#tw: discussion of nazism

[imperiuswrecked]

Kinda of random but what do you think of Alan's Moore comments about people liking comic book movies could lead into fascism? Seems like bitter old man territory but what do you think?

Long reply. These are just my personal thoughts/opinions ~

Tbh I don't read Alan Moore but I know of them, I know of their works, and I know that alot of the wrong people take their work and basically "Fight Club" it.

If you know the movie Fight Club then you understand how a piece of media is often taken into the wrong context. What was supposed to be a satire/examination of anti capitalism was usurped by men thinking they need to be in peak form/fight for what they want, reprogram themselves etc. Basically they thought all the wrong ideas.

Moore's Watchmen gives way to such things like The Boys, where violence in superhero media is the focus rather than the message behind Watchmen. So everyone focuses on the violence, the spectacle, etc.

Many people treat comic books like it's a thing for kids, or people who can't read books, or whatever.

Yet comics have been a form of literature for a long time. Comics have a finger on the beating pulse of pop culture, world events, and shifting tone of the public thoughts.

For example: Something Happens. In the world, real-life, a big event occurs that effects many people. Someday you will see that someone has written a very good book about the subject, but by then maybe years have passed, meanwhile a comic captures things in the moment as time moves on, you can see the trends in the form political cartoons, or someone who was effected creating a comic witin days/weeks, or generations of people who grew up effected and began pouring their message, their hearts into comics. Some stories that are not easily told through novels.

Superhero Comics began as a message from Jewish creators, a hope, a story.

So while I know people will be quick to dismiss Moore as a bitter old person, I would really recommend people stop a moment and look at what they are saying.

See I think it's less "Liking Superhero Movies will lead to fascism" and more "consuming media controlled by massive corporations uncritically will have an effect on people".

Look at the way Superheros Movies have a chokehold on pop culture, look at the way there are literal nations of fans supporting Superhero Movies. Look at the way they defend Superhero Movies even at its worst, at its racist, at its mysoginstic, at stuff that literally makes my skin crawl. Look at the way these super fans doxx marginalized actors/ess, at the way they harrass, they swarm into comments to spew their hatred. Look at the way they say "it's just a Superhero movie, it's just a cape comic, it's nothing serious".

Then I need you to look at the way Marvel tried to market a choice to people: "S.h.i.e.l.d or Hydra, which side are you on?"

Hydra isn't just a bad guy team. It's Nazis. It's always been Nazis. It's literally headed up by the biggest fictional Nazi to ever have been created. So not only this question but, to make contests, merchandise, so much for this event. It really makes you sit back and ask: How did we get to this? How did this industry get from superhero characters created by Jewish people, to a comic company asking if you would join Nazis.

Fascism doesn't just happen. It's created over time, over years, and I agree and disagree with Moore. In my opinon not every Superhero Movie is propaganda for the American Military but many are, not every movie is racist/has propaganda, but there are those that are, not every Superhero Movie will lead a person to Facism, but some will plant the seed. We can't control how people internalize things or what deep web rabbit holes they follow, or what Nazi/Racist/Facist groups they join.

Movies are power, movies can reach a lot of people, not everyone will be able to read the same books, or comics, but many people will be able to watch the same movie. I just think people should be critical to Superhero movies when there is something to discuss. I don't mean complaining about the cgi, but talking about the actual plot, who is making the movie, who did they cast in what role, etc. Blindly following whatever big companies decide to put in their movies isn't a good idea.

I may not be a Moore fan but I do think he's earned a right to be bitter after how the Comic Industry has chewed him up and spit him out. Many creators are ground down by how the Comic Industry runs, and the Superhero Movie Industry has become a behemoth, to ignore an industry that shapes the mind of kids and has a hold on adults is pretty dumb. Again, I don't think it's a pipeline of Superhero Movies > Facism, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look critically at movies just because they are about people flying around in tights.

[neechees]

Speaking of racist authors who's scalp I want decorating my home, but Rowling literally keeps pulling that thing where she backtracks the alleged meaning & intentions of her own work by saying "well actually I meant THIS the whole time" in the books to try make it look more politically "savvy" (in her mind) or steeped with meaning than it actually is, because she is literally too stupid and short sighted to actually write those things, & usually its also to try get out of some sort of criticism, & she's done this at least 3 times.

Like first was the whole "Gandalf is gay" shtick when this was her shallow, lazy attempt at trying to look "diverse". Second time was when she was like "well actually Hermione wasn't WHITE, I think she was Black" which, absolutely wasn't true considering she describes all her Black characters as being "tall" and athletic (which, Hermione is not) and she would've given her a stupid, obviously racist name if she always intended this.

But the most recent time was her allegeding that she based the death eaters off of trans activists? This obviously isn't true since she's already repeatedly talked about the specifically nazi & fash influence on the death eaters, and then when people critisized her for her antisemitism & lack of logic on how the death eaters operate, she attempted to "prove" this wrong by tweeting about visiting the auschwitz memorial museum (in relation to, again, it's specific influence on death deaters) to try insist she was sensitive to what she was referencing. If she intended this from the beginning, she would've brought attention to it because she literally just so stupid & knows it but tries to "prove" otherwise. So the whole thing example NOW is just her appealing to her fash t/erf clown crew to try seem more intelligent than she is.

