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I really love the pissing contest of "your fav is problematic unlike mine." watching people go and be like "how can you like this character he's a shit dad" and you look at characters they like and its the dude that sold a female character into slavery.

#lmao #big reason why fandoms at at their best when people are collectively like #'haha! our favs suck!' #and then explore the layers of said suckage

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oh yeah forgot to post these guys

for when you're definitely very normal about Things

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@bonkalore

@witchysolfan

[RUINING THE LIVES OF PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT REAL] i am playing. With my touys

#story telling #time honored tradition tbh

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The point of fiction is actually to put that guy in a situation™️, and he might try to tell you the point is to then get him out of the situation, WRONG, second situation

#fiction #pro tip: endless number of situation to put that guy in too

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How do you think the guys from the terror would handle to being stuck in the pyramid from alien vs predator?

no survivors

#the terror #trueeeee

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#zionism #zionist occupation #Palestinian history #genocide #ethnic cleansing #concentration camps #torture

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What do angels actually look like per the bible?

Well, according to Ezekiel 1 they might look something like this…

According to Daniel 10 something like this…

According to Isaiah 6…

In Ezekiel 10… 

Again in Ezekiel 10…

Basically, when the people writing Scripture tried to describe what they saw when they saw an angel… they run into the end of their imagination… they can never quite seem to fully explain it because they had trouble even comprehending what they saw, let alone being able to describe it to someone else. 

#angels

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As of now, there isn't a Gofundme. Let's ask the following organisations to evacuate this child to safety:

Doctors Without Borders [Website / Instagram / Twitter]

Palestine Children's Relief Fund [Website / Instagram / Twitter]

Medical Aid for Palestinians [Website / Instagram / Twitter]

Palestinian Red Crescent Society [Website / Instagram / Twitter] (you should also message Red Cross)

The Egyptian and Qatari governments (especially if you're a citizen of either country)

Please message them on social media and their websites.

#gaza #palestine #donations

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The situation in the Jabalia refugee camp in north Gaza needs attention!

Not only did Israel declare that their operations in the north had ended, only for them to return in full force, but Israel's nonstop strikes are targeting a densely populated area as well as invading UNRWA schools.

Each of these UNRWA schools has been sheltering about 10,000 people. Six of these schools are being directly targeted right now and reports are saying that tanks are approaching the entrance of these schools.

Also, if you know anything about refugee camps you know how houses are almost on top of each other with barely any space and alleyways are so narrow sometimes only allowing one person to pass through at a time. This can paint a picture of the amount of destruction and death that will be caused by Israel's invasion and strikes of the Jabalia refugee camp.

As a reminder there are no fully functioning hospitals in the area and the wounded are expected to die as a result of not only lack of medical support but also because Israel makes it impossible for ambulances or people to get to the wounded by targeting the ways leading up to them.

Everything I mentioned above has been something we have at some point screamed about during the past months and in fact the past years. None of this is a new tactic or approach by Israel. Yet, this continues to happen because despite its obvious crimes, Israel is allowed to enact with complete impunity. We were worried about allowing Israel to set a precedent, but what does it tell you now that Israel had repeated the same heinous crimes over and over again while they're being televised?

Keep talking about Gaza, from Jabalia to Rafah.

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A revolutionary action within culture must aim to enlarge life, not merely to express or explain it. It must attack misery on every front. Revolution is not limited to determining the level of industrial production, or even to determining who is to be the master of such production. It must abolish not only the exploitation of humanity, but also the passions, compensations, and habits which that exploitation has engendered.

Guy Debord, Report on the Construction of Situations, 1957

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This makes a lot of sense. Thank you for your answer!

Hello ryin! I saw in a recent post of yours that you dislike the "class warfare" reading of the Havoc in Heaven arc in JTTW and would honestly love to hear more about your thoughts on that! Your takes have been really interesting.

Thank you!

My biggest problem with the "class warfare" reading is, first and foremost, what it has been historically used for.

Like, after the Havoc in Heaven opera and movie came out, the propagandists absolutely ate it up; SWK was associated with Mao Zedong and used to promote Mao's personality cult, and soon after, the White Bone Spirit story would be interpreted as this fable for the Sino-Soviet split.

Whereas Havoc in Heaven was intended and viewed as a metaphor and love letter to the victory of Chinese revolution, the White Bone Spirit story was interpreted in the context of the horrific fuck-up that is the Great Leap Forward, where the party were starting to doubt its leadership, and the path to the future seemed an uncertain and arduous one——much like the pilgrimage.

So, in the new twist on the "class warfare" narrative, Tripitaka and Pigsy became the poster-boy for "party members who were easily captivated by revisionist ideas" and needed to see how wrong they were, the WBS became the personification of Khruschev, imperialism, capitalism, revisionism...you name it, and SWK the Mao expy who could do no wrong yet was unfairly blamed by everyone.

Came the Cultural Revolution era, SWK would then become a sort of hero and role model for the Red Guards, smashing down all that was considered archaic and backwards, tearing down older authority figures and perceived "class enemies" alike, all the while emboldened by Mao's saying that "To rebel is justified" (造反有理).

