#maybe i should keep posting about American politics | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

matan4il · 3 months

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Idk if you know who Noah Schnapp is but I feel so sad for him. He seems like a sweet kid and The internet has been sending him death threats and trying to get him fired because he’s pro Israel/anti Hamas. Noah is gay and Jewish the two groups Hamas hates the most of course he’s not gonna support them

Hi Nonnie!

I do know who Noah is. I think he seems like a nice guy, I was really happy for him when he was able to come out as gay, and get such a positive reaction, first from his family, then from the public.

He visited Israel back in July, almost 3 months before Oct 7, and already he was getting attacked simply for that. I think it's SICK in the worst way possible, that Jewish people are getting harassed for even simply visiting their ancestral land, and it's the kind of racism we wouldn't see turned on ANY other marginalized group in the US. Kids of Mexican descent don't get attacked simply for visiting Mexico, African Americans don't get vilified for visting Africa, no matter what people think of these countries. It's anti-Jewish racism to do this to Jews, and it should be loudly called out and condemned. Noah was brave to post about this visit, he was brave to explicitly say he had never felt as alive as he did visiting his ancestral land, and getting to know fellow young Jews here, but he shouldn't have to be.

By now, however, as the attacks on him intensified since Hamas' massacre, and Noah's continued support for Israel, of native Jewish rights in our land, and calling out Hamas for being the vile organization they are (you're right, it is vile to Jews AND to gay people. In fact, it's an organization that should be vile to ANYONE who claims to care about human rights), he's deleted most of his posts from his visit here on his IG, only one remains, and he removed the caption for that one, which is that one that IIRC said he's never felt more alive. Now there's no caption, and it's still apparently taking a lot out of him to simply keep it up on his account.

He did try to backtrack, IDK to what a degree he might have been pressured to. He's certainly not the first Jewish celeb I've seen having to do that, and later admitting they were motivated by fear and harssment. The "kind" anti-Israel crowd is definitely implying Noah is only doing it due to Stranger Things' new season which is about to be released. I'm afraid whatever the reason, he's about to find out that if the antisemites can't tokenize you to use you against other Jews, then you're forever a "bad Jew," and nothing you say will ever change that. On the way, I guess he'll disappoint many Jewish followers, who looked up to him when he was one of the few celebs, even more so one of a handful of young celebs, to stand by Israel. The anti-Israel crowd claims to be persecuted, silenced and bullied, but as far as I can tell, especially with young people like him, they're the ones doing the persecuting, silencing and bullying. I'm really saddened that he felt he had to backtrack his support of Israel, to a great degree because it tells me just how severe the attack and pressure on him must be, and I just don't want any Jew to suffer.

But this actually brings me to another, maybe more important point: just because celebrities have a bigger stage than the rest of us, it doesn't mean they know more about politics than others. If Noah, as a Jew, could safely speak about his experiences as a young Jewish man, I think that would be fantastic, just like I think it's great whenever a queer celeb comes out of their own accord and shares some of their experiences. It's a really sad thing to realize that in 2024, it's safer to talk about being gay, and to speak up for gay rights, than to be Jewish and speak against antisemitism, or about Jewish experiences, or for Jewish rights. But beyond sharing personal experiences, celebrities don't understand a conflict as complex as the Israeli-Arab one, and with as much history as this one has, more than the average Tiktoker. Neither one is an authority, and neither one should be who people go to for their political views. The fact that people look at Tiktokers as any kind of authority, or have expectations from celebs regarding political views and bully them for the "wrong" ones (based on what Tiktokers said) is a part of what has gone horribly wrong with modern society.

The internet was supposed to help us fight misinformation through the availability of facts. Instead, we see repeatedly how what is true falls prey to what is viral.

Sending big hugs, and I hope you're doing good! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #antisemitism #israeli #israel news #israel under attack #israel under fire #israelunderattack #terrorism #anti terrorism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish

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soup-mother · 4 days

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Not Australian but can I join the American hater club ? I can not fucking stand them 😭 once I was venting about my country undergoing an adhd med shortage and some American fuck was like "Oh no. How could this happen in America :(( we wanted those" BECAUSE THEY JUST ASSUMED I WAS TALKING ABOUT AMERICA? which is even worse when you realise the shortage was probably because of America and hhh. We need to bully Americans more/hj. I think every non American person (bonus points if from a low income country) should have an automatic right to bully Americans because the way they're consistently framed as the center of everything, both in the media and in online discussions is fucking irritating. Sorry for the rant, I just rarely see USA centrism get acknowledged a lot so your posts really resonated

god no fully though. the american FDA controls one of the ingredients for adhd medication they straight up enforce how much other countries can make. it's the same in Australia.

my favourite thing here is yanks thinking literally any piece of news is about their country, especially when they're confusing the american ABC and Australian ABC (like that jam factory child labour article). this site is so fucking US centric and pointing that out makes ostensibly chill americans really really defensive, like "uh well you're on an american website so what can you expect?". endlessly frustrating.

also lol Australians have less right to complain about yanks that basically the rest of the world, we keep trying to turn ourselves into little america. so u do not need my permission to join the club. hate that dumb stupid country. there's just something about living there that makes people's worldviews extend to maybe their fingertips.

this site would be way better if we pushed the yanks off for a few days (as a triol period before doing it permanently). we'd actually be able to have conversations about world politics without the endless, sincere but completely unhelpful onslaught of americans chiming in with their opinion on the matter unrelated to them, and making it about america.

#asks #anon #anti yank action

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swabian-princess · 1 year

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It-Girl Check: Carina Zavline

Hey girlies,

todays topic is a German It-Girl named Carina Zavline. For those who are not familiar with her at all – she’s a German It-Girl, Model and influencer.

As you can see – she has almost 1 million followers on instagram and posts frequently about her vacations, model jobs and various beauty treatments. In fact, I first heard about lympathic drainage in one of her instagram stories and been a fan of this treatment ever since!

Her career started 2017 when she was a contestant in the German casting show Germany’s Next Topmodel.

While she got the best job (the Opel campagne) of the season and was handled as the shows favorite she had to leave the show right before the semifinal.

However, her career had just started. She landed a job as one of Guess ambassadors and did cooperations with many companies, mostly over her instagram profile.

But who is Carina and what makes her so succesful?

Carina is the daughter of a Russian father and an Ukrainian mother. She was born in Dortmund, Germany and grew up in Hamburg before she moved to Munich to study there. After she finished her studies in Germany she moved to Paris and went to university there. She also studied acting at the Strasberg institute in LA.

Carina is fluent in six languages: German, English, French, Spanish, Ukrainian and Russian.

Before she started her career as an influencer/model she was a succesful dancer and competed international.

In conclusion: she’s not only beautiful but also smart, well spoken and knows how to move her body.

These attributes helped her to land maybe the most important deal of her life: Kilian Hennessy.

Kilian Hennessy is a french billionaire and maybe you already guessed it – yes, his family business is the cognac brand Henessy.

He’s also the founder of the luxurious perfume brand Kilian.

There is not much about the two as a couple on the internet but they made it official relatively recently, in 2022, when he and Carina walked together over the red carpet at the Cannes film festivals.

What can we learn from Carina?

Well, one thing would be: make friends on your way up and keep them. Nourish your friendships and make sure you don’t betray your friends or throw them under the bus for a man because maybe, they introduce you to your future husband.

Carina frequently posts pictures with one of her girlfriends, Hofit Golan – an israeli model, producer and entrepreneur.

Hofit once was called Israels Paris Hilton and she seems to have the same lavish lifestyle as the American It-Girl.

Private jets, dinners in fancy restaurants and of course expensive clothes seem to be Carinas new normal.

Carinas personal style is very sexy but never too much. She’s often spotted wearing luxurious brands like LV, Hermès and Guess.

Her favorite accessoires seem to bee her Van Cleef & Arpels jewellry and her Hermès bags.

She always looks elegant, mix and matching different colors and materials. Look at her instagram for outfit inspirations!

Her makeup and hairstyles are rather simple. She’s sporting a basic nude face with winged eyeliner and wears her long hair down and with soft natural waves.

For nails, she mostly wears them short and with a soft pinkish color.

I do understand the hype about her and I really do think that she’s a great role model in terms of levelling up and hypergamy.

She shows that you should not only look good but also need to be intelligent in order to bag a high value man.

Beauty can open doors, yes – but if you’re dumb and can’t hold a basic conversation even the most beautiful face won’t help you.

Most of those high value men are smart and want a partner they can talk to, a partner who’s able to discuss literature, politics or even art.

Work on yourself, not only on your appearence but also on your inside. Be gentle, generous, friendly and curious. Just never stop learning.

Selene

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jellymeduza · 8 months

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I'm probably going to regret writing this as I rarely make non-Sims posts and get involved into political stuff, but I just feel I need to get this off my chest as it keeps bugging me more and more as time goes.

