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i understand the appeal of publishing "fic with the serial numbers filed off" as original work but i also feel like. what makes something a good fic is at odds with what makes something a good original story.

a good fic is in conversation with a source text, it may give a character an interesting role, it may reinterpret or subvert the rules established in the canon universe, whatever. but like. its transformative by nature. whereas original stories - good ones, anyway - have their own internal, non-referrential sense of logic and rules. it can be in conversation with the genre writ large but it has to have internal substance that can stand alone. which fic inherently cant do.

the reason it is necessary to educate yourself on colonialism and specifically on settler colonialism is that it is very easy to be stupid and think about asymmetric power as bad strategic decisions in a war, like the average blue-check replying "FAFO" under every palestinian death toll. there is some kind of comfort in believing that a colonial power can be out-strategized or appealed to and that palestinians somehow have been making the same strategic mistakes for 75 years which is why they're being genocided (this is what stupid people believe and evil people are trying very desperately to get stupid people to believe)

but once you understand it is a colonial struggle and not a war, patterns begin to emerge. no colonized people "lost" a war because no colonized people have ever asked for a war nor have they engaged in one. colonialism imposes war upon indigenous people. colonizers come to you in your home, where you are a civilian, and force a fighter out of you. every civilian is now engaged in an existential struggle simply due to the bad luck of existing in a home coveted by colonizers.

many complexities have been manufactured to disguise this simple truth. but across the world—in canada, in algeria, in south africa, in the united states, in australia, in lebanon, in the philippines, in hawaii, in puerto rico, in argentina, in sudan, in india, in every region that has experienced colonialism (and that is almost every region in the world) this remains the base truth of it. and it is also instinctively why everyone recoils at the images of idf soldiers gleefully dancing on the ruins of gaza. it doesn't look like victory in war, does it? there's no honor nor achievement in it. the more they kill, the ease with which they do it, more obvious it is. it looks like what it is.

"goddess" "matriarchy" "female wisdom" girl your civic rights

“But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

I haven't purchased a HP item in close to a decade - I use the books I already had as doorstops or to prop a laptop up for meetings nowadays.

There is NO "death of the author" with JK Rowling - she controls and continues to profit from her IP, and uses that money to fund hate groups.

lol

My problem is like... Yeah there is space in discourse to understand the Holocaust was unique in its' execution, structure and planning; it doesn't really meaningfully compare to anything else the human race has ever done.

But also lol, lmao, said the quiet part out loud.

it wasn’t unique in any of those aspects though, and it’s dangerous to pretend that it was. white westerners often believe that the holocaust was exceptional because they are only taught (and usually taught very superficially) about the holocaust, and not about the extent of the atrocities visited on colonized people around the world, which directly served as the model for the holocaust.* something does not have to be unique to be significant. imo portraying the holocaust as the exceptional unprecedented crime of a few individuals actually diminishes its significance by decontextualizing it from the full history of white supremacy, absolving western society from truly facing its pervasive racism and antisemitism. it allows white people to avoid reckoning with the fact that white western wealth and power was accumulated through a series of genocides which continue today.

this is a silencing strategy that impedes solidarity. I’ve seen white zionists on here scream that Black people are “downplaying the holocaust” when they point out that the transatlantic slave trade was also a genocide characterized by systematic bureaucratic planning of the most horrific brutalities. the only way you would see that as “downplaying” is if you aren’t sufficiently educated about the extent of the violence enslaved Africans experienced, and/or if anti-Blackness has obliterated your capacity for empathy. (side note—if you struggle to see how racial slavery fits the genocide framework, or you just don’t know much about it, I strongly recommend reading The Price for Their Pound of Flesh by Daina Ramey Berry, Specters of the Atlantic by Ian Baucom, and Scenes of Subjection by Saidiya Hartman, to start).

Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide because he saw that the holocaust his people suffered was not unique in history, and he knew that naming the pattern would help prevent it from reoccurring. accurately identifying parallels and connections between genocides is not disrespectful to anyone, it’s crucial to liberating everyone from the systems of power and domination that enable these genocides.

