nyc dyke march literally put out a statement being like "people have been asking if jews are welcome at dyke march, the answer is yes, and we do not actively support antisemitism" and then 30 minutes later took it down and posted an apology message for the "harm" they caused with that statement and made sure to clarify that it was posted by like a rogue operative without the approval of the full board
Baghra: “What are you doing with the Tailor girl?”
Aleksander: “She’s a traitor and a useful lesson for others who might consider crossing me.”
Baghra: “She served you loyally since she was a child, endured years of abuse on your orders, and you reduce her to an example? Oh, Aleksander, where does this stop?”
I’m seriously considering skipping all of Baghra’s parts, because this is getting unbearable.
Baghra never cares about anyone. It’s one of her main traits.
She certainly doesn’t give a fuck about children, unless it helps her send the desired message. She literally kept abandoning her own imperfect children, one after another, so don’t try to tell me she has an ounce of sympathy for Genya.
Genya was the one who decided to stay in Queen’s service in return for revenge. People should stop pitying her, and start respecting her and her decision. Writers included.
Bitch just accused Aleksander of intentionally sending Genya to be raped. Another antis’ fav simplification.
Baghra “Beating, drugging, endangering and abusing her students” Morozova, preaching about abuse is a gem.
This whole season so far looks like a collection of absurdity and anti-Darklings’ tracts.
Hello, you may not see this but me and my older sister always get heated up about a specific word: hurt. She says it’s grammatically correct to say, for example, “that hurted” but I keep telling her that “hurt” is already in the past tense. Thus, it would be “that hurt” but she disagrees and mentions most people use “that hurted”.
As a prolific writer, please let me know your thoughts
(Also me and my sisters were not really in the best of terms but for some reason we all decided to watch Good Omens together and our relationship became really close. Thank you. )
Grammar is both prescriptive and descriptive. "Hurted" was good English grammar from the 15th to the 19th Century (just as "hurtit" still is a valid past tense in Scotland). In the 19th Century it was decided that "hurt" was the only valid past tense of "to hurt" and "hurted" fell out of fashion. If enough people use it then it will become good grammar once again.
“But there was one scenario in which the Autistic people left a positive first impression: when people read a transcript of their words instead of seeing and hearing the Autistic people saying those words, observers rated them as more likable and more intelligent. In fact, in the scenario where observers just read the written words of Autistic and non-autistic people, they rated both groups the same. For non-autistic people, the written transcripts were their lowest-rated mode of communication, although only by a small amount. For Autistic people, the written transcripts were their highest-rated mode of communication by a very significant margin. Written communication is the great social equalizer. Remember this if you start to fear your Autistic child is spending too much time interacting with others online and not enough time interacting with others face-to-face. Online communication is a valid accommodation for the social disability that comes with being Autistic. We need online interaction and this meta-study demonstrates exactly why that is the case.”
—
Autism and the Burden of Social Reciprocity | Sparrow R. Jones unstrangemind.com
(via dickensign)
thinking again about TvTropes and how it’s genuinely such an amazing resource for learning the mechanics of storytelling, honestly more so than a lot of formally taught literature classes
reasons for this:
basically TvTropes breaks down stories mechanically, using a perspective that’s not…ABOUT mechanics. Another way I like to put it, is that it’s an inductive, instead of deductive, approach to analyzing storytelling.
like in a literature or writing class you’re learning the elements that are part of the basic functioning of a story, so, character, plot, setting, et cetera. You’re learning the things that make a story a story, and why. Like, you learn what setting is, what defines it, and work from there to what makes it effective, and the range of ways it can be effective.
here’s the thing, though: everyone has some intuitive understanding of how stories work. if we didn’t, we couldn’t…understand stories.
TvTropes’s approach is bottom-up instead of top-down: instead of trying to exhaustively explore the broad, general elements of story, it identifies very small, specific elements, and explores the absolute shit out of how they fit, what they do, where they go, how they work.