You see, I'm Polish and I see myself as a citizen of the global west. Most Polish people do. The thing is, we are too often put into "Eastern Europe" category by European and American journalists and scholars, which is something we don't identify with.

We speak of ourselves as Central Europeans. Unfortunately, you'll often find people on the Internet arguing that there's no such a thing as Central Europe - only Western and Eastern. If you want to go with this duality, then we'd call ourselves Western not Eastern (however the three groups division is better for describing the nations of Europe, imo).

There are also people who acknowlegde the existence of Central Europe but decide we're not that. Guess who is Central European according to them? Austrians! I've seen an article with Austria put into "Central Europe" bin and Poland, Czechia and Slovakia into "Eastern Europe" bin. Has the author seen a map? Czechia is Austria's northern neighbour. Moreover, Czechia, Slovakia and southern part of Poland were parts of Austrain Empire for crying out loud! So why? Because we're Slavic? Are Slavic people always eastern to you?

We argue that we don't feel eastern for many reasons - e.g. we use latin alphabet, our culture is Catholic Christianity based as opposed to Orthodox Christianity, we live literally in the central part of Europe. What we hear in return is that we're different from Germanic nations. Which like, duh, we are, obviously. But I can assure you average Pole is culturally and mentally closer to average German than to average Russian.

We find being called "Eastern European" offensive, frankly. It sounds to us as if somebody told us we are Russians. That's what Eastern Europe means to us - no human rights, violence and poverty. Now, some people in the west say that means we are Russphobic. I don't know, maybe we are. But you'd probably have similar views if generations of your nation had been subjects to Russian regime, be it tsar or USSR. So, naturally, when Russia attacked Ukraine we had great "disappointed but not surprised" mood.

Many of those people who refuse to call us Central Europeans (as if we aren't good enough to be called that) are progressives, which is quite baffling. If you are leftist and accept that e.g. trans people want to be called by correct pronouns and new names (rightfully so), why the hell can't you accept that we don't identify with Eastern Europe? Both matters are about who you are, how you see yourself and how you identify.

Another thing in a similar vein - it's tiring going abroad and hearing all the time "Oh, you're from Russia?" when people hear you speak in a Slavic language. I don't even know Russian language! This kind of behaviour carries the spirit of Pan-Slavism in Russian fashion - all Slavic nations should be united, but once they would be united, they all would become Russians.

ETA: Another thing I wanted to complain about but I forgot (because this post got quite long) is the depiction of Slavs in pop culture, especially Hollywood movies. They often show Slavs as baddies with thick accent, which is probably a remnant of cold war times. So what we usually get is some kind of token Slav (quite often shown as an ignorant violent drunkard) that is a Russian, because they can't tell us apart and most likely don't even care to create diverse Slavic characters. Even if some non-Russian Slavs are introduced in those media, they still carry Russian traits, like the accent which is pretty different for Polish language and Russian language. And those non-Russian Slavs often speak Russian instead of their correct language. Sometimes it gets even worse as they show Hungarians as Slavs. Like what??? Dude, Hungarians are not even Indo-European. Come on, Hollywood! You can do better than that! /End ETA

Maybe the reason for this kind of division is related to the fact that we were on the eastern part of the Iron Curtain. Nevertheless, it's been over 30 years since the Curtain fell. During this time countries of Central Europe have joined NATO and EU. Our economy looks quite different than it had during communism. We've changed mentally too! More than a generation of people have been born after the fall of communism in Poland - some people born in the 90s already have children on their own. That's two generations!

So, please next time when you hear someone speak Slavic language, don't assume they speak Russian, for God's sake! Just ask them if you have to - just like you'd ask a person about their gender.

This is written from my perspective, so it might differ for other Central European Slavs - Czechs, Slovaks. I'm also curious how similar or different are views of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians.

As for the Central Europe discourse, I've read an article of Ukrainian journalist, who argued that the war might lead to Ukrainians identifying as Central Europans as well to strengthen the opposition between Ukrainian nation and Russian nation. That's another thing I'm curious of - how common is that opinion among Ukrainians?

Now I leave you be and go back to simming stuff.

#non sims #geopolitics #kind of

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illmamnim · 1 year

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5 reasons you should read All That's Left In The World By Erik J. Brown

1. Good queer representation

Without giving much away, the development of relationship and character in the book is well built and darling. As someone who doesn't invest in romance as much, I very much still enjoyed seeing the two characters come to terms with their emotions and grow together. It's a found family as much as it is a romance.

2. Character/World balance at it's finest

I don't want to drag other books, and I certainly won't point them out, but I've seen quite a few YA stories that avoid heavy personal events for the sakes of keeping things in the realm of a "light hearted read", and it always takes away from the gravity of the story. All That's Left In The World is a post apocalyptic romantic story that doesn't favour one or the other. There's harmony in both the truma the characters been through and the prose that keeps it relatable, engaging, and touching. Giving us adorable banter all the while never taking away from the fact that the world truly did end, and actions have serious consequences.

I could go on because I truly love their characterization but we have more points to make.

3. Excellent world building (yes, it is different from reason 2)

This is an American story, full of American references, places, beliefs and more. However, as a non American, no nod or reference disturbed my immersion or felt out of place. The references and jokes aren't put just to fill up space, they genuinely deliver a small level of exposition and a look into who the characters were before the start of the story. As a non American, I can still get a sense of how the world each of them lived in shaped them to who they were when they met.

4. Morality in a changing world

Like I said, the world building is well thought out, and the question of right and wrong is a fundamental part of our heros' journey. The world has ended, people are left to fend for themselves, how do you know what's morally wrong when you're counting down each can of mushrooms? How do you change years of learning to be a good person because suddenly it's you against the world?

Morality, politics and identity are all reoccurring thoughts that our heros' deal with, on their own and together, and try to make the right choices when so much of the world is wrong.

5. Not a coming of age story (and why it works)

Coming of age are some of my favourite stories, both because I relate to them as well as it being a fun light read. But this story, in a sense, tricked me into thinking it is a coming of age, when it deals a little differently. The characters don't grow up because they're learning things about life, but rather are forced to grow because... Well, the world ended. Suddenly having to take care of themselves, their mistakes aren't stepping stones, they are a literal matter of life and death (but no pressure).

If they break out of their shell it's because they need to survive. If they have a hard choise to make- it can but their lives on the line. They still grow and learn about themselves, still question who they are, but the story doesn't conclud with their identity, because the goal isn't who they are- it's others.

Again, I could go on, because this is the tip of the iceberg for me spreading the ATLITW propaganda, but I'll leave you with this for now.

And, hey, maybe in the future I'll do a small analysis with actual spoilers, who knows.

(bonus reason: the Audiobook is REALLY good!)

#tinstuff #all that's left in the world #atlitw #erik j brown #analysis #book rec #book reccomendation #long post #bookblr #idk what else to tag this but PLEASE I love this book so much I've listened/read it 4 times no joke #listened 3 times and then my friend bought me the physical copy :3

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dappersautismcreature · 7 months

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here, maybe. a small masterpost abt this furniture/caging bad thing.

this IS imprisonment without trial, without justice. bad was entirely willing to talk this out with people, it wasn't like he was running. even when things were turned against him in early conversation he did not run. there was no point to caging him asides from some idiotic idea of cop vs robber that people had about this situation. they didnt have any evidence, even richas' testimony isnt strong evidence. theyve had evidence of further damning things on other people and have never resorted to this.

and thats another point. nobody besides the federation has ever trapped or hurt another islander like this. you HAVE to admit this is a crossing of a line not previously crossed.

im not calling anyone in this situation 100% in the wrong, 100% the villain, or 100% the thief. and neither should literally ANYONE when doing character analysis in this. until we have concrete undeniable proof of action without remorse, i will not condemn any of these characters to posts about 'how evil they are for doing such and such'. i expect you to agree, if you dont, i do not understand you.

cc!bad could still be pulling a fast one on all of us, i agree. in fact im still not calling for his innocence. but i will admit there are many factors to this that are in favor of him. i think i can say i know q!bad, and how cc!bad plays him, preeeetty well? of course im no egotistical idiot, i can be wrong, but so could anyone at this point -___-

it is very odd to see q!cellbit acting like this, and i know many things point to his time as f!cell having an impact on his actions now. so i would like yall to also consider that cellbit may be biased and not completely in his right mind right now. i think that is an intentional character choice on the cc!s behalf.

most of this is intentional, thought out roleplay. do not harass any ccs in this, keep harsh venting against characters to their proper neg tags and mostly in private. and id also like to say, especially to white americans, look at your posts through a lense of anti-racism, anti-xenophobia, and a sense of worldwide politics and democracy vs just american politics and democracy. i myself have had to examine my posts and actions and learn new things. it is better to correct your internal xenophobia and misunderstandings in the draft phase, learn from it, and move on, rather than doubling down. listen to hurt brazilians about this PLEASE. we do not want tumblr to become a twitter cesspool.

overall, very excited. i was feeling down after yesterdays arguements with seemingly no ends but now that actions have finally been made i am so excited. qsmp truly is about to enter a new era and i am inspired! revolution time babyyy!

