#despite being american

[deadhawke]

Can’t believe Mr. Blobby Mr. Bonzo is cannon in the Magnus Protocol universe lmao

Truly a fitting subject for a horror podcast

#random dribble #the magnus protocol #tmp #the magnus archives #I somehow know the full history of mr blobby #despite being American #so I recognized the story way too quickly

[frogmanfae]

The gift of prophecy 🔮

I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this, but what I am going to do with this is find out when Newsies UK is going to announce their return and make everyone on Tumblr think I'm secretly in the cast or something

#despite being american #and chronically unable to sing #newsies #uksies #newsies uk #asks #idrk how else to respond to this man #thanks?

[creekbed-burial]

#mine #my photography #wisconsin #pretending theres a dude running along the powerlines to get through car rides despite being an adult is fun #regional gothic #american gothic #americana #midwest aesthetic #midwest gothic #midwestern gothic #midwest #road trip #midwest america #small town gothic #gothic americana #rural gothic #digital camcorder #digital photography #digicam #digital camera #camcorder #rural america

[televisionjester]

love when i get flagged for spelling a word technically correct but still wrong. "the archaic spelling of this word" sorry i'm writing like i'm from the 19th century

#honorable mention is the amount of times google docs asks me if i want to switch to the british keyboard #because apparently i spell a lot of words in the non-american way despite being from the us and i have no idea where i picked it up from #writeblr #writing community #writer problems

[arsonmurderandjaywalking]

I'm only on like chapter 4 but I really like the way Migi to Dali is handling the idea of irrational childhood fears when experienced by two twelve-year-olds with seemingly very little interaction with normal human society. like why WOULD the twins know what wigs are and why people have them? they don't need them to survive! they're completely superfluous! I don't think they've had much space for superfluous things. they're used to everything being a life-or-death matter with only each other and their wits to save them. thinking the parents are going to steal their hair and then make their escape on what looks to be a biplane is a very twelve-year-old thought process, but it makes sense that they would immediately assume they're in danger.

#migi to dali #migi and dali #also im really liking this weird eerie american suburbs vibe it has despite it being set in japan #adds to the surrealism element of it. its like reality but it isnt #also the mystery. like is this an alternate timeline where japan is more westernized? is it just these people? will this be explained? #who knows! certainly not me!

[1899sbiggestbabygirl]

I want to expand on this idea in the future:

Dutch Van der Linde is the perfect analogy for the white saviour.

He presents himself as someone who believes in equality; however, he uses his progressive stand views as long as it's rewarded with praise, his support is very minimal (basically not being overtly racist) and receives praise over it, but is willing to overlook racism if it benefits him ( him letting Micah stay in the gang), his views are literally based on a privileged man pretending to understand the oppressed (Evelyn Miller, Lenny calls him out on this), he pretends to care and empathize with the structures of oppression but is very willing to exploit them anyways (the whole thing with the wapiti tribe).

at his core I think Dutch would see himself as a saviour -but the narrative itself shows who he really is, and what every white saviour at its core is: A fake hero.

Sure, Dutch's saviour complex and manipulation is evident with all characters, but to pretend that race or ethnicity doesn't hold a big role in how these dynamics work (especially on the time period) would be willful ignorance.

#with that being said rdr and rdr2 do have their white saviour moments #but in a way it functions more of a 'hey these guys are good despite the times' reminder than anything #rdr1 has that sherif american guy living in that mexican town... that's very white savour ish but eh... #anyways #anyone else got any ideas? #rdr2 #rdr #red dead fandom #dutch van der linde #character analysis #meta #rdr2 meta #txt

[emptyjunior]

Can I say as someone who's a Pacific Islander, lived in Australia, Oceania my whole life, it's absolutely mind-bending how many Americans think that when it comes to english speaking countries it's only them and Europe.

Like the "oh sorry I don't use Celsius like you Europeans" stuff, you know everyone uses that right? Everyone? Absolutely everyone in the world except you?

When you talk about having a kettle as a standard kitchen item and some Americans are like that's SO british. It's not? It's all of us doing that?

