#they’re both Jewish and I will take NO CRITICISM

[emo-batboy]

Harley: Happy Hanukkah, Brucie!!! Here's your present :D Do you like it? I hope it’s the right size.

Bruce, openly weeping as he holds up an I am Kenough hoodie: It's fine.

[dreamofbecoming]

if i don’t immediately headcanon at least one of my favorite characters as jewish, did i really join the fandom?

[etz-ashashiyot]

You know how sometimes arguing a point is losing?

Like if you engage the argument at all you are inherently putting up for debate things that should never be up for debate and the argument itself is degrading?

You see this with interpersonal gaslighting:

A gaslighter doesn’t simply need to be right. They also need for you to believe that they are right. In stage one, you know that they’re being ridiculous, but you argue anyways. You argue for hours, without resolution. You argue over things that shouldn’t be up for debate  – your feelings, your opinions, your experience of the world. You argue because you need to be right, you need to be understood, or you need to get their approval. In stage one, you still believe yourself, but you also unwittingly put that belief up for debate. In stage two, you consider your gaslighter’s point of view first and try desperately to get them to see your point of view as well. You continue to engage because you’re afraid of what their perspective of you says about you. Winning the argument now has one objective :  proving that you’re still good, kind, and worthwhile. In stage three, when you’re hurt, you first ask, “What’s wrong with me?” You consider their point of view as normal. You start to lose your ability to make your own judgements. You become consumed with understanding them and seeing their perspective. You live with and obsess over every criticism, trying to solve it.

[Source]

But you also see this on a broader societal level, with people asking unfathomably awful questions about minority groups, such as:

[Source]

It should go without saying, but no group of people should be forced to explain that yes, they really are real people, dickheads. The question doesn't deserve an answer; it deserves at best a disgusted eyeroll + "Are you a Nazi?" and at worst a punch to the face.

There is also the related phenomenon of the "when did you stop beating your wife?" type questions. The question is framed as a yes or no question, but the real answer for the innocent is: "I've never beaten my wife and never would." But even that answer still dignifies the question with a real response and puts the idea in the mind of the listener that hey maybe that's a real possibility and this guy is lying because of course he wouldn't just admit that. Now I don't know what to believe, but I'm skeptical.

Even if he answers, doubt has been cast on his character and many people (maybe even most people) neither have the attention span to listen to his full counter argument and supporting evidence nor are invested enough in strangers' lives to take the time to dig for facts on their own. Critically, it comes from a good impulse that shouldn't be repressed or taken too far in the opposite direction; namely, that we want to believe survivors and make it socially acceptable to speak out about abuse.

This leaves us with the uncomfortable reality that balancing believing survivors and whistle-blowers against not automatically believing allegations that very well may be false and/or in bad faith is a very tricky balancing act indeed. Because of this, people tend to struggle with taking survivors seriously and with presuming innocence until guilt has actually been proven, both. And as for the latter, this is at least partially due to the same psychological factors underlying the Don't Think of an Elephant problem.

Why am I discussing this?

See the thing is that these types of discourse have all been used, heavily, against the Jewish community, especially since Oct 7th, but really going back hundreds of years.

If you want to be our ally, you need to be on guard for how people use this rhetoric to accuse Jews of absolutely batshit cookoo bananas allegations (like being lizard people or having horns, or secretly running the world, or killing Christian babies to use their blood in our matzah, etc. etc.) and get away with it. Now obviously if so many people weren't already racist towards Jews as a people and had a vested interest in maintaining their supercessionist cultural worldview from Christianity and Islam, it would be a lot harder for this to work. Alas, the past 2000 years has created a bit of a snowballing effect.

This culminates in the effect described so well by Sartre:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Right now, Jews are facing extreme levels of these types of rhetorical abuse, and are receiving very little help in the way of pushback.

We have to stop trying to explain ourselves and start just naming these tactics instead.

[worfsbarmitzvah]

I've thought about how gentile Abrahamic religions are antisemitic religious colonialism before and it pisses me off a ton and I'm thankful you said it, but now that it's someone besides me saying it, I'm gonna give some criticism (please don't take this personally)

Everything up to Abraham (particularly Adam and Noah) have G-d creating and tending to the entirety of humanity, right?

During Abraham's time, it should stand for something that G-d tends to Hagar and Ishmael, right? Especially since Hagar gives her own name for G-d and He makes a promise to Ishmael that he'll be the father of nations (or something like that). And I think the Prophet Muhammad is supposed to be descended from Ishmael.

And Noahides are a whole Thing in all this too ofc.

But the bigger thing is there are definitely texts and interpretations that take G-d being the G-d of the Hebrews and extend it to Henotheism, but for the Jews who are purely monotheists and say there is truly only one G-d in existence and He belongs only to us, isn't it cruel to totally deny the vast majority of humanity the Divine, especially if He is still their Creator and controls the world(s) they live in?

this whole thing is coming from the assumption that judaism was always monotheistic. it wasn’t. at one point in time we were monolatrous, meaning we only worshipped one g-d but didn’t deny the existence of others. hell, the language used in the torah supports this (the way the text treats egypt’s g-ds being perhaps the most prominent example). hashem has always been our specific g-d, since before the idea emerged that he is the only g-d. our/the world’s perception of him may have since evolved into this idea of one singular deity, but it has not always been that way.

hagar and ishmael still come from our mythology surrounding our particular g-d. the idea then emerged in islam, which was born with the same jewish roots that christianity was, that muslims were descended from ishmael. and, like, i don’t really mind or care about that either way. ishmael’s not a super major figure in our folklore. the story, along others in breishit, genuinely does lend itself to the idea that hashem can be the guardian of many different peoples, families, and nations. and to tell the truth i don’t genuinely have much of a problem with sharing some folklore and roots.

but it NEEDS to be acknowledged where those roots come from. for so much of history, right up until today, christians and muslims have pretended they know our g-d and our folklore and our history better than we do. they have MURDERED us for worshipping our g-d and practicing our customs in OUR way, the way we have been since before their religions and cultures emerged. if the religions that find their roots in our culture were more willing to listen to us, respect us, and learn from us, maybe i’d be less angry. but they’re not. they’ve tried and tried and tried to eradicate us and erase where they came from and make our stuff theirs. i don’t think it has to be like that forever but i don’t think we’re very close to it not being like that as of now.

also, i can’t think of a single cultural mythology that doesn’t have a creation story of some kind. it’s just the kind of thing that societies do when they try to make sense of their place in the grand scheme. the fact that we believe our g-d created the entire world does not actually mean that that story or that g-d belongs to the entire world. the fact that everybody thinks our creation myth applies to and belongs to them is just more evidence of how widely our culture has been co-opted.

there’s nothing we can do to change the fact that our g-d has been made universal (either through the natural evolution of our theology or from colonialism and cultural theft, more likely a combination of both) and i have to be fine with that. sure, fine, the people who have adopted our g-d as their own without actually bothering to understand us at all can outnumber us by orders of magnitude.

but why does our holy city have to also be their holy city? the christians have the vatican and rome and islam has mecca and medina. why do they need jerusalem? why can’t even that just be ours?

again, i have to push this aside and be okay with sharing if i truly want to have peace in our land. and i do, because i love eretz yisrael and yerushalayim more than i hate what has been done to her. the situation has grown so far beyond the injustices i am angry about that it is impossible to right those injustices without creating brand new ones. so i will be okay with sharing our g-d, our texts, and our land. but that doesn’t mean the injustice of it won’t burn like a fire in my heart.

[laineystein]

If I may? You seem to have an incredibly rosy view of Israel and live comfortably there. And I am happy you do! I just also have seen Israelis on tumblr speak of the struggle with the rising cost of living.

This includes having to be self conscious about the price of brands to pick, and the rent of apts. (Which are pretty common things to deal with anywhere lately). I’ve also seen an Israeli blogger say that if you don’t have a background in engineering and tech, there’s not much of a future for you in Israel-or at least not one where you can live well.

On a personal level, I struggle to comprehend the idea of bomb shelters being a conscious part of every day life in so many parts of Israel. I don’t know how you guys do it, I really don’t.