#qsmp #analysis #q!cellbit #q!badboyhalo #q!forever #mushroom screams

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bilbobagginsomebabez · 1 day

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Hi! I’ve been following your blog for a bit and I’m wondering if you or anyone else could help me with an idea I have. I’m graduating from college in about a month (mid-May 2024) and I was thinking of using the opportunity (large-ish crowd, lots of cameras, important/official school event) to decorate the top of my graduation cap with something in support of ceasefire, peace/liberation, and an end to U.S. support of the Israeli government’s violence. My current/best idea so far is to have simple, black-and-white text reading “CEASEFIRE NOW” and maybe a little dove holding a branch that is green, red, and black. I understand that some people who are also disgusted with this violence (genocide) find problems with the call for “ceasefire now” but I don’t know what else to write—I want to make sure that the design is clear, succinct, and easy to read/see. I’ve thought about adding a small border of text around the edge of the cap, to say something like “END GENOCIDE” and “END U.S.-BACKED VIOLENCE” but I worry that would make the design too busy.

Is this a good design? Good text? Should I take a different approach? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thank you and I hope you have a nice day :)

i'm guessing the ceasefire thing is related to "not a war -- an occupation" rhetoric, but i would not worry about that. very different groups there with very different considerations; effective rhetoric amongst online leftists is not effective rhetoric during an american graduation ceremony. tune your language to your audience and what they'll understand. a ceasefire is the next most immediate step to saving palestinian lives and is commonly understood language. it's fine.

as for the design, i'd pick either "END THE GENOCIDE" or "CEASEFIRE NOW" with a fact or two. kind of like this:

^this is ugly. don't use this. but be bold with what it says. its purpose is to make a strong point fast.

i don't mean for this to be patronizing at all, i just don't know where your experience level is regarding political action online vs in real life, where you live, your comfort with public speaking, etc. i'd like to warn you because sometimes people are surprised by it, but people may approach you about this. they may not choose to talk to their family about it later or post about it on social media or google it. the point of doing this publicly at a large event where it is unavoidable that people see it is to cause a reaction and to control the structure of the conversation that follows. their starting point is the one you chose. if you haven't spoken about or heard others speak about palestine in your community, don't underestimate how contentious this topic may be. someone may argue with you or even attempt to berate you. when making a public statement of your beliefs in this manner, you are inviting public discussion by starting a public discussion. an open-entry public discussion, where not everyone who enters will be well-mannered.

if you are approached, this is a limited contact type of activism; quick and dirty. the goal is to get them curious and questioning and hopefully refer them to stronger and more detailed sources. for this purpose, stronger and more detailed sources can be easy and digestible like a good social media account or youtube video. do NOT get bogged down in the details. do NOT dissect the whole history of the area. it is sufficient to address recent violence, it is not your job to cover the entire issue from start to finish, and you couldn't if you tried anyway.

i would operate on an assumption of good faith but prepare for bad faith attempts to debate. don't necessarily use terminology to determine good faith from bad faith. assume ignorance instead of malice where possible, and be prepared to control your temper if you have one. get your facts straight, and consider keeping a little notecard with talking points or specific numbers like you might for a speech class. a note on your phone. an album of screenshots. some sort of reference that you feel confident using.

though to be honest, the more likely result is a drawn out argument with a conservative family member at dinner. which is also important, if wildly unpleasant.

either way, be ready to talk about it, be ready to explain it, and be ready to challenge people you know directly and staunchly.

good luck!

this may be a useful quick and dirty talking point to sidestep antisemitism accusations: "Ethnostates are bad no matter which ethnicity is in charge. We know this. If you're confused: it's 2023. There are people everywhere. There is nowhere to establish an ethnostate where you will not have to forcibly remove people who already live there, which called ethnic cleansing. which is known under international law as genocide. Ethnostates are always bad."

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luckyladylily · 4 months

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What do you think about Arab Americans refusing to vote Democrat unless they condemn the genocide in Gaza? I kinda feel like every post I've seen arguing against refusing to vote sidesteps that whole issue, including your own. Asking you specifically because you at least acknowledge the genocide in the post.

Alright, so the problem in Gaza is not a democrat problem, its an America problem. This is not about who is currently in power, but about 70 years of foreign policy and over seas American interests. The democrats will never abandon that because a relatively small amount of us on the left threaten to withhold our vote. Once again, it comes down to simple election math. I've explained this before on this blog again and again.

Depending on your area, progressives are up to around 10% of the population, and losing a progressive vote costs the democrat one vote. Centrists make up a minimum of 15%, with even greater numbers in the swing states that actually matter. And a centrist flipping from democrat to republican effectively costs 2 votes for the democrats - a flipped vote for republicans hurts twice as much as losing a leftist. This means that for any action they make to appease the left they have to gain twice as many votes as they lose centrists.

If the left wants to play this kind of election game we need to establish ourselves as a powerful voting block. But for the past 30 years people on the left have been hemming and hawing about voting in elections like Hilary vs Trump and Gore vs Bush and not showing up when it is clearly in our best interest. We have not done what is necessary to establish ourselves as a powerful voting block. If we had, if we hadn't been such lazy cowards about voting strategically, if we had established ourselves as an important, core voting block for the democrats then maybe we could attempt a move like this now. But we didn't. We were a bunch of useless cowards wringing our hands about how Hillary Clinton just didn't excite us, so why the fuck would the establishment democrats give a shit? We are a fickle, useless voting base that couldn't even take California for Bernie.

Meanwhile centrists are extremely reliable. That is a voting block with an extremely strong record. They will vote in high numbers every election in every state, especially swing states. And if they do not vote democrat, they will vote republican.

So on the one hand, we have the left, a small, unreliable, and fickle voting block, and on the other hand we have centrists, a sizable, reliable, consistent voting block that effectively counts double. Who do you think they are going to cater to?

If we want to use electoral politics like this to force change then we are going to need to put a lot of work over a long period of time. Work we on the left have not taken seriously for decades. It is absurd to think that we can suddenly enter the game at this late date and be taken seriously as a voting block. It's asinine.

For that matter, if we really wanted to avert this genocide happening now we should have been working at it seriously for decades. We've all seen the posts by now and read the history, this has been coming for decades. It was just a matter of when it was convenient for Israel to pull the trigger. But we, as the left, have not been making the concerted effort to influence moderate politics that would be required to shift American foreign policy like this. No, far too many of us have been so very concerned about keeping our personal hands clean or just being fucking lazy and not wanting to talk to moderates because it's not as fun as calling for le epic revolution. If every progressive for the past 30 years had made a strong effort to teach the basics of anti colonial politics to the general moderate left, centrist, and moderate right populations, using well considered arguments that appeal to their sensibilities, then this genocide might have been stopped in its infancy. Instead, we didn't. We sat around and complained about racist uncles and dropped friends at the first sign of them being less than perfect and created insular, echo chamber communities where we yell about settlers and a bunch of other bullshit and did nothing. We didn't do the work required. Trying to patch that over in a panic with electoral politics, which we also didn't do the work for, is terrible strategy. No one will be impressed.

And its not like the left's heart has really be in it for fighting this genocide, not completely. Oh, we made a reasonable effort at protest, but since we didn't do the work in either electoral politics or grassroots politics our entire strategy has had to rely on mass protest, which frankly we have not done to nearly the degree required to make up for our other shortcomings. Do you remember the 2020 BLM protests? We have never come close to that kind of disruption in our anti genocide protests. Which is understandable, protesting is dangerous and costly and difficult, but because we were too lazy or high minded to engage in either electoral strategies or mass grassroots conversion strategies up to this point mass protest is all we've got. We bet everything on protests and outrage. But it's not enough. The great flaw of betting everything on protest and outrage is that we can't keep it up forever because it is so costly. We are burnt out from years of protesting and dealing with Covid. It wasn't a month after this whole mess started that people were talking about fatigue and burnout. We don't have near the means or will to deliver the kind of mass riots that would be required to force an abrupt and massive change to American foreign policy. We might be able to cut the genocide short if we keep it up, and therefore we should absolutely keep it up, but frankly stopping it in its tracks was never in the cards for a political group as weak as the US left.

I understand the frustration or even hatred people feel towards democrats right now, I really fucking get it, but doubling down on proven failed strategies in a panic is not the answer. If we start establishing ourselves as an effective voting block now and we start a concerted effort to reach out to moderates and centrists now maybe in 20 years, if we are lucky, we will be powerful enough to throw around our weight with electoral politics. Maybe we will make it in time to avert the next genocide, or maybe us holding that kind of power will mean it never comes to genocide in the first place. But until that time we have no choice but to work within the constraints the failures of the US left of the past decades have left us with.