I'm not making this to try and rag on Americans I promise, this isn't an 'all those Americans are ignorant and we're not' post, I'm just saying it's very baffling to be a person on the internet who speaks English and says they're not American, the FIRST response is "okay European."

???

The vibe is very 'Americans are the standard, Europe is the only other real place and then there's the east'😭

Like most of us are in the Commonwealth, measuring with kilometres, doing Eurovision. Americans are the outlier😭

I just can't impress upon you how many times I have discussed a thing that isn't a standard in the USA for an American to assume it's only a fringe European practice, we're ALL doing that man, all the rest of the world exists, it's such a gamble for you to assume I can only be in your country or Britian ☠️

#can I say once the point of this post is NOT haha all Americans are like the trump man #and it's not 'Please tell me about the electric kettle you have despite being american' #its just talking about a very weird phenomenon I see all the time #of Americans not realising that on a lot of things they're kind of very outnumbered #and it's an Attitude or perspective that they often don't realise they're doing #anyways #text post #long text post #america #Australia #britain

[blitzenforcer]

#touhou #touhou project #blitz posting #blitz gaming #i was roleplaying momiji and i came up with a funny idea that she probably listens to American Punk Rock #despite being a total tool lol

[sourstiless]

i think my biggest gripe with the comparison between zuko and john smith and zutara as a whole to pocahontas is that john smith was an active colonizer. he was a grown man who chose and was proud of what he was doing. he didnt even believe the act of colonization was wrong. yes, he tried to end the violence in the movie, but he still lived with the belief that his people deserved to and were entitled to co exist on that land with the indigenous people.

zuko was an active participant in dismantling a hundred years of colonialism and colonization and genuinely wanted to fix the problems that his ancestors had left for him. it wasn’t easy and he wasn’t a perfect leader, but he was genuinely trying to make decisions that would be for the better of all the people, not just himself or his people. where john smith thought that indigenous ppl needed the white people’s help to become “more civilized” because he viewed them as inferior, zuko sought to give those that the fire nation had hurt their autonomy back.

that’s not to say that it isn’t a valid reason to dislike zutara, and if the idea makes you uncomfortable that’s fine and i respect it. i realize that the ship doesn’t appeal to everyone and that’s okay, but i just hate the comparisons because john smith was genuinely just an awful person who never should’ve been glorified in a disney movie.

#idk it’s just very frustrating because zuko was also a victim of the fire nation #j0hn smith was not a victim of england #zuko was a child who realized the atrocities and war crimes his nation was committing and sought to unlearn the indoctrination he underwent #AND played an active part in dismantling that system despite being labeled a traitor to his people #j0hn smith was not and did not and contributed to the continued oppression mistreatment and genocide of the native american people #if indigenous ppl have a different perspective im all ears as i am not and would never intend to speak over you #im always willing to work to educate myself and unlearn any biases i may have #zutara

[the-masked-artist05]

Today I offer you another hairstyle and earrings I made for Orion. Tomorrow, who knows? (Hopefully a proper drawing or something since I finally have some free time for once.)

Previously version is under the cut. Let me know what you think!

#art #my art #digital art #oc #my oc #sda #orion evander #im doing research on native american tribes (specifically the Lakota) #so im trying my best to get it right #for both Nyx and Orion #for context Orion has more modern styles and is influenced by other cultures and trends (especially since he is born in the modern day) #Nyx on the other hand was born during the 1800s and tends to have a bit more traditional values despite being raised by only one individual #and was not in constant contact with any human civilization growing up #the individual in question was not human and not of their and the others' universe #but yeah im still working on it and things are subject to change nonetheless #i wouldn't mind getting some feedback or advice on stuff like this btw (it would help a lot actually)

[marzipanandminutiae]

speaking of "they wouldn't do that/talk like that," I read a fic once where Lucille put on blue glitter eyeshadow to welcome Thomas home from a trip

it was not a modern AU

I. why.

(like I don't expect people to know everything about history- I sure as hell don't, and the source movie leaves out a presidential assassination that happened smack-dab in the middle of the first act's timeline, in the same city. but. Blue. Glitter. Eyeshadow.)

