#home as not a place but rather a person supremacy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tequiilasunriise · 1 year

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A lot of y’all seemed to have REALLY enjoyed my ‘Enid is a lesbian because she says howdy’ shitpost so here’s another round of me performing Olympic god medal level mental gymnastics in order to explain how Wenclair works:

Okay so, as taught by my Bumbleby roots, names can have SIGNIFICANT have power. So to see if that applied here, I looked up the meanings of Wenclair’s names.

Enid: life, spirit

Sinclair: saintly, pure

Wednesday: Originates from the Norse god Woden (Woden’s Day) who was associated with death

Addams: The creator, Charles Addams, clearly inserted his own surname here, but it’s interesting to note that Addams means earth

Wenclair really are polar opposites aren’t they? Sun and Moon Girlfriends™️ not just aesthetically, but even down to their names (giggles in BB giggles in BB giggles in BB-). It’s almost like they were meant to parallel and compliment the other from the moment they were born.

The Sun- warm, pure, full of spirit and energy and a giver of Life.

The Moon- dark, shadowy, a blanket of cover for Death as she calmly overlooks her star-studded realm.

Did y’all know that Life and Death can not exist without the other? They are perfect equal-yet-opposites foils of one other that are in this grand cycle of balance. One is not inherently better than the other, mind you. Furthermore, I love the idea of inverting these tropes. The Sun may be associated with Life, but do not underestimate her- she can just as easily take this life away. Scorching wildfires, droughts, a rage like a sleeping wolf now awakened by her lover’s call. The Moon may be associated with Death, but she is also a symbol for change. The ever-shifting tides she controls, the phases she cycles through, the way Wednesday helps Enid change for the better. Sun & Moon, Life & Death, two halves of a rather lovely whole.

That being said, there’s also something sweet to be said about Addams meaning earth. The Earth is often associated with feelings of welcoming because, well, above all else, Earth means home (see the goddess Gaia for example). Like, yes, being celestial beings on a grand scale of equality and eternal devotion is amazing, but there’s also a charm to Addams meaning earth, of Addams meaning home. Enid is not accepted by her own family, but that’s alright, because she’s made a home in the loving arms of another. I like to imagine that on that on the flipside, there’s the symbolism of ‘earth’ not in the sense of the whole world, but earth like the soil beneath our feet. Wednesday seeing ‘earth’ as the ground we trodden upon and going, “Would you really want to settle for some dirt like I?”. Enid, with no hesitation, replying, “I like this dirt, it’s great for growing beautiful flowers. I wouldn’t want any other home but you, Willa.” Enid Addams does have quite the ring to it, wouldn’t you agree?

#if I made any of yall cry sorry not sorry #i fucken LOVE symbolism analysis and ofc imma bring it here to the wenclair fandom #sun and moon life and death gfs so TRUE #home as not a place but rather a person supremacy #some of yall might think im crazy fer such in depth name analysis but lemme just say #being in the rwby fandom fer several long years will get to you like this #again sorry not sorry #if theres any HINT of more symbolism in the show yall already know imma be on that shit like a mf bloodhound #anything fer yall anything fer yall #wenclair warriors moment #wenclair #wednesday addams #enid sinclair #do i tag bumbleby #yes I do #bumbleby #rwby

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decolonize-the-left · 6 months

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Show Me You're Indigenous

No wait let me explain.

Seeing global indigenous solidarity right now and I wanted to say I think y'all should be looking into the history of the land youre on, looking into the support your local tribes need, learning about the native plants and foods and animals around you.

If you do not want to be defined by consumerism, hyperindependence, or white supremacy you must start to build a future for yourselves outside of it.

And what does that look like if not becoming indigenous to the place you live?

Making sure that the land pilgrims and colonizers handed to you isnt something that you exploit, but actively participate in taking care of. Making sure that you don't see the indigenous people or the land as beneath you, but as equals if not teachers.

Because this is your home now too. Isn't it?

And rather than villifying the people who were here first for having a birthright claim that you dont and forcing us to assimilate to capitalism... learn about the land you inherited.

How it works, what and who takes care of it and how it takes care of you. How you can return the favor.

Show us you are not your ancestors. That the change we see online and in support of Palestine is not shallow or just a trend.

By showing through action that not only do you believe all humans are equal but that you are willing to engage and actively help dismantle the systems hurting all of us.

That you're no longer just a settler on occupied land taking advantage of the way the land and it's people are exploited.

Show us that you no longer feel like a colonized person who wants to uphold white supremacy and it's ideals. That you no longer want those privileges or any comforts bought with innocent blood overseas. That you don't want to perpetuate the systems destroying the planet and it's people.

Your people.

Show me that you know you belong on Turtle Island. Show me how you respect your home and land.

Show me that you are not "white" because you know that race was created Solely to create separation and false superiority.

Show me how you've defined yourself outside of it.

Show Me That You Are Indigenous

#show me that you're indigenous #whiteness #white supremacy #native american #Ojibwe #turtle island #usa #native solidarity #indigenous solidarity #landback #colonization #decolonize #decolonization

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whitedemon-ladydeath · 5 months

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Rural Communities, Illyria, Yt Liberalism/Leftism + Classism

I'm having a hard time putting into words how I feel performative activism and political pandering plays into the way the IC works with Illyria

like

ok so I'm from rural Iowa. I am from a community of people who are prideful and hate handouts. we'd rather break our backs working ourselves into the ground instead of asking for help

now, I am looking at these Illyrians. these close-knit peoples who are prideful and work themselves ragged. As someone from a poor family, in a poor, prideful, relatively 'conservative' area, I can see a lot of similarities between Ilyria and my home. Not so much the rampant wing clipping and violent misogyny, but the pride and stubbornness that gets in our own way (note: misogyny, racism, ableism, etc etc etc are often the results of settler colonialism + yt supremacy. they just don't come out of NOwhere and were/are used as a tool to keep yt rich folks in places of power by causing class divide)

enter Cassian and the IC, people who greatly dislike the Illyrians, who routinely look down on them and call them backwards, uneducated, etc (note: this stereotypical language is due to racist undertones, canonically. This is just from my own perspective as someone from a low class rural area)

