrorist attack in history, and continued attack in all possible ways, happened to the US or even - dear god - Russia or China and not Israel, we would probably not have to worry too much about people living in the Gaza Strip anymore.

[willel]

I think you’re the one who’s oversimplifying or twisting what people have said about Joyce and Jonathan. You take everything as meaning that people don’t want them to interact, nobody actually says that. It’s an interesting relationship, there are just different opinions on how it should be developed, and how every pov (Jonathan’s, Joyce’s but also the social context) should be taken into account.

See this > https://www.tumblr.com/willel/714855037607837696/the-problem-i-see-is-that-most-ppl-who-are?source=share

I'd also like to point out every time people talk about potential Joyce and Jonathan interactions, all I see is,

"It's not Joyce's fault Jonathan has taken on this responsibility."

"Joyce is a single mother and Jonathan is an adult, he should be able to handle this by himself."

"Joyce has her own problems right now, she shouldn't have to deal with Jonathan's problems too."

Etc etc.

My issue with those kinds of takes is, regardless of how Joyce is feeling or the situation she's in, she IS Jonathan's mother. He's still in high school. She loves him. She's his mom, she's going to do what she can to help him.

Even when she's at her worst, she's clearly done everything possible to keep supporting her children no matter what.

Regardless of how it's done, I think it's nonsensical to suggest Joyce shouldn't have involvement in Jonathan's arc. Or insulating if she does, then that means Jonathan is blaming her or that she's a bad mother or something.

Maybe I'm missing it but I haven't seen anyone who talks about this potential interaction as Jonathan calling her out or condemning her or blaming her for his life. that's exactly opposite of what Jonathan probably feels.

"People don't say that"

But look at this??

WHO IS CALLING JOYCE A BAD MOM? YOU -different anon- ARE.

It's like people equate this potential situation to Joyce being bad when that is not the point at all and never has been. I just have to ask if you guys have lived in a single parent household, and if you did, did you have a good or bad experience? These are conversations older kids have with their parents.

Depending on the parent, it can be such a positive and relieving experience to go over your life and have your parent validate your experience. I'm not a single parent so I don't know how THEY feel, but when I had this talk with my single mother, she was a little snarky but she was also smiling and even though my mom is not really a touchy feelsy type, she still patted me on the back and thanked me for the things I did. It felt good. It made me appreciate my mom a little more. She seemed to appreciate me a little more (as much as my mom can that is, lol). I totally get that sometimes single parent households are WAY worse. Maybe you experienced something worse than me. Maybe your parents lashed out at you instead of appreciating you and there were no hugs had. I'm sorry about that, but that's not how every single parent household concludes.

Just because some people are speculating what this could look like from Jonathan's perspective does not mean Joyce is a bad mother. It doesn't mean Jonathan hates her (he freakin loves her dude, that's part of the reason why he's in the situation in the first place). So why would anyone say, "Well, since you want a moment where Jonathan opens up to her, we Joyce "fans" are gonna turn against him."

That is some bonkers shit right there.

A moment where Joyce and Jonathan can come together and talk about things can only happen because Joyce is a good mother who would notice her son's distress and be able to listen to him when he has something to say.

Regardless of how they write season 5, this is the person Joyce is. She loves her boys. She notices when her boys are going through something. She will protect and comfort her boys no matter what. That's Joyce's character. If you're her family, she'd go to the Upside Down/Russia and back just to save you even if it's from yourself.

And in return, absolutely everyone in her family would do the same for her.

We want a redo/expansion of this moment posted below. Is this moment bad to you? Is this the worse possible outcome in your eyes? Does it destroy Joyce's character? Is the interaction something to be scared of? Does this moment make Joyce a bad mom? Does this make Jonathan a bad son? Is this moment only from Jonathan's perspective????

What is so terrible about wanting something like this again? Please tell me because I do not get it. This moment makes Joyce an awesome and caring mom and character among all the other stuff that makes her character whole. I and others just want to see more of it among the other things Joyce will be involved in.

[fag-on-goth-action]

🔪 KNIFE - how do they react to injury / misfortune befalling their loved ones (significant other, family, friends)? do they put themselves at blame?

�� SEE-NO-EVIL - whats a side of your oc that they don't want to show other people?

🙊 SPEAK-NO-EVIL - what is something your oc will refuse to stay quiet about?

🙉 HEAR-NO-EVIL - what is the worse thing your oc could hear from someone?

for all your OCs <3

🔪

ok so all of them but wes has dealt with that. so this is easy

Lilith- denies it happens doesn't put herself at blame and acts like nothing changed

Marr- shuts down and does a lot of stupid things to fix it but makes things worse

Am- takes all the blame feels guilty and then inflicts the same pain or what she thinks is equivalent pain upon her self

Wes- drinks. a lot.

🙈

oh this is easy they r all hiding sooo much

Lilith- the fact that she's a trans woman obvi but she is trans and queer and all that shit as Lea so that's a cop out. Hers is how she has never truly processed things. ever since she got bit the years have blurred and she doesn't know 78 from 09 well because Am had the same haircut or whatever and she thinks she's been going crazy for so long she's horrified about how bad it is

Marr - Ever since she got cursed to be unable to do the things she loves ( makeup, hair, acting, singing ) she has acted really chill about it and she knows that she hasn't done them in so long so she's fallen out of love but god when things get bad she will cry for hours after trying to sing a song. it devastates her even if parts of that curse have become regular parts of her life, like her makeup being messed up is part of her brand, some days she wants to just look classically pretty and she wants to feel like the woman she used to be and it breaks her.

Am- Context is in my world vampires acquire parts of their greatest fear and desire. for this you gotta know Am's biggest fear is dying alone and without true love. she has taken refuge in platonic bonds but oh my god the day she found out Wes was her soulmate she broke down. She was incapable of having the love of her life ever. she said she would never meet her soulmate and if she did she would kill them, but you can't kill another vampire as a vampire. it's an act only witches or humans can do. And then shit, they are best fucking friends. the worst part is Wes is bound to her until the world ends. he will never experience love that is true, and because Am is always around he's constantly subconsciously comparing his romance to how he feels for her, which is impossible to beat. she can't tell him.