Every TvTropes article is basically, “Here is a piece of a story that is part of many different stories. You have probably seen it before, but if not, here is a list of stories that use it, where it is, and what it’s doing in those stories. Here are some things it does. Here is why it is functionally different than other, similar story pieces. Here is some background on its origins and how audiences respond to it.”
all of this is BRILLIANT for a lot of reasons. one of the major ones is that the site has long lists of media that utilizes any given trope, ranging from classic literature to cartoons to video games to advertisements. the Iliad and Adventure Time ARE different things, but they are MADE OF the same stuff. And being able to study dozens of examples of a trope in action teaches you to see the common thread in what the trope does and why its specific characteristics let it do that
I love TvTropes because a great, renowned work of literature and a shitty, derivative YA novel will appear on the same list, because they’re Made Of The Same Stuff. And breaking down that mental barrier between them is good on its own for developing a mechanical understanding of storytelling.
But also? I think one of the biggest blessings of TvTropes’s commitment to cataloguing examples of tropes regardless of their “merit” or literary value or whatever…is that we get to see the full range of effectiveness or ineffectiveness of storytelling tools. Like, this is how you see what makes one book good and another book crappy. Tropes are Tools, and when you observe how a master craftsman uses a tool vs. a novice, you can break down not only what the tool is most effective for but how it is best used.
In fact? There are trope pages devoted to what happens when storytelling tools just unilaterally fail. e.g. Narm is when creators intend something to be frightening, but audiences find it hilarious instead.
On that note, TvTropes is also great in that its analysis of stories is very grounded in authors, audiences, and culture; it’s not solely focused on in-story elements. A lot of the trope pages are categories for audience responses to tropes, or for real-world occurrences that affected the storytelling, or just the human failings that creep into storytelling and affect it, like Early Installment Weirdness. There are categories for censorship-driven storytelling decisions. There are “lineages” of tropes that show how storytelling has changed over time, and how audience responses change as culture changes. Tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Narm are catalogued because the audience reaction to a story is as much a part of that story—the story of that story?—as the “canon.”
like, storytelling is inextricable from context. it’s inextricable from how big the writers’ budget was, and how accepting of homophobia the audience was, and what was acceptable to be shown on film at the time. Tropes beget other tropes, one trope is exchanged for another, they are all linked. A Dead Horse Trope becomes an Undead Horse Trope, and sometimes it was a Dead Unicorn Trope all along. What was this work responding to? And all works are responding to something, whether they know it or not
iejejdhsjak I can't breath, these people can't be real
Every once in a while, the magnitude of the Hamas massacre hits me all over again.
I'm not sure most people get it even now.
In absolute numbers, it is one of the three deadliest terrorist attacks in human history (second or third worst, depends on which estimates you trust for the Camp Speicher massacre), but if we take it in relation to the size of the population in the attacked country (which we should, because terrorism by its very nation seeks to victimizes through psychological trauma the entire target population, and not just those who were physically affected during the attack), then what Hamas did IS the single deadliest terrorist attack in the entirety of human history.
But it's even more than that.
Never, in any other attack, have the terrorists taken over as much land as Hamas did on Oct 7. ENTIRE TOWNS were under complete control of the terrorists, some for SEVERAL DAYS (I specifically remember watching a report on one town, where combat with the terrorists was still taking place on Oct 11, meaning on day 5 of this terrorist invasion into Israel). ENTIRE TOWNS WERE OCCUPIED. BY TERRORISTS. There's not a single Hollywood action movie dealing with such a scenario, because NOTHING OF THIS SCALE HAS EVER HAPPENED BEFORE. Imagine waking up and hearing in real time that the northern half of the American states Washington, Idaho and Montana has been taken by terrorists, who are driving through the streets freely, as they murder, pillage, rape, torture, maim, burn and kidnap people, and almost no one's there to stop them.
And then imagine the world expecting the US government to just... let the terrorists retreat to the other side of an international border in the north, after having murdered over 40,400 American, most of which are civilians, almost 183,000 more injured, and while taking with them across the border over 8,450 American hostages, to God knows what awful fate, for how long, or if they will even ever come back alive. Entire communities and regions would be devastated, without knowing if they'd be able to rebuild. The total would be more than 230,000 Americans directly impacted (I've adapted the real numbers from Oct 7 to the size of the American population... Remember the horrendous 9/11 attack, which saw 2,977 victims killed and a few thousands more injured, and think of what would be the emotional punch of over 230,000 direct victims).
