LU Star Wars AU: Part 3

Got a theme of noncanon characters for this one, this time we have Spirit and Warriors! (It doesn't feel right having a Star Wars AU without including Spirit)

PART 1 | PART 2

Spirit

Spirit isn't actually related to Wind, but the two of them are so alike in appearance that many mistake them for twins. While Wind loves to pilot, Spirit's interest lies more in tinkering directly with the spacecraft itself. He personally works on Tetra's, Linebeck's, and Wind's ships, and ended up also working as a mechanic for the Alliance for a brief time before moving on.

Spirit has had his own adventures with Spectre (AKA his Zelda); he is one of the rare few people alive to venture into the chaotic Unknown Regions of the galaxy without a wayfinder or star compass and return to tell the tale. That adventure involved an encounter with a ghostlike being named Malladus.

Spirit is also especially in tune with the Force and spirits, just like Wind. He also has some skill with a blaster, and is extremely handy in space combat, but he has no interest in combat and would rather work on his personal projects and ship designs. His personal favorite is a prototype set of powered armor he designed for Spectre, but unfortunately it got wrecked in the encounter with Malladus.

Warriors

Warriors is an active military captain in the Alliance. He is also a close friend of Artemis, who is a high ranking general and a current member of the Imperial Senate. Their home planet has widespread anti-Imperial sentiments and secretly hosts a base for the Alliance, and Artemis does her best to keep it hidden from Imperial eyes.

Warriors actually inherited his saber from his mother, a former Jedi Knight from the days of the Jedi Order, and was taught how to wield it by her before she passed. He grew up on stories of the old Order and is determined to uphold the legacy of being a Jedi Knight. Part of that is looking out for his men and protecting those who can't protect themselves, and protecting Artemis in her efforts with the Alliance.

He has a certain amount of pride in that legacy and the skills and stories he was taught. He quickly rose to the rank of Artemis's personal knight, and his achievements make him stand out among Alliance forces. It took a few particularly close calls with Imperial Forces to temper his pride.

One of those encounters involved a Sith Lord named Cia, whose attention he unwittingly caught. The only reason he escaped alive was due to someone named Lana, who he later learned was Cia's twin sister. Cia still has a one-sided obsession with Warriors in particular and is determined to hunt him down.

Warriors has also met plenty of people across the galaxy during his time with the Alliance; among these people were Wind and Spirit. Wind had a brief stint with Warriors as a pilot and Spirit ended up tagging along for the ride.

(Linked Universe AU belongs to Jojo)

in addition to being prone to an obvious naturalistic fallacy, the oft-repeated claim that various supplements / herbs / botanicals are being somehow suppressed by pharmaceutical interests seeking to protect their own profits ('they would rather sell you a pill') belies a clear misunderstanding of the relationship between 'industrial' pharmacology and plant matter. bioprospecting, the search for plants and molecular components of plants that can be developed into commercial products, has been one of the economic motivations and rationalisations for european colonialism and imperialism since the so-called 'age of exploration'. state-funded bioprospectors specifically sought 'exotic' plants that could be imported to europe and sold as food or materia medica—often both, as in the cases of coffee or chocolate—or, even better, cultivated in 'economic' botanical gardens attached to universities, medical schools, or royal palaces and scientific institutions.

this fundamental attitude toward the knowledge systems and medical practices of colonised people—the position, characterising eg much 'ethnobotany', that such knowledge is a resource for imperialist powers and pharmaceutical manufacturers to mine and profit from—is not some kind of bygone historical relic. for example, since the 1880s companies including pfizer, bristol-myers squibb, and unilever have sought to create pharmaceuticals from african medicinal plants, such as strophanthus, cryptolepis, and grains of paradise. in india, state-created databases of valuable 'traditional' medicines have appeared partly in response to a revival of bioprospecting since the 1980s, in an increasingly bureaucratised form characterised by profit-sharing agreements between scientists and local communities that has nonetheless been referred to as "biocapitalism". a 1990 paper published in the proceedings of the novartis foundation symposium (then the ciba foundation symposium) spelled out this form of epistemic colonialism quite bluntly:

Ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, folk medicine and traditional medicine can provide information that is useful as a 'pre-screen' to select plants for experimental pharmacological studies.

there is no inherent oppositional relationship between pharmaceutical industry and 'natural' or plant-based cures. there are of course plenty of examples of bioprospecting that failed to translate into consumer markets: ginseng, introduced to europe in the 17th century through the mercantile system and the east india company, found only limited success in european pharmacology. and there are cases in which knowledge with potential market value has actually been suppressed for other reasons: the peacock flower, used as an abortifacient in the west indies, was 'discovered' by colonial bioprospectors in the 18th century; the plant itself moved easily to europe, but knowledge of its use in reproductive medicine became the subject of a "culturally cultivated ignorance," resulting from a combination of funding priorities, national policies, colonial trade patterns, gender politics, and the functioning of scientific institutions. this form of knowledge suppression was never the result of a conflict wherein bioprospectors or pharmacists viewed the peacock flower as a threat to their own profits; on the contrary, they essentially sacrificed potential financial benefits as a result of the political and social factors that made abortifacient knowledge 'unknowable' in certain state and commercial contexts.

exploitation of plant matter in pharmacology is not a frictionless or infallible process. but the sort of conspiratorial thinking that attempts to position plant therapeutics and 'big pharma' as oppositional or competitive forces is an ahistorical and opportunistic example of appealing to nominally anti-capitalist rhetoric without any deeper understanding of the actual mechanisms of capitalism and colonialism at play. this is of course true whether or not the person making such claims has any personal financial stake in them, though it is of course also true that, often, they do hold such stakes.

hey, "sorta-long time viewer, first time asker", thought i'd reach out to ask about your recommended reading on socialist/communist theory. besides the obvious like the Communist Manifesto and the works of Lenin and such

optionally, i'd appreciate sources to access and read what you pick out, but i can probably manage on my own without them

please and thanks! <3

obviously bear in mind that my perspective is just one and quite limited -- & also that i very much approach marxist theory from the lenses of anti-imperialism and cultural studies. that said, my basic recommended reading list of books that equipped me with the ideological tools i have now would look something like:

engels, principles of communism

marx, wage labour & capital

marx, the german ideology

engels, socialism: utopian & scientific

luxemburg, reform or revolution?

lenin, the state & revolution

lenin, imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism

fanon, the wretched of the earth

rodney, how europe underdeveloped africa

nkrumah, neocolonialism: the last stage of imperialism

gramsci, the prison notebooks

adorno & horkheimer, the culture industry

parenti, inventing reality

chomsky & herman, manufacturing consent

benjamin, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

castro, capitalism in crisis

a lot of these texts can be found for free on marxists.org. the rest can be found for free on all kinds of cool websites if you type their name into google search with 'pdf free' at the end

"Everywhere around the world, the broad masses of the people, from the heart of the Global South to the center of the imperial core, are expressing a clear and thorough rejection of the ongoing genocide that has quickly accelerated to a firm revulsion to the Zionist ideology and Zionist project as a whole and to solidarity with and inspiration by the Palestinian people and their heroic resistance in all forms, particularly the armed resistance. The 'red triangle' over targets featured in the resistance videos of Al-Qassam Brigades, Saraya al-Quds and other resistance forces has become an online shorthand for the triumph of the people, their determination, their love for their land and their community over the automated, technologized forces of death and destruction represented by the Merkava tanks and military bases of the US/Israeli war machine.