Wes- he's my least fledged out little guy but oh my god he is so incapable of anything past first base and like that wasn't a part of his curse! he doesn't know what's up he just can't feel a lot of things for people man. only time he remembers being good at sex was with Am but she's probably a sex god or something. he can't figure out love and it's pissinf him off

🙊

Lilith- she seriously needs to stop talking about how she helped with jfk in bars she's gonna get arrested soon

Marr - one of these days she'll finally get someone to believe her and be sober enough to see her magic in clubs shes sooo bad at hiding being a witch

Am- WE.DONT.CARE.YOU.WERE.AT.9/11.SO WAS EVERYONE ELSE IN THSI HOUSE AM AND YOU RAN LIKE A PUSSY WHILE WE WATCHED

wes- im so sorry shut up about yr highschool band it was soooo bad u did violin covers of beetles songs

🙉

Lilith- the details of what happened to marr when she was deported and had to live in russia from 57-73. that would break her so hard.

Marr- What happened to the kids who cursed her

Am- Where her brother is ( she thinks he's dead )

Wes- that his fuckinf band sucks shit

okaaayy that was so long sorry but i'm on mobile i cant do cut :(

[excavator0077]

ok , getting a bit fired up about these elections looming over the heads of u.s. citizens …… it will be upon us soon , so i’m trying , as are you to see thru the “ and they are eating the people’s pets “ bull shit and onto real issues … of which they ( both candidates ) say very little …… and this is where i’m at : my gut screams trump …. trump . but then my reasonable brain matter counters with … “ thirty two felony convictions ? yet to be sentenced for ….. and …. gridlock , again man . one thing i can come up with is i would much rather trump and his goons across the table from ping , putin or any other leader than i would harris ….. trump has proven he’s in it for the u.s. and if he or his brand benefit from said high level meetings …. so what , i can’t blame him …. and then the really hard to get away fact …. “ are you better off ?” question …. well punk … are you ? shit i’m not … things were much better under trump …. hard to deny …. now i have a few items yet to be explored and one is … has the uber hawks ( chaney , rumsfeld and wolfowitz ) taken to the democrats ? and that’s what i’m working on ….. these are the guys that had everyone convinced in the eighties that russia was coming for us and our way of life ….. the whole nation … me included were anti-russian . red dawn and fictional portrayals had a lot of influence over people without their knowledge …. shit me and my friends flew bumperstickers that read things like my favorite “ ruck fussia “ and in reality they had no intention of anything close to that , they only hoped we would leave them alone . but our leaders needed an enemy and one big enough to get the nation rallied against , russia was not a real threat … and now ? same shit … russia spends one tenth of what our country spends on it’s military … that should tell it all , once russians incompetency was hown against ukraine …. they threw in china with russia to make a format able enemy ….. i think we could do either in a matter of days , so as undecided as i am i still have things to checkout ….and please remember “ nationalist “ is not necessarily a bad thing … it can be … but as far as trumps past administration i would say it was a nationalist administration working to our advantage and to our being perceived as a country that will take no shit from anyone … will harris carry that kind of perception ? ask yourself this and some of the other points i have brought up then see where your at …oh and i almost forgot … trumps pick for v.p. and i don’t know that much about him , i don’t think anyone does but what i’ve seen and read looks pretty damn good , really , . peace t. d.

i can’t believe i left out the most important problem with trump … jan.6th ….. those people who stormed the capitol as part of a plan …. and i know i’ve seen the video .. so we don’t REALLY know what happened .. really . unless you were there , however i do believe there was a plan by some todo some really dumb things and attempt to circumvent the legitimate and peaceful handing over of power , something that we should take very serious and not accept anything less , at all cost . in any other nation in the world those fuckers would be hanging from a fucking tree … that night , one close to the capitol , so … you know trump has this going against him …. and that … well , peace t. d.

[cirimanga]

Now I need to speak out...

I’m mentally tired, and this person is the cause of my stress and pain. I have a broken heart.

The moment you warn the person you thought was a friend that she is making the mistake of getting into politics bein simple artist in front of an more then 26K audience  where there are both sides with different political views. She calls me toxic, aggressive and God knows who else, then I tell her that if she don't want listen me, I finished conversation and bloked her in instagram, coz i don't want listen her excuses anymore. And then she bans me everywhere, even in twitter where I unfolowed her alredy.I just left her with her invincible opinion that she doesn't hurt anyone and that her friends and TV of her country are the only truth in this world...

And when she gets the expected hate, she blames me for everything/ IT WAS ME?! oh, really? How about to show evidence before making such accusations? No?

Why she thinking it was me? Because I warned her first coz can think about the consequences, unlike her? Or maybe because she would do that to the person who insulted her?

OMG such a rare egocentric and rot...!

Wow, if she don't have the courage to remove the block and talk face to face about her troubles in twitter,  she a cowardly writing shit and thinking that no one of my friends who know that she blocked me will not show me it? But of course I will remain a coward and a rotten person.

Seems like the kind of words she's describing me now, right? 

Complaining and crying in twitter that someone is jealous of her. Does anyone jealous her even and for what? 

It's funny to watch her once again trying to get attention, that there are bad people around her, and she is poor thing didn't deserve such an attitude...

I have always been loyal to her, supporting her on Patreon, even seeing that none of my friends liked her. (now I wonder why so ?) I listened to her complaints and tears about rundome stuff, gave advice in drawing. It seems only I continued to try to ignore her her ugly behavior. After the fact, I learned that she blocked my close friend, but did not even explain her action. Because she was jealous of her too or something like that? lol

Even though she actually lied to me when she lounched Patreon page. She asked me to subscribe to it on a reciprocal basis, but soon unfollowed me without even bothering to explain her actions. Is that what friends do? She waited for me to come and ask her about it when I was already filled with fear that I had offended her in some way. Yes, I really valued our friendship.

Where is your decency, huh?

What are friends and elementary concern for their feelings for you?

Or financial benefit for you in the first place? 

I forgave her, was still supported her on Patreon page coz I thouth we are “friends” and sent all the paid content that she no longer received and now she pays me by blocking me and writing shit about me, reposting disgusting statements about my country/president from little histerical girls who at any moment will be called in treason of their country.

 I'm not surprised that she believes that all Russians hate their own country/ wishing death to president and are ashamed of being Russian. Because we are not! And she might regret judging the whole country by looking at her marginal "friends" on Twitter. 

Now some of my friends in Ukraine under the fire... russian, ukrainian, other nations. They and me is not responcible for this. This is the pain of both Russians and Ukrainians nations.my heart bleeds for all of them...

 But you didn't even understand how painful your haitful posts/ reposts about Russia for me personaly and other russian fans of the Witcher. They will remeber what you did and me too.