So I understand the idea, but I am sorry to say it simply will not work. As I said in my other post, the *only* thing you should be thinking of at an election is how it will effect your political goals. For the near future at the very least, vote withholding strategies will not advance any of our political goals and will almost certainly hinder many of them. It is a bad strategy and should not be employed.

#us centric

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feminismisstillahatemovement · 1 year

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Hello. I’ve been following you, unofficially, for a little bit (like a shadow I guess). I agree with a good number of your statements (and can agree to disagree with others). I had a few questions about some and wanted to ask them.

Do you find any validity in the LGBTQ+ movement?

Are you a men’s rights activist or with the men’s rights movement?

Are you a Trump supporter? (I don’t believe you ever said, so this is just a random question)

Why do you not believe in a patriarchy? Do you think any such systems exist that lean toward / favor men? If so, do you believe it’s the same for women?

What do you think of the BLM movement?

In your opinion, does structural/systemic racism exist? Why or why not?

What political ideology do you alight with most? (I’d guess conservative or maybe even libertarian lite)

And to end, one last random one: do do you think that the extravert ideal is highly favored in the US/western countries? What do you think about the extravert ideal?

You have the right to keep your opinions under wraps. But honestly, I don’t see that being a concern for you, seeing how outspoken you are. Also, sorry for how much pure, unbridled hate you get for simply having opinions that are not [popular] with the mainstream. You don’t deserve that, no one deserves that, and I just wanted to tell ya. :)

Have a good one!

Wow, those are all good questions but this would be an insanely long post if I went into the detail each one deserves, so I'll try keep it short.

(SPOILER: I failed.)

Do you find any validity in the LGBTQ+ movement?

Yes to the first and particularly second letters, as the historical criminalization and brutal persecution of consensual homosexuality was always cruel and unjust, though lesbianism was and is comparatively excused and overlooked and rarely violently oppressed to anything like the same degree. The "Bi" and "Q" parts are largely superfluous, and the "T" part has no real reason to be in there at all, since gender dysphoria is a medical condition, not a sexuality.

As with the feminist movement, I think any substantial and just goals were achieved decades ago and I don't see any defensible reason for the perpetual hostility and relentless promotion of LGBTQRAMZ24JL%$🧸 propaganda in the 21st century: the last campaign I can remember holding any water was the push for recognition of gay marriage, and little before that for a long time: most gay activism today seems to come from a vengeful, privileged and protected position chiefly concerned with bullying others, like the monsters going all out to hound and destroy the Christian owners of a cake shop who politely declined to bake a gay wedding cake that went against their religious beliefs. The oppressed have become the oppressors, and it's very ugly to see. Celebration of other people's sexual activity should never be mandatory, and all the corporations hauling out their rainbow flags year after year are weird, preachy, tiresome and unwanted, so all these actions will inevitably lead to an exhaustion of goodwill and tolerance in the larger populace, which in the long run will not benefit gay people at all.

Are you a men’s rights activist or with the men’s rights movement?

No, I don't consider myself so: when I first got red-pilled I hung out in some MRA spaces, because they were the only ones at the time discussing the things I was thinking about, but I haven't checked in on them in over 10 years. All political movements tend towards echo chambers and extremism, even when a good many of their positions are solid and their goals are just. I don't feel comfortable with any labels, so I just go my own way, do my own thing and think for myself, take each issue as it arises and try to locate and align myself with whatever truth can be found in it.

Are you a Trump supporter? (I don’t believe you ever said, so this is just a random question)

I'm not American, so I don't directly have a dog in the race, but the media misrepresentation and bias against Trump, along with the political persecution, has been so overwhelming, relentless, unprecedentedly blatant and unjust, that if I was American I would certainly vote for him, simply because those who are openly conspiring against him have been revealed over the past 6 years or so to be so much worse. And, unlike all the career politicians "on" "both" "sides" who do nothing but trot out pretty, hollow and meaningless untruths while serving military-industrial interests and the status quo, I think he really does represent some kind of necessary, urgent and beneficial change, so I hope he gets re-elected in 2024.

Why do you not believe in a patriarchy?

At least in the west, it's a silly and hysterical conspiracy theory that has little grounding in reality, essentially asserting that all human civilization is best explained as a conspiracy on behalf of all men to benefit all men through the oppression and exploitation of all women, but that somehow no men are aware of or in on. To believe such nonsense you have to have either never known, liked or talked to ANY man, or be insane. Or both.

Western civilization is the very opposite of what feminists claim, in that it has always given special provisions and protections to women that men have never had, and attempted to curb and punish the selfish and sociopathic tendencies of the minority of dangerous men. It's the carving out of some civility in the wild and brutal dog-rape-dog natural world, which has benefited women enormously, but is massively under attack from every left-wing movement today: the advent of things like the current gender ideology, largely started or supported by feminism, is now clearly and inarguably harming real women, and stripping away protections so many of them never even realized they had.

And teaching women to hate and avoid men, and to instead seek fulfillment only in selfishness and wage-slavery: this has just produced millions upon millions of miserable, lonely and entirely unfulfilled women. Feminism is cancer.

Do you think any such systems exist that lean toward / favor men? If so, do you believe it’s the same for women?

It appears to me the modern Islamic world, which is probably the closest thing to what feminists would call an actual "patriarchy", does unjustly curtail women's freedoms and human rights, though that's better understood as springing from a perpetually warring desert culture's "round up the wagons" mindset and aim of overprotection of women, rather than as evidence of some innate universal male misogyny.

In the west, there are no institutionalized systems that favor men: all of them greatly and unjustly over-favor women. And now trans-women.

What do you think of the BLM movement?

A thoroughly corrupt and enormously destructive money-making scam.

In your opinion, does structural/systemic racism exist? Why or why not?

I think there has historically been undeniable institutional bias against black people. I also think all human beings, black and white and everyone else, have in-group biases that cause them to distrust and fear those who they consider outsiders: who look, dress, think or believe differently to themselves. What in recent times we've come to, often inaccurately, label "racIST" behaviour is more helpfully seen as just an outcrop of our innate tribalism, which is both fortunately and unfortunately evolutionarily hardwired into us all, so I think on the large scale it's unproductive to approach such behaviour as simply a moral failing, labelling people "bad" or "good" and leaving it at that.

I really like it when I see black and white people getting along and genuinely liking each other, rather than just uncomfortably walking on eggshells trying to not upset the other, but I think that's something that either just happens or doesn't: it can't and shouldn't be engineered, mandated or forced in any way.

While prejudice against black people still undoubtably exists on an individual level, it has been completely and exhaustively stripped from all western institutions, and black people are now hugely over-represented in most areas of society, which, again, cannot help but lead to resentment in the rest of the populations of western countries, who are now being openly and gleefully discriminated against every day. This is so stupid, and needlessly provocative, and could have been avoided by just sticking with equal rights and opportunities for all citizens and not going further, but the simple fact is all the identity politics movements are incapable of stopping once they have realized their original goals. It's inevitable they overreach and become a negative force themselves. They never fail to behave this way.

What political ideology do you align with most? (I’d guess conservative or maybe even libertarian lite)

Genuinely none. As with religion, I think there are understandable reasons for all of the major ones to exist and speak to people, all representing genuine and necessary human concerns from many different and valid positions. I find things that speak to me in Socialism, Anarchism, Progressivism, Libertarianism, Conservatism, Nationalism, Liberalism and whatever else. But I don't feel any of them actually represent me in any way, except on a few narrow, specific, isolated issues, so I consider voting little more than weighing up and selecting the lesser of many evils, and don't find myself actively aligning with or enthusiastically supporting any of them.

And to end, one last random one: do you think that the extravert ideal is highly favored in the US/western countries? What do you think about the extravert ideal?

I'm not sure if you've just misspelled "extrovert" or if you're specifically referring to the Jungian use of the term of "seeking fulfilment outside of the self". I guess it must be the latter.

Yes, I do think the western world, originally starting with, and spreading from, America, has become a hungry mouth that can never be filled or sated, and that consumerism is a hollow pipedream, destructive and corrosive in every part of human life. So many people today will unabashedly do anything for money, which they singlemindedly pursue simply to spend on things, which they falsely assume will bring them happiness. I've got family members whose entire daily lives seem to revolve around buying the next new thing: another toy, another holiday, another trip to another expensive restaurant - and they don't seem capable of stopping and enjoying or finding deep meaning or fulfillment in any of them.

True happiness is found only in the selflessness of love, in family, community, the pursuit of wisdom, truth and meaning, and helping others. Your funko pops collection will go in a landfill site when you die.