[mogai-sunflowers]

i really haven’t seen many posts about this, as in i’ve only seen one and it didn’t even really explicitly talk about the labrys lesbian flag so i’m just going to say it: if you see “discourse” that amounts to “don’t use the labrys lesbian flag”, then please realize that that is not just “stupid flag discourse”. yes, most flag discourse is pointless and is based on stuff like “well this flag looks similar to another one” or “the creator of this flag supports mspec lesbians” and we can all agree that discourse like that is stupid and pointless.

the “discourse” about the labrys lesbian flag is not that. that flag contains the literal Nazi symbol that was used to designate the Romani and Sinti people in Nazi concentration camps. it was used for people deemed “Asoziale”, “asocial” which in this instance referred to people who were vagrants, prostitutes, and generally who fell outside social norms. among the people who were deisgnated with the Black Triangle were homeless people, migrants, prostitutes, but most prominently Romani and Sinti people, who were literally marked with the Black Triangle and the German variant of the g slur on it. 

the labrys lesbian flag is, first and foremost, a white supremacist symbol. there’s a big difference between queer people using the pink triangle in reclamation, and non-roma queers using a white supremacist symbol. so if you see “discourse” over this flag, please remember that it’s not just “discourse” it is literally asking you not to use a white supremacist symbol. 

if you want to learn more about Nazi symbols so you can avoid/recognize them when you see them, i recommend visiting the website for the german auschwitz memorial museum, specifically here

[birthofvcnus]

just finished watching the gameplay for Martha Is Dead and uh. yeah that game is Not for everyone

[ayeforscotland]

(tw: discussions of rape, child sexual abuse)

the person who said "mixed reaction to baldur's gate 3 in þe "people i respect þe critical opinion of" community" said they were referring to lily orchard. if im understanding them correctly - i hope im not - theyre saying they respect lily's critical opinion on things, which with all due respect, you should not. Lily's consumption of media is almost exclusively animated shows for children, disney movies and marvel, and she has warped ideas on what media "has" to be, including having little conflict, never using slurs and such.

She wrote MLP fanfiction that glorified child abuse, it was based on her raping her younger sister before she transitioned, as she had been sexually abused as a child herself. Her sister, Courtney Peet, came out with the full story and while it is very much word of mouth vs word of mouth, Lily herself has went on record saying she wrote the fanfic, titled "Stockholm". She claims to be Native American and draws her persona much darker than her actual skin, as her sister has proven. Presumably to allow herself to complain about all the "white character praising" in kids' cartoons without people able to point out that SHE is white, which she often complains about. She also slandered Rebecca Sugar, a Jewish person, claiming they wrote themes supporting Nazism in Steven Universe, and insists that artists cannot write stories well, which is why SU was a badly written show, as the storyboard artists worked on the story. Her critical thinking skills are very low.

In other words, don't worry about her opinions on Baldur's Gate 3. And I'm a bit concerned about people attacking Courtney if they read this so just fyi I'm not saying this to cause drama, just to inform you that Lily Orchard's opinion on that game should be discarded for a number of reasons. So you dont have to reply to this or anything, and I hope I havent bothered you by saying any of this.

I don't usually engage in online drama but Lily Orchard is my one exception as I started watching her a while back and thought she maybe had some good points, until I learned she made up things about the shows she covered and the people that worked on them, then learned about the awful stuff she did and lies about. There's a ton more discourse I don't think is worth getting into.

Good grief. Happy for this to be the first and last time I hear of this person.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for running a kid out of a gaming community? (Tw mention of rape/self-harm/nazism)

I play the sims often, and am active in the simblr community. About four years back I (f, 19 at the time) saw a comment under a post about a DLC pack for the game, pointing out that there were an unequal amount of masculine vs feminine clothing in the pack, and stating that “girls were ruining the sims and making it a girls game.” I replied, saying I agreed with their assertion that in inequality isn’t fair (people, myself included, have been complaining about that very thing since the game first came out), but that it’s the developers faults, and it’s not right to blame the players or fanbase of a game for aspects of production that they have no control over. The commenter who I’ll call J (m, 17, though I didn’t know his age until later) responded saying again that girls were ruining the game for male players. Not wanting to clog the OPs notifs with back-and-forth comments, I messaged J privately, reiterating that I agreed with some of his points, just that it wasn’t fair to blame women for ‘ruining’ a game when they weren’t in control of mistakes the development team made. J went on a massive rant about how I was a ‘stupid white girl who loves Starbucks’ (I’m not white and I never said anything about Starbucks?) and that women were ruining the sims franchise by turning it into a “decorating and dress up game” and that players who were women “hated all men and children” because too many people made adult women sims and not enough men/child sims.

At that point I knew the discussion wasn’t going to go anywhere, so I joked and said he sounded like a Redditor. He responded by saying “me when women get raped” followed by a Fortnite dancing gif. I didn’t respond. An hour later he sent me a link to some website featuring a video of a man beating a woman in public. I screenshotted his messages, blocked him, and made a post with said screenshots urging others to not interact with him/to block him too.

A while later I get a message from a mutual linking a post he made about the situation on Reddit, explaining the discussion from his point of view. It was removed by the time I looked at it, but the comments were basically all agreeing with me or at least saying his last responses were wrong. He would go on to complain about how I was “the reason he hated modern women” and that I was “driving him back to being a Nazi because Nazis were so welcoming”. I made a post laughing at the situation, because it was just so absurd.

A few hours later I get an anon from J telling me that I had made him self harm and he posted the photos on his blog. When I finally got the courage to look on his blog several days later he seemed to be okay (it looked like he accidentally scratched himself on the arm too hard, nothing life threatening) but he had DOZENS of anons upset with him for the heinous shit he said. This is when I learned he was 17. He said that he “wasn’t a Nazi anymore, but was thinking about going back” (even though he was non-white, gay and trans?); that women were turning the sims into a girls game and because of that people irl would call him slurs because he was playing a girls game; that the reason he said those things to me was because “I’m autistic, and no one gets mad when they say it on family guy”, and that he want a misogynist he just wanted to make me upset, as well as back and forth arguments with anons where he essentially argued that female custom content creators are sexist if they don’t make masculine clothing/content for male sims. His last posts talked about how the sims was all he had in life and that since everyone in the community hated him now he’d just make everyone happy by killing himself. His blog hasn’t updated since.

Obviously I can’t confirm what happened to him, but I still think about this event frequently, and check up on his blog a few times a year. I have a sizable following on my simblr, and I knew I’d be exposing him to thousands of people with my posts—but I didn’t want him to hurt himself, I only wanted to warn people that he wasn’t safe to interact with.