  You are one of those who are guilty of inciting hatred towards Russians, that in Poland and other countries it has now become dangerous to speak on Russian. It is subject to my friends that this has already happened. They are afraid. Very.

 Although YOU was trying to justify yourselve and started telling me stupid shit like "no one hates Russians! Blah Blah Blah".  What fantasy world do you live in or maybe take me as stupid person? 

When will you start thinking before you do something? 

I just wanted you to understand feelings of others (because you don't seem to have any compassion) and save you from future problems that you will undoubtedly receive. Well, if there are more people who don't like your tweets or stories, I will not be surprised that you distort my words and again blame ME in your troubles and hatred.  because you're innocent, right?

I think she already made up a nice story for her friends to make me look like a bad person, but maybe they are still reading this blog and will show it to her. So, I will never be able to forgive her behavior and words.

In difficult times, the true face of a person is always seen ... Let this be a reminder to myself what a disgusting people exist here... in this world ...

[pressradio]

So it’s time for my long post about Charles' season. 

We are going to look at the whole season a bit more in detail, talk about consistency and compare Charles’ season with both Carlos’ and Lando’s. Actually I tend to think it’s not correct to compare them, because they are different drivers with different setups (actually not sure that I meant this word) and with Lando even different cars. However, why should I be silent if everyone does that.

This post has no disrespect for Lando’ and Carlos’ achievements. They both did astonishing things. But this is about Charles.

I collected some statistics that were necessary in my opinion. You might have a look HERE. Remember, I’m not a robot and did it manually, so if I messed up some data please tell me and I’ll check and update.

Let’s go.

We should start with a short summary.

Lando dominated in the first half of the season. Had 4 podiums (P3 Imola, P3 Monaco, P3 Austria, P2 Monza) and Pole in Russia. DNF in Hungary. 20 times in points. Actually Lando carried McLaren on his shoulders the whole season and we should praise it. And if Daniel was somewhere close, Ferrari would ended P4 (btw, thank you, Daniel)

Carlos had a GREAT season. We can’t say anything else. He was adapting during idk maybe first 3 races. No DNF, 20 times in points, 4 podiums (P2 Monaco (big thank you to Valttery’s wheel), P3 Hungary (thanks to AM), P3 Russia (solid race in wet conditions) and P3 Abu Dhabi (don’t want to talk about this fucked up race)), 1 first row in Russian. Absolutely amazing. And I would say 3 really bad pit stops.

Charles was 7 times in TOP 4 with just one podium (P2 in Great Britain that had to be P1, but FIA and the Ferrari engine had their own opinion), 1 DNS (don’t even need to mention the race) and 1 DNF (thanks, Lance). 18 times in points. And just 5.5 behind Carlos and 1 point behind Lando.

And now we are going to talk about some shit that happened.

EMILIA ROMAGNA

Charles didn’t have any radio since Red Flags (BOT-RUS crash) and didn’t know what type of restart it would be (I mean he was shown the table probably, but it’s not the same as radio) and lost it to Lando. 

MONACO

I partly disagree that this DNS is Charles’ fault. His fault that he crashed (and actually got this pole by this, because BOT and VER kinda were robbed, but nor NOR nor SAI haven’t improved their time). But checking fucking car is NOT HIS JOB. I would prefer P5 that could turn into P3 because they had pace. But Charles season was all about “we would throw any guaranteed points to potential win”.

FRANCE WAS JUST SHIT.

STYRIAN GP 

Contact with Pierre was Charles’ mistake, but owerall it was great race with 2 pits where he ended P7 straight after NOR and SAI who had 1 pit.

AUSTRIAN GP

“It’s better to start on medium”

BRITISH GP

I fucking died during all these engine cuts. And if NOT this probably it should be the WIN even with just 10s HAM penalty.

HUNGARY

THANKS LANCE!!!!!!!! (it was quite a new engine, LANCE!!!!!)

BELGIUM

We don’t count it as a race in this house.

RUSSIA

Firstly, I thought that it was Charles’ reckless decision to stay another lap, but it turned into that Ferrari just couldn't imagine that somehow BOTH their drivers might have needed pitstop in these changeable shitty conditions. And both his pits were shitty as well.

QATAR 

Smell of broken chassis, love it.

SAUDI ARABIA

Wrong tactic (that wasn’t actually wrong, but fuck you FIA that can’t understand that fucking barrier need to be repaired)

ABU DHABI

Silly mistake by Charles (when Max left pitlane) and shitty race.

Charles had a GREAT season, he managed his tyres, he did jist two small mistakes (well ruins Pierre’s race wasn’t small one). He OUTPERFORMED both Carlos and Lando and he has never fucking blame the team about some contradictory decisions that were made (actually most of the time he blamed himself).

having 2 races in points less, being out of the race 2 times, having just 1 podium and still SO close to P5. This is consistency. 

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Mod: this is a bit of a big topic for a doll blog, and to be clear I sympathize with all those who are affected, and all those who do not want this to be happening. We do have readers and hobbyists and artists from all over the world in the hobby, and everyone is affected indirectly or directly by this so I think this is OK to discuss here since we will all have seen how this affected people within the community.

This anon is directing the post towards a user, I think assuming they are from the US, I opened the comments to one of the supportive confessions when this news first broke awhile back, and the user they are directing this towards is in fact Ukrainian, living in Ukraine.

My policy on this blog is if your country is currently being invaded, I don't expect you to have thoughtful and reasoned views about your invaders and you're free to vent whatever you want in the comments. Obviously those of us who are not in current danger can be rational and considerate, but I don't think it's fair to expect, in this example a Ukranian person to be sympathetic to soldiers who are commiting war crimes, the ordinary citizens are not the people they're dealing with and the comments will come from that perspective, versus those of us in Western countries who have the emotional bandwidth to consider all those who are affected. Citizens don't choose what their government do and shouldn't be blamed for their actions, as this anon points out, but in the case of being currently under attack that will not be at the forefront of your mind.

I also agree with this anon that we are already seeing a bias emerging due to all this, and this is unfair to innocent citizens, however please consider the readers here are from all over the world and not just the US and that will make a difference to their perspectives on events.