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paperstorm · 6 months

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i know you said you didn’t want to talk about this and you can delete this ask when you get it but speaking into the void here

i personally as an arab never expected ronen to give a both sides are bad let peace prevail kind of statement (im aware that is what he is posting now and has reiterated that palestinians aren’t responsible for hamas i haven’t ignored that)

fully acknowledge that this is painful for him given his personal family history and just the generational trauma jewish people have lived through and antisemitism raging in the states for the past few years and spiking drastically since the bombing started

so him sticking by israel no matter how much of a bitter taste it leaves in my mouth lmao i understand why but what genuinely hurt was him reposting videos from violently islamophobic and racist right wingers like nathan*el buzolic calling it “palestinian propaganda” and who dont care about jews or israel but in his eyes brown arabs are the devil and need to be gone (ronen could very well not know what that man stands for but doesn’t change that its who he’ll be associated with henceforth cuz everyone knows and noticed)

celebrating biden sending weapons to israel knowing full well who exactly its being used against and pushing the “human shield” bullshit to justify it all makes it hard to digest seeing babies pulled out of rubble and dying and never not once admitting that collective punishment isn’t right or mass starvation isn’t right

i dont think anybody is ignoring his sentiment of wanting peace between communities but compared to what he’s been pushing it makes it harder to acknowledge when the most hes said about palestinians is “oh life will be lost on both sides no can do” and not voicing support for a ceasefire and doubling down against people trying to kindly show him a more nuanced view and flat out blocking people

i’ve long since stopped caring about celebrities and their political opinions cuz they need woke points but since we’re all a part of the same fandom i guess its making rounds more

(and also a general thing, the fact that antisemitism and islamophobic hate crimes are spiking should push politicians to call for a ceasefire instead of doubling down on their money making tactics from defence contracts and stocks cuz as long as people see videos of palestinian parents losing their children and vice versa and weeping in the streets and IDF soldiers in uniform eating mcdonalds in a full face of makeup and acrylics its just going to keep getting worse cuz the disparity is getting more obvious)

It's not that I don't want to talk about it, it's that every time I do like clockwork about 30-45 minutes later the death threats and 'kys' anons roll in and that isn't easy to deal with. But I do think these things are massively important and I do want to talk about them.

And I agree with all of this. It feels so silly sometimes to care about him or what he's saying when there are babies buried under rubble from genocidal bombs dropped purposely on apartment buildings and bakeries and hospitals and funded by American taxpayers like ... he's a random C list celebrity and we aren't the victims here by any stretch of the imagination. But it still hurts. It seems to me like he is extremely misinformed. Uninformed, ignorant, uneducated, whatever adjective you want to use. If he's bought into the human shields propaganda then he's bought into all of it, and the US/Israeli propaganda machine is one of the strongest the world has ever seen (I mean you have a state indiscriminately slaughtering thousands of children and you have the whole Western world terrified to say "hey maybe don't do that", it would be impressive if it wasn't so horrible) so he isn't the only one who's fallen for it but it's ... sad. I dont' know, it's just sad. All of that and all of what you said is context for his response to this, but context doesn't make it hurt less. It sucks that we're going to have to do the heartbreaking work of separating him from TK in order to keep loving our show and not feel like we're de-facto supporting genocide. We're not the victims in this, especially those of us who are white and not Arab and not Jewish and are far less likely to face any consequences here, but it still sucks. I don't have any answers but I'm there with everyone who feels let down by him right now.

#911ls asks #palestine #israel

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goldeneyedgirl · 7 months

Text

AILess Whumptober Day 5: Held at Gunpoint

silence. (day 5: held at gunpoint).

twilight, alice/jasper, pg, post-twilight. canon-verse. trigger warnings: school shooting, mention of suicide.

This prompt was so cursed, I can't even. I just had such a hard time with it, but we persevere. It definitely ended up way longer than I wanted and like... it's done. It's fantastically wonky, but hopefully it works.

Day 6 will be politely skipped over for now, and we resume tomorrow with Day 7.

There are many, many things that Alice Cullen has never done. She’s never eaten ice cream, she’s never fallen asleep, she’s never accidentally cut herself. She can’t, but that’s beside the point - on the list of things and experiences she’s had in her life time, they remain absent.

There are million little things she never got to do. It’s not something she thinks about much; she’s seen and done and had so many other beautiful, wonderful, fantastic experiences that what she has missed out on don’t seem to matter that much. How many people get to dance barefoot under the Northern Lights? How many people get to go on long, lazy tours of entire continents without a single responsibility in the world? Not to have to worry about where their next meal is coming from? Or know that they can always study a different degree next go-round?

When she does get to mentally cross off a new experience, it’s usually with joy. The list gets shorter the older she gets, so new things are almost always wonderful.

But this time… well, she’s sorry that this will be an experience that she gets to cross off her list. More for her classmates than herself.

But then, maybe it’s becoming the quintessential American high school experience and this moment was inevitable.

(The silence is chilling.)

Study hall in the library is the one class she doesn’t have with Edward, Bella, or Jasper. She thought about changing it, but they all decided that having one of them not in class could be potentially useful to them - not to mention that it’s fine and healthy for Jasper to have classes without her. Esme’s always lovingly exasperated when the school sends messages home that they’re bordering on unhealthily codependent and maybe someone should look into that. This was a positive step towards looking more normal.

So she had kept study hall after lunch and now she’s sitting next to Nicole Casey who is trying not to cry, second-guessing her choices. Samantha Wells is two seats down and shaking perceptibly and every single one of them are staring very hard at their books.

She’s so very, very glad Bella had Bio with Edward after lunch.

(She can feel the ghost of her heart pounding in her ears as she tries to find a way out. But her gift won’t settle, as the future fluctuates.)

Forks is small enough that it’s hard not to know something about everyone, especially classmates - Beth’s mother has made several inappropriate passes at Emmett, Lee Stephen’s little sister has just gone into remission from leukemia, Jennifer Ford can’t manage to keep a part-time job longer than a month. Just useless nonsense that she habitually picks up for no reason.

Which is why when Kirk stormed into the library, the hair stood up on the back of her neck. He was always one of the quiet ones, slipping through the crowds without notice, coming into study hall with his head down and taking the first seat at the left-hand desk. He listened to angry music the whole time, and ignored everyone else. He was the occasional punchline to a joke, but mostly he was just another face in the junior class. Except…

Kirk’s father had been one of the workers laid off recently, when another lumber company closed up shop. A lot of families had been struggling lately, another closure had made things worse for the town, and there was only so much that could be done - Esme made sure the local food pantry was overflowing (anonymously, of course), the Cullens made regular donations of clothing to the church and the local thrift store, and Carlisle was volunteering for as many shifts in the walk-in clinic that he could get away with.

Work would come, she had seen that. By the end of summer, things would pick up again. But it wasn’t like they could tell people that, or that it made time speed up. They just had to wait.

And worry and stress created anger, and anger could come out in so many ways - like the men that lined up outside the liquor store and the one bar on the end of the town limits. The yelling and frustration towards everyone still surviving and thriving - they’d started driving Emmett’s Jeep to school, much to Rosalie’s displeasure. And the bruises that littered Kirk’s face, the way the kid hid inside his hoodie and glared at anyone that walked past. Jasper had visibly recoiled from the boy when he got too close, the distaste he had visible on his face from whatever emotions Kirk was emitting.

Oh, Jasper. She wishes he was here, so she could hold his hand. But she’s glad he’s not because she can practically feel the tension and fear and rage in this room right now; if he were here, he’d be suffering.

(Rob Sawyer is starting to wheeze, and Mrs Garcia is visibly crying. This is going to get worse before it gets better.)

“…think you’re better than me!” Kirk rants, pacing, the gun shiny and obscene in one hand. There’s a bullet hole in the check-out desk - a warning shot. “How many times, Sawyer? Huh? Since middle school?” Suddenly the gun is pressed to Rob Sawyer’s temple, and the boy squeezes his eyes shut, his lungs straining for oxygen. He is as white as a ghost, his skin waxy white, and it’s a long way from the boy that offered her a flower on Valentine’s Day last year because ‘Hale needed to know there was competition’ with a wink and a grin.

She’s waiting for the shot, waiting for the sound of the body hitting the ground.

Just as suddenly as he jammed the gun against Rob, Kirk moves on. He’d just walked into the library like a thunderstorm, reached into his backpack and pulled out the gun - a handgun, most likely used by his parents to ‘protect their home’. She hadn’t even seen it coming, because he hadn’t made the choice to take it out, to do this, right up until that exact moment.

She didn’t even know how long he’d been carrying it around. She’d never seen anything. She can’t even see how this is going to end. Everything is in flux.

Kirk’s walking round their seats now, reciting their sins and pressing the gun against their skin. Sara turned him down in middle school, Cole beat him up last year for some reason that isn’t mentioned. A laundry list of crimes that he hisses and yells and sneers back at them, grotesquely empowered to stand his ground now. She keeps her gaze fixed on the table. She can feel the metal of her seat bending where her hand is gripping it, and she has to take a breath and calm herself.

(The very, very worst thing that could happen is that Kirk does shoot one of them. Free-flowing blood… she’s intensely aware that in this moment, that will break her.)

