faruzan after thinking shes successfully compartmentalized the 100 years of time she lost vs her robot and family that never stopped looking for her.

Choosing you as the most likely to give a honest and detailed answer. Feel free to delete, however.

When people are calling Israel a colony, what do they mean? The way I understand that word, a colony is land, controlled by some other country that's elsewhere and run by citizens of that country. That doesn't seem to be the case here, since most Israel citizens are only citizens of Israel, not something else, and there's no "main" country they're representing and can return to. Or are people using "colony" metaphorically here?

Before Tumblr mobs me - I don't like Israel and don't support it.

Israel began as a British colony of Palestine in the post WW1 era, around 1920. The people responsible for the genocide are almost entirely of European origin who were moved to Palestine after WW2 (in the 1940s and 1950s) to avoid returning to the homelands where they'd been given up to the nazis by their neighbors.

Today, however, the bulk of the colonization effort is managed by the US military industrial complex.

Now, there are many other people living in Israel, of many faiths and many ethnicities. The Israeli people, be they Jews or otherwise, are also not fans of the genocide, in much the same way the American people are not fans of US genocides.

But the israeli government exists almost entirely as a puppet for US and European colonial goals, and has done since the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in the 90s.

Prior to that, there was a brief period wherein the rightfully elected leaders of Israel sought peace in the region after throwing off the shackles of British colonialism, which again founded the country and only "ended" (on paper) in the 1950s.

Israel has been a colonial effort for about 2/3s of the century it has existed, including today.

Now, this is a simplified explanation, of course. For example, although it was was a colonial effort, the "return" of Jews to their "homeland" was also a refugee effort, and a repatriation effort.

Jews never really "stopped" being indigenous to the levant even in diaspora. This is extremely obvious if you've ever lived in a Jewish neighborhood, but may come as a shock to a lot of people used to thinking of the assimilated mask Jews wear in Christian societies as our "true" selves.

My family were nondiasporic Jews until me, which I gather is an... unusual perspective that many people don't see often. You'll have to take me at my word, I think, because it's difficult to explain. But Jews never actually "became white" the way people so desperately want to believe. Some jews learned to pass for white, yes, but that isn't the same thing.

Jews, even the Ashkenazim (the "white european" ones) have a right to return home the same as anyone. And not just because I'm a fan of open borders.

But here's the deal.

Mizrahim (Jews who remained in the middle east rather than living in diaspora) are literally treated as inferior, as "arabs" (a colonial term) regardless of religion or ethnicity. To be a Jew is not enough. You have to be the right kind. This is true of other Jews of Colour in Israel as well, often to an even greater extreme, as any Ethiopian Jew in Israel damned well knows.

This also... well, I've talked about it a bit before, but this summary is also casting a very cruel light on the concept of Jewish citizenship being automatically granted in the case of Jewish descent. Which isn't fair of me at all.

In a world without all the goddamned genocide, having a reduced immigration process for the children of emigrants is perfectly fucking common and normal and many countries do it, including the US.

And this also doesn't touch upon the critical political reality that Israel exists as a place for bigots to throw their jews away instead of straight up killing us.

So, okay, this got away from me.

Basically, Israel as a state is a colony of the US (today) and UK (historic), which is armed almost entirely by the US, and which attacks targets the US deems "of interest." The fact that the colony is populated by repatriated indigenous peoples doesn't really change that.

If anything, it deepens the horror, because many of the Jews involved in the genocide against Palestine genuinely (and fairly) believe that this is the last place on earth where a Jewish person can reasonably expect religious safety. Genuinely, and fairly, believe that it's a choice between "the genocide of all Jews globally or the elimination of a single '''Arab''' city."

They're wrong, but not irrational.

In a way, the existence of global antisemitism is the justification that fuels the ongoing palestinian genocide.

Though in practical terms, it is "fueled" by US weapons. The US wants to own Israel and use it as a launching off point for US violence in the region, without the US having to take the blame.

"See? It's all just poor, innocent Israel defending itself*!"

*(entirely with US weapons and often on US orders, often with weapons given to Israel rather than purchased, solely to further destabilize a religiously and financially significant region and furthermore to instill a sense of fear of Israel's neighbors and gratitude to the US)

For another example of a colony-of-the-repatriated, you can check out the history of civil war in Liberia, after the US just dumped a bunch of freed slaves there instead of killing them. Unsurprisingly, it went fucking Badly. However, because Liberia was not considered a "valuable" colony, less study tends to be done into the complexities of that.

Or, I mean, there's always "the life history of Osama Bin Laden" which is kind of like a one man speedrun of what the US is doing with all of Israel.

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will probably delete this later, but... saw a post yesterday that bugged the shit out of me. didn't want to add comments on it because g-d knows I don't need tumblr harassment in my life, of all things, but...

there is an incredibly Western impulse to say Israel is colonialist and therefore we should expect decolonization in that area to look like it did in South Africa or pretty much anywhere else that European nations colonized. and when you say this, it's like... tell me you have no grasp of Jewish history without telling me you have no grasp of Jewish history. tell me you think all Israelis are white colonizers without using those words.

you simply cannot expect that a nation largely composed of *refugees* and the *descendants of refugees* will be treated the same way white South Africans were. or should expect to be treated that way. Western leftist goyim have really taken the "Jews are White > Israel is White" thing way too far... even when we are, which is far less often than many think, we are more often than not treated as acceptable targets for violence because we are Jews. This is simply not true for White former British citizens. their historical experience is not our historical experience. violent antisemitism, including pogroms and massacres, was ALWAYS a feature of diaspora before the creation of the state of Israel, and it's naive to expect that violent antisemitism wouldn't also be a common feature of a post-Israel world. especially when Hamas had "death to the Jews" in its charter for ages, and the Houthis have it now, and Iran has something like it too and funds them both. and yes, I know Hamas took that out of its charter in 2018, but... if you think that the quiet part stops existing when you stop saying it out loud, then I have a bridge to nowhere I'd like to sell you.

like. metaphors have their time and their place. this is not it. some situations are simply not like every other situation that you think kind of looks similar to it on a surface level. I think Westerners in particular find it incredibly easy to look at conflicts in parts of the world they know very little about and go "oh yes, so x is just like y thing we have over here" and ... not everything is. and you'll walk yourself right into a trap of oversimplification if you do that. not to mention that there's a certain arrogance to saying that "x is like y, we solved y already, so why don't you just adopt our solution for x?" it's a kind of chauvinism to assume that x has no important features that Westerners didn't already account for in solving y. it's essentially saying that you think non-Westerners are backwards for not having implemented solution y already.

but most of all it just feels like goyische leftists in the West will tie themselves into all sorts of pretzel knots to feel ok adopting the same slogans as people who have told us and shown us, over and over, that they're interested in committing violence against Jewish people. what happened to "when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time"?

like... of course that's not what everyone who uses a certain slogan means by that. but there are a lot of people who do mean that. and when both those with and without violent intentions use the same slogan, we can't tell the difference between the two. so tell me, what's the cautious way to approach someone who has like a 1/3 chance of wanting to do you harm? on an interpersonal level, you avoid them.

like don't get me wrong - here's the official Online Jewish Disclaimer - I am very anti Likud, very anti Netanyahu, very anti war crimes no matter who is committing them. but I do not know or pretend to know how to solve this conflict and achieve a lasting peace. and I wish more people understood that you can't arrive at a real solution by erasing one party's current reality or historical experience.