The 'Dahiyeh doctrine' of mass destruction of civilian lives and infrastructure failed in Lebanon in 2006 because the people were a popular cradle, a source of nourishment, growth and sustenance, of the resistance, because the resistance was of, by and for the masses; today, it is failing once again in its full genocidal furor in Gaza for the same reason. This Resistance emerges from the very camps of refugees, denied their right to return home for the past 75 years, that the Zionists seek to destroy and drive into a new displacement today. Globalizing the intifada today means developing the international popular cradle of the resistance – the growing recognition that the Resistance of the Palestinian people, joined by their comrades, brothers and sisters in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and beyond, today represent the hope of humanity on our collective front lines.

Like the great popular Intifada of 1987, today’s Palestinian, Arab and international globalized intifada is an anti-imperialist cause. It is a movement against colonialism, imperialism, racism and oppression everywhere. The Palestinian flag is not only a symbol of Palestinian national liberation, but of a commitment to anti-colonial principles, to Indigenous sovereignty, to the fight against exploitation, to the fight to end the extraction of wealth, labour and resources by the United States and its imperialist cohort in Europe.

The anti-imperialist nature of the Palestinian cause has perhaps never been more clear than in the present day, where every imperialist power has clearly aligned itself with the Zionist regime with unparalleled fervor, sending billions of dollars in weaponry for genocidal aerial bombing of the Palestinian people in Gaza; banning demonstrations and Palestinian and Palestine solidarity organizations, including Samidoun in Germany; arresting and prosecuting demonstrators and organizers in France, the United States, Canada and elsewhere; setting up new parliamentary and congressional bodies meant to silence and suppress the growing movement and releasing a torrent of deceptive propaganda; and unleashing a wave of social terror in the academy. It is clear that the imperialist powers are doing this because they see the events of October 7 and the rising regional and global resistance as a threat to their continued domination and extraction of wealth from the region and view the Zionist regime as their mechanism to hold on to such power through genocidal violence.

The imperialist powers, led by the United States, have always viewed Zionism as a mechanism to extract wealth from the people of the region while denying the Arab nation sovereignty over its land, wealth and resources. From the Zionist colonization of Palestine, directed by Britain, through the Nakba, the 1967 occupation, the Intifada to the Zionist genocide today, the imperialist powers have always been the central enemy of the Palestinian people, and every rock, every bullet and every strike that confronts 'Israel' also confronts imperialism.

Today’s international popular cradle of the resistance, this globalized intifada, stretches from Gaza, Sanaa, Beirut, Baghdad and Damascus to the streets of Havana, Caracas, Sao Paulo and Johannesburg to the heart of the imperial core, raising a collective voice and developing an international struggle against imperialism and its murderous wars, sanctions and siege, with Palestine at the center.

Also like the great Intifada of 1987, we are in a clear era of unity of the Palestinian cause despite the lingering near-afterlife of the collaborationist Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. The Palestinian people throughout occupied Palestine and everywhere in exile and diaspora are united to bring an end to the genocide, unified behind the Resistance, forming a global resistance front that also embraces popular mobilization, arts, culture, political engagement and grassroots organizing as central to the liberation struggle. On this 36th anniversary, we recall that the siege of the camps in Lebanon was finally broken by the eruption of the Intifada inside occupied Palestine in 1987. Today, we look forward to breaking the siege on Gaza, not only through the strength and resilience of the Palestinian people in Gaza, but through the uprising elsewhere and everywhere.

... From members of U.S. Congress, to university officials, to German security services, to British police, to the French interior ministry, imperialist forces are attempting to criminalize, suppress and silence clear speech for Palestine. They seek to turn reality inside out, whereby 'intifada' – the term reflecting resistance to genocide and oppression – is redefined as itself 'genocidal.' These propaganda campaigns aim to empty the term 'genocide' of meaning and legal weight and to attempt to reclaim control over the discussion of the Palestinian cause, a control that has been swept away by decades of struggle, and has been rendered unrecoverable after October 7. They also seek to target the growing role and organization of Palestinians in exile and diaspora, reclaiming their role in their national liberation movement stripped from them through the years of the Oslo liquidation process.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Long live the Intifada. Victory to the Palestinian Resistance. Stand with the Palestinian armed struggle. Zionism is racism. Imperialism will be defeated. These slogans are ringing out everywhere around the world, and now is the time to declare them, more loudly and clearly than ever. There are no slogans or statements that will satisfy Zionism and imperialism – on the contrary, they wish to strip our movement of our most effective advocacy and our most unifying vision, the vision and promise that enables people to continue to fight, to resist, and to move toward victory in the most extreme conditions of genocide and deprivation."

Samidoun Network, Globalize the Intifada: Regional resistance, international struggle and Palestinian liberation on the 36th anniversary of the great Intifada

Gaza: The World's First LiveStreamed Genocide

As we mark the 81st anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, we are collectively watching the world’s first “livestreamed genocide.”

For so many of us, the images are unavoidable: Our social media feeds are full of Palestinian death and dehumanization by the Israeli military: children left as the sole caregivers of their siblings after their parents are killed, Palestinian prisoners stripped naked and handcuffed, amputations and c-sections with no anesthesia, survivors of the Nakba traumatized again and again, adults and children lined up and numbered, the bodies of Palestinians discarded after execution by Israeli soldiers.

For many American Jews who grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, the parallels we see with our ancestors’ own subjugation and dehumanization are undeniable.

For many of us, we are yet again compelled to answer the urgent warning of “never again.”

The experiences of our ancestors’ persecution and mass death under fascism now serve as the foundation for how we define modern genocides.

