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#(personally i like the idea that this is part of the narrative and the US arc will conclude with all of them hugging)
sokkastyles · 17 hours
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Just saw a comment praising Toph for being "mature" for blaming herself for Appa getting taken in the desert and internalizing Aang's anger at her, by someone who is notorious for trying to stir up shit in "defense" of Aang.
And like, first of all, yes, Toph is incredibly emotionally mature, but it's actually really sad how she blames herself here. And it's not that Toph should not be sad, it's not that no one understands how close Aang is to Appa, it's that Aang's reaction is really unfair, not because he doesn't have a right to be upset, but because he directly blames Toph for what happened and literally accuses her of wanting Appa to get taken.
And it's never actually something Aang ever apologizes for, while Toph constantly beats herself up about the fact that she couldn't save Appa and the gaang at the same time.
And part of the reason this bothers me isn't just related to how Aang is never really forced to grow by the narrative, but I also see this trend of people assuming that Toph's feelings don't actually matter here. Yeah, I know she's presented as the rough and tumble tomboy, but as a disabled person, it bothers me that Aang takes Toph's discomfort with Appa, that she has because of being uncomfortable when she can't have her feet on the ground, and uses it to blame her and accuse her of secretly wanting him gone. And honestly, this is an overlooked plot point that pretty realistically shows the prejudice and suspicion towards the disabled, the idea that they might actually be faking their disability and could have actually done more if they tried, and because they didn't overcome their disability, they must not really care. Plus as I said, there's a very real assumption that Toph's feelings can't be hurt because she's blunt and unfeminine. Toph is emotionally mature and empathetic, more than people give her credit for, but she's also a child, and she should not have to deal with that burden alone, while Aang takes advantage of her caring and her friendship here.
"The Desert" is not one of Aang's shining moments, and it could have been a good opportunity to show how people can act their worst when they are under stress, and have Aang realize that his grief over Appa should not allow him to take it out on his friends, who are just trying to help him.
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scintillyyy · 2 days
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actually. i was thinking, though. what exactly *is* the metric of a tim civilian friend. as in, what exactly makes a character tim's friend vs a kid he goes to school with who he happens to friendly with (because tim is generally friendly with everyone). what's the distinction?
and i think the answer falls on "does tim's civilian life and robin life intersect in a significant way around this character"
because, listen. we all know that tim is a compartmentalizer who tries to keep the ideas of "tim" & "robin" separate. however, we also know that it's not one or the other with tim--he's both. and the closer you're allowed to that narrative intersection of both tim & robin, the more the civilian in question can then be seen to have importance in *tim's* life and a reciprocation of friendship interest by tim.
because you think of the gotham heights high crew--not only does tim use his skills to investigate what's wrong with ives at one point (he got an embarrassing job), he's also used the W&W crew for unknowing assistance against the joker, hudson leads him to a case at one point, & he runs into a case whole hanging out with them to see a play at the park. despite tim's best effort to seperate parts of himself the close interactions of his other life to his friends is not just tim accepting friendship, but tim narratively showing friendship in return--they are narratively allowed to be a part of his life as robin though they'll never know it.
and the brentwood boys are no different. though they're not allowed the secret, their lives are affected and improved by tim as robin. as they give friendship, tim gives friendship in return. and when tim leaves his friendship and reunion with ives is marked by a case, the one with charaxes.
and even later, with zoanne, her life and relationship with tim is complicated by tim's life as robin, but she is allowed that narrative closeness to his life as robin, closeness to the entirety of his life. she even makes a cameo as having spoken to vicki vale about tim, and vicki's story during that era is finding proof of the hidden life of the batfam.
louis grieve is interesting because darla is the friend of the era who meets this metric--her life as a mob daughter is doomed to return tim to his true life. her resurrection as warlock's daughter is what intersects her with whole of tim's life, not just tim. and bernard surprisingly doesn't have any narrative markers that would indicate these kind of particularly close feelings from tim towards him--tim does not help him on a personal level with his personal life, there's, hm. like bernard does bring him the news of steph being robin, but there's really no personal intersection of *tim as robin* with bernard or because of bernard or for bernard. they do interact during the school shooting but it's no more personal than tim and the rest of the kids. in post-crisis, at least, the lack of tim's as robin having any sort of notable personal connection to bernard narratively indicates a fundamental distance between them where tim is not shown to have any significant personal investment in/towards bernard unlike all the other civilian friends. i would say bernard does make in on account of his presence at the school shooting, however when tim's true self is both robin & tim, for him to not have any significant personal narrative connection to the real tim, it does makes him a notable outlier among the civilian cast.