I’ve been passive-aggressively criticized for having what some would deem a rosy view of life in general so I don’t know if I’m the best person to be giving you my feedback. What I can say confidently is that I have lived elsewhere and I will forever choose to live in Israel because it is the place I truly feel is home. Yes, things are expensive but they’re expensive where I lived in the diaspora as well. Homes here are not any more expensive than they were where I lived in the diaspora. Our economy is certainly curtailed to specific professions but so is every economy. Being an engineer and being in tech is also currently the most lucrative profession in the diaspora. I’m not saying that Israel doesn’t have its issues. It does and I reference them often. I’d probably talk about them more if I wasn't so used to a lot of it; I’m used to sirens and bomb shelters and tzahal and I don’t know how to explain that to someone who isn’t. It’s just always been apart of my life and it’s not going to change anytime soon so it is what it is. I also have no problem acknowledging that I grew up very privileged and still live a very privileged life so that may have something to do with my viewpoint. But here’s the thing - I just can’t live in a non-Jewish world. I can’t live my life comfortably in a non-Jewish world. And that’s not solely because of antisemitism. I keep kosher. I keep Shabbos. And nearly everyone I love (in the diaspora) is visibly Jewish. The men wear kippot and tzitzis. The women dress tznius and cover their hair. When you are this religiously observant it’s difficult to exist in a non-Jewish world. Our holidays are different and it’s not a default to have them off and not every company you work for will be fine with you taking them off - even if it’s illegal for them not to. In the US, you can’t make friends with coworkers because you can’t see them on the weekends or eat at their restaurants or in their homes. Sending your children to a Jewish school like the one I attended is like paying college tuition per child, per year; my parents paid over 100K every year sending me and my three brothers to school - the same school would be much more affordable in Israel. We’re nothing but pawns to the political system there - the right and the left both hate us. We are politically homeless and we’re too much of a minority for it to matter. So there’s a million reasons *not* to live in the diaspora as a Jew. For me, there is also a million reasons to live in Israel. The proximity to our holy sites. The weather. The fact that we have beaches and deserts and mountains and forests and rain and snow and sunshine. The diet and the healthier lifestyle. The joy. There’s so much joy here and I feel sorry for anyone that disagrees. I can be openly Jewish here. My Jewishness is not an inconvenience here. I do not have to apologize for it or hide it. And yes, I will forever feel safer here than I ever have in the US. Is Israel also an absolute dumpster fire sometimes? Of course it is. I’m not saying it’s for everyone. Living here will be a huge shock for many Jews. But for some of us, it makes sense and the pros will forever outweigh the cons.

[notaplaceofhonour]

I am pro-Palestine, but I've been getting a little uncomfortable with some of the things that some people have been posting. I've been looking for more nuanced takes, that still support Palestinian liberation. I don't know if this is okay to ask, but I was wondering if you could take a look at a couple of instagram posts that I was unsure about, because they seemed a little biased. I'm asking because some people have been acting like condemning Hamas is bad, and I'm genuinely confused at this point. I live a relatively privileged life, so I have no answer to the people who say that we're not allowed to police how the oppressed fight back. Also, I'm really sorry if anything I said was offensive. I'm still learning, and your post was on an important starting point.

Links:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cy0sgSxtboS/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cy9J8KLSuc8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

It’s good that you’re open to growing and learning! Ignorance is where we all start, and it takes time to take in new information.

If you ever hear someone tell you you’re “policing how oppressed people liberate themselves” by being appalled by mass-murder or atrocities, they’re being intellectually dishonest. This is a thought-terminating cliche that is both misrepresenting the situation you’re criticizing and what you’re saying, and being used to shut down any attempt to step back and think critically about the situation.

They’re using the language of social justice—appealing to surface-level aesthetic markers of progressivism—while disregarding the core of what makes social justice socially just.

Because social justice isn’t just about being “on the right side” of a fight, right? It’s about ensuring the freedom, dignity, and social well-being of everyone, not just “the right people”. That’s why the concept of equity exists. The framework of oppressor-oppressed/privilege/power dynamics certainly can be a helpful tool to understanding that, but the moment it’s weaponized to enable atrocities, mass-murder, & the denial of human rights, it ceases to support that goal—the entire point that framework exists. The framework of sorting entire populations of people into the categories of “the people you can’t criticize” vs “the people it’s fine to dehumanize” is one that is fundamentally opposed to social justice—in fact, it’s one of the steps of genocide.

Being oppressed is not a license to commit atrocities or shoot up schools or concerts or ethnically cleanse a town. Being mistreated doesn’t waive a person from responsibility for their actions, and no one needs to be equally oppressed to them in order to recognize when someone is doing something monstrous that must be stopped. You’re allowed to be appalled by atrocities or anything that dehumanizes anyone, and you’re allowed to fight against dehumanizing & mass-murdering anyone, no matter who’s doing it.

Having privilege—having power—often comes with blindspots, and it’s important to fill in the gaps of your experience with the experiences of people who don’t share your privilege, but that privilege doesn’t disqualify you from having a perspective, and caring about social justice for everyone, not just for some. In fact, privilege—power—comes with a responsibility to use it in favor of ensuring social justice is delivered for everyone—not just “the right group”. The whether because they live in an open-air prison or because someone broke into their house and executed their family in front of them.

As for the instagram posts:

The reel:

It’s a very whitewashed & over-simplistic presentation of Jewish-Arab relations in the Levant. Why exactly it’s wrong is difficult to fully cover without writing a novel’s-worth to debunk it, but essentially it pushes the myth that Palestine existed as an Arab homeland prior to the establishment of the modern state of Israel, and that the two countries would’ve been fine if Israel hadn’t gotten greedy & tried to take it all over.

In fact, the League of Nations created Mandatory Palestine in 1920 as a British territory out of land Britain got from the dissolved Ottoman Empire after WWI, which the Allies had made separate promises to both Jews & Arabs to give it to each of them as a homeland for their respective peoples. The twin movements for Arab & Jewish national independence (the latter of which is called Zionism) rose in the Levant around the same time. Arab-Jewish solidarity existed between some people in the movements, but there was also tension & fighting between other parts of the movements. The League of Nations drew up a partition plan in 1947 to give land to both Jews and Arabs, but that partition plan did not go through because the Jewish leadership accepted it and the Arab leadership did not. Negotiations fell apart, Israel declared its independence the next year (it was not created by the US or UK), and the Arab League invaded, creating the client state of All-Palestine. The Arab League tried to destroy Israel, and Israel won the war.

It’s true that Israel *did* seize more land than the 1947 partition would have allotted them, Israeli soldiers did commit atrocities during the war, and a lot of Arabs who refused Israeli citizenship were displaced to Gaza & the West Bank (it’s worth noting that Jews were also forced to flee from there to Israel in that time as well, but that doesn’t negate the horrors of the Nakba for Palestinians), which remained under the control of other Arab countries for a long time after.

I know less about the other Arab-Israeli wars, but I know Israel took more land during the Six Day War in 1967, displacing even more of the Arab population to what is now Palestine. The modern State of Palestine itself wasn’t created until 1988. Under Bibi Netanyahu & Likud, Israel has continued to move Israeli settlers outside Israel’s borders, deeper into Palestinian territory, often terrorizing & displacing more Palestinians.

The reel also uses the phrase “Zionist Media” to present the sum total of art & news media in Europe & America as a propaganda arm of Zionism/Israel. Bias can exist in any media, but when you hear this specific phrase, or any claim that amounts to painting “the MainStream Media”/“Western Media”/“Corporate Media” as one entity that is single-mindedly Pro-Israel, as shills for Israel, pushing “Zionist Propaganda”, that the media is in Zionist hands, in Zionist pockets, funded by the “deep pockets” of the Israel Lobby, that Israel “has its hands in” international media etc., this is a reference to a conspiracy theory from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (an antisemitic hoax document claiming to be the minutes of a Zionist meeting detailing their plans to exploit, control, & genocide non-Jews; originally published by Tsarists, and since reprinted by antisemites across the world, including the Nazis, Henry Ford, Milton William Cooper, & some factions in Palestine, including Hamas), which claims that the media is in Zionist hands, that they decide what does or doesn’t get printed. Anywhere you see the phrase “(((Zionist Media)))” you should heard it with the triple parentheses. I would call it a dogwhistle, but I feel like it’s too blatant.

The slideshow:

It’s straight up just pro-Hamas propaganda. It’s full of terrorism apologia, revisionism, selective presentation of quotes from Hamas, and atrocity denial.