Cassian, who somehow has a victim complex due to the systemic problems of Illyria, but also does not actively push for Real Systemic Change outside of making the women Also be warriors, comes into the camps, he brings blankets, small tokens to help aid them and personally, if I saw someone from my home town who had made it very clear of how he actually feels about us try to give us blankets? I would not take a damn thing from him bec which is it? are we just the absolute Worst People Ever or do you feel *sorry* for us. And even if that is not his intention, which I don't think it is at all, he has proven time and again he's "better" than them

Cassian more-or-less scorned the Illyrians, as did Rhys and Azriel, and the more Cassian keeps aligning with Rhys compared to finding solidarity and alliances and progressivism with the Illyrians, the more alienated and isolated he's going to make himself from them

Cassian aligning himself with Rhys and the IC and Velaris and the High Lord's family removed him from the class and community solidarity if his own community. He profits off of the systemic problems that are in place despite having been a victim of the same problems

a lot of the ICs performative actions and pandering towards the Illyrians, just enough to get what they want out of them (bodies for a war), and their inability to push for actual, progressive and real change quite honestly reminds me a lot of the yt liberal and democratic politicians who look down on rural folks and have called us backwards and uneducated and hicks.

The IC hide their own prejudices and bigotry behind a shield of contempt and the systemic problems of the Illyrians, the same way I see from a lot of leftist + yt liberals here in the cities

The Illyrians have very real problematic systemic issues that need addressed and actively changed. And it's very interesting, for me, that the wing clipping and violence towards Illyrian women are so highlighted when violent misogyny seems to be fairly normal/common among the fae, in general, according to SJM, anyways

The way you combat systemic issues is through education, social programs and funding, policy changing, etc

what, exactly, is the IC doing for the people of Illyria outside of small performative gestures and "change takes time"

I see the same social problems of "change takes time" with democratic policies and I look at rural areas, and the Illyrians, who need help NOW. they're people getting routinely abandoned or forgotten unless we're needed for something bec they're "backwards" and "uneducated" and "hicks"

I'm not sure if I'm wording this well, tbh, but it feels very... familiar to what I have experienced living in rural Iowa for most of my life compared with the last few years here in the city

tagging: @bookishfeylin @kateprincessofbluewhales @acotardeservesbetter @ae-neon @andramoreaux

#a court of thorns and roses #acotar #sjm critical #anti rhysand #cassian critical #classism in acotar

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odinsblog · 7 months

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TERFs dni

“Mutual abuse” does not exist. Dynamics of abuse are fundamentally about a power imbalance in which the abuser consistently uses harm to gain and maintain power and control over their victim. It does not become “mutual abuse” when the victim responds with violence or harm.

I’ve seen that many of y’all are capable of understanding that a cop hitting a protestor is different from a protestor hitting a cop because there is a massive power dynamic that makes a cop able to act with impunity and places immense restrictions on the protestor.

I’ve also seen folks recognize that using harm to take maintain that power and reacting to harm inflicted on you with violence have a distinctly different moral weight/impact.

But you see that same shit play out in an abusive relationship and throw your analysis out the window.

The question to ask is not what individual actions everyone involved has done, it’s a question of where the power is. You cannot understand abuse and how it functions unless you start asking where the actual power is and until you learn how to see it.

Since some of y’all are clearly struggling with this I’m gonna help you out: the term “toxic relationship” exists for a reason. There are plenty of relationships in which the people are just shitty to each other. Not all bad relationships are abusive ones. Abuse is about POWER.

^^ that said: don’t assume that from an outsider’s perspective that you have the ability correctly and consistently determine that a relationship is toxic rather than abusive. Because folks defaulting to saying harm in a relationship is “just toxic” similarly silences many survivors. (source)

“Mutual abuse” is the adult version of a principal telling a kid defending themselves from a schoolyard bully, “Well, it’s really the second punch that starts the fight.” Utter bullshit. This false equivalence messaging sides with the oppressor, and tells weaker or oppressed people turn the other cheek and not to defend themselves. Unsurprisingly, this “both sides are equally guilty” narrative is most often trotted out in defense of white men, especially in cases of domestic abuse.

It reminds me of when I used to hear the old phrase, “Well, everyone’s a little bit racist” that was used to equate the justified rage of Black oppression with white supremacy. Again, the problem with this argument was denying the POWER imbalance. Black people absolutely can express prejudice against white people, but because it is white people who control the criminal justice system, Hollywood, social media platforms, banks and lending institutions, the education system, etc., the collective “prejudices” of Black people will never be the equivalent of white racism and anti-Blackness. If every Black person in America got pissed off at white people on next Tuesday, not one damn thing would change for white Americans. You wouldn’t see more white people missing out on job promotions, you wouldn’t see more white people getting stopped and frisked by the police, and you wouldn’t see more whites getting denied home loans or entrance into elite colleges. Nothing would change for them because they control all of those institutions.

It’s not precisely the same thing, but in both cases, dismissing or ignoring the POWER imbalance is exactly the same.

#amber heard #johnny depp #mutual abuse #false equivalencies #dv #domestic violence #darvo depp #darvo #power imbalances

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yakourinka · 2 years

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(late post-guide ahead musings, kind of a long rambly post, part 1?)

I feel like Laterano being peaceful and its residents' wacky wild wild west uwu antics has caused some people to miss just how fucked up Laterano actually is - it's the most fucked up place on Terra in my opinion.