Imagine expecting the US to let that go, and allow those terrorists to continue existing and ruling the land on its northern border. Imagine expecting the US to do so while this terrorist organization openly declares that it will repeat this large scale massacre whenever possible, until the entire country is destroyed.
And please don't come at me with "Fine, Israel can react, but not like this." Unless you have the military expertise to explain exactly how Israel can protect its people from this attack ever being repeated, and to free all our hostages, without civilian casualties (despite Hamas intentionally using them as human shields, and even directly causing Gazan deaths), unless you can translate the vague "not like this" into something practical, some actual guidelines on how this urban war could have been fought differently, even though there's no historical precedent to support that this is possible, "not like this" is just wishful thinking at the expense of the safety and right to live of Israelis.
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
Out of curiosity, what does the UN actually gain from keeping the terrorists in power? Obviously antisemitism but way do they materially gain?
Anon, don't be so quick to dismiss antisemitism. It's a really powerful motivator, for some people even more than money, because it is often to connected to a person's views of themselves, their society and the world. As such, antisemitism can be linked to issues of self-worth or hope for the future. And the place where someone's self-worth depends on demonizing Jews, or their future hopes depends on the notion that their society will be so much better, if only a Jewish collective (whether the Jewish religion, race or state) will be dismantled, they are emotionally invested in ways that can be far more crucial to them than money.
So I personally do think that antisemitism played a big role in how the UN has acted regarding Israel for decades.
For example, the UN sets up a special agency to help Koreans in Dec 1950 (UNKRA). By Jul 1958, less than 8 years later and 5 years after a ceasefire was achieved between the two Koreas, the agency was seen as having served its purpose, and was dismantled. Since then, if there are ever Korean refugees still in need of help, it goes through the general UNHCR (established 1951. It replaced the UN's temporary agency IRO, established Dec 1946, which itself took over from UNRRA, established Nov 1943), the UN refugee agency that takes care of ALL refugees in the world... except the Palestinian ones. Their agency (UNPRP) was established by UN resolution 212 in Nov 1948, and later became UNRWA in Dec 1949.
Now, take a second to consider how there was NEVER any UN agency dedicated specifically to help about 1.5 million Jewish Holocaust survivors at the end of WWII, which is May 1945 (with many of them still being murdered after the end of the war, in places like Poland in Jul 1946 or Libya in the Nov 1945 and Jun 1948 pogroms). No special agency for them, no intervention to protect people who had literally been through and somehow survived the worst genocide in human history, and were still being targeted and killed after it was done, even though the UN had a talent for establishing plenty of refugee agencies just fine during those years. But there was a special agency set up for the Arabs in the Land of Israel, even though they were the aggressors in the 1947-1949 Independence War, and it still operates to this day, unlike UNKRA, which was set up later than UNRWA. Why? What reason is there for treating Holocaust victims worse than the Arabs who declared a war of extermination against Jews in Israel? Or for treating Palestinians better than any other group of refugees in the world, even though other groups often need the help much more?
I can only see one thing in common when it comes to all of these illogical, counterintuitive decisions, and that is antisemitism. Dislike the Jews? Deprive them of getting their own agency, even while others get one. Hate the Jews? Dedicate special resources to the refugees who can be used as a political pawn against the Jewish state, while still counting them as refugees even after being resettled with citizenship elsewhere, unlike every other refugees group.
And never forget, the UN's voting "democracy" (where antisemitic abuse is not penalized in votes) IS inherently vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority. There is only one Jewish state at the UN. There is a block of over 20 Arab countries, another of over 50 Muslim ones, and when they're told a lie such as the one invented by Amin al-Husseini in 1929, that the Jews are attacking the al-Aqsa mosque, then it's easy to recruit all of them against Israel without even much effort. Then add countries which have vested interests in keeping the Arab and Muslim countries on their side, or who have issues with the pro-west, pro-democracy countries (and Israel is not only one of them, it is closely allied with the US, which is the leader of that stance) and basically the one Jewish state has close to no chance.