#fanfic #noped out right after that #this would have been c. 1885-1899 so #no. that was not yet a thing. #I choose to believe the McKinley assassination is not included because none of the characters give a damn #but Edith's bio does have GDT claiming Carter was a child during the American Civil War despite him being 60 in 1901 #and therefore born in 1841 and likely a Civil War vet himself. the math isn't mathing #anyway! tangent there

[fritzes]

tbh italian tennis has the same problem as american tennis in that their support of players is completely fair-weather

#obviously I’ve gone on many unhinged rants about the treatment of american tennis players #but the more I think about it the italians get the same shit #matteo berrettini has basically been disowned because of his injury #everyone has written off lorenzo musetti because of a slump #and don’t even get me started on jannik until he started having great results everyone was like “oh he isn’t REALLY italian” #and now everyone is like “ohhh jannik we never doubted you for a second! you’re the best!” #and no one ever talks about like jasmine paolini or martina trevisan despite them being ranked just as high as most of the guys #if not higher #ughhhh

[sergeifyodorov]

plz share the willy xenophobia discussion at your leisure i would love to read about it

Right. So.

Willy was drafted in 2014, a top-ten pick with legacy pedigree, and unlike the other two in Toronto's Big Three, took a little longer to develop -- Marner spent his D+1 in the OHL before coming up, Matthews made the team right away, but Willy spent time in the SHL and about a year and a half in the Marlies before joining at the end of the 15-16 season, after Marner was drafted but before Matthews was. Needless to say, expectations of him weren't quite as high, but he was firmly expected to be part of the Big Rebuild, too.

He's also Swedish. The first Europeans in the NHL were Swedish, and to this day the highest proportion of non-North Americans is Swedish. However, in order to understand the Swedes, we have to talk about the Russians.

The 1972 Summit Series is probably the most important single event in the history of hockey -- eight games, the first true best-on-best in the world, since the NHL and the Olympics have always had a fraught relationship and they weren't allowed to attend. If we really wanted to talk about the Summit Series, we could be here for years, but, the point: on this particular world stage, it was finally understood that Europeans -- Russians, but everyone else, too -- played a different style of hockey, one that emphasized a side-to-side possession-based game instead of the Canadian dump-and-chase style. The Euro style involves far less checking. And less fighting.

North American (largely Canadian, but nonetheless) hockey has always had a culture of hypermasculinity around it, and this relative lack of violence, as well as pre-existing stereotypes of the time, gave the impression that Europeans were "soft."

Back to Willy. Go back to look at draft-era Willy, before he learns how to grow facial hair -- not Mitch's baby face, but not Auston's full-grown jawline. A layer of puppy fat that disguises all but the most defined of his muscles. Silky blond hair and a dopey smile. He dresses expensively, breaks into fits of giggles in interviews, doesn't seem to take anything as seriously as he should. Because this is Toronto, and we feel as if we are about to enter a new golden age, we expect the most out of our prospects -- solemnity, hard work, not a flaxen-haired nepotist idiot. Especially not a soft flaxen-haired nepotist idiot.

Willy Nylander, raised and trained on a different continent, doesn't hit much, preferring to carry his puck in than dump it. He's speedy, patient with a shot, would rather make a dangerous chance than one through three lanes of traffic. He doesn't fight, doesn't get mad, scores less when the team's really going, and he held out to the last possible moment in his RFA negotiations. Every single one of these drives people mad -- people here trailing all after Don Cherry.

If you're not familiar with Don Cherry, imagine the worst Leafs uncle you could possibly realize, give him opinions of similar attitude on the rest of the NHL, and then understand that he had a national platform for decades. Cherry, fervent nationalist that he is, touted the "tough" Canadian forechecking style, adored players who would walk off injuries -- never mind their lives afterwards -- and once expressed his disdain for visors (you know, the thing that... protects your eyes... and a lot of your face...) by saying that only the Europeans and Francophones liked them. (He also got kicked off of Hockey Night in Canada for anti-immigrant statements. Yee haw.)