Should I have blocked and moved on without warning people? Was I the asshole?

What are these acronyms?

[x-on-the-calendar-business]

ryan ross iceberg (tier 5)

tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, tier 4, tier 6, tier 7, tier 8

near end of the iceberg:

r.r. confessions twt account:

there used to be a ryan confessions account on twitter under this name, but it was deleted. however, people said the most unhinged shit on there and there was so much drama. i wish i could list specific examples, but i don’t have any unfortunately.

there is a new ryan ross confessions account here, but i think it was created after the last one ceased to exist [i]. this one also has some unhinged stuff on it, such as someone saying they used ryden theory for their gender studies class, and someone else claiming that ryan has a child on the way (they confirmed they were joking). also the person who claimed their friend hooked up with ryan in a bathroom or something like that.

there is just nothing going on in the ryan sphere so the stans are bored.

dank eyes:

this is the nickname for dan keyes because, when you look at his instagram handle dankeyes, it looks like dank eyes. in 2015/2016, this is how most of us referred to him. honestly, i still call him this most of the time out of habit.

light brown:

this is a…uh song? that shane morris (we’ll talk about him next) posted on his soundcloud in 2012 featuring ryan and danny fujikawa.

you can listen to it here for the lore:

shane morris:

buckle up for this one.

this is ryan’s former manager from about 2012-2016, and he was just an absolutely horrible person. the masterpost about all of his wrongdoings (which i will link of course) starts out with “tw: rape, self harm, abuse, pedophilia, body-shaming, sexism, swearing, talk of drug use, suicide, nazism, classism, generally dicky things,” if that doesn’t tell you how things are gonna go [ii].

there is so, so much that this could be an entire post itself, so i will give a tldr but link some posts for further reading. there’s a couple of things related to him that will also appear as their own entries, so i will save in depth discussion of those for later.

shane has a pretty extensive history of posting disgusting things on the internet: rape jokes, fat shaming, making fun of people who self harm, eating disorders, slurs, basically anything that is problematic. the post i’m going to link shows specific tweets and tumblr posts about this. he also has a history of bullying ryan’s fans, and the picture below is one of many examples of it.

so he was generally an abhorrent human being, but let me elaborate on some of the stuff specific to ryan. shane would often promise fans new music from ryan but never follow through with it, likely because ryan didn’t know he was doing this. he actually ended up leaking some of ryan’s songs, but we’ll touch on that again later, along with him impersonating ryan on both twitter and facebook. once he and ryan cut ties, shane also deleted ryan’s soundcloud, i guess in an attempt to “get back” at him and the fans by robbing us of music that was backed up anyway. he spread rumors that ryan is a drug addict and transphobic as well [iii].

the context that ryan is not really active on social media is so important here because he had no idea of a) the kind of person shane was and what terrible things he said on the internet, and b) the way he was attempting to sabotage ryan’s career.

don’t worry, shane is still at it with managing musicians and creating drama. he was travis scott’s former manager, and in 2021, he claimed that he helped travis fake all of his streams to launch his career [iv]. this could be true, but it’s shane so i always take everything he says with a grain of salt anyway. he posted the tiktok about it during the astroworld events, so it reads to me as an attempt to insert himself into the situation (which is so tone deaf for such an insane tragedy like) (and of course, i’m not a travis scott apologist either). i take it that he is still the same as he was 10 years ago.

like i said, there is so much more to cover about shane, but we still have more entries to go over in this tier. therefore, i will leave you with this link to the aforementioned masterpost:

and another link with some more information:

its for lovers or just friends:

i mentioned this in tier 4, but this is a quote from ryan’s last ever livejournal post from june 25, 2006: “You don’t have to love me. You already did. At least enough to keep me smiling from South Carolina to Virginia.it's for lovers (orjustfriends)”

brie larson disneyland:

this refers to this picture of ryan at disney with brie larson.

i think it was from around 2017? they were hanging out because brie and alex greenwald used to date, and they were engaged before breaking up. there’s more pictures of them from this day in this twitter thread [v].

chelsey:

okay put your seatbelts back on cause this one is another entry that is a lot.

chelsey lynn is also known as the panic! stalker, and for good reason. she is a pretty terrible person and a lot of the reason that ryan and brendon don’t speak anymore. as discussed in an earlier tier, ryan and brendon did run into each other at a hooters and hang out, but around that same time, they tweeted each other occasionally, although they weren’t necessarily friends; however, the chelsey saga ultimately led to the complete ending of their friendship (which, granted, is not the worst thing in the world since brendon is also a pretty abhorrent person).

in 2012, chelsey started to catfish ryan pretending to be brendon. she did this by hacking shane valdez’s (panic!’s former photographer and brendon’s former roommate) facebook account and messaging ryan under the guise of brendon. she told him she wanted to rekindle their friendship and was able to get ryan’s number, though she claims she got it from one of his friends, which is still weird. she catfished him for nine (9) months. she was able to coax all sorts of private and vulnerable information from ryan, such as the split, his relationship with z, his childhood, and more [vi].

once a fellow panic! fan and tumblr user got chelsey to confess, she went to shane morris about it, who thankfully actually took it seriously (even though shane has his own history of impersonating ryan, but we’ll talk about that later). due to the general public finding out about chelsey’s wrongdoings, she released an apology, but no fans really accepted it [vi].

chelsey did leak screenshots of her texts with ryan, which i won’t post here because i don’t think it’s appropriate, but you can find them if you feel so inclined. she also messaged someone on facebook stating that she has pictures of ryan she could leak, but she’s “nicer than that” [vii].

as i’m sure you can imagine, once ryan found out the truth, he was pretty upset. he made some instagram posts right after that were fairly sad.