He’s around at her table now, and she’s trying to brace herself for what comes next. She’s never had a gun pointed at her before - except for Emmett’s paintball guns; she’d been more mad that he’d point a paintball gun at her vintage Alaia, honestly. And Jasper has some vintage guns, sentimental collectibles, but even though a bullet wouldn’t do anything more than ruin her outfit, he’d rip off his own arms before he pointed a gun at his wife.

So this is new. Very new.

“Nicole Casey,” Kirk says in that sing-song voice that is unnerving. “The one who started the rumour that I pad my swimsuit because someone this ‘scrawny couldn’t have anything worthwhile going on’? Do you know what you did, Nicole? Do you know?” Everyone knows. It’s a running school joke. She’s heard from her brothers the absolute bullshit that goes on in the locker room; they’ll only intervene if it crosses over from verbal to physical, per Cullen family policy. Jasper might intervene with his gift if it’s appropriate but honestly, Jasper escapes the locker rooms like a road runner most days. Human eyes might not be able to see the scars easily, but he refuses to risk it.

The gun slides through Nicole’s hair and he leans over her shoulder. “Bang.”

And Nicole slumps in her seat, audibly sobbing.

(Everyone else is being evacuated. They can hear them; the hurried footsteps trying not to burst into a run, the tears and the desperation to be swift and as quiet as possible. There’s some yelling, people calling out for their friends and siblings, panic in their voice. It feels very far away right now.)

She feels very distant from everything that’s happening in the room right now. She wonders if Edward can hear her; the library is at the back of the school, they’ve probably evacuated everyone to the front in the hopes they can get the students off campus. She hopes Jasper is staying calm. She’s going to be fine.

The muzzle of the gun is suddenly against the back of her neck bringing her back into the moment, and it’s an odd feeling that brings up an entirely new scenario to worry about - if Kirk, who she’s never spoken with, decides to shoot her. The bullet will ricochet; if the gun is flush against her skin, it’ll backfire and… it’ll be a mess. A big one that will be hard to explain.

“Little Alice Cullen. The Cullens never give anyone the time of day. Too high and mighty to deal with us lowlifes.” The gun slides down the top of her spine. “Driving around in your sister’s car that cost more than a house. You think you’re just so much better than any one else that you had to keep it in the family rather than slum it with anyone from Forks. What’s it like, Alice? Huh? When you f-”

(It’s rather hypocritical for him to bring up their admittedly terrible cover story that she’s fucking her ‘brother’, after condemning Rob and Nicole for ruining his life over rumours and personal stuff.)

She turns her head slightly; his breath hot and damp against her face. The gun moves to jam into the space between her jaw and neck. She wishes she was alone with him right now. She’s been a Cullen for decades, she knows how to stage a suicide with the best of them.

The library doors suddenly bang open, and they all jump; including Kirk. She knows that they’re all expecting Chief Swan or one of the police, and Mrs Garcia’s face is an expression of horror when she realizes who it is.

The only person who expects him is her. The fear and anxiety that have been pouring off her would be like a beacon to him. Edward might be able to read her mind, but Jasper will always hear her when she calls - even when she doesn’t mean to.

But the very easiest way to get out of this without bloodshed is with an empath. Especially an empath who knows how to manage people. In the right head space, Jasper could sell milk to cows.

And honestly, in any bad situation, he just makes it better. Everything is going to be okay if Jasper’s there. That’s how it’s always been for her.

Except… his expression is dark. Calm, but dark. Angry. He’s so angry right now, his fists tensing at his sides. The muzzle of the gun slides back along her neck to press hard against where her neck joins her head and she hopes it doesn’t bend.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Kirk snaps, and his other hand grips the shoulder of her sweater. “If you take another goddamn step, I am going to blow her head off.”

(Someone has wet themselves. She doesn’t know who, but the smell is distinct and she’s just so intensely aware that other than the librarian, she’s surrounded by children - sixteen and seventeen years old, facing down a peer, a classmate, a friend who is threatening them with death because he’s tired of life being cruel. She just feels sorry for them, the ones that will close their eyes and not be able to forget this day, forget the barrel of the gun against their skin, and the knowledge that they might never get to say good bye to everyone they love.)

“You’re going to put the gun down.” Jasper’s voice is low. “Alice?”

“I’m okay.” Her voice quivers perfectly, she sounds like a panicked teenager trying to stay calm. Her hands are balled up in her skirt, and she’s playing the part perfectly.

“Get the fuck out, Hale,” Kirk has a slightly hysterical tone to his voice.

“Kirk, put the gun down.” Jasper’s having trouble with picking the correct flavour of calm right now, she can tell - the room is full of terror and rage. Their secret could be exposed. He’s pissed off that it was her class that Kirk chose for his vendetta.

“Make me,” Kirk snaps and Alice kind of wants to laugh. Emmett said that to Jasper once in the seventies over something. She can’t even remember what - a remote control car? Some gadget that they were both fascinated with. She just remembered that it ended with Jasper taking Emmett up on his challenge with the kind of swift and decisive action that guaranteed a humiliating defeat. One of those incidents that became family lore.

(Bella will like that story, she has to remember to tell her.)

Jasper’s eyes narrow in a way that sealed the deaths of thousands of newborns and humans back in the day, and Alice takes a breath to try and center herself. Having Kirk so close to her is uncomfortable - he doesn’t smell even fainting good, and honestly, other than Bella, she’s not usually touched all that much by humans; usually it’s accidental or incidental touching, not a grip. It’s very odd and she’s hyper-aware of him; she almost wishes he’d still been tormenting Nicole when Jasper walked in.

“You’ve made your point,” Jasper shrugged. “You’ve scared the shit out of everyone in this school, not just this room. No one is ever going to tell a joke about you again. Hell, they probably won’t talk about you ever again. And you did it without spilling any blood. You can walk away from this.”

That’s stretching the truth - Kirk’s going to prison after this, maybe after a stay in a psychiatric ward. A student can’t bring a firearm to school and go back home that night. That’s not how this ends. But it doesn’t have to get worse than that. There’s still light in the tunnel.

“Maybe I don’t fucking want to,” Kirk says back nastily. “Maybe I’m going to blow your sister-wife’s brains out.”

“That won’t end well for you.” Jasper moves closer. Everyone is transfixed. “Alice has never done anything to you, Kirk. Just put down the gun.”

(She can feel his finger shaking on the trigger. As much as fresh blood flowing is the very worst idea right now, having the bullet hit her flesh and explode the gun would end this quickly. She wonders if they can control themselves long enough to get out if someone starts bleeding.)

It hits her first; she’s always been especially vulnerable to his gift - maybe because she knows it so intimately, knows that it’s him, that she lets it happen. But she’s suddenly so calm and peaceful that she visibly relaxes. Everything is going to be okay.

Kirk’s breathing changes, and then the gun is falling away from her body and he is stepping backwards.

“The gun, Kirk.” Jasper’s voice isn’t kind, but it is firm, and she watches Kirk hold it out and maybe she holds her breath that he doesn’t change his mind at the last moment and fire it at Jasper.

Jasper’s hands close over it and she lets out a breath, closing her eyes for a moment, as Kirk drops to the ground and he begins to cry. There’s no pity in her for him right now; just relief for the others. Gratitude that her husband always has her back and is, at heart, a hero. She watches as he disassembles the gun with the intention of unloading it.

The bullets fall like rain onto the carpeted floor, and Jasper tosses the gun behind the check-out desk, and that’s when everyone comes back to life, scrambling faster than they can get their bodies to move. There’s yelling and tears and they all run, Kirk still sobbing on the floor.

She expects Jasper to take her hand, to pull her along with him into the hallway, to quietly get their stories straight so that she doesn’t have to go to hospital or talk to the police. Except he doesn’t.

He pulls her into the kind of hug that feels desperate and relieved. He’s wrapped around her like she might actually have gotten hurt, like he was actually worried for her, terrified of the outcome.

“We need to go,” she says, and he grunts his assent, but he doesn’t immediately move away. And when he finally does, he keeps one arm around her as they move through the school - no debrief, no instructions. Just the two of them hurrying outside to join the chaos.

(There’s a local news station there, and she’s relieved that they waited to leave the building, because no one really notices them slipping out to join the crowds; the police pushing past both of them to get inside and find Kirk.)

“We should have taken the gun,” she says as Jasper leads her away, towards where she can see their siblings sitting on the Jeep, waiting; Edward’s holding his phone to his ear, probably speaking with Esme or Carlisle. “We shouldn’t have left it with him.”

“I don’t care.” Jasper’s words are ice cold - and clairvoyant because seconds later, they all hear a gunshot ring out and when she gasps and turns to look around, he just wraps his arms around her protectively and keeps her moving towards their family.