Anyone claiming Hamas hasn’t committing extreme & horrific atrocities against civilians or that those atrocities are just made up is out of their goddamn mind. Hamas has sent suicide bombers into densely populated areas. Their rockets have frequently targeted populations with no military installations anywhere nearby. We have footage of Hamas executing unarmed Israelis, including children, a terrorist trying to behead an incapacitated Jewish man with a shovel, a terrorist calling his mother on the phone of a Jewish woman he murdered to brag about how many Jews he had killed that day. Anyone invoking the name of MLK, Malcolm X, or Nelson Mandela to deny or justify any of that as though it’s just “armed resistance” is a disgusting, antisemitic person.

Hamas denies the Holocaust, claims that it’s Zionist propaganda. Hamas’s original charter included passages detailing their plan to kill Jews anywhere they lived, including a vivid fantasy about hunting down Jews (not “Zionists”, it explicitly says Jews) even as they tried to run away and hide and begged for mercy; they’ve since tried to whitewash that in the revised charter, mostly just swapping out the word “Jew” with “Zionist” without changing much of the actual content, while claiming they never were antisemitic (saying in fact they can’t be antisemitic because antisemitism “isn’t a part of Arab culture”—something else they have claimed isn’t “part of Arab culture” is teaching that the Holocaust even happened), despite the fact that their new charter still pushes several cartoonishly antisemitic conspiracy theories from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, including the claim that the Free Masons are a front for global Zionist control.

I’m going to go into further detail about the antisemitism of Hamas’s rhetoric with sources on a different post eventually (I promise), but yeah, if anyone ever tries to claim Hamas “just hates Zionists, not Jews”, no they don’t; they are cartoonishly antisemitic; they just mean “Jew” when they say “Zionist”. It’s a dog whistle.

[ginger-snap-talkin-nonsense]

If one of your major defenses of Chuck Lorre’s and Adam Sandler’s work is that they get too much hate due to antisemitism and their critics being fascists. Why the fuck do you not hold this principle consistently for people like Rebecca Sugar as well? I just don’t get it at all. The main focus you try to bring when discusses these two straight Jewish men are always that their work is being attacked by antisemites/the far right and people should take that into account when looking at their work. But when it comes to Rebecca Sugar, a bisexual Jewish woman, your complete silence about any antisemitism potentially fueling people’s extreme hatred of both her and her work is just absolutely fucking deafening. Not to mention that, unlike both Sandler and Lorre, she ALSO has to deal with frequent both biphobic and misogynistic attacks, on TOP of antisemitism. Do you REALLY think the fact that you are also told by everybody around you to hate her/her shows is just for totally only normal reasons as well?? Because if you value the consistency of your beliefs to any fucking degree at all I don’t think that you could.

Oh hey guys check it out-the old town bicycle, Sitcom Anon has come home ONCE AGAIN. You done fucking other whores yet, you bitch?

Anyway I don’t talk about Rebecca Sugar ever, they’re non-binary (she/they I believe) as well so write that down, and I’m allowed to hold the opinions of Steven Universe I do (because let’s be real that’s the only thing of hers I’ve heard dunked on in any capacity) because I watched every episode and don’t have the critical thinking skills of an unsalted peanut.

Now if you want quality art here’s some for ya! Get er done!

[iheartgod175]

Correction Course: What to Expect in SRBA Reloaded!

It took me a long time to get this post about since life kicked me in the pants, but as promised, I am going to make a full post addressing the criticisms leveled at SRBA and what will be changed in the remastered edition, Super Readers’ Biggest Adventure Reloaded.

Since I’m not someone who can’t learn from her mistakes, I’ll start off with the valid criticisms to my story, Super Readers’ Biggest Adventure, which I have addressed with others who’ve read the story in some private messages (those who read this, you know who you are ^^)

1. The religious themes. I’m no less religious than I was when I first started, but going back I admit that the Christian themes were way, WAY overused here. I still laugh/cringe over the Jesus part myself, haha. I thought I was doing something cool there, but man. I really DID go overboard, and in all honesty, it wasn’t necessary. For those who pointed it out, I take full responsibility for it, and apologize for that. Later installments in the Gaiden series do not have this, though, with Darkness Rewrite being the only exception due to Prince Charming’s throwaway line. Reloaded does have a few metaphors/archetypes for several characters in the Bible (ie. Jeremiah is a blend of both David and Paul, while Chaos’ original character is supposed to mirror Saul before his fall from grace) and some parallels to Scripture, but I definitely won’t go crazy with that like I did in the original.

2. The worldbuilding/lore. For context, I wrote SRBA when I was in high school. So the quality of the writing is…much to be desired. I admit, I had trouble keeping track of the world building and lore for a while, and often when I was adding things into the Gaiden series, it was due to multiple, MULTIPLE rereads to make sure that I wasn’t retroactively retconning everything I wrote back then. As it was my first time working on detailing a large world, and since I made up a lot of things on the fly, a lot of things didn’t make sense back then. I’ve long since learned a lot about how to world build properly and am putting that into effect with the remaster, retconning and adding a few things—I wouldn’t call myself a master, but I’m not a beginner like I was before. While I don’t hate the lore that I created for it, there are things that could’ve been explained better. There are some things that could’ve been shown earlier in the story rather than in the throes of action. There are a few things that could be removed (not sure where I was going with the Summoning Pin element, honestly). There are some things that could’ve been added (shouldn’t the Fairytale World been taken over ages ago?). This is one of the main reasons I tapped this story to get a complete overhaul in the form of Reloaded, where I plan to change everything that was wrong with the original story. As for all the magical swords/Device ripoffs, they were supposed to be based off of Lyrical Nanoha’s Devices, but that wasn’t made clear. I also put in references to Pretty Cure/Sailor Moon in regard to both Muse and Princess Presto, since they’re like the magical girls of the team. I do apologize for that ^^;

Also, being a Black woman myself, there’s gonna be more representation for BIPOC/women. It was a weak point in the original story (as the only other OC whose family gets prominence, Muse, is of Irish/Scottish descent), but I’m gonna rectify that. I’ve decided to include Power Paige in Reloaded, as well as a few other characters, too. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in describing appearances back then, much less scenes, and I realized recently that in trying to create a good descriptor for one of my OCs, I ended up unintentionally offending someone. And at the time of writing the original story, I had no idea that Red was Jewish (for context, I wrote the story when the original Woofster episodes aired, and didn’t follow the series for a while until 2016, when the last few episodes were airing). So, yeah, going forward, we’re not having any stereotypes for BIPOC, period! I’m planning on revising the first chapter of Darkness Rewrite to get rid of that descriptor for Ethan, because, like you said, it was a weird longer way to say someone had darker skin. As someone who interacts with people of various cultures, and makes sure to include that in my own stories, I admit, I dropped the ball here. But I’m gonna fix that! Names were also a big thing that I struggled with. I’ll correct the names for the families of the Super Readers’ families (AKA. The ones who weren’t properly named in the series) soon.

3. Character Development, Part 1: The Super Readers. As much as I like the Super Readers, I didn’t really give them proper character development, with Wonder Red and Super Why being the most egregious. I’d say the character that I (mostly) nailed in the original was Alpha Pig, while the character who got the worst end of the stick was Wonder Red, who was kinda reduced to a hotheaded Tsundere (and I did kinda keep up that energy in the recent entry, which I’m gonna correct in the following chapters!). Whyatt wasn’t terrible, but he was pretty blasé in comparison to the others—he was just there to be the leader and that’s it. Rewatching the series has given me a better idea on where to go with accurately portraying the characters, and of course, that’s gonna be accurately represented in the remaster.

Oh, and while I’m on the topic, the other villagers will get better character portrayals too. Little Boy Blue was demonized pretty early on, to where even I felt bad for him rereading the story.

4. Character Development, Part 2: The OCs. I hyped Muse up a lot during the introductory chapters, but nowadays I really dislike her character. Her character was very much underutilized and underdeveloped. I had more fun writing about the Super Readers and the history about her country rather than her, since they were way more interesting. Her personality is gonna get a complete overhaul in the remastered version, and she and the Evil Reader/Jackson will definitely get better character development and arcs that flesh out their characters.

On the topic of the Evil Reader/Jackson and Lexicon, their “redemption arcs” were rushed and admittedly terrible. Well, Lexicon’s was slightly better than Jackson’s, but I agree that justice wasn’t served to the Super Readers or the victims they hurt in the story proper. They can basically be summed up as “my past sucked and it’s the defining characteristic of who I am, but I’m discarding as of today, please forget the people I’ve killed!” Which I agree is a pretty toxic way of achieving redemption, and I recognize and apologize for that. I did do this on purpose to have them go through a “trial by fire” where they learn that forgiveness for their actions isn’t immediately earned—quite a few characters in the Gaiden series (and even in Chaos’ Revenge) do not forgive or let Jackson or Lexicon off the hook, but that’s not implied in the first story. That’ll definitely be fixed moving forward, as seen below.