Cherry hated Nylander the entire time, explicitly citing his Swedishness (and implying a lack of toughness, or winning quality, which he equated) as a reason that the Leafs would never win with him. Here's an article from right around draft day with Cherry's opinion -- he says the Leafs, should they choose to contend, should forgo Europeans and instead take Canadians. He also cites Ritchie's high penalty-minute count as a valuable item. (I don't know about you, but generally I think regularly putting your team on the penalty kill is a detriment, not a strength).

Furthermore, there's a poll at the end of this article asking the reader if they think Cherry was right. Most people think he was. He was hugely popular not only because he was a charismatic figure (I keep talking about him as if he's dead; he's not, just no longer working) but because his ideas were popular. People believed, and still very much do, that Swedishness is softness and that softness is bad. And as -- as a Leaf -- arguably one of the most visible Swedes in the NHL, one of those tasked with shouldering the weight of the most known franchise, Willy bore a lot of it.

I think part of the reason I didn't mention it in the original post was because unlike Mitch, Willy doesn't seem to let it get to him a lot -- he's a blissfully oblivious Barbie-doll idiot -- and, again, because expectations on him weren't quite as high. That being said, it's still important to discuss imho !

#asks #william nylander #btw this isn't 10 million words long don't worry. just a leedle too long to post without the cut #also: willy is still very much white. like he's not north american but he is white which certainly affords him privilege #for ex over a guy like naz who despite being one of those canadian ohl guys don cherry liked so much is visibly Not White.

[fatehbaz]

Nothing in the past, moreover, gave any cause to suspect ginseng’s presence so far away. Or even closer by: since antiquity, for well over a millennium, the ginseng consumed in all of East Asia had come from just one area -- the northeast mountainous lands straddling Manchuria and Korea. No one had found it anywhere else. No one was even thinking, now, to look elsewhere. The [...] [French traveler] Joseph-Francois Lafitau didn’t know this. He had been [...] visiting Quebec on mission business in October of 1715 [...]. He began to search for ginseng. [...] [T]hen one day he spotted it [...]. Ginseng did indeed grow in North America. [...]

Prior to the nuclear disaster in the spring of 2011, few outside Japan could have placed Fukushima on a map of the world. In the geography of ginseng, however, it had long been a significant site. The Edo period domain of Aizu, which was located here, had been the first to try to grow the plant on Japanese soil, and over the course of the following centuries, Fukushima, together with Nagano prefecture, has accounted for the overwhelming majority of ginseng production in the country.

Aizu’s pioneering trials in cultivation began in 1716 – by coincidence, exactly the same year that Lafitau found the plant growing wild in the forests of Canada. [...]

---

Since the 1670s the numbers of people [in Japan] clamoring for access to the drug had swelled enormously, and this demand had to be met entirely through imports. The attempt to cultivate ginseng in Aizu -- and soon after, many other domains -- was a response to a fiscal crisis.

Massive sums of silver were flowing out of the country to pay for ginseng and other drugs [...]. Arai Hakuseki, the chief policy maker [...], calculated that no less than 75% of the country’s gold, and 25% of its silver had drained out of Japan [to pay for imports] [...]. Expenditures for ginseng were particularly egregious [...]: in the half-century between 1670s through the mid-1720s that marked the height of ginseng fever in Japan, officially recorded yearly imports of Korean ginseng through Tsushima sometimes reached as much as four to five thousand kin (approx. 2.4–3 metric tons).

What was to be done? [...] The drain of bullion was unrelenting. [...] [T]he shogunate repeatedly debased its currency, minting coins that bore the same denomination, but contained progressively less silver. Whereas the large silver coin first issued in 1601 had been 80% pure, the version issued in 1695 was only 64% silver, and the 1703 mint just 50%. Naturally enough, ginseng dealers in Korea were indifferent to the quandaries of the Japanese rulers, and insisted on payment as before; they refused the debased coins. The Japanese response speaks volumes about the unique claims of the drug among national priorities: in 1710 (and again in 1736) a special silver coin of the original 80% purity was minted exclusively for use in the ginseng trade. [...]

[T]he project of cultivating ginseng and other medicines in Japan became central to the economic and social strategy of the eighth shogun Yoshimune after he assumed power in 1716. [...]