There are the more obvious reasons: racial supremacy that is implicit in their religion, "lesser" races practically serving as adoring errand people and soldiers for the Sankta:

What I can only call as racial segregation: Shit Sucks Everywhere At All Times for the Sarkaz but this is (to the best of my knowledge) the first time we've seen a government officer/cop go I SPOTTED A SARKAZ, GIT'ER at a person who, as far as they know, is a street peddler.

Also they hunt Sarkaz in the wild for sport apparently. (I'm aware that the Sarkaz also fight them, but you'll notice that Sarkaz are in a lot more disadvantageous situation than the Laterans.)

KFC Pope also brushes upon this with the fire analogy in the last chapter (if you give out too much of Laterano's light the place will burn out etc.), but Laterano refuses to share its resources with other nations (despite, hilariously, trying to pull a United Nations shit on their land) because:

(This is also Andoain's Joker moment.) Now consider that they have the resources to waste to the point that you can blow shit up everywhere provided you fill the paperwork and it will get fixed, and the entire city constantly smells of sugar and vanilla.

Putting all of this against the background of Shit Fucked Everywhere that is Terra and you get what is essentially a resource-hoarding ethnostate full of nice, wacky people.

It's also no coincidence that there's a noticeable emphasis on sweets - you might remember a similar thing from Dossoles (and other real world examples cough South America) with coffee and sugar: 1) it's a luxury 2) it keeps people happy and content and wanting more. Which brings me to the next point: The emotion sharing thing.

Everything about Laterano is socially engineered in a way to keep its people content in this proverbial cage. The people here can't even tell when they're in danger, which is simultaneously funny and fucked up:

See, you live in the Saved Land. Your feelings are not private because you're all hooked up on the Holy Hivemind. You feel rather encouraged to keep feeling content and happy and not think too much because your distress will be detected and shared by other people. You are now an anomaly. Ezell returning home after letting Cecelia go is some twilight zone shit because he's seen some fucked up stuff, is confused and in distress and everyone he meets on his way home is like hey man why don't you have a little snack and relax? why don't you have some cake and coffee my guy ha ha? And he has no way of processing his own mental state or articulating himself to anyone, despite the hivemind.

(completely my personal opinion here but I ended up liking Fia and Mos substantially less after the event because Laterano and its weird as fuck extreme collectivism are uncomfortably fucked up to me. like I respect a single-minded to the point of idiocy, rage-filled woman usually, like them even, but Laterano's just way too fucking weird and Fiametta being like yeah so what bitch? to everything Patia and Andoain was saying was, while funny, also unlikable. also Mostima is drinking buddies with the Pope! what the fuck)

I've seen some more positive/funny interpretations of It, the god in the Papal Basement, but what with the hivemind thing I can't help but think of the only other case of hivemind+singular god in Arknights, the Seaborn. Why did It let the incident between Mostima, Lemuen and Andoain happen, but swiftly cancelled the "shoot someone else and you're out" rule the moment Andoain and KFC Pope were shooting at each other? Is it because Andoain is/was essentially a cultish missionary spreading Its word, and the Pope is kinda essential to keeping Laterano stable? Assimilation by consumption versus assimilation by faith?

There's probably a lot more shit you can say about Laterano, like Adnachiel being ostracized because his halo is kinda not straight, what about the infected Sankta, etc., but I'll stop. Laterano's fucked up, man.

#arknights #guide ahead #andoain #fiammetta #mostima #ezell #long post

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mymarsmoonandstars · 1 year

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About Killmonger...

and his usage of the word sacrifice, and how he compares to Namor

.

It's so interesting to me that just like Shuri, Killmonger is wearing white in the ancestral plane. They're mourning clothes for him, too, aren't they? If they are, in a film about moving through the grief and resentment that comes with loss, his white clothes represent that Killmonger is stuck—stuck in anguish, stuck in rage. This may explain why he told Shuri that Ramonda sacrificed her life for Riri, because in his mind, his own father N'Jobu sacrificed his life for the African diaspora.

(By the way, I am using the word sacrifice here because this is the language Killmonger uses, and I merely want to study why. I myself do not believe N'Jobu's or Ramonda's deaths were. When black folks are murdered, I don't view their deaths as sacrifices. They didn't want to die. Both N'Jobu and Ramonda were human beings desperate to save someone (or someones, in N'Jobu's case). The word sacrifice to describe the deaths of black people should be applied with the utmost care, because there is a history of people using that word against us, as it places culpability on the murdered black person instead of the one who actually did the killing. It also reduces black folks to always being the strong and resilient type when we can be victims, too.)

In the first film, Killmonger's father's death motivates him to finish what N'Jobu started and spread vibranium weapons outside of Wakanda to wage a vengeful war—this is his way of "taking care of business" which he encourages Shuri to follow. In calling Ramonda's death a sacrifice, he does not take away blame from Namor, but rather does so to inspire Shuri to act. He urges Shuri to make sure her mother did not die in vain and to instead use her to justify even more bloodshed, just as he had done with his own father. Him wearing white shows he hasn't progressed from this sentiment, and even after all that's happened, he is still very much in pain. It's like he wants Shuri to wage the war that he never got to.

I think Killmonger views the loss of his father as a sacrifice to cope with it, and to him, his father's and Ramonda's deaths are one and the same. In reality, N'Jobu was killed by his own brother then abandoned. Ramonda was drowned as punishment. Neither wished to die. Neither should have died. But to view their deaths as sacrifices? It takes away the brutal truth and gives their deaths purpose. Sacrifice as euphemism. Sacrifice translated into action. He spurs Shuri to vengeance this way, but it doesn't come across as manipulative. For Killmonger, Ramonda and N'Jobu both died protecting a Black American(s), and being that he's never healed from his trauma, he coaches Shuri in the only way he knows how.

