#im specifically referring to the people who are supposed to be on the same level as her power wise but in that one small way are higher up
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Okay this one might be a bit of a weird thing to discuss (and will be much less relevant if there’s a time skip on Remnant) but I wanted to talk about Ruby and Oscar’s height difference and how much it means to me in light of this recent episode.
I’d like to start this off by saying that I’m actually (conveniently) Ruby’s height. One source is saying 5’4” and ones saying 5’2” and I’m about 5’3”, and something I’ve been noticing a lot recently as I accept that I’m done growing and this is my permanent height is that there’s always going to be something that intimidates me about the majority of the population. As much as I want to think that I’m a confident, capable person, it really takes away from your confidence when you have to look way up at someone to have a conversation with them. On top of that, I’ve noticed that 1. People tend to get really close to me when having conversations, much closer than I’d like, possibly because they’re trying to make up for the fact that there’s about a foot between us that wouldn’t be there normally, and 2. This is a problem, because a) it’s intimidating to have someone larger than me get in my personal space, and b) it just makes me so much more aware of how much taller they are because I have to really lift my head to look at them, only to see them looking down on me.
My point in saying all this? The last few volumes have been really leaning into that with Ruby. This happened a lot in V 7, where Ironwood would be framed as looking down at her, and it really jumped out at me in this last episode with that one shot after Jaune yells at her and she’s left staring up at him with tears in her eyes as he gets up in her personal space.
This scene to me really highlighted how small Ruby is compared to most of the people around her who are supposed to be equals to her-Jaune, Ironwood, Qrow, Robyn, Clover, any of the ace ops-but not Oscar. Oscar is one of the few characters in the show that Ruby is taller than. And speaking from personal experience? It’s so much more comfortable interacting with people who don’t use their size to physically intimidate you (even if that’s not at all their intention).
I know realistically, Oscar is probably going to get taller than her (and when that happens I will find it cute) but right now it’s just so incredibly important to me and really serves to (once again) emphasize how good Oscar is for Ruby and how much his very existence supports her and takes stresses away. In a world where ticking time bombs like Ironwood, Jaune, and the ace ops can turn on her and use their size as a weapon, Oscar can’t (and wouldn’t) do that. Oscar has Ruby’s back, and she trusts him in a way that I don’t think she trusts anyone else in the show.
#rwby#rwby spoilers#its weird how the volume with literally no canon Rosegarden stuff is doing so much to back it up#at least for me#rosegarden#ruby rose#oscar pine#to clarify I tried to word the post in a way that got this across but I’ll say it down here too#im not talking about *everyone* when I say Ruby is small compared to people#obviously we have weiss and nora and even blakes not that much taller#im specifically referring to the people who are supposed to be on the same level as her power wise but in that one small way are higher up#hehe puns#and not to worry my fellow Rosegarden shippers I’m not advocating against the Ruby realizes that Oscar is taller than her scene we all want#im just saying I like the way it is right now#mine
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WHO ARE THE GAY ENSTARS MEN ?! THE ONE WITH THE BLUE HAIR ?? THEIR ROMANCE WAS WORLD SHATTERING? ! I AM DESPERATE AND DEHYDRATED WHO ARE THEY
alright. i know you asked me this because im the Enstars Person you know so while i am not the expert on this i will try my best to answer! also drink water bestie
ok so im assuming you are talking about wataei because of the ship wars thing. and theyre the only ones i can think of that ive seen described like that recently.
alright so theres a common joke that eichi (blond one) started the war (massive social and school politics effort to reform the idol system in yumenosaki academy) because he had a crush on wataru (blue hair one). this is not true eichi started the war because he loves idols and wanted to make a fairer system for them.
this reform effort actually happened in two stages: the war was the first stage, where eichi made the five eccentrics the scapegoats for all the vices of the school, which worked because they were so good at being idols everyone saw them as otherworldly and not one of the rest of the human students. eichi, with his power as both student council president and Local Hella Rich Guy, orchestrated a battle of the bands system where he and his unit, fine (usually in this period referred to by fans as ex-fine) defeated each of the five eccentrics and brought supposedly equal chances for the students at the school. the main part of this rhetoric relied on framing the eccentrics as godlike beings, and fine as just regular humans, to show the student body that with hard work, even regular people can rise to great heights.
part of this whole situation was wataru. Wataru was one of the original members of the five eccentrics, and eichi greatly admired him and his skills. a secondary motivation, for eichi specifically, was to raise himself to the same level as wataru so they could communicate as equals. so like yeah he had a crush on the guy but that wasn't his main motivation.
wataru is a fascinating character. he has layers (like an onion) and he is always acting and rarely shows his "true self" and often talks about narratives and such in a very meta perspective (eichi talks this way a lot too, which is why theres so many monologues in enstars, but eichi views himself as just some guy while wataru views himself as the ultimate actor). wataru was also the last of the eccentrics to be defeated by fine. natsume, the youngest of the eccentrics, caught onto the fact that wataru was acting according to the "script" of the war (because he agreed with eichis ideas of reforming yumenosaki), so natsume wrote his own script where the eccentrics won. unfortunately, wataru discarded the idea, essentially For The Sake Of The Narrative. (natsume ended up burning the script, which is an interesting parallel to tsumugi burning the records of the deeds ex-fine did during the war, but thats another matter.) so wataru lost, as he was Supposed To, and eichi and ex-fine won the war for yumenosaki.
up until now eichi and wataru have been distant, only interacting occasionally (including one conversation where wataru has stuff to say about acting, or whatever. its all very meta of them). but after this, eichi is hospitalized, and rips out his IVs and such and refuses to let any of the nurses treat him. Wataru climbs in through the window of his hospital room to find him like this, and essentially asks him: What Now? they start talking about the results of the war, and the future, and they essentially write a script for how yumenosaki can change further for the better: this is Stage Two, trickstar's revolution. only when they plotted it they didnt know it would be trickstar, or the extent to which they would change things. because eichi, in the war, made himself and ex-fine powerful enough to defeat the eccentrics, which gave the students hope; but he did this through the power of being rich and also student council president, and other things like tsumugi's connections to basically everyone in the school. so he ended up having the school in basically a tyrannical rule, but that still wasn't the best environment to encourage idols to grow. so eichi and wataru wrote out a plan for an idol group to overthrow eichi himself, and bring about full change.
basically wataru and eichi combined have orchestrated the majority of the narrative of both the war era and the ! era stories. also they both know each other so intimately on a psychological level. youve probably heard people talk about wataei proposal and that is referring to the last story of the ! era game, where wataru and eichi met on the roof of yumenosaki one night and had a deep conversation-- i dont know all the details because i havent read it in full, but wataru offers eichi one of his theater masks and eichi recognizes the gesture as wataru offering him all of himself, to be wholly known and understood. eichi accepts the mask and yeah you get the point theyre so in love its ridiculous
#i didnt even realize i knew this much about wataei good lord#wataei#wataru hibiki#eichi tenshouin#enstars#puddle answers#ensemble stars#the war enstars#five eccentrics#ex fine
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some thoughts about 'kayfabe compliance'
i don't have 'moral issues' with RPF but i do engage with it on quite a different level to regular fanfiction (except john and paul they're a secret third thing to me but i digress). it's hard to fully put my finger on what's different about it, maybe there's a much stronger sense of thinking "this isn't real" the whole time because the disconnect between actual full people ive become parasocial with and the AO3 interface with fanfic tropes on it is much greater. anyway, it's a whole different mode of engagement is the point, so reading wrestling fic has a tendency to be a VERY whiplash inducing experience, due to how fast and loose one can play when it comes to what is the text we are writing fanfiction about here. cue a ramble
the basic divide is kayfabe vs shoot, where a fic is either about the fictional wrestling personas in their storyline, as if wrestling is just a very strangely set up long form soap opera (which it is), or it's RPF about the wrestlers themselves, and will reference their fictional personas as just that, fictional. both are fine and chill, i personally vastly prefer the former not just because it's less uncomfortable but also because, well, that's where all the conflict and angst is and I did sort of come here for that. but the existence of the second option is so interesting, because it's not actually a basic divide, it's a bizarre spectrum and nothing is certain. using sami and kevin as the illustrative example:
the very fact that throughout a 'shoot' fic, sami will still be called, well, sami. if he's called his real name you know you're in full speed ahead RPF mode, but using 'sami' places a layer of fictionality onto the whole thing, as if this is still a made up story about wrestling, it's just a story about wrestlers making up stories. i've never read any drag queen fanfic but i'd guess this is the same effect as using the drag names and writing about their reality TV personas which are varying degrees of authentic, but all basically created for audience entertainment, so is it even 'real people' fanfiction?
stories about el generico where el generico is sami in a mask, but wrestling is real. so he really loses/wins matches, he really gets betrayed and hurt by kevin, but the gimmick is kayfabe, meaning kayfabe also exists but then what is real and what's acting doe sit matter
this is a small thing but it speaks to the whole mindfuck, which is a fic in which kayfabe doesn't exist, everything wrestlers experience happened for real, but wrestling jargon keeps appearing like 'mark', 'bump' and most maddeningly of all 'jobber'! who's jobbing! they're just losing fights!
and then there's just the level at which the writer simply does not give a fuck about any supposed 'rules' and just picks and chooses what's kayfabed and what's not. case in point, a fic i read last night which started as a clear shoot/rpf fic - kevin and sami in the aftermath of Battleground, congratulating each other on putting on such a banger and chilling out in the locker room. only for the fic to reveal half way through that kevin's betrayal at r evolution was real he and sami just made up and i guess decided to keep the feud going for TV. sami went into his pre planned semi choreographed match with his best friend to conclude the story that began with said friend nearly breaking his back for real.
