#show has Zionist themes

[quercus-queer]

hey, what’s up with tlou 2? I keep seeing comments mentioning how it’s related to zionism but I can’t find info on it

Im not someone who gets very interested in creators of the media I enjoy (idk what my fave band looks like or their names) and I was only a very casual watcher of tlou adaptation and gameplays. I only recently found out Neil Druckmann is a Zionist and that tlou2 was “inspired by the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

This is to say Im not the most informed and have no desire to watch the podcasts this Vice article gets quotes from, the article was more than enough information for me. There’s some reddit threads out there too but I digress.

Some excerpts that I think sum up the article, Druckmann’s bias, and explains the criticisms people have always had about tlou’s writing.

But "cycles of violence" are a poor way to understand a conflict in a meaningful way, especially if one is interested in finding a solution. The United States, for example, hasn't been at war in Afghanistan for almost 20 years because it's trapped in a "cycle of violence" with the Taliban. It is deliberately choosing to engage with a problem in a way that perpetuates a conflict. Just as the fantasy of escaping violence by simply walking away from it is one that only those with the means to do so can entertain, the myth of the "cycle of violence" is one that benefits the side that can survive the status quo

In The Last of Us Part II's Seattle, Scars and Wolves hurt each other terribly, and the same can be said about Israel and Palestine. The difference is that when flashes of violence abate and the smoke clears, one side continues to live freely and prosper, while the other goes back to a life of occupation and humiliation. One side continues to expand while the other continues to lose the land it needs to live. Imagining this process as some kind of symmetric cycle benefits one side more than the other, and allows it to continue.

As a result, The Last of Us Part II never quite justifies its fatalism.

…

This seems to be The Last of Us Part II's thesis: humans experience a kind of "intense hate that is universal," as Druckmann told The Post, which keep us trapped in these cycles.

But is intense hate really a universal feeling? It's certainly not one that I share. I, too, have seen the video of the 2000 mob killing of the Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, and it's horrific. Yet, my immediate response wasn't "Oh, man, if I could just push a button and kill all these people that committed this horrible act, I would make them feel the same pain that they inflicted on these people," as Druckmann said.

This is not a universal feeling as much as it's a learned way of seeing the world.

…

The trouble with [the story/writing/themes], and the reason that Ellie's journey ultimately feels nonsensical, is that it begins from a place that accepts "intense hate that is universal" as a fact of life, rather than examining where and why this behavior is learned.

Personally, I’ve come to understand that people who cling to the Cycle of Violence as human nature, especially concerning community/global conflict have an deep misunderstanding of humanity.

This post details an article that requires an account to access, but elaborates on a certain mentality about Landback movements:

Additionally, the casting for tlou2 adaptation has come out and it’s a shit show:

Dina (the only Jewish character in the series + her fam) will be played by a very skinny conventionally attractive Hispanic non-Jewish woman who is allegedly a Zionist

Abby will be played by a very skinny conventionally attractive 5’2” woman who is also allegedly a Zionist

Also worth noting since some redditors misunderstood: the author is NOT saying Palestinians are literally like the Scars, the entire point is that Neil created the Scars to parallel how HE (biased) sees the conflict.

#palestine #tlou #tlou2 #tlou hbo #in conclusión #creators a Zionist #neil druckmann #show has Zionist themes #he casted zionists who regardless of that are unfit for the characters

[boiiiko]

fyi the creator of blue eye samurai is a zionist. definitely shouldn't be supporting that.

I see people are making the rounds to stop the growing enthusiasm for the show. I get it.

Seeing Green's posts (via tumblr, since I don’t have twitter or X or wtv the fuck it’s called today) admittedly made me wince. I don’t agree with or support his views. I also feel their dissonance with the show’s blunt criticism of colonialism.

But.

This will be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t actually agree that condemning a show that has been made by a HUGE team of people, who are most certainly as diverse in their political beliefs as in their cultural backgrounds, because of one person’s few posts on social media is entirely fair or fitting.

Yes, he’s one of the creators, sure, his name is slapped onto the lid, but the show is not him. A show is never one person. AND I’m a Death of The Author believer besides, so. There’s that. 

So I for one will keep on celebrating the show and what it stands for and the themes it explores, because I feel it’s important to have them out there. While also disagreeing with one of its creators’ views. After much thought, I’m comfortable with that complication. You, and many others, may not be. Which is fair. And I urge you to block the tag or unfollow me if the distinction makes you uneasy. 

#i get the need to DO smth from a rather helpless position i do #but i don't think this is it #blue eye samurai #i grew up on buffy man i've learned a thing or two about show creators who don't practice what they preach #that feeling of betrayal #but also the realization that the show is made of all those beautiful beings that believed in it poured their souls into it #not that one white guy #who gets the credit for the whole thing #and then turns out to be a shitbag #also maybe we can stop guilt-tripping ppl for enjoying stuff??

[decolonize-the-left]

hey! if you don’t mind could you elaborate on why TLOU is racist and zionist? i kind of get the racist part but i’m really lost on why it’s zionist

The entire first game and first season of the show is to build up the relationship between Joel and Ellie and make you care about their relationship.

Why?

So that when Joel is murdered in the second game and (likely) the second season you feel so much empathy for Ellie that you don't even question her motives when she goes on a revenge homicide spree.

Why?

So you understand hate. So you understand the pull of violence when it comes to people who hurt you and the people you love. So you can understand "both sides" of the genocide happening in Palestine. So you understand Israeli soldiers who commit war crimes. So you understand why Israel keeps going and won't stop. So you understand that conflict can't end until "both sides" put down their arms. So you personally can feel & understand why peace can never be realized. To justify Palestinian genocide as an inevitable of human nature.

Which is absolute horse shit to any non-bigot of course, doubly so for anyone aware that Israel is definitely the country perpetuating a literal genocide and most violence commited against them is out of defense and self preservation.

The creator of the game and show Literally said this himself.

The real horror in zombie fiction is usually not the legions of undead, but the frailties and cruelties that they expose in the living. The differences between stories in the genre come from the specific fears and frustrations that they render into their metaphors. The Last of Us Part II fits perfectly within these genre conventions, but what's different here is its sources of inspiration.

The Last of Us Part II focuses on what has been broadly defined by some of its creators as a "cycle of violence." While some zombie fiction shows human depravity in response to fear or scarcity in the immediate aftermath of an outbreak, The Last of Us Part II takes place in a more stabilized post apocalypse, decades after societal collapse, where individuals and communities choose to hurt each other as opposed to taking heinous actions out of desperation.

More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo.

The game's co-director and co-writer Neil Druckmann, an Israeli who was born and raised in the West Bank before his family moved to the U.S., told the Washington Post that the game's themes of revenge can be traced back to the 2000 killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob in Ramallah. Some of the gruesome details of the incident were captured on video, which Druckmann viewed. In his interview, he recounted the anger and desire for vengeance he felt when he saw the video—and how he later reconsidered and regretted those impulses, saying they made him feel “gross and guilty.” But it gave him the kernel of a story.

“I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.”

Read the article. It's Extremely informative and lays all of it out clearly. It's a very well written analysis.

Personally I'm going to be side eyeing Anyone who agrees with Ellie's sentiment that "they deserve it at any cost, no price is too high for me" when season 2 is released. Season 2 will be serving as a litmus test tbh.

I had no idea about any of this until the show came out, I posted about it (cuz I used to love the game), and someone sent an anon. I googled it, looked through some tags, read this article, and decided the show nor the game are worth my time anymore.

It's inherently Zionist. To play the game or watch the show at all means consuming Israeli genocide propaganda. There is no way to avoid it and thus no reason to watch it "critically" as I assume people will try to say justify keep watching it.

Besides that most people who say they will watch it critically already analyzed the game and the Zionism went right over their heads. Which is case in point that most people who use that excuse simply do Not have the knowledge or skill necessary to do so in the first place.