The genocide we are witnessing in Palestine by the Israeli military is yet another outgrowth from the same fascist mechanisms that extinguished the lives of over 6 million Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.

Journalist Masha Gessen’s comparison of Palestinians in Gaza to ghettoized Jews in Nazi Germany holds power not only due to its accuracy, but because any discussion of Jews during the Holocaust inevitably invokes their harrowing fates.

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising is the most well known act of Jewish resistance to the Nazi regime’s fascism.

The refusal of Warsaw Jews to accept the violent fate the Nazis prescribed to them, and instead fight back, reminds us all of our duty to resist oppression wherever it is.

We hold these ancestors close and affirm our commitment to ensuring their values of solidarity, collective liberation, and anti-imperialism are carried on into the future as we fight for justice in Palestine.

As Jews, as we continue to witness and struggle against Israeli oppression of Palestinians, we also must engage our collective knowledge of where these ongoing atrocities will lead to, and do everything we can to stop that outcome

Our beliefs, our history and our duty demand we stand up to stop this genocide before it escalates even further.

By Jewish Voices For Peace

Okay- Salem throwing in during the Great War especially with Grimm would belatedly justify that card game from Volume 2 because of how it was over control of Remnant besides as an in show ad. Especially with the whole bit of the Nevermore card.

Salem as supporter of revolutionaries fighting for their freedom... One that fits extremely well. Two it puts additional layers to Cinder approaching the White Fang and also just ... Cinder being taken in.

I also would find such a reveal in show to likely be extremely hilarious as the implications hit the audience and cast.

my god i wrote that entire fucking post without remembering the great war Board Game existed

you’re right though, it would be a sly piece of foreshadowing if that’s the intention, esp bc the nevermore bit is between ruby (playing atlas) and yang (playing mistral) and a dice roll which of their forces it attacks.

in terms of the worldbuilding that game has always kind of interested me for what it says about how grimm are viewed in military contexts by the general public; qrow in WOR suggests that grimm on the battlefield was an automatic ceasefire until they were driven off again, but also that “grimm came in droves” while ozma laid waste to his enemies with the sword. and then there’s this grimm card in a war game where the mechanic is “flip a coin to see whose soldiers get mauled”—implying that opportunistic “let the grimm attack your enemies” tactics are not unheard of.

and… then. there’s arrowfell. the grimm lures the antagonists use were developed by the atlesian military, and… the only practical use case for a device that summons swarms of grimm is to weaponize grimm against human targets, ideally a safe distance away from your own forces. like, they’re grimm bombs. and these were developed post-war! in a time of peace! the great powers during the tense period before the great war must have been thinking about how to point the grimm at their enemies, too.

but unless you’re salem, or have salem on your side, weaponizing the grimm will always be a double-edged sword—as yang says, that’s just a risk you have to be willing to take.

anyway yeah if i’m right, the reveal would be so punchy. and i do for sure think were due for some sort of revelation about the great war—it’s been set up and referenced over and over, and they made a deliberate choice to convey this information through a heavily biased perspective, and the great war ended in vacuo, and everything the narrative is building up to the last stand in vacuo. something about history coming due, and the truth coming out.

it’s also be a neat counterpoint to the Team Oz narrative, which is very black-and-white (mantle and mistral were the bad guys, vale and vacuo were the good guys, don’t ask too many questions about valean expansion into the likeliest origin point for those desperate crazy founders of mantle or vale’s involvement in the complete destruction of its next-door neighbor centuries ago or the part where ozma magic nuked everyone so hard that allies and enemies alike bent the knee.) whereas the truth seems to be more complicated with vale also having imperial ambitions prior to ozma assuming the throne, and then at best prioritizing the status quo.

an interesting possibility that i think about sometimes is that ozma may have been the one to withdraw vale from vacuo; less out of anti-imperialist principle than because the vacuan people were increasingly unhappy with valean rule and he recognized that the only way to avoid a war for independence in the long term would be to give vacuo independence first. and then mistral swooped in like a vulture because ozma neglected to do anything but formally recognize vacuan sovereignty, rather than make reparations and provide support needed to allow vacuo to emerge from centuries of valean occupation as a functional country—the same conflict-avoidant, shortsighted approach on display in his choice to “share the land” with mistrali colonists in eastern vale.

I like that the empire’s response to the raid on aldhani is somewhat incoherent. like doubling the prison sentences of everyone currently incarcerated in an imperial prison is not going to stop the rebels outside of prisons conducting more rebel activity, and neither is randomly arresting people for completely unrelated crimes. cassian is arrested for literally standing in a public space ‘looking suspicious.” he gets convicted of “partisan activity” and “anti imperial speech,” despite very clearly not doing anything, so when that sector reports its arrests to the empire, it can say there was an increase in anti-imperial criminal activity on Niamos and can they pretty please have an increase in their police budget.

a lot of the punitive measures the empire deploys doesn’t make any sense because the point of those laws is not actually to stop rebels. the empire is punishing people because it wants to punish people, it just needed a reason - no matter how tenuously connected - to ramp up its security and surveillance mechanisms. it justifies its brutality after the fact because the point is just cruelty

The issue of nationalism is much more difficult to settle, because nationalism is no unitary thing, and so many different kinds of ideologies and political practices have invoked the nationalist claim that it is always very hard to think of nationalism at the level of theoretical abstraction alone, without weaving into this abstraction the experience of particular nationalisms and distinguishing between progressive and retrograde kinds of practices. Theoretical debates as well as global historical accounts are rendered all the more opaque when the category of ‘nationalism’ is yoked together with the category of ‘culture’ to produce the composite category of ‘cultural nationalism’. Unlike the political category of the state, the regulatory and coercive category of law, institutional mechanisms such as political parties or class organizations like trade unions, ‘culture’ generally and the literary/ aesthetic realm in particular are situated at great remove from the economy and are therefore, among all the superstructures, the most easily available for idealization and theoretical slippage. As these categories have been historically constituted, they have been endowed with an inherent tendency towards national and civilizational singularization. The ideology of cultural nationalism is based explicitly on this singularizing tendency and lends itself much too easily to parochialism, inverse racism and indigenist obscurantism, not to speak of the professional petty bourgeoisie’s penchant for representing its own cultural practices and aspirations, virtually by embodying them as so many emblems of a unified national culture. Cultural domination is doubtless a major aspect of imperialist domination as such, and ‘culture’ is always, therefore, a major site for resistance, but cultural contradictions within the imperialized formations tend to be so very numerous –sometimes along class lines but also in cross-class configurations, as in the case of patriarchal cultural forms or the religious modes of social authorization – that the totality of indigenous culture can hardly be posited as a unified, transparent site of anti-imperialist resistance.