CW: War discussion

the shit imp saying in https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/682547892762886144 is seriously xenophobic. I'm a russian in the USA and the shit theyre spouting is literally 1:1 to what I heard from the "russians are bad!" kind of people. The kind that throw things at you, bully you, say hurtful things, once they find out you're russian in the USA. Russians ARE hurt by the government in this. They always have been. Even when Stalin was alive, he single-handedly has the world's largest kill-count he's responsible for, and majority of those he killed, were his own people. Only 10 years ago Putin let Russian's  several mafia groups essentially run the city. It was normal to have "fees" youd pay at bus stops and trains to the mafia so they wouldn't mug you. And now, I still have family in Russia and if you compared it to the social climate from 10-20 years ago nothing changed. 

I find it disgusting that you weaponize Putin as word for majority of the Russian people when majority do not share his views. Hell, before I lost contact with my uncle in Russia his neighbor got jailed- because another neighbor ratted him out that he shared "Anti-Government Sentiment". And yes, there are people who actually support Putin, but there are also many that are pressured to say they support them in order not to literally go under investigation or jailed- and the government needs literally NO proof to jail you over there. 

Ukraine is facing terrible things because of Putin, and so are the Russian people. Putin does not care about his people, and his sentiment is similar to Stalin's, where during the war Stalin allowed his soldiers to ransack russian civilian's homes for food, and allowed many r*pes, injuries, and murders to happen from his soldiers without repercussions. Even worse in other countries that were under the rule of Russia- like the area that is now the Republic of Moldova, which the Russian government forced most of the villages and towns to go into a FAMINE in order supply food to their soldiers. Places like Moldova had literal pits in their towns to throw dead bodies because so many people died of starvation and disease because of this and they didnt have enough time and strength to make graves. And this was only ~50 years ago. Russia is a communist country though, so many people knew of these things, but the government covered majority of it up to the outside and newer generations. Russia lost the war, but it won against it's people and the surrounding area. 

Russians and more have literally suffered from Putin and past dictators more than you imagine. and you villainizing Russians for literally existing is disgusting. More disgusting that you're speaking this from a place of ignorance and refuse to understand the situation. I pray for Ukraine and all the other eastern European countries, but I also pray for Russians in Russia at the moment. I hope people stay educated because the "anti-russia" sentiment is spreading, and in the USA at least it's becoming, "anti-russians" instead. So now we have old men who hate russians because of ww2 hating us, and now we have the youth in the USA also hating us falsely. 

Hate the russians that support Russia. Hate the government of Russia. Hate Putin that is making this all happen. But leave Russians who are most likely victims in all this alone.

I'm sorry since this is off-topic to bjds. But seeing the growing sentiment around this in the community is really disheartening and scary. 

~Anonymous

[nevermindirah]

I've been drafting and redrafting this meta post for weeks now. It's about to be 5781 and my country that was founded on settler colonial genocide and slavery and a deeply flawed but fierce attachment to democracy might go full dictatorship in about 6 weeks and it's time for me to post this thing.

All our immortals are warriors, all have been traumatized by war. But only three of them died their first deaths as soldiers in imperial armies. This fandom has already produced gallons of meta on Nicky dealing with his shit, because Joe would not fuck with an unapologetic Crusader. But there's very rich stuff in Booker and Nile's experiences and the parallels and distinctions between them.

Nile was 11 when her dad was killed in action - that was 2005, meaning she and her dad both died in the same war that George W Bush started in very tenuous response to 9/11. Sure, Nile's dad could have died in either Iraq or Afghanistan, or in a training accident or in an off-the-books mission we won't know about for a hundred more years, but he died in the War on Terror all the same. I had to look it up to be sure because Obama "drew down" the Afghanistan war in his second term, but nope, we're still in this fucking thing that never should've happened in the first place. The US war in Afghanistan just turned 19 years old. A lot of real-life Americans have experiences like the Freemans, parents and children both dying in the same war we shouldn't be in.

I know a lot of people like Nile who join the US military not just because it's the only realistic way for them to pay for college or afford decent healthcare, but also because they have a family history of military service that's a genuine source of pride. Military service has been a way for Americans of color to be accepted by white Americans as "true Americans" - from today's Dreamers who Obama promised would earn protection from deportation by enlisting, to Filipino veterans of WW2 earning US citizenship that Congress then denied them for several decades, to slaves "earning" their freedom through service in the Union Army and in the Continental Army before it. As if freedom is a thing one should have to earn. Lots of Black Americans have the last name Freeman for lots of different escaping-slavery reasons, but it's possible that this specific reason is how Nile got her last name.

Dying in a war you know your country chose to instigate unnecessarily and that maybe you believe it shouldn't be waging is a very particular kind of trauma. It is a much deeper trauma when your military service, and your father's, and maybe generations of your ancestors', is a source of pride and access to resources for you but your sacrifice is nearly meaningless to the white supremacist system that deploys you. That kind of cognitive dissonance encourages a person to ignore their own feelings just so they can function. How do you wake up in the morning, how do you risk your life every day, how do you *kill other people* in a war that shouldn't be happening and that you shouldn't have to serve in just so that your country sees you as human?

We see Nile do her best to be a kind and well-mannered invader. Depending on your experience with US imperialism, Nile giving candy to kids and reminding her squad to be respectful is either heartwarming or very disturbing propaganda. We also see Nile clutching her cross necklace and praying. From the second Christianity arrived on this land it's been a tool of white supremacist assimilation and control, but like military service, it's a fucked-up but genuine source of pride and access to resources for many Americans whose pre-Columbian ancestors were not Christian, and it's a powerful source of comfort and resilience. This Jew who's had a lot of Spanish Inquisition nightmares would like to say for the record that it's not Jesus's fault that his big name fans are such shitty people.

Nile is a good person trying to do her best in a fucked-up world. "Her best" just radically changed. Her access to information on just how fucked up the world is has also just radically changed, because everything's so fucked up a person needs a lot of time to learn about it all and not only does she have centuries but she won't have to spend that time worrying about rent and healthcare and taxes, and because she now has Joe and Nicky and Andy's stories, and because she now has Copley's inside scoop on just what the fuck the CIA has been up to. Like, I want a fic where Copley tells Nile what was really behind the brass's decisions that led to her experiences on the ground in Afghanistan, that led to her father's death, but also I Do Not Want That.