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acourtofthought · 2 days
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Whenever I see an Elriel say: SJM told us the mating bond could be rejected for a reason! Elain is going to reject Lucien to be happy with Azriel!
The only thing I can think is: Yes, she did tell us that, but she also told us the consequences of that, and that's the part Elriels always seem to forget or ignore.
Even if Elain does reject the bond, she will never be able to be fully happy with Azriel because she will always feel the remnants of the bond lingering deep inside her chest. Even if she loves Azriel and wants to give him her heart, mind, body, and soul, a piece of her will always be tied to Lucien. There's no getting away from that. It's a simple fact, and as interesting as a rejected bond could be, it doesn't seem fair or right to have Elain end up with Azriel when they will both be eternally haunted by the shadow of Lucien.
And it doesn't seem fair or right for Lucien to suffer a rejected bond, even if somehow the Vassien shippers are right and he ends up in love with Vassa, he too will forever feel the lingering bond and then what? Vassa is human and will die much sooner than Lucien. So I guess they want him to be "happy" only for a few decades, then just go on living the rest of his life alone, haunted by the loss of Jesminda, Elain, and Vassa.
You're so right! If you ask me for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I take away the peanut butter and jelly, I'm just feeding you bread. Sarah has given us a ton of information regarding the bond yet E/riels cling to the random snippets of information that suit their narrative while acting like the rest doesn't matter.
"You said your mother and father were wrong for each other." "What if - that is what she needs?" They love that line and it's used exhaustively in arguments. But they don't bother to think on why Rhys's parents were a poor matched. Bonds do not make poor matches. Personalities make poor matches. Rhys's father was vicious and cold, his mother was soft and fiery. We KNOW Lucien is not vicious or cold. Az is the one with a temper, an icy rage, a hatred of many people, a torturer. Rhys's mother managed to have two children with her husband and we're not given hints that she was forced against her will, it says she eventually grew to resent him. Why don't they focus on that part? That their downfall came about from their personalities? And with that awareness, how they can they claim the same won't happen to Elain and Az? She might be fine with him for a bit but what if she eventually grew to resent him too? You don't need a mating bond for that to happen, it happens all the time in the real world without bonds. They focus on how Sarah mentioned she has turned the idea of bonds over in her head, is there choice? Once again, proof for E/riels that Elain's choice has been taken away and she's decide to be with Az instead! But they ignore how she goes on to say "or is it both?". For every character so far, it's been both and she even tells us she's not saying whether she'll explore a rejected bond or not which is not a confirmation that it's what we're going to see for Elain. As always, they ignore how Elain and Lucien will always feel a tug to one another even if they reject the bond. They pretend that one doesn't exist but what that means is that no matter how long Elain and Az are together, no matter how happy they might seem, they are BOTH going to know that Fate chose Lucien for her and she'll have a connection to him that she'll never have with Az. That sounds depressing to me and will prevent many readers from ever feeling confident that it's not going to become an issue for them at some point. It raises too many questions, how often will Az be jealous because of it? How many fights will they have where Elain needs to reassure him that she's not thinking of Lucien? That she didn't sense him through the bond? What will E/riel do if Az comes across his own mate some day?
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sclfmastery · 2 days
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Quickfire hot take but, even though I totally grasp each of us having favorite regens of the doctor and the master, both individually and together, as symbols of their ever-evolving positions along their personal and relationship journey.... I will never ever understand fan (or canon...) portrayals that draw such a sharp line of favoritism from the characters themselves.
Missy said "they're all the Doctor to me" when recalling a memory to Clara, and to me that encapsulates the enduring nature of their intense bond. To me that is THE line. Regeneration is a form of death and rebirth, but certain core traits are immutable, particularly to two people who are narrative foils, who have known each other for centuries (or possibly millennia) and keep being thrown together by fate again and again and again.