I’m also very unsatisfied with Jackson/The Evil Reader’s character. I intended for him to be straight evil and then defeated, until I decided that I’d do a redemption arc for him, and did one that was ripped straight off of an anime. Or, more specifically, a movie. I was originally going for an Anakin Skywalker kind of thing, and I realized that I pulled it off badly. I remember being quite proud of his backstory when I wrote it. Now, though? Ugh. I’m going to be redoing his entire story, plus his history with his two best friends as well, in the remastered version.

Jeremiah, naturally, isn’t gonna be a Gary Stu like he was in the original fic. He does have his own flaws, which are shown later on down the road, but honestly should’ve been shown before the Gaiden series. He also should’ve stepped in way earlier, especially when the Evil Reader’s true nature as Chaos was starting to be revealed (which ties into how the darker themes are gonna be handled). All of this are gonna be handled appropriately in the remastered version.

5. Way less shock value. Some scenes (such as the Pig’s brother slapping him “to his senses” scene) were added for shock value. I know now that this is NOT good writing, especially when it goes against the characters’ canon natures. Plus, having a shocking scene after a shocking scene can really, REALLY get annoying after a while.

6. The Whyatt/Red romance. While it was one of the “selling points” of the original story, it was cheesy. It’s one of the things that I didn’t like about the original because it felt rushed (I also wrote a romance fic alongside this way back when, so I don’t really have an excuse!). I’ve already made like seven pages of notes for their romance in the remastered version, where their friendship is showcased as well, and how it’s not just one-sided on Red’s end.

7. Last but not least, the mature themes. The original SRBA got pretty gritty at times—from more physical violence, to the villains possessing/enslaving the villagers, to the horrors of war, to characters outright dying/getting killed, to the implications of genocide. And then, there’s the reveal in the Gaiden verse that Chaos is a predator. A lot of the Super Readers’ reactions/trauma to the events that happened in the original were pretty understated, I can concur with that. There are two chapters and a few moments that do address their worry, terror and fear about losing everything they hold dear…and that’s it. If I’m being totally honest, those aren’t enough. To say nothing of the crap they learned about the Evil Reader in chapter 17. That’ll get rectified in the remaster as well.

Now, I’ll finish this by explaining that I do write darker subjects in my writings. Those things do include, among other things, rape, SA, objectification/sexualization, suicide, violence (of several forms) and—if my Western series Blazin’ Trails is to go by—animal abuse, racism and slavery. I’ll make this abundantly clear: I don’t have a sick fascination with these things, and I do not advocate for any of these horrible things in real life. Sometimes, when I read these stories, when I see things that are just so awful, it literally runs through my head for hours, I write. I write it out to vent about it, to get my feelings out on paper, to break down why it’s wrong/cruel and most importantly, what can be done to end it and the suffering in people’s lives.

It’s why, when I write these themes or villains who eagerly commit these crimes and laugh, I do it with the mindset that they are the lowest of the low. When I write villains like this, I write with the mindset that these are horrible beings who a.) need no backstory to justify their horrible actions and b.) need to be eradicated in the most fitting way possible.

And in all of the stories that feature one or any of these things, it’s made 1000% crystal clear that none of these things, nor the people doing them, are morally right, excusable or justified/vindicated by history. I also stand by the fact that rape/sexual assault is never the victim’s fault, it’s 100% on the perpetrator, regardless of the circumstances. I have one rule when writing about characters who commit such acts, or who supports such acts: if there’s a character who believes that such things are right, they are swiftly dealt with, often violently. In fact, a lot of times, there’s a visceral reaction to those things and the characters are trying to eradicate those things (as well as the people doing it) from the world they live in. I certainly don’t let my villains (the ones who commit the aforementioned terrorism/sexualizing/etc.) get away with such actions.

I did address that yes, Lexicon and Jackson got away with the aforementioned genocide due to BS writing back when I was in school. In Reloaded, though? The difference is night and day—Jack and Mr. Beanstalk straight up kick their faces in for what they did to them and the kids, Jeremiah is much harsher in his beatdown of both of them and does reduce both of them to husks of their former selves when he steps in. And the Super Readers don’t speak to them for much of the story, even after it’s revealed that Chaos is the true villain, ’cause their earlier actions are still fresh in their minds and as such they don’t trust them at all (and rightfully so).

As for Chaos, he gets dealt with in the appropriate manner befitting a predator by Jeremiah when they first fought (which is gonna be explained in Darkness Rewrite when I get to it). But just know that the mature themes of this story will be handled in the appropriate way/explained better than they were in the original.

I think that’s everything that’s gonna be changed. If I find anything else that needs to be changed, I’ll be updating this accordingly! ^^

Thanks to everyone who let me know what was up, as it really helped me to get all of this out.

~iheartgod175

[hockeygossipdaily]

Anon that y’all labeled “Sammy defender” here. And just fyi, me having a different opinion then you does not mean im trying to salvage her name because i think she’s pretty. But anyways this is me honestly trying to understand where you guys are coming from cause there’s stuff that’s been concluded that makes zero sense to me.

How does her sitting on a guys lap automatically equal her cheating on jack? We don’t know if they discussed boundaries and have said that stuff like that with close friends is ok. Relationships are all different and heck maybe the guy is gay and that’s why she felt comfortable doing it. Also exactly what proof is there that jack cheated on Sammy? If it’s true I feel like this is yet another case of women getting vilified for doing the same thing men do while men getting very little criticism. Cause I have heard no one complaining or spam commenting on insta or giving Jack grief for being a cheater but Sammy (allegedly) cheating makes her scum of earth. People constantly excuse jacks part in this relationship as it being a toxic relationship. Oh it has to be “toxic” and he has to be “trapped”. But maybe just maybe, jacks a bad person too.

I am also trying to understand why you guys call her a Zionist? Is it solely because she is presumably Jewish and visited Israel? And the luke thing. I think it’s insane that Sammy, from what i understand, was allegedly rejected by Luke and threw a fit and then randomly was still able to get with jack?? Cause honestly if that’s the case it’s on jack 100%.

You guys are saying that Ellen and Jim are PR freaks and that a lot of media that has come out with jack and Sammy, they look really happy. But then say that things are awkward between Sammy and jack and his family BECAUSE of media that has come out? Media and pictures can be misleading. Quinn and Luke both can look veryyyyy awkward in pictures but that doesn’t mean they hate their friends or brothers who are in the pic too.

Also I don’t know if you guys have just forgotten but sienna got a lot of hate on other discussion boards while she was dating Jack. It was mostly after they broke up that people started liking her.

On a real note, I don’t have any particularly strong feelings towards Sammy but I have period of being on and off tumblr and recently when I came back I was just so taken aback by the extent of bashing and personal attacks against her. It is truly a way higher amount of hate towards her than any other wags recently. And I see common phrases being used like “I think”, “I feel”, “yeah I could believe that”, and comments talking about energies when making statements about Sammy. It starts as theories and speculation, and gets repeated so many times that people on tumblr believe it as fact. Please remember everyone to be kind and keep in mind that we are all human. Mental health matters and really anything can be interpreted in a million different ways.

I’ll try to answer each of your questions:

1. Being in a relationship and sitting on another guys lap some don’t take to that lightly especially the boyfriend. You’re right in saying we don’t know they’re dynamic as both have slept with other people and they’re still together. Her sitting on a guys lap may not be physically cheating but it’s definitely wrong

2. Her and her friends went on a mission trip ( that’s the closest thing I can compare it to) to Israel . There might be photos but I can’t remember

3. Jim and Ellen want what’s best for the boys and after Jack and Sami hooking up if that hadve gotten to the public that would’ve put a dent in his reputation. So the PR thing was to keep Jack in everyone’s good graces. As far as how the family views her and actually thinks of her idk. However with evidence provided from other anons who have said things that turned out to be true Sammy did try to go for Luke so I can see him being uncomfortable around her and if Quinn knows I can see him not taking a liking to her either. Her parents, like Luke, probably are trying to stay cordial with her again to keep the peace because their family is in the public eye and now one of the most famous hockey families so they have to keep a certain image.