(She sees Charlie, looking tired and angry; he makes eye contact with her and nods but doesn’t come over. She knows at some point, Charlie is going to come looking for her and Jasper - once he’s interviewed all the other students and Mrs Garcia, and finds out that they were right in the middle of this mess.)

She’s not really sure about getting home - she knows that she was bundled into the backseat with Jasper next to her; that Edward and Bella are following in Bella’s truck. She knows that Jasper has his arms around her the entire time, and that she’s never felt a tiredness like this before. Rose and Emmett keep looking at her in the backseat with these solemn expressions, like she’s going to keel over at any moment. And yeah, she did fuck up - she never should have missed that a student was carrying a gun around school, especially with Bella around. But she doesn’t want to think about that right now, and she doesn’t want anyone else to point that out either. She just leans against Jasper and lets everything wash over her, the conversation over her head indecipherable to her ears.

It all passes in a blur until she’s climbing out of the Jeep to find Esme there looking stricken, barely waiting for Alice to have both her feet on the ground before she’s pulled into a hug.

“Oh sweet girl,” Esme says, and she’s confused why everyone is behaving like she could have gotten hurt. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she says, but Esme hugs her again - a proper mom hug, the ones she reserves for really, really bad days (slips, Maria’s unscheduled visits, the death of a human family member) and it doesn’t feel like she’s really done anything to deserve it.

“I’ll call Carlisle and let him know you’re all home safe,” Esme says, pressing a kiss to Alice’s forehead.

Edward and Bella aren’t back yet, so she doesn’t protest when Jasper gently guides her upstairs to their room, and folds her into their bed, his arms tight around her. And it’s her favourite place in the world right now; the familiar scent of the bedding, the way they both curl together in their usual positions with her head on his shoulder. It makes her feel like the world has tipped the right way up again. Like maybe her mind was still in that library, and it’s only just caught up with her body.

“How are you feeling?” Jasper asks, as if he can’t feel exactly what she is. She smiles and curls closer to him.

“I’m fine. I think you’ve all forgotten that if Kirk had tried anything, he would have hurt himself,” she replies. “I was more worried he’d damage the gun. How would we have explained that?”

Jasper’s giving her a look. “What? Are you okay? I haven’t seen you that mad in a long, long time. It couldn’t be because you missed American History.” Jasper hates that class; he’s lived through the real life events and the class so many times that the course work drives him nuts.

“I found my wife held at gunpoint today; it’s been mildly stressful,” he says lazily, but she can see the strain in his eyes.

“Jas…” she says softly. “We’re bulletproof. There’s nothing he could have done to us.”

“He might not have been able to hurt you, but he had the intention to,” Jasper explains, his fingers stroking her cheek. “He wanted to hurt you, Alice, and that is… entirely unacceptable to me. I walked in there to get you - and you alone - out of that room because of his rage and his hatred towards everyone in that room. If it had just been us, I would have… well, if he hadn’t cleaned up after himself, I would have done it for him. For even looking at you while holding that gun.”

She shivers in his arms, knowing that he means what he says. It could have been a few weeks from now, with Kirk home on bail, or it could have been ten years from now, on parole and starting over. Jasper would have found him and killed him. She knows her husband, and he holds a grudge - especially when it comes to her safety and happiness.

“There is a special terror in the sight of a fire arm for a human,” Jasper continues more gently. “They end a life so absolutely… I remember the first time I had to shoot one of our animals, when I was a child. It was such a terrible moment, it’s been over a hundred years and I’ve never forgotten it. The same with the first man I killed in war. A gun is a heavy responsibility, a way of playing god, when you’re mortal. It’s looking into the eyes of death.”

“…and I can’t really grasp that,” she says finally. “Because I’ve got no memory of them as a human.”

“There was never any doubt that you would leave that room whole, I know. But there will never, ever be a time when I won’t defend you from someone that intends you harm, whether that’s some high school kid or some kind of monster. You are always going to be my priority, the thing that I protect over everything else.” Jasper pressed his lips against her cheek and she reached up to run her fingers through his hair.

She loves him, all of him - his single-minded focus, especially towards her; his determination, his practicality, and even his over-protectiveness.

And she knows that at some point, they’re going to have deal with the fact that Kirk killed himself because of their carelessness, speaking with police on record, with the entire school knowing that they were in the eye of the storm. All those little things that could expose them, that make them memorable. She’ll let herself feel sad for Rob and Nicole and everyone else who was there who can’t sleep without feeling the barrel of the gun against their skin.

But right now, she’s going to stay here safe in her husband’s arms and be grateful for the fact that no matter what, he’s always going to come running when she calls.

#ailesswhumptober2023 #ailesswhumptober prompt 5: held at gunpoint #alice cullen #jasper hale #jalice #twilight fan fiction #my fic: whumptober2023 #trigger warning: school shooting #i tried #it got complex #something a little different

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salt-volk · 8 months

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Saw the post about "other sites" and I'm feeling ~salty~, so lemme give some context for where the bar is with pet sites to y'all. Maybe you've seen ads, maybe you tried playing it and quit because the tutorial is its own circle of hell, maybe you're a blessed person who has never heard of it: Sylestia. It's run by one (1) man. He codes the entire site, has exactly 0 help - by choice. People have literally offered to help him with coding stuff *for free* and he refuses to let anyone touch his precious code. His ex girlfriend (yes you read that right) is supposedly the other admin - she barely ever shows up, posts games/events that are full of errors, once vanished in the middle of running a game, and has personally insulted players before because they dared offer feedback on one of her ugly ass designs. There is exactly one artist for avatar items and one for pets - one other artist is listed in the credits but it's unclear what regular work, if any, they do for the site. Over 200 different avatar items are released per year, and new pet traits debut anywhere between 4-8 times per year, AND the site is in the (glacially slow) process of redoing all the art for various species. The site is at least 98% RNG by volume - including items you pay premium currency for. Retired items? RNG only. Getting pets? RNG. Getting items period? RNG. And the RNG is also awful - people are constantly having to literally beg for rates to be adjusted. Plenty of features for events are also just. straight up gambling - you can pay solid chunks of premium currency and walk away with items that are literally worth nothing. You think DV is grindy? Sylestia not only practically requires you to spend a full workday glued to it - including events that basically require you to literally not sleep for several days - the site owner is actively making new content to further encourage ridiculous amounts of grinding. Why? Because he's worried that older players will be bored without new content - so instead of fixing any of the old content on the site, or the site itself which is a mess, he makes new content that ALSO doesn't work. As of December, the site will be in its ELEVENTH YEAR IN BETA. So when I say "not fixing old content", I'm not talking like, a couple glitches or iffy art. I'm talking *half the site is completely incompatible with the other half*. And all of that my friends, is still somehow not the source of my salt. Someone pointed out to the site owner that one of his avatar items was, perhaps, a bit racist. It was (I should say is, it's still on the site :) ) a stereotypical native american dress, CLEARLY based off of the stupid Pocahontas movie, titled "Pow Wow Costume". It was released with a Pilgrim costume in the site's early years. Pretty not great, yeah? Multiple people complained, provided him sources explaining why "Maybe don't keep this on here, maybe this isn't great". He, is white. He responded by saying he a) would not remove it, b) did not think it was offensive, c) what about the Christmas items or St. Patrick's day items the site has aren't those the same, and d) he actually visited a reservation once so he knows it's OK to have those items, and e) native players should actually be HAPPY to have those items because it was to iNcLuDE tHeM. I am not joking. The site has 0 acknowledgement of pride month, not a banner, not an announcement, no items, no anything - it DOES however have an entire festival for the American Fourth of July holiday. The owner claims he doesn't like to have political things on his site, make of that what you will. The owner also issued a mass ban on a bunch of people because they said some rude shit (about the racist items, the rng, his refusal to get coding help, general issues taking feedback, etc.) in a private, off-site discord server. How did he know what they said? Why, he asked some players in the server to *spy on the others for him*. He edited time stamps out and published a bunch of the screenshots from this private server, out of context and who knows if they were edited, and threw a public tantrum about how the players were harassing him and secretly planning to destroy the site… by bitching in a private discord. So yeah. Not excusing Anji's behavior, but happy to show y'all exactly how much worse it could be LMAO.

#submission

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callgespenst · 5 months

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Saw a post about how you should always be able to pause a video game, just as a general rule,

and I discovered an exciting new edge case ruling on that today.

I'm at the arcade playing DDR, which I've been doing a lot lately, really getting back into it. Used to play at home off and on but those metal pads literally and figuratively hit different. I've gone to Dave and Busters more in the last 6-7 months than I have in my whole life before that.

Dance Dance Revolution is not a game you can pause, despite what Transformers (2007) might have led you to believe. You have some brief time to recuperate while choosing the next song, but once the music starts, it's dance or die. On some difficulties and settings you might be able to mess up a few times, but on, say, LIFE4, if you miss four arrows (or drop freeze arrows), that's it, show's over.