and all that is very cool, but the thing is it means such a different thing to me when i perceive something as entirely fictional vs actual feelings and events with the real person who made that fictional thing. i want the real person to be happy. i want an uncomplicated unmessy parasocial relationship there. i want the fictional character tormented in agony, and i usually specifically seek this out in fic. so when i enter a story, and it's not clear from the get go if im reading about fictional characters who caused each other terrible pain, fictionalised versions of real people who get along very well as far as we know and who are untouched by that pain, or some strange mixing and matching of the two, there's a real tension there as my brain tries to recalibrate what kind of narrative engagement is about to occur
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so sorry to bother you with this but im watching justified for the first time and you seem like The Premier Tim Gutterson blog/the person to ask. so when Art calls Tim a powder keg, he also refers to him as an Iraq veteran, but Tim only ever mentions serving in Afghanistan (as far as I can remember). Do you think Art just conflates the two conflicts given the time period and made a mistake? Or could Tim have served in both and just never mentioned Iraq? Given the differences in perception between the conflicts, especially concerning civilians, I don’t think it’s completely out of line for Tim to not want to discuss it with his coworkers but idk. Art’s line just seems like such a fundamental Tim Line, but it also doesn’t line up. (so sorry to dump that in your lap, it’s just been bugging me for like three weeks now lol)
yo you could never bother me with a question about Justified or my best boy Tim Gutterson. that is why this blog even exists. this ask is a delight, for real. feel free to hop into my inbox any time.
honestly, you're absolutely justified (hehe) in being bugged about this and you're not alone!! i've had this exact topic of discussion lots of times with many different justies and i do believe some of the greatest Tim Gutterson stan minds around have played ball with this confusing information. i think there are three main ways to approach this issue:
(1) you can believe that Art made a mistake and is conflating Afghanistan with Iraq. this mistake is deliberate and meant to convey that Art doesn't know Tim on a personal level, only a professional one. on a deeper level, this could represent civilians meshing these two invasions and two countries together.
(2) you can think the writers themselves conflated Afghanistan with Iraq and/or made a mistake in the writer's room forgetting Tim's history and nobody noticed/corrected it because let's be real poor even Jacob Pitts spent all of season 1 lost on who his character was supposed to be because uh nobody told him.
(3) the writers didn't make a mistake with Art's line about Iraq, but they did make a mistake in not fully confirming all of Tim's service history. maybe Tim has talked about it and he revealed something specific about his stint(s) in Iraq and that's why Art defaults to talking about it in the heat of the moment.
considering we only have Tim himself confirm Afghanistan (he mentions the Taliban, Mark references Bagram, etc) it's totally fair to disregard Art's comment on Iraq and say Tim only served in Afghanistan.
however! considering the writer's room consistently dropped the ball on Boyd's military service…i do also think it's fair to believe that Tim served in both Afghanistan and Iraq and the writers just once again did a bad job integrating a veteran's service history and revealing it in the plot. also, Colt is a "double winner" and served in both. since Colt + Tim serve as narrative foils there is a poetic slant in making Tim a double winner too.
at the end of this ramble i will say this is one of those intriguing sticking points that i don't feel strongly about because i believe there's room for differing head canons to co-exist depending on writer needs when people are writing fanfiction or roleplaying. i regard this continuity error in the same vein as what the hell is up with frances' date of death.
did Tim serve only in Afghanistan?
or did Tim serve in Afghanistan and Iraq?
justie's choice!
#also while i yell about tim gutterson a lot i wouldn't consider myself THE tim expert or anything i stay humble#there are much more studied justies out there that are welcome chime in about this if they'd like please do#tooks.txt#tim gutterson#justified#thanks again for sending this ask i love talking about him :)
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Name Symbolism in Gone
Sam Temple
Samuel's story in the Bible is actually kind of interesting.* He was the first of the prophets and the last of the judges (not a king, no idea where MG got that from), promised to God before he was even born and obedient to Him until the moment he died. He appointed two kings of Israel: King Saul, who was eventually diagraced, and the humble King David**, though he died before David was actually made king.
Does this mean anything in relation to the Sam Temple we know and love? I don't know. It could be alluding to Sam's more hands-off approach in the later books, but more likely MG just picked a random name from the Hebrew Bible because Jewish(TM).
*Disclaimer: I am an atheist who was raised by an atheist who was also raised by an atheist. I know nothing about the Bible, or really any religion for that matter. My information regarding this may not be entirely accurate. Also, I may explain Bible stuff that's common knowledge to you because it's all new to me. This is not me being stupid or talking down to you. Thank you.
**Random bolding helps me focus. Ditto for all the bright colors. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.***
***footnoting my own writing is really really fun.
Caine Soren / "David Temple"
Caine's name symbolism is more obvious. Cain, humanity's first murderer, who killed his own brother with a rock. Most likely this name was chosen because it sounded cool and edgy while also alluding to his connection with Sam. I do wonder what was going through Caine's adoptive parents' heads when they named him. Eh, white people gonna white people.
Caine's last name is kind of interesting. It's of Scandinavian descent (sources differ on what specifically, most likely Norwegian or Danish) and means "stern, strict, severe". It's particularly interesting to me that this is the family name. Perhaps alluding to the Soren family's attitude toward their adopted son? I guess we'll never know.
King David (the same David who slew Goliath) was a harpist brought to King Saul by Samuel. He grew up to be a great general, and Saul grew paranoid that David was plotting to kill them. To simplify things: David defeated Saul and became King, had an affair with a married woman, killed her husband, and had a son with her (Solomon).
What significance does this have to Caine's story? None that I can see. I think that Connie gave him a good, strong name in hopes that he would grow up to be good and strong. Maybe Caine was a particularly small or weak child and so she named him after David, the boy who defeated a giant and became King. But that’s all conjecture. Again, the most likely explanation is that MG just plucked a random name from the Hebrew Bible because Jewish(TM).
Drake Merwin
Drake's name is actually really funny. Drake means "dragon" or "snake" and Merwin means either "mariner" or "friend of the sea". I choose to believe that this is a reference to his Whip Arm (because it. it looks like a snake,, perhaps even a sea serpent?). If it is, then it's hilarious and MG is a comedic genius. If it isn't, then it's a hell of a coincidence.
Diana Ladris
As far as I can tell, the name "Ladris" doesnt exist. MG made it up. It may have faintly Greek or Italian origins, which makes sense as Diana was the Roman goddess of the moon and fertility (possibly the Roman interpretation of Artemis? Idk im not a historian I just had a Percy Jackson phase). I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a reference to Diana's precociousness. At least she wasn’t named Mary! Speaking of which...
Mary Terrafino
Yeah, Mary's is pretty obvious. Mother Mary, Martyr Mary, etc. As far as I can tell Terrafino is of Italian origin, but I can't find a meaning.
Astrid Ellison
So the name Astrid itself comes from Old Norse and means "divinely beautiful". I don't know if this was on purpose but I believe Astrid's name works on three levels: first, referencing her religiosity; second, sounding similar to "asteroid" and thus alluding to her power (that MG completely forgot about after the first book :')); and third, referencing Astrid Hofferson, who just so happens to both look very similar to our Astrid Ellison (white teen girl with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a ferocious personality) and share a name with her.
I don't believe Ellison has any special secret meaning, but it comes from an Old Welsh name meaning "kind, benevolent" which I think is nice :)
Peter "Little Pete" Ellison
Similarly to Astrid, I'm not quite sure if the name Peter has any special meaning. The name itself means "stone", and if we follow MG's trend of using Biblical names, then it might be a reference to Saint Peter. It's a bit of a stretch, but this could be a reference to Little Pete going metaphysically toe-to-toe with the Gaiaphage from page one, possibly even before the FAYZ (Peter was the first disciple that Jesus revealed himself to). It could even be a reference to his death: martyred at the hands of a mad tyrant (Peter was crucified by Nero).
Edilio Escobar
Idk if it means anything particularly but Edilio's name is so poetic. It's Greek and means "he who is like a statue". I'm 95% sure MG just picked a random Latino-sounding name but damn he was so right with this one. Edilio: so perfect, so tragic. Like a statue.
Lana Arwen Lazar
I also really like that he has name alliteration, it makes him sound like a superhero (as he deserves!). I'm pretty sure the only other character that has that is Brianna*.
*EDIT: And Lana!
We know that Lana's first & middle names are a reference to comic book characters, but not enough people talk about her last name. In the Bible, Lazarus was brought back to life by Jesus--but considering that Lana's parents are apparently giant nerds, this is probably not a reference to the Bible but to the "Lazarus pit". In DC comics, Lazarus pit is basically a giant pit of mysterious green ooz that brings people back to life. Its side effects? White hair and green eyes.* So Lana's last name may be alluding to the Gaiaphage and the hold it has over her: it killed her and brought her back to life, but it changed her. Considering the Gaiaphage has brought people back to life before, it's not too far-fetched.
*Disclaimer: I know this because of fanfiction. It may not be entirely accurate.
Charles "Orc" Merriman
Orc's name obviously has a lot of symbolism behind it. First he's figuratively seen as a monster, then he's literally seen as a monster. Throughout the series we continuously see this dichotomy between "Orc"--the bully, brute, drunkard, rock monster--and "Charles"--the child in desperate need of help.
Pretty sure his last name was just MG having a laugh since this kid is anything but "merry".
Dekka Talent
Dekka the. The. Don't make me say it.
Brianna Berenson
Howard Bassem
Brianna means something like "good, strong, noble" which tracks. Berenson just means "son of Ber" and I can't find a meaning for that so idk.
EDIT: Brianna's name having alliteration is probably on purpose, since it makes her sound more superhero-y.
It rhymes with coward lmao
Bassem is an Arabic name meaning "smile". I'd have to check and see exactly what book his surname is mentioned in, but honestly the first thing I thought of when I saw it was The Paragraph(TM).*
*idk what it is word-for-word but it's smth like "Howard just looked up at me with that crooked smile of his and said 'I'm always behind you, big guy'".
Duck Zhang
He just wanted a pool :(
Hunter Lefkowitz
His name is Hunter and he. he hunts.