Aijaz Ahmed, Introduction to In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literature

[CW: transphobia]

Transmisogyny is misogyny, transphobia is patriarchy.

The only main difference is that trans people are more oppressed than cis women so while cis women have gotten relative progress from feminism trans people are often left behind by cis feminists, and “progressive” transphobes will even naturalize patriarchal gender roles and definitions and manufactured constrictions, specifically bringing them out or bringing them back when it comes to defending transphobia.

This dynamic is especially exacerbated by racism, colonialism, Orientalism; the cultural imperialist Western gaze targets racialized trans people and even cis women and queers to naturalize or essentialize the patriarchal oppression they experience, treating it as an arbitrary cultural quirk occurring because of happenstance which must and/or can only be preserved, rather than a historically contingent form of oppression with specific material causes and consequences which can and should be overthrown. The relativist authoritarian often chastises consistent anti-authoritarians for supposedly being racist, white-privileged, disseminating “Western” viewpoints, etc. (erasing the non-white/Western intersectionally marginalized people who are the most harmed by such discourse, of course), but don’t be fooled: they’re the ones leveraging structures and ideologies originating in Western imperialism (the notion that The East and The West are ontologically different in grand historical ways, that nothing “Western” can be related to anything “Eastern” and vice versa, that The East is static and unchanging and underdeveloped, that The East’s cultures, values, practices, etc. are mysterious, exotic, inscrutable by The West, and so on), and when we expose this we peel away their façade (an important step that they always struggle to prevent by any means possible). (I don’t just say this in a vague abstract online discourse way; these dynamics also pop up in day-to-day personal political contexts, often the mechanism of violence/abuse; they are behind a great deal of material oppression in the real world today and have left a great deal of trauma upon marginalized people.)

It doesn’t occur to relativist transphobes that if someone doesn’t consider themself a woman / man because they feel they aren’t allowed to identify as or be one because they don’t fit the cissexist standard of having to be able to give birth (and fulfill the hegemonically defined (subordinate) wife role) / impregnate (and fulfill the hegemonically defined husband (patriarch) role), then that might possibly be a result of internalized patriarchy/misogyny/(cis)sexism and not an ideal state, and their mental health and self-image might improve and they might be living lives more closely in alignment with their internal selves if some friend went up and told them it could be an option. This is liberal choice “feminism” but specifically a version targeting trans people and transphobic oppression under patriarchy.

If a (white) infertile cis woman / cis man vented about feeling like they’re a failed Other rather than a real woman or real man because they can’t give birth / impregnate and the society around them says Real Women / Men are people who can give birth / impregnate (respectively), would people like this say as readily that it’s true they really are an ungendered unwomanly / unmanly Other, despite their own desire to be a woman / man and feelings which align with that? Or likewise for other forms of gendered nonconformity among cis people. (Much less likely, I think.)

Would they say, “cis women without children” is a whole separate gender from “cis women with children,” a third gender after “cis women with children” and “cis men with children”? Then “cis men without children” as a fourth gender. What about married with children versus married without? Then split the above into eight. Some trans people do get married, either while closeted, as an attempt at conversion or punishment by family or society, while passing for their correct gender (if they have a gender from the binary), or with updated laws which have assimilated trans people more. Trans people can have children too, even if not in the same patriarchal way which secures intergenerational patrilineal inheritance. More gender-categories for them then? (It’s obvious where this leads: there are in fact as many ways to be women and men as there are women and men, and different gender roles and social gender locations are assigned or designated in a gradient or internally distinguished way for all gender differences or social role differences, but there are some general categories which could be broadly termed different “genders” which group together, and thus it would be irrational/illogical and arbitrary to exclude trans women from womanhood or trans men from manhood under such a linguistic system.)

The transphobic takes above prioritize what “society” says, what other (cis) people surrounding someone says about what gender is, what their gender must be, as if what they say matters so much in defining us (or even at all), and then also equates the viewpoint of oppressive surroundings with the viewpoint of the oppressed individual (as if the oppressed will always just bow down and accept their oppression). That is not how we define gender or determine what anyone’s gender is, because that literally goes against the whole point of transness in the first place, which is that we define our own identities, we say what our genders are, we don’t limit ourselves by a cissexist society which constrains people by setting rigid inaccurate definitions; the subversiveness, the contradiction with surrounding norms, is literally the point; it wouldn’t be transness if there were no preexisting cisness (top-down/nonconsensual gender assignments) to struggle against in the first place.

It’s especially nasty to imply that Western trans people identify as “really” the gender they feel they are because the West’s social definitions of gender uniquely recognize that women don’t have to be wives, childbearers, and mothers (for patriarchs) and men don’t have to be husbands (patriarchs) and property-owning child-investing patrilineage-obsessed reproductive futurists. That erases the fact that there’s rampant institutionalized socially prevalent patriarchy in the West too; many people do believe that still; the point is, no society, no culture is a monolith. But it’s very obvious why sweeping portrayals of white, Western PoVs highlight the “progressive” parts while sweeping portrayals of non-white/non-Western PoVs highlight the “regressive” parts (racism, Enlightenment teleology). (And yes, people oppressed by racism can also be racist themselves.)

That also implies that trans people and our feelings and desires are dependent on cis people and their choices. That none of us will think against the grain until cis people create the conditions which allow for it. This prioritizes cis feminism and cis women’s rights over that of trans people, telling us they’ll always come first, we’ll always need them (though they won’t ever need us), if they’re not class-conscious yet then there’s no scenario where we might be more class-conscious already, which erases how we’re actually pressured to know much more about feminism than them, to understand their issues and ours and to be able to argue perfectly for both our rights and theirs in order to be relatively tolerated. These notions are only legible because of cissexism.

Trans people whose gender includes one (or both) genders from the binary are only treated as not being “allowed” to be “properly” considered as people of that gender because of cissexism. This denial is a form of oppression and social subordination, not something neutral or good or just naturally occurring. It’s cruel and it’s wrong. Notice how such discussions about “difference” never say that, e.g., “cis men are Different(tm) from trans men because they occupy different social niches, and trans men are more manly than cis men, because cis men don't fit into our/the Paradigmatic Image of What A Man Is(tm) and we only begrudgingly acknowledge cis men as probably ‘men’ in some way because of their self-identification but that won’t alter how we fundamentally categorize ‘men’ and we couldn’t possibly put forth a cis man as Paradigmatic, Archetypal, or Representative because smh he’s cis not trans, we couldn’t do that, that doesn’t intuitively make sense, a Man(tm) is a trans man unless otherwise specified?” (or likewise for women). Which makes it clear that this is about a power imbalance, a hierarchy placing cis people above trans people of the same gender and prioritizing cis people, which pushes out trans people from equal recognition and epistemic authority. (And no, the “unless otherwise specified” is not good enough, it’s still implicit misgendering; it’s just a half-assed attempt to cover the problems with your ideology; we want more.)