4. I didn’t start hockey till after they had broken up so all I saw was people saying they liked sienna but I didn’t see the hate. Some Jack fans are gonna hate who he dates regardless of if they’re nice or not but I don’t think sienna did half of what Sammy did

What really turns people off is that anons have been correct in her being mean or making mean comments to people and the SA joke really turned people off because why are your friends making that joke in a comment section and your agreeing by liking it?

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

After suffering a set of embarrassing defeats in last year’s elections, Michigan Republicans tapped their worst-performing statewide candidate, Kristina Karamo, to lead them back to relevance in 2024 as state party chair.

Unsurprisingly, however, Karamo—who once accused Beyoncé of spreading paganism and believes demonic possession is “real”—is already doubling down on the far-right rhetoric that doomed her own campaign for Secretary of State in 2022.

Speaking at a party function on May 17, Karamo laughed off concerns about a tweet from the Michigan GOP that invoked the Holocaust to condemn gun control measures, according to audio obtained by The Daily Beast.

The tweet amplified the popular right-wing argument that the Nazis’ campaign of systematic mass murder was possible because of gun ownership restrictions. On top of an image of wedding rings left behind by murdered Jews, the Michigan GOP tweet reads: “Before they collected all these wedding rings… they collected all the guns.”

Figures in both parties criticized the tweet as an offensive trivialization of the Holocaust; the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition called it “absolutely inappropriate” and called on the Michigan GOP to take it down “immediately.”

In her remarks at the Lincoln Day dinner in Montcalm County, Karamo made clear she did not care about such concerns—even dismissing the continued anger over the tweet “hilarious, completely hilarious.”

“They’re still going on and on about that,” she continued. “‘Are you going to apologize?’ I’m like really, are you guys still going on about this?”

Referencing her identity as a Black woman, Karamo said, “I get this mail and it’s about how I’m encouraging white supremacy and xenophobia all this… I just laugh so hard.”

In her remarks, however, Karamo may have unintentionally laid bare how she, and a significant portion of the party base, views the role of firearms.

“Us being armed is not about stopping a burglar,” she said. “It’s not about hunting. It’s about stopping a tyrannical government. And if you know a thing or two about history, we know that governments have a tendency to be very abusive to the citizenry.”

Mentioning “basic things like history” on several occasions to defend the Holocaust meme, Karamo also depicted Democratic opposition as “very violent” and “Godless people.”

For Michigan Republicans, if their chair’s fringe style prevails, it’ll likely point to more embarrassing defeats in 2024 for a once-proud party organization. That outcome would have national implications: Michigan is not only a crucial battleground in the 2024 presidential race, but will host an open-seat U.S. Senate contest that could help decide the majority in that chamber.

But as Karamo’s career trajectory shows, in today’s GOP, election blowouts are no impediment to personal success for rising MAGA leaders.

After a failed run for local office in 2018, Karamo rose to prominence after serving as a poll watcher in Michigan during the 2020 election and pushing conspiratorial claims of widespread voter fraud and illegal voting.

With a newfound platform, she would go on to claim the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was a “false flag” operation and to speculate that Michigan was the epicenter of “The Great Reset,” a spinoff COVID conspiracy theory positing that the World Economic Forum fabricated the pandemic to install a global government. Wackier still were her repeated claims that modern concepts like evolution are demonic scams, or that abortion is akin to pagan sacrifice.

Such comments helped Karamo win the GOP nomination for Secretary of State in 2022. After a conspiracy-laden campaign, she lost to Democrat Jocelyn Benson by 14 points, practically a blowout in evenly divided Michigan.

But her ascension to Michigan GOP chair just months later demonstrated that Karamo had figured out the incentive structure of a party reshaped by former President Donald Trump. Pushing all manner of conspiracy theories, she capitalized on the MAGA base’s appetite for more extreme rhetoric and a distrust of institutions above all else—including the imperative to win elections.

As The Daily Beast previously reported, Michigan Democrats have been surprised by the dearth of top-tier Republican recruits in their state. Right-wing media personality Tudor Dixon, the 2022 challenger to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, lost by nearly 11 points after running a campaign focused much more on culture war issues, such as transgender women in sports, than economic ones such as inflation.

A leaked memo from within the Michigan GOP following the 2022 losses lamented that Dixon had “no statewide operation” and called for changes at the top of the party.

“There were more ads on transgender sports than inflation, gas prices and bread and butter issues that could have swayed independent voters,” the memo stated. “Voters simply didn’t like what Tudor was selling.”

Beyond concerns about Republicans being able to compete statewide, conservatives who have drifted away from the GOP worry the problem runs much deeper.

Once a mighty force and a winning machine, the Michigan GOP is now considered a national bastion of extremism, in a state which was quickly becoming a hotbed of far-right militia activity even before the 2020 election.

“It’s dangerous and it’s concerning, because there’s been some very famous violent actions and threats of violence from some of these militia extremist groups, but we’re seeing not just dotted lines or offshoots, but direct connections between those same groups and the Michigan Republican Party,” said former Michigan GOP chair Jeff Timmer, who’s since become a vehement critic of the party.

Karamo’s rhetoric, Timmer told The Daily Beast, “is becoming very alarming, talking about citizens taking up arms against the government, like we saw on January 6th.”

It’s hardly just the party chair espousing such rhetoric, too—ambitious Michigan GOP hopefuls running elsewhere are, too.

At a June 5 campaign event, Dean Brandt—who lost a bid for the state legislature last year—presented his run for Allegan County Sheriff as a major opportunity for the Michigan Liberty Militia, one of the groups that sent armed members to take over the state capitol in Lansing in 2020 to protest COVID public health restrictions.

Aside from backing the now-mainstream GOP position of arming school teachers, Brandt also said he wants to deputize members of the militia and bring them on to help the sheriff’s office.

When a member of the crowd told Brandt “the sheriff can deputize anybody in his county”—which is not true—the candidate showed his cards.

“That is exactly why I’ve been asked not to use the word militia, because it targets me,” Brandt said, according to audio obtained by The Daily Beast. “Well, guess what? That target [is] standing right here.”

Brandt made it abundantly clear he’s eager to incorporate the militia into formal law enforcement tasks—or tasks well outside their remit—should he get elected to the job.

“I will deputize as many organized militia members as I can. Period,” Brandt said. “As a community watch. That will have a direct line to me. Any unconstitutional shit that hits the fan. Call me.”

The Michigan GOP and the Brandt campaign did not return requests for comment.

“It’s not just lone wolf action,” Timmer said of extremism in Michigan. “It’s becoming part and parcel of what it means to be in the party.”

[grinleysspa]

Not here to attack or anything I just like your take on Israel and I would like to add that people (or most of them i hope) aren’t against the jewish existence anywhere, they’re just against the state of Israel and its practices and policies. Source: am from a neighbouring country never met someone against jewish people.

Hi! Sorry I didn't seem to see this ask sooner. Unfortunately, I've run into a lot of people who invoke antisemitic tropes in their "activism" for Palestine and Palestinians here in Canada, although I'm sure it's easier for Jews to identify antisemitic dogwhistles than it is for non-Jewish people :(* Even if someone is against the Israeli government, its actions, or its policies (which isn't inherently antisemitic at all), their criticism can easily veer into antisemitism if they use antisemitic tropes in what would otherwise be valid criticism. I'm not Israeli myself, but in my experience, Israelis are honestly one of the groups MOST critical of Israel and the Israeli government. I obviously don't have any perfect solution to the conflict since I'm just a random Jew at a Canadian university studying the Hispanic Caribbean (aka a field completely unrelated to the region or its history), but I definitely think that centring Palestinian and Israeli voices is something that's been lacking in Western activism related to I/P and is something that needs to improve a lot. Even 3rd+ generation Palestinians and Jews in Canada or the US just aren't going to have the same level of knowledge, involvement, or stakes in I/P as people who actually live in the region, so centring either diaspora isn't necessarily great either (although it is slightly better than focusing on the takes of non-Palestinian goyim).

I'm personally hesitant to label myself as either Zionist or anti-Zionist because both terms cover such a wide range of stances (you can have two people with the exact same political stance on I/P where one considers themselves a Zionist and the other an anti-Zionist), so it's not helpful terminology at all imo. Basically, in the simplest terms, I'm just pro-peace, which is the bare minimum at this point. Israelis, Palestinians, and Jews all live in Israel-Palestine, regardless of what language people use to describe them, and none of them are going anywhere.