Lefkowitz may or may not mean "lion" and if it does then :(
All the other characters' names either don't have a meaning that I can see (i.e, Albert, Brittney, Quinn, etc.) or have a very obviously stated meaning (i.e, Gaia, Sanjit, etc.).
#MG's naming really is so on the nose.#mother mary. hunter the hunter. howard the coward. drake the snake. dekka the dy-#(i think im allowed to make this joke as i am Black & also a lesbian.)#MG really went ham on that religious symbolism huh.#gone series#sam temple#caine soren#astrid ellison#drake merwin#little pete#little pete ellison#edilio escobar#lana arwen lazar#diana ladris#dekka talent#howard bassem#charles merriman
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AUGHGA the people have spoken. good god i hope this makes sense:
cole death symbolism is fairly well established i think? but here is a list of a lot of the different parts of it just for reference. one thing that stood out to me the more i thought abt it was that his becoming a ghost and s10 “death” both have him come CLOSE to dying, but never actually crossing the threshold. i think i made this post a while ago just talking abt that phenomena in relation to cole.
ALSO in relation to cole and death (which i see ppl talk abt but not necessarily as part of the overall death symbolism he has which i think is interesting) is the older-mirror scene in s5. the writers later made this scene foreshadow his ‘disappearance’ in s5 which. was not done particularly well lol, and so it can easily be reinterpreted. if we assume that, on a narrative level, this scene is not explaining his ability to disappear, but is actually foreshadowing his death. well.
it’s kind of unclear how old everyone is supposed to be when they see themselves in the mirror?? because they are legos but like. they are certainly not super old, which (if we are continuing on the assumption that cole dies before everyone else) means that cole very specifically dies young.
lets come back to that in a minute i have to take a quick tangent about cycles. also something i feel is well established, but its important for background info. one thing ninjago does A LOT of is have its main characters repeat things. both things they themselves have done AND ALSO things their parents/ancestors have done. think nya becoming the sea the same way nyad did, lloyd having to fight the overlord in a never ending loop like the fsm, etc.
the whole deal with cycles and generational trauma etc etc when specifically talking abt cole is centered on his mom; he does almost exactly everything his mom did before she died in s13 (adjusted for the situation) and of course has her element. if this extends to his actions, it could certainly also extend to his death. i think this is more evidence to the idea than anything else? like cole dying young is a continuation of the loop unintentionally created for him by his mother.
to actually return to the point i was making, cole is surrounded by death. he almost dies a couple times, but his death is stopped partially or entirely by some other supernatural force. based on this he could be seen absolutely as a psychopomp/grim reaper, but because of both the s5 symbolism and his mom, im really more inclined to say that he is more doomed by the universe to die at some point. now this is really me speculating and tbh just making things up, but i think this does lend credibility to the idea that the universe itself is keeping cole from dying at these points (s5, s10) because there is some point in the future that the universe has literally decided is the time that he is Going To Die.
and like why??? what is so significant about that (theoretical) death that the universe is literally changing the laws of physics to stop this man from dying? what is so important about this point in time that the whole world is bending over backwards to make sure it happens?
going to get emotional now but like! cole being the first to die of everyone is so crazy to me! cole who is the leader and the oldest and the most mature and the one trying so hard to keep everyone together who dies first, and dies young! just like his mom!! in a world where robots come back from the dead every single year and the children of gods live forever there is one guy who has a point that he can never come back from. despite evading death he is surrounded by it; he cant die yet because you cant fight destiny!! your time will come bitch!!
anyway tldr; i think that cole dies young just like his mom because the universe loves him and has big plans for him. or maybe the universe just cares about perpetuating the cycle whos to say.
#coleposting#ninjago#loop theory#death tw#???? like not crazy but it does make me sad :(((#also this took me a minute bcs i just finished my finals week and i wrote sooooooo many essays. good lord#one thing about me is i love to personify laws of nature#thsi is really so off the rails that its not even based in canon anymore but :/ i perservere#if any of this is unclear pls let me know! i tried to make it make the most sense lol#got so caught up making this post i forgot abt d/20 lol
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And look, even as a person who does really really enjoy Harry Potter (specifically the marauders and their era), every time I look at the HP fandom and these people are literally off their rocker and they ride this woman’s dick so GOD damn hard. These people legitimately are behaving like how the barbs are for Nicki Minaj and I promise it is SO mind-boggling. They act like JKR pays their bills or something and it’s wild.
As much as I enjoy HP/Marauders I will NEVER EVER be part of the HP fandom bc I just can’t fathom how people will worship JKR because if this is the direction humanity is progressing then we are all doomed. And I look at white women like her and im just trying to figure out like, when you fight for all of these right-winged policies, under no cornstarches will you be safe either because I can PROMISE you that these right-winged men will eventually turn you into tradwives because they view women as nothing more than a baby making machine and they only see you as an object who is supposed to “suck, fuck, and clean” because the way I hear nearly all of these right-winged men speak about women (the same women who fight for the same ideologies JKR believes, the same ideologies who were created by these men) is just diabolical and disgusting.
I am deeply concerned for the future of humanity it’s crazy
in terms of there even BEING a fandom for it, I think Miriam Margoyles said it perfectly when she stated: "I worry about Harry Potter fans. They should be over that by now. It was 25 years ago and it's for children. I think it's for children. But they get stuck in it and I do cameos and people say 'Oh we are having a Harry Potter-themed wedding' and I think 'gosh what's their first night of fun going to be. I can't even think about it."
like, these people 100% need to grow up. they're AS BAD as Disney adults - praising mediocrity and bigotry at EVERY FUCKING TURN solely bc their favourite kiddie film has a theme park or whatever the fuck.
yeah, and tbh, it's no mistake either; JKR claims to be a feminist (which is FUCKING LAUGHABLE) and yet aligns herself and even praises male nazis time and time again. and it's no mistake, she KNOWS that, what these men call a "biological woman" (which is also HER definition!), is just a baby machine. it's this 1950s ideal of a perfect housewife: submissive and quiet, satisfies every need for the husband, does everything in the house, is constantly shaved, skinny, white, abled and non-political. THAT'S what jkr is referring to when she says "biological women". she doesn't care abt the women in Sudan, Tigray, Congo, Armenia, Palestine, etc. she doesn't. she opens her mouth and talks abt things like periods, but has NEVER, NEVER spoken abt how people in Palestine need hygiene products. she has NEVER, NEVER spoken abt the people (esp the children) being raped in Congo. she has NEVER, NEVER spoken abt the displacement and violence against women in Armenia.
bc none of those women fit HER definition - they aren't white. they aren't "civilised" (read: christian and white). they aren't western. they aren't middle/upper class. they aren't abled. they aren't non-political. they don't FIT the ideal of a 1950s housewife that she is, and they never will. bc she does NOT care abt women, and never has or will.
JKR is just as bad as the men who she sides with, and when they eat her face, she'll kick and scream abt how "THE LEOPARDS ATE MY FACE!!!" like, yep. bc that's what you get for siding w the face eating leopard party, ma'am. the matter of the fact is, as much as she pretends NOT to be by using "progressive" buzzwords, JKR is just as bad as Nigel Farage. like 100%. and her writing & her films are mediocre AT BEST, too - it's EASY to move onto a different franchise, onto a different fantasy world that ISN'T just chock full of nazi bullshit; but her stans and HP stannies WON'T bc they, on one level of another, agree w her ideology. they AGREE w nazi rhetoric.
bc that's what it REALLY boils down to, tbh.
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Ive had so many fun dreams lately but for some reason i’m coming to write about the scary ones
Um been having nightmares. Last night and today. And they feel really heavy, but important. And frankly i do hate them. Please no more nightmares. But maybe if i write about them i’ll prove to spirit that im listening and then they’ll stop
First Dream:
Last night i had a dream where the fam of 5 was traveling, driving road trip vibes probably to florida. We were all together packing the car and idk how but all of a sudden erikka was missing. And we knew immediately there was foul play. We were in a sketchy area ad there were cars going in and out and we were afraid she was kidknapped for trafficking. It was so anxiety inducing, and i tried to keep praying and have a positive attitude that she was strong, she would find a way out, she would show make it home. I kept hoping she would show up any minute. But as hours past i kept getting more worried that i’d never see her again, that something terrible happened. And i was crying and and already grieving. In this dreamverse apparently something similar had happened to dalvin a while back. And erikka used some sort of manifestation power to bring him home safely. So i felt like absolutely garbage that i couldnt do the same for her, i was beating myself up. I kept saying “im supposed to be good at this, i feel useless”
Next Dream:
This one was so so very odd. Basically we were at chip and it was the anniversary of this well known historical environmental event. And it happened near the west end fairgrounds or something. So there was a lot of hype and press in our area during this.... 100th anniversary or something like that. I don’t really remember, but there were 10 guys all brothers and they won a contest? or something? from someone in....ohio or some random state. Back in the early 1900s. Anyway, an almost catastrophic event was witnessed by a bunch of people. A huge asteroid hurdled towards earth and grazed the side of it (near west end fairgrounds) and chipped a piece of land. It was marvelous that only a few inches kept it from hitting earth directly and splitting the earth in half. Or doing dinosaur level damage or something else crazy. It couldve killed a ton of people or been an end to humanity. So whatever....a hundred years later or so, they were able to do a super techy demonstration and show what almost happened and what didnt happen through like a hologram projector and the whole town watched and it was really snowy outside and i wasnt wearing pants. It was just trippy to think about how something like that could happen at any moment and kill us. For some reason i made the comment “it always scared me that the fact that an asteroid hasnt hit earth with humans on it is completely by chance and hasnt happened yet which means odds are it WILL happen soon. But i always forget about THIS historic moment, which makes me feel safer in that something technically DID happen”
Final Dream:
Okay so again, at chip present day. And i wake up with a bunch of messages from people from high school saying to call....our class prez. Which was so odd, ive never had a personal relationship with him. But everyone was blowing up all socials and talking about something crazy that happened. His twin sister reached out to me and said to call him. Like PV social media was going bonkers!! So i was busy all day, it was always ET’s birthday maybe for a date reference? And the more i ignored it, the more people hit my line. Even claire, messaged me by the end of the day saying “call class prez he’s really not doing well” and i was like WOAH. Cause that means people wanted me to call him so bad that they had reached out to my friends who didnt even go to pv to get my attention. I told erikka “idk why they want me, is it because im good at saying calming words” and she said idk it seemed more specific like he wants to “apologize.” SO then im like what?? By time i call him its 1:03am. But he answered and apparently. A couple of kids from our grad class passed away and class prez was really emotional about it. I remember one being Austin H. And he was so sad and unstable that he made a comment online saying something along the lines of “this is worse than gilaine maxwell creating slave camps for black people” ???? Bro i have no idea.