Your favorite trolls character?

branch! hes literally me .. ouuaaagghhh........... his anxiousness is so familiar and his fear of abandonment is so real. ...... the part in trolls 3 when he was pushing poppy away and saying that she's "going to leave him eventually" too was so SHRIEKING AND CRYING SOUNDS. but especially when poppy reassured him and stuck by him... auuuoooohhhgh. do you feel me. like there was a youtube comment that said "not a kids movie making me feel lonely" like Yeah lol. i also kind of wish poppy apologized for constantly trashing his stuff ToT but whatevs (<- is so sad abt it but is being strong)

i also really love cooper and prince d .. . i thought cooper's little adventure in trolls 2 was so awesome and his family is sick as hell ... i thought trolls 2's message of how difference is important was so refreshing in an era of fantasy racism stories in kids' media often trying to erase these differences (kind of like in a "there's only one race.. the human race" way) instead of appreciating these differences.. and cooper's embrace of pop and funk kind of being like a metaphor of diaspora... was kind of surprised by the nuanced introduction of these concepts in this otherwise lighthearted and silly singing toy movie

also i quite like bridget and gristle... bridget is so sweet and i love her a lot and i actually kind of appreciate their crooked teeth because theyre so cute (i have crooked teeth and it makes me sad sometimes so this was appreciated tbh) plus she slays every time shes on screen so yeah. i like how shes so nonchalantly badass too like nobody comments on the fact shes sick as hell and i find that fucking hilarious

Why do you like Battlestar Galactia so much? ( genuine question, I didn’t even know it existed before I started following you and I’ve never played it, plus I like listening to people talk about stuff they really like)

Oh I love this ask 🥺🥺 here goes a love letter to BSG:

the mission: the goal of BSG is, in the writers' words, "the reinvention of the science fiction series." They set a very down-to-earth tone and cover serious themes from the beginning. I know that's a pretentious and ambitious thing for writers to say of their own work but I truly do think they succeeded and earned the right to say it. The story is extremely grounded. There are no aliens. Every bit of tech and why they use it is based on something real or plausible. The political philosophies and moral dilemmas of their society are very similar to what we see on the news every day.

the characters/actors: like I said, super grounded. The characters are all extremely flawed and complex, constantly making decisions most of us never will. From day 1, the actors had a collective goal to perform in a realistic style to match the weight of the story. Not everyone is equally talented, nor is every character equally interesting imo, but the show does contain some of the most convincing, unique, and intriguing performances I've ever seen in my life. The performances of Gaius, Kara, and Adama in particular stand out to me (in terms of acting, not necessarily character).

the world: the Cylons are some of the most intriguing antagonists I've ever seen. They are completely their own species, but they're very human. We get a steady, mysterious build of information about the Cylons throughout the show, which makes them feel nuanced as a culture, unpredictable as opponents, and thought-provoking as technology. The sci fi aspect is very intertwined with political commentary, which is true of all my favorite sci fi. It falls apart a little around the end of season 3 into season 4 but the highest points are so high I almost don't care.

the themes: where do I begin? To me it really feels like a big metaphor for diaspora, race, and of course, war and humanity. What makes us human? What makes us alive and what makes life worth living, especially in times of crisis? Whose lives have the most value in society? Who are we willing to sacrifice for "the greater good," and at what cost? What makes someone fit to make that decision? What makes someone fit to lead? These questions are posed in every episode, in subtle and obvious ways. The show is very philosophical and at times dark, which I think turns a lot of people off, but it's also heartwrenchingly redemptive. To me, that's life. It's a very honest picture of us, even with the clunky robots and bleeding spaceships. ❤️

There is a person on IG that looks to be of East Asian descent who is a hobbyist model. They have recently taken to wearing hanfu in at least 3 photoshoots I have seen to date.

All of the hairstyles are Wrong. It may look kind of right or okay at first glance, but when you look a bit closer they just seem just a little bit off. I do not know how to explain this Exactly Precisely except for pointing out that in varying cases, it is a) too wide; b) not enough accessories in the appropriate places (you do not make a big hairstyle with a lot of empty spaces normally unless it is to put accessories in. In dynastic eras the more elaborate the hairstyle the more pins you have in it. This is because the pins hold the style and the various bits that go into that style in place. So a great big empty space is Unrealistic because it looks like Something Is Missing, unless it is a simple enough hairstyle that it can feasibly be held up with minimal pins.), for instance having pins in the front but no adornments in the back; c) in the latest post I just saw, the front sections of their hair are just Down while there are braids to the back of it. This Does Not Happen. At most you are allowed some strands of hair escaping at the front, you Cannot have whole front sections of your hair on each side down. Or else they are Too Tall and just Straight Up. Unrealistically so. It is just Wrong.

I have never seen such Wrong hairstyles in hanfu before. It Bothers me so much. Even just leaving their hair down would be better.

I realise after I have written this that it is just sad and kind of upsetting to see when people (diaspora) are trying to reconnect with their heritage and are either misinformed or miss the mark in terms of 'Actually, That's... Not It' somehow. It also annoys me because this can go on to misinform other people not from our culture as to what something is or looks like.

Like I understand that diasporic Chinese food for instance is its own thing, but like - I saw a post somewhere where a Chinese diaspora person had written in a novel all poetically about the way a particular Chinese character supposedly came to be written as it is (told, of course, to them by a 'Master Wang') - they said the word 黑 ('black', pronounced hēi) is made up of a mouth (口) bifurcated by and on top of earth/ground (土) being heated over fire (火), even going so far as to make metaphors about it.

This is completely incorrect. It's actually a field (田) on top of the earth (土) and fire below (火). It cannot be a mouth (口) because it does not account for the two dots/点 in the 'mouth' at the very top of the word 黑. Just Googling it on Wiktionary will show you this.

But it's... published in an English-language book now, this. And I came across it because some other Chinese diaspora person had shared this page, commenting that this author 'writes so evocatively of characters that it gives them such feeling' or something to that effect. When it is flat out Wrong.

It's just in the same vein of things as like - once a Chinese diasporic friend said they were looking at buying some hanfu and wanted my opinions on which, and proceeded to show me something on Etsy that, at a glance, was immediately clear to me that it wasn't hanfu; it was more Japanese (the belt/sash was wrong, it was too wide and fastened differently iirc, something like that). Or like when I and my dad wore hanfu for Chinese New Year back home in Sg, and my uncle and several other people commented like, 'Wah, wearing kimono ah/why wearing Japanese stuff?'

Like... I understand that reconnecting with heritage is a tricky thing, especially when you don't have a lot of background, which is kind of the whole thing, in many cases; and that it is a very personal thing and that in some cases as diaspora it is completely about transforming or making something new of it. But at the same time, some things really are 'right' or 'wrong', in the sense that some things do fall within a 'Yes this is how it looks like/is done' and 'Oh that's not quite how it is' circle. Like it just wouldn't be true to say that, oh, idk, Chinese people believe that the Jade Emperor is the One God. The Jade Emperor is one of the immortals we have in our lore/believe in! But it's not true that we think there's only The One God. Or something like - God forbid, wearing the collar crossed right over left (only done at funerals after the person is Dead).

You are free to break the rules - but only if you know them well enough first to know what the rules Are.

I'm not sure if this is exactly the right place to say this, but I don't know if there is. And you're a smart person and critical thinker who has talked about this before. If this is totally weird, you can just delete it ofc. I've never properly watched Supergirl but I started reading fanfic around the time my mental health got real bad so it was a comfort thing I didn't bring too much thought to. I really identify with Lena and in the past, part of me has understood her actions-

and I know that they're wrong. The anti-alien rhetoric is obviously an allegory for racism or homophobia. She's violated people's basic human rights. And I'm scared that I'm a bad person because sometimes, I kind of get it. Which is insane because i'm a lesbian enby of color, i mean i get targeted by most of the -ist/ism actions. And I'm also too tired to think about things critically all the time. Supercorp was my comfort fic, content thing-

I knew it was problematic (the whole James thing makes me sick to my stomach, scared and sad) but I didn't know that Lena as a character was written that way. The metaphors never really clicked in my head because I never thought about it, but now I feel absolutely horrible about myself because I like and identify with Lena. I'm not really sure how to move on from here- I'm just tired. I wish there could be just one thing, one piece of media that wasn't prejudiced (granted sg is not the place to go if you want decent rep and the like) and all of those things I said earlier. Its just me somehow trying to justify how I felt and empathized with something I shouldn't have. So yeah, sorry that was really long. I hope you have a lovely day- sorry for the spam

FIRST of all, you’re fine, babe! Both in sending me this and in enjoying The Bad Media. That’s my thesis here: You’re fine. With this in mind, let’s unpack this big ol suitcase:

We’re living in a fandom moment where more than ever before, we’re thinking about the ideas we consume in fiction and how they may or may not affect us. This is a net positive! Fiction is not reality, but it undeniably impacts it, so for this and many other reasons, we should always think critically about what resonates with us and why. Does this mean dissecting every facet of something to find all the ways it might fall in line with oppressive power structures? Absolutely not.