---

China and Korea were naturally eager to retain their monopolies of this precious commodity, and strictly banned all export of live plants and seeds. They jealously guarded as well against theft of mature roots: contemporary Chinese histories, for example, record that the prisons of Shenjing (present day Shenyang) overflowed with ginseng poaching suspects. So many were caught, indeed, that the legal bureaucracy couldn’t keep up. 

In 1724, the alarming numbers of suspected poachers who died in prison while awaiting trial led to the abandonment of the regular system of trials by judges dispatched from Beijing, and a shift to more expeditious reviews handled by local officials. [...]

Even in 1721. the secret orders that the shogunate sent the domain of Tsushima called for procuring merely three live plants [...]. Two other forays into Korea 1727 succeeded in presenting the shogun with another four and seven plants respectively. Meanwhile, in 1725 a Manchu merchant in Nagasaki named Yu Meiji [...] managed to smuggle in and present three live plants and a hundred seeds. [...]

Despite its modest volume, this botanical piracy eventually did the trick. By 1738, transplanted plants yielded enough seeds that the shogunate could share them with enterprising domains. [...] Ginseng eventually became so plentiful that in 1790 the government announced the complete liberalization of cultivation and sales: anyone was now free to grow or sell it.

---

By the late eighteenth century, then, the geography of ginseng looked dramatically different from a century earlier.

This precious root, which had long been restricted to a small corner of the northeast Asian continent, had not only been found growing naturally and in abundance in distant North America, but had also been successfully transplanted and was now flourishing in the neighboring island of Japan. […]

---

Colonial Americans, for their part, had developed their own new addiction: an unquenchable thirst for tea. […] This implacable need could have posed a serious problem. [...] [I]ts regular consumption was a costly habit.

Which is why the local discovery of ginseng was a true godsend.

When the Empress of China sailed to Canton in 1784 as the first ship to trade under the flag of the newly independent United States, it was this coveted root that furnished the overwhelming bulk of sales. Though other goods formed part of early Sino-American commerce – Chinese porcelain and silk, for example, and American pelts – the essential core of trade was the exchange of American ginseng for Chinese tea. [...]

---

Yoshimune’s transplantation project had succeeded to the point that Japan actually became a ginseng exporter. As early as 1765, Zhao Xuemin’s Supplement to the compedium of material medica would note the recent popularity of Japanese ginseng in China. Unlike the “French” ginseng from Canada, which cooled the body, Zhao explained, the “Asian” ginseng (dongyang shen) from Japan, like the native [Korean/Chinese] variety, tended to warm. Local habitats still mattered in the reconfigured geography of ginseng. [...]

What is place? What is time? The history of ginseng in the long eighteenth century is the story of an ever-shifting alchemical web. [...] Thanks to the English craving for tea, ginseng, which two centuries earlier had threatened to bankrupt Japan, now figured to become a major source of national wealth [for Japan] .

---

Text by: Shigehisa Kuriyama. “The Geography of Ginseng and the Strange Alchemy of Needs.” In: The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by Yota Batsaki, Sarah Burke Cahalan, and Anatole Tchikine. 2017. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

#all kinds of fun stuff smuggling piracy biogeography medicinal tea shogunates secret orders #the irony of emerging US empire beginning relationship with china based on export of american ginseng which europeans hadnt known existed #the irony of japan quickly transitioning from almost being bankrupted by ginseng to becoming a ginseng exporter #the importance of local habitats and smallscale biogeography despite the global scale of imperial trade #the french cartographer in 1711 in manchuria who had never been to canada but correctly predicted ginseng might grow there #abolition #ecology #imperial #colonial

[weldnas]