*any zionists who see this will flip out at me no matter how many sources I cite so I’m not gonna waste my time laying out all the parallels and connections, but here’s some further reading for anyone who’s genuinely interested in learning: Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents Domenico Losurdo, Liberalism: A Counter-History

Gerald Horne, The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century and The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean Cedric J. Robinson: on racial capitalism, Black internationalism, and cultures of resistance, ed. HLT Quan

Dangerous liaisons: gender, nation, and postcolonial perspectives, eds. Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate All the Brutes and A History of Bombing

German Colonialism: Race, the Holocaust, and Postwar Germany, eds. Volker Langbehn and Mohammad Salama Carroll P. Kakel III, The American West and the Nazi East: A Comparative and Interpretive Perspective  Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and Genocide in Rwanda

Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

by Nada Elia

[ID: "Palestinian women and queers in the homeland are often asked by concerned Westerners how we negotiate the challenges of living full, rewarding lives in a conservative society. Those of us in the Western diaspora are asked if we are not better off, really, living in "modern" societies where we can wear whatever we want and go wherever we want. These questions are misguided. Instead, Palestinians should be asked how we persist, how we continue to live, love, and care, in a society that is living under Israel's brutal system of apartheid, intent on erasing our very existence and history. We should be asked how we persist under the rule of law of an ethno-supremacist country that views each and every one of us as a "demographic threat," simply for being who we are. We should be asked how our youth retain the impulse to be free, when trigger-happy Israeli soldiers and snipers are ordered to kill unarmed children demanding their human rights. We should be asked how we continue to build community, nurture each other, and denounce settler colonialism in the same breath as we reject patriarchy. And anyone who is concerned that those of us in the diaspora are better off than in Palestine should stop and think about who is the greater oppressor of the Palestinian people, including women and queers: Israel, which denies every Palestinian their basic rights, or Palestinian society, with its at times stifling "traditional values," which are often little more than an attempt to hold on to one's culture, threatened with erasure. And they should consider that, for the millions of us longing for the homeland, our diaspora is not a choice but a reality imposed upon the Palestinian people by Israel." End ID]

regarding the genocide song contest:

if you're european: please contact your participating broadcaster and demand for the removal of israel, or try to contact your nation's selected artist to put pressure on the broadcaster. if you're swedish, please try contacting svt or authorities with security concerns regarding the inclusion of israel. if israel does enter eden golan, complain about her selection and ties to russia. and absolutely DO NOT vote on, watch or promote this show if israel does end up competing.

Here is a document with contacts for all participating broadcasters, artists and sponsors, including a template email translated to 20+ languages

i am quite honestly very exhausted with this starbucks feminism that preoccupies itself with the centering of rich white feminine women in the neoliberal capitalist lens and typically no one else.

criticizing buying 100 stanley cups is misogynistic. criticizing taylor swift is misogynistic. margot robbie not getting nominated for an oscar is misogynistic. saying you dont like pink is misogynistic. not wanting to wear makeup is internalized misogyny. not liking romcoms or romance novels is internalized misogyny. thinking self-infantilization on the basis of it being an inherent trait of your gender is bad is internalized misogyny. these are the most pressing manifestations of misogyny. can we spare a thought for any woman not waiting in line at starbucks.

Recently saw an insta vid where a musician was singing lyrics that described their intrusive thoughts as a person with OCD, and in the comments every so often there would be people writing like "bro what is this 🤨🤨" and "keep this between you and your therapist dont post it on the internet" and it just further fueled my belief that OCD symptoms and intrusive thoughts need to be talked about more because a majority of the struggle with the disorder is the shame surrounding its symptoms. OCD is not able to be easily romanticized or 'quirky'fied like other disorders or neurodivergencies have been*, and as a result its symptoms are more quickly met with disgust or repulsion.

Other people in the comments were thanking OP because it captured the struggle of real intrusive thoughts instead of impulsive ones. Impulsive thoughts are more of the 'I'm gonna dye my hair randomly on a thursday night' thoughts vs the intrusive 'what if I drove my car into that family and suddenly killed us both' thoughts, the latter of which make OCD as a disorder truly debilitating. And the people that immediately assign bad morals to intrusive thoughts? They only further condemn people with OCD to never wanting to talk about the symptoms they've already been struggling with shame about.

I feel it needs to be made more blatantly explained to the public that OCD intrusive thoughts aren't desire based. They're fear and disgust based. You fear hurting anyone so badly your mind can't stop thinking about what if you hurt someone. You fear molesting anyone so you never want to even touch anyone. Your mind fixates on the 'what ifs' and distorts them into the idea that, because you think this way, you must want to act this way--when the reality is the exact opposite.

If a person with OCD ever confides to you one of their intrusive thoughts and you feel a knee-jerk reaction of disgust towards them, it needs to be reiterated that:

1. the person does not want to be thinking about this, their brain is legit hardwired to make those thoughts pop up

2. the person themselves also feels this disgust, often intensely, and they very likely resent themselves for ever thinking it

and

3. they have no desire to enact the intrusive thought, because its intrusive nature hinges on the person's fears and dislikes.