You, as an individual, do not owe anyone an explanation for why you enjoy anything. Period. How you relate to a given character or why you like them is nobody's business but your own.

Supergirl, as a piece of media, is singularly awful in its lackluster lipservice to progressivism while simultaneously refusing to deliver any progressive themes. Socially and politically, it is a useless liberal wet dream. Kara is an immigrant from a dead culture working as the muscle for a secret FBI offshoot with zero accountability for all of the other aliens in diaspora she has rounded up and dumped into a cell without trial. Alex is allegedly a lesbian, but the key points of her endgame relationship are constantly deemed not important enough to get screen time, which is made even more absurd when examined from the angle that this series is marketed directly toward LGBT people. An embarrassing percentage of villains on this show are women of color, which is particularly loud when there are only 2 women in the main cast who aren't white. And "main" is extremely generous, given that Kelly is just there to Give Advice Good and everything M'gann says and does is as dry as toast.

My point here is that the whole show is rotted to its roots, and whatever quietly libertarian or even fascism-enabling bullshit they push onto Lena in a given week is par for the crusty, shitty course. Kara deciding that she's ok with the alien detection device because "there are bad aliens" is a lovely (read: awful) microcosm of why this show sucks so fucking hard. "People are entitled to their opinions" is for debates on whether pineapple goes on pizza, not for whether we should casually out, endanger, and disenfranchise our [insert minority metaphor here] because some of them are mean.

But what I would love for this fandom to wrap its head around, and what I hope you understand, anon, is that just because it happens on the show, doesn't mean we have to give a rat's ass about it. What the hell is The Canon, anyway? Especially in the case for Supergirl, which can't even get its own continuity right. Especially for an IP that has been rebooted dozens of times before and will be rebooted again in the future. We can just decide that Lena realized the horrible injustices she enabled through her position of power. We can even decide that they just didn't happen at all! This is all fake. It's not set in stone. Who came up with it, anyway? A network with a list of buzzwords they want included and a couple of D-tier showrunners cranking down caffeine to meet an absurdly tight deadline. It's not special. I can guarantee that you care about it infinitely more than they do, and you haven't even watched the damn show.

On a more personal level, people who are hurt, depressed, or traumatized have always and will always look for themselves in fiction. Myself included! And despite what lofty platitudes there may be on the matter, suffering does not make us kind. It does not make us better. Sometimes it's just suffering. Often it pulls us further from who we are meant to be. Often it just makes us "worse."

Trauma has made Lena emotionally brittle. A lifetime of manipulation and abuse has taught her to compartmentalize herself and lock her feelings behind a maze of doors. When she does let love in, she accepts it so wild and vulnerable that she can't see the red flags behind the rosy lenses. She latches so hard onto people she deems virtuous that she holds them to a standard none could fulfill. Her pain has to go somewhere, so it oozes out of her, into Non Nocere, into the post-reveal rift. She's a powder keg, and Kara spent 4 years shoveling more gunpowder onto the pile while holding the match between her teeth.

And despite these fatal flaws that make perfect sense through the eyes of Lena's trauma, she is so full of love. Like Kara, her suffering did not make her kind. She is kind in spite of her suffering. These are the characters we are drawn to when we're hurting. Lena’s trauma is an inextricable part of her, but it is not all of her, and neither are her mistakes.

There truly is not and never will be a piece of media that is absolutely innocent of the harmful structures thrust upon us by society, because we ourselves also participate in that society whether we are critical of it or not, whether we strive to change it or not. I'm flawed. You're flawed. Bettering ourselves is not a journey toward an ultimate destination of perfection. It is a garden we nurture in an endless labor of love because the joy that comes from seeing it flourish and change vastly outweighs the work we put into it and the weeds popping up around its unkempt edges. This is a lesson Lena herself could probably stand to internalize. Probably with lots and lots of therapy. Lots. And lots.

So, to circle back to the start of this? You're fine. You recognized the logic in a traumatized character's mistakes because our own gravest errors more often than not stem from the ways we have been harmed in the past. It's what makes Lena (or, at the very least, the many adaptations of Lena that exist in this fandom) a good character. She is, to her core, characterized proof that a crumbling foundation and poisonous soil do not define us. Which is why watching her heal and grow and learn a healthier kind of love is so, so wonderful.

In closing, I think it's worth mentioning that being critical of media does not mean that we stop enjoying the parts of it we like. There is a lot of gold to be pulled from the steaming pile of shit that is CW Supergirl, and that's why we're all here in the first place. So I really hope you can continue to enjoy it in whatever way makes you smile <3

I'm white, but my mother is of an Eastern European ethnicity, my father isn't btw, and my family lives as diaspora in a different country. She was always super strict with me, I wasn't even allowed to play with many neighbour kids bc she was absolutely paranoid something would happen. There's a lot about Turning 🔴 that felt relatable, and honestly, in the worst ways. While I still care for my family, I definitely wish there'd been a part of my life that was like Ming realising she fucked up.

Anonymous asked:

Turning Red definitely feels like a movie for immigrant children, or 1st gen diaspora. Even if you're not Asian, or even Chinese, a lot of things are relatable, especially the stronger focus on the home-culture, and focus on the family that's available where you live. I know a lot of parts are obviously 100% part of the Chinese culture thing where family, and parent worship is already pretty intense, but I don't really think it detracts much from the general "FAMILY" aspect for general diaspora

First anon: I remember being allowed to play with neighboring kids and even go over to other kids houses, but not after, like, 2 o'clock and definitely no sleepovers because of that cultural paranoia combined with me being a child in the 90s where Stranger Danger was in its second wave.

And while I can understand the concern there, there are other things that my mother did/has done/does that I feel like I could start healing from if I just got a genuine apology. Rather than either a turn around ('Do you know what I used to go through back home?'/'After all the struggling I've done--'/'Why are you lashing out at me all of a sudden?!') or a half-hearted non-apology ('Well. I'm sorry that you feel that way.') that a lot of children from immigrant households know far too well.

Second anon: I've been hearing that conversation a lot, particularly with the Red Panda in the movie being a multifaceted metaphor for puberty and Mei's heritage. Particularly the latter with such lines as 'we decided to come to a new world... where what was once a blessing became a minor inconvenience' and 'the more you let it out, the harder it will be to control'. So, yes, Domee Shi did a really good job of creating a story that so many people, including people who grew up in similar environments that she did, can relate to.

Title: Ada or Ardor

Author: Algis Budrys

Rating: 2/5 stars

I thought I enjoyed Budrys as a science fiction writer a decade ago, and was looking forward to revisiting Ada. But Budrys has since become a kind of pastiche of a science fiction writer. Or at least a science fiction writer from the mid-50s, a kind that would be familiar to people in that era. A Budrys style I suppose you could call it -- a certain amount of formal playfulness, and a certain amount of stylistic playfulness as well. It's good stuff, and fun to read, but I can't stand Budrys the person, so even reading his science fiction can't make much of an impact.

My main problem with Budrys' work is that he is very fond of elaborate science fictional conceits, a lot of which seem like attempts to provide a new and exciting way to look at things. (In fact, I can't find any good examples of the kind of science fiction novel I would want to read and find Budrys' Ada does a reasonable job of providing. I guess maybe that means I like Budrys' science fictional conceits less than the conceit-focused Budrys himself does.)