Bottom line is, every Doctor is the same person, and so is every Master. Acting as though one of them only cares for select versions of the other is just so strange to me. They aren't us. To them, it's just like loving (or hating, or both) someone through the eras of their life. Their same life, broken down into stages od evolution and devolution. It's the same person.
I can point to the exact episode (a lol very polarizing episode in Series 10) where I think this "they're not the same person from face to face" trend got exponentially more pronounced, but anyone who knows me knows what that episode is. I truly believe it's a disservice to every version of every Doctor and Master involved.
And I really don't think that Spydoc, which came soon thereafter, is just the playing-out of the consequences of a MASSIVE miscommunication between soul mates. It IS that, but not JUST. I think all of the writing about Thoschei that followed the exacerbating episode was trying to force this inaccurate distortion, this illusion of separateness, which is part of what made the events in Power of the Doctor so painful to Thoschei fans. The Doctor walked away from the Master (literally and figuratively, ironically inviting his inevitable despair--and her own demise) partly out of understandable hurt and rage and caution, but also out of a cold, repulsed misunderstanding: "Missy was willing to change and you regressed, you're a different person than she was, and you have angered me to the point of indifference; I am able to turn off caring about you because you are unrecognizable from her, the version of you that I could control save."
Maybe Whittaker's response is intended by Chibnall: we're supposed to recognize that she's wrong but HAS to be in order to survive another betrayal by the Master, which is what makes it all so tragic.
But I think fan reception has taken the whole thing ( "each Doctor and each Master is an entirely discrete self-contained being") too far, and it bothers me, so much, I think, because it's a trope that enforces the idea that love is transactional and contingent (in such a way that also perhaps unwittingly targets the socially, culturally, and economically marginalized). If you're the "good, small, manageable version" of yourself, then you're easier to love, and it's worth the investment. Otherwise, "you gambled and you lost," and you deserve to die lying in the filth of your own poor decisions. I get why that's an appealing, vindicting plot device, from the POV of an audience member who has felt hurt or even abused IRL. I understand it, I've BEEN the Doctor many times. It just doesn't sit well with me. Maybe that's just me. I could be at peace with that, as a Whovian :P.
But, in-universe, it's based on a premise that's factually erroneous! Dhawan's Master IS Missy IS Delgado IS Simm IS Jacobi IS Ainley IS Roberts IS Beevers etc etc etc. Just as Whittaker's Doctor is a RESPONSE to Capaldi's, but ALSO still IS Capaldi's. And Tennant's. And Baker's (x2). And Eccleston's. And Gatwa's. And Pertwee's. Etc etc. Dhawan's Master was the Prime Minister of the UK and also made chairs that eat people and also cried remembering the names of people she killed. It's the SAME PERSON.
Lol, not quickfire at all. It's an old bone to pick, I know. I just can't stop finding the whole trope...very itchy.
(ok to reblog...dunno if anyone would, LOL, but feel free to reblog and to comment).
I'm gonna tag some ppl I know I've chatted about this with before to see if there are new insights. And feel completely free to disagree with me on any count. @natalunasans @mostincrediblechange @drummingncise @modernwizard @nickcagestrufflehog @rearranging-deck-chairs @koschei-no-more @likeacharacterinamusical
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pixelatedquarter · 9 months
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Shoutout to Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III who's decided the only way he can ask Patrick (who's been constantly hugging both guests and joe for the entirety of the tour) for a hug is apparently onstage comparing him to a football player and saying he looks like a teddy bear he'd like to cuddle.
Like a normal person that doesn't have an extremely complicated relationship with boundaries borne from testing those decades ago and then backpedalling so hard we still see that one gif of him hovering his hand and pulling it back like patrick was a stovetop when they were fresh out of hiatus.