So class prez gets ALOT of flack for this comment. I mean its career ruining, he’s getting death threats. So maybe he wanted individual calls from black peers to hear their genuine opinion? So we’re on the phone and he’s profusely apologizing, saying what he said was unacceptable. He said “im sure youve heard my ghislane maxwell comment” i said no...havent got the chance. So he plays me a historic video about supposedly the “actual history” of these slave camps he was referencing. The video had this eerie 1900s black racist cartoon vibe that makes my blood curl. It was about these talented black people being condemmed and found guilty for things they didnt do. The evidence was so blatantly there and still everyone convicted them and sent them to be tortured and die at these camps. It was EXTREMELY unsetteling to watch and to be watching with class prez. Also in the dream, it felt inescabable and scary and for a little it felt like i was there. Like it was playing in my chip bedroom but i went top bunk and i could feel the sticks they were beating the black people with. It felt soooooo evil and sinister, and seriously idk what ancestors are communicating with me via dreams or what they want because this was DARK. So then class prez is asking for my take, and why it matters, and why its bad. And im saying he obvious stuff. The videos message was basically like “it didnt matter if black people were educated, doctors, laywers, scientists, hey were gonna slaughter and torture us anyway” so i didnt know if the vibe was like “be greatful that black people are allowed to have careers?? or get vengeance on white people....it was just so intense.
So when the video was over and i got off the call, i was so uncomfortable and unsettled. Felt like i had waken up from a nightmare or finished a scary movie. So i desperately tried to turn all the lights back on but ofc it was a dream so everything was dim. Still didnt catch it though. I tried finding my parents for comfort.
Awful right? No more nightmares
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hey im really sorry that you and your community have gotten harassment as a result of this, thats absolutely not warranted or acceptable under any circumstance, and if any of them are doing it on our behalf than i apologize sincerely and i hope they feel ashamed of themselves.
but can i kindly request you and your community to please read the room? a friend of mine got targeted antisemitic harassment. and it doesn't really matter who it was, or whether it was bait or not because the truth of the matter is theres still clearly antisemites in our community more than willing to send that to another human being for any reason. and you and your friends are not the biggest victim of this situation, she is. and to derail it and to make it all about you is not appropriate right now. take care
hi Cube, it's obviously extremelly fucked that these asks were send to your friend and to whoever else may have received them. I wish i could obliterate everyone who sends anon hate no matter who they are, especially this vile, because its one of the most cowardly things you can do on the Internet, meant to cause nothing but harm and give the sender a sense of power over another human being.
and unfortunately it's not news that people who are willing to send these kind of asks are in the community - we know the people who want nothing but chaos and hurt exist on the outskirts of mc.ytblr.
but the truth of the matter is that my friends get vile asks often too, even right now as you mentioned, I've seen them, they're not pretty either. and I don't want to make statements on who is a 'bigger victim' here - I don't think there's a point in that. everyone who receives hate has equal right to be hurt by the hate. I think everyone should be allowed to talk about it or not talk about it, depending on what they want.
the thing that annoys me is the way people immediately jump to attack a group of people because of the fact that someone claims to be from the community. we don't have a way to prove they're not, because they're on anon, and so we're supposed to - just accept the fact that apparently people are now running around with a list of dreblr members warning people to not interact with us?
like, if this is someone from dreblr they know damn well they're not wanted here. they know dreblr is strongly against sending hate.
but if this IS bait, and the freaks have reached the 'sign off anons to throw blame on a specific group of people' level - who's to say it won't go further? and how are we meant to defend ourselves then? how is anyone? this is what I'm worried about, and this is what my post was referring to.
so again, I'm really sorry that this happened to your friend, please let them know neither I or anyone I spoke with and saw talk about the situation would ever in a milion years encourage such actions. we are vocal about denouncing hate whenever the topic pops up. but several issues can coexist at the same time, and I don't think talking about what worries me is equal to not reading the room, especially when the room is a post on my blog with no tags.
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Slice of Folklore: An Asian Historical Folklore AU
by Tamadango
Oh god....Okay so this is an AU based on Chinese Folklore.
Reigen is a Daoshi Priest. This is a real sect of Taoism. But within the context of folklore, these Daoshi are more like Mages. They travel from village to village, doing exorcisms, performing rituals, removing curses, treating illnesses, presiding over ceremonies like funerals and also reanimating the dead so they can be walked to where they need to be buried.
Ekubo is a Jiangshi. More on this later.
That idiot villager…. said this route was a safe and easy hike
This is taking way longer than I expected. The other route would have been much faster
As he’s walking through a cave, the path underneath his feet collapses and he falls into a lower level of the cave.
(In chinese folklore, humans live on the surface and monsters/the dead/ spirits reside underground. Caves are sort of a limbo area inhabited by monsters, that average people avoid.
The path collapses underneath his feet, and he falls. -Screaming- Holy shit!
He falls and grunts in pain before looking up.
Directly in front of him, is a Jiangshi.
SAFE MY ASS!!
(Jiangshi are monsters from chinese folklore. They are corpses reanimated by blood spells. Lower level Jiangshi are just straight up zombies. Higher level ones are spirits sealed into dead bodies so they have some kind of will/consciousness like Ekubo here. They are reanimated by Daoshi priests and are obligated to serve them.
By default, Jiangshi are servant monsters, they ALWAYS have a master. Since they are dead/decaying bodies, they feed on the lifeforce of living people, ie blood. They can be powered up with blood, sealed with blood seals, sustained/controlled with blood. etc.
It’s sort of the mix between a zombie_ (undead, with poisonous bite)_, a vampire (needs blood), and a summoned demon (serves a master.) in western fiction.)
Reigen reaches around for his bag as the Jiangshi hops towards him. “Dammit all my tools are in my bag.”
(Tools specifically associated with being a Daoshi priest, like exorcism stuff, ritual daggers…spell tags…etc)
WHOA!
The creature is lunges at him, snapping. -teeth snapping sounds-
Reigen: ....? What an odd blood seal. Is it possible that this Jiangshi is acting under the control of this spell?
I have to remove it somehow!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
bottom panel -murmuring-
Ekubo: Hnnnnnngg
I’m finally free… Thanks to you
(So technically, he serves Reigen now. Jiangshi are servant monsters by their nature.)
Reigen: Ahhh the J…..J…. Jiangshi…. It talks! (Low level Jiangshi can’t talk... only the spirit sealed ones can.)
Ekubo: What kind of terrible outfit is this?
Ekubo: Huh? Don’t put me in the same category as those low class monsters.
Ekubo leans over: ....hmmmm
Sniff Sniff
You’re a Daoshi Priest from the Salt group aren’t you?
Eh?
Ekubo: and you’re a virgin….good! good!
Reigen: What business is that of yours?
Ekubo: Haha…What’s your name?
Reigen: Reigen.... Reigen arataka
(Daoshi Priesthood requires celibacy, virginity, veganism, no alcohol and vow of poverty, along with a lot of other things like prayer, literacy in religious languages, etc.)
My name is Ekubo. I am an high level creature of darkness!
(In Chinese folklore, Humans reside on the surface and monsters, demons, spirits, reside underground, and are collectively referred as such.)
You’re going to help me find the asshole who kept me sealed for the past couple hundred years so I can take my revenge.
Reigen: No, I’ll pass. I need to get to the next town, see ya (he says this very fast while walking away)
Ekubo: What?! Hey Wait! There’s lots of gold and treasure in the crypt below. I was guarding it. It’s yours if you help me out.
Reigen’s ears twitch.
(Daoshi Priests are required to take a vow of poverty so he’s not supposed to be interested in riches or accumulating wealth.
Jiangshi are servant monsters by their nature, and must have a master at all times. Which is why Ekubo tries to convince Reigen to go with him. Because If Reigen just left, he would have no choice but to follow.)
They’re looking at a sarcophagus covered in spell seals in the chamber below.
Reigen: Is that the owner of the crypt buried here? Doesn’t look wealthy to me.
Ekubo: Im sure all the good stuff is in the coffin
(In ancient china, as in most ancient cultures, it’s typical to dress the corpse lavishly and fill the coffin with jewelry, money and valuables, so the dead person can be wealthy in the afterlife)
Reigen: Hey, All these coffins in the back here are empty… that’s really strange
-Click-
Ekubo: No… those aren’t normal coffins… these… they’re sacrifices!
Reigen! It’s dangerous, Get Back!
Reigen: Wait… why are you running?!? Weren’t you looking for this guy so you can take revenge?
Ekubo: Hey I thought he sealed me here to guard the crypt, I didn’t realize I was intended as a snack for later.
Reigen: What?!? Does that mean those coffins are empty because it already ate them? So there’s no actual treasure?
Ekubo: Is THAT what you’re worried about right now? Can you stop being a greedy bastard for a bit so we can get out of here?
(Again, as a priest, he would have taken a vow of poverty and isn’t supposed to be interested in riches.)
Ekubo: Reigen what are you doing? You cant beat him! That monster is powered up from eating countless other creatures of darkness.