Here is a representative example: in Ada, our heroine (her name, at the beginning of the novel, is Ada) is a pilot, and is recruited by an artificial intelligence project, at a time before AIs were common. There is some explanation for why such a project is important, but to cut the story short, AIs have now become commonplace, and in Ada's present-day story it turns out that they are being deployed in an aggressive war. But before we get to the war, our heroine ends up in a kind of interdimensional war, and while fighting off her enemies she gets trapped in a mysterious kind of prison or "bubble" whose nature is never explained (the bubble looks like this, and seems to be surrounded by this:

And I'm sure I could find similar photos of things if I tried).

The "conceit" is that the bubble is an extremely large, powerful, complex space probe -- but it doesn't need to be. The technology necessary for building the bubble is already being deployed in a number of practical (not science fictional!) uses, and the bubble is basically a very powerful computer system, not a spaceship. So if we could get our hands on it, there's no reason we couldn't use it to fight war after war, or conquer planets after planets, and thus change the whole course of history in a way that doesn't depend at all on the "conceit" -- indeed, the "conceit" wouldn't change anything except by pointing out how much of the future has been made possible by the technology the bubble actually uses.

The conceit is like a device in an old-fashioned movie -- there is nothing particularly special about it, but if you don't think about the conceit, it looks and sounds like a good old-fashioned movie, and you can forget about the conceit and you have a good old-fashioned movie. (Or to go from the movie metaphor to the one I just gave to the conceit, it has the feel of an "infinite loop" in the sense of an "infinite loop" in one of those video game levels where a monster keeps spawning infinitely. You could stop the monster by getting rid of the power supply, and then you would be left with some very uninteresting level of the game. But if you think about the power supply, you may want to try other stuff first, and when you try other stuff, you'll often wind up in exactly that same position, endlessly looping, because you never got rid of the power supply. And of course that's not a good way to play a video game!)

Budrys loves to write conceits like this -- and it's one of the reasons I liked the "conceit" of his Ada, which I thought was a novel in itself. But after reading more of his other work, it's now clear that he does this all the time, and I hate it. I've said the conceit from Ada, and I'll say the one from Diaspora, which is not much better, and I'll quote the conceit from Lanterns because it's the most over-the-top:

To make this dream real would take vast and powerful forces. Such, however, are available only to the rulers, who have the wherewithal to create them. All we need for this dream to become reality are the minds which can imagine it. Those minds must be those of the rulers.

In the meantime, there are those who believe the dream to be a fraud. There are also those who will refuse to accept this as anything other than an elaborate joke which has been played on themselves. But it is only an elaborate joke if the dream is believed to be an elaborate joke. They who would not believe it are already in control.

I read this, and laughed out loud. I can find no sense, however, that any of the people named would be less "in control" than anyone else. They are not in control! There is nothing they can do about it! What are they in control of, if not reality?

But then, here is the thing. Budrys writes in this sort of conceit-loving way because that's what you do in science fiction -- which Lanterns is science fiction. But you don't do that in real life! In real life, the science fictional conceit is usually used as a cheap gimmick to advance some kind of message. For instance, in Diaspora, the alien creatures, the Vhoth, are not in control of the bubble. In Lanterns, the people who are in control of the bubble are not in control, and they know it -- they believe that what they do is an elaborate joke, a trick or a prank on "the rest of us," which means that the "rulers" can't be blamed for the actions of their servants, and, I suppose, can't be held accountable for the actions of their servants.

Budrys' science fiction has little to say about the nature of reality except in the usual sense that it is a collection of the results of our scientific efforts, and is often in a certain sense anti-realist. In his novels, nothing is "real" in the sense that it exists independently, or that people have an innate knowledge of its nature and nature's ways. The conceit is often used as a cheap gimmick to "make things real" in this sense, so that what is really going on in the story can be treated as a kind of fantasy, with its own special kind of reality.

And in his "conceits," Budrys uses the conceit as a sort of gimmick in this way. The conceit in the bubble, for instance, is like the one in Ada -- it is the product of the power of a complex system (the bubble) which actually doesn't need to be there in order to achieve some practical ends. But since the "conceit" is a gimmick for writing science fiction, it would have to be used as a gimmick, and not presented as a product of the bubble's actual nature. So instead of something like "it was a great spaceship," we get stuff like

The bubble was not some artificial prison. It could provide a place in which to perform computations and receive data in an environment free of radiation.

Which is a perfectly good concept, and not obviously related to the conceit in the bubble. But the conceit makes it not obviously unrelated, and Budrys himself has made it seem like the conceit is directly related to the conceit.

The problem is that Budrys treats the conceit as something like a gimmick or a toy, or a device, which is how it should be viewed if we want to make it into something that tells us something about the characters and the world it's supposedly an emblematic symbol of. But the conceit, in its real world, is just a device. It doesn't point us toward anything in the bubble, or even within the book's own fictional reality, except to the fact that Budrys enjoys using this device. Which is why I can't enjoy reading his book. I want to read it for the actual world, and I don't want to read it for the fictional world.

SHANG-CHI (2021) Review Pt. 3

This section will focus more on the potential cultural impact and reflections of the movie.

Good things first. This was a great movie for Asian-American representation. On face value, it was a huge rather well-promoted movie (in my opinion, but that could just be my algorithms) under arguably the most internationally renown franchise today, Marvel. It featured empowered and attractive Asian male leads, empowered and attractive Asian female leads, a glorious, dreamy romance between two of them, and multiple humanizing familial relationships that don't simply recycle the old "modern freedom vs oppressive tradition". Each Asian character is a fully fleshed person, as is due, and clear authentic effort is made to celebrate their backgrounds, from the action to settings to costumes to language to the jokes.

And the Asian-American jokes land very well, especially the ones that highlight how different each individual Asian-American 's experience, and familiarity with their heritage, can be. Central to this is Katy, of course, essentially the audience surrogate, the audience being both nonAsians and "standard" Asian-Americans. She is bad at Chinese, even as her own grandmother speaks it. She defies her mom's (gentle) expectations of her, she is amazed and somewhat intimidated by her heritage in full form. The other characters who are closer to their native culture are gentle with her unfamiliarity: Shang-Chi walks her through pronunciation, Ronny Chieng's character assures her "Don't worry I speak ABC", and even Wenwu treats her kindly as a guest, and doesn't put her down for her Americanness. Well other than the patronizing storytelling tone, but that's the villainous patronizing, not the "you are uncultured" patronizing. Even in the village, they look down on her mostly on account of her not having martial arts skills and being ambitionless, than of her Americanness.

Similarly, Shang-Chi's struggle with his father did not use his time in America, and his potential Americanizing, as much of a pain point. I appreciate this, and the gentleness to Katy, greatly, as it dances around the culture conflict narrative that so frequently plagues other Asian American media (looking at you Crazy Rich Asians). As such, Wenwu is not evil because he is more Chinese/traditional, he is so because of the very human pain of losing his wife. Also he was a ruthless immortal warlord. And his children are not good due to their separation from their heritage; they are good because of their ties to each other and their mother, and her heritage from the village, which also traditional. Like an equation, the culture on the good and bad sides cancel out, and you are left with a largely culture-neutral narrative, while Chinese culture itself is shown off more.

Most of the characters are Asian, the non-Asians are very tertiary. In this, the movie functions as normal Asian media does; in removing the racial differences, the characters level with each other as people, instead of as representatives of their heritage. Speaking of native Asian media, I will now explain how this movie, for all of its virtues, will still serve the same ultimate function as Crazy Rich Asians and Mulan in terms of cross-national relations.

This was an American movie. Featuring Asian culture, yes. But an American movie nonetheless. Its action scenes would probably stand up well against native Chinese media, but its overarching presentation would be seen as incredibly cheesy, and probably somewhat patronizing, to a Chinese viewer. What are those costumes? What are those Ta Lo "traditional clothes"? Straw Huts? Why the fuck does Death Dealer have face paint? What are those ridiculous hook swords and tassle helmets? Oh hey its the mythical beasts they see in every wuxia fantasy movie.