It's the tour of fuck it we heal man, i'm sure you can get a hug without reciting archivebears
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spacedlexi · 3 months
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speaking of fucked up overly hated female twdg characters i find it Super Interesting how people will say carver was the best villain in the whole series, but when lilly is literally just a successful carver (iron fist leader of a community turning children into soldiers) suddenly shes a bad/lame villain for some reason 🤔
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mmmthornton · 1 year
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She was so real for this
#that *AHAHAHAHA.. Stupid. >:( *#what a queen#<3#life things#inspiration#i looked up this interview again because i was thinking about how bad the Death on the Nile remake was AGAIN#and i thought the choice to make Otterborne into like#Sister Rosetta Tharpe ISH#like they used her music and superficially made her character into a rockstar while also taking away any personality or drama or like...#personality in the character lol like what a disappointment#Angela Lansbury in the old version is HAMMING it UP like can you imagine showing up to a movie thinking that THATs the character you -#- get to have fun with only to be told most of your scenes are sitting quietly listening to Branagh talk? BOO#anyway if they wanted to do a (roughly) time appropriate singer and that's not a terrible idea....and if they wanted to have a cool -#- real black creative woman inspo which is ALSO not a bad idea... why wouldn't you make her character more like Eartha Kitt?#some disctinctive way of speaking that's sort of recognizably old fashioned while being vivacious and the life of the party?#yeah thats what works for that character AND it'd be a fun inspiration for her as a singer#its so baffling that they just...straight up played the audio tracks of Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing while also not adding anything -#- to her character that was relevant and in fact just took away stuff about the character that made her an actual part of the mystery#they gave her narrative purpose to a white guy who wants to eat people irl ffs if that's not women being passed over for mediocre#white men idk what is#Youtube
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cruelsister-moved2 · 9 months
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usually i kind of hate when a piece of art feels indulgent sorry #earthmoon BUT i hate how often i hear the take that all description in writing needs to serve the Grand Unified Purpose of the work and you can tell its dumb because imagine watching an animated film and saying they shouldnt bother to put any detail in the backgrounds because its not important to the plot or theme 🤔 like it can be one stylistic approach especially in short fiction & can description and details feel pointless and unearned sure but the idea it should only rain if ur character is sad is goofy af and the idea that every element of the world should revolve around ur character and their narrative its giving western individualism
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fellhellion · 9 months
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This part of the editorial from 2099 (pic sourced from this post) is so interesting to me because i don’t even think the idea of Miguel having these kinds of flaws is uninteresting or impossible, but I just personally would never have come to this conclusion just based on the text.
Like, when I personally look at how Miguel and Dana interact, I don’t see any indication that he emotionally condescends to having a relationship with her, when you’d think this strain of elitism should shine through in some part of their relationship at least initially in his arc.
I don’t look at Xina and Miguel’s interactions and interpret any sense him feeling threatened by her intelligence (even if we're just talking purely pre-spidermanning), when you’d think an element of that would be present, even in a flashback. He was a callous dickhead about the cheating explanation, but that alone without some corresponding behaviour to how he speaks to/treats Dana, even just as a flashback, just doesn’t offer the bridging piece to displaying what the authorial intent apparently was, at least for me.
Also, and by god we always come back to Dana’s writing being so damn lazy, but if Miguel - even if only at first - sought Dana out due to the emotional convenience she provided, what has prompted enough change that he is willing to bear and forgive actions like her seeking out the company of the man who drugged him when she wants to needle Miguel.
ALSO. PETER DAVID I AM SPEAKING DIRECTLY INTO YOUR EAR RN. ITS VERY SILLY TO ME TO POINT OUT THE MISOGYNISTIC STREAK INTENDED IN MIGUEL’S ACTIONS HERE BUT THEN LITERALLY JUST NOT BOTHER TO MAKE THE WOMAN THIS IS ABOUT MAKE LIKE. SENSE WHEN YOU WROTE HER. OFFER NO EXPLORATION INTO WHAT HER ACTIONS SPEAK TO IN HER PERSON AND DELVE INTO WHAT CONTRADICTORY ACTS MIGHT TELL US ABOUT HER.