#TLOU #asked #answered

[videodrome-fag]

Free Crochet Patterns For Palestine

So I wanted to wait till I had at least a few patterns out before posting about this here, but hey! If you're a crocheter (and not a zionist piece of shit) here's a cool thing for you to do to show support for Palestine!

I've been creating and releasing free, watermelon themed patterns for crocheters to enjoy, and if you want to chuck a couple bucks toward the project, I've made an associated Ko-fi page, 100% of which goes (and has gone) to donations.

The first month's funds went to @fairuzfan HelpGazaChildren fundraiser, the receipts for which you can see here in the first (and so far only) gallery post on the Ko-fi page (I also personally donated $50 again last week, as well as $50 previously to PCRF)

The second month, I price matched Ko-fi donations up to $150, so $100 went to UNRWA, and the other $100 went to Maryam's gofundme which, at the time of the donation, was highlighted in the Operation Olive Branch spreadsheet (receipts are on my Instagram collated in highlight tabs at the top of my profile)

If you want these and future patterns, you can find them for free on my Patreon. They're public posts, no I do not want you to subscribe to my Patreon, I just don't have a personal website or know of any free pattern hosting sites to put these on (I refuse to use Ravelry for anything more than the bare basics, the UI makes me want to puke, and idk how to upload directly to their database, only to upload via external links.) Ribblr has pissed me off one too many times, so that's out, too, plus, again, can't trust they wouldn't nuke the patterns. The only caveat to this is you have to have a regular Patreon account to see the posts, but they're not paywalled! Alternatively, just shoot me an email at [email protected] and I'll email you the PDF(s), just lemme know which one(s) you want.

You can also buy them each for $2 on the Ko-fi if you can't afford the base $5 Ko-fi fee but still want to donate, and again, all Ko-fi money is for donations! I'm making no profit on this, I just want to use my crochet skills and Instagram reach to do what I can.

#palestine #gaza #free palestine #crochet #crochetblr #memes and more than memes #my crochet

[extraaa-30]

PJO & Palestine pt. 2

This is going to unpack some bullshit I've seen about Rick Riordan. For pt. 1 about why "boycotting Disney" is not actually the thing you need to be doing right now, go here.

Imma try to keep it brief this time <3

In addition to the misleading info about Disney as a boycott target, I've seen some ridiculously facile takes about boycotting the show because of Rick Riordan.

As far as I can tell, the drama stems mostly from this blog post, where he shares his (fairly tepid but still principled) view of Palestine and Israel.

Here are some key takeaways:

The blog post is from Oct 17, 2023. Only ten days into the genocide, and with plenty of attention still lingering on Oct 7 worldwide. As far as I know, he hasn't shared any updated reactions

Should he? Maybe. Here's what he has to say about it in the blog post:

He goes on to talk about having readers in both Israel & Palestine:

Maybe you think he should pick a side. Maybe you're sick of both-sideism and if you see one more media take equating Israeli grief to Palestinian grief during a motherfucking genocide you will launch yourself into the sun. Rick goes on:

I don't know what you were expecting from a children's author whose overarching theme is, "You might think you know who the monsters are, but be careful; black-and-white thinking like that reduces us all."

[SPOILERS for non book readers] In PJO, Percy ultimately agrees with Luke that the system is unjust and can't remain as it is. Luke's willingness to sacrifice the lives of their friends is the thing he can't support.

The series deeply explores questions of monsters vs. victims, how our circumstances shape us, institutional injustice...

I get the anger when people, especially celebrities and the media, use calls for nuance to avoid taking a stand. I don't think it's accurate to say that's what's happening here.

I said I'd keep this short and I've obviously failed, so let's get to the most damning part of Rick's blog post:

This is what has people calling him a Zionist. And do I kinda hate it? Yeah, I do. That line "security and support" is propaganda that Israel has spent 75+ years feeding into the global media machine. I also hate that the overwhelmingly pathetic response of most public figures has conditioned me to be impressed by breadcrumbs like 'Palestine should also be secure and supported and free.'

So there you have it. Rick's opinions from 10 days into what has become a 100+ day genocide.

Maybe this all sounds unforgivably centrist to you, and that's your right. You don't have to engage with his stories. Approaching content with an eye to the author's real positions and attitudes is a healthy way to interpret media critically.

However, I'd really like people to remember two things:

This is not a JKR situation. Watching the show does not give money to someone who actively uses their platform to spread hate.

If this is about your own media purity, I have bad news for you. Literally none of your faves are perfect, and neither are you. Trying to only interact with un-cancellable media is futile, discourse-killing, and self-absorbed at a time when there are more important things we should be doing.

Ultimately, the choice of whether to engage with content from someone whose views you don't agree with is your own. You get to decide where to draw that line.

I, personally, can respect a lot of what Rick says here. He's a children's author using his platform to speak to children. He has his eye on the long game. He still emphatically argues for a free Palestine.

There have been other betrayals from other artists that I couldn't tolerate. It's a personal choice.

So please, stop shaming people for watching this silly little show. Stop trying to police how others engage with media that isn't hurting anyone.

There's work to be done.

#and bickering with strangers online or cultivating a perfect media diet aint it #pjo #pjo tv show #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #pjo series #rick riordan #palestine #free palestine #pjotv #if you're gonna rest by talking fandom on the hellsite then rest #we need all the energy we can #stop wasting it with petty bullshit #literally there is not enough time #also zionists feel free to interact. i look forward to blocking you. #extraaa

[horizon-verizon]

Image Credit: PlayStation

The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of 'The Last of Us Part II'

A past Israeli wrote this 2020 article and got into how The Last of Us: Part II to "both sides" its story into a fatalist, status-quo-preserving ideology that nevertheless supports Israeli/Zionist actions in the Mid East by revealing the Israeli military infrastructure AND its stereotypes/racist mindset towards Palestinians. It also mentions the twisting of Judaism, the Holocaust, and how Israelis view themselves.

The article (all of this is the entire thing, not mine!):

The real horror in zombie fiction is usually not the legions of undead, but the frailties and cruelties that they expose in the living. The differences between stories in the genre come from the specific fears and frustrations that they render into their metaphors. The Last of Us Part II fits perfectly within these genre conventions, but what's different here is its sources of inspiration.

The Last of Us Part II focuses on what has been broadly defined by some of its creators as a "cycle of violence." While some zombie fiction shows human depravity in response to fear or scarcity in the immediate aftermath of an outbreak, The Last of Us Part II takes place in a more stabilized post apocalypse, decades after societal collapse, where individuals and communities choose to hurt each other as opposed to taking heinous actions out of desperation.

More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo.

The game's co-director and co-writer Neil Druckmann, an Israeli who was born and raised in the West Bank before his family moved to the U.S., told the Washington Post that the game's themes of revenge can be traced back to the 2000 killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob in Ramallah. Some of the gruesome details of the incident were captured on video, which Druckmann viewed. In his interview, he recounted the anger and desire for vengeance he felt when he saw the video—and how he later reconsidered and regretted those impulses, saying they made him feel “gross and guilty.” But it gave him the kernel of a story.

“I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.”

Druckmann drew parallels between The Last of Us and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict again on the official The Last of Us podcast. When discussing the first time Joel kills another man to protect his daughter and the extraordinary measures people will take to protect the ones they love, Druckmann said he follows "a lot of Israeli politics," and compared the incident to Israel's release of hundreds of Palestinians prisoners in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. He said that his father thought that the exchange was overall bad for Israel, but that his father would release every prisoner in every prison to free his own son.

"That's what this story is about, do the ends justify the means, and it's so much about perspective. If it was to save a strange kid maybe Joel would have made a very different decision, but when it was his tribe, his daughter, there was no question about what he was going to do," Druckmann said.