But how is never as important as why, isn't it? I've been trying to come up with an answer as to why Killmonger mimics Namor's line. I think to understand it, you have to draw some parallels between him and Namor. The core of what makes them anatagonists is that they both wanted to wage war against colonizers in the name of protecting their people. But they have much more in common beyond that:

White supremacy displaced both Killmonger and Namor. N'Jobu had to hide them away in Oakland just as Namor's mother Fen had to take refuge in the water.

You know how N'Jobu always told his son about how beautiful the Wakandan sunsets are? And how Fen told her son stories about a land and people who never had to change? N'Jobu and Fen filled their children's heads with stories of their homelands dressed up as fairytales. Consequently, Killmonger and Namor grew up thinking of home as an idyllic place that they should have belonged to, but a place always out of reach.

Killmonger and Namor witnessed their father and mother grieving the loss of where they came from. They inherited this grief, this longing.

They have a complicated way of seeing life—they fiercely want to protect their people, but are so blinded by this that they harm those who should be their allies (Killmonger killing black people and other people of color as an American soldier, Namor's assault on Wakanda, both becoming the very thing they hate).

Adding onto the last point, death is sadly common for them. As a boy, Killmonger says, "everybody dies, it's just life around here" which is very similar to Namor's "when you age as I do, you realize we all lose everyone we love." Their hearts are hardened against death, and this is truly a sad thing, and allows them to commit tragedies devoid of sympathy.

So it's kind of perfect that Killmonger echoes Namor's "how is never as important as why." The two characters uphold the same motif of the Black Panther films—to not only look at their methods, which are not the best and at times even downright wrong, but to understand the reasoning behind them.

Remember, despite everything, T'Challa still takes Killmonger to see the Wakandan sunset. The image of these two sitting together and watching the sun go down in Wakanda embodies this theme of empathy, and mirrors Shuri and Namor watching the sun rise over Talokan.

#erik killmonger #killmonger #shuri #t'challa #n'jobu #n'jadaka #queen ramonda #wakanda forever #wakanda forever spoilers #black panther #namor #wakanda forever meta #i don't think i can ever get this film out of my mind

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chaoticrokiroki · 1 year

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todojirou domestic fluff supremacy

they don't move in together right after graduation. it changes things, disrupts their routine, and its an adjustment. so they take it slow, work it out and process the beginning of a new life by themselves first

shouto's not. eager. to live full time in the new todoroki house with his mother, if only because he fears how stressful it could be for her. but he does love his family and it's not bad, not really. he gets to have a little bit of his childhood back, a small part of the time he should've had with his family.

a part of kyouka's still looking for the kind of peace she had before UA, back when her parents were the Adults and made the decisions and kept her safe. its been the other way around for several years, logically she knows its not coming back.

they still meet every day, if their plans dont end up derailed by some villain attack or family emergency. everything's changing but, in this, finding new footing isn't weird or bad or nostalgic at all. it's just exciting, to know theyre both preparing for the same thing. for a place that'll be theirs and theirs alone.

they do move in together after almost two years - into a tiny one bedroom apartment that's barely big enough for the both of them. but there's golden light streaming through the kitchen windows, shining on a small living space that's filled with cardboard boxes and kyouka's tripped twice over the past five minutes and shouto's has no idea on where to place their new dishware and. its warm, here. in this pocket of time they've made for themselves. its warm and its home and its theirs.

it feels like it cant possibly get any better than it is. and yet, with time, it does. with time, they learn how to make themselves into a safe place for one another. a shield, between the other and the grim reality they face everyday at work.

there's always music playing in the background, kyouka cant help but come home exhausted and not want to hear the neighbours' fights or the dogs barking down the street. it drowns it out, makes it a little easier to breathe - coming home to shouto trying not to burn their dinner, wearing a sky blue apron with a pink, sparkly "babygirl" on the front (mina's particular brand of humour is Priceless) and a random rock album playing in the background loudly is. certainly something that brightens her days. something that makes it worth it, to wash grime and filth from her skin and stumble home tired to the bone and sink into his embrace.

there's a stash of soba noodles that makes up probably half of their food - its not really used for dinner or lunch, rather it's treated as a midnight snack. shouto will wake up from a nightmare, tossing and turning and outright screaming for the worst ones (kyouka can never wake him, during those. can never snap him out of his own personal hell like she wants to), and they'll stumble under sudden, too bright lights and share a bowl while sitting at the kitchen counter. touching every possible way, knees and elbows bumping together and making a mess, too sleepy to care about cleaning up.

the mornings are their favourites - they're both lazy, after waking up. kyouka will get up first, sit at the edge of the bed yawning and pushing at shouto's legs in an effort to wake him. he will, eventually. coming to stand beside her at the sink, fighting to get more space and brushing their teeth together. grabbing a slice of toast in a hurry because they both took too long getting ready (it takes a while before kyouka is comfortable singing/humming in the shower but after shouto always finds some excuse to listen in, getting ready in the bathroom longer than strictly necessary) and rushing out the door in two separate directions only to run back and share a hasty goodbye kiss.

there's not a precise way to describe it, not really. its just home, the kind that you know you want as a child and that you dont think you'll ever get as a moody teenager. the kind of home you spend a lifetime searching for, unconsciously.

a final puzzle piece, clicking into place.