But over the years, in addition to being invested in keeping the issue of the Palestinian refugees going as a tool against Israel, to present the Jewish state as uniquely oppressive, the UN has also become invested in the jobs that the conflict produces for its members. UNRWA alone employees over 30,000 people and is, by the UN's own admission, one of its biggest employers.
On top of that, the UN also has other workers who deal specifically with the conflict (and therefore are employed thanks to it), such as OCHA oPt. OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) is the "humanitarian arm" of the UN and oPt is its branch that takes care specifically of the Palestinians. WHY is there even a need for this, if the Palestinians already have (UNIQUELY!) an entire UN agency dedicate just to them? And then on top of that (yes! A redundancy on top of a redundancy!) they also have a Palestinian branch for the OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights).
Having so many employees dedicated to this specific conflict does make the UN financially invested in keeping it from being resolved. Also, it's probably easier to get donations for the UN when talking about this falsely over-hyped conflict (here's a recent example, a report shows there's no famine in Gaza, the UN has known this and kept it quiet), especially when the hype is fed by so many antisemites happy to spread libels about the Jewish state. Some of the antisemites are likely very rich and happy to donate to any organization targeting Israel (I can even name some very wealthy governments happy to continuously donate to the UN and UNRWA, when they're also known for their antisemism, like financially sponsoring known antisemitic professors at US universities).
I do think the antisemitism is what enabled the creation of the financial aspect to the UN's anti-Israel bias, and interest in preserving the conflict, but now I'll mention one more factor. It's also one that IMO was preceded by the antisemitism and financial interest, but now it adds its own fuel to the fire. Since 2007, when Hamas violently took over Gaza, in order to keep its programs running there, the UN has been collaborating with Hamas. Because that's what happens in an actual dictatorship, which has absolute power over its people, and doesn't allow for any civilian liberties. If you wanna run a UN agency in North Korea, you will HAVE to collaborate with Kim Jong Un's dictatorial regime. And if you want to run a UN agency in Gaza post Jun 2007, you will HAVE to collaborate with Hamas. So that's exactly what the UN has been doing in Gaza. In doing so, it has been collaborating with a genocidal, antisemitic, radical Islamist, terrorist organization. And as has allowed Israel to enter Gaza and gather evidence, we have more and more proof that the UN is complicit in Hamas' crimes. That is NOT something the UN wants the world to realize. So it's trying its best to stop Israel from fighting in Gaza, to prevent the gathering of further evidence, at the same time that the UN is doing its best to screw over Israel's credibility. If the UN can vilify the best witness against it, who will believe the evidence about its complicity anyway?
I hope that helps answer the question!
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
"im doing a paper on antisemitism and it so difficult to find sources that aren't pro-isreal. They're all going on about how saying that Israel shouldn't exist is antisemitic. no how is thinking something should not exist if genocide is a part of its creation antisemitic? The Israeli state itself is antisemitic and has continuously failed to support its population of Holocaust victims.
any help on finding decent sources would be much appreciated."
When all of your references are telling you that your starting external point of reference is Antisemitic, that is because it is... You can't unpack your biases and unlearn them by searching for references that confirm your biases. Learn that your assumptions are likely bigoted and you need to learn what you don't know instead of seeking validation of what you believe.
To specifically address "saying that Israel shouldn't exist is Antisemitic", Israel DOES exist and more than 40% of all Jews live there, and no matter your opinion of its founding or the conduct of its government.... unless you intend to conquer Israel by force, and believe me it's been tried, it will not cease to exist by political pressure. So the expression that Israel shouldn't exist is tacit war mongering. There is more to be said on the topic, but that will come later.
More below the cut, very long
First, at least this canard recognises Jews as an ethnic group, but the accusation of Israel as an "Ethno-State", is a deeply uncomfortable canard levelled against a Parliamentary Democracy where the third largest national political party is an Arab Party and 10 Arabs currently hold office in the Knesset. Arabs hold office, serve as judges, they Serve in the IDF as General's and Major's and make up 21% of Citizenship.