*I will say that a lot of "pro-Palestine activism" has just been anti-Israel and heavily performative in a way that doesn't actually prioritise the wellbeing of Palestinians and just exists to make the person doing it look good (for example, the whole "being on the right/wrong side of history" rhetoric). Also a lot of the stuff I've run into hasn't even been dogwhistles, it's loud and proud antisemitism. Most of my Jewish mutuals and accounts I follow, including ones who identify as anti-zionist or non-zionist, have received multiple death threats and suicide baiting asks and messages

[jaws-and-canines]

Idiots, Fools, Part-timers

A Count The Days story. Comes after They’re Laughing At Me and leads into Respite. Contains teeth gore, shoulder whump and some sembelance of comfort. 

---

Fennec is on his fourth cup of coffee. It is three in the morning, and he is doing the observation rounds, because none of the officers have deemed to do it, and it must be done. He has a splitting headache.

None of this is unusual for him. He limps down the corridor of C-5, a hand on his key chain to stop them from rattling around and waking people up. The people in Corrective Isolation tend not to be so happy if you wake them up in the night. He’s had a man take a chunk out of his chin with a makeshift knife made from a broken CD over that in the past. 

Halfway down the coridoor, in the middle of the long row of locked doors, one of the blue metal doors sits slightly ajar, away from the frame. Fennec pulls a comical expression of incredulous shock before it drops from his face as he realises what a stupid expression it is.

He rubs gritty eyes on the back of his hand, and stops, staring at the slightly ajar door. “Idiots, fools, part-timers,” he mutters, as if the day staff would hear the criticism, and goes to try to shimmy the lock into shutting. The day keys- the individual cell keys- are all in sealed pouches upstairs, and the spares, the “doubles” keys, are in the hands of the night’s orderly officer. The door’s locking mechanism won’t budge- true to its design, but certainly frustrating. Fennec pauses about to radio the orderly officer, one hand on his radio. Who is the orderly officer for tonight, he wonders? He puts his hand on his forehead as he remembers the name written on the whiteboard in the staff reception today. Jack Iverson.

He pulls the door ajar again to try and slam it, and see if the lock will shoot with that kinetic shock. It is at that moment when he realises the worst-case scenario has happened. Somehow, the cell’s not empty. The door wasn’t checked, and the cell is not empty.

Fennec’s hand on his forehead turns to a hand in his hair, staring at the crumpled figure in the dark of the cell. “Oh, Scheisse,” he mutters.

The ones who are awake usually know better than to try to sneak by if a door doesn’t lock properly. The threat of escape charges is enough for them to point it out at lockup, and no later. But the man in the cell looks totally out of it. He’s lying almost foetal on the plastic mattress, writhing and clawing at himself, mumbling incoherently. “I can’t- I can’t- I can’t-”

Against his better judgement, Fennec decides to step in. He almost vomits as the smell of alcohol hits him. He almost vomits again as he stands on a tooth on the floor with a crunch. He winces, kicking it gently out of the way, and steps towards the figure writing on the floor. “Mother!” cries the man, jolted into the now by Fennec’s shadow falling on his face. “Mother! Please!”

“She isn’t here,” says Fennec quietly, recognising the man by his scarred back and his hands and not much else. Haskell- normally a relatively well put-together man- has been off Fennec’s roster for upwards of a week now. He had wondered where they had moved him, but had decided it was much beyond his payroll to even think about.

Where he was doesn’t matter. What they did to him is written over his skin. Fennec pushes his glasses up his nose and watches Haskell reach a hand out to something that’s not there. “Jesus,” he mumbles- an exclaimation of shock he’s picked up from the native speakers around him. An unusual idiosyncracy for a Jewish man to have picked up, but an expression of shock all the same.

Haskell’s face is a mess. Both eyes blackened, swollen, hair thick with salt, his jaw, swollen, blood dripping down his chin as he chews at his own lip, reaching out into the dark with a grunt of effort. “No, no, n- no, no, you can’t, I can’t-” There’s a reedy cry as he shifts his weight a little, and he goes back to mumbling incoherently to himself, writhing in agony.

Tipping his head to one side, then the other, Fennec realises that his left shoulder is out of its socket. It’s quite obvious to see at a certain angle, each time he reaches out for something that’s not there. As much as he’d like to clean the utter mess they’ve made of him up and get him into bed properly, he worries that they’re not done with him. And to interrupt the work of the people who like to periodically wipe Haskell from the face of the earth for a week or so is a dangerous game- Fennec already has a vague idea of Iverson’s obsession with the disgraced soldier, and doesn’t wish to know more.

So cleaning him up is off the table, reasons Fennec. But the shoulder? It wouldn’t be out of the question that the shoulder had simply slipped back in whilst the man had writhed around in his half-conscious state, he thinks. He could lie his way through that. Glancing behind him, he puts a hand on the wall, and clumsily sits down beside the man.

He glances behind him again, expecting Iverson to be standing in the doorway, poised to attack. Reaching over, he takes Haskell by the intact shoulder, who screws his face up with a groan. Fennec gently turns Haskell over. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says quietly, getting a good grip on the injured side, one hand on the side of Haskell’s neck and the other at the top of the arm. “I’m so sorry.” “N- no- no-” Fennec, aided by a grim sort of muscle memory, puts his weight behind his hands. The shoulder slips back in with an audible crack.

Haskell’s eyes go wide. “Ah! Ah!” he howls. “I’m sorry,” says Fennec quietly, putting a hand over Haskell’s mouth to try to quieten him down. “That’s better now, it is better, it is better.” Haskell shifts around, trying to get away from him, but slowly, the realisation that the pain has subsided a fraction sinks in, and he stills with a sigh, pressing his face against the cool of the floor.

Fennec sits there for a moment, looking at the utter mess they’ve made of the man, before he can hear the distant clicking of Munroe’s shoes against the laminate, coming down the other corridor of the wing.

“Oh, shit,” he mumbles, remembering just how much trouble he is in if he’s caught here, and tries to get to his feet again, grabbing onto the doorframe to ease himself up with a grimace.

He stumbles out of the room, nearly bent double, still holding onto the door frame with white knuckles, and lets a few tears slip down his cheeks as the pain gnaws at the inside of his knee. He stays, a hand on his knee, until he catches his breath, and then he straightens up, and pushes his glasses up his nose with a sigh.

In the dark, Haskell stops writhing around on the plastic mattress, and drifts off into a dreamless sleep.

Fennec takes his radio from his belt with a sigh, and keys the transmit button. “This is tango-four to control, over,” he says flatly. He utterly despises using the radio. “Control. Go ahead, over.” “I have a door here- 467, down on C-5- that’s not been shot by the day staff. The… the, er, lock mechanism seems… erm…” He trails off for a moment. “It was shut but not locked. Requesting the NOO to come down and ensure that it is locked, over.” He chews his lip, praying that he’s not going to get yelled at for being unclear on the radio as he often is. There’s a moment as he stands there in silence, with his radio in his hand, and then Iverson’s voice cuts through the static. “Night Orderly Officer, receiving. Thank you, Anton. I’m on my way down, over.”

Iverson announces his presence with the jangling of his keys as he walks, as he always does when he wants to be heard, walking onto the wing in the knowledge that it is his kigdom and his alone. “Is it down here?” he asks, walking down the hallway. Fennec keeps his distance, just nods. In all honesty, he thinks the man smells godawful- salt, fish, and a coppery undertone- and he doesn’t want to be within arm’s reach either.

“There. There’s someone in there,” he says to Iverson, gesturing towards the unlocked cell. “No, there isn’t,” says Iverson, and fixes him with a stare. Those parchment-pale brown eyes are full of rotting bones and decay and blood and carrion. Fennec instinctively stares at the floor, wrenching his gaze away from the stare. That stare means what Iverson says, and it means what is in Iverson’s eyes, despite the soft smile on his face. “I think you must be very tired.” His voice drips with a sort of condescending sarcasm.

There is, then, as far as Fennec is willing to argue, nobody in that cell. “It has been a long night,” concedes Fennec quietly. “Go and take your break,” says Iverson. Fennec looks at him again, and nods slowly. He leaves before Iverson has a chance to say anything else to him, but out of the corner of his eye, watches the Special dissapear into the cell and pull the unlocked door of the cell to behind him.