I liked a comparison I read on social media; it is like presenting orange chicken as a dish specially made for your Chinese guest. The dish may be good, but that is besides the point; it is insulting for you to expect them to appreciate your facsimile of their culture. In this metaphorical scenario, you may be a Chinese-American, but your weird attempt to reference your heritage only highlights the divide. They eat better Chinese food all the time anyways, this orange chicken may be a direct downgrade. Did you expect them to be happy just because you, the American, made it for them? Are you looking down on them?

It is better for you to make a pizza or a fettuccini alfredo for them. This equivalent would be the World of Warcraft movie, with no Asian references whatsoever.

I remember when Avatar: The Last Airbender came out, and my 3rd grade self was so excited to see the Chinese armor designs on the fire nation, the kung-fu inspired bending styles, and more. But now, I feel a bit strange seeing how much obsession is given to this series by the Asian-American community. For all its acclaim and AsAm representation, it is virtually unknown to native Asians, unlike the notorious Resident Evil live-action movie series. I wonder, if most Chinese-Americans had watched more Chinese wuxia and fantasy, they would be as excited about ATLA?

This is also related to how Westerners are discovering Tony Leung for the first time, and some Asians say "we been knew". But how many AsAm actually did know? For how many Asian-Americans did it take Shang-Chi to introduce them to this legend, and his previous body of work?

Why was I so excited to be represented in a cartoon, even if I did watch Journey to the West growing up? Could it be because finally it was something with Asians in it that the kids around me also watched? Maybe. I could go on and on about Sun Wukong, but nobody cared, while Prince Zuko was somebody everyone knew and rooted for.

So in this way, Shang-Chi, despite being mildly offensive to the motherland (for which the movie does not even have a release date), is still very important and positive to us stateside. I feel a little bad for Simu that his homeland may not appreciate his greatest work so far, but maybe it doesn't bother him that much; he is now a hero to almost the entire Asian-American community. I hope Tony Leung can be the movie's saving grace for native markets. I also hope that Chinese watchers would understand why this movie is important for the diaspora, even if they don't enjoy the movie itself.

Oh, and finally, I hope Chinese-Americans don't hold their motherland in contempt for disliking this movie. It's not for them! Cut them the slack! And go watch their movies and media! It may not have jokes about the immigrant experience, but it is effective representation. Watch Asian movies! With your family, with your friends! Western media is not the center of the universe, and it never deserved to be. Put more people who look like you on your own screen.

I saw a lot of Tiktoks of nonAsians (and Asians) doing kung-fu moves coming out of the theater. I...am not sure about this? I guess martial arts is once more the vehicle by which we get positive representation in Western media, as is tradition. The legacy of Bruce Lee, of Jackie Chan, of Jet Li. Should I celebrate? Martial arts are dope as fuck but...that's not all we are...well. The appropriate tropey thing to say is: "This is just the beginning."

Part 4 will be my rewrite ideas. I will write it on my blog and link it here later.

On Eren’s choices and Ymir’s curse

Ah, yes, I am back from Attack on Titan hell and I have thoughts. Major spoilers, do not read until you finished the manga.

This essay will be about Eren’s “choices” or the lack thereof when it comes to attacking/defining/reshaping/destroying humanity and how much of this could be read as Ymir’s curses.

First, let’s talk about what undergirds his course of action:

the injustice of historical trauma being justified for modern time apartheid:

Eren traveled long and far to realize how much the Eldian outside of Paradis was being discriminated against and held as noncitizens in multiple lands and nations, so much that they have to renounce their “belonging” to their identity and claim their personhood only “accidental” Eldian and not “truly” one like those from the Paradis island (as seen in

I take that the non-Paradis Eldian resemble the Jewish diaspora in the ways they are persecuted and subjects of ethnic cleansing, and a recent example would be Muslim people, in how they were put into camps all over the world, forced to live in ghettos, hated for the fear of their religion and their gods.

The hatred for Eldians supposedly started because Eldian leaders become power hungry and warmongers who colonized, massacred, and dominated Marleyans for 1,700 years. This is a debt that Eren, unlike Zeke, was NOT ready to pay, given that he is also only an Ymir subject in name like the vast majority of the Eldian population and was not in anyway responsible for the greeds of old, powerful royals. Unlike descendants of King Frizt, whose genealogy comes from passed down memories of literally cannibalism and war crimes for generations that destabilize all the inheritors in fear, shame, and disgust that they would not dare to do anything but die with the memory, Eren is a regular boy with so much indignation, feels so unjust for his loved ones and people who had to bear the cross they didn’t yield. As such, he refuses to see the current treatment of Eldians as just, and this marks the goal (not the solution) of his plan: to not let Paradis Eldians suffer any longer. So he does what he thinks he needs to do in order to advance that goal, all the while NOT KNOWING the outcome, only WISH for it.

Now this is not a metaphor for why Nazis or white settler colonialism and slave owners in North America shouldn’t pay reparations for what their government has done, because their descendants still uphold power over their historically subordinated subjects and perpetuate a system that does so. AND, the main character squads or people we think as ”good guys” here do defy the monarchy and old power toward new future for Eldians, so their refusal to align with old Eldians is nothing sort of revolutionary.

Now let’s talk about Ymir’s will and her curse.

Ymir’s will and the timeloop aka self-fulfilling prophecy and Watchmenian godly time:

If you watch HBO Watchmen (2019) you will know what I mean by godly time. Dr. Manhattan in the show experience all times and all dimensions AT ONCE, so thing happens simultaneously for him in all the worlds he occupies, and he is in every world talking to everyone. Also, he is a god, so he doesn’t follow human emotions, reasons, values, things are just actions set in motions toward outcomes. Nothing matters, because Gods as beings are not a set of ideologies, but circumstances that are willed by people. And humans are trully uncontrollable, ungovernable, down to the last one of them and their human interests.

What does it mean to say that Eren bears the will of god and Ymir?

So Eren went ahead and woke up the Wall Titans to have them rumble the earth. Did he do that because he wants to kill people? He doesn’t will it, but accepts that as a side effect. Did he want to scare other nations? He knows that if he sets this in motion, uncontrollable things would happen, disregards of what he wants or plans. It’s not like he can just reroute the Titans then park them back up in the wall, because there’s no going back, even if time is looping, the future is always in the process of being written. Inevitable, he said, was the course of action that he took and yet he goes through with it because he doesn’t believe in the inevitability of human bowing down to fate. Zeke’s plan was to make all Ymir subject sterile just so they couldn’t reproduce-and Eren thought of Historia and her bloodline that had already defied their fate (of becoming host for the founding Titan thus ends the family affair of eating their family members), and he thought of his parents, and all the comrades whose bloodline ends with them in their quest to freedom. Zeke’s self-imposed role of god of nothing does not interests Eren. He wanted more. And he saw the difficulty of achieving freedom in the last couple years he had when the deep rooted racism against Eldians by the Marleyans were also equipped by state militarism and the overall brainwashing machine in all aspects of life that literally turned children into loyal warriors who want to die violent death and adults who pushed their children there so they can live a sorry ass life. He saw the problem in all, and had no solutions, no moral judgements, only power to rupture this world anew.

At one point, it is the godly power of Ymir that affects Eren, her will that determines what Eren can do based on the memories he could see through her, and she CHOSE destruction. A lot of folks I saw was bewildered by the biggest revealing that Ymir was just an enslaved girl with her tongue cut off and think all was caused by her blind loyalty to her abuser. They also read the Ymir’s curse (die after 13 years) as nonexistent because she’s not a goddess who struck a deal with the earth devil but the first human to be blessed by the gift of life, to regenerate and to change life forms. This is where my reading, I think, will differ from a lot of people.