No Israeli citizen and certainly not the vast majority of Jews around the world would want Jews to be a stateless people again. Particularly not the Majority of Israelis who are refugees from the Genocides, Pogroms and Expulsions against the Jewish people across the Middle East and North Africa, their children and grandchildren.
We are painfully aware that after the last century of genocides and expulsions in South West Asia Jews stand on the edge of extinction on the continent of our origin. My family had to flee the Libyan Pogroms and Partition in Pakistan under threat of forced conversion or death... Today there are no Jews in either country, you either fled or you died. Many Jewish communities and traditions that have endured for millennia would be extinct today if not for the safe haven provided by Israel.
[The above article states that approximately 400 Yemenite Jews remain in Yemen, at time of writing only one remains as a Houthi prisoner.]
Importantly Jews can't colonise our own indigenous homeland, and comments on the skin colour of light skinned Jews is colourist and Antisemitic.
Jewish civilisation has conservatively at least 3000 years of archeological history in the city of Jerusalem alone, a people can't colonise their own indigenous homeland. That DOESN'T mean the people who came after us have to leave at all... Palestinian culture has been developing in the region for at least 1400 years. The promise of a Jewish state was the promise of self determination of Jews as Indigenous people displaced from our home by the colonising Roman Empire in the First century, arriving in Europe as slaves to build great works like the Coliseum and monuments to our own dispossession like the Arch of Titus.
After 2000 years confined to the ghetto, 2000 years of always waiting for the shoe to drop, we needed to come home.
The colonisation of the Jewish people and our homeland also isn't a one note affair. The Sassanians, and the Crusaders, the British Empire, The Ottoman Empire, The Mamluks, and pivotal to the current discussion The Arabs... Arab Colonisation of MENA/SWANA is uncontroversially the historical record... They are the majority population across MENA because of their centuries of privileged social and economic placement in society even among Muslims. Pan-Arabism is Arab Supremacism.
Morrocco speaks Arabic because of Arab Colonisation, Ctesiphon was renamed Baghdad by Arab Colonisers, the subjugation of pre-colonial religion and culture such as Jews, Zoroastrians, Shabaks, Assyrians, the continuing collusion between ME states to deny the Kurdish people a state.
Recognising Arabs as colonisers doesn't mean demanding they be expelled, nor does it make anti-arab violence acceptable... But it is necessary if you intend to understand the historic social power dynamics of MENA social issues.
People, it makes them human people who are seeking a state of their own and should have one post haste. Most people agree on this, I hope we agree on this..
People often have a habit of using their intuition rather than research to learn about current and historical circumstances. This leads to the exaggeration or minimisation of events by those who don't understand.
This isn't to say that violence wasn't present in the founding of the State of Israel, because it was, but in all of the wars Israel has ever been involved in, the combined death toll has never even come close to one million let alone the millions, even the Nakba which was a human tragedy worthy of recognition forever had a Death toll of 15,000...
It is worth remembering that the Nakba took place against the backdrop of invasion by the Arab league (including Palestinian Arabs) of the newly declared State of Israel within these borders as defined by the United Nations...
On the day of the expiry of the British mandate for Palestine the forces of the Arab League (Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Palestinian Holy War Army) invaded, and the Israelis/IDF counter attacked... And somehow even without any allies were not only successful in defence but the victor. This was the second refusal to accept an Arab majority state, this time that rejection came as war.
Palestinians absolutely deserve a state, historical rejection of the peace option at one time or another by any party in a conflict is no reason not to establish peace now. This is something we can hopefully agree on, the endless cycle of violence and retribution is neither desirable nor sustainable... and to that end in 1994 the Palestinian National Authority was Established as a Part of the Oslo Accords, which is a multi stage state building project agreed between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the State of Israel, which immediately formalised the recognition internationally as an institution in principle of the Palestinian State as declared by The Palestinian Liberation Organisation in 1988.
The eventual state borders of the Palestinian State would be the Territories of the West Bank and Gaza which came under Israeli Administration during the 1967 6 Day War, and which the kingdom of Jordan and Egypt refused to accept return of due to the expense of security in the region.