There is a (very obvious) reason why, despite having very different contexts at times, all patriarchies share certain common characteristics (patrilineage; intergenerational private property/power transfer of some sort; socially-mandated, enforced, or disproportionately incentivized binary heterosexual marriage/the couple-form; child-ownership by the patriarch; rigid definitions of “woman” as childbearer and mother and “man” as the one who possesses/owns the children (and “girls” and “boys,” respectively, as future “women” and “men,” requiring coercive socialization/indoctrination); condemnation of autonomous deviation from the prescriptive binary definitions of gender (in desire, in self-regard, in private or public identification/claiming, in differences or alterations in aesthetics/appearance/biological sex characteristics or role performance); etc.). Of course it’s not just arbitrarily landing on that every single time. These are social structures which arose from a historical process during which children, women, and queers were domesticated or forcibly excluded (as colonialism is imposed through an initial conquest and then ongoing counterinsurgency), relatively stabilizing after the patriarchs won the battle.

There is no reason why “man” or “woman” (or male, female, wife, husband, mother, father, boy, girl, masculine, feminine, gender, sex, “two genders,” “third gender”) would be terms any more transhistorically relevant, self-evident, coherent, or applicable than “transgender,” “nonbinary,” “trans woman/man/girl/boy/female/male,” etc. (And for that matter, “transmasc(uline)” (and “transfem(inine)”) shouldn’t be treated as “safer” terms to slide in third-gendering of binary trans people to avoid using the words “trans man” or “trans woman”; there’s no reason why they would automatically be more accurate either.) The people who would be called “trans” here today have existed and will exist in every society, and there will always be trans people under any patriarchy, and some language that would apply (whether a word or set of words or phrase or set of phrases or way of describing) to denote people rejecting or not aligning with their birth-assigned gender, so long as gender is assigned at birth. There will always be resistance, at least somewhere, sometime, when there is oppression. You will never have 100% internalized acceptance of cissexism. It’s time that relativists recognized this.

I feel like anarchism would make way more sense to me in an already post capitalist society primarily made up of state-socialist countries. In that scenario they serve to push for the transition to full communism. Currently though the equivocation of state socialist and capitalist countries only serves to assist reactionaries. It frustrates me when they support blatantly capitalist color revolutions because "state bad" and then turn around and go "this is fine actually because I hate the imperial core just as much" like ok but you do realize that even if you hate them equally the capitalist imperialist hegemony still has the advantage here right. China is not the dominant force in the world stop acting like allying with an anti-PRC movement backed by the west is doing anything but supporting the strengthening of western hegemony.

Yes, it would make more sense. However, you'd have to remove it from its current political-economic context and then transport it to a society which has by-and-large shed liberalism. The material conditions/circumstances and the ideological superstructure would not support anarchism as an ideology and it would pass. Again, my disagreements with anarchism are fundamentally rooted in its framework of analysis that is built more on abstract ideas than materialism; everything else is just set dressing and benign.

The mechanisms for the withering away of the state is rooted in materialism, not (as the anarchists might say) "the good will of those in power". The functions of the state, as they become more and more unnecessary are naturally reduced due to the fact they aren't needed anymore. Lawn maintenance is absurd for being wasteful and useless and the same can be applied to institutions which become no longer necessary. However, unlike under the capitalist mode of production , since resources are allocated based on need, redundant or useless arms of the state receive less and less resources as their functions become more and more unnecessary until they are absorbed into another department, are dissolved, or its entire nature changed.

I think you've hit the nail on the head in terms of when western anarchists agitate against foreign "enemies". This agitation is beneficial to the west only and serves to advance imperialist interests. The material outcome of this agitation doesn't care whether your intentions were to "be against all states" or whether your intentions were to access the labor and resources of another country. You, as a resident/citizen of the country you live in has more direct effect on the country you live in, not one a thousand miles away; only the imperialists have the capacity to effect change in that other country. In our modern world, the greatest contradiction facing the international proletariat is imperialism.

Does anybody want to tell the people still complaining that 13's era didn't have enough political commentary that the anti-imperialism themes, the condemnation of the treatment of refugees and immigrants, the emphasis on violence for violence's sake being bad but violence in the name of protection and self defence is acceptable and heroic (you can and Should fight back against violent colonizers), and and absolute refusal to give any ground to abusers (something the other eras were sketchy at Best over), we could talk about the environmental protection themes that appear about as subtly as a brick more than once (ideally environmental protection shouldn't be a political issue, but idk if you've watched the news lately, it is) were like. Really thematically obvious? And that if you talk about the Less obvious, it gets deeper.

We could talk about medical exploitation and the parallels of the timeless child to henrietta lacks (look her up). We could talk about the northern working class emphasis in the whole era and that its avoidance of the south is a statement in itself, from Sheffield steel to nobody having an upper class accent (sans that one time lord who ran division who had the Snootiest of snooty high class accents. Almost like they were making a Point). We could talk about how all our characters and reoccurring are working class, a bus driver, a trainee mechanic, a hotel manager etc etc, we could talk about the portrayal of actual honest modern poverty, and that it's explicitly shown that Dan Wants to work and is threatened off of the premises instead as the indictment of capitalism it is. We could talk about the very clear condemnation of tech companies taking advantage of their customers (calling fake google Vor was unacceptable tho, no defence available).

I could go on, but I'd like to drink my tea before it gets cold.

Sorry 13 didn't say the words eat the rich, but idk if you noticed, there was an actual whole episode where in the future the 1% who ruin the earth beyond repair literally get hunted and eaten by the mutated remains of the 99% whom they left to die 👍

Wasp, the Anti-Grineer Warframe

Wasp is going to be the most ordinary of the three Anti-Warframes. I'm actually kind of surprised how much love the Grineer receive as a faction but that's beside the point. Wasp is acquired by defeating Captain Visak Shuuk at Kaentake.

Health: 550 (750 at rank 30) Shields: 100 (150 at rank 30) Armor: 575 (675 at rank 30) Energy: 150 (200 at rank 30) Sprint Speed: 0.95

Passive: Activating any ability increases Wasp's armor by 30% for as long as the ability is active plus an extra 6 seconds after the ability terminates. Successive casts refresh this effect.