I dont think Ymir loves the king. I think Ymir’s curse exists. I think she cursed the Eldian king with the thing she knows will destroy all the future generations to come: a monstrous power, a literal man-eating power that will only be used for destruction that so long as anyone has it they become the enemy of humanity. Ymir did not know peace in her entire life, not a single person was nice to her even the slaves, every single one sought out to live a sorry ass life and sacrificed children to avoid violence unleashed onto them. You see that times and times again, from the original story of Ymir being singled out by grown men and women as releasing the pigs, to the men hunting her for sport, to the king using her bodies to the last bone, committing unforgivable violence forcing his daughters to consume her raw flesh, and they grew up to become adults who would make their children eat their raw flesh to generate power. You see that in the story of Eren, Mikasa, and Armin, who became orphaned child soldiers and adults who have seen death around them keep pushing them to be solutions for an ancient crisis even they know nothing about. You see that in the Marleyan Eldians who wish their kids would become warriors so they can become some model minorities and leaving the interment camps. Over, and over again, the cycle of violence is willed and carried out by people, no matter the shapes and forms. Of course, this is a nihilistic view that does not take into account critical perspectives that could work out, realistically, what types of oppressions and injustice that each group deals with (i imagine in real life there would be groups of critical Marleyans who resists their government and other types of social movements in order to end apartheid against the Eldian diaspora, and that Marleyan as a military state does have to rule their subjects with democratic laws and whatnot, but vengeance cannot be a guiding principle for modern society), but to engage in the right and wrong discourse is to literally disregard the entire theme of Attack on Titan.

So for 2000 years Ymir, in the form of an unloved child, consumed by greed and apathy, set into motion that the fate of the Eldian tribe will grow so big, so expansive, so powerful that their enemies will rise somewhere along history. And they will never know peace. Not until she meets another person who rages on her behalf, who understands the pain shes going through, to come and beg her to let go. When Eren comes to tell her she is free, it is not from the bondage of a ruler, a master, but from her bind to what he had done unto her, thats when she can rest. Let me make it clear, Ymir is not a slave to Frizt and the royal family, she is a slave to more than 2000 years of unforgivable injustice and silent scream, when all the people who have been trampled on bear the bloodline that was forcibly taken from her only ask her to help them, and not a single person speaks the truth on her behalf. She rages, and rages, and rages, and the humans created out of her legacy against her will, suffer. And she, the good child that wants freedom for the pigs, at one point believes that for her rage and curse she can no longer be loved. Not until she sees another girl coming to kill the monster who had carried out her will, with love. Eren can be loved, privately, quietly, for all the monstrosity he had unleashed onto humanity. And so can Ymir, be free, be loved, be at peace after all of eternity. She can leave this realm.

I wish Ymir’s perspective could have been shown more through the manga, but I don’t think it is not there. It is also a meta thing for AoT to let readers come up with their own reading of “freedom” and “justice” and ways to repair ancient hate. The events in the book, in a large scale, are not justifications for the actions taken, but rather a set of events that are connected, willed, and carried out against thousands of other possibilities, to the point of inevitable. Choices are always taken with or without true understanding of the context that would define such choices as right or wrong. And if you dig a little deeper, all the contexts that have the power to define decisions as right or wrong end up being created out of ambivalent decisions, as well. So much that the only thing you learn out of this story is this simple truth: attack on titan is the attack on humanity.

(this ask is in response to your question about what other people think is the unsaid thing in your poem, and i'll get to that! but first, a tangent:) i always get offended when people called poetry pretentious because i felt like any assessment of authenticity of any poem misses the point of poetry altogether? idk if that makes sense anymore, though, bc i see poetry in a different way altogether. bc we as poets, i think, are scared, so we dress everything up and go in circles around the point. what a poem is about is not what is written but what we have no choice but to leave unwritten, etc.

the best example i've personally experienced is when i wrote a pantoum in response to my grandmother's death. but when i read it now, i realize that the center of the poem was not my grief over her death, but actually my regret of not having anything substantial enough to grieve over. in the poem, i build the lore of my grandmother from ground up, because i never really saw her and never really knew her and never really knew how to miss her. that sounds gruesome when i type it out, but that's just one of realities of being a product of diaspora and being so separated from one's "homeland" i guess 😐 anyways. this poem was inventive but not authentic, but the truly authenticity lies in what i never wrote (i wish i had something to miss you by). does that make any sense?

moving on!! from your poem, what i pull most from this poem is that you fear that you often see much more than is actually there, and that too much of what you perceive is tinted by wishful thinking & imagination than actual reality. i do not know if this even a fragment of what you meant! perhaps i am just projecting! but here is a too-long response to your question 💖

hi! once again i find myself in the position of apologizing for not responding faster, i promise it's nothing to do with you. i'm just super overwhelmed with school and anxiety and social situations and all of that and it makes my spoons run out way quicker.

i agree with that assessment of poetry. the point of poetry is not to tell a truth... the point of poetry is to get as close as you can to that truth without getting burned. at least that's what it feels like to me. as a poet i make everything a metaphor and a simile and i don't say anything plainly, because then i'd have to confront it. i'm not repressing my feelings to my own detriment—rome is burning. and so on. pretension does not become poetry and neither does honesty. you're right. it's about what you have to leave unwritten.

i'm sorry to hear about your grandmother's death, my condolences. (i know this may sound hollow, but it's all i know how to say). unfortunately i recognize a lot of the feelings you talked about in this part of the ask. it's hard when you lose a family member that you realize you didn't really know. and the separation from your homeland (where you feel like you're supposed to be, where you might want to be more than the place you are) can make it worse for you. this is all to say that it makes perfect sense. but i also think that you did write what you say you never did. it's like dark matter—we can see it by the effect it had on everything else.

as for what you've said about my poem... i know different people get different things from art (to quote taylor, these songs were once about my life they are now about yours) but i can't help but feel that you're right. the entire poem is shrouded by disbelief.

Cuties/Mignonnes, from the project to the meaning and international public interactions

OK Let’s talk about it. 

Let me tell you what Cuties is really about, the meaning behind it and what you need, as an international public, to understand it properly.

/!\ Spoilers needed. 

So Mignonnes/Cuties is French-Senegalese movie produced by Bien ou Bien Production in collaboration with Netflix for international distribution. Maimouna Doucouré is an award winning director, she’s french-senegalese, 35 years old, grew up with a dad and two mothers surround by a big religious family. Nothing wrong, just a little girl having thoughts and dreams like any others. 

Mignonnes, her very first long metrage, is based on a study she conducted for the project. She interviewed hundreds of young people with her team (pedopsychologist included) to collect a lot of infos and ressources to built a movie dealing with young people anxiety, sexual discovering, bullying, social media and young black people representation in movies. 

I. Story telling from someone who watched it.

Amy is 11 year old, she came in France with her mom and little brother. While hidden, she discovered that her dad is in Senegal and will soon come back with a second wife as it is authorized by Islam and accepted in Senegal. Her mom and aunt don’t tell her anything but she saw her mom crying about the topic, not knowing what’s happening, she ressents her dad and her condition as a refugee, the typical “it was better where we were before”. 

Her family is muslim, she wore a hijab to her religious ceremonies and practice like she was told to, without the opportunity to do otherwise. In her building there’s a girl, Angelica, she has a rebellious side in opposition to her workaholics parents and she dances hip-hop style which Amy has never saw. She befriend her and her circle of friends and decided to dance with them at a local championship. In order to learn the dance and prove to them she was “cool”, she stole her cousin’s phone, got herself instagram and started relooking herself as a young woman instead of the pre-teen girl style she got before.  But, she gets her periods. She’s afraid, she’s anxious, but most of all she doesn’t understand because nobody told her. Her aunt take care of her telling her “you’re an adult now” and how she wish she’ll live a beautiful life like they are. This is a problem as Amy doesn’t know what it is to be “an adult” nor does she know what it is to grow up, and the only roles model she has at home are her sad mom and her ultraconservative aunt. So she starts acting out, comparing herself to more developped girls, tries to be like them and starts mimicing them for their dances. While fighting for the phone she stoled with her cousin, she locks herself in the bathroom and posts an intimate photo of her on instagram as a last proof she’s a woman. Obviously, she’s getting bullied in school for that, her mom come, slap her across the cheek, call her names and ground her.  Amy became depressed and in her anxiety, tries to reach out for her friends who turned their back on her so they won’t be associated with her.  Nonetheless, she succeed into entering a championship with her former-friends and are disqualifies due to highly innapropriate behaviour on scene.  She go back quickly to her house during a panic attack, her mother comfort her telling her she doesn’t have to attend her father’s wedding if she doesn’t want to. Reassured, she skip the wedding and go play with kids her age. -END-

II. Producing and interpretation. 

DISCLAIMER : Self-made interpretations as someone who’s into thoughtfull movies. It may changes from one person to another. 