*And to clarify what I mean by romanticization and 'quirk'-ifying, I do not mean to imply that romanticizing any disorder or condition is inherently a good thing. It's only to state that conditions like anxiety and ADHD have been made such common/'trendy' topics recently that they're less taboo to speak about--leading to more people talking about their struggles with it, and helping others realize they might have it too and aren't alone. Because certain OCD traits aren't as marketable (obviously) a lot of those with it are left rather isolated.

I am so sick of the phrasing that Germany is persecuting supporters of Palestine because the German government feels "guilty" for the Holocaust.

Germany uses its support for Israel to offset its atrocities on to Palestinians. It uses its support for Israel to muddy the waters on what is and isn't antisemitism and to arrest anti-Zionist Jews. It uses its support for Israel to persecute, police, and deport Palestinian and Muslim migrants and then offset its obvious racism and Islamophobia on to Jews.

Germany has never fully reckoned with the white German gentile supremacy that caused the Holocaust. It has never reconciled with Jews. It never fully acknowledges the colonial violence that preceded the Holocaust or the Romani victims of the Porajmos.

Germany is a white supremacist state. Germany is a police state. Germany is a deeply Islamophobic and antisemitic state. The German government is an antagonist to Palestinians, Muslims, and Jews alike. The German state can shove its crocodile tears for the destruction of European and North African Jewish life up its filthy asshole.

i saw a video the other day detailing why we see so much about gaza🇵🇸 but not sudan🇸🇩

it comes down to these 3 key differences

which is why it's more imperative than ever to follow Sudanese creators and journalists who do report on the little information that does come out.

here's a post on where to get daily updates about Sudan

disclaimer: palestinian press also deal with immediate risks when confronted with IDF on-ground.

The truth is most people think being disabled is a death sentence but instead of advocating for disabled people they r convinced that they’ll never become disabled as if being disabled is some biblical punishment. Guess what? Accidents happen. You will get old and your body will stop working like it used to. Imagine if we live in a world where disability is seen as normal. Where we actually take care of each other.

Also I don’t think we have as many abled body people in the world as we think. I think many people are so terrified of being disabled that they r willing overwork themselves to prove they can do it. Many people deal with chronic pain and physical health issues in silence. Because they don’t want to be burden. I think we should be burden to each other and i think labor should be shared.

iceland is threatening to pull out of eurovision unless israel is removed... please g-d let them blacklist israel that would be so huge

finnish broadcaster yle is now also considering dropping out pending the removal of israel & is reportedly discussing options with other nordic countries - including sweden who is literally hosting

eurovision is huge. it's the biggest non-sport competition in the world and got significantly higher viewership than the superbowl. the ebu sanctioning israel - thus implicitly condemning their actions and denying them a platform for propaganda - could have a giant impact on its perception by the public, and possibly encourage other international events to follow

seing people write 'unaliving' and 'g-cide' or whatever other stupid self-censorship is so absolutely annoying because like - for one, we've already acknowledged that there was never any proof that saying 'kill' would actually lead to posts being algorithmically suppressed, and the entire thing was just paranoid self-reinforcement - and for two, who fucking cares if your post doesn't go #trending, if it means not writing in an infantile and euphemistic way about an ongoing genocide?

i think its really funny when people say they don't like political media and just want something 'cozy' and 'discourse free' then the media theyre talking about is like. miyazaki movies. or the moomins

tove jansson and hayao miyazaki were probably the farthest from being apolitical you can be in children's animated media it's just that you saw cute artwork and a pleasant setting/aesthetic and decided to put no further thought into the story you were engaging with

youre right but i think people are going to kill us for you sayng it

sure! maybe the u.s. lied about and/or caused mass death in japan, china, korea, the ussr, guatemala, indonesia, cuba, congo, peru, laos, vietnam, cambodia, grenada, lebanon, libya, el salvador, nicaragua, iran, panama, iraq, kuwait, somalia, bosnia, sudan, afghanistan, pakistan, bulgaria, macedonia, bahamas, cuba again, south africa, bolivia, marshall islands, greece, portugal, philippines, ecuador, albania, argentina, angola, jamaica, indonesia, seychelles, haiti, guyana, chad, thailand, algeria, brazil, dominican republic, ghana, mexico, uruguay, colombia, chile, russia, venezuela, yugoslavia, palestine, yemen, cuba again, the u.s. itself........ but! ....and hear me out here..... maybe this time they're telling the truth & they really have the interests of people and democracy at heart :)