the thing is, chelsey didn’t even like ryan that much; she was just obsessed with brendon and sarah. she stalked their families as well, and even had a spreadsheet of all of their information. she hacked several of their accounts too. she took photos from their private accounts and posted them on her tumblr, posing them as “rare” photos of brendon and sarah [vi].

the worst part of all of this? CHELSEY REMAINED ACTIVE IN THE FANDOM. she had a popular instagram account, called brendonurievines, and sarah followed it.

sarah ended up leaving a comment on instagram about it, in which she says there is nothing but love between them when they see each other…okay then. she also says she doesn’t follow her which is just a lie [viii].

chelsey has met brendon and zack hall multiple times, even as recently as when brendon was in kinky boots. she has deleted her instagram, but her youtube channel is still up. she hasn’t posted in 2 years, but even in 2020, she was posting videos of brendon and sarah.

lastly, she posted a statement on her instagram stories about it in 2018, taking no accountability.

so in conclusion, chelsey is a terrible person and one of the darkest sagas in ryan’s life. the way she catfished him during an already rough time in his life and gave him false hope that he could rekindle one of his oldest friendships was insanely gross. she shouldn’t be forgiven for this, and although she isn’t active anymore, we still shouldn’t forget what she’s done and continue to hold her accountable. here’s a post you can read to get more details than i put here:

gremlin:

a far more lighthearted entry than the last couple.

in 2015, ryan dressed as a gremlin for halloween. we’ll come back to this halloween party in the next tier.

zooey deschanel:

in around 2011, ryan and zooey were friends. they appeared on each other’s instagrams and tweeted back and forth some. the pics of them together are from vicky t’s christmas party in 2011.

the tragic love life of ryan ross:

this a series of tumblr posts by @pathetic-at-the-disco that chronicle ryan’s relationships. it starts from his high school girlfriend (who most of fever was written about), and it was originally supposed to end with helena, but they left off before moving on to z berg 5 years ago. it also discusses jac, keltie, katie, and his fling in cape town [ix].

they are fairly long posts because they contain a lot of detail, but i definitely recommend reading them because they’re really informative. definitely very well done and impressive. in fact, i sourced them a lot when talking about jac and keltie.

if you remember, in tier 2 i said i would link more info about his relationships with jac and keltie later in the iceberg. so here we are:

this is another post for further reading that corrects some things that were incorrect in the original post:

hung out with freshmen:

i cannot find the source for this anywhere, but in an interview, ryan said that when he was in his junior/senior year of high school, he hung out with freshmen.

tweets that aren’t his:

back to shane morris i fear.

in 2014, he hacked ryan’s twitter. i’ll talk about the specific tweets he made in the next tier. ryan did find out about the hacking and tweeted this.

all of the tweets are still up, and his twitter bio still says, “Nope. It wasn’t me.”

this is my coming out party:

in 2009, someone hacked ryan’s twitter and tweeted this, and it was absolutely iconic. i actually quote this frequently lmao

ryan ross struggles:

this is a twitter account, ryanrosstruggle (shoutout kiki), who posts struggles from ryan ross stans. struggle accounts basically just post unhinged or cringey tweets (or other posts) from people within the fandom. there are other kinds of posts they repost, but it’s really hard to describe, so you should just go to kiki’s twitter to see some of the things she tweets [x]. here’s a couple examples:

up next, we finish the actual iceberg before diving into the deeper waters.

tier 6

references:

[i] https://twitter.com/ryanrossconf?lang=en

[ii] https://astroe.tumblr.com/post/42733669382/shane-morris-and-why-everybody-hates-him

[iii] https://pathetic-at-the-disco.tumblr.com/post/172418363736/hey-can-you-elaborate-on-the-whole-shane-thing-i

[iv] https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/travis-scott-shane-morris/

[v] https://twitter.com/crossboydreamie/status/1569466922042802178?lang=en

[vi] https://pathetic-at-the-disco.tumblr.com/post/172832450316/the-time-that-ryan-ross-was-catfished-by-a-fan

[vii] https://dallonsmiles.tumblr.com/post/42837896821/here-are-a-few-screenshots-from-a-conversation

[viii] https://pathetic-at-the-disco.tumblr.com/post/172147291981/last-year-i-remeber-in-a-comment-sarah-left-on

[ix] https://pathetic-at-the-disco.tumblr.com/post/171140808026/the-tragic-love-life-of-ryan-ross-all-links

[x] https://twitter.com/ryanrosstruggle

[marcfrenchie]

DO YOU WANT TO READ MOON KNIGHT?

are you a show fan who's learned about how terrible the MCU did moon knight and you want to check out the comics? did you see him in a teamup book and want to know more about him? are you just looking for more comic recs? are you just interested in the character? then you're in the right place!

okay, to begin, i want to say that this is a character that has had a... varying history. there are no moon knight comics you can enjoy without extensive criticism. critisizing the things that you enjoy is good and gives you a better understanding of the work. please do not idolize any of these comics and please work to be kind to the many minorities (jewish people and systems, primarily, but classism, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia are all explored throughout MK's publishing history) that these comics represent. anyway.

MOON KNIGHT 1980 -

tws - doylist racism (racist villainous charactictures, mostly. a lot of this), ableism (outdated terminology for systemhood, occasional slurs), and sexism. extensive discussion of anti-semitism, specifically neo-nazism, in issues 37 and 38.

what happens - moon knight 1980 is a 38 issue comic book centering on the ex-mercenary and now hero moon knight. almost entirely episodic but there are occasionally multi-issue stories.