#'a component to miguel's cheating is misogynistic thinking' AND IS THE MISOGYNISTIC THINKING IN THE ROOM WITH US NOW#idk idk...i genuinely have no issue with grappling w this as a character flaw of his i just would never have come to this conclusion on my#own PURELY from how he treated dana and xina. absolute asshole move w how he spoke of the cheating intially to xina#but that alone just makes him an asshole. not someone who felt threatened by her intelligence and THATS the piece that i dont personally se#in the text.#not to mention. the way dana and miguel's relationship is tonally depicted just. speaks of some lvl of sincerity to me. miguel isn't an#overly physically affectionate person and the times he does display that are really interesting (holding Gabriel when the abuse was going o#holding Xina when she blamed herself for Dana's death etc etc)#and then you have the way he holds Dana when he accidentally hits her while hallucinating from the rapture. he calls her lover and honey.#they cuddle in the bath that one time together. he recognises he hasnt been spending enough time w her and went to invite her out because o#it. and yeah. some of these we can absolutely chalk up to the character development hes having at the same time due to spidermanning but#even BEFORE that its like. it feels tonally dissonant to even try read Dana's actions at face value because the narrative doesnt CARE#about them making sense as part of a coherent whole person who thinks and rationalises actions to achieve a certain outcome or satisfy a#desire. it doesnt CARE enough to give her that sadly and so youre just left like. what does this relationship mean to these two characters?#for one party in particular i genuinely have no idea. and i dont know what to infer is the reason for a change from the mentality outlined#as authorial intent. because i didnt get that impression in the first place.#tunes talks 2099#tunes talks critical#long post
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merrygejelh · 1 year
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Nobody understands me except Kermit the frog
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michiganmerchant · 1 year
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please do not read the tags i am being insane at 10pm on a sunday night
#thinking. perhaps even thoughting. thunking.#<- new tag because i am Insane#anyways shipping disease is real etc etc but. i love luke hughes because i also love brandt clarke#and i want to put them together like two barbie dolls !!!#listen LISTEN luke/brandt is like me and two other people in the fucking boat but it's such a good one#it's also completely made up in my head but. well. look.#luke/brandt is the only appealing hughes ship to me! i dont know why!#quinn/elias does not do anything 2 me (quinn/elias/brock DOES but also not a. ccanucks fan)#no jack ship inspires me Enough but he and nico are kind of cute?#but luke and brandt bitch4bitch... oh that's good stuff right there mhmm 100%#it's just. it's the way luke is such a peculiar and funky little guy like of course#he had to go... not fall in love but something to the left and darker than that with the boy he used to beat up during ministicks#also hilarious how they're both dmen! opposite sides too! wow you could put them togeth-[gets shot]#i think soecifically the idea of examining luke and his little guy bitch vibes via brandt i#who is also little guy bitch and them being narrative foils 2 each other when they are Not the same person its like WOW!!!#i want to write (no i dont i want to read actually) about luke and his tenacity when confronted with a bite that's just as bad as his#luke and his youngest brother weight of expectations successful brother vs brandt being the best clarke at hockey in his family#they're around the same point imo in their development curve and its going to be SUCH a battle i know#because they play similar games#and i think brandt heightens luke's competitiveness! and his competitiveness is part of what makes him- HIM!#in conclusion i am going to watch lak vs njd even though i do not like any of these teams in the slightest!
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sanstropfremir · 1 year
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just for fun, how would you stage taemin's waiting for? since he didn't perform it, i've seen many ppl here giving their takes, i want to know yours^^
oh HO what a question!!! hmmmmmmm
i think what i'd want to do with waiting for is to play up the dream elements that are in the lyrics. there' a lot of talk of appearing/disappearing trying to keep hold of something intangible etc, and so i'd either want to do something like what they did in film : kai for hello stranger, with the laser projector and smoke, OR in a more elabourate idea for actual performance, i'd want to build a whole bedroom setup and use pepper's ghost to create an illusion where he would actually be dancing with a 'ghost' (actually a projection of another dancer offstage. here's a demo of a group imitating the effect at the first theatre it was performed in in 1862, it's a very old style of optical illustion that uses a glass + light setup that can be done totally live and with no digital! the stage setup is pretty elabourate and although you can do it with much more sophisticated technology now (it's the same technique that was used to create 'hologram' tupac) so in theory one could do it at large venue like taemin's concerts normally are at, but actually what i would want to do is do a full staging of both parts of ngda like they were a play or an opera, and in a european style theatre with a smaller audience where you could actually do the whole technique the traditional way. one of the things that taemin really likes doing with his concerts is investing in new and unusual stage tech, and personally i think it would be a really interesting artistic challenge for him to use only OLD stage tech and to be constricted by the physical limitations of it. we've come to associate him with big arena shows and big spectacle in the last year and change before he left, and i want to pare all of that down and give him a chance to really flex both his performance and also how high concept his work really is.