#bnha #mha #todojirou #shouto todoroki #jirou kyouka #todojirou hc #i have So Many feelings for them #their house is Eclectic and its beautiful #an explosion of blues and reds and purple accents #if you remember kyouka's room youll know the reds are for her tbh #ive got so many thoughts about their house i love it #shouto's the one sneaking in purple accents i needed to add this #ill probably write a whole other thing about it soon hold on

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bullet-farmer · 8 months

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All I Need to Know about Life I Learned in Elementary School

No seriously. Read on. I feel like my elementary-school experience taught me everything about society that is worth knowing. I've just spent the last 30+ years learning the nuances. This is a pretty pessimistic post, but the last eight years have shown me that my belief that humans were basically good was entirely wrong. And I think that my major mistake was turning twelve without internalizing this message. (I blame Star Trek lol, and I can't think of any other piece of media that gave humanity so much false hope.) This is what I learned: 1. Most people who have maximum social privilege don't give a shit about anyone else.

Unless that "anyone else" is in their same social/economic group (and most often only if they're also white or willing to carry water for white supremacy). I saw this play out when I was a kid. I wasn't part of the dominant religious culture in my state, which meant that no one saw me or my family at Sunday services. In fact, I was probably the only person in most of my classes who wasn't part of the dominant religion. Therefore, I was not human; I was a thing to be abused, whose pain wasn't real and could therefore be ignored. But I also saw the same mistreatment happen to kids who were part of the dominant religion...but who were any combination of poor, fat, neurodivergent, traumatized, from abusive homes, learning disabled, or physically disabled. Ableism, the dominant religion, classism, neuro-supremacy, fatphobia/lookism, and society's interest in ignoring child abuse conspired to keep the powerful in power and to remind the have-nots to stay in our place. (If my school had had more than two Black kids who I didn't know well and who were never in my classes, I suspect race would've been a widespread factor too--rather than one that only applied to those two kids.) Yes, it was the 80s. But being "a different time" doesn't excuse the fact that families taught their children (directly or by inaction) to be cruel to those with less social cache, and the fact that the adults who served in loco parentis enabled it. Teachers and staff either gave no shits about peer-on-peer abuse, or, if they did, their attempts to stop it were well intentioned but ultimately ineffective. Because they were going against a system designed to elevate the privileged and damage the underprivileged. This essay's difficult to write, so I'll have to take it one part at a time. Stay tuned for more.

#all i need to know about life I learned in elementary school #cw child abuse #cw cocsa #cw abuse

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tierra-posting · 1 year

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1st Report on Aladic d'al Sancroix, by Agent Friedrich vam Graz

Full report on the potential threat posed by Alaric d'al Sancroix.

Pre observation notes: Alaric has proven an excellent military mind, playing a key role in multiple major battles in the Antari-Tierran conflict. Yet he has also proven a rather forward thinking man, especially compared to his peers, on matters of equality and progress. His friendship with ambassador Cassius vam Holt proves that he is malleable to Tarakan influence, though his friendship with anti-Takaran elements such as Markus d'al Havenport may prove troubling.

1st Observation: He has proven himself to not just be a brilliant officer but a budding statesman as well. His speech before the court, in support of Duke Wulfram, on his first day in the courtes has steered quite a few lords towards Wulfram's position. This has also revealed either a genuine care for the common people of Tierra, a noble and very Takaran ideal, or a unforseen streak of opportunism. More investigation will need to be done to discover his driving force before I can determine if he is a viable candidate for our efforts.

Should he prove viable he will truly be one of our greatest assets, Takara aun Tau'zenkai!

Personal note: Aetoria has proved a strange city to me. Here I see sights so strange yet so familiar to me. Back home it was unheard of for any Takaran citizen to starve let alone be without a home. Yet that speaks only of us, the Falkish and not of the human population. Our country is great in many ways but one could never say we are without flaws.

The way we treat the humans born within Takara is not only shameful but hypothetical. Is it not our task as the Falkish, as determined by our place in the tree of life's hierarchy, should we not have guided these humans enough to be our equal by now? And if not should we not make a greater effort to do so, is it not our great task?

Yet even that is bullshit used to justify our foreign policy to the citizenry. That's why they dispel those illusions when they train us agents isn't it? So we can maintain the lie of Falkish supremacy? Yet even then you only replace that illusion with a cold reality and a hopeful alternative.

You present us with the idea that should Takara falter in this great game with the Kian they will invade our home and slaughter us to the falk, a truth the Kian would gladly admit. Yet you also provide us with a vision of a better future, one where democracy and egalitarianism has been spread to all corners of the infinite sea. One where every nation, human and falk, would work together to better both themselves and in turn each other.

I only hope that dream is not simply another illusion, and I hope it's worth the blood shed in its name. I know no one back at HQ will read this because if you are, I've most likely been tried and executed for treason already. Yet I'm still writing this to you, to air my frustration even if only to this paper on which I write. Takara will persevere and grow grander by the day, till one day I'll feel truly proud to be a Takaran.

#dragoon saga spoilers #dragoon saga #lords of infinity spoilers #lords of infinity #infinity series #Takara #in universe document #in character

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taryn-phillips · 2 years

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Ch.5 Fieldwork

White Supremacy

White supremacy is beliefs and ideas emphasizing that the white human races is superior over other racial groups. This is largely shown and viewed in American culture (our country). For example, our formal president Donald trump was a white supremacist who's slogan was to "make America great again" meaning to gain power and benefits for only white people. Additionally, a riot perpetrated against the capitol by Donald trump supporters that was enforced by Donald trump himself. Our country is viewed as white people can get away with things that black people or any other person of color can't. The system has been like this since the beginning and it all roots from white supremacy.

American culture

in 2018, Childish Gambino an American rapper/singer released a song called "This is America" where the song focuses on a side how the world views America and then the other side what America is hiding (that is not shown). The side that is portrayed to the world is the American dream where every family is living behind a white picket fence, in a beautiful home with great jobs. The side that is not shown is the struggle minorities go through in this country on a daily basis. The music video targets black life in America and American culture by including secret messages and symbolism throughout the video like black people fighting the police etc. We can say that our culture the (American culture) is portrayed to other culture as fast food, sports, and privileged.