Ability 1: Nailgun, 25 energy. Wasp fires a massive iron spike from the barrels on his gauntlets at the enemy closest to his crosshairs within a 90 degree 45 meter cone centered on his aiming reticle, dealing 1,000 times 1+X (where X is equal to the enemy's level divided by 10) puncture damage with 100% status chance to the target enemy. Using Nailgun again within a 1 second window of its last use increases its damage by 250 and status chance by 25% stacking up to six times. If the target enemy is within 15 meters the spike will be aimed perfectly at the victim's head (or similarly vulnerable body part) applying relevant damage multipliers.

Ability 2: Solvent Spray, toggled ability, drains 3 energy per second. While active the mechanical pumps and tubes on Wasp's back and arms activate, spraying flammable caustic fluids from his gauntlets in a 10 meter 90 degree cone. The Solvent Spray deals 400 corrosive damage with 100% status chance per second. Holding the ability key for Solvent Spray ignites the fluid, changing its damage to heat. Damage change can be triggered while Solvent Spray is active or inactive. Wasp moves at full speed and can use all movement techniques while Solvent Spray is active, but all weapon attacks, gear items, and abilities other than Nailgun cannot be used.

Ability 3: Flash Weld, 75 energy. A fluctuating pulse of magnetized plasma blooms out from Cain and then retracts, stripping the defenses from all enemies it touches and adding the stolen armor to Wasp as overguard. Flash Weld emits a radial pulse with an initial radius of 5 meters, which follows him as an aura and rapidly expands outward by 15 meters per second over a duration of 2 seconds. Enemies in direct line of sight of Wasp and within range of Flash Weld's aura have 25% of their current shields or total armor stripped. When Flash Weld expires or when the ability key is pressed again while the ability is active the pulse instantly retracts to Wasp granting overguard based on the amount of shields and/or armor stolen from all affected enemies. Flash Weld cannot grant overguard exceeding a value of 10,000.

Ability 4: Attrition, 100 energy. If there's one thing the Grineer know it's their brutally effective military weapons. When Wasp activates Attrition he becomes a force of pure destruction. For the next 8 seconds Wasp gains infinite ammo, 100% heavy attack combo efficiency, and +30% fire rate and attack speed. When Attrition expires Wasp releases an explosion that deals 100 blast damage in a 12 meter radius with 100% status chance. For every enemy killed by Wasp's weapons while Attrition was active this explosion gains an additional 100 damage, 0.5 meters, and 10% status chance.

Subsumed ability: Nailgun.

Signature Weapon Akgoblins: The Akgoblins are the Tenno answer to some of the Grineer's iconic weaponry. Ironically, the Tenno-made Akgoblins are closer to the original Orokin weapons used by the Grineer of the imperial era than the mass-produced bastardizations seen in their hands today. For players the Akgoblins blueprint is acquired for 25,000 credits from the orbiter market and is crafted using Twin Gremlins and Twin Grakatas plus 5 Morphics to meld them together. Akgoblins are nearly full-sized rifles, with their weight and recoil only a warframe could use them akimbo. The Akgoblins have a full-auto trigger and fire spike-like projectiles with a travel time and arc. Akgoblins capture the strengths of both of the weapons they are based on, having the superior reload speed & damage inherited from the Gremlins and the magazine size, max ammo capacity, accuracy, fire rate, and critical affinity of the Grakatas. Directly improving on both of its predecessors the Akgoblins have an innate 2 meters of punch-through. As Wasp's signature weapon the Akgoblins deal 30% bonus damage when they score a multi-hit with punch-through.

Closing Notes: I was a little nervous about Wasp at first but I've really come around on him. I certainly don't think he's breaking any molds but his combination of damage and tankiness surely leads to easy use.

Chara Starhunter

❌NAME: Chara Starhunter ❌ Pronounces: She/her ❌Age: 18 ❌Gender: Female ❌Personality: Despite her serious looking demeanor she is welcoming of anyone who wishes to talk to her. However she is also a no shit taker. So if threatened or looked down on she won’t hesitate to throw a punch to defend herself or others. ❌ Side: For Freedom ❌About or story: Chara Starhunter is from a Star Wars AU and is a former imperial Ace pilot and is considered the youngest Ace pilot of the imperial academy. Top marks. A strong resistance to G-Force capable of handling turns that could harm anyone. And leader of the first Commando Experiment Squad known as “Circus Squad” (Because unlike the gray hue every imperial pilot had on their fighters. Theirs differentiates with many colors, as if like a circus) She became known as the “Red Baroness” (as a reference to the red Baron) and was seen as a highly decorated star pilot. However an incident caused her to lose her whole squadron who she saw as her own family. Because of this she went rogue and began to harass the Company that abandoned her and her pilots to a suicide mission. After escaping from a chase in battle her ship had a malfunction which caused her hyper speed escape to break the barrier between worlds. Causing her to crash into the anti-void. Where she was introduced to the multiverse.

She found herself in the unnamed universe and deciding to put her skills to good use. With help of getting her ship fixed and fueled she signed up with the Red Squad. Working as an infiltrator at times but mostly eyes in the sky and air combatant. She is always looking for new missions in order to help those in need.

❌Sector: Homebased at B. Tends to go to C a lot on missions.

❌Powers and capacity: Has no magic but is good at hand to hand combat (she works out at the gym). She is also good with her blasters and doesn’t miss like a typical storm trooper. But her go-to is her star fighter.

Equipment:

Modified EC-17 hold-out blaster with proper scope setting and flash pistol function. Able to shoot a bolt that can blind her enemies when fired.

WESTAR-35 Mandalorian pistol. Usually used when having to go on team missions. Basic pistol functions with self recharging power battery.

GALAAR-15 (CURRENTLY BROKEN) Assault rifle she found along with the WESTAR on her home planet she was visiting to scavenge for supplies. Weapon’s power cell and inner mechanical functions damaged and is useless until repaired.

Modified TIE/HU Hunter multi-role starfighter. Colored Red. Call sign “Heartbreaker”. Preferred to be used by Chara. Capable of hyperdrive, shields, ion blasters, laser canons, and up to 12 proton torpedoes. The twin ion engines and S-foils helps this starfighter be deadly with both with both fire power and speed. Navigation system shotty due to being in new universe. However constantly updated when on a new mission to a new place.

————————————————————————————-

Character for @1unnamed-universe Discord server

So yeah I made a new chara combining both Star Wars and undertale XD Two my fave fandoms. Course in the Star Wars AU she didn’t go down the usual Chara path. She is an absolute bad ass and I love her. Especially the ship she flying. I loved the Tie Hunters when I was a kid playing rogue squadron.