Naughty Dog and PlayStation have presented Druckmann as The Last of Us Part II's creative lead and public face. Game development is a highly collaborative practice that demands the backbreaking labor of literally hundreds of programmers, testers, writers, and artists, all of whom make creative contributions and without whom a game of this size and scope would not exist. So while it's impossible to pin a big budget video game's themes and inspirations to one person, parallels between The Last of Us Part II and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict manifest in the final product, not just in what Druckmann has said in interviews.

Besides the familiar zombie fiction aesthetics of an overgrown and decomposing metropolis, The Last of Us Part II's main setting of Seattle is visually and functionally defined by a series of checkpoints, security walls, and barriers. There are many ways to build and depict structures that separate and keep people out. Just Google "U.S.-Mexico border wall" to see the variety of structures on the southern border of the United States alone. The Last of Us Part II's Seattle doesn't look like any of these. Instead, it looks almost exactly like the tall, precast concrete barriers and watch towers Israel started building through the West Bank in 2000.

The history and power dynamics of The Last of Us Part II's Seattle map to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well, if viewed from an Israeli perspective.

The main faction in Seattle is the Washington Liberation Front (WLF), known as the Wolves. The broad strokes are that after the outbreak, FEDRA, an emergency militaristic government agency, took over the city. With food shortages, constant fear of infection, and FEDRA's increasingly brutal measures of keeping order, an insurgency rose: the Wolves. They were outmatched, but prevailed with a series of hit-and-run attacks, assassinations of FEDRA officers, and other guerilla tactics. Eventually, FEDRA abandoned the city and ceded control to the Wolves, who in turn implemented an equally harsh (or harsher) regime.

In one in-game note, a FEDRA commander in Seattle writes to Central Command to explain that he has lost the city to the Wolves, which he describes as terrorists. Here, there are parallels to early Zionist organisations that fought British rule in the region. These organizations were also described as terrorists, and leaders of those organizations later became leaders in Israel, much like how Isaac, the leader of the Wolves, came to control Seattle. Other in-game notes, scenes of urban ambushes, and the bodies of executed FEDRA officers laboriously walk the player through the cliche "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

Once Isaac and the Wolves seized control of Seattle by violent means, however, the same means were used against them by another group—one that uncomfortably matches Israeli caricatures of Palestinians.

Most of the Wolves regime's restrictions are directed at a post-apocalyptic religious sect called the Seraphites (the Wolves call them "Scars" after the ritualistic scarring of their faces). These Scars vexed FEDRA as well when it was in control. The dynamic in the city when the game begins is one of conflict, escalation, and a broken truce. The Wolves, like FEDRA, leverage more resources and raw power, while the Scars rely on surprise strikes against Wolf patrols, and a zealous willingness to die for the cause.

To run through just a few key ways in which the Scars uncomfortably reflect some Israeli stereotypes about Palestinians:

The same note from the Seattle FEDRA commander that bitterly says the Wolves are in charge explains that it's now their responsibility to not only feed and shelter the people of Seattle, but deal with the "religious fanatics," referring to the Scars.

Later in the game, Ellie finds a location called "Martyr Gate," where the Scars' spiritual leader apparently died, indicating a religious significance of a specific and disputed location, and emphasizing the notion of martyrdom as central to their culture.

The Scars are able to get around Wolf patrols and various barriers around the city via an elaborate, secret system of bridges between skyscrapers. These function as a kind of flipped version of the underground tunnels Palestinians use to bypass Israeli blockades and other means of limiting free movement in order to get supplies and carry out attacks on Israel.

The Last of Us Part II goes to great pains to impress that it sees no innocent players in this conflict. It's not just that Isaac and the Wolves seized control of the city by vicious (but necessary) means—the society they've built, prosperous and protected by the walls of Seattle's CenturyLink Field, is buttressed by fascism and cruelty to an outgroup. The Wolves' bountiful crops exist to feed an army that ventures far beyond its territory to punish the Scars. Its kennels of adorable dogs are just disposable weapons. Isaac leads from a forward operating base that sits atop torture chambers. After a truce fails, the only way he can imagine peace is through the total annihilation of his enemies.

It is not a peaceful or just society, or even a sustainable one in the long run, despite its perseverance and resourcefulness. It is one that is doomed to collapse because of an inability, or unwillingness, to resolve a perfectly resolvable conflict.

This conflict comes to a head when Isaac decides to push deep into the Scars' land to finish them once and for all. We don't get to see how the battle ends or who comes out on top, but we see Isaac die in the fighting, and get the sense that the battle is so brutal and bloody, whatever survives is not worth keeping.

Rather than step back, cooperate, and seek truth and reconciliation, the Wolves and Scars keep seeking revenge for past grievances in a cycle of violence that eventually ends them both in literal fires sparked by hate. The game's message seems to be: "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind," another cliche that The Last of Us Part II indulges in by taking away Tommy's eye at the end of the game for seeking revenge for his brother Joel.

A "cycle of violence" is a tempting way to interpret this conflict, or any conflict, because it signals careful nuance while quietly squashing more difficult conversations. By suggesting that since both Wolves and Scars are equally implicated and equally in pain, we are free to stop thinking about the problem. All parties include both good and bad actors. We're all human. Both sides.

This common, centrist position on violent conflict, while better than absolute dehumanization, is not coincidentally a world view that allows conflicts to drag on forever. Suggesting moral equivalence and a symmetry in ability between sides also invites us to throw up our hands and give up on better solutions because of implied and unexamined perceptions about "human nature." Indeed, the game is unrelentingly cynical, and this cynicism animates most of the 30-odd hour experience. Whereas Abby and Ellie find interpersonal resolution at the end, the game seems content to leave the question of community-scale cycles of violence as a regrettable fact of human existence. Even if the Wolves and Scars meet their mutual end, the game leaves us with the knowledge that a resistance group from the first game, the Fireflies, and other groups, are regrouping and gaining strength. The cycle continues.

Despite the lengths it goes to, The Last of Us Part II can't help but reveal that its perspective is firmly rooted in one side and not the other.

Seattle is so clearly inspired by Israel and Palestine without naming either, but it does notably spend time presenting Jewish identity. One of the first things Ellie and Dina do when they arrive in Seattle is explore a former synagogue. It's a short scene, maybe 20 minutes out of a 30-plus hour game, and it serves as a kind of a Jewish experience amusement park ride, bombarding the player with references and history as Dina and Ellie walk around a bimah, find a Torah, and so on. Almost the entirety of this section is spent explaining Jewish identity as that of survivors in the face of other groups that want to destroy them. In the span of those 20 minutes, there are three separate references to the Holocaust.

Survival in the face of persecution is a pillar of Jewish identity for good reason, and has been since before the Holocaust. It's also one that is relevant to the characters in the game, all of whom are survivors of a zombie apocalypse. But this is only one aspect of Jewish identity. The Last of Us Part II doesn't spend any time exploring, for example, Talmudic traditions which define so much of Jewish notions of justice and scholarship. Instead, in a non-optional section of the game, it spends a significant amount of time telling the player that Jews are always persecuted and fighting for survival. This is not wrong, but it is serving a specific purpose in the ham-fisted allegory about Israel and Palestine that is The Last of Us Part II, much like the Holocaust is cynically leveraged by some to justify Israel's actions.

This sermon is notably delivered by Dina, who is Jewish and serves as the game's moral compass. Dina is pregnant, dreams of a life of peace, and tries to turn Ellie back from her murderous quest. When Ellie chooses to pursue it anyway, the heaviest price she pays is that Dina leaves her.

The more moral characters in The Last of Us Part II all want to escape cycles of violence rather than reckon with them. Lev and Yara want to escape their cult. Owen and Mel want to get on a boat and sail away from Seattle. Dina wants to walk away from the mess and live on a farm secluded from the rest of society. Even our main characters, Ellie and Abby, after far too much suffering, essentially end their emotional journey when they decide to walk away from revenge.