Nile was 19 when Alicia Garza posted on Facebook that Black Lives Matter. She grew up in Chicago well before white people on Twitter were saying maybe police violence against Black people is a problem. She knows this is a deeply fucked up country, and she put on her Marine uniform and deployed with her team of mostly fellow women of color, and maybe she and Dizzy and Jay marched in the streets between deployments, maybe they texted each other when a white manarchist at a protest sneered at one of them for being a Marine. Nile's been busy surviving, and she knows some shit and she's seen some shit but she hasn't had much time to think about what it all means. Now she's got time. And Joe, Nicky, and Andy are willing to listen. (Is Copley willing to listen? I could see that going either way.)

Booker might also be willing to listen. The brilliant idea of cleaning up the rat Frenchman so that Nile can have millennia of emotional support and orgasms sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and holy shit do Booker and Nile have a lot of shared life experience as pawns of imperial wars. Obviously Booker is white and a man and that makes a very big difference. (Though G-d help me, Booker could be Jewish and France was knocking its Jews around like ping-pong balls in the 18th-19th centuries. Jewish Booker wouldn't make him any less white but it does add a shit ton of depth of common experience: military service as a way for your country to see you as a full member of society who matters, because who you are means that's not guaranteed.)

Booker was hanged for desertion from the army Napoleon sent to invade Russia as part of his quest to control all of Europe. We learn in the comics / this YouTube video that Booker was on his way to prison for forgery when he was offered military service instead of jail time. While we don't know how he felt about the choice beyond that he did choose soldier over inmate, it's unlikely he thought invading Russia was a great idea, given he tried to desert because Napoleon like a true imperialist dumbass didn't plan for how he was going to feed his army or keep them from freezing to death in fucking Russian winter.

I find it very interesting that the French Empire was at its largest right before invading Russia and fell apart completely within a few years. My country has been falling the fuck apart for a while now - see aforementioned War on Terror, growing extremes of economic stratification in the richest country in the world, abject refusal to meaningfully deal with climate change that US-based corporations hold the lion's share of blame for - but between Trump's abject refusal to meaningfully deal with the coronavirus and strong likelihood that he'll refuse to leave office even if a certain pathetic moderate I will hold my nose and vote for does manage to earn a majority of votes, ~y~i~k~e~s.

Our only immortals who have never known a world before modernity and nationalism happen to have been born of wars that were the beginning of the end for the imperialist democracies that raised them, and I think in the centuries to come that's going to give them some very interesting shit to talk about.

Nile's a Young Millennial, a digital native born in the United States after the collapse of the USSR left her country as the world's only superpower. She's used to a pace of technological change that human brains are not evolved to handle.

Napoleon trying to make all of Europe into the French Empire was a leading cause of the growth of European nationalism and the establishment of liberal democracies both in Europe and in many places that Europeans had colonized. Booker's first war produced the only geopolitical world order Nile has ever known and I just have so many feelings ok. Nile the art history nerd is probably not aware of this, and why would she be? This humble meta author is, like Nile, a product of US public schools, and all they taught me about world history was Ancient Greece/Rome/Egypt/Mesopotamia and then World War 2. Being raised in The World's Only Superpower is WEIRD.

Nile the Young Millennial is used to the devastating volume of bad news the internet makes possible. But she has absolutely no concept of a world where the United States of America is not The World's Only Superpower. In order to get up in the morning and put on her gear and point guns at civilians in Afghanistan, she can only let herself think so much about whether that American exceptionalism thing is a good idea.

She's about to spend many, many years where the only people who she can truly trust are people who are older than not only her country but the IDEA of countries.

She's got time, and she's got a lot of new information at her disposal. But there comes a point where my obsession with her friendship and eventual very hot sex life with Booker just isn't about sex at all. Nile needs someone to talk to about the United States who Gets It. Booker the rat Frenchman coerced into Napoleon's army, and Copley the Black dual citizen of the US and UK who's retired from a CIA career that he half understands as deeply problematic but half still believes in hence his mind-bogglingly stupid partnership with Merrick, are the only people on the planet Nile can talk to honestly about, and really be understood in, all the thoughts and feelings and fears and hopes of her experience as a US Marine.

And one more thing before I go get ready for Rosh Hashanah: Orientalism was a defining element of the Crusades and that legacy is painfully clear in current US-led Western military activity in Afghanistan, Syria, Israel/Palestine, you name it. Turns out memoirs by French veterans of the Napoleonic Wars are full of Orientalist language about Russia as well. I am maybe/definitely writing a fic where Booker spends his exile reading critical race theory and decolonial feminism and trauma studies monographs because he can't be honest with a therapist but maybe he can heal this way and become the team therapist his own damn self. I just really need him to read Edward Said and Gloria Anzaldúa and then go down on Nile, ok?

[circlique]

Do you have any ships you like but ever only in a very specific way? That’s the kind of relationship I have with rusame. Cold War dark and edgy antics with hate fucking? nah, lame, overdone 🙄😤🤮 Two people who are really just himbos making fun of each other for petty reasons and shit 🥺😍🥰

God I love RusAme himbos like that like what was the post I reblogged a couple days ago...Russia stealing America’s model airplanes and claiming them for Russia. That’s some good shit.

Anyway, to answer your questions: (tw for r*pe and abuse mentions btw)

Russia/China: I am SO fucking picky about rochu like--it was a notp for me for the longest time because I despised how everyone made it super abusive to China by making Russia this obsessed stalker who China would somehow fall in love with. Like, I have found fics where Russia r*ped China and after he apologized China would fall in love with him. God fucking no. And also, even when consensual, any time where Russia is a fucking hypersexual “seme” to a mewling, begging, hyper feminine China. People who ship it like this, get wrecked. SO anyway, loving and supportive rochu where China is a snarky asshole and Russia falls for him because China’s the only one who stands up to him and treats him like an equal and a comrade. They become each other’s rock in a rapidly changing world, and although they have their ups and downs, they understand each others suspicion, pain, and hesitance better than anyone. 

Japan/China: I feel like it should be fairly obvious why the history surrounding this ship makes some people uncomfortable. Obviously people acting like the r*pe of nanjing was some kind of shipping scene is fucking disgusting. However, I have met many Chinese fans who like this ship. It’s kind of a “better world” sort of ship, where many of the people who ship it do so with the understanding that the two of them coming to terms with their pasts is about the only way it can happen. That being said, I think there is plenty of canon evidence that China wishes to have a better relationship with Japan, and that he feels a lot of nostalgia for when their relationship was better. I think a lot of fans of this ship just want to see them have a happy ending.