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orcelito · 1 year
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the funny thing is everyone's like "oh yea a fic studying the senses of an inhuman character, that's pretty cool" but Little Do They Know i happened upon this idea by accident. Sentido started as me just messing around with the idea of hearing Life And Death, which REALLY started as a "Vash can hear dead people" kinda au lksdjfld
decided to go with less of a literal Hearing Dead People and went more of Hearing Death being the acute hearing of death-related sounds. i think this idea's pretty good tbh, even with how accidental it was
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snekdood · 1 year
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I do kinda think peoples reaction to thinking i prevented my ex from Being Whatever They Want and then trying to exclude me entirely from the things i identify with- like... How is that okay in any capacity? If you did this in regard to my trans identity, would it still be okay? Why is it okay with the rest of the ways i identify too? I never stopped them from being anything anyways, i just didnt want to date someone who was mirroring me so fucking much, goddamn, i was okay with being their friend still, why is that so hard to understand. Sorry i dont wanna fuck someone whos pretending to be my clone, almost in an effort to mock me..?
#some of yall are genuinely bad people. like you do need to digest that fact.#all of this based on a rumor. and again i state like ive stated a million times. what will you do when you find out theyre the abuser?#are you gonna try to apolgozie to me for trying to run me off the internet ostracize and bully me?#or are you gonna come up with a million justifications for why your behavior was fine even though you didnt know?#like maybe. just maybe. in situations where you dont know the truth of the situation. maybe. just dont act on the impulse to hurt#someone because you really really want to believe the other person you like more is telling the truth. idk. just an idea.#because i dont think yall are capable of the self introspection right now to realize how fucking abusive your behavior has been.#JUST because its directed at mem suddenly its totally fine. lets not think about the possibility snake could be telling the truth too.#nawww... the guy who identifies as a snake and looks like a disney villain? im totally not allowing my subconscious biases navigate the#way i treat people in this situation. boy do i love my angel looking boys.#me* not mem lol#surely my culturally christian upbringing isnt playing a part in any of this.#anyways. i never went out of my way to invalidate them but ik believing that would make their narrative crumble for you.#i knew what i wanted. they knew what i wanted. they pretended to be what i wanted. when we got comfortable and i got used to#them being that way theyd start to morph back into who they really are. i dont like who they really are. id try to break up woth them.#theyd beg me to stay. id give them another chance and once again they start acting like the person i wanted to be with. rinse and repeat.#that was the entire relationship. i tried breaking up with them so many times but they were too ig dependant on me#and didnt want me to leave bc ig they thought if i wasnt dating them that id just abandon them and never help them with anything.#i do think its more they knew they could manipulate me easier if we were together and they pretended to be what i wanted.#thats what happened and im sorry you cant accept the truth of who your fave is and what theyre like my dude.#me not liking who they really are has nothing to do with their transness. sure. who they really are is more masc than what i wanted.#but kre than that. who they really were was kinda just a skeevy selfish shitty person who thinks really highly of themselves.#and i just didnt dig that man. not sure what to tell you.#should i have put my foot down and left anyways? yes. and i did. but i knew that when i did break up with them they would turn on me.#like they did. and stabbed me in the back a million times. hoping id hate being alive enough bc of the ostracism to kill myself.#then thered be no one to criticize them for their actions or abusive behavior anymore.#but yeah idc. im not going anywhere. you're gonna tell the truth or put up with my existence. those are your options.#anyways i dont think the progressive solution to you believing i prevented them from being things is to prevent me also from#being things. like how does that help when you just spread the supposed pain.... not to mention it was more of a seed you planted#rather than a plant that was already growing
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jewishvitya · 5 months
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A pro-Palestine Jew on tiktok asked those of us who were raised pro-Israel, what got us to change our minds on Palestine. I made a video to answer (with my voice, not my face), and a few people watched it and found some value in it. I'm putting this here too. I communicate through text better than voice.
So I feel repetitive for saying this at this point, but I grew up in the West Bank settlements. I wrote this post to give an example of the extent to which Palestinians are dehumanized there.