moon knight, in the day, is the millionare socialite steven grant, and, at night, the hero moon knight- moon knight also "uses" jake lockley as an informant. marc spector was the mercenary moon knight ran away from. doug moench was NOT intending to write a system at this point- steven and marcs relationship is meant to represent one mans struggle with guilt- but its really really easy to gel this with their current situation of being alters in a system and also some of the specifics of their whole thing make me fucking insane. jake is also there and i love him even if he isnt really a major part of the moral conflict

please dont read all 38 issues- attatched is a list of my personal ratings. everything later calls back to this so its best practice to read it first but its very much a slog if you arent already attatched to this character so make your own choice

nothing from 1980 to 2014 is particularly good (you can read it if you want but i havent) but knowing what happened is pretty important to understanding the later modern runs so a runthrough. throughout the 90s mk continued in the 80s status quo but in 2006 he 1. cut off bushmans (remember that guy from 1980?) face 2. was given a tendency for violence and and 3. became significantly more tense with marlene and frenchie. by 2014 they had completely fallen out. thats all we can continue with the recs now

[Image ID: A list of Moon Knight 1980 issues colored based on their quality. Issues 4, 7-11, 15, 17-20, and 28 are marked as "not good." Issue 27 is marked as "not good makes me insane though." Issues 3, 5, 6, 13, 16, 21, 34, and 35 are marked as "fun." Issues 2, 12, 14, 22 to 26, and 29 to 33, are marked as "good writing." 37 and 38 are marked as "genuinely essential." 1 and 36 are not marked. 29 is denoted as "slightly weird about his DID" and issues 6, 21, and 22, are denoted as "racist." End ID.]

WHAT HAPPENS IN BETWEEN -

MOON KNIGHT 2014 -

tws - graphic violence. do not buy the book new, warren ellis is an awful person. brief (doylist) ableism.

what happens in it - the first six issues are the warren ellis/declan shalvey run, which is what im reccomending. read the rest if you want, its mediocre but i like it

moon knight 2014 is 6 episodic issues centering on a now alone marc spector. steven and jake only show up twice, both lineless appearances in the back of panels. most of the issues are significantly more violent, dark, callbacks to old 1980 issues. most of the run is silent violence from marc but all of the stories are really good and the art is breathtaking.

MOON KNIGHT 2016 -

tws - unreality. mental hospitals. both doylist and watsonian ableism.

what happens - i am reccomending the lemire/smallwood + co run, the 15 issues before the numbers shoot up. i have not read the bemis run.

moon knight 2016 is 15 issues situated in a hallucinatory version of NYC, following moon knight as he struggles against khonshu's attempts to possess him. the thing is a lot of things in 2016 piss me off so i cant exactly sing its praises but its super important to modern moon knight so just. slog through it. highly reccomend reading after 1980 because it refrences A Lot.

MOON KNIGHT 2021 -

tws - violence, discussion of anti-semitism in issue 5.

what happens - i am reccomending the first 16 issues. the annual sort of triggered a falling off for the series and so i have not read after #16. read the later issues at your own risk

moon knight 2021 follows moon knight as he opens the midnight mission, gains multiple new side characters, and reckons with the consequences of the age of khonshu (an event in jason aarons avengers which is explained fine in 2021 so you dont have to read it). most of the series is typical action juxtaposed with MK's SHEILD-ordered therapy sessions. issues 14 and 15 are possibly the first time jake and steven have been written well since 1980. unfortunately, the annual is deeply xenophobic (villianizing the only romanian hero in marvel) and i have stopped reading the series due to this. the first 16 issues are really good though

MOON KNIGHT BLACK WHITE AND BLOOD -

tws - violence.

what happens - mkbwb is 4 issues consisting of 12 noncanon moon knight stories, as is typical for bwb series. most of them are pretty good and fun and also really pretty.

OTHER MOON KNIGHT STUFF -

- ms. marvel and moon knight

- devils reign: moon knight - tw violence, prisons

- west coast avengers 1985, issues 25-41

- hulk 1978 issues 11-20 (not #16), b stories.

- moon knight 2006 issue 3 - for frenchies coming out scene, which is good. not anything else

- heroes for hire 2011 - hes only in a few issues but im not saying which ones because i want you to read the whole thing. because its good

- defenders 1972 issues 47-51 - its Very 70s but its cute and i like it :)

- werewolf by night 32 and 33 - his first appearance!

ENDING THOUGHTS - please god listen to and make a point to be kind to systems and jewish people when you talk about MK.

[smallandangry24]

A Not-So-Brief Character Analysis of one Anakin Skywalker

TW for discussion of Imperialism, Nazis, and events paralleling sh00tings, brief mention of domestic violence and slavery.

Hello there, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of ranting about fascism on the internet (I know, you’re waiting with baited breath): Star Wars Edition, featuring a very beloved character -- Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader.

Star Wars is many things -- found families. Hope. Rebellion. Democracy. The importance of standing up for what is right, and for those who do not have a voice, even if the world is against you. Holding others and yourself accountable. Corruption. Accidental baby acquisition. And the first space western among them. But at its conception, Star Wars drew a very hard line in the sand (I know, we don’t like sand, but bare with me) regarding a subject that was very relevant at the time, and I would argue still is: Imperialism, Fascism, Slavery, and Nazism.  

“But Mads”, you might ask “why would you get on the internet to rant about such things, probably bringing a very angry toxic fanbase out of the woodworks against you?” For a few reasons, one of them possibly being that I’m a fool. One of those reasons definitely being that sometimes, something needs to be said, regardless of opposition, and you need to be the one to say it, especially if no one else will (and what’s more Star Wars than that?). I hope you’ll find it in yourself to stay with me, but that’s beyond my control. So here it is:

Anakin is a tragedy, in many ways. 1. He could be anyone -- someone’s boyfriend, a brother, a best friend, a son, the guy sitting two tables down in a chili’s in the middle of nowhere Iowa (idk if y’all have Chili’s but roll with it). 2. He cared about his family. 3. He WAS manipulated in fear and put in a situation no child (yes, CHILD) should have ever been put in on the battlefield, nevermind his status as a slave. It is an ESSENTIAL part of his story, but not in the way I see interpreted by so many fans. There is a MESSAGE in his character... a great many!! Sure, he is a type of prodigal son, falling from grace but returning eventually for -- here’s where we disagree. Redemption. Can we call it that? Is he really redeemed? The Prodigal Son, at least in my interpretation, is not about redemption, but forgiveness and mercy -- given because the father, who I think the story is really about, is good -- not because that kindness is deserved (because in it’s context, the story is not about what is deserved, but I digress). Anakin, Vader, can be a story about how people cannot be summed up by good and evil, and instead are made by their choices, and that we have the power to change our choices every day, and that there can be redemption for some. 