I thought I would do something interesting by having a starfighter Chara with many modified stuff to help her in battle.

So am gonna have fun playing her. One day I hope to get her ship designed with a proper ref. I’ll give more details of her background soon but for now just gonna have the standard ref and info.

art by @xjunjox

Artifact Creatures

Artifact Creature is an extremely broad category, and follows the general belief that Artificers can do anything, if given enough time and resources.

And, this is technically true, but more complex designs require exotic materials, and an incalculable immaterial spirit.

Everything you do, channels mana, whether you realize it or not. Sorcerers, Scholars, Pyromancers, etc. simply are conscious of this. Other races, like Orcs, do not have magic users, because they do not need do. Orcs channel mana through their bodies to strengthen and quicken them.

When crafting, you channel mana through it. Sorcerer/Pyromancers can do something showy, like adding a fire enchantment. But other, more subtle enchantments can increase accuracy, or make a bow easier or harder to draw. If we extend this further, we could say have a flying scimitar, a weapon that has to be controlled, but does not need to be maintained in hand.

When an Artifact becomes an Artifact Creature is when it can truly move on it's own. The problem with this is that the Artificer does not know HOW the object will move on it's own. They might have a general idea, but these Artifact Creatures will have to Mature on their own. With experience making similar Artifacts, and Artificer can learn to produce Artifact Creatures with this Maturity born into them.

All Artifacts have the material body and immaterial spirit. When repaired, they need to be physically repaired from a skilled craftsman, and spiritually repaired by an Artificer.

Artifact creatures have personalities roughly equivalent to that of lesser beasts. They can be frightened easily, and communicate through noises of their type and material. Those who know learn that these noises are akin to those of animals, such as a horse or hound, and primarily express emotion.

Sedan

The most common Artifact Creature, and, in fact, the only one that is universally recognizable. They are essentially horseless carriages. While in theory, they could take on the form of any carriage, their time, expense, and rarity mean that only the wealthiest can afford them, and even then a coach pulled by a couple of horses would likely be cheaper. Despite the fact it in theory could be of nearly any shape, there are so few Sedan makers that most Sedans are not only copied from existing carriage designs, they are often built with the cartwrights that build ordinary carriages.

Wood is the primary material, and this is because the primary metal that could be used, iron, doesn't just have poor magickal conductivity, but negative magickal conductivity, while wood of all varieties is naturally conductive.

Airship

A lost technology in Cynn, that is until the Summer King's glory. Even then, he created his fabled, (in his opinion overfabled), Lionwight to carry his Myrmidons into battle. The Holy Gothic Empire had Alchemical Cohorts that used them at the time.

Airships are exactly as it would seem, and like Sedans, were often patterned off of real ships, with a cabin and poop deck in the rear. They typically lack the castles of ships of the line, as there are few if any other ships to actually fight. Combat is instead typically done with boarding actions.

Being patterned after ships means that most airships can land in the water, and in truth, most cannot land. Instead, they simply moor while floating in the air.

For the record, the Summer King views the airship Pearlescence, (former Imperial Alchemical Airship), as his flagship, while the Lionwhite is more for military deployment.

Myrmidons

A truly lost technology, until revive by the Summer King. Myrmidons are mechanical men. Iron is anti-magickal, and needs to be alloyed with things like silver, gold, and mythril. Other components needed to be made from bronze alloys. Even Thorium and Odinium were required. This was well and truly something that only the Summer King could create. He had the support of the entirety of the Kingdom of Cynn's nobility, nad the Dwarven Hold of Southwall, (who's thane that he was oath-sworn and brother-in-law to), along with various other friendly Dwarven Tribes, up to an including the Dwarven Rebellions. This also required the expertise of Gnomes.

While Gnomes had been enslaved by the Empire, and were often used as functionaries, they rarely showed any creativity, and would not volunteer any of their services not harshly forced out of them. Under the Summer King, the Kingdom of Cynn had made incredible forays into recruiting Gnomes.

The results were the Lionknights, mechanical men 12 feet tall, with swords and polearms to match. Their great Lionshields could deploy spikes and placed as pavises to draw their great Lionbows, capable of damaging a Seated Dragon.

Note: The Summer King is honestly annoyed at how everyone insists on naming everything he makes after Lions. At one point, he barely enchanted a stone before giving it to the Dwarves that can headed his call and come to aid him. It's not treated as a sacred relic, though the first Man to ask Dwarves to form a hold, (usually it is formed, extremely difficult to remove, and too economically valuable to do anything about), handing them a stone from the mountain he asked them to protect, could be treated no other way, at least with hindsight. This said, he did not object to his portal being named The Lion's Reach.

Flying Carpets

Considered the quintessential Artifact Creature, though at least only in myths and legends from long lost cultures.

The Summer King recruited a Dwarven weaver to help him craft one, (so his Dwarven wife could experience the joys of flight), and they discovered why:

It makes you vulnerable to wyverns.

The Empire's did use cohorts of carpeters, but never in an unsupported capacity, and never in the untamed mountains that typically contain wyverns.

Iron Ponies

A creation wholly of the Summer King, and in truth, partially to test the technology to produce Myrmidons. The other reason they were crafted was because he has a pair of Dwarven wives, and Dwarves are not fond of riding horses, (too tall for them to be comfortable).

One of the major creations, other than integrated Vaults of Holding, were spinning metal armatures that allow the Iron Ponies to harness far more mana than their bodies should allow.

Avatar: the Last Airbender - Vigilante AU

Do you ever think about that one time Katara became a vigilante eco-terrorist called the Painted Lady? I feel like that’s not talked about enough.

Here, Katara and Zuko become Best Friends/Vigilante Buddies without knowing each other’s identity

Platonic Identity Porn. If that wasn’t a thing before, it is now.

Sokka & Aang never discovered Katara’s identity as the Painted Lady but Toph knows all.

This could also be a modern AU, in which case all the Gaang are Vigilantes.

- Katara’s the Painted Lady; her mom, dad, and papa (Kya/Hakoda/Bato) were/are part of a secret group investigating and gathering proof of Ozai’s many violations of Native land rights treaties. Kya got badly injured or killed while investigating and Katara isn’t about to let that slide, even if her parents don’t want her involved. She becomes an ecoterrorist targeting Ozai Incorporated.

- Toph’s the Blind Bandit; she ran away from home and is homeless, surviving by being the champion of an illegal fighting ring. She helps out other homeless people whenever she can but doesn’t go out of her way to patrol or anything.