It's certainly true that individual lives get wrapped up in larger conflicts in horrible ways. Cycles of violence exist in practice as escalations and retributions. A defining feature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the macabre bargaining over which violence is worse. Images of exploded public buses are presented next to collapsed buildings and children being pulled from the rubble. Armed factions swear to deliver retaliation over specific incidents, and do.

But "cycles of violence" are a poor way to understand a conflict in a meaningful way, especially if one is interested in finding a solution. The United States, for example, hasn't been at war in Afghanistan for almost 20 years because it's trapped in a "cycle of violence" with the Taliban. It is deliberately choosing to engage with a problem in a way that perpetuates a conflict. Just as the fantasy of escaping violence by simply walking away from it is one that only those with the means to do so can entertain, the myth of the "cycle of violence" is one that benefits the side that can survive the status quo.

In The Last of Us Part II's Seattle, Scars and Wolves hurt each other terribly, and the same can be said about Israel and Palestine. The difference is that when flashes of violence abate and the smoke clears, one side continues to live freely and prosper, while the other goes back to a life of occupation and humiliation. One side continues to expand while the other continues to lose the land it needs to live. Imagining this process as some kind of symmetric cycle benefits one side more than the other, and allows it to continue.

As a result, The Last of Us Part II never quite justifies its fatalism. As Rob Zacny wrote in his review and again in his closer examination of The Last of Us Part II's ending, at the end of the day Ellie's journey of revenge seems especially cruel, even idiotic, because we are never given a good reason for why she keeps recommitting to it. Acts of cruelty along the way, like Ellie's torturing another character to get information, are presented as inevitable. This seems to be The Last of Us Part II's thesis: humans experience a kind of "intense hate that is universal," as Druckmann told The Post, which keep us trapped in these cycles.

But is intense hate really a universal feeling? It's certainly not one that I share. I, too, have seen the video of the 2000 mob killing of the Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, and it's horrific. Yet, my immediate response wasn't "Oh, man, if I could just push a button and kill all these people that committed this horrible act, I would make them feel the same pain that they inflicted on these people," as Druckmann said.

This is not a universal feeling as much as it's a learned way of seeing the world. There are many other ways to react to that video: compassion for the victims, compassion for the killers, questioning why these soldiers had to drive into the West Bank in the first place, questioning what would drive a mob to this kind of violence. Revenge and hate is just one option.

The Last of Us Part II is an incredible journey that provides not only one of the most mesmerizing spectacles that we've seen from big budget video games, but one that manages to ask difficult questions along the way. It's clearly coming from an emotionally authentic and self-examining place. The trouble with it, and the reason that Ellie's journey ultimately feels nonsensical, is that it begins from a place that accepts "intense hate that is universal" as a fact of life, rather than examining where and why this behavior is learned.

Critically, by not asking these questions, and by masking its point of view as being evenhanded, it perpetuates the very cycles of violence it's supposedly so troubled by.

#not asoiaf #israel and palestine 2023 #israel #zionism #fiction vs reality #fiction writing #tlou #tlou part 2 #tlou part ii #articles #article

[popop-maru]

Hey so I once in a while post about Metalocalypse and I wanna say, at the possible expense of my ability to do that, @secret-tacos is my best friend of over 10 years. We've known each other for an eternity. I was a young teenager when I met him, we were both still discovering ourselves- We were different people, and we've been through a lot and learned who we are together. Nothing in this world will come between us, or sever the memories we've shared- And we've both met some shitty people who have tried.

For a while, we + some friends have discussed a lack of darker/more serious content in fandom, despite the show obviously being pretty dark itself (a recurring character is a registered sex offender, for one) and how people who DO make this content (while it may not be triggering in nature) that we've been friends with have been afraid to post things like guro for fear of being lumped in with the worst kinds of people, and that isn't an exaggeration.

I've seen people lump in "DNI if you do X/ship X" with terfs, zionists, etc. in the literal same sentence, and I think at that point you seriously need to step back and look at your life, and why you choose to engage with that content (even to rant about it) if it bothers you. But you also need to realize that these things are not real.

There is someone popular in this SAME FANDOM who has written dynamics involving adults and minors being romantic/sexual that makes me personally uncomfortable, and no you don't need to know why. You're not entitled to that information. But that isn't treated as a bad thing, people ignore it, and how its romanticized- Which is not a courtesy given to my friend, Damien.

So, my friend posts a list of prompts for fanart/fanfic involving various taboo themes. Some of them horror themes, some of them potential triggers, etc. He does this explicitly to give people, some of whom are friends, an excuse to create what they want while diverting the target onto his own back. If you do not like these things, then do not engage with them. It is that simple.

He did make the mistake of not trigger tagging the prompts, under the impression that just seeing the words (the offending ones being "noncon" and "incest") would not be a trigger for people, but others have talked to him about this and he's corrected it. That's over and done with.

What I don't understand is people who have gone out of their way to comment on the post and message him about how they DONT WANT TO INTERACT WITH THE POST. That doesn't make any sense to me. The only outcome I can see is that they want him to delete it, and possibly his blog, which isn't going to happen.

Nowhere did he say, either, that these things had to be sexual. Nowhere did he say that you couldn't write a dark, introspective fanfic about these things that ultimately speaks to something deeper. He also didn't say they COULDN'T be porn, he very much didn't say that.

I want to throw it out there, I'm not proship or comship or whatever else people want to call it nowadays, because I think its cringe and fail to spend all your free time arguing about what other people do online.

Just like I think it's stupid to go to someone else's blog and say how angry you are that you chose to go to their blog. Or to post in discord servers THAT HE'S IN about how much you hate his content. Or to follow him and reblog his art and then comment that you hate what he's doing.

You can put it on whatever morally pure pedestal you want, but that's just. Kind of mean and unnecessary.

The express challenge here is to give people a space to create dark content, and for people who DONT WANT TO SEE THAT to blacklist it and move on. Which was the outcome people wanted, but not the one we got.

I understand if you're a survivor and you're offended, and that isn't the intention at all. When people look at fiction, they do not think of you, and they do not want to hurt you. But I am still sorry if you've been hurt.

I understand the desire to rail against anyone who posts something you don't like. I do. You can't complain to the writers of the show directly about the content you dislike (and if you do, they won't listen) but if you want to complain about a specific blog? You can just go there and comment and hope that they get bullied off the website, that's something you can do right now and tell all your friends how you're morally right for it.

And you will. And you'll do it to me, too, and you'll tell everyone how good it felt to do it. Because you're such a good person, because it feels so good to be good, and everyone should know how good you are.

#metalocalypse #maru.txt #cw incest #cw noncon

[noodlesandtoons]

Hello sorry to bother you with this all of sudden ,and this might be coming out of nowhere, and I’m not trying to force you or be pushy but I m trying to get more people into this show with great potential. If your not interested it’s fine but Have you heard of or watched moon girl and devil dinosaur? Season 2 comes out tomorrow February 2. 

The main character i love she gives me autistic vibes I’m autistic. The show has interesting characters, action ,great music, and animation ,good themes and representation, Anime references, it even has an eyecatch season 2 is going to be more story driven if you find that interesting. It also shares the same animation studio as rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles.

It be good if you watch the first 2 season 2 episode when they air so the ratings will be higher. And watch the other season 2 episodes when they air.

I think Disney might be trying to sabotage the show with them probably dropping 14 episodes on Disney + on February 3. They did similar with season 1 and the ratings where low ,please watch season 2 episodes when they air on. But more importantly also watch it on Disney + on feb 3 and when they air it on YouTube. Unfortunately they are dropping 14 episodes on Disney + so watch them all in one day but also when they air the first time.