But that’s not all there is, or even the biggest part of his character.

There are more messages. Monsters can be anyone, and if we don’t hold people accountable and learn from our past, history will come back to haunt us. My problem is that very few hold him accountable. Let’s go back to the roots. Star Wars isn’t exactly subtle. “The Empire,” “Storm troopers” (the name of Hitler’s private army), the concept of a nationalistic regime taking over under the power of a charming dictator bent on expansion by force, using propaganda to unite his people against a common enemy of a peaceful people who share a religion, etc. It’s about Nazis, and more than their well known atrocities -- about the importance of accountability, uniting in rebellion, how they can come to be, and, most importantly, punching them. 

Back to Anakin. He’s young, under the influence of the man who’s a parallel of Hitler, very stressed because he’s leading an army and just got put in charge of a child, probably needed more talking to regarding healthy levels of attachment and relationships, and he’s been put in a position of power. He’s also played by Hayden Christensen (who did a remarkable job -- this is not a criticism of his performance but an applause. The problem lies in how some interpret it), who, I’ve been reliably informed, is very cute. An increasingly common reaction is “oh it’s not his fault, poor baby,” or  WORSE, “It’s Obi-Wan’s/Padme’s/Ahsoka’s fault -- he/she should have paid more attention/proclaimed his/her love more.” 

*Is violently unimpressed*

Let’s also look at what he did!! *drumroll* He betrays all of his loved ones -- strangling his pregnant wife Padme, who tries to appeal to him numerous times while also stating her love, trying to kill his brother/father figure Obi-Wan, who’s last words prior were about how proud he is of Anakin, and proceeded to tell him he loved him and also tried to bring him to his senses multiple times while Anakin is ACTIVELY TRYING TO MURDER HIM, enslaves the clones, his friends, who fought for him, were willing to die for him, were already struggling with a lack of human rights, further betrayed by Anakin forcing them to turn on their family the Jedi and help him commit mass genocide, made worse by the fact that Anakin used to be a slave, and not only participates and initiates said genocide against his own people (but let’s also not forget the genocide and coverup of the one he committed against the native Tusken people), but cuts down the children who trust him and run to him for help. He his not only a parallel of naziim, but also domestic abusers, imperialists and, currently, school shooters. AND IT’S NOT JUST THESE CHOICES!!! There are more I’m probably forgetting, but it’s the fact that it’s not just ONE time. He makes the choice to be this person over. and over. AND OVER. AND OVER AGAIN. And for what?? To save Padme?? He just choked her out! And after she DIES, he KEEPS GOING. “He was too scared to return, the canonically thought about it,” WELL?? First of all, Obi-Wan was literally begging him to come back and secondly, even if he didn’t “return” he could have stopped, idk, actively hunting down and murdering people and supporting the Empire. Just throwing that out there. 

Yes, Palpatine chose him to manipulate. FOR A REASON: He knew Anakin was powerful enough to turn the tide of the war-- which would have just ended with the death of General Grievous -- in his favor, AND because such power would have been a threat to him. Anakin had the power to threaten Palpatine and the Empire at any time.... but instead, he repeatedly chose to use that power to undo everything he had sworn to protect, everything his friends had fought and died for. And for what purpose? Last time I checked, you don’t strangle people to say “I love you.”

That’s the tragedy of Anakin for me -- the repeated choice to fall, and that he could be any one of us if we allow it. Too often, we let him hide behind a mask and a new name. I get it -- I, too, am a sucker for transformation and cinematic symbolism. But Anakin’s transformation marks the solidification of his choices and the nature being revealed in him -- the corruption of hate and anger and obsession -- but it DOESN’T MAKE HIM A DIFFERENT PERSON. He can’t escape accountability for his actions by hiding behind a fancy new title. Are you a simp, or an apologist? I get it, he’s cute, and there’s an appeal to knowing someone would burn the world for you, but be careful of the line you tread -- with this character, it’s pretty thin.... and quite frankly, my ace ass doesn’t care how hot a Nazi is.

Today, I encountered a new perspective I’ve never seen before, regarding the line, “there’s still good in him.” Iconic, I know. And despite the above... ooops paragraphs, know that I AM A MASSIVE VADER FAN. His character is incredible and complex and (I knooooow) cool. Horribly so, but yes, you can’t deny the dramatics. And I’m an even bigger fan of redemption, hope, the idea that no matter what you’ve done, you can work to be better. I’ve struggled with Anakin -- I’ve wanted to say “YES, in the end, when he choses to overthrow Sidious, he is Redeemed!” .... but it never quite felt right. Today, I encountered the phrase “so what?” Okay, not literally, but someone might as well have written it on a brick and slapped it across my face. There was good in him. So what? He still chose to do those things. And he chose to do them over and over again. Does the fact that he was capable of good excuse the genocide? the slavery? the murder? Does it not make it worse? Do we owe forgiveness to someone who could have been a good man? Are we obligated to -- RESPONSIBLE for bending over backwards to convince someone to be good again? Even at the price of more innocent blood? Or is it HIS responsibility not to spill it in the first place?

The tragedy is in that he was good, once, if a person can be good, but he made those choices anyway. The tragedy is in that he could be anyone. The tragedy is that he is MANY someones today. The tragedy -- what makes a tragedy -- is that anywhere, in all of this mess, it could have been over. It could have been prevented. He could have stopped. The tragedy is that it didn’t need to happen, but it happened anyway.

Today I encountered “It was his choice.” Today, I saw written, “Don’t take that away from him.” 