[daggerbisexual]

ok so i originally wrote this for facebook but im gonna share it here too. So, given everything that’s been going on lately, I thought I’d give everyone a brief lesson. Now, I’d like to preface this by saying that I am, in no way, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s the longest running world conflict and a very complex topic that I, like many, have only scratched the surface of. I’d also like to note, that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES AM I DEFENDING THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT. What they’re doing is horrendous, and criminal under the Geneva convention (but i’m not an expert in war crimes either). References will be linked under the cut.

Okay, let’s start with a couple of definitions, shall we?

Jew: Someone who belongs to Judaism, either through birth or conversion.

Judaism: an Abrahamic ethno-religion (a religion that has a common ethnic background and thus can be treated both as ethnicity and as religion).

Zionism: a movement in favor of the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people.

Zionist: a member of the Zionism movement.

Antisemitism: a prejudice against or hatred of Jews.

Ready? Alright, here we go.

1. American Jews have no say in the decisions of the Israeli government.

This one seems fairly obvious, but I’m gonna say it anyway. American Jews, unless they are at very high levels of our government, have no say in what the Israeli government does. Blaming Jews for the actions of the Israeli government is just a cover for antisemitism. Which leads me to number 2.

2. Being Jewish does not mean automatically supporting the actions of the Israeli government.

Note that I say the Israeli government, and not Israel itself (but I’ll get to that in a minute). The Israeli government has done some frankly awful things to Palestine and the Palestinians, particularly along the Gaza strip, and being Jewish does not mean that I automatically support this. In fact, speaking personally, think what the Israeli government has done is detestable and horrific. See the Aljazeera summary for a more complete history.

3. Being a Zionist does not necessarily mean being Pro-Israeli government or being Anti-Palestine.

Again, this one seems like common sense. Just because someone believes there should be a Jewish state does not mean they support the actions of the Israeli government. See number 2 and the Aljazeera summary. Which leads me to number 4.

4. You can support both the Zionism and Free Palestine movements.

This isn’t a contradiction. You can support the ideal of a Jewish state and also believe that the Palestinians have the same right to self-determination and statehood. In fact, these two ideas should absolutely exist side by side.

5. If you use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the basis for anti-Jewish rhetoric, you’re not progressive, you’re antisemitic.

See literally all of the above.

Antisemitism is at an all time high in the United States. According to the Anti-Defamation League, recorded antisemitic incidents in the US increased 36% from 2021 to 2022. We might like to think that antisemitism ended with the Holocaust, but it didn’t. It is still alive and kicking, and it is getting worse.

So criticize the Israeli government, criticize Hamas, support the people affected by this conflict. But don’t take it out on Jews. We’re as horrified as you are.

References:

Jew & Judaism definition: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3854897/jewish/What-Is-a-Jew.htm

Ethno-religion definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group

Zionism: definiton: https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/zionism

antisemitism definition: https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/what-is-antisemitism

Anti-israel protests and antisemitism: https://www.ajc.org/news/7-ways-some-anti-israel-protests-have-spread-antisemitism

ADL antisemitism data: https://www.adl.org/resources/report/audit-antisemitic-incidents-2022

Aljazeera summary: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/9/whats-the-israel-palestine-conflict-about-a-simple-guide

[jewishbarbies]

Hi! I’m sorry to bother you, but I found your posts by accident and I just have a few thoughts as a fellow Jew (I’m mixed but my matrilineal Jewishness is Jewish Arab/Arab Jewish). This is aimed at the gentiles in your asks, but white USAmericans need to realize that they’ll always be inherently more privileged than Jewish people. Point blank. There’s no real discussion to have in regards to that. And there’s a LOT of commentary and jokes being made from USAmericans (mostly white) that is framing themselves as the victims or centers of this ethnic cleansing and apartheid. They are WHITE. I’m not a fan of them appropriating a lot of the humor or commentaries the actual oppressed and ethnically cleansed peoples are making, because when white gentiles do it it is ABSOLUTELY punching down and antisemitic. Westerners in general need to realize they have systemic power behind their words and actions that inherently disadvantage Jews. I’ve been very vocal about people derailing pro-Palestinian posts, and I’m going to be JUST as vocal about people derailing Jewish people venting about people using Israel as an excuse to voice their already preexisting antisemitic views. My Jewish identity is both Arab and Jewish. They don’t care about Arabs either. The same mayo gentiles beating their chest falsely accusing Jewish people venting, like yourself, of being a Zionist or genocide apologist are the same ones who before this past month was openly anti-Arab around me. So it’s like 🤷🏻‍♂️

White gentiles are not the oppressed in this dynamic, they are the oppressors and they need to start remembering that.

Jewish people halfway across the world shouldn’t be having to constantly condemn Israel in order to be allowed to vent about western antisemitism. Plus, goyim don’t even hide their antisemitism when even I, an anti-Zionist Jew, have been accused of being a Zionist when I’ve called out random white people using antisemitic tropes or imageries. If you want my honest blunt take, white gentiles are frothing at the mouth hoping that Jews, Arab, and Muslims just wipe each other out while they sit back and watch from their ivory towers in the US eating popcorn and scrolling through tiktok. I’ve been very critical of the white supremacy when it’s derailing Palestinian posts (even when done by my fellow Jewish people), and I’m also very critical of the white supremacy when it’s derailing your (or any) posts about antisemitism. I’m not trying to explicitly state the anon is a white supremacist (though I have some concerns), but … I was very annoyed by their implications you’re a closeted Zionist, just because you’re Jewish and venting about the Nazi shit that’s been on the Nazi app, formerly known as Twitter. You’re not derailing posts about the genocide or ethnic cleansing. You’re not even “both siding” genocide, either. You’re just a random Jewish person venting about the western world getting off to the idea of a bunch of Jews dying. A lot of people on here and Twitter aren’t even saying Israelis anymore they’re bluntly saying Jews. And as another Jewish person yourself, I know you’ve seen that vernacular shift first hand, especially judging from your vents.

I’ve had white people on this hellsite defend calling Jewish people they don’t like reptile people because “well Israel is calling Arabs animals” and I had to go “uh excuse you you are WHITE and I’m being dehumanized by both sides so thanks for that.”

It’s inherently antisemitic to police Jewish people being afraid of the rising antisemitism in the west and it’s also disingenuous to erase white gentiles’ and white countries’ involvement in this issue. It doesn’t miss me people are underplaying what white goyim have done and are still doing to contribute to the apartheid and genocide. All of this you’re vent vagueing about is the same exact stuff anti-Zionist Jews have also been complaining about for literal decades.

I’m sorry I ranted for too long, but I wanted to show solidarity with you. I’m sure there’s a lot you and I don’t see eye to eye on (2 Jews, 3 opinions), but at the end of the day I have your back because I know exactly what you’re talking about. No one is going to be antisemitic to you and get away with it 😤😤😤

I am so sorry people are wearing their iron crosses in your asks and Twitter feeds. And I’m sorry for wasting your time with all of this, I just felt you needed another Jew in your corner

thank you so much for taking the time to send this, I really do appreciate it. 🧡

I agree with everything you said here. it’s tiring seeing goyim think they can be apart of jewish conversations and are owed a seat at that table just because they believe all jews are white and therefore all white people are apart of the same group. I don’t expect them to truly understand everything bc how could they while not being jewish themselves, but the basic respect they give to other minorities is all I’m asking and I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

[josiebelladonna]

god as my witness, i didn’t want to do this.

but it seems like the world has drastically shifted in the last two months and hatred has swept through everywhere like the coronavirus, and i cannot risk being around people who perpetuate that hatred combined with fearmongering and it’s always done without even realizing it or knowing it. antisemitism is a form of racism, as the jews are levantine and not white, and the fact that swaths of people on here do not see this, understand it, or even question it is flooring to me especially when so many have the fucking balls to preach to the diaspora that they know their culture better than them (that is some real big brother shit, let me tell you).

now, full disclosure: i’ve been critical of israel in the past, just because i didn’t like how they were collectively punishing palestine for h*mas, and yet i’ve always been careful to differentiate the israeli government with the people as well as the rest of the diaspora (and fyi, a huge number of jews and israelis are on my side with this) because people are not their governments—and lo and behold, israel is letting netanyahu and herzog have it as we speak. i’ve always said that i wouldn’t be the artist i am today without the jews as my first big illustrative project with my cartoons was based on a Holocaust survivor story.