I’m not just saying only cable just also. I’m saying please support this show. Despite that it still won 5 Emmys. Also if it’s no trouble could if it alright with you spread the word about this show to others you know like either online or irl. Time is limited!

Hello! Thank you for the ask. I had been planning on watching Moon Girl for a while due to how amazing the clips of it I saw were but unfortunately due to current events I will not be watching it. Due to Israel’s current genocide against the Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza, me and many other people are participating in the BDS movement. A boycott campaign in order to divest funds from Israel. Here’s a link to it.

As people found out more about this many of us, including myself, have canceled our Disney + subscriptions as solidarity to this movement and because Disney is listed as a pressure target. Now recently they have also announced to FULLY boycott any marvel products because currently in the new Captain America 4 movie there is a character named Sabra who is an IDF soldier/terrorist and is essentially a PR Zionist “hero” for Israel. Because of this people have been telling Marvel to take her out COMPLETELY from the movie but they have currently not budged. So BDS has since called to boycott ALL things Marvel until this character is taken out. And that includes comics, movies, merchandise, and of course TV shows. Which means most likely Moon Girl is a part of the boycott list especially considering her show is on Disney + too. So the only way I would be watching this show would be through pirating. After this post I will not be promoting any Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur or any Marvel Content until Marvel removes the character Sabra from Captain America 4. I’m sorry if this isn’t the response you were hoping for but I hope this may lead you to joining this boycott as well and maybe even incline you to start educating yourself more on the genocide that is taking place right now as well as helping in ending Israeli occupation of Palestine.

If you are in the US like me you can actually download the 5 calls app in order to call our congress people and government to call for a permanent ceasefire and to not use our tax money to keep funding this white supremacist settler colony into existence. It even gives you a script on exactly what to say when you call.

I hope this has given you some insight on what’s going on and you can start doing some more research on what’s happening and what you can do about it. It’s never too late to take after Hobie Brown. 🕷️🕸️ 🎸🍉

#free palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #moon girl and devil dinosaur #ask

[akajustmerry]

Just wanted to let you know that the actress Hiam Abbass is Palestinian and plays both Ramy's mother in Ramy and Logan's wife in Succession. She's talked in the Guardian briefly about how Israeli occupation has affected her in the past and in general about Islamaphobia and there's also an article in The National News in which she talks about how she wants the pieces of art she's involved in to reflect herself as a person, so I think it's irresponsible to label Succession as a Zionist show considering this.

If you gathered that it's a Zionist show from that one line Macfayden's character says, "this [the family drama of the Roys] is like Israel-Palestine, but harder and more important" in the trailer for the new season, I think you've misread that line as being purposed to make fun of Israel's occupation of Palestine rather than being purposed to make fun of uber-wealthy WASP people's self-obsession, which is a consistent theme in the show.

...................................i cannot tell you how important it is to get into the habit of quickly searching someone's blog for a topic before you come into their ask box and condescendingly "let them know" about that topic. you may just find that person (in this case me) knows all this. not only do i regularly post about Ramy, Hiam Abbass and Succession on this blog, but I created and co-run @swanasource where I post about South West Asian/North African public figures and media. I have an honours degree in media studies, specialising in racism in liberal media, am a media educator, and am co-founder of a literal film podcast. so, suffice to say I know how to identify a theme in a show. I never labelled succession as a zionist show. I made a general comment about Zionism attitudes in media, relating to it. here's some food for thought: consider that the mere presence of a Palestinian in a piece of media does not make it pro-Palestinian. Consider that Hiam Abbass' Palestinian identity is actually erased in Succession because Marcia as a character is Lebanese. Consider that the reason she wasn't really in season 3 is that she was temporarily blacklisted for being a Palestinian actor. Consider that while it may be in character and in keeping with Succession's themes to joke about these things, that doesn't exempt it from perpetuating those attitudes.

#anon #/

[sandinmybed]

Not only is the Stranger Things fandom still more fixated on Noah than on Brett Gelman's Zionist bullshit, they won't even talk about the new brand deal the show's production team announced with Squishmallows, a brand that's been a major doner to AIPAC. A post about that got about five notes before it was taken down. Anything to avoid criticizing the show as a whole and asking if being vocally pro Israel has been actively encouraged, by producers we already know share those views.

im very with you on this. i am not condoning noahs actions at all but people are WAY too focused on him when brett gelman is DANGEROUS and i never see shit about it. for anyone not sure what this ask is talking about, its about this post i made

and my opinion is that hes the easiest target due to being young and quite online. the showrunners have expressed a lot of very pro isr*el views but nobody really talks about it because theyd have to actually know what theyre talking about re; gaza in order to criticise them, rather than just rting something about hoping noah never gets another role and dunking on his looks or whatever (which, guys, can we not do that? equating beauty to goodness is the first step of a BAD path)

also a lot of people i think dont want to criticise the showrunners/brett/etc because they are still hyperfixated on the show and somehow they think this is going to make THEM look bad for still liking the show? guys you can still like the show. the show has nothing at all to do with isr*el, this isn't like TLOU where the showrunners literally based the themes of the story off hate for palestinians. just yo ho ho your way through season 5 if you still want to watch it. use Alternative Methods. if you DONT want to watch s5 and you want to drop it entirely because of the zionists involved, thats absolutely your choice. but i think we need to move on from a couple of lukewarm statements from a 19 year old rich kid and focus on the involved persons (brett!!) who are genuinely calling for people to die.

#anon #ask #text

[lastweeksshirttonight]

Guess who's back

Lee is back, tell a friend.

I know I let this project sit fallow for the last few weeks, but I'm gonna kick it back in gear - especially now that we don't have any new LWTs to pick apart every week.

Last Lee Tonight (wherein Lee is still alive, he promises) Season One, Episode Five

(original air date: 6/8/2014) Major topics covered: Net Neutrality, the spelling bee, European elections

"Is there anyone into both anti-Zionist conspiracy theories AND smooth jazz?"

Welcome back from our mini-break! When we last left off, Last Week Tonight was still trying to figure out how, exactly, to structure its show, now that it's determined longer-form dissections of issues can and will work as stand-alone viral bits. This episode is, at least in some respects, where things start gelling into the format we know and love - and gives us our first really big viral bit from the show. I think this, more than the episode on the death penalty, is where LWT really starts to take shape.

Our episode is a rare start where John does not slap his desk a lot, but instead bobs around like a weird bird while everyone claps. It is delightful and important for you to know this, and he should do this more often. (Did you know that one of my main character traits is 'strong opinions about objectively useless shit'? SURPRISE IT IS)

The episode kicks off discussing a surge of far-right victories in European elections. Good to know people were worried about this getting out of hand in 2014. John makes it very clear this is a bad sign - "when Europe goes far right, they go far right through Belgium" is an amazing joke - and showcases multiple far-right Nazi groups that now have seats in their countries' governments. I hate how numb to a lot of this shit I am now because of the US' slow descent into fascism, but this was a startling warning sign at the time.

In contrast, Ukraine elected a chocolate baron as their president, and John takes the opportunity to sing badly and "whimsically". My heart.

Next is an update on Afghanistan, and a new plan for pulling out of the country by the end of 2014. Or the end of 2015. They've been just about to leave Afghanistan for a long time, and John has some further updates on plans going into 2016 and 2017.

These first bits before the "And Now This" feel a lot more like the modern introductory sections of Last Week Tonight. Everything aside from the brief Afghanistan update is centered around one singular theme (European elections), goes on for about 6 minutes (leaving plenty of time for the main topics), and goes into at least slight depth about the news (unlike earlier, extremely brief tossed-off news updates that expected at least a modicum of familiarity with current events). Things are starting to come together everyone!

Our first "And Now This" is about Jay Carney resigning from being White House Press Secretary, which they frame his resignation speech declaring his respect and love for the job with clips of him getting irritated, bemused, and drained by the idiocy of the press pool he dealt with. I honestly completely forgot this guy existed but all the memories of those Obama-era press conferences came back hard to me while watching this clip.