Reigen: Yeah that’s exactly why he needs to be stopped
Reigen: Ridding the world of monsters and exorcising evil is my calling!
Reigen: And you, since you haven’t been eaten yet, help me out
Ekubo: Tch! I want to, but this body is way too weak to go up against a monster like that.
Get down!
Ekubo: You don’t look it, but you’re actually pretty powerful. Shame it’s not enough to defeat him. Impressive nonetheless.
Reigen: We don’t have time for small talk! Think of something useful! Get us out of this mess!
Ekubo: Alright alright, calm down. You can leave it to me.
Ekubo: huh! very nice flavor.
The blood from the tongue of a virgin plus my (some kind of power class that is ancient but also protective)
(I really tried to translate this part but I don’t get the exact words he’s saying. The gist is that he gets a powerup by combining their powers. That’s it.)
Ekubo: I should be able to break through the protective barrier that he’s using to shield himself.
**Ekubo: Bring it! I’ll show you my true strength. **
Reigen: Can’t move… Cant feel my body at all….Looks like the poison is taking effect…. Makes sense… the bite of a Jiangshi
(Jiangshi feed on lifeforce/blood, so their bites can drain a person of their lifeforce temporarily.)
Can’t feel my tongue at all. It’s completely numb
Dont lose you bastard
I’m so tired……
Reigen: Ekubo?
Ekubo: Farewell...
Ah!
-tongue hurts -
Thinks: so it wasn’t a dream
**He starts sobbing. **
**Ekubo: You alright? **
Reigen: It’s a talking fart!
Ekubo: Hey! It’s me! Ekubo!
Why are you crying? You miss me?
(More advanced Jiangshi are spirits sealed into dead bodies so they can be freed if their bodies are destroyed )
Reigen: Idiot! I’m trying to get the taste of corpse out of my mouth! You’ve been dead for hundreds of years!
Ekubo: Why are you so angry? Was that your first kiss?
Reigen: Shut up! Don’t you have some underground crypt to return to? What are you loitering out here for?
Ekubo: Just doing my guard duty.
Reigen: Why are you following me?
Ekubo: Why can’t I follow you? I just saved your ass, you could be a little more grateful you know.
(So earlier, Reigen removes the seal that was controlling Ekubo, and he then serves Reigen by default. After his body is destroyed, he’s free to move on. The implication here is that he’s chosen not to, and has decided to follow Reigen around instead.)
By Tamadango
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UGHHHH. I was not going to translate this. But @gemmawritessometimes prodded me into it. There was so much goddamn folklore shit to explain.
Also this comic has a lot of terms you ONLY see in folklore and rarely anywhere else. Goddammit.
Yeah, anyway, enjoy this comic.
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How I Would Humble NHL Players
An essay written by bigboigritty.
I would humble hockey players the only way I know how to, by sending them to Australia. Let’s suppose that they have decided to hold the All Star game over here (forget about it’s usual date) (forget that some players I have listed below might not be invited) (and while you're at it, please forget that Australia’s rinks are Not Good).
I think that they would suffer but in an entertaining way so it’s fine.
First of all, their biggest concern is getting sunburnt. It would effect all of their dumb asses but I’m particularly worried about Pierre-Luc Dubois and Mitch Marner. Boys are practically translucent. Vince Dunn would be fine, he’d probably wear a shirt most of the time which is a very smart decision.
You may wonder why I didn’t mention Nolan Patrick because I am a certified slut for him, well I don't think he would have a problem. He would spend most of the time inside and when he joins the others, I think his Virgo ass would reapply sunscreen. Maybe he would burn slightly but I don't think it'd be enough to make him uncomfortable.
Another thing that I think they will gain from this experience is a higher pain tolerance. Now you’re probably thinking, “Zoe they are NHL players so they can handle pain.” Wrong.
Real pain is running barefoot on cement at theme parks while you race to get to the next ride. Also getting into the car and having to avoid touching every piece of metal to not get branded like a cow. Or better yet, when the heat gets so bad that there’s a black out because everyone has their air conditioning turned on.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that other countries have scary animals but I would pay to see them panic over ours. Crocodiles here can grow up to 5.2 metres / 17 feet. We have a box jellyfish season where it’s advised to avoid swimming or wear wetsuits for coverage. Funnel web spiders can survive underwater for hours by trapping air bubbles around their skin. We have several of the worlds deadliest snakes present across the country.
Listen, I don't want anyone to get injured but the constant fear that they would have when doing anything would be enough to make me happy.
My biggest question is who would survive in the shady areas, who would survive the eshays?
Under no circumstances can you look them in the eyes or cross their path. They are not to be feared individually but in groups caution is advised. I think the players would attempt to assert dominance and that is simply not an option. You are better off to ignore the eshay.
Nolan would have no issues here if im being honest. He is big and I don't think they’d find it worth it to fuck with him. But you know who they would target? Matthew Tkachuk. “Where are you going pretty boy?” “Oi braa did we hurt your feelings ya pussy cunt?” They would make fun of his hair in particular.
Travis Konecny would be an eshay. I don't think I need to make further comment. (So would Louis Tomlinson but I am not a 1D account and I will continue to repeat that until it’s true.)
I would also give them a few iconic tasks to get the true Australian experience. Activities for the ‘vacation’ include triathlon events, beach flags, bush walking and climbing the harbour bridge. They could attend a cricket match but they tend to like golf so unfortunately they would probably enjoy this :(
AFL is an extremely popular sport here and I think they would loose their shit when they learn the rules of this game. No protective equipment is used other than mouthguards, that's it. That’s all you get. And jumping onto other players for leverage is encouraged. I would thoroughly enjoy the fights that would break out because of this.
Another task would be to use a map to make their way to a servo for a slurpee. The catch is that they will be required to pass through multiple alleyways. Also, the season is Spring, it’s swooping season mother fuckers. Let’s see how brave you are when birds chase you down the block. Personally I don’t think any of them would pass this test, maybe McDavid because the birds may not be able to detect a heartbeat.
Australian food would disgust them, I just know it. Things that they would need to try are a Bunnings sausage sanga, fairy bread, lamingtons, baked beans on toast, Milo and Vegemite. Because I’m me I would give them no butter with their Vegemite.
An after thought I had was money so I’m editing this to include it. Everything here is EXPENSIVE so they would need to learn how to budget. Upon doing research, Canadians would be fine but the Americans will be mad.
1000 CAD = 1019 AUD
1000 USD = 1297 AUD
Another after thought was the fact that they won’t be able to drive (or at least drive well) here. We drive on the left and not the right, same goes for walking paths too. I can sense a lot of them bumping into people.
Where I think players would live based on vibes alone:
Carter Hart and Vince Dunn: North Shore Beaches, NSW. Daddy’s money. Carter probably did Nippers whereas Vince was a skater boy.
Travis Konecny: Darwin, NT. Would 100% live there and enjoy it. He would try to conduct crocodile tours but gets assigned to feeding the baby crocs and doing shows for little kids.
Tyson Barrie: Perisher, NSW. One of the only ski resorts we have to offer, major friendly mountain man energy.
Nolan Patrick: Byron Bay, NSW. @antoineroussel enlightened me, steering away from my original thought of Katoomba, NSW. Byron Bay is a magnet for hippies and links rainforest to the ocean. Chris Hemsworth and his family also live there.
William Nylander: Perth, WA. I don’t know much about Perth other than they wouldn’t shut up about partying while the other states had to quarantine. For some reason, I also associate Perth with Tik Tok.
Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid: Melbourne CBD, VIC. These two would live in the same apartment building in the city, Connor one level above Sidney. It’s the most boring looking block of them all and Crosby would send in complaints to the landlord about McDavid pacing during the night.
Tyler Seguin: Surfers Paradise, QLD. Party central, not many people are actually from this area and he would be sure to tell absolutely everyone that he was. I also think he would get a Meter Maid tattoo, specifically on his leg. Has definitely slept on the beach before because he couldn’t find his way home.
Jamie Benn: Hobart, TAS. Tasmania is usually forgotten about. Another one with mountain man energy except he is more creepy than friendly.
Mitch Marner: Fitzroy, VIC. @antoineroussel is responsible for this one too. Hipster central, makes you question how the hell someone so young can have so much money. Would chug $45 wine and not blink an eye.
(honourable mentions include = Sammy Blais: Hobart, Tas. Once again no comment on Tasmania. TJ Oshie: Cairns, QLD. Would do reef tours. Haydn Fleury: Western Sydney, NSW. Haydn would 100% own a ute or a white holden commodore and you can’t tell me otherwise. Roman Josi: Adelaide, SA. Small town history teacher vibes.)
I have attached a handy map for those who may need it.
In conclusion, the NHL should send their players over here to teach them some manners and while they’re at it, management should bring themselves too. Nolan Patrick could pass as an Australian if he built up a tan. (So does Nylander in this picture but we won’t talk about that.) Come over anytime baby, I’m free.
Glossary
Servo - A service station, also known as a petrol or gas station. Example: 7/11
Theme park - An amusement park. Can be said in reference to both normal parks and water parks and usually means those in QLD. Example: Six Flags
Swooping season - August to October in Australia. When birds attack and chase humans and / or pets for getting close to their babies. Magpies are notoriously bad for this.
Bunnings sausage sanga - A cheap feed / meal found at the front of a hardware and gardening store called Bunnings. Made up of white bread, sausage, onion and your choice of sauce.
Fairy bread - White bread with margarine and topped with 100s and 1000s / sprinkles.
Meter Maids - Women who work along the beach dressed in gold bikinis. They top up parking meters to save tourists from getting fined and will often stop for photos.
Nippers - Surf lifesaving programs carried out for children between 5 and 14.
Ute - A pick up truck.
Eshay - A person who partakes in drug use, graffiti, listens to EDM and targets victims in groups. Below is the typical style of an eshay.