Genetics

In the human we race we distribute ourselves into groups based off of race. According to chapter 5, based on variations of skin color and other visible features associated with race are shaped by less than 0.1% of genetic code. For example, a person from Western Africa who starts walking east will have more in common genetically with someone in Russia compared to their neighbor at home.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are widely held fixed ideas of a particular race or group. A popular stereotype among the black race is that we have large noses/ large lips. As the first humans evolved from Africa, your features came from where you are in the world and the climate of that location. According to the article sciencelet, an advantage with having a larger nose facilitates breathing in more air thereby supplying the body with more oxygen especially in warm climates. Physical activity in a hotter environment is more demanding because your body requires more oxygen rather than in cooler climates. So

The show blackish also portrays black culture stereotypes. It shows how a typical black family lives in America and the struggles that come with it. In the show, it shows how black culture is viewed from an inside and outside perspective.

Microaggression in American society

Microagression is common for POC in America and it is simply a term for everyday insults, snubs, or negative attitude to target someone solely on their race or culture. We have a common with microagression in many places such as the workplace, hospitals, and unfortunately schools. Many black children are judged right when they walk in the door that they are either disruptive or will slack off. This judgement roots from racism and has turned into a microagression in schools. For example, the award winning movie The great debaters portrays a group of kids from an HBCU that challenge white kids in debating during the 1935 era. In the movie, actor Denzel Washington starts a debate team at a hbcu which was highly unheard of during that time. In the movie, nobody expected anything great from this all black debate team. They were viewed inner American culture as dense and unintelligent. Surely, these kids made a good name for themselves and ended up winning the debate contest. Although they won, they were judged on their knowledge just because they are black which gave them the disadvantage.

Racial genocide

Racial genocide is the systematic destruction of a group of people because of their race, ethnicity, or religion. In the us, too many black people have died for crimes they did not do. We call this a racial genocide as many of them from the same race was killed. For example, according to the article Black Agenda Report, the Martinsville seven were seven black men who died in the state of Virgnia's electric chair for a rape they never committed. Black genocide still occurs under color of law.

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blackofheart · 2 years

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diagon alley is home to many , a direct connection to the wizarding world , right in the centre of london , many people like bellatrix black , spend majority of her time in the busy alley , people know her as the thirty-three year old who is a past slytherin graduate , now working as a unspeakable, i think the role suits them perfectly as i think they are ambitious but also they can be intolerant, but that's just my opinion . (faceclaim; Crystal reed, penned by ; laurie/24/gmt )

&. BASICS

full name: bellatrix walburga black. nicknames: bella. age: 34. sexuality: she has never really labelled her sexuality, but she’s drawn to power. birthday: august 5th. place of birth: 12 grimmauld place, islington, london. gender & species: cis female, human, witch. current location: london, england

&. MORE BASIC INFO

languages: english, french and russian,. religion: non-religious, except for perhaps blood supremacy. education: hogwarts (slytherin) - OWLs, with 6 Os and 3 Es, and NEWTs, with 4 Os and an E. occupation: unspeakable within the death chamber. drinks, smokes, & drugs: frequently, regularly, occasionally

&. PERSONALITY

zodiac sign: leo. MBTI: ESTJ-A, the executive. fears: the fall of blood purity. four positive traits: intelligent, ambitious, loyal, determined. four negative traits: intolerant, unforgiving, manipulative, arrogant

Tw: Bigotry, Violence and Implied: Murder and Torture

chapter one. childhood:

An heir. That was all that Cygnus Black III wanted. Everything he had done in his life was for The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and, with his older brother Alphard not even betrothed and sister Walburga married to their second cousin but without her own son, when Druella fell pregnant for the first time it was his duty to ensure that they raised the perfect pureblood boy to secure the family legacy. Imagine his disappointment when Bellatrix Walburga Black was born. Eventually, the new father resigned himself to the truth. He assured everybody that his daughter would be raised just as well as any son would be and that his heir would come with the next. It was years before another Black was added to the infamous family tree. Whispers circulated around high society circles, talk that perhaps this was finally the fall of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Now if Cygnus could help it. No longer were they waiting for the heir apparent, he would simply mould one from his oldest daughter.

By the time the younger two Black sisters were born, Bellatrix was already being transformed from future potential pureblood wife to successor to everything The Blacks held dear. Her childhood was filled with occlumency and legilimency lessons, and she much preferred them to the horror stories of etiquette lessons to become the perfect lady that other daughters of the Sacred Twenty-Eight told. She was permitted access to her father’s office, where they would spend hours at a time talking about the purity of their blood, toujours pur, and the threats that faced their very way of life. On many warm Sunday afternoons she chose to visit her Aunt Walburga, preferring to run her hands along the family tapestry rather than play in the sunshine with her sisters and cousins.

chapter two. hogwarts:

By the time she was at Hogwarts, proudly sorted into Slytherin just like every Black before her, she was everything that family expected her to be. Everything they could have wanted. The perfect son her father had never had.

Bellatrix had never been made to be subtle, even as a mere eleven year old she had been outspoken. After all, she had all the confidence of a girl who had been promised the world because of the blood that ran through her veins. She sneered at blood traitors and did worse to muggleborns, landing herself many a detention and building herself a reputation that made her as feared as any of the Slytherin boys she’d associated herself with. She was a favourite of her Head of House, a powerful witch Horace Slughorn couldn’t ignore her potential, but was ultimately rejected as prefect for her behaviour. Truly the young girl hadn’t been bothered. After all, why would she need a shiny badge and the power to grant detentions when she had hexes and curses to throw in the direction of people she felt were undeserving of their Hogwarts’ space?

chapter three. the war:

The summer after her final year at Hogwarts changed Bellatrix’s life. Now an adult, her mother made clear what was expected of her. She may not have been the lady that Druella had once pictured, but that didn’t stop her mother from parading eligible suitor after eligible suitor under her nose. Bella found the whole thing rather boring. Despite the birth of her younger cousins, effectively dethroning her from her once prized position as heir to their fortunes, she still very much considered herself the true heir - after all, she had done the work while they had merely been born boys over a decade later - and didn’t see why she should have to prove herself worthy of any man. Especially when it seems so clear to her she was leagues above anybody her mother suggested. Those long summer days were filled with arguments with her mother, familiar talks with her father, hiding from her annoying cousins and half-reluctantly spending time with her sisters. A routine began to settle. And then she met him. Tom Riddle.