The first main story starts with the Internet, and John going on an extremely long tangent about buying coyote urine before bringing us to the actual topic - Net Neutrality.

This episode had a massive social impact when it aired in 2014. I remember this being such a huge deal, it seemed like every news organization was covering John's show and, through that coverage, informing the public about why net neutrality would be an absolute disaster for the US. Looking at this now, it also was a huge turning point in the marketing of the show - I've mentioned multiple times for previous episodes that the YouTube clips pulled from each episode so far make absolutely no sense, sometimes chopping up bits and not showing full context (like with the GM recalls), sometimes having shorter and longer versions of the same thing (like with the climate debate and the Bill Nye cameo). This episode marks the first time I can share the entirety of the episode's main bit with you as a YouTube video. It is absolutely wild to think that most audience's main way of interacting with this show, through longform YouTube bits, was not a thing at the start.

While the YouTube channel continues to have some smaller fragments of LWT episodes from this point on (usually the smaller intro bits or episode enders divorced from the main topic), and episode 7 inexplicably doesn't have video of its main topic at all (oh boy, that'll make my write up fun), by episode 8, the main subject of every episode has its own longform YouTube clip.

Here's the net neutrality clip for your viewing pleasure:

John opens the clip noting that discussions of net neutrality are boring as shit, saying he'd rather watch Caillou with his niece than listen to them. That's one of the most casually damning insults I've ever heard, because Caillou is fucking terrible. But net neutrality, I think as we all know now, is extremely important to the function of the internet as we know it.

I said I won't go deeply through each bit on a technical level, and this clip is very technical. It shows really well how LWT, at its best, really breaks down a complex issue and makes it easy to understand - and easy to get incensed about. Helps that cable companies get shit on CONSTANTLY in this one. I am still ready to destroy Spectrum over my early year internet fuckery.

I wish I remembered what I put in that FCC comment website, lol.

The episode shifts to another Other Countries' Presidents of the United States, which focuses on Tony Abbott of Australia, a religiously anti-immigrant shitheel who was an immigrant to Australia himself. It's always projection with these idiots. He's got a cavalcade of bad thoughts and ideas, a lot of which feel like they were pulled directly from a Thick of It episode. "I've given you the response you deserve", Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ.

He also looks a bit like a Paul Scheer character. I can't unsee it.

The last segment of the episode focuses on the Scripps National Spelling Bee. I made it to the regional tournament for this godawful stress-inducing nightmare in middle school, and I'm pretty sure the only reason I got that far is because my dad promised to buy me the Game Boy Advance game 'Ed Edd n Eddy: Jawbreakers' if I made it to state. I did not make it, and my dad felt so bad about it that he still bought me the game. I loved that game far more than I ever loved the goddamn spelling bee.

As an expert on this subject, "the Hunger Games of the mind" is a super accurate assessment and I related very very hard to the girl who said she was going to get every horror movie ever upon losing. I did much the same, except with Ed Edd n Eddy. (I was fucking obsessed with that show.)

I have to note that John also says "pop that pussy" in this clip. This is of interest to me and my gremlin followers.

Also Jesus Christ, Chris Cuomo, go to a fucking fight club or something to get out that Mortal Kombat-ass rage. My God, you absolute lunatic.

Random notes:

Lee obviously focuses on important things corner: plum tie, light blue shirt, dark gray jacket, holy shit it is too early for me to be this flustered. A LOOK. 10/10 no notes

Weird items from the Last Week Tonight YouTube page: a video of a singular joke from the Net Neutrality clip. I am not entirely sure what they were going for here - did they think one joke might go more viral than an entire 15 minute clip? Did they make this as a lead-in on a long-lost corporate website? Did they predict TikTok? I have so many questions.

A couple of years after the Spelling Bee bit, in 2016, John sent his congratulations to Scripps for their 90 year anniversary and some encouragement to participants. This is worth watching because a) all-ages/family-friendly John content is generally adorable and this is no exception, and b) John is smoking hot in it. Not even including the 'imo' there, he just IS. 11/10. 12/10 even. Ranking scale destroyed.

I would ask you all to guess who my favorite character on Ed Edd n Eddy was, but I am such a stereotype of a human being that if you guessed anyone other than Double D, you don't know me at all. Also this show is still hilarious as an adult, and I maybe got sidetracked watching a bunch of clips of it this morning.

#john oliver #last week tonight #last week tonight with john oliver #last lee tonight #ed edd n eddy #sorry for that tag people in the eene tag it makes sense in context #Youtube

[sweet-little-goldfish-stede]

hello, what would you say to someone who very much thinks about stepping away from the renewal movement bc our fandom keeps being associated with slavery, racism and zionism? and people just take it at word value and feel morally better that they don't consume that media taika did while probably watching 1665 tv shows from disney and mcu. i do not care to be associated with zionists and racists and be told i ship slave owners, but everyone outside of fandom seems to have made up their mids and i don't need my tweet in supoort of a silly tv show i love to be used in some ofmd guys are dicks bullying campaign

Oh boy. I don't typically delve into this because I'm cautious about saying the right/wrong thing and being misconstrued. But I'll do my best*. Let's break this down:

Slavery - I understand people are uncomfortable with the show depicting characters based on real life pirates who were connected to slavery in the 1700s, and that is incredibly valid. If someone doesn't want to interact with the show because of that, that's fine! It's great! However, the show basically takes the idea of these pirates and makes them into entirely new characters which never themselves touch on the idea of slavery. The show depicts itself as pretty anti-slavery given the immediate violence that occurs against people who are racist to the non-white characters (Officer Whatever getting knifed after calling Frenchie slave, Abshir and the servants helping burn down the French ship and leaving happily with money after one of them called them "my Africans", which, yes EW, but was very pointedly saying he was wrong). I will also say to the slavery point that kids play pirates/love pirate stuff, people don't tell them not to because the real Blackbeard was involved in that? Idk, please take my opinion here with a grain of salt (and I'm very willing to be wrong on this) but it seems a bit...reactionary to say the show is pro-slavery.

Same goes for racism - MOST of the actors and characters are not white in this show, and that I think is portrayed very well through many different backgrounds. And as I just mentioned, every time a character is racist, they almost immediately get their comeuppance. Stede never treats any of his crew in any way which is racist, and the one time he and Pete are racist towards the Indigenous tribe, they're called out on it explicitly and never do that again.

Zionism....sigh. This is unfortunately a loaded argument these days. Yes, Taika signed a letter that said "give the hostages back". Taika is also half-Jewish and describes himself as a Jewish Polynesian man. At the time the letter was making the rounds, October 7th had just happened, and a very real, terrible kidnapping/murder of roughly 1,000 people happened, which is shocking and terrible to see as a Jewish person. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Of course that does not excuse the >20,000 Palestinians who have been killed. Absolutely not.

Taika also gets a lot of unnecessary shit because people just don't like him and want to find some moral high ground to stand on and berate fans of his work with. I'm Taika neutral, but the more hate he gets the more I'm willing to back him because it's waaaaay disproportionate to anything he actually says. Plus, many, MANY actors on the show are openly pro-Palestine, and those people are close with Taika (see: Vico), so I'm very against the idea that OFMD is zionist? At least, I don't see how it can be any worse than any other piece of media those screaming about hating OFMD watch.

So, ending my ramble....I say do it anyway. You can't please everyone. People on the internet are mean. You don't know them, and they don't know you. They probably haven't seen the show and are dogpiling, because that's what people on the internet do. In addition, the renew as a crew movement has raised money for Palestine and for other charities close to the shows themes - LGBTQ+ youth and rights and amputees come to mind from what I've seen over the past few days. All extra money from the renewal campaign is going to charity. Everyone I know who donated and emails Zaslav and Co are also active in the campaign for a ceasefire, calling reps and MPs, being loud on other sources.