Tagging a few friends so this doesn’t completely flop but feel free to ignore if it isn't your thing. I won’t be offended lmao
@scheifefe @ifiwasshawnmendesidslapmyself @d00dlebob @bowenbyram @kempe @prettyboyroope @quintonsbyfield @travisgermy @pitoftrash @kspitehockey @ballsakic @canadianheaters @bricksatlandyswindow @powerblais @brokeninsidebutnobodyknows @jamiedrysdales
#also feel free to send asks if you want more ‘where are players from?’#I’d give a better explanation in single posts#none of this is serious if you couldn’t tell#its all out of love#nhl#hockey#travis konecny#tyson barrie#nolan patrick#sidney crosby#also enjoy the magpie picture#connor mcdavid#william nylander#mitch marner#vince dunn#tyler seguin#jamie benn#carter hart#I refuse to read this again so ignore any mistakes#I feel like I had a fever dream writing this so I only hope you feel the same after reading it#I’m scared of birds can you tell?#z does other stuff
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do you have any gx rivalshipping hcs!! im super curious on your take of them :]
When I saw this ask my immediate reaction was thinking: "Yes, I have an excuse to talk about gx rivalshipping, YES."
So yeah. I love this ship a lot, like a whole damn lot and it's a little hard to explain why, especially when gx has so many open possibilities for romances involving Judai. By which I mean two, really, and Manjoume is not one of them (sadly for me). I am referring to Yubel and Johan, by the way, I refuse to acknowledge Asuka as a love interest.
I'll start off with a bit of fluff headcanons?
Manjoume thinks Winged Kuriboh is really cute and that its friendly and fluffy appearance screams Judai, in a way. But he will never admit it because of what that might imply for him and the Ojamas.
Manjoume is fueled by caffeine and monster, he only really starts to recognise how nice it can be to have a meal because of how much Judai enjoys his food. He tries to sit at the table with him with dumb excuses.
Judai feels a bit guilty for how his actions impacted Manjoume's life, but Manjoume generally tells him that it's fine, it's better this way, that he's never this happy, that the only reason why Judai should maybe feel bad about it is because of his tendency to get overly invested in other people's problems and getting hurt in the process. Judai responds with bear hugs.
Manjoume brags about Judai a lot, actually.
"Oh you think that's cool? One time Judai managed to do a backflip, you loser."
"Slifer reds suck, but they do have redeeming qualities, by which I mean one of them is actually good."
Judai likes to indulge himself in the thought that he's Manjoume's most trusted, that he's the only one who could ever be allowed to have that many incriminating pictures of him. Because Judai just loves taking candid pictures of Manjoume. He thinks he looks and and cool in every situation, so yeah. A part of him does it because he has an inexplicable fear of forgetting people and the way they look, but he just can't say why that is.
They hang out in silence a lot, but once they start talking they just never stop. You'll find them on the beach at 3 am with a smiling Manjoume listening to Judai go on about how crazy it is that you can fry food in so many different ways and how he once caught a butterfly as a kid and named it Kujaku.
They share their music a lot, so Manjoume's tastes switch from just emo to fast paced rap and the weirdly happy sounding songs about very morbid things Judai listens to (plus emo). Judai starts to enjoy a bit of angry screaming into microphones thanks to Jun. Do they sing along like idiots as they share earphones? Yes. Is Manjoume mesmerised by Judai's singing voice? Also yes.
Judai loves hiking and sometimes invites Manjoume, but because he's a lot weaker and has less stamina, they take it slow. Manjoume keeps cursing himself for being slow and dead weight, but Judai is just happy to have a companion. Admittedly, going slower makes the walks better as he has the time to enjoy the scenery properly. He never teases Jun about his lack of physical training.
Now... I wanted to talk about my general view on the ship, plus headcanons I guess, but this is going to be EVEN LONGER (you are getting more than you asked for, your fault for enabling me, really). For the sake of the sanity of mobile users, I'm adding a cut so nobody has to unwillingly scroll through endless text.
On to the the juice, then. My thoughts on the ship.
Manjoume and Judai are, of course, the rivals of the series and, if my thoughts on rivalry weren't clear enough, I am one of those people. It's just really romantic to me.
What is very interesting about the two of them specifically is that they are polar opposites in the way the reason why they play, throughout the whole series. Hell, their views end up getting reversed completely: Manjoume goes from "if I don't win I'm gonna have a breakdown breakdown" to "losing is ok, as long as I enjoy the game and am true to myself", while Judai does the 180 from "I really just love playing cards with my friends, who cares about the outcome, it's fun" to "I have card game related trauma, nobody speak to me, games are only an excuse to assert a sort of power scale and honestly fuck that".
Manjoume is sort of the only person in the 'friend group' (he's never actually part of it, sadly, literally only Judai and Fubuki like him) to not idolise Judai, not explicitly. He clearly has an admiration for Judai from the beginning, but he is adamant on expressing it as hatred towards for being better than him. A part of me feels that a lot of his superior act is meant to try and fool himself and Jaden into thinking that he's a worthy rival, because I know for a fact that Manjoume doesn't believe that. He wants it to be true, yes.
What I am trying to get at is that Judai is probably a little confused by the fact that Manjoume doesn't drool all over him like the rest of the school does, but it soon becomes a crutch. Judai is under a lot of pressure because he is the hero who will save everyone and people like to remind him of how much they count on him. Manjoume is in it for Judai. He wants to be acknowledged by him, he wants his recognition and his attention, but he never asks for help or expects Judai to fix his problems for him. Judai is probably thankful for that.
Manjoume is also really scared of being left behind and cast aside as soon as he stops being useful and that's exactly what the writers do to him!!! hooray!, but Judai keeps insisting that he's not a bad guy, that he's fun to be around, that he's competent. Manjoume doesn't really believe all that that much, but Jaden keeps playing him despite his repeated losses and to Jun that's the equivalent of someone kissing his tears away. Manjoume only learns to accept his losses and shortcomings because Judai did it for him first.
So basically Manjoume is the only one who fully sees Judai as a person, while Judai is the only one who is really willing to look past his pretentious facade. I fully believe that Judai was relieved to learn that Manjoume was not just a perfect boy with perfect manners, by the way. They both just love to learn about every imperfection that the other has and silently thinking that they just add to the beauty of the other's character. Will they tease eachother about it? Fuck yes. Do they feel awful when the other tries to fix something about themselves because they pointed it out? Also fuck yes.
They are in a dumb competition against themselves to be better in order to earn the right to be friends with eachother, but because they are fucking dumb they never actually communicate (until they do), so for a long time it's endless pining that is definitely not gay because admittedly Judai just doesn't think that dating is a thing, while Manjoume is straight™, really straight. He has never liked a boy in his life, he's so very fucking straight, I swear.
So Manjoume is a bisexual disaster (and in my headcanon he prefers boys, actually, the Asuka incident is the biggest example of denial™ ever. He prefers Fubuki, fight me over this).
The problem is that he never really considered he might be crushing on Judai, but at the same time admitting to maybe liking boys too means that there was more to wanting to stay at DA, to hanging out with Judai's crew despite their mutual dislike, to his continuous playful headlocks and ear pulling. To add onto that, there is probably a certain amount of guilt over having betrayed that bond with Judai by trying to throw away his cards and everything.
Judai, on the other hand... is confused at how bothered he is by the public declarations of love, because Manjoume is his rival and rivals are supposed to focus on eachother, not on some girl, no matter how good said girl is at card games.
So maybe they are a bit gay for eachother. And maybe they just want excuses to be together as much as possible. And it's really just the vibe of highschool romance between two people who don't want to admit to caring for one another on a deeper level, but are also weirdly possessive of eachother for no apparent reason.
And I think I'll stop here with my gay retelling, but really if you look at the two of them you do see that they do a lot for eachother's characters. It's kind of beautiful, really. They are the two socially inept characters who find comfort in someone being just like them and understanding them as they change and grow up.
I have a lot to say about how that changes once the transfer students come in, but I think I've bored everyone for long enough- as in nobody will read this lol.
That's ok.
I thank you again for the ask and for allowing me to gush about this ship that is so close to my heart. If anyone ever wants to talk about them, just. Do. Break into my house at night and I still won't mind, I just want to talk about them.
#shut me up#i'm so sorry#i started and i couldn't stop#i also didn't want to be disappointing by giving an half-assed response#i've thought about this ask all night#i still improvised the whole thing and i'm sure you can tell#yugioh#ygo#yugioh gx#ygo gx#gx rivalshipping#manjoume jun#jun manjoume#chazz princeton#yuki judai#judai yuki#jaden yuki
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tw: lesbiphobia
(by the way, the account stole the person's video! they downloaded it and reposted it, then added this "opinion")
lemme just explain why this is terrible because im in a fighting mood. (/j)
(for reference, i am a queer trans man, not a lesbian! so take this with a grain of salt, and if any lesbians add, listen to them!!!!)
the f slur likely developed negative connotation during the 13th century: it was used to describe, yes, bundles of sticks (firewood) that old and often poor women gathered for a living. they were considered nuisances, and burdens that nobody wanted. this later developed into another term for baggage, still able to be used derogatorily.
then, in the 18th century, the term "fag" or "faggot" was used to describe "ugly" women.
user "space ace" on the LGBTQ amino says: "Though its origins can be traced back to the UK, the first published use of the word "faggot" in the USA was in a newspaper from 1914; "All the fagots (sissies) will be dressed in drag at the ball tonight.""
the american term originated sometime in 1914, and the shortened version (officially) in 1921. as you can likely guess, because it was a term that originated from the degradation of women, it being applied to men implies that they're feminine (which was, and still is, considered bad.)
now i know this is a long post, but please hang in there. i swear im getting to the actual point
(by the way, here's some more history for those who may not know: "There is an urban legend, called an "oft-reprinted assertion" by Douglas Harper, that the modern slang meaning developed from the standard meaning of faggot as "bundle of sticks for burning" with regard to burning at the stake. This is unsubstantiated; the emergence of the slang term in 20th-century American English is unrelated to historical death penalties for homosexuality.")