Regions of Palestinian National Authority Civil and Military Administration were established in the West Bank during stage 1. (Areas the Palestinian National Authority were supposed to be expanded each decade assuming the continuing stability of the PA) During stage 2 in 2005 those areas were expanded and the Palestinian National Authority assumed Civil Administration over most of the remaining West Bank except for Israeli majority settlements. Also as Part of Stage 2 Israel forcibly repatriated all Israelis living in Gaza and passed Civil and Military Administration to the Palestinian National Authority.
Unfortunately 2 years later Hamas seceded Gaza in its entirety in a coup and suspended democracy to establish an Islamist Autocracy in opposition to the Fatah dominated Palestinian National Authority and all attempts at reintegration have failed stalling the Palestinian Nation Building project.
Throwing a wrench in the "is able to preserve stability and territorial integrity" thing.
At no point in history until the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority has there been self government of Palestinians by Palestinians. Even the name "Filistin" was a colloquial one in the Ottoman period. Under Ottoman rule the area of Israel and Palestine was made up of many feudal estates with a non-palestinian aristocracy.
Once again, this doesn't mean that Palestinians shouldn't have a self governing state now, today. But Jews should also have self government because.... we are indigenous to the Region, and second we have seen ourselves be betrayed by our neighbours too many times to not hold our defence in our own hands. In Europe, Africa, and Asia we have seen the repeated attempts to destroy us completely.
If you deduct the population of Israel the combined Jewish population of all three continents is less than 2 million, because you killed us.
The territory people are referring to as historically Palestine right now is the British Mandate for Palestine, which included the area East of the Jordan River where the Kingdom of Jordan was established by British Partition.
The Palestinian Liberation Organisation have made multiple attempts at political normalisation with Hamas, as have the Israeli government... In the hope of reuniting the Palestinian National Authority administered territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately with both authorities, Hamas and their affiliates like Palestinian Islamic Jihad use talks as an opportunity to re-arm, regroup, and relocate personnel and equipment. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation were in the closing stages of political normalisation talks, and Israel were in the midst of a (permanent) ceasefire and disarmament discussions at the time of the Simchat Torah Pogrom (Oct 7)
---------
The attack on October 7 was a betrayal of West Bank Palestinians as well, and attacks by Hamas affiliates like Palestinian Islamic Jihad in areas of the West Bank where Israel is treaty obligated to act as security guarantor has been spun by people in the west who don't understand the treaty arrangements as an invasion of Palestinian Territories.
Continued in reblog
I found it so bizarre when I came across posts on Tumblr talking about a random Palestinian online influencer by her first name (yeah, I know she has a "press" vest, so people call her a journalist. Seriously laughing at anyone thinking or pretending like there's any free press in Gaza. If you're Gazan and have a "press" vest, you got it from Hamas, or it was at some point approved by Hamas). But it's not just the way they talked about her by her first name, as if she was someone they personally knew, and therefore could fully trust, it's the way that there were instructions passed on from her to the masses reading the posts. "Bisan said" this and "Bisan asked that we" that, and I felt like I was reading the instructions of a cult leader being passed down to the cult members. Honestly, it might as well have said, "Saint Bisan" the way that she's quoted like her every word is to live and die by.
Examples will be attached to the end of this post.
Anyway, turns out Saint Bisan has asked people to donate to her and other Gazans, and then just decided to keep all that money to herself? What a shocker.
And I'm gonna stress again she's got some sort of a connection to Hamas, or she wouldn't be able to pass herself off as a journalist. That's where everyone's money has gone to. Someone with at the very least ties to a genocidal, antisemitic terrorist organization, responsible for the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, with their only greater victim being the Palestinians themselves, when Hamas uses them as human shields or directly kills them.
Anyway, here's just two random examples of some cult-like posts with instructions from "Saint" Bisan...
Oh, and I just read that before the war, her family's home and her office were in the neighborhood of Rimal. Before the Oct 7 massacre, that was considered a luxury neighborhood, and ONLY people affiliated with Hamas were rich enough that they could afford to live there. She's been saying that she's Hamas all along. People just don't know the nuances of her language.
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
Hex Maniac | Coffee Addict | Elder Millennial
192 posts