I'm sorry if this didn't make much sense and if anything I said was wrong. Again, very willing to listen and dialouge on any of it. As always, my DMs are open.

*Please note that I am a white American who lives in Canada and was raised Catholic (although in a very Jewish area with many Jewish friends so I do have a lot of background on Judaism, but again am not Jewish so), therefore I don't want to speak over anyone more qualified on any of these matters.

#ofmd #slavery cw #racism cw #renew as a crew

[carbondated]

#CARBONDATED Professor River Song of BBC's Doctor Who. Archaeologist. Post Library and Canon divergent. Beloved by Ivory. She/her. 25+ South African Tamil. First est Jan 2013. reestablished Aug 2023. .

. CARRD *not affiliated with Doctor Who, the BBC or Big finish.

PORTRAYAL- I am canon compliant with the show and EU respectively, except for the episode, 'name of the doctor'. Please note, this account has existed in one form or another since early 2013, as such my River has developed past canon. My main verse will be post-library. Thandiwe Newton is the default faceclaim for that verse, however I will still write River's third and canon regeneration in addition to Mels Zucker. ACTIVITY - I work full time and when I'm not doing that, I'm a community organiser so my activity here will be sparse and inconsistent. If you can handle that then we'll get along great. ** currently on leave.

FORMATTING - I use minimal formatting with small text and 50x85 icons. If you need me to make any adjustments for accessibility sake, please let me know.

CONTENT - Typically I write multi-para but I'm fine with chat style rp as well. I love love love! adventure/mystery/sci-fi driven threads. I'm looking for long ongoing threads overall though.

CURRENT INSPO: MUSIC :Signed, sealed, delivered. Everlasting Love. Go your Own way. The loneliest time, I've been to the moon. LIT: Antony & Cleopatra , Death At Daylesford, Partners in Crime. Ode on a Grecian Urn. Endymion ART: Lady of Shallot, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Garden of Earthly Delights. Madame X, Judith Beheading Holofernes, The Raft of the Medusa, The Sleeping Beauty MEDIA: How to steal a Million, High Society, Firefly, Timeline, Carmen Jones, The Mummy.The Crypt of Tears. VERSES - I don't typically write AU scenarios with the exception of canon alternate universes eg: Kala's Guard Universe. So far this has worked for me. If I do write a thread with a character from a fandom where time travel or aliens etc doesn't exist, then I will just play it by ear. Each verses that I do write follows several arcs, the same way the show would.

SHIPPING - River is bisexual and poly in canon. I love shipping. I'm open to it. However, I'm not a big fan of a lot of Doctor/River ships in canon. ( mainly River/10 and Releven ) That doesn't mean we can't plot something out if you do write the Doctor. Everything else is open for discussion.

FOLLOWING - Due to certain themes, I really don't feel comfortable interacting with anyone under the age of 18. I apologise if this offends anyone.

TRIGGERS: Just ask me if you need something tagged, I honestly cannot remember a hundred different things for a hundred different blogs, even if you have it in your rules it's simply impossible to do. THEMES- Please be aware that this account WILL explore some dark themes such as murder and other high crimes. However, there are definitely things that I draw the line at. I WILL NOT be interacting with anyone who chooses to write the following themes, P*edophilia, r*pe, transphobia, racism, etc. lastly, but certainly not least, if you are a Zionist don't follow me don't and don't try to interact with me in any way. Update: 15/3 sorry but this rule now includes anyone that KNOWINGLY continues to interact with people that have OUTWARDLY stated they are Zionists.

#out of character. #updated 29/03/24

[cosmoboba]

✰Pinned Post Bros✰

🌠🧋Welcome to the Cosmo Café🧋🌠

“ 𝓣𝓸𝓭𝓪𝔂'𝓼 𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓾 𝓪𝓻𝓮 𝓯𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓼 𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓿𝓮𝓭 𝓲𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓻𝓼… 𝓹𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓼𝓮, 𝓮𝓷𝓳𝓸𝔂.„

⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺

🌠༺☆Cosmo

🌠༺☆Genderfluid, He/They/She

🌠༺☆Demi-Biromantic Asexual

🌠༺☆Multi-fandom blog + OCxOC/CC content + Selfshipper

🌠༺☆Bilingual, English + French(Weak on vocabulary tho) ⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺

Hi!! Welcome to my page, refer to as Cosmo if we don't know personally! If I ever warm up to ya then you'll have ultimate pass to my real name(s) which I only allow close friends to call me by. I'm an artist and writer, both non professional, but am still trying my best in what I love doing.

As you can tell from my overall favored aesthetic, I have a gigantic crush on the beautiful cosmos itself and galactic themes despite the unknown fates having the worst lucks in store for me lmao. The café part is just in addition since I I used to work at one, it was pretty memorable for me despite having frequent burnouts + I love boba tea so that's included too ❤️

BYI:

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⟫First and foremost- if we aren't close, I prefer you refer me as a gender neutral person(Pronouns included: they/them).

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⟫As stated in pf desc, I am a multifandom account and CCxOC is promised to be present too.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⟫I'm a very slow artist, so I wouldn't expect too much of that, but!! It will still be there.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⟫I'm a very shy person who has a very, and I mean, very, limited social battery. Making friends for me takes a lot of time and I'm very dependent on others leading conversations.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⟫I cuss. A lot.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──★─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⟫Oh yeah and I'm very sensitive and insecure. Doing my best not to make that sound like I'm an attention seeker but, it's not uncommon to for me to retaliate against myself over the smallest things so it's pretty much a warning lmao.

⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺

Interests that'll commonly show up on my pf:

Furries! I've got a lotta furry ocs for a story I'm making teehee ❤

Final Fantasy VII, got into it when I was 15, never been the same ever since. No I'm not okay

Splatoon. That game is addictive as fu-

⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺

DNI if(TW: Cursing):

The elephant in the room.(Anti-LGBT, Pedo, problematic shipper, Discrimination like racism or against religion, ect.)

If you got shit on me for liking furries or being an CCxOC maker/selfshipper, then why did you come here in the first place?

I always say this revolving around the ff7 fandom but this applies to all: if you're gonna be a bitch to others over ships or favor characters more than the other, I ask you to pack your shit and leave my pf cuz I ain't up for fighting you over a damn onscreen pixelated mofo. Unless you have a separate account for drama it's fine, but if I find that you're an overall toxic person(like straight up harassing others instead of actually disagreeing) then I WILL block all your accounts associated to you.

Also, tumblr, please be a dear and like, keep your pornbots away from me? Thanks

In under absolutely no circumstance will I allow you to follow me if you support Israel/zionism/are a zionist. Please block me and fuck off. DNI with me on any of your accounts.

Tags:

☆Cosmo Craziness = Random hours

☆Cosmo Asks = Answering Asks

☆Cosmo Babies = OCs

☆Cosmo Art = Art stuff

Alright....I suppose that's all I got in mind to place here.

Cosmo out ｡･:*:･ﾟ★

#☆Cosmo Pinned Post

[bonesandblood-sunandmoon]

Tumblr has been working on implementing a Communities feature here, and they've gotten to a Closed Beta stage. There's more details in this post, but basically, some people will be getting emails with information about filling out a form if they're interested in a community and ideas will be selectively approved and created. There will be a community member cap while in Closed Beta, and taking part in feedback will probably be inevitable.

I'm honestly not sure if there's an underlying reason for who gets sent emails or if I was randomly chosen, but I have the opportunity to fill out a potential community form. Someone would have to approve it, and at this stage, allowing duplicates or communities that are very nearly duplicated with minor differences will probably be unlikely. Considering the tag spamming in Jumblr, I thought it might be a good idea to suggest some sort of Jewish themed Community.