I'm on my third or fourth set of the afternoon, having a grand old time. A few of the lads I usually play with are around, but for this go-around there's someone I haven't played with before on the dance pad. To make this simpler, we'll call them Player 2. We've made it to the Extra Stage, where if you do real good for the first three tracks, you get to play one more on that aforementioned LIFE4 gauge. It's Player 2's pick and they choose a Touhou song, of which there are, quite a few. It's weird being in the modern era, where Touhou is a semi-known quantity in American anime pop culture, and not just something one of your stoner friends in high school tells you is the coolest shit ever before giving you a flash drive full of fan translated games, but that's a different story.

We make it about halfway through the Extra Stage before Player 2's shoelace somehow gets stuck in the dance pad, which I don't think I've ever seen before. They stumble and fall and of course, immediately fail out of the stage. Now, of course, the polite thing to do is to stop and make sure they're okay. But the rhythm gamer thing to do, is to keep going for your fallen comrade. There are other people around checking and making sure Player 2 is okay, and I keep on dancing, but lemme tell you, I have never felt more sheepish in my entire life than that extremely long minute where I'm continuing to dance as if the minor accident next to me didn't just happen.

(Player 2 was totally okay, just confused, and told me I was right to keep going, because that really is just how rhythm gamers are).

Anyway I think the moral of the story is that maybe instead of a pause button, Dance Dance Revolution could use a "sorry, sorry, I fucked up, lemme take that again from the top" button.

#gespenst updates

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unlicensed-un-proffesional · 2 months

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Small update on what I've been doing with my life currently and thinking about, it just feels like something like this should be posted onto what I call My Blog.

So, I kinda got this idea, right? That maybe with a few of my connections and the places I'm getting myself into right now, I could get the whole Palestine thing mentioned at a festival or two this summer, maybe even have a small area like a little stand dedicated to information and messages surrounding the whole thing, possibly sending out invitations to Pro-Palestinian Liberation Organizations? I've currently just got a few bullet points and notes, I'm just thinking while I'm helping out these people with a couple of their things I could probably propose the idea.

I don't really know the head honcho's too well, they seem kind of like liberal types to me, what I know of them politically is just their ties to the Green Party, specifically the Green Party of Alaska through one of my friends who was deeply involved in that party, and there may be a couple of organizations involved I haven't bothered to research yet, but from what a personal source tells me there is some discussion around the topic taking place, leaning more in favor of Palestine it seems, and while they work on the stuff they're doing, my personal source might be able to sometime when I've got some things set up and ready put in the word for me or bring it up in a meeting. I already wanted to be involved in this project for personal reasons, and to an extant already am and have been, but it kinda struck me that I might be able to get something started there that's a little more, idk, connected? Something clicked in me about that, bringing some parts of my own life together and then parts of the world I see together, and you know mentally I leaped at the chance for some form of direct action and am... definitely committed to it now.

It's still a work in progress idea, I have a bunch of links and sources and stuff saved, I'm looking into books and stuff, but I have yet to properly flip through my list and put it to more direct use. I want it to have an emphasis on what an American Citizen (as these events will be, at least for now, primarily taking place in the USA) can do about it, like maybe I could find or make a map of weapons manufacturing sites in the US and another more metaphorical map of money trails and politicians, things people can not only learn of, but knowledge they could use. Just some ideas I'm still workshopping, it's a slower process than I'd kinda like right now. My internet connection is still kinda crap and I still have life and dishes to keep up with, but I feel pretty confident in the overall direction I'm moving in. As big of a deal as I'm making this small Pro-Palestinian movement of mine out to be, it's realistically more of a side project I'll have to put spare time into while I get info on what I'm currently gonna be doing, and it's ultimately not my event and out of my hands if something like this goes through or not. For all I know there could already be plans similar to mine being worked on in a more professional setting right about now. I have a couple, more personal projects I'd like to see inserted, maybe a little bit of advertising for some housing projects I've really wanted to get started, but what I feel most strongly about currently is the Palestinian people and the occupation of Palestine.

This is, all to say, I have somewhat more importance tied into my life right now, which I'm still a little anxious about, just as an update on what I'm currently doing. I mean right now I'm not doing that, I'm bumping it to the Hotline Miami OST and digesting soup while writing a post on tumblr.com at 11 PM, but for the next couple months, I have several interconnected goals that I am passionate about and proud of for political and personal reasons that I'm going to be spending more time on. It at least seems like a good jumping off point to get more into the swing of things with my life. As anxious as I am you know, it feels pretty good.

#i was drinking a little tonight so it is a little needlessly long. sorry about that.#hexacles.txt #pentacles talks #it's pronounced pen tuh cleese

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gridbug · 5 months

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Ok so I'm still alive I'm just getting beaten over the head with a frying pan like a loony tunes character by school work and family commitments, I think I'm just going to do a short review of the books I managed to finish at the end of the year, maybe even early January, because I do have a lot I want to say for the reading roundup and it was a fun exercise, I just haven't gotten a chance to open the app and do whatever.

I have way too much to type on what's been going on with Israel/Palestine, it's something I like many people find an infuriating, heartbreaking subject, you've heard it from a million places and people, we need a ceasefire now.

In lieu of me just writing words about all the ways in which this is a completely avoidable tragedy, (I'm sorry for my one mutual that's in the one group chat where I've just been dropping term papers in there I am losing my mind) both for Israeli civilians taken hostage by Hamas, and for all of the Palestinian civilians being killed in an act of revenge by the Israeli state, I'm just going to link two reading lists from the excellent Boston Review (and then just read on for my thinly edited ramblings):

These essays cover so much ground, I don't agree with all of them of course, they're contradictory, but taken together they provide an excellent analysis and context that is a great alternative to both the mainstream "pro-Israel" consensus and the left's pro-palestinian response, which while undeniably often impressive and heroic, can too often slip into a sort of essentializing rhetoric that makes Israel this black hole of evil, and this rhetorical arms race between the pro-Israel* and pro-Palestine** sides does not lead to anything resembling genuine understanding.

What I think is missing from the left is a comparative lens through which to view this conflict. Violence against stateless peoples, in Sudan, Indonesia, the Congo, India, Syria, Turkey, anti-indigenous violence in South and Central America, American and Canadian violence against indigenous peoples demanding sovereignty over their lands with regard to oil pipelines and other forms of environmental destruction, Morocco's occupation of western Sahara: each of these have their own nuances and challenges but fit a larger pattern of (often) U.S. and first world backed violence against vulnerable ethnic groups. I really hope the current wellspring of interest in Israel/Palestine has a chance to grow into a richer critique of the rules-based international order from the left, to move beyond calling out hypocrisy and broken discourses and to actually dismantling existing regimes of violence and oppression and creating justice and peace for everyone on earth. This isn't a utopian dream, it's the only realistic answer I believe we have. It's the bare minimum of what we owe to eachother.

And I'm sorry as well this is an unreadable mess but I need to finish the paper I'm working on and this keeps poking me in the back of my head as a thing I want to write so I hope this will bring me some peace. I won't know until I press the post button.

*ideally we wouldn't even use this term, Israel will not survive as even a nominally democratic, Jewish state under the current government's policy, this is as much a self-destructive war as it is a destructive and almost certainly genocidal one, and anyone that cares about there being safety or political freedom for Israelis should recognize this is an unwinnable war that will doom Israel. The level of repression that the Israeli Jewish left is currently facing is simply unprecedented. Even if you see a post online from anyone who is Jewish or Israeli, and you think they have the wrong post or are saying something bad, just don't argue with them. They are experiencing something traumatic and painful, and it would be an act of epistemic injustice to both deny the pain they are in and demand they perform the correct political script for you. Just donate to UNRWA or PCRF and continue on your day, go to a March or write to your congressperson or phone bank, read a book about the conflict from that reading list you saved and haven't looked at since, do literally anything else rather than get into arguments with strangers, you have no idea how they are grieving and processing this. I keep finding myself with this compulsion to read the threads from people on Shitter responding in extremely callous ways to people, to what end, why? You're never going to convince them of anything especially not online. Now if it's a Christian zionist who's just on twitter/wherever celebrating the upcoming apocalypse let them have it, they can fuck right off.

**Just because this is driving me up a wall: there's nothing liberatory about Hamas, it has run Gaza as an East Germany-style police state since it squeaked its way into power, anyone on the left should be able to see that our solidarity with the people of Gaza should be with the brave members of civil society groups that have and do resist both Hamas and the coercive Israeli and Egyptian violence of the blockade. I also have no sympathy for the people policing the language or rhetoric of Palestinian activists, who have so often and so beautifully made the case for peace even in the face of unthinkable cruelty. Anyone hectoring a Palestinian person for not condemning Hamas enough after half of their family is killed by an Israeli airstrike, or who don't know if their loved ones are alive or dead right now, anyone who is grieving, can jump into the sun and stay there until all of their organs boil away.

#reading roundup

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