DenNor: A very popular ship that seems to have a couple of common shipping trends that rub me the wrong way. Number 1: really obvious seme/uke dynamics. I’ve seen several people say Norway is really “in touch with his feminine side” and idk if maybe I missed something in canon but I never got that sense from him at all? Not to say having a feminine side is a bad thing, but this ship does get the seme/uke treatment a lot, and kind of like rochu, people will make Norway super desperate for Denmark’s dick and then also make Denmark into this manly sex god. And then number 2: making it abusive. Norway pulled on Denmark’s tie in one scene. Now he’s gotta hit him every time he’s sort of annoying I guess and verbally abuse him. Can’t we just have the cute dynamic where you have one who’s basically a golden retriever and the other who’s a cat? That’s DenNor to me.

GerIta: You remember what I just said about people making Norway verbally abuse Denmark? Well, GerIta but with Germany verbally abusing Italy all the time. Canon is to blame for a lot of this because...like half their interactions are Germany yelling at him. But they were at war, Germany was frustrated with his ally being a dunderhead--but why do we have to go and make their romantic relationship the same way, especially  modern day? Wouldn’t part of them getting together be them getting past this, don’t you think? And anyway, people in this fandom definitely aren’t afraid to throw out canon, so I don’t know why people are clinging to this element of GerIta and trying to spin it as “Germany’s just frustrated and yells at him because he cares about him!” People go on and on about GerIta being a cute and wholesome ship, but then they portray Germany as verbally abusive. Maybe it’s just my annoyance at people labeling ships like RusAme or FrUk as abusive because they have disagreements and less than stellar histories, but then those same people ignore obvious abuse in their own ship’s fandom because “rules for thee but not for me.” But yeah...GerIta is cute, when handled as a “best friends who were the last to get the memo that they were dating” sort of ship. Germany sighing in frustration at Italy saying something dumb but endearing, and just kinda being like “yeah...he’s an idiot...but he’s my idiot.”

Anyway, this is getting long, but you get the idea about what kinds of things turn me off of ships.

[thenightlymartini]

Asking again because your headcanons are *chefs kiss* and brighten up my day. So because I've been on a bodyguard trope kick lately, how would that trope play out with your ships?

Awww, thank you! Do you mind if I call you my chef's kiss anon?

Also, you single-handedly opened my third eye to this trope! Like how can one trope somehow fit all of my fav pairs so well?! And I love every single one of them so much that I want to write stories for them!?

Like I would sell my soul to anyone who does artwork about this trope with these pairs with no regrets.

Headcannon #64 - Bodyguard Trope (side note, these are in Human AU)

Kimchiburger: I've seen this go around quite a bit, but America as popstar!SK's bodyguard is so what I'm down for. I've done a few asks and headcannons surrounding that scenario, and I practically fell in love with it.

Like SK getting secretly flirty with his bodyguard? Totally scandalous? But so great! America getting flustered cause he's trying to do his job without feelings getting mixed up (too late on that front). Those two trying to keep a relationship on the down low when it could ruin both of their careers if it got out? There's the angst and danger I'm looking for!

Like SK could be a solo artist or in a group (maybe a co-ed group consisting of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Philippines, and Japan and China are other solo artists in the same company) and his brother, NK, is the manager? Which just adds even more complexity and danger to their hidden romance?

RusNK: Like, NK is just a rich CEO's son and Russia is the hired bodyguard to deal with the heir to a conglomerate empire. Little did Russia know is that NK isn't going to make it easy. Like the Korean will do everything and go out of his way to make it difficult for Russia to keep him even in eyesight, much less do his job. Why so? Cause NK thinks he can handle himself and is dealing with family issues. Like his father likes his brother more and wants his younger twin to be the heir instead of him, despite getting top marks and trying to prove otherwise? And it makes it worse cause SK wants nothing to do with the company and wants to go his own way, thus causing more strain on NK and his relationship. Having a bodyguard is almost like a slap in the face from his father, because he thinks his father is just making sure the second option is available if the first isn't convinced in time. Add in a little more angst where he is also trying to come to terms with his attraction to men which also ties into the familial drama, and he is now supposed to let some hot Russian be his guard and not catch feelings, whether purely physical or something more?

Add in Russia (where he comes from a country where being openly gay is not socially acceptable) and his coming to terms with his sexuality with a good looking, college-aged Korean that he isn't supposed to feel that way about, both professionally and socially? Along with the slow burn of man this kid is so damn annoying and I just want to strangle him to I feel bad for the kid to I kind of admire this guy's spunk to maybe I like this guy in more than an admiring way to oh god, I think I like him what do I do.

Commieburger: I like the idea of the both of them being bodyguards to popstar!SK. They hate each other and have very different ways of doing their job. Like SK could have gotten a death threat due to a minor slip or some rabid fan trying to hug him while he's performing on stage and they would have very different ways of how to deal with the situation. America would be the calmer of the two and be forceful, but respectful to the fan, and then comfort SK when he gets depressed about it. NK would have flattened the fan with a punch if he was legally allowed to (so he just settles with being a lot more aggressive) and tell SK to buck up cause "you're not going to win everybody over, so don't let it get to you", but his actions would be kinder than his words towards SK cause of family relations (which America wouldn't find out until he accidentally overheard an argument between the two).

The catalyst to these two seeing each other differently is when both of their pride and stubbornness towards each other costs them a fan slipping through and grabbing SK, causing him to twist his ankle on stage and being forced to take a medical leave for a few weeks. Both of them were devastated that due to their bickering SK had to suffer. Like he's America's best friend, how could America let this happen? And he's NK's younger twin, how could he, as the older brother and bodyguard, fail to protect him? Like SK would never blame the two of them, and waves it off as "shit happens", but both of them take it rather personal. They never start pointing fingers and blaming the other, despite that being a tempting option, because both realize they themselves could have been the bigger man and prevent what happened, but they didn't. That fact alone is what makes them realize that the other isn't necessarily as bad as they thought, since, for once, they both were on the same page.

This then becomes slow burn of them gradually warming up to each other to then having the beginning bud of romance once they realize with quite the surprise that they are actually compatible together. Like their both competitive, but it works out in oddly positive ways? Like they challenge each other to who can bench press more or who can be more discreet about dealing with unwanted attention directed at SK. Or that they both have green thumbs after finding out they both were taking care of SK's plants when he wasn't looking, and they give each other tips on plants they themselves own. Or how their seemingly clashing personalities are actually good balances? Like America is super spontaneous and charismatic, and NK is more calculating and calm, but they figure out that by balancing both personalities they both get a lot done. Add in SK (who is oblivious when it comes to his romantic life, but never his brother's), slyly shipping them and prodding them together, despite the controversy and conflict of interest that could arise if this were found out by superiors. Like SK is so sly that both America and NK think they get together under their own terms when really SK may have had a hand or two in some key points.