The word faggot (and a variation of the d slur) was used by a character in Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem and says,
"a bull[d slur]ing woman and a faggoty man"
there's much more history that i don't have time to get into right now, but you get the point. the f slur has been used against gay men (or even cisgender heterosexual men) to imply they're less masculine, or a burden. it was also used against gay women and trans people specifically. essentially the entire LGBTQ+ community has experience with this slur.
disclaimer: i will not be typing the d slur, but i will be talking about it! take most of this part with a grain of salt please. listen to actual lesbians over me
the d slur specifically began as a misogynistic slur for a masculine, butch, or androgynous girl or woman. it was considered a very bad thing to be like this, especially because a woman's role was supposed to be caring for men and appealing to them. being masculine then was attributed to being attracted to women, or being a lesbian. this was also "bad" for the same reasons.
the d slur is also thought to originate from the term bull[d slur], which had a similar meaning.
wikipedia says (slurs manually censored), "The etymology of bull[d slur] is also obscure. It may be related to the late-19th-century slang use of [d slur] ("ditch") for the vulva. Bull ("male cattle") being used in the sense of "masculine" and "aggressive" (e.g., in bullish), a bull[d slur] would have implied (with similar levels of offensiveness) a "masculine cunt".
in the 1950s, the word [d slur] was used derogatorily by straight people towards lesbians. at this time, bisexuality and similar sexualities weren't considered often: you were either gay, or you weren't.
as the term bull[d slur] evolved, it was even more derogatory. someone who was considered a "[d slur]" was just a lesbian, however, if they were a "bull[d slur]", they were considered aggressive, obnoxious, and "man-hating" (which was also a derogatory term).
the d slur was also used to describe early feminists, along with the "man hating" stereotype. it was often synonymous with ugly and dumb.
as a result of all of this, lesbians (as other queer people) developed a code. one of these "codes" was with hankerchiefs. you would usually learn these meanings in gay bars or speakeasies
im getting a bit off track here, so let me come back to my main point!
the f slur has been used against the entire lgbtq+ community, and so all of us can reclaim it. the d slur, however, is based in misogyny and violence against wlw and gay women specifically! it would not be at all fair for gay men (or anyone else in the LGBTQ community in general) to reclaim.
now it's absolutely not my place to say who among wlw can reclaim this slur, as that isn't what this post as about (and as i have stated, i am not a lesbian!) but if you genuinely had a belief like OP's, please consider this post, and listen to other lesbians!!! (here is just one wonderful thread on certain lesbian issues, but please dont just get your info from twitter)
now that i've reached the end of this very long post, do hear this:
i do not speak for any lesbians, nor do i wish to speak over them! some lesbians may disagree with this, but this is the general statement i've been made aware of and the reasoning behind it!!
thank you for sticking with this whole post :)
#tw f slur#f slur#d slur mention#discourse#tiktok#long post#lesbian history#slur history#lgbtq history#queer
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agree that there is no form of "acceptable" racism and jasper hate from white people means nothing if they are not actively anti-racist irl. the white characters in twilight are canonically racist esp the cullens, but my question is what exactly do u, a white person, consider "dunking on jasper if you stan any other cullen"? if someone was for ex. claiming rosalie wasn't racist then yes, but usually i just see ppl having to explain why they don't want the proud confed soldier on their own blog
Im referring to when white people type out very long posts about how inexcusable Jasper's background is and how it can't be written out in fanfics but they reblog and come up with headcanons and fics about Esme, Rose, Emmett, etc. I've rarely if ever seen someone pretend that the Cullens aren't racist in canon but when white people pick and choose which racist actions are "okay" to rewrite and which aren't, that isn't okay. It also isn't okay for anons to hound black fandom members with asks about Jasper so I have no issue with posts that call that out.
As a disclaimer I don't think it's anyone's job to "redeem" or rewrite any of the cullens. Fandom is supposed to be fun! If you don't like Jasper, that's fine, I don't care for him either aside from what his characterization can tell us about authorial biases. No one is obligated to engage with any of these characters if they don't want to. And none of what I've said has anything to do with black fans who want to ignore Jasper completely.
My issue is specifically when white people find ways to write out the other Cullens' racism while claiming that no one can do the same for Jasper. It isn't white people's place to say "well this form of racism wasn't THAT bad" because all racism is evil.
Edit because I forgot to say: my overall point of the original post is that it is very easy for white fans to denounce the confederate. It is far more difficult for us white people to reckon with normalized forms of racism and that's why it is so important to do so. We have to destroy the idea that any form of racism is excusable or harmless and if we can use fictional examples to do so, so be it. That is why I think it's important not to draw distinctions between the confederate and the "run of the mill" racists in the series. Excusing or overwriting some of the Cullens' racism only reinforces the harmful belief that there are "levels" of racism.
#answered#anon#long post#again im not telling anyone which characters they can and cant like or use in fics#do literally whatever you want!!#its hypocritical imo for a white person to say that jasper is irredeemable but the other cullens arent#racism discussion tw
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Fic Annotation: Gilded Iron
gilded iron is my qin su/wen qing fic that i wrote for the mxtx flash fic exchange: lady edition. It was supposed to be short, which of course means i wrote a (bare bones) plot. As such, I don’t have a good handle on what it’s Secretly About, but on a surface level it’s about escaping and solidarity.
Notes on writing + fic lore below the cut
the title is completely bullshit. i needed something, i thought about qin su’s gilded cage vs wen qing’s iron one
if i hadn’t been writing this on a deadline, i would have gone more into qin su’s life at jinlintai, and how being the wife of head cultivator (a head cultivator who you now know is monstrous) is its own kind of prison. but i was on a deadline, so that’s uh. largely forgotten.
wen qing gets to be feral in jail because jail is terrible and also wen qing deserves to be feral whenever she wants.
qin su is a prison abolitionist /s //s
god i do wish i had spent more time documenting how qin su earned wen qing’s trust, but again, i was trying to write something in the 350-1000 range
there’s a lot of overlap, thematically, between this work and I Have Always Loved The Door, in that we’re starting at roughly the same point in Wen Qing’s life in both
which means wen qing is gonna be flat and matter-of-fact and cynical
jin guangyao does actually love his wife and son. there’s no room to talk about it here but he does worry about qin su when she’s “ill” and he is good to a-song
(this does not excuse the fact that he’s willing to murder his kid to hide his mistakes)
when i wrote the “loving complicated powerful men and watching them change in front of you” conversation, i was thinking mostly about wen ruohan, because i love the implication in the book that she had a somewhat positive relationship with him b4 he decided Imperialism. but it works just as well if wen qing is talking about wwx, and honestly, thinking about that makes me hurt
im using “monstrous path” instead of “demonic cultivation” bc of @pumpkinpaix. Sometimes I think the translation works exceedingly well, adding a menace and level of clarity that “demonic cultivation” doesn’t. other times i think i’m just not figuring out how to say it right.
“perhaps the expression was confusion, not anger” not for nothing wen qing but maybe glare less????
nevermind, queen, you do you
saying “be careful” is wen qing’s love language tbh
TIME TO SUFFER, WEN QING
“viewpoint character informing the audience that they are not having a feeling, while very definitely having a feeling” is one of my favorite writing tropes, apparently. i just. love lying.
so is “character’s heart cracks/breaks open” apparently but like. u ever go from being very guarded and still to overwhelmed with love??? it’s a very specific sensation that happens 2 me all the time bc i’ll be depressed and then my cat will move and my grinch-heart will grow three sizes
as always, i love writing meng yao/jin guangyao. i didn’t bother with triple meanings in this fic, bc 1. short on writing time and 2. he’s only performing a little bit
the “guest” is sect leader he. jin guangyao invited him over for a polite conversation about the towers, and then kidnapped + tortured him to find out why he hurt qin su + exactly what poison he used.
originally, in the world where this was much longer, wen qing accepted jgy’s terms + healed sect leader he. jgy gave her food on the regular, so she regained some health + didn’t have to hide the effects of qin su’s help. (but she did have to hide her actions from qin su)
but like. that would have been another 1k, and exhausting, and im just a small bird.
girls!!! holding!! hands!!!!
in case it wasn’t clear: jin guangyao sent qin su to the cloud recesses to keep her safe/out of the way while he moved against sect leader he.
“be careful” is wen qing’s love language
the qing of yao qing is written differently than wen qing. to be clear.
soft epilogue soft epilogue soft epilogue!!!!
a-song does have a developmental disability, not bc his parents were related but bc sometimes that just happens!!! but qin su and wen qing aren’t fucking eugenicists!!! they just love their son!!!
i used to own chickens but i did not have names for them, there were 20, and they all were rhode island reds, so i could not tell them apart. a-song is better than me.
they have a v small vegetable garden but exactly 0 potatoes or radishes. qin su never asks.
what family name do they give a-song? don’t know don’t care
the thing about wen qing grabbing qin su’s hand all the time was just me making fun of myself for this cute romance fic that hinges mostly on holding hands.
i never decided what the ladies do for a living. Wen Qing doesn’t practice medicine yet, bc she’s Afraid, but she might work as an apothecary/pharmacist. qin su might be a gynecologist, helping people terminate or healthily carry their pregnancies. but also that would involve more writing, and it wasn’t relevant to the Happy Ending, so i dropped it. maybe they just farm. maybe qin su takes on extremely small night hunts.
old zhao + his husband are dumb references to zhao yunlan + shen wei from guardian. shen wei + wen qing become fast friends as soon as they see each others’ “i am not going to yell at my beloved right now but i am going to think extremely stern thoughts” face. zhao yunlan adores a-song and keeps offering to babysit.
i didn’t get to say this but qin su 100% still rescues injured animals, much to wen qing’s frustration. “don’t you know how many diseases wolves carry?” “yes, i do, which is why i need you to hold a-song while I remove the trap from this little one’s leg.” “this little one is taller than you.”