Where I live now, I meet Palestinians in day to day life. Israeli Arab citizens living their lives. In the West Bank, it was nothing like that. Over there, I only saw them through the electric fence, and the hostility between us and Palestinians was tangible.
When you're a child being brought into the situation, you don't experience the context, you don't experience the history, you don't know why they're hostile to you. You just feel "these people hate me, they don't want me to exist." And that bubble was my reality. So when I was taught in school that everything we did was in self defense, that our military is special and uniquely ethical because it's the only defensive military in the world - that made sense to me. It slotted neatly into the reality I knew.
One of the first things to burst the bubble for me was when I spoke to an old Israeli man and he was talking about his trauma from battle. I don't remember what he said, but it hit me wrong. It conflicted with the history as I understood it. So I was a bit desperate to make it make sense again, and I said, "But everything we did was in self defense, right?"
He kinda looked at me, couldn't understand at all why I was upset, and he went, "We destroyed whole villages. Of course we did. It was war, that's what you do."
And that casual "of course" stuck with me. I had to look into it more.
I couldn't look at more accurate history, and not at accounts by Palestinians, I was too primed against these sources to trust them. The community I grew up in had an anti-intellectual element to it where scholars weren't trusted about things like this.
So what really solidified this for me, was seeing Palestinian culture.
Because part of the story that Israel tells us to justify everything, is that Palestinians are not a distinct group of people, they're just Arabs. They belong to the nations around us. They insist on being here because they want to deny us a homeland. The Palestinian identity exists to hurt us. This, because the idea of displacing them and taking over their lands doesn't sound like stealing, if this was never theirs and they're only pretending because they want to deprive us.
But then foods, dances, clothing, embroidery, the Palestinian dialect. These things are history. They don't pop into existence just because you hate Jews and they're trying to move here. How gorgeous is the Palestinian thobe? How stunning is tatreez in general? And when I saw specific patterns belonging to different regions of Palestine?
All of these painted for me a rich shared life of a group of people, and countered the narrative that the Palestininian identity was fabricated to hurt us. It taught me that, whatever we call them, whatever they call themselves, they have a history in this land, they have a right to it, they have a connection to it that we can't override with our own.
I started having conversations with leftist friends. Confronting the fact that the borders of the occupied territories are arbitrary and every Israeli city was taken from them. In one of those conversations, I was encouraged to rethink how I imagine peace.
This also goes back to schooling. Because they drilled into us, we're the ones who want peace, they're the ones who keep fighting, they're just so dedicated to death and killing and they won't leave us alone.
In high school, we had a stadium event with a speaker who was telling us about a person who defected from Hamas, converted to Christianity and became a Shin Bet agent. Pretty sure you can read this in the book "Son of Hamas." A lot of my friends read the book, I didn't read it, I only know what I was told in that lecture. I guess they couldn't risk us missing out on the indoctrination if we chose not to read it.
One of the things they told us was how he thought, we've been fighting with them for so long, Israelis must have a culture around the glorification of violence. And he looked for that in music. He looked for songs about war. And for a while he just couldn't find any, but when he did, he translated it more fully, and he found out the song was about an end to wars. And this, according to the story as I was told it, was one of the things that convinced him. If you know know the current trending Israeli "war anthem," you know this flimsy reasoning doesn't work.
Back then, my friend encouraged me to think more critically about how we as Israelis envision peace, as the absence of resistance. And how self-centered it is. They can be suffering under our occupation, but as long as it doesn't reach us, that's called peace. So of course we want it and they don't.
Unless we're willing to work to change the situation entirely, our calls for peace are just "please stop fighting back against the harm we cause you."
In this video, Shlomo Yitzchak shares how he changed his mind. His story is much more interesting than mine, and he's much more eloquent telling it. He mentions how he was taught to fear Palestinians. An automatic thought, "If I go with you, you'll kill me." I was taught this too. I was taught that, if I'm in a taxi, I should be looking at the driver's name. And if that name is Arab, I should watch the road and the route he's taking, to be prepared in case he wants to take me somewhere to kill me. Just a random person trying to work. For years it stayed a habit, I'd automatically look at the driver's name. Even after knowing that I want to align myself with liberation, justice, and equality. It was a process of unlearning.