Yeah, no, fuck that shit.

Terrible historical baggages aside, it is also a reading that reeks of presentism, and Lin Geng, a renowned professor of literature, had done a thorough takedown of the "SWK as peasant rebel" idea in his 西游记漫话.

Namely, it neither fits the circumstances of Havoc in Heaven, nor SWK's backstory and motivation. He's not rebelling because his monkeys are oppressed by the Celestial Realm, he's doing it because he feels personally slighted.

His mindset is also not that of a traditional peasant; compare and contrast that with Zhu Bajie, whom the author argues is very much peasant-coded in terms of his obsession with going back to Gao Laozhuang, his rake, and his comedic ignorance that stems from urban stereotypes of rural farmers.

To paraphrase Lin Geng, "Not all rebellions and rebel narratives in Chinese history are peasant ones, and we shouldn't just cry 'peasant rebellion metaphor!' the moment we saw a rebellion in fiction."

Lastly and more personally? This reading also tends to remove SWK's depth as a character. The representation of the Mind can be both heroic and flawed, capable of great feats and fuck-ups alike, but the representation of The Revolution has to be heroic and his opponents, whether celestial or demonic, must be evil oppressors and political boogeymen.

Like, the demons in the novel are representations of the mental obstacles a person will face on the path to Enlightenment, but they are also capable of being funny and very human characters, and not all of them wanted to eat Tripitaka.

The Celestial Realm is a satire of the imperial bureaucracy, sure, but the novel is also a product of its time and cannot magically promote 20th century ideas of revolutions and political reforms 500 years before they were a thing. Besides, SWK can still get help from them on the Journey and their relationship is more complicated than "oppressed rebel and oppressors".

And that's exactly why I dislike the "class warfare" reading: it creates a simplistic opposition of good and evil, and tries to squeeze the work into a narrow political framework that is neither nuanced nor accurate.

#journey to the west #xiyouji #jttw #chinese history #chinese literature #sun wukong #havoc in heaven

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there’s an online mobilisation effort called “blockout 2024”, where people are en masse blocking influencers/celebrities who have been silent so far on palestine to make them lose followers and income. and it’s been making celebrities and streamers start posting links to gofundmes and the PCRF, which is great. But after 7 months of silence, I simply can’t look at many of these creators the same way, and the idea that these people with so much wealth and influence only started caring when something materially forced their hand and affected their social standing should disgust you too.

so accept the meager good these people are doing by posting links, but remind yourself that all of them could’ve been talking about palestine this whole time. sharing resources is truly the bare minimum. remind yourself that your faves aren’t exempt from the criticism attached to attending the met gala because they’re your faves. and never forget how many lives they could’ve saved if they spoke up sooner, and bothered to put any of their own money on the line.

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These three tweets showed up like this on my timeline (blurring mine):

I keep on hoping that people will see enough death and suffering that it'll make them want to stop this. That they'll see the shared humanity and imagine if it were them or their family or friend and think, this is unbearable.

#rafah #palestine #child murder #child death #genocide #war crimes #crimes against humanity #israel #usa

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Here's a website where Palestine GoFundMes are vetted and shared that you can send out to people. The url is gazafunds.com

Easy to use and simple. Just share the site whenever someone asks for GFMs for Palestine.

#palestine #gaza #donations

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The Israeli army justifies its attacks on healthcare by alleging that Hamas is operating from hospitals. However, in order for a hospital to lose its protected status under international law, it would need to be used to commit “acts harmful to the enemy.” Hamas fighters sauntering through a hospital to get a hostage treated hardly constitutes an act harmful to the enemy, nor does the strange presence of guns behind an MRI machine (surely the worst place to store a metal object), as they could easily fall under the provision of “small arms and ammunition taken from the wounded and sick…not yet handed to the proper service.” If such arms were to be found in a hospital, they would not deprive the hospital of its protected status under international law.  The bar for losing protected status is set very high. The International Committee of the Red Cross states that, “In case of doubt as to whether medical units of establishments are used to commit an ‘act harmful to the enemy’, they should be presumed not to be so used.” The Israeli army attacked all 36 hospitals in Gaza, such that there are no longer any that are fully functional. Not even one of those hospitals had been shown to meet the criteria needed to lose its protected status, let alone all 36. Moreover, even on the rare occasion that a hospital loses its protected status, the military would still need to protect patients and staff, make contingency plans to address the disruption to healthcare, and help restore healthcare services after the attack.  In light of the scale of human suffering during World War II, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 were created to provide better protection to civilians. Article 19 of the Geneva Conventions states that medical establishments, staff, and patients should not be attacked. The Conventions became a cornerstone in international humanitarian law and medical ethics, but recent conflicts show how easy it is for states that flout them to go unpunished.  In Gaza, it is not that hospitals have suddenly changed their mission such that they can now be used as weapons of war. Rather, their mission to save lives is precisely what renders them so vulnerable in conflicts when the aim is to kill as many people as possible. This vulnerability is being exploited in Gaza to the greatest effect and means that no one, not even an individual seeking medical care, is safe. 

#israel #palestine #gaza #war crimes #genocide #crimes against humanity