[minetteskvareninova]

Dear Russians: Historically Speaking, It Will Never Be a Better Time For an Uprising. Or Never Was, About A Week Ago.

I don’t think I need to explain to y’all that the situation in Ukraine is horrible, devastating, and all. We all have heard about cities being bombed, tanks rolling down the streets, and lately civilians being targeted as well. Most wars are brutal affairs, and Putin is determined to only make this one more and more brutal in the hopes that it’ll break Ukrainian’s resolve. And if he is able to keep fighting this war before he completely runs out of money and allies, he actually might pull it off. As of now, it’s all up in the air; Ukrainian resistance has been fierce, Russian army in a sorry state even before the war (allegedly because of corruption diverting funds from army to the pockets of oligarchs - because contrary to the popular belief, karma does sometimes work) and sanctions don’t help matters on the Russian side. All of this misfortune for Russians creates an unstoppable force, that has to contend with a single unmovable object - Vladimir Putin. Who will win this tug-of-war is still unclear, but sanctions might definitely help Ukrainians prevail in this regard. But I’ve heard another argument in favor of sanctions that I want to talk about - the possibility of Putin being overthrown by either people from his inner circle, or a popular uprising. A lot of otherwise smart and reasonable have expressed hope that this will happen and that this will be the end of this war.

That is, if you excuse me, THE STUPIDEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD.

I’ve always said this, and the time has seemingly only proven me right. I distinctly remember claiming at the beginning of the war in several private conversations (I know, pics or it didn’t happen - you’ll just have trust me, a stranger on the internet, who could just make shit up as they please.) that if we want to stop Putin, relying on the domestic resistance against him asinine. I also claimed that it could happen, but that it’s far too optimistic to even let this possibility factor into your decisions. Part of this was just a crippling fear of disappointment, as if even admitting the possibility would set me up for eventual fall. But also, I’ve read enough history to know the way most autocrats act when backed into a corner. The specific case I compared Putin into was Ivan the Terrible during the Livonian War. A lot of thing were different, of course, but the relevant factors were still there - prolonged war destroyed the economy (in Ivan’s case, crop failure and famine also didn’t help matters, while Putin has his sanctions instead), causing domestic unrest, which was cheered on by foreign agents. How did Ivan the Terrible react? By an epic temper tantrum. Which led to the establishment of one of the most brutal secret police forces from before the 20th century. I predicted that, as the situation on the frontlines continues to be bad for Russians, Putin will most certainly counter the domestic resistance against the war with brutal terror.

A few days later, the news of Putin’s first moves against dissenting opinions reached Slovakia, and his insistence on Russians towing the party line has only gotten more extreme with time.

The question of culpability of the ordinary Russians (meaning here current citizens of the Russian Federation, just to be clear) is a complicated one, but I am leaning more towards “they have nothing to do with this” than the other side. Because whether they agree with the invasion or not, they aren’t given much choice to express their opinion, let alone influence the situation. It’s the “it’s not rape if they enjoyed it” kind of argument - as long as the perpetrator would’ve done it (and started doing it) with or without the consent of the victim, they are still the victim and the perpetrator, and the victim shouldn’t be blamed for it.

The thing is, while I’ve never lived under a totalitarian regime, my parents’ generation did. And I recognize some of the same elements in current Russia that people from outside the former Eastern Bloc (or any other former undemocratic regime, really) might not. From what I’ve heard, people in former Czechoslovakia had about as much chance to resist the communist regime as current Russians have to resist Putin. There were ways to do so, but if you were found out, the consequences could be horrible for both you and your family. People are indoctrinated with state propaganda, and it’s not important if they actually believe it or not, as long as they continue to parrot it in the public, creating a kind of popular hypocrisy. This, in turn, breeds cynicism and apathy among the populace, as your public opinion doesn’t matter and any sign of dissent will only get you in trouble. Official party line is stoked by true believers and opportunists, who immediately recognize the benefits they might gain from peddling the state dogma. When you read the writings from the communist Czechoslovakia (and the other Eastern Bloc countries, I can imagine), it’s sometimes hard to tell who really means the bullshit they are spewing and who is just trying to not lose their job. And just to be clear - Putin was always an autocrat, now he’s just getting worse because of the bad situation he put himself in.

Okay, so this is what the situation looks like from the outside, but what if you are Russian? What should you do then? Are your protests really useless? Well...

I should first acknowledge that I absolutely get it if you are going to call me an out-of-touch idiot who has no idea what is it like to live in Russia. It’s easy to yell “don’t let the bastards grind you down” when there are currently no bastards grinding on you personally. And hey, I don’t even know if I would took my own advice if I was in your place! I am a coward who has never experienced any hardships on this level. I don’t blame anyone in Russia who folds under the pressure, any more than I blame people who run away from Ukraine instead of staying and fighting (even those who aren’t trying to get any children into safety, which many of them do). With that said, and I can’t stress this enough - it will only get worse. Even if Russian forces win eventually, they are nowhere near reaching their goals, and even a peace treaty is currently a distant prospect. Putin wants all or nothing, and only prolonged, costly war might dissuade him of this notion. Meanwhile, as the war will keep on taking its toll on his country, he will get more and more tyrannical. The worst case scenario is that Russia will become just a bigger North Korea.

As I see it, in every dictatorship there is a point where the populace is so crushed they are completely unable to overthrow their oppressors, no matter how much they want to. It’s possible that Russia is already there. But if I were to give advice to the Russians (which, again, I might not take in their place, and I completely understand if they don’t take it either), I would tell them this is only the case if the majority of them believe it. If you can help it, do not. Believe you can make the difference - but not by protesting, oh God, no! Totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia did fall that way, but by the time of the Velvet Revolution its authority has been slowly chipped away for years by various factors. Things in Russia aren’t getting worse and dissent isn’t rising slowly. It’s a rapid process, and unbreakable status quo will be set before this war ends. I know nobody in this day and age wants to even consider this option, but sometimes, the violence is the answer.

In this case, it might be the only answer. Or maybe the question simply isn’t posed anymore.