It didn’t take long from that first meeting, where they spoke of the same things she had with her father years before with the teenager hanging onto every word while Riddle offered up his solutions, for her to become enthralled with the man. They would eradicate the unworthy, be able to break free from their secrecy and take what was rightfully theirs. Wizards would live in the light, heads held high and proud rather than forced into hiding out of fear. He had made it all sound so simple. She didn’t hesitate in joining his army, after all the victory would be so much sweeter when she’d been the one to help win the war.

She is a delighted participant in the war. She considers herself an activist, she is fighting for everything she’s been taught to stand for and is upholding values generations of her family have lived by, if the means she uses should be violent then it so be it. She’s never had a problem with squeamishness before. At her core there is anger, fuelled by a fear that the world she loves will give way to the muggle loving blood traitors and the filthy blood that dared to think they could infiltrate their sacred blood. By the time Sirius joins the blood traitors, officially removed from the tapsry she spent hours of childhood admiring, she is not surprised. Now he’s just another enemy with a target on his back as she rises through Riddle’s ranks and becomes one of The Dark Lord’s most trusted soldiers. One of the deadliest too. For those unlucky enough to run into Bellatrix Black on the battlefield it has become apparent that they are unlikely to survive.

She is exactly who she was raised to be. A proud member of the House of Black, a soldier for all she finds righteous, and with a Lestrange heirloom ring sitting on her left hand she even has the perfect pureblood fiancé. What Bellatrix wants she always gets. And now, she wants to win the war.

#diagons.intro #bio #| muse ; fragile like a bomb |#tw murder #tw violence #tw torture #tw bigotry

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pestk687 · 23 days

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Rat Control: Safeguarding Homes and Health

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In conclusion, Rat Control stands as a beacon of excellence in the field of rodent management, offering comprehensive solutions tailored to the unique needs of its clientele. With a focus on prevention, eco-friendliness, and customer satisfaction, the company sets the standard for effective and ethical pest control practices. Through its dedication to innovation, education, and community engagement, Rat Control exemplifies its role as a trusted partner in promoting healthy, pest-free environments.

#fleas pest control

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mirag2001 · 4 months

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blog assignment #1

MG

January 21, 2024

Blog Assignment #1

I vividly remember when I first watched Get Out. I am one of those people who deliberately not watches the trailers for movies- I quite like the surprise I'm in for when the lights dim in the theater. The only thing I was aware of was that it was directed by Jordan Peele and that it was a horror movie. That's all I needed to know. Being a horror fan myself, I’m familiar with how these types of movies play out. So, you can imagine how shocked and impressed I was with how Get Out made me feel. While the movie was clear that it was in the horror genre with the first scene where Andre got kidnapped, I got a sense of dread the more I watched the movie.

During Professor Due’s Thursday lecture, she described her theory on the moneypaw method. One of the points she made was that the movie doesn't show explicit violence, especially towards the black characters. And even though the movie itself wasn't violent in a physical sense, other than what the white family does to these black people that come to their home, it was horrific in other ways. While it was quite easy to pick up the microaggressions coming from Rose’s family, the other points, the deeper ones, the movie was trying to make were a little less clear. I really had to sit in my room after watching, to play out the scenes in the movie to try to make sense of everything. I am not black, and I don't claim to know how it feels to be black in America, but I have been the “other” in the room before. I am a Mexican woman who grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood. I know just a little of what it feels like to be the only “other” in the room. Microaggressions like “your English is really good for a Mexican” or others have literally questioned my legal status, even when I was a child and didn't know what that meant. Those microaggressions that Chris experienced in the movie, I have experienced my own in different situations, those that have made me feel uncomfortable and not trusting of the other people in the room.

I think the movie is one of the greatest horror movies made. Not because it was explicitly scary, even though it did have some little jumpscares, but rather it made me feel uneasy and dreadful about what would happen next. It made me feel dread because Peele captured what was happening at the time in America. That white supremacy was coming out of its cave and was paraded around proudly during the Trump era. And it's not just exclusive to the Trump era, but rather things that black people have been experiencing for ages. The racism, the appropriation and coveting of black bodies, and how white people love everything that black people have, their bodies, their strength, their appearance, but they don't love the person. Hence, why Rose’s family was persevering the bodies of these black people but not their minds.

I also thought the sunken place was an interesting avenue to take. When I first saw the movie, I believed that the sunken place was more a metaphor for the state the black people have felt for a long time. That black people are always going to be placed in a box, in specific categories, stereotypes that were demining and extremely difficult to escape. Or that black people are always going to be seen as inferior in the eyes of white people. However, when I heard Jordan Peele talk about the sunken place and how he thought of mass incarceration and how he thought of the piling of black bodies into the carcel system for the most minor offenses being locked away for a long time, that made a more sense, then what I originally thought. Get Out is one of those movies that is hard to forget about. It was one of the most original storylines that I have seen in a horror film. I was not scared because there was a demonic possession, zombies, or ghosts. I was scared because this movie was extremely accurate to the racism that black people experience in this country on a day-to-day basis.