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this is totes random sorry pls feel free to ignore but is there a 'STATE' that's completely independent from like elected government, heads of state, partisan politics etc.. like what's this state that some ppl talk abt that doesn't include the elected president? e.g."korea and france have greater deference to state." is there polisci literature/concept on this? what is this STATE that doesn't include the president or CDC head nominated by said president? im sorry im just so ignorant of polisci
This is not at all an ignorant question! This is a huge issue people argue about--maybe less in poli sci than in other social sciences, because poli sci has gone so completely up its own quantitative ass that it has abandoned what should be its obvious theoretical domain and so other disciplines have kind of taken over this kind of question. There are full professors who cannot answer this question (I know because some of them are on my listservs).
So: what is the state. Seriously, really, there is no one widely accepted answer to this. So I’ll go through a few of them under the cut for you. This ended up being really long because it’s something I’ve been thinking about lately, so the simplest, shortest answer to your question is the first one.
1. Institutions
In this view, “the state” means the institutions and bureaucracy that stay on when political leadership changes. The political leadership is called either “the regime” when we want to imply it’s evil or “the administration” or “the government” when we don’t. (I think this terminology is silly and “the regime” should mean the whole arrangement plus some other things--as in a regime of power--without negative or positive implications, but I don’t make the rules.)
Obviously these two things are not firewalled apart. Elected officials can alter the state through policy and/or direct reforms (creating, merging, or eliminating existing state organizations), and the existing state can constrain what elected officials can do through anything from ethics laws to bureaucratic foot-dragging. (In the US context, when we talk about “political appointees,” we mean high-level officials in “the state” that get appointed by elected leaders, but they take over organizations generally staffed by people who have come up through the bureaucracy and are supposed to be “apolitical,” i.e. just there to do a technical/bureaucratic job. So that’s another way that the two blur.) A great example of this would be what happened with the US’s Syria policy under Trump. Trump (”the administration”) wanted to pull out of Syria. The Pentagon, The State Department, various diplomatic branches, etc. (”the state”) did not. The state succeeded in putting him off executing his desired policy for years, even though as the Commander In Chief Trump in theory had really extensive authority to do whatever he wanted. Eventually he exercised that authority and state officials found themselves scrambling madly to try and salvage something of their preferred policy, which is how the US military ended up with this ridiculous non-presence in NE Syria. Another example would be the attempt to take down the USPS.
That’s why partisan politics and elected leaders are excluded from “the state” in this view; “the state” forms the organizational containers that those movements and individuals fill, and the structures they seek to act on or act from. You can think of it like the ground they stand on. This doesn’t have to mean it is itself “apolitical,” since the terrain has implications for everyone standing on it, but it is the object or delivery channel of politics, not politics itself. (Again I don’t agree with this, but it’s what you’re seeing reflected in the discourse you’re talking about.)
When people go on about “the deep state” they’re espousing a conspiratorial version of this view, where they think the ~real behind-the-scenes power lies in these institutions and the long-term bureaucrats who (sometimes) staff and run them. Definitely some power does lie there, but the conspiracists overweigh this into an Elders of Zion type thing.
2. A sovereign entity.
This is more about distinguishing states from other kinds of political entities, and as a result it’s less concerned with fine distinctions about what is and isn’t “political.” The idea is that there are lots of political structures and systems in the world (anything from tribal law to international associations like NATO) but not all of them are states. States are distinguished from other things by virtue of sovereignty. The classic definition (from Max Weber) of sovereignty is “a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within a clearly bounded territory.” In other words, a state’s police, military, national guard, security forces, etc. have a license to use violence within its borders that no one else has--anyone else engaging in violence is a criminal. It is these groups’ status as “agents of the state” that grants them this license. The bordered, yes/no territorial nature of this status--Turkish security forces have no mandate to act in Greece and vice versa--is also distinctive; fixed, defined, cartographic borders are not necessarily a given. In this view, all power and indeed all law is ultimately founded in violence (enforcement), so what matters is who/what can use force with impunity. (When the state’s monopoly on force is challenged in its territory--e.g., Hizballah making war on Israel without the Lebanese army, the original Zapatistas forming a breakaway region during the Mexican Civil War, or any occupation by a foreign force--then the state’s sovereignty is “weakened” or “under attack,” etc.)
Lots of people have criticized and elaborated on this definition. I don’t want to go on forever about all the critiques that exist, but basically in reality, sovereignty is not a yes/no binary where either you have it completely or you don’t have it at all. Things tend to be more mixed and blurry. It also has more dimensions: two important examples are 1) controlling and disposing of the territory itself (exploiting natural resources, moving people around, etc.), and 2) recognition. In many cases, the difference between a state and a non-state is whether other states recognize it as such, i.e. act like it is one. So for example, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus exercises sovereignty and has a state bureaucracy, elections, etc., but because it is not recognized by ~the international community~ it isn’t “a state.” (This isn’t just semantics; it may seem arbitrary when you just think about what goes on inside the TRNC, but when its citizens try to emigrate, for example, they encounter very specific, concrete problems on this basis--e.g., their passports will not be recognized as valid.)
I find this more useful personally, especially because it doesn’t assume a liberal democratic state--it can apply to a dictatorship or a monarchy or whatever you like. But in practice, i.e. how people use it, I still think this approach is frequently too worried about pinning down differences that aren’t always useful. On the one hand, I wrote my BA thesis about how Hamas and Hizballah aren’t states (it was common for a while to refer to them as “states within states”) while also not just being political parties, terrorist organizations, service providers, or any of the other things they get tagged with, precisely because of the way they relate to the Palestinian and Lebanese states. This is worth understanding because it helps explain their political projects and their successes. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s very helpful to go around arguing that, say, ISIS was a state (or state-like) and the Houthis are not because of some detail of how they think/thought about territory, or courts, or bureaucracy. Like what do you get out of making that distinction. If you want to argue that a tribal council somewhere is “the state” for its context I think that’s fine depending on what you’re trying to get at. It all depends on what kind of question you want to answer, and on what scale.
3. There’s no such thing.
This view recognizes that the state is a salad bowl full of different organizations, individuals, ideologies, etc. that do not actually all work in lockstep together or have the same goals. To talk about “the state” is to reinforce the fallacy of unified power and cooperation. Instead, we should recognize that actors within states have their own agendas, institutional cultures, power struggles, etc., and that whatever the state does is the outcome of 1) these internal dynamics, 2) the ability of different external actors (from citizens to foreign governments) to play on/appeal to/push back against different pieces of the state, and 3) the interactions of 1 and 2.
This to me is common sense. You just have to be careful not to take it too far. We can acknowledge that the state is internally differentiated/not any one single thing without going so far away from what most people understand about their worlds. There’s no point saying “there’s no such thing as a state” when people still have to pay taxes.
4. "The state effect,” or: there both is and is not any such thing
This idea, put forward by Tim Mitchell, is my favorite. It is also the subtlest, and a little tricky to explain, but I think it’s the most useful.
This view steps back and looks at all the endless, elaborate debates about every possible nicety of “stateness” and says: perhaps we are asking the wrong question here. Maybe it doesn’t matter what the state is. Maybe it matters what the state seems to be; how it seems to be that; and what “resources of power” are generated by these impressions.
This is the tricky explanation part, so bear with me for a few paragraphs.
Where exactly do we draw the line between “the state” and “civil society”? Are NGOs and nonprofits part of the state? What if they get government funding? Especially in a neoliberal context, when so much policymaking is done through contractors, consultants, tax breaks, etc., are these kinds of organizations not carrying out the state’s agenda, consciously or otherwise? Okay, that’s tough, let’s try something easier: individual people and families aren’t the state. But if a household depends on an income from state employment, does that not affect their politics and their actions in society? Is a person “part of the state” in one building and not in another? How do we account for the way off-duty cops behave, for example, then? You can do this same exercise for “the economy” or any of the other things that are supposedly separate things/domains that the state manages. How can, e.g., the American economy be separate from the state when the state prints and guarantees the currency, sets interest rates, enforces contracts, and generally sets the terms on which the economy can exist? (Going back to your original question, you could probably also do this same exercise re: political parties, or partisanship.)
The point here is not that absolutely everything is actually the state. The point is also not that there is no state. It’s that there are not firm lines. Amazon may be the state when it builds systems for the Pentagon even though it is also, clearly, a private company and not part of the state’s institutions or subject to the same kinds of political controls that state institutions are. Similarly, the state itself is not one smooth solid object (as in #3). But it seems obvious, common sense, that “the economy” is a thing, just as “public health” is a thing, etc., and both of these things are objects of state management/governance/power.
This makes it easy for political leadership to make claims on the basis of these other things as separate “objects.” I.e., “we need to take drastic action to save the economy.” So the impression of these divisions can be used to justify or legitimate state action. You can see this super clearly in the current coronavirus situation. How many times have we been told the US has to “reopen” for “the economy,” and how many times has it been pointed out that the government could just take its own economic measures to allow people to stay home--because “the economy” is not some separate object that works by itself. (I myself had to explain to a friend that the government couldn’t just switch the economy back on by “reopening.” I think we underestimate how powerful these conceptual divisions really are in people’s understanding of how the world works.)
So, therefore, “the state” is the effect of ideas and practices that make things that political leaders and institutions do seem like they form a freestanding, separate structure, a thing, that we call “the state.” It is the ensemble of all these pieces (as noted in #3), and said pieces often include things that are generally thought of as not the state; these lines between state/nonstate shift all the time. What matters is not where the line is at any given moment but what the particular configuration allows state power (including the consideration of force from #2 and the structural concerns from #1) to do.
The problem I have with this is that it doesn’t really account for state capacity very well, but that’s for another day because I haven’t figured it out via paper-writing yet.
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