[tangled-pixel-harpsichord]

TW: discussions of the invasion of Ukraine, anti-Semitism, genocide, death, and Nazism

Caveat: I do not live in Ukraine or Russia, I am an American with a vested interest in Ukraine bc I have family there (including my little brother), but listen to actual Ukrainians please.

Looking at the talk around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I’m seeing a few folks pointing out how odd it is that Putin is citing “getting rid of Nazis in Ukraine’s government” as a reason for his unsactioned invasion, given Volodymyr Zelenskyy is, you know, Jewish. As many have already pointed out, there is a far-right nationalist movement in Ukraine, including a contingent of vocal neonazis. This is bad, we all agree. But this group doesn’t control the government, especially not to the same extent the far right controls the government of, say, the US.

BUT, what nobody has said, because it isn’t taught in the West for some godDAMN reason, is that the Nazis targeted Slavs and Soviet citizens for genocide too. Slavs were sent to concentration camps and killed en mass. In much greater numbers than any other group. Putin is drawing on very real, very powerful memories of an attempted genocide to try to convince Russians to support and carry out his attack on fellow victims of that same attempted genocide.

Real shitty thing to do, but at least now you know why.

(We’re not gonna get into the fact that a lot of the Soviet victims were from modern-day Ukraine because this isn’t about convincing you that Putin is doing horrific things. You already knew that. I WILL mention it though, because the West has a habit of equating the Soviet Union and modern-day Russia, which is a mistake)

Tldr: the Nazis killed an estimated 12 MILLION Slavs during the Holocaust and Putin is trying to use that horrific trauma to convince Russians to commit more genocide.

[delusion-of-negation]

Some folks seriously miss the point or got no off switch.

Like sometimes it's just a joke, let em joke. Not everything is a super cereal discussion lol

Now the real quest is what wand is best fir the poop-be-gone spell

it bugs me because if I posted "man that sweet sweet milky bar wouldn't be worth the child slavery if they got rid of the cowboy mascot" nobody would be like "tw slavery, it's not worth it now", buddy, obviously that's the joke that's the premise you need for what I'm saying to be funny. the joke is obviously the cowboy is never going to make child slavery okay. and ngl, yeah I care that children are enslaved more than I care about jkr's bigotry. there simply isn't a contest between racist goblins and a ten year-old currently being worked to death. I just don't get making the joke serious by adding that "um it's still not worth it :/" like well done, would you like a trophy, you're against bad stuff, applause. sorry there's not enough stupidity in me for me to die on the hill of the shitty wizard game, when I can instead point and laugh at it like, somebody tell these people that conservatives laugh at you for taking it seriously, but if you say "does it let you shove the wand deep in your asshole and cast poop-be-gone?" they can't really declare you triggered lmao. I don't even know what console the game is on, I'm not going to buy it, I can google centaur porn. I honestly am reminded of people who bitch when you don't take some time away to explain that perspective character is morally wrong, when you're writing psychological horror from the villain perspective, the whole reason the story is scary is your morality comes up against this twisted view of the world and that causes discomfort - the story isn't scary if you're not assuming from its beginning that these events are wrong, that's the condemnation built into the very genre, it doesn't need to be spelled out, and it doesn't work if the character isn't acting fine with the awful shit, should you depart to explain how gross and icky it is then that's shattering the tension of this romanticised view of it that you do understand isn't true inherently. it's the same with the joke, it is assuming you already know wand + anus =/= nazism destroyed.

that said, you wanna go with a brown wand for poop-be-gone, it means any accidents or missed spots aren't going to stain white wands, y'know? once you're an accomplished wizard who won't fumble, you can gamble on a white wand up your ass, probably.

edit: I'm being snarky here, the person who added that is fine, it really isn't meant to come across as nasty to them, I'm just tired

[defeatedbyamerechild]

(Not about the blog) Political stuff mostly? Skip if you want to.

Ok, so apparently it’s a thing now here in my country (Brazil) to virtually break into Universities’ digital content such as seminars, lectures and classes to... uhm... play n/*zi propaganda videos, boost loud music with explicit lyrics, yell swear words at the teachers and students and also pornografic stuff I think??

I cannot possibily imagine the purpose of that malarkey... But my dad works in a University and said that it happened there in some of the lectures... and now it also happened in my mom’s University too (she’s studying pedagogy in a different institution). I’ve just found out about it but apparently it’s been happening in different institutions. While my mom’s course has always been online, even before the pandemic, my dad works with face-to-face courses, but both have suffered attacks. That makes me believe this is not about protesting against social distancing, otherwise they wouldn’t have attacked a course that has always been digital? But I don’t know... I think it must be some sort of attack against the academic studies in general for some reason...

It is a somewhat widespread belief in my country that Universities and Schools are “leftist” and “brainwash people with marxism” or whatever. Honestly, I bet that like 87% of Brazilians literally don’t know wo Marx was so like??? But ok. Right-wing extremists (mostly, but not exclusively) have been spreading fake news via whatsapp, facebook and other social medias for a while... And I remember that a while ago this whole “war against teachers” started, with the whole excuse of political brainwashing that literally doesn’t exist (otherwise we wouldn’t have Bolsonaro as our president? Like, if people were being brainwashed to be leftists, then they wouldn’t have voted on him??? but all right I guess). This whole “marxism in schools” thing is coming from the same people who used the “we lived in a dictatorship” rhetoric a while back to take down our first female president. They said that we lived in a “communist dictatorship” from her party and had been living in it for 12 years... And welp, that’s simply not true? These guys would go out in massive protests and literally take selfies with the military police officers against the “dictatorship” they were living in. Like, folks, I’m sorry to rain on your parade, but if you were in a dictatorship you wouldn’t be allowed to go to protest and the military would be killing you, not taking selfies... But I guess there’s no poing in saying this now anyway.