-

#Seeing the dune part 2 american centric red carpet and as a devoted aficionado of the books and yk a moroccan person here are my 2 cents #Dune was one of the few Western works inspired by MENA culture that that felt genuine and respectful #But ofc despite the profound symbiosis with Middle Eastern and North African culture evident within the pages of the novels #the movie adaptation lack of substantive representation from these communities both in on-screen portrayals and within production roles was #very much disappointing in part 1 and i doubt there are any change now #While drawing inspiration from the Amazigh peoples of Algeria and Morocco #the film barely skims the surface of its MENA influences leaving substantial potential untapped #Herbert openly acknowledged the profound impact of Islam and MENA culture on his noveIs #from the metaphorical representation of Spice as oil #to the allegorical parallels drawn between the occupation of Arrakis and real-world MENA geopolitics #By marginalizing Arabs from the narrative fabric of Dune the essence of the story is being undermined particularly its anti-colonial core #the irony of this is kiIIing me because this was a direct resuIt of us impérialism on the middIe east #But the reality is that Dune is an American production tailored for an American audience so it makes sense for it to be what it is now #a big production running from its original essence #What adds to my disappointment is the fact that I liked Villeneuve's adaptation of Incendies and I had what you call foolish hope hfhg #Dune feIt Iike a squandered opportunity to authentically depict the cultural milieu that inspired it #Given the narrative's inherent anti-colonial themes #the omission of Arab and North African voices dilute its message if any of it is even left #without representation from Arabs and Amazigh people the cultural essence becomes another appropriated resource watered down to an aestheti #rather than serving as a critique of the destructive actions of colonialists seeking power and dominance #the narrative becomes susceptible to distortion and co-option by the very entities it was intended to condemn and hold accountable

[chaosandthe-deadblog]

okay lets see if i can put this into words

it matters that miles is latino

it matters that miles is a latinamerican kid that grew up in new york city with a usamerican father, it matters that he barely speaks spanish

it matters because his entire story is about not being able to find a place where he fits in. a community. a family

miles feels disconnected from the other spideys.

miles is not a "canon" spiderman. he wasnt *supposed* to be spiderman. but he is anyways. he cant relate to the othet spidermans because of the nature of how he became spiderman. by almost every sense of the word, he is an anomaly.

however... hes not an anomaly either. he lost his uncle like every other spidey. he went through the insecurity and problems every other spidey went through. he IS spiderman and no one can take that away from him

it reminds me so much of what it feels to be latinamerican in eurocentric spaces. like a lot.

the opening to miles' situation basically spells it out. "you're a struggling immigrant family" and only his mother is an immigrant. theyre not even struggling. he doesnt even speak spanish. hes not usamerican either. yet he's being forced into boxes. forced into either turning into a usamerican kid completely disregarding his heritage, or make said heritage the only thing thats important about himself

in the same way that he either has to be a spiderman or a civilian

miles is neither. he cant relate to his mother because he barely speaks spanish, he cant relate to the other spidermans because he's not supposed to be there. they shut him out because he's spiderman in a different way than they are.

i cannot stress enough that its his mom the one who tells him that he shouldnt let anyone define him. because people will try to force him into a box no matter what he does. embrace his heritage? he'll just be latino. not do that? he'll lose touch with it. get into the spider-society? he'll lose touch with his own experience as spiderman. not do that? he'll be alone

it MATTERS that this movie puts emphasis on him being latino. it MATTERS that his mom has more relevance.

not to get personal, but i understand the feeling miles has. by almost every definition i am white -- skin color, european heritage, all that. but i am also latinamerican. i grew up in argentina... in one of the more usamericanized cities. in one of the more eurocentric spaces. my id says im argentinian and spanish, but i was never able to identify with the latter. ive never been in touch with the non-european side of my heritage, ive never related to it. ive never related to the european side either

does any of this make sense? for so many latinos its impossible for us to fit into the boxes europeans and usamericans want us to fit into. for so many of us we're just.... a third thing. at least i grew up in my home country, at least i speak my own language; miles doesnt, miles didnt.

for so many of us we either have to live disconnected from our culture in order to be "accepted" by europeans or usamericans, or just be "latino" (which, by the way, is not even a race, yet its treated as one)

also.... isnt it interesting how miguel is mexican? bye bye

#red.txt #atsv spoilers #atsv #spiderman: across the spiderverse #across the spiderverse #media analysis #IM LOSING MY FUCKING MIND #AT HOW MILES' STORY IS SO SIMILAR TO BEING AMERICANIZED DESPITE NOT BEING AMERICAN #AAAAAAAAAAAA #i felt the 'dont let anyone define you' in my fucking soul man