On October, not long after the current escalation of violence, I had to take a taxi again. A Jewish driver stopped and told me he'll take me, "so an Arab doesn't get you." Israeli Jews are so comfortable saying things like this to each other. My neighbors discussed a Palestinian employee, with one saying "We should tell him not to come anymore, that we want to hire a Jew." The second answered, "No, he'll say it's discrimination," like it would be so ridiculous of him. And the first just shrugged, "So we don't have to tell him why." They didn't go through with it, but they were so casual about this conversation.
In the Torah, we're told to treat those who are foreign to us well, because we know what it's like to be the foreigner. Fighting back against oppression is the natural human thing to do. We know it because we lived it. And as soon as I looked at things from this angle, it wasn't really a choice of what to support.
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K-Pop Spotlight: DAY6
Come one, come all to a K-Pop Spotlight that is sure to dazzle and delight ’til the final curtain. This week, all eyes are on DAY6 following the release of their eighth mini-album, Fourever, and brand new title track, "Welcome to the Show." We caught up with the band to discuss their goals as they approach their 10th anniversary and their ever-growing connection to their fans through their music. Check out our full interview below!
Tracks like “Welcome to the Show,” “The Power of Love,” and “Get The Hell Out” seem to have very different themes. Can you tell us a little about how these songs relate to each other and what aspects make this album cohesive?
SUNGJIN: As we pursue the idea of being a 'band that sings every moment,' it seems like our albums, including the recent one, prioritize diversity in songs and situations rather than unity. Consequently, our albums contain various genres and narratives. However, there seems to be a commonality in most songs, depicting situations that everyone has either gone through or might experience.
Young K: First and foremost, I would say this album is a compilation of the best songs we could create. There's definitely a theme of love running through it. "Welcome to the Show," "The Power of Love," and "Get The Hell Out" all talk about the concept of love.
What goes into creating titles for DAY6 songs and albums, especially those that don’t come directly from your lyrics? Do you find it hard to condense the intentions and themes of a song into a title?
Young K: While there have been cases like that, all the songs on this album came from the lyrics. Sometimes, when choosing a title, we select the one that best describes the song—other times, we choose to give it a twist or make it more intriguing.
WONPIL: Naming songs involves a lot of deliberation. We often contemplate which title will catch the eye and capture the song's essence. Usually, we try to take it from a verse in the chorus. This can be a challenging part of the songwriting process.
Is there a creative project you’ve always wanted to work on but haven’t gotten the chance/found the time?
SUNGJIN: I'm very curious, and have a principle of "trying to experience as much as possible." There are so many things I want to try musically and personally, especially among the things I know but haven't tried yet.
DOWOON: I hope we can have a song that we can collaborate on with My Day, like a choir.
What does your work/studio setup look like? Where do you feel the most creatively inspired?
DOWOON: We try to keep the studio as tidy as possible and make it comfortable for practice sessions.
WONPIL: When working on songs, we talk a lot. We get inspiration from little conversations, joking around, sharing stories, and listening to music from various eras regardless of genre while giving opinions. We also try to build emotional connections with the songs. There’s a lot of communication going on. The songwriting process takes place in the studio of our long-time collaborator, composer Hong Jisang, with whom we've been working together since our debut.
How do you want to evolve as a musician/producer?
Young K: I want to be eagerly anticipated and awaited as an artist. Without those who wait for us, we wouldn't release or even step onto the stage. So I’m always thankful for My Day.
WONPIL: My biggest goal is to make good music for My Day and the public, so I think I'll continue to ponder. When working on songs, I pour my sincerity into them. I constantly strive to express this sincerity musically, fully capturing the emotions I want to convey. I hope to create songs that can still be listened to even after 10 or 20 years.
Design your own Tumblr blog: choose an aesthetic, a blog name, and would you be a frequent poster or lurker?
SUNGJIN: I think I’ll use it to catch up on friends' updates. For the blog name, THUMB BLUR sounds good to me. I might end up being a lurker who never posts.
DOWOON: Maybe a blog for plants? I think I'll post it like a diary.
Want more DAY6? Check out their new mini album Fourever and the music video for the title track “Welcome to the Show,” both out now!
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