If anyone else has gotten an email about creating a Community and has had this idea, I would absolutely like a response about it. (I have no idea if this is a 'first come, first serve' sort of thing, but I'd rather not make a duplicate suggestion.)

There is a note in the email that not every suggestion will be approved, and they're looking for a spread of different types of Communities. However, it also can't hurt to at least put forward the suggestion.

I haven't looked at the form in great detail yet, but it will probably ask for a name, description, community guidelines, and if the Community will be public or private.

Name: I'm not 100% sold on using 'Jumblr', 'Jewish', or 'Judaism' since those are so broad and general. However, if enough people like using 'Jumblr' or something that does seem personally broad, it's still on the table for consideration.

Description: A space for Jewish Tumblrites...? (Jews of Tumblr?) To be determined, really. (Should it be a space also open to gentile allies? Probably see the private vs public section.)

Community guidelines: Some will be the usual matters of what posts will not be allowed, how to tag for certain topics, and what conduct could lead to being removed from the comm. Specific guidelines to this comm are definitely where I'd appreciate some degree of input, though.

For example, it's entirely possible that someone interested in joining this potential Jewish themed Community will want to avoid examples of antisemitism. Does this look like a guideline about not posting antisemitic anon hate or reblogging conversations with antisemitic responses in the reblog chain into the Community? Does this look like needing to use a specific tag so other community members can blacklist or use Tumblr's filtering feature? What if someone wants to talk about antisemitism they've recently faced?

The Israel-Hamas war. Do the community members want a space free from news updates? Or would a guideline about not showing gory imagery or videos, but allowing text only updates, be alright? (Do community members want a space free from larger I/P discussions? Or as long it's tagged for filtering purposes, do they want to be able to talk about I/P without having trolls and random antisemites wander into the replies/reblogs?)

Zionism. I don't want this to be another space where people face the 'are you a Good Jew or a Bad Jew' sort of questioning. However, does this look like a statement in the description welcoming everyone including Zionists, or does there need to be a guideline about talking about anti-/non-/Zionism within the Community?

Other: I don't know what the community member cap will be in the beginning, so I have no idea whether there'll be a need for mods immediately or not. The only language I'm comfortable doing any modding in is English, so at the very least, I'd probably need someone who knows Hebrew at some point.

Public or private: I like the idea of a public community that's not dissimilar to the Jumblr tag, but you know, I'm not sure about how comfortable community members will be with a public community given the compilation of blocklists based on interacting with a particular post/user.

From the Communities Help page:

Public communities can be seen and visited by non-members, logged in or logged out. However, only the feed of posts in each community tab, and the About page, are accessible. Non-members cannot view the member list, see who reacted with what, or see community comments. Non-members with an invite can see everything a member can see, but cannot interact with anything until they accept the invitation. Private communities cannot be seen or visited by non-members at all. The existence of a private community is not hidden, however, if someone has the URL (they’ll see a message like “this is a private community”). Non-members with an invite can see everything a member can see, but cannot interact with anything until they accept the invitation.

-

Not directly related but notable enough to mention: I can easily imagine that some people will not be enthusiastic that I'm volunteering for this effort. This is the main associated with a conversion sideblog, but I have not felt comfortable with revealing my sideblog, especially after October 7th. However, I don't think a Tumblr Community can be associated with a secondary account, so I can't really change that my not-really-Jewish-looking account is the one associated with this idea. If someone likes this idea but still would rather have someone else try to implement it, I guess we'll cross that bridge if we get there in the response to this.

#Jumblr

[xtruss]

Why The Watermelon 🍉 Has Become a Symbol For Palestine

Love For All: Forever Palestine 🇵🇸! Hell with the Bastard Child of the US and Th West, Illegal Regime of Isra-hell.

— Mariam Amini | IslamCannel.Tv

What comes to mind when you think of Palestine? Perhaps you envision a grove of olive trees swaying to the beat of a gentle breeze. Maybe you picture the bold black and white of the keffiyeh, or the glorious gold curves of Dome of the Rock.

Recently, however, another symbol has resurfaced, representing the sweet spirit of resilience integral to the Palestinian culture.

It is that of the watermelon.

In image, emoji and graphic form, the fruit has splashed its way onto our screens, with more and more people embracing the motif.

But why watermelons? What does it all mean?

According to Palestinian artist Sandra Watfa, history answers these questions best.

“Watermelons have been grown throughout the entirety of Palestine, but specifically cultivated in the West Bank and Gaza. Their colours being red, white, black and green, they visually reflect the Palestinian flag.”

“The fruit has long been the emblem of Palestinian solidarity and resistance since our flag was banned in 1967 by the Israeli colonial entity.”

This banning of the Palestinian flag is just one form of censorship. In recent years, the keffiyeh has also been weaponised, with Zionist supporters claiming those who wear the chequered scarf are supporting terrorism.

For Watfa, this only strengthens her resolve to speak out. “No one can douse the flame of the human spirit. As long as there is oppression, there will always be people who are ready to die on their feet rather than live on their knees.”

“The watermelon facilitates this in the most innocuous way. Symbols engage the part of the brain that is connected to creativity and perception, and therefore draws the viewer in at a deeper level.”

Beyond the support expressed online, there are various ventures taking the symbol even further. The Watermelon Project is one such example, a social enterprise selling watermelon-themed products such as pins and tote bags.

“The project came to fruition in an effort to unite the world,” says founder Bilal Muhammad. “I wanted to create something akin to the poppy for armistice day, something everyone and anyone could wear to show solidarity to the people of Palestine.”

“It’s not just about products. It’s a movement, a collective effort to elevate the watermelon as a beacon of hope. This association has turned it into a subtle yet powerful symbol of Palestinian identity and nationalism.”

Protesters in Melbourne, Australia 🇦🇺 holding a large watermelon flag.

One hundred percent of profits from The Watermelon Project go to grassroots charities. These have ranged from female-run organisation Forgotten Women to Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), a UK non-profit serving Palestinians back home and abroad.

Meanwhile, for Tel Aviv-based Palestinian lawyer Aisha Malik, the watermelon represents the humour with which her people stand up to continued persecution.

“It resembles this outsmarting, this outwitting, this insistence. Palestinians continue to persevere, to teach their kids and future generations.”

She adds: “It also shows how much we are censored, in that we have to find creative outlets. Right now, even saying this, I had to close my office door in Tel Aviv. We have to be super careful of what we say.”

As for whether there is a risk of the watermelon facing backlash by Israel and its supporters, Malik believes it’s only a matter of time.

“They will try to restrict it, but at the same time, how absurd would that be? I think that’s why it’s so clever. With the keffiyeh and the flag you can argue it’s political, but imagine how funny it would be to literally ban a watermelon symbol?”

Back in the 1980s, Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour allegedly had a showcase shut down by Israeli armed forces because his works featured colours from the Palestinian flag.

Mansour has since recalled officers telling him that even images of watermelons would be illegal. Time will tell whether symbols of the fruit will be further challenged by Israel.

“I think there will ultimately be some sort of backlash,” says Muhammad from The Watermelon Project. “There is already a movement towards pro-zionist activists taking over the watermelon on social media.”

Marchers in Berlin gather, waving Palestinian flags and images of Watermelons 🍉 🍉 🍉.

Finally, one should note that this isn’t the first time watermelons are being used symbolically. Following African-American emancipation in the US, many former slaves grew watermelons to sell. The fruit represented their newfound liberation.

However, for white Americans, it embodied a loss of dominance, and was consequently hijacked and used in offensive caricatures of black Americans.

Far from this historic anti-Black racist trope, the pro-Palestinian movement’s claiming of the watermelon revives its original meaning, signalling newfound hopes for freedom.

— Some names have been changed to protect the identity of our sources.

#Forever Palestine 🇵🇸 #Protesters #Watermelon 🍉 🍉 🍉 #IslamCannel.Tv