- Zuko’s the Blue Spirit; after being burned, Iroh discovered the abuse and took custody (which wasn’t hard since Ozai didn’t fight for him). Despite this, Zuko feels it’s his responsibility as a son to stop his father’s economic imperialism.

- Sokka’s a Kyoshi Warrior; part of a vigilante team led by Suki. By day, this team is just a Scout Troop that teaches self-defense.

- Jet runs a gang that doubles as anti-hero vigilantes called the Freedom Fighters. He takes in any homeless or abused kid he can and will do anything to keep them fed, happy, and avenged.

- Azula, Mai, & Ty-Lee are a bounty hunter trio hired by Ozai (a corrupt CEO). Azula’s still his daughter, but being in modern times didn’t stop him from molding her into a child soldier to assassinate his enemies.

- Aang’s a new vigilante trying to avenge the monasteries destroyed by Ozai’s corporation. He’s an exchange student living with Katara, Sokka, Hakoda, Bato, and/or Kya.

- Teo (the Mechanic’s son from the Northern Air Temple) kits out all the vigilantes’ gear, tech, and outfits with help from Sokka.

Credit to @symphony_sonata on Instagram for their modern civilian lives. Link: https://instagram.com/symphony_sonata?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)

I also got a lot of inspiration from searching “the blue spirit avatar” on pinterest if you want concept art.

I decided I wanted to read a little something extra today and something told me at least one of you would want to read it too.

Afrofuturist Abolitionists of the Americas

Anarchism / Intersectionality / Decolonization

Feedback Loop

1. Anarchism

2. Intersectionality

3. Decolonization

For Anarkatas, Black Intersectional Feminism and Decolonization aren’t optional ideological stances. Together they are instrumental in addressing the complexities of systemic ableism, cis hetero patriarchy, transmisogynoir, Racism, anti-indigeneity, imperialism, colonialism, poverty, class, land, property, prison abolition, cultural theft, exploitation and capitalism, providing a map to areas of need and a course of action respectively. Informing and informed broadly by the principles of Anarchism and guided more specifically by our own Black anarchic traditions, the centering of these struggles and analyses in tangible ways should form the core of our focus and efforts.

1. Anarchism

This is the first filter we will apply to a set of conditions in order to arrive at a course of action. Anarchism is now understood to encompass all anti-racist, anti-authoritarian, anti-state, anti oppression etc struggles but the core tenets of anarchism (anti authoritarianism, anti statism, horizontalism, decentralization, mutual aid) are routinely idealized and presented in a uniformly colorblind, universalist manner. Universalism as conceived by those locked within the white identity construct can never truly be universal, and it could be argued that the urge to universalize phenomena is itself a protective mechanism of the white identity construct. In any event, anarchism gives us the rough blueprint for the outcome we want and pitfalls to steer clear of. Anarchism in this sense is an ideal. But it can’t be one size fits all. Next, we have to compare the ideal to what we actually see. To do this we need a tool with which to analyze the material conditions. That tool is Intersectionality.

2. Intersectionality

Our second filter is intersectional analysis. Intersectionality, coined and illumined by Kimberle Censhaw and particularly the Black feminist identity politics of the Combahee River Collective grew out of a desire to reconcile Marxism with the unique experiences of Black women. Like old school anarchism, Marxism provided a rough blueprint for the structures of class struggle under simpler conditions; the most oppressed were in the position to see that it needed a serious upgrade.

Intersectionality is a microscope.

It allows us to analyze any given situation on a structural, multidimensional level and steer to the locus of the most compounded oppressions. In this way, we can attack the monster closer to the source, and through the perspectives and leadership of the intersectionally oppressed, especially Black women, provide adequate aid to the largest swath of people, starting with those who need it most. Intersectional analysis is indispensable in conflict resolution, resource allocation, navigating interpersonal relationships, and representation to name just a few areas of applicability. It should be apparent that while intersectional analysis certainly chips away at the universalized flatness of barebones anarchist and Marxist doctrine, anarchist and Marxist analysis are better for it; in fact, intersectional analysis strengthens both Marxism and Anarchism.

Now that we’ve analyzed the conditions through an intersectional lens, we must decide on a course of action. That course of action is the path of Decolonization. Decolonization is central to Anarkata praxis.

3. Decolonization

Decolonization is our third analytical filter, our praxis, and our immediate material goal all in one.

Through analysis of the material conditions, we have seen that the only remedy is complete abolition of the existing structures of oppression. We have seen that the relationship between oppressor and oppressed and the planet is intolerable, untenable, irreconcilable, and unreformable and to make room for the world we want to see, the dream of a world which isn’t built on our oppression, we have to sweep away the old one. This is the meaning of decolonization. Decolonization isn’t a return; we can never return. What’s left is to take what is ours now and build the world we want to live in now. We do this by any means necessary. By ceasing to perform for the gaze of whites or provide more free labor to oppressors. By learning our radical history. The validity of the white cis hetero patriarchal identity construct (the “norm”) is called into question, ridiculed and mocked. Our own identities are celebrated in their multiplicity. All accepted norms are questioned and placed in a decolonization context. These are decolonizing imperatives that arise from the ontological needs of the oppressed and can in no way be encroached upon or dictated by colonizers. Decolonization isn’t a polite or abstract process; to the oppressor, it’s rude, inopportune, adversarial, contrary, mean, emotional, unintelligible, etc. To the oppressed every drop of scorn heaped on the oppressor in our name is a show of love. Decolonization demands fearlessness beneath the white supremacist gaze. Decolonization is a constant practice, requiring a radical posture. Full Decolonization is militant, often bloody.

By now, our filters have skewed the picture of our anarchist city on the hill. The edges are blurrier, the walls have revealed some cracks. The world we wish existed is far in the distance. The real world has thrown us a few curveballs (racism, sexism, ableism, racial power dynamics etc) to contend with, things we have to attack structurally as well before we can begin to have the world we want. Different times, places, and populations have different material conditions and we need to meet people who want to build where they are and work with the tools that are at our disposal.

“Decolonization never takes place unnoticed, for it focuses on And fundamentally alters being and transforms the spectator crushed to a nonessential state into a privileged actor, captured tn a virtually grandiose fashion by The spotlight of history. It infuses a new rhythm, specific to a new generation of (human), with a new language and a new humanity. Decolonization is truly the creation of new (humans).

But such a creation cannot be attributed to a supernatural power: The “thing” colonized becomes a (human) Through the very process of liberation

— Frantz Fanon

(https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-a-i-d)