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kammartinez · 8 months

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Around the time of the 2016 election, YouTube became known as a home to the rising alt-right and to massively popular conspiracy theorists. The Google-owned site had more than 1 billion users and was playing host to charismatic personalities who had developed intimate relationships with their audiences, potentially making it a powerful vector for political influence. At the time, Alex Jones’s channel, Infowars, had more than 2 million subscribers. And YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, which accounted for the majority of what people watched on the platform, looked to be pulling people deeper and deeper into dangerous delusions.

The process of “falling down the rabbit hole” was memorably illustrated by personal accounts of people who had ended up on strange paths into the dark heart of the platform, where they were intrigued and then convinced by extremist rhetoric—an interest in critiques of feminism could lead to men’s rights and then white supremacy and then calls for violence. Most troubling is that a person who was not necessarily looking for extreme content could end up watching it because the algorithm noticed a whisper of something in their previous choices. It could exacerbate a person’s worst impulses and take them to a place they wouldn’t have chosen, but would have trouble getting out of.

Just how big a rabbit-hole problem YouTube had wasn’t quite clear, and the company denied it had one at all even as it was making changes to address the criticisms. In early 2019, YouTube announced tweaks to its recommendation system with the goal of dramatically reducing the promotion of “harmful misinformation” and “borderline content” (the kinds of videos that were almost extreme enough to remove, but not quite). At the same time, it also went on a demonetizing spree, blocking shared-ad-revenue programs for YouTube creators who disobeyed its policies about hate speech.Whatever else YouTube continued to allow on its site, the idea was that the rabbit hole would be filled in.

A new peer-reviewed study, published today in Science Advances, suggests that YouTube’s 2019 update worked. The research team was led by Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth who studies polarization in the context of the internet. Nyhan and his co-authors surveyed 1,181 people about their existing political attitudes and then used a custom browser extension to monitor all of their YouTube activity and recommendations for a period of several months at the end of 2020. It found that extremist videos were watched by only 6 percent of participants. Of those people, the majority had deliberately subscribed to at least one extremist channel, meaning that they hadn’t been pushed there by the algorithm. Further, these people were often coming to extremist videos from external links instead of from within YouTube.

These viewing patterns showed no evidence of a rabbit-hole process as it’s typically imagined: Rather than naive users suddenly and unwittingly finding themselves funneled toward hateful content, “we see people with very high levels of gender and racial resentment seeking this content out,” Nyhan told me. That people are primarily viewing extremist content through subscriptions and external links is something “only [this team has] been able to capture, because of the method,” says Manoel Horta Ribeiro, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne who wasn’t involved in the study. Whereas many previous studies of the YouTube rabbit hole have had to use bots to simulate the experience of navigating YouTube’s recommendations—by clicking mindlessly on the next suggested video over and over and over—this is the first that obtained such granular data on real, human behavior.

The study does have an unavoidable flaw: It cannot account for anything that happened on YouTube before the data were collected, in 2020. “It may be the case that the susceptible population was already radicalized during YouTube’s pre-2019 era,” as Nyhan and his co-authors explain in the paper. Extremist content does still exist on YouTube, after all, and some people do still watch it. So there’s a chicken-and-egg dilemma: Which came first, the extremist who watches videos on YouTube, or the YouTuber who encounters extremist content there?

Examining today’s YouTube to try to understand the YouTube of several years ago is, to deploy another metaphor, “a little bit ‘apples and oranges,’” Jonas Kaiser, a researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society who wasn’t involved in the study, told me. Though he considers it a solid study, he said he also recognizes the difficulty of learning much about a platform’s past by looking at one sample of users from its present. This was also a significant issue with a collection of new studies about Facebook’s role in political polarization, which were published last month (Nyhan worked on one of them). Those studies demonstrated that, although echo chambers on Facebook do exist, they don’t have major effects on people’s political attitudes today. But they couldn’t demonstrate whether the echo chambers had already had those effects long before the study.

The new research is still important, in part because it proposes a specific, technical definition of rabbit hole. The term has been used in different ways in common speech and even in academic research. Nyhan’s team defined a “rabbit hole event” as one in which a person follows a recommendation to get to a more extreme type of video than they were previously watching. They can’t have been subscribing to the channel they end up on, or to similarly extreme channels, before the recommendation pushed them. This mechanism wasn’t common in their findings at all. They saw it act on only 1 percent of participants, accounting for only 0.002 percent of all views of extremist-channel videos.

This is great to know. But, again, it doesn’t mean that rabbit holes, as the team defined them, weren’t at one point a bigger problem. It’s just a good indication that they seem to be rare right now. Why did it take so long to go looking for the rabbit holes? “It’s a shame we didn’t catch them on both sides of the change,” Nyhan acknowledged. “That would have been ideal.” But it took time to build the browser extension (which is now open source, so it can be used by other researchers), and it also took time to come up with a whole bunch of money. Nyhan estimated that the study received about $100,000 in funding, but an additional National Science Foundation grant that went to a separate team that built the browser extension was huge—almost $500,000.

Nyhan was careful not to say that this paper represents a total exoneration of YouTube. The platform hasn’t stopped letting its subscription feature drive traffic to extremists. It also continues to allow users to publish extremist videos. And learning that only a tiny percentage of users stumble across extremist content isn’t the same as learning that no one does; a tiny percentage of a gargantuan user base still represents a large number of people.

This speaks to the broader problem with last month’s new Facebook research as well: Americans want to understand why the country is so dramatically polarized, and people have seen the huge changes in our technology use and information consumption in the years when that polarization became most obvious. But the web changes every day. Things that YouTube no longer wants to host could still find huge audiences, instead, on platforms such as Rumble; most young people now use TikTok, a platform that barely existed when we started talking about the effects of social media. As soon as we start to unravel one mystery about how the internet affects us, another one takes its place.

#internet #politics #youtube

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kamreadsandrecs · 8 months