[evilelitest2]

Please don't insult Tsar Nicholas II by comparing him to Stalin. Yes, Nicholas had commited many truly vile shit, but... he wasn't an evil person by heart, just an autistic boy who was unlucky to be born in the position of absolute power in the most corrupt and opressive country in Europe. Unlike him, Stalin wasn't born in absolute power. Stalin has many chances to stop going over Old Bolshevic's heads for absolute power and establishing personality cult of himself, but he didn't.

I mean...he killed a lot of Jews dude. Like his secret police wrote The Elders of Zion, one of his long term goals was to eliminate all the Jews in Russia (the imperial policy was 1/3rd of Jews would be converted, 1/3rd killed, and 1/3rd exiled). like there is a reason why I am not a fan of Tsar Nicholas II. My girlfriend's great grandfather had to flee the country because of the pogroms and then again later when he became an activist. In my mind, Nicholas and Stalin are basically two different flavors of horrible Russian autocrat.

Nicholas was certainly a nicer person than Stalin, he was a caring husband and a good father (in a time period when that was not normal) and he was a friendly affable guy to those around him. Meanwhile Stalin was just kinda a dick to everybody at every moment. But when judging a historical figure, how nice they are and how sweet they were personally doesn't really change their policies. Also like...Nicholas was born into the richest family in the world. Stalin was a disabled ethnic minority born into an abusive household in relative poverty, I'm not really sure why Nicholas being from a super privileged background makes him less of a monster? It's true I feel a lot more sorry for Nicholas than Stalin, since his son was a hemophiliac and his entire family is murdered (which for the record I don't consider acceptable) but if we are talkin about autocracy the fact that Nicholas is more likable shouldn't change the fact that again, killed a lot of Jews.

Now Nicholas II was born into power and personally didn't want to be Tsar but...he was given many many opportunities to give up some amount of power and he didn't. He clung to power in the face of the advice from almost anybody who wasn't an arch royalist super conservative. Even if we compare him to other conservative Monarchists at the time, Nicholas is so stubbornly unwilling to share power that it literally gets him killed. In the last two years of his reign he and his wife prefer to lose the war rather than accept aid from the Duma/Worker's Councils. After the disasters Russo-Japanese war (a war that he caused due to his incompetence and lost due to his incompetence) you have the 1905 revolution where after the death of thousand of people and the crippling of the Russian economy finally gets Russia Duma. And then Nikki's Black Hundreds brutally massacre thousands in order to make the Duma largely a puppet organization, and leads a series of nation-wide pogroms against Jews (who he blamed for all of his own mistakes). And what does he do with this absolute power he so furiously clung too? Help get his country into WWI and then does so badly in that war that his dynasty gets overthrown. And when you get into the details of the Russian Revolution, it becomes clear that Russia could have won WWI and the Romanovs could have kept power had Nikki been at all flexible. He is remarkable in that almost every decision he made as Tsar was the worse possible decision he could have made, it's like the platonic ideal of a bad monarch.

Nicholas was an absolute monarch with a brutal secret police and one of the richest men in the world. And under his administration labor conditions were some of the worse in the Industrialized world, political freedom was denied. None of this was for the good of the empire or anyone really other than himself and his rich friends, its just that Nicholas did it under the name of "tradition". Sure he inherited his horrible state whose national motto was "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality" but he was an absolute monarch, he could change it if he so choose. And he didn't, when he oversaw two failed wars, two famines, and two revolutions, at no point does he ever take responsibility for his actions and go "Hey maybe I should take steps to prevent the suffering of my people."

In many ways, that is Nicholas II's greatest crime, he would have been happier as a Constitutional Monarch, but because he was so damn stubbornly conservative he wouldn't even change when it was in his self-interest. All of this was avoidable, had he simply accepted the reforms his people so desperately wanted, he could spend more time with his family, not have to worry so much about his heir, and could leave the governance of the empire (which he sucked at) to people who like....were at all good at it. He would have been great as a Constitutional monarch, he could just sit around and be sweet and then hang out with his family, but instead he stubbornly clung unto power and blamed all of his mistakes on the Jews. All to defend a job he didn't even enjoy. It was all....so avoidable, almost everything under his reign didn't need to happen if he had simply accepted reforms rather than retreat into his little fantasy bubble of pure Russian peasants loving their little father the Tsar.

And again, his secret police wrote the Elders of Zion, which is in competition for "Book with the Highest Death Count in History." And this document was written because Nicholas didn't want to share power. A ton of his loyalists are going to end up working for the Nazis.

Now most of Stalin's crimes came out of malice and most of Nicholas' (again, except the violent racism) came out of incompetence, which does matter in terms of understanding their motives and why they were awful, and I don't think Nicholas enjoyed the amount of death he brought the way Stalin did...but like if your family starves to death it doesn't really matter if it was done because the ruler actively was doing it on purpose or was too fucking stupid to understand how a supply chain worked--you are still dead. And in the case of the Jews, Nicholas was intentionally murdering them by the thousands for its own sake. Stalin was also a racist anti-Semite but you don't have full pogroms under his reign until the last year of his reign (and the Doctor's Plot is no in no way comparable to any of Nikki's pogroms). Again, Nicholas loved and encouraged the "Black Hundreds" who were basically Russian fascists.

And Nicholas wasn't just a raging anti-Semite, he was also a white supremacist and a Russian nationalist. Despite being mostly Danish and German himself, with barely any Russian ancestry, Nicholas got super into the whole Russian supremacy thing, and his empire actively tried to wipe out the languages, cultures and religions of the ethnic minorities in his empire, most infamously in Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia. In fact, part of the traumatic childhood that probably made Stalin so bad was getting beaten for speaking Georgian (his native language) in school. And Nicholas' anti-Asian racism led to him buying whole hog into the Yellow Peril conspiracy theory, the original "White Genocide," which was a huge factor in the disastrous Russo-Japanese war (he regularly referred to the Japanese as "yellow monkeys").

Now Stalin did kill a lot more people than Nicholas over he course of his reign, that can't be denied, so at the end of the Day Stalin is worse than Nicholas in my mind. But not by much: Nicholas' regime would have killed more if he was competent enough to pull it off, and his stubborn stupidity in the face of an empire in desperate need of reform still killed millions of people. And what's more he never seemed to care. So getting up in arms about even comparing him to Stalin is ridiculous, revisionist, and probably a little bit classist, as well as implicitly counting the murder of Jews as less bad than the murder of Christians.