As sais before, it was produced by Bien ou Bien Production which a french production corporation based in Bordeaux. They are producing movies dealing with diversity, social issues, minority representation and religious debunking. They also produced Doucouré’s award winning short film “Mom(s)” that was dealing with the topic of polygamy in Senegal, and was based on her own life. 

Being produced by them again for her long metrage was a financial security and a very good deal. She got a France TV (public channels organisation) financial deal and scored that spot into Netflix international catalog making her one of the only black french-senegalese woman director into the international catalog. 

Obviously, as it is not a movie for children/teenagers, there’s few meanings behind the already well written script : 

Growing up without ressources : Amy is a stereotypical 11yo girl who doesn’t know anything about relationships, sexuality and woman body. It is well know that parents tends to have “the big talk” with their children when they are around 15-17yo, but puberty starts around 13yo and with that : sexual desire discovery, gender identity crises and body changes. Innocents idioms like “you’re a big girl now” or “you’re not a child anymore” shortenned childhood, leaving young girls without ressources to develop themselves and, often, shame to ask for answers.

Female representations and social media : We can’t criticize this movie without putting a context around it. Our society has been developped around certains standards, weither they are socials, professional, personnal... Social media and main stream TV promote a way of life that is unattainable for 90% of us but they give us the opportunity to act “as if”. In this movie, Amy is just like one of us except that she is way too young to understand the behaviour she is immitated. You can see it when she doesn’t understand why her friends are lying about their ages, when she’s pushing a girl into the water (possibly drowning the girl), when she cries on stage in front of those parents judging her... What Doucouré is trying to show us is that little girls are little girls, they aren’t tough enough to be shown anything just because it’s socially accepted. 

Children education :  To me, this is the main purpose of the film, showing that it is important to educate children. Predatory behaviour, public image, false advertisment, relationships... There is no “right time” to talk about it, and most of the parents are too late, the fact is protecting your children is also making them understand why this behaviour is dangerous, why this outfit is innapropriate and never blame your children for mistakes they can make. Amy is the exemple of what could happen if you don’t educate your children, and she is brave enough to rise when her my mom take a step toward her to comfort her. 

Religious family and sexual education :  As an atheist, I won’t talk about metaphors behind the prayers or anything, someone who believe in their God the same way her family does will be more adequate to talk about it. But it is one of the main critic and thus, I have to share facts : The movie isn’t centered around it, the only reason it is here is because they needed a traditional figure such as the aunt, they needed a strict environment such as a religious family and they needed a twist that would put the little girl into a negative feeling, they needed her to ressent her situation as a refugee in order to criticize how it is to grow up without help. So why Islam ? Well, in France, we have two main religions : Roman Catholics and Islam. Using Islam as the main religion of the film helped them showing the good sides of this religion such as love, family devotion and loyalty.  Added 22/08/20 : Islam has a lot of branches like any other religion. In Senegal most muslim practice Soufism, find differences between the way you practice and theirs mights come from that. Especially regarding the hijab, it’s common for young people to wear their hijabs only during ceremonies.

III. Streaming plateform and international public : 

If you’ve read all this, you know now that it isn’t about girls twerking or pedo porn normalization, in fact, until Amy came into the group, the girls are doing basic hip-hop dance (well, at least they try...). So how a movie mostly acclaimed by those who saw it can be the center of such a scandal ? 

Well, first let’s talk about culture appropriation.  As a 25yo white european woman I’ve had my share of culture appropriation story, did I mean anything bad when I did it ? No. Was I ignorant ? Yes. As everybody with a little bit of dignity I reflected on myself and stopped whatever the f*ck I was doing that was innapropriate as a white woman. That said, we can’t denied that the world has absorded some part of the black africans culture when it got popularized.

Twerking is actually a mixed between dances from African diasporas (especially Mapouka and Soukous from Ivory Coast and Congo), it is known nowadays a sensual hiphop dance and there is nothing wrong with doing it when you’re a grown up in your right mind doing whatever you want to do. So why using this dance in the movie ? First, it’s part of the heritage of Amy, a 11yo girl who hasn’t lived in a occidental culture before. Second, it is a way of telling you, public, that what you do has consequences. Suggestive dances on TV, sexualized hiphop dances in the streets, rated r music video available on YT... Adult contents are available anywhere, anywhen by anywho. Children included. It is what the director, who study the subject of the impact of oversexualized content on young girls, is trying to tell you through the film. 

Now, Netflix and the art of communication. Netflix has first released a trailer, a poster and a pitch that aren’t the one used to promote the film in the first place (France included). After the start of the backlash they released another set that are stil not the one used to begin with. Why ? Because Netflix is an industry, they aren’t cinema professionnals, they aren’t critics, they are a company like any others. They didn’t watch the film, didn’t understand it and didn’t advertize it as it should : A movie for adults who want to know what they could do to help the younger generations. 

Because a movie isn’t just for entertainment, there is no film just made to amuse you, everyone is trying to tell something thanks to their art. Yes, those same young girls who acted in the movie won’t be able to watch it because they are too young, not because it is inapropriate but because the subject is too thick for them to understand it fully at such a young age. The way Netflix handle the promotion of this movie was also bad because international public can’t resonnate with it the way we do. And I include myself because I was the age of Amy not long ago, in the same country she came to. Cinemas from every country is proper to this country, we have the chance to be able to watch films from other places made by people whom don’t speak our language, have their own religion or not at all and try to reach us with their own issues and traditions. 

I’m not saying this movie will be the best of this year, and I’m not saying that everything inside of it is perfect, what I’m trying to say is that it’s easier to agree with the majority than to forge your own opinion but if you take the time to watch you’ll be able to understand others and empathize with them. 

I hope it will help some of you understand the purpose of the film, that some will be kind enough to watch it before throwing their critics and that most of you will still enjoy movies for watch the director is trying to say instead of what the politics want you to see. 

my year so far in books. one sentence reviews:

A Continuous Harmony by Wendell Berry: Mediocre 60′s environmentalism that turns into just the shittiest liberal individualism in the last essay. 1/5

Song of Myself by Walt Whitman: Not really my style of poetry (much like the Hart Crane stuff I didn’t like last year, it relies on you caring about multi-page lists of things that exist in America), but clearly the man is good at what he does. 3/5

The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany: Wonderful little Delany novel that was probably my “least favorite” of the ones I’ve read so far this year (I loved them all), though the last few chapters, especially involving Kid Death, are unforgettable. 4/5

The Ballad of Beta 2 by Samuel R. Delany: In contrast, probably my favorite of the Delany I’ve read this year, pulling in so many of his pet themes of identity, communication, prejudice, and sexuality and having a wonderful little anthropological study framing device to boot. 5/5

Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany: One of the best bildungsromane I’ve ever read, a charming cyclical narrative that’s an equally apt metaphor for growing up as it is a metaphor for the diaspora and how movement changes our ability to communicate to those who used to be our family. 4/5

From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty: An absolute joy to read (Doughty’s voice scans so well on the page) that is set on challenging the antiseptic and removed way we deal with death in the United Sates, providing alternatives in other cultures and expressing how they help those people process death and memory (also ngl one of the best books I’ve ever gotten as a gift). 4/5

Trilce by César Vallejo: A longtime favorite of mine (I last read it around 2015), Trilce is a sometimes brutally challenging work of poetry (the translator’s footnotes are basically mandatory) that actually rewards your work, unlike, say, Ezra fucking Pound. 5/5

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein: The praise I’ll give it is that, as far as early analytic philosophers go, Wittgenstein is head and shoulders above Russell for readability, while the con is everything else in the book (later Wittgenstein is tight as fuck tho). 2/5

Kissing Caskets by Mahogany L. Browne: Formally inventive (one of the poems, which can be read in three different ways, is so dope) and full of some pretty brilliant passages, rich in dialect and form of speaking that often actually reads as speech instead of as a textual reproduction of speech. 4/5

Collected Poems by James Joyce: Look, I am a fucking slut for James Joyce, so I loved it, but a lot of it is simply rhyming lyric poetry about love that I think, for many people, will kinda just read as amateurish. 5/5, because I simp.