and as i’ve done more and more reading into israel, as i’ve been crossing paths with more and more jews and israelis over on threads and instagram, as i remember my brother visiting there back in 2018 and he and his wife absolutely loved it, i realize that the hate and the pro-palestine crowd really has no basis or substance: i get rude comments from that side all the time and they’re always like schoolyard bullies, or they try and flip the script and call me a zionist even though i’m not jewish and i can’t believe that’s an actual slur now because all it is is “the jews should be safe and coexist with their neighbors peacefully”: it’s not fascism, and it’s not “pro-genocide”, it’s about letting the most marginalized people on earth live.

now, do i feel palestine deserves better? absolutely. abso-fucking-lutely, and like i said, there are a lot of jews and israelis (25% of that population is arabic, hence why i say that) on my side with this, and way more than you think, too. they’re all indigenous to that land and this is a conflict that is very old and a little tiresome at this point, and apparently both sides are tired of it. i try not to take sides here for this reason: i’d rather listen to people talk and be supportive.

it’s all anyone can do. it’s imperative to bring in the word “and” here and i don’t understand why that’s so bloody hard, either.

i should also mention that “free palestine” is not only a genocidal statement against the jews and the israelis, but once you realize that h*mas are backed by iran and russia, known hostile powers, you should understand that palestine itself actually has nothing to do with it and this is a conflict that doesn’t involve us. the chant is pointless at best and an excuse to be antisemitic at worst.

kicking cal to the curb hurt, to be honest. always loved them, always got a kick out of them; but when i see them actively participating in blood libel against the jews and then turning around and saying “happy hanukkah”… no, i’m sorry. i can’t. i can’t. hypocrisy is where i draw the line. if you actively post that godforsaken “from the river to the sea” chant and then have the gall to wish all a hanukkah sameach, it’s closet antisemitism. i have to stand with the jews.

dora… i was starting to lose interest a while back, before all this happened, mainly because i was just starting to lose interest in the goth subculture—once a very cool community that i found deep interest in because i’ve always had this darkness in me has become not only just another meme but a bastion of pretension and you guessed it, hate. dora is like one of many former friends of mine, in that she got so belligerent and militant about her beliefs and that makes for a hostile environment. writing hamfisted lyrics and putting “this machine kills fascists” on your synthesizer makes you come off as so corny and edgy and like you have an anger problem more than you’re standing for something (when i was at my heaviest, i had mood swings, too; i get it). and once i realize that she’s older than me, it just gets sad, and uncomfortable and not in a good way, either. it’s on par with bikini kill screaming about palestine and subjecting themselves to potential charity fraud while israeli women and men were quite literally assaulted on october 7 and are grappling with the trauma.

feminism is such a hollow parody of itself now, and these two are just two cases of that, and i have a feeling i’m going to be doing this more. i’m going to start banning people but i don’t care if my follower count drops like a rock, though. it has a number of times, it can do it again. and it’s going to be painful for me, but i need to stand by what i believe in, and i need to clean house before 2024 starts—i’m probably going to be on main here less next year, anyway, just because of lifestyle changes and i have a lot of art and writing including kinktober all year on the horizon for my side blogs, but i need some clarity.

by the way, is anyone else totally weirded out by the sheer amount of lgbtq+ people who are pro-palestine? tel aviv is one of the most lgbtq-friendly cities on earth, and yet being that way in either gaza or the west bank will either get you jailed or killed (it gets even weirder when i realize the region not only birthed judaism but christianity as well; islam didn’t come about until some 500 years later and it came from persia—al-aqsa in jerusalem built on top of the temple mount is enough for me to understand that none of you see the forest for the trees). i genuinely feel like i’m living in a david lynch film or that we all died with bowie, prince, and leonard cohen in 2016 and we’re living in actual hell when i think about all of this.

“pro-genocide”… where do you people get off.

[digitaltariq]

USC college students protest cancellation of valedictorian's speech

USC college students, school and pro-Palestinian protesters responded to a name to motion Thursday to battle again towards what they are saying is the “institutional silencing” of valedictorian Asna Tabassum.“Let her communicate! Let her communicate!” the group of a whole lot chanted, a number of holding up indicators bearing Tabassum’s face.USC is barring the valedictorian from talking at its Might 10 graduation — a primary within the college’s 143-year historical past — over unspecified security threats, Provost Andrew T. Guzman introduced in a campus-wide letter Tuesday. The transfer got here after pro-Israel teams criticized Tabassum for a hyperlink on her Instagram profile directing folks to a pro-Palestinian web site.Teams on and off campus say the positioning is proof that the graduating senior is antisemitic, which Tabassum denied in an interview with The Occasions.“It’s now not about free speech. It’s now not about me. It's about when the college silences me, they're silencing all these folks,” Tabassum mentioned, referring to pro-Palestinian activists.On Thursday, college students and school initially walked silently within the warmth whereas media choppers hovered overhead. Many wore head coverings, together with beanies, hoodies, hijabs and keffiyehs, and a few had tape over their mouths to characterize what they name Tabassum’s unjust silencing. College students, school and pro-Palestinian activists from off campus joined Thursday’s largely silent march at USC. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions) “This campus has been hostile to Muslim voices, Palestinian voices, people who find themselves calling out the genocide taking place,” mentioned Maideh Orangi, a USC senior who attended the protest in assist of Tabassum. “That is simply one other instance of that.”Orangi, co-chair of the varsity’s Center Japanese North African Pupil Meeting, mentioned there had been tensions on campus for the reason that Oct. 7 assault in Israel, together with when an economics professor was quickly banned from the college grounds after being seen on video calling for the killing of members of Hamas.“In current months, it’s change into extra tame and mellow on campus, as a result of that’s simply how issues settle after some time,” mentioned Orangi, who famous she was talking just for herself, and never for her scholar group. “However this has introduced all of it again to a peak.”Orangi, an Iranian American and hijab-wearing Muslim, mentioned that the assaults and “silencing” of Tabassum felt “larger than one scholar.”The protest, deliberate as a “silent march,” was calm and orderly. College students and school talked softly amongst themselves as they adopted these forward of them down campus paths.“That is nothing in comparison with the disruption we’re going to see at graduation,” one scholar mentioned.“She labored so exhausting for the respect of talking,” mentioned one other.USC public security officers in uniform adopted the group on bikes however didn't intervene. Though some protesters held indicators in assist of Tabassum, no chants rose from the group till close to the tip of the protest. Protesters chanted, “Let her communicate!” after initially marching silently in assist of valedictorian Asna Tabassum, some carrying her picture. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions) The gang got here to a cease close to Allyson Felix Area and broke the silence with calls of, “Let her communicate!”Previous to the on-campus demonstration, Sabrina Jahan, a pro-Israel Jewish scholar concerned within the Chabad Jewish Heart at USC, mentioned she would keep away from the realm close to Thursday’s protest. “I don’t see me displaying as much as this silent protest as one thing that might be productive for both facet,” Jahan mentioned.The 22-year-old enterprise administration main from Los Angeles mentioned she noticed these demonstrating as combating for the mistaken trigger. Jahan mentioned that her personal place on Tabassum has “nothing to do together with her non secular beliefs and nothing to do together with her tutorial achievement” — however that she feels the views the valedictorian linked to on social media are “clearly antisemitic.”Saying the protest “represents a double customary,” she requested: “If a valedictorian was chosen who was discriminatory and promotes hate speech towards another racial minority, would we've allowed them to be chosen for this place or communicate? No.”The college had “made the mistaken alternative within the valedictorian and in how you can deal with the controversy,” she added. The protest on USC’s campus Thursday had some college students avoiding the realm altogether. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions) Jahan described a local weather by which some Jewish college students, like herself, really feel “villainized as a menace.” USC’s lack of transparency surrounding safety threats, she mentioned, had brought on others to “assume it's Jewish people who find themselves making them.”“USC solely cited safety — very vaguely — as why she won't communicate. By doing so that they put each Jewish and Muslim communities in a a lot worse and harmful place on campus,” Jahan mentioned.Sarah Schornstein, a Jewish graduate scholar who was on campus Thursday, mentioned she was additionally avoiding the protest — however not as a result of she fully disagreed with it.“I’m a free speech absolutist,” mentioned Schornstein, who research public diplomacy. “I’m simply not huge on protests.”“I agree that she linked to issues that had been clearly antisemitic — a web page calling for the dissolution of Israel,” she mentioned of Tabassum. “However finally, we don’t know what she was going to say” at commencement. Read the full article