What I mean is... Due to the fact that teaching has been attacked before in my country for political reasons, I’m inclined to believe that this here is political stuff too? But I can’t be sure, honestly. It could be just some sort of bad taste mass trolling event but like... so much time and energy just to disrespect people, am I right? I would say it makes more sense if there’s some “cause” behind the whole thing.

I’m gonna wait and see if people are gonna talk about it in the news or whatever... Still I wanted to ask, is this sort of stuff happening anywhere else? Have Universities been attacked lately somewhere else, in a similar way??? Anyone has a clue as to why this could be happening???

I’m posting this here because my personal blog has zero visibility so it’s just gonna be 100% ignored if I post there. Sorry about bothering.

(I just wanna remind you all this is all MY personal speculation, I’m not a social scientist, I’m not a specialist in politics, I haven’t read about this behavior and I haven’t seen any explicit connection between politics and this vandalism acts anywhere, I’m just guessing, so don’t take my word as an official and immutable truth, I may be 100% wrong here, and I’m posting because I’d like to find out more. Thanks)

[mogai-sunflowers]

pretty sure the black triangle was used on the flag because most lesbians imprisoned in concentration camps during the holocaust were marked using the black triangle, not the pink triangle, because homosexual women were considered "asocial" and not classified under homosexuals, due to the way that nazis viewed the role of women in society (for the same reasons that they destroyed lesbian life and culture established during weimar republic, but did not outlaw lesbian sex the way they did sex between men). sources for this include "triangles and tribulations: the politics of nazi symbols", as published in the journal of homosexuality.

to be clear, this is not me saying we should or should not use the labrys lesbian flag; i agree that it feels very strange and inappropriate to reclaim a symbol that was primarily directed at roma and sinti! (though, actually, roma and sinti people were later classified with the brown triangle, and their black triangles were specifically marked with a Z notation, to signify them using a german slur that is equivalent to the english g slur). i simply feel it is important to understand why the black triangle was chosen.

the tone of this ask is /nm.

i agree with what you're saying completely, and i know that as a white person i don't really have nuanced expertise on this discussion. there were definitely instances where some lesbians were marked with the Black Triangle, but it's just.... as a symbol it's much more associated with white supremacy than explicit queerphobia, so for a flag with that symbol to be primarily used by TERFs, an extremely white group with very well-established connections to right-wing ideology and especially antisemitism and racism, is just very suspicious to me. i'm not trying to give some firm opinion on whether or not to ever use the symbol, i just think it's very dangerous for people to use a flag that they either don't know the meaning behind, or to blatantly use a white supremacist symbol and not care, because it can just spread blatant Nazi symbolism, which just further can lead to Jewish lesbians, Romani lesbians, and in general lesbians of color, to not knowing whether or not they're safe around that person- because it's hard to know whether they're using it because they're ignorant of its meaning, or if they DO know and don't care.

additionally, while records are very scant, it's generally agreed that the limited "acceptance" lesbians faced during the Nazi regime, was pretty much reserved to non-Jewish lesbians. As seen in the persecution of Magnus Hirschfield, the Nazis viewed homosexuality as something that Jewish people had introduced to whites, they viewed it as Jewish peoples' fault. Jewish lesbians did not have the same luxuries that Gentile lesbians did, so it's still first and foremost a white supremacist symbol.

[heavenlydreamangelflyhigh]

if ur “dark humor” revolves around nazism, white supremacy, transphobia, homophobia or any other kind of deplorable shit i think maybe u aren’t funny and i think u should stop and get help or just shut up forever and drive car into pool.

[queerbauten]

"It was fun. It was great! I think we were the only straight people on the train!"

[ieatmorecrispsthanyou]

A Clarification

(tw: Nazism)

Hi, so some of you might remember a recent post about the German Spy headcanons that included references to a post made by @historicalsnail​.

Basically, he made a silly post about Nazis and the Captain, which wasn’t a part of the German Spy headcanons thing which is really not OK. Perhaps some might say it was misjudged, but at the end of the day it wasn’t doing anyone any harm and was definitely not part of the whole problem in this fandom of people disrespectfully headcanoning Havers or the Captain as Nazis - it was more lighthearted and not as problematic.

After seeing this post, some tumblrs got into an argument with @historicalsnail (I think they misinterpreted his lighthearted thing as another case of the Nazi Spy headcanons, which again it wasn’t, and I also joined in but from a different point of view). This then led historicalsnail to delete the original post and block those involved. A friend of mine then made a post about German Spy headcanons again (which was just prompted by historicalsnail’s post, not about it). Some people were confused with all the drama so I then made an addition to this post detailing what had happened, and it included a reference to historicalsnail’s post - I think saying ‘historicalsnail then blocked everyone calling him out’ and how the post was about ‘the Captain thinking that a Nazi is gay and then the Nazi thinking that the Captain is a Nazi and how that’s disrespectful to the 15,000 gay men put into concentration camps by the Nazis’. historicalsnail then made a reply to my post:

After this happened, me and a few friends were discussing it in the Plague Pit discord, which historicalsnail saw. This prompted us to properly talk about the whole situation and how (me and the friend) had taken it out of proportion and caused sincere upset to historicalsnail. At the end of the day it’s not about who was right or wrong but the effect on other people: my post had had a harmful effect on historicalsnail (just as German Spy headcanons have a harmful effect on me) and I apologise for that. Through this conversation on the discord we apologised to one another and ultimately came to an understanding, and I deleted the previous post which had included him in the list of problematic posts.

Now the main point of this long post is to say that some people have reported historicalsnail, which isn’t OK, and I recognise that this may be due to my previous post including him on a list of events in the Ghosts fandom about problematic Nazi headcanons. He’s also lost a few followers due to this. So he’s asked me to make the situation clearer for anyone here so you can recognise that everything’s been sorted now, there’s no reason to unfollow historicalsnail for anything he’s posted and I apologise for the upset I have caused. Please do give him a follow if you haven’t already, he makes really funny posts and is definitely worth following.