In Season 3 I'd like a flashback with Azirpahale talking to Jane Austen, where she laments the need to marry to secure a prosperous future as a woman, and he inadvertently encourages her into a life of crime whilst gossiping about a hot, red-head criminal mastermind he's currently crushing on...
For all my Jewish followers, I have a pressing question.
Do you identify your race as Jewish?
I ask this because this is a comment that has come up over time in the communities I've been in, where people say they identify as Jewish above everything else, and do not identify with goys of their same race. I work at a university as a researcher of antisemitism, and this conversation has been coming up in academia as well.
We all know that race is a social construct, and various groups have had the perception of their racial status change over time (Ex. Irish people not being considered white, and more recently Hispanics/Latinos being considered white). It wouldn't be a new concept for the Jewish identity to be racialized, as we were classified as "yellow Eur-Asians" during the Jim Crow era, and non-Aryan during the Shoah (though there were thousands of years leading up to this of us not being considered whatever the dominant racial group was). Many groups still don't consider Ashkenazi Jews white (though these are most often far-right neo-Nazis that barely consider us humans).
North American Ashkenazi Jews who don't identify as white have said their reasoning is that the cultural and ethnic differences of Jews lead to a great divide between white-passing Jews and goys, and the inter-generational trauma of thousands of years of brutal oppression and slavery is something that white goys don't experience. They say that Jews originate from the middle east, so they can't be white even if their skin was paled during exile. They argue that as long as many people don't consider them white, they don't even really have a choice of what they identify as.
To Ashkenazi Jews who do identify as white, they've argued that by racializing your Jewish identity you're, in a way, giving in to what the oppressors want and accepting that you're different.
but is there anyone out there who does extensive work on the jewish ghettos in eastern europe who doesn't mutter "fucking Rumkowski" whenever his name comes up??
been thinking about the rotting blue heart in the House of the Undying that seemed to nearly kill Dany and the Heart of Winter that made Bran cry. Drogon ate the blue heart, saving Dany, and destroying the HotU as a result. Dany also ate a raw stallion heart to give her son (the stallion who mounts the world, the title that actually belongs to Dany/Drogon) strength.
There's some foreshadowing there, right? Dany and Drogon (plus the other dragons/dragon riders maybe) are gonna eat the Heart of Winter? Dany consuming death itself? life eating death, fire melting ice, etc. Obviously the "Heart of Winter" might not be a literal and physical heart.
Bran eating the Heart of Winter through Summer; Summer literally consuming Winter. We see him eat while in Summer's mind in the books, it's an escape from his own nagging hunger. Hunger is for winter, feasting is for summer.
Eating as a celebration of life. I like this visual better than This Character strikes down the Big Bad with a sword. I also like it more than the three dragons simply burning whatever they see in the Heart of Winter. Eating is a celebration of life; I read a post awhile ago about how grrm puts so much Detail into his descriptions of food because of this. because it's all about celebrating life in the face of death, when you know Winter is Coming anyways.
I've been memeing on Dazai and leaning on the theories that's its all his plan he's doing this to convince fyodor and Sigma etc but it didn't hit me at all till watching episode 8 that he may have been genuinely trying to reach Chuuya by mentioning their partnership
Like I do think Dazai was being honest in that speech but the anime has made me think he is trying to get into chuuya's head and ch 109 kept springing up in my mind while watching
That implies that there isn't a 100% certainty he's conscious yet in ch 109
But Dazai has already placed his trust and life on Chuuya at that point too
i've really had xina and miguel's dynamic under a microscope lately; right now my object of scrutiny is xina's use of "kevorkian" in issue #26. it's a quick, tongue-in-cheek comment about miguel's suicidality; kevorkian, at the time of publication, was routinely making headlines for his stance taken and assistance in physician-assisted suicides.
we know early on that xina is, as miguel describes, a "twencen freak," which manifests the most prominently via a love for old pop culture, but it doesn't stop there. she notably talks about alchemax's habit of erasing history, has a lifelike version of a old political figure in her home, and, in this case, brings up a name that's big in bioethics debates.
importantly, she says it very offhandedly, implying that she and miguel have had these discussions before—and i doubt the state is particularly eager to bring up any talk of ethics to their scientists-in-training.
my take on miguel sinking deeper into alchemax's agenda is that while he really doesn't care for the institution itself, he's mistakenly convinced himself that he's chosen the most politically neutral option possible. science is anything but apolitical; it is deeply, irretrievably steeped in concerns about morality. at the time miguel and xina were drifting apart, this wasn't something he wanted to mull over. (after all, once he realizes he's an accessory to state-sanctioned oppression, he wants nothing more than his life to end.)
xina is smart, yes—and i think, knowledgeable, specifically, in ways that directly challenged the delicate mental gymnasium that miguel had started to build for himself. it's not just that xina being more intelligent became a problem. she was also probably (and rightfully) challenging the value of his work, the completeness of his knowledge, and becoming a huge source of cognitive dissonance.
he's the geneticist, but xina, who specializes in an entirely different field, was engaging him in talks about the ethical implications of the work he was doing. trying to get him to think for himself, appealing to the good person she sincerely believes exists in this strange new version of her friend.