God and the State by Mikhail Bakunin: Even if he wasn’t an anti-semite (which is on display here, don’t worry anti-semitism fans!) I would still think Bakunin is an embarrassing polemicist who is not even particularly good at polemics, like a hairy anarchist Lenin (also the copy I have spells his first name as “Michael” which lmao). 1/5

Mermaids in the Basement by Carolyn Kizer: First half was honestly delightful where the second half really leans into the subtitle on the cover, “Poems for Women”, and goes in hard for gender essentialism (so a mixed bag, let’s say). 3/5

Point Omega by Don DeLillo: I already wrote my thoughts on it in a longer post, but in short it feels like a better version of The Body Artist, and like that novella left me feeling kinda conflicted and nebulously positive and negative at the same time. 3/5

Endgame by Samuel Beckett: Maybe Beckett’s best stage work (not to throw in with Harold “Shithead” Bloom, but it’s true), though I think also his most despairing, lacking some of the goofy comedy of Godot and leaning in hard on desolation and darkness that maybe was a bad idea to read today when I was already feeling off emotionally but oh well! 5/5

Fic ask: 18 or 20?

18: Do you feel like your work gets enough recognition? What kind of feedback do you like to receive?

Oooh!! I def get a lot of attention and recognition—I get a steady flow of kudos and am lucky enough that people venture into rarepairs and niche concepts with me, you know? As for what kind of feedback I like receiving, I love them all ofc, short or long. For the shorties I kind of love the attitude-y one-liners ( @missmarthanightingale cracks me UP, teach me your ways) so like, never feel like you have to be NICE nfjdndndnd at least not to me. Longer comments I’m always enormously touched by, and people who give me a play-by-play of their read through? Muah, chef’s kiss, I owe you my life my cows my crops. The poetic whore that I am, I also am a sucker for when people point out figurative language they liked!! Oooh also one of my casual fics got an unexpected amount of feedback cause lots of people were vibing with the Chinese diaspora feelings, and that really, really humbled me 😌💕💕

I’ll do 20 too lolol you’re asking some real ass questions anon!!!!! I love it

20: Which fic have you put the most work into? Which fic have you put the least work into?

It’s impossible to actually quantify of course but I probably spent the most time + research + craft on We Built Our Own House! Other than that, the gangbangs all took a while to choreograph and write LMFAO. I wrote Quizas Quizas bit by careful bit so that feels like a different kind of effort…all of my metaphor-heavy fics feel effortful in that way, I suppose. But it’s more deliberation and less heavy lifting, whereas like, Second Chances at 100k+ was definitely heavy lifting (and I spent a YEAR writing that ndejdnndjd).

The least amount of work…either Farmer’s Almanac or Cultivation No. 6. I wrote Farmer’s in literally one work day—maybe 5, 6 hours of writing? Didn’t do any planning at ALL, everything just kind of flowed in a bizarre coagulation of craft and inspiration. I wrote Cultivation in roughly the same amount of time trying to meet a deadline LMAO. I went in with the vibes of a mission but had nothing planned—and let’s be honest, instead of plot, it’s more just my customer service stories and a lot of wishful thinking. Both are fics I LOVE tho (and medium-length!), probably BECAUSE they took such a small amount of time.

!! the third eye from your music ask list!

Whew... The question, for those that might want to know is this “What are the texts, videos, sounds, quotes, books, that have sharpened your mind, helped you grow wiser ?”

So we’re going to start by what litters my blog, which is quotes:

“ What does it mean to kind of…to try to experiment with living…uhm…in the context of a world that is in so many ways uninhabitable ? “ Saidiya Hartman (I feel like I don’t need to explain why it’s there, it’s just...)

“ Knew, felt the cost, but were too proud and too scared to get downright familiar with the conniption fit getting downright familiar with their bodies, minds, and spirits to just sing "Blues, how do you do ? Sit down, let's work it out." Took heart to flat out decide to be well and stride into the future sane and whole. And it took time.”

from The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara

"Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well ?"

from The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara  (start doing a metaphorical run around her house because WHEW...)

Let’s move on to books because as I’m looking through quotes, I realize that most of it is derived from videos/texts/books/sounds that have shaped me. 

The books that truly had an impact on my spiritual and emotional being, that were part of my healing AND my growth The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara, Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell, and most recently Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman. And Sula by Toni Morrison. 

In terms of texts, I would say one text I need anybody that is a recipient of trans/misogynoir to read, regardless if they identify as a Black woman/Black girl or no, is Olympia’s Maid by Lorraine O’Grady. Because yeah the advice you take from it varies whether you recognize yourself as a Black woman/girl or no, but a lot of what she’s talking about has to do more with whether the world at large genders you as a Black woman/girl and the attendant consequences than it has to do with your personal relation with your gender.

Also Terrion L. Williamson’s chapters from Scandalize My Name titled On Anger and In The Life are both sublime and needed and they’re still teaching me about Black female anger, about the utter pettiness of respectability politics and the beauty of loving people in their bare, raw, utterly flawed humanity.

The chapters from Jezebel Unhinged by Tamura Lomax about ho theology, Black ladydom and the strategies put in place to maintain it are sermons in their own right. Also, if you’re a Black Christian cishet woman and you’re struggling with the Church as a Black feminist/womanist, please pick up this book (yeah it’s expensive but it’s a worthy investment.)

All the chapters about Black art in Amber Jamila Musser’s Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (including the introduction since the cover is by a Black gay male artist) are essential reading not only because of the art but because you get a primer on Black lesbian theory history in addition to Mickalene Thomas’ beautiful art, a discussion around Mammy and Black sexual abjection (and consumption of Black bodies and emotions) alongside Kara Walker’s Sugar Baby, theorization around diaspora, kinship, voice and witnessing when it comes to Carrie Mae Weems’ photo series From Here I Saw...

So one video completely changed the way I framed and saw citation as a writer who engaged Black feminist thinkers/artists/writers, but also how I saw intimacy, knowledge production, engagement with texts and it’s this discussion organized by Left of Black between Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Hortense Spillers.

The other one is the one from which I transcribed Saidiya Hartman’s quote at the beginning of this ask and that has several nuggets of wisdom from both Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten, who are two of my favorite theorists (and two McArthur fellows) and writers and everything. So this video is them talking about the Black outdoors and dropping gems while doing so.

In terms of sound, if I were to actually make a genuine list of all the wisdom and comfort I found into songs, we would still be there next Wednesday but I’m going to try to sample from what comes right now.

Rico Nasty’s Let It Out, because there is great wisdom in listening to your emotional clock and letting yourself get your emotions, and in that case rage, out.

Mad and Weary by Solange (yeah I know Lil Wayne is on one of those songs, what can I do) have been genuine help in more ways than one.

Church by Outkast actually was a genuine moment of intellectual and spiritual meditation for me. So was E.T Extraterrestrial for different reasons.

Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain is everything to me. Everything.

There are so many, but again, we’ll still be there in days, but yeah music is my (Kelsey Lu’s voice in that one interview) EVERYTHING...