#same applies to genocide btw

[thecatspasta]

Btw to the people going 'Well Hamas is bad and Palestinians voted Hamas in therefore Palestinians deserve to get killed'

That happened in 2006. 17 years ago. Any Palestinian who is 34 and under COULD NOT HAVE PARTICIPATED IN THAT ELECTION, and this is INCLUDING the children currently being slaughtered

Along with that Hamas isnt every person in Gaza, thats like saying every American is Donald Trump and supports his actions because they voted him in. Its so obviously wrong when you apply it to literally anything that isnt Palestine

Shut the fuck up and stop supporting actual literal genocide, from river to sea, Palestine will be free

Edit: To the people saying 'Even if everyone supported Hamas that doesnt justify genocide' I absolutely 100% agree. Nothing justifies genocide, however this post is directed at people who try to "excuse" Israels actions by saying 'Well Hamas would do the same thing if they could and Palestinians voted them in so obviously theyre also bad so dont try to support Gaza because theyre just as bad as Israel'

Absolutely nothing justifies genocide, but the people who trying to need to be told they are wrong

Edit 2: In this post I am not comparing Trump and Hamas and saying 'Look how similar they are omg' I am pointing out the hypocrisy of people who try to use Hamas to excuse genocide, while also believing that civilians arent responsible for the actions of their government just because they were voted in

#gaza #palestine #free gaza #free palestine #global strike #from the river to the sea #global strike for palestine #global strike week #strike for palestine #gaza strip #gaza genocide #israel #important #current events #ethnic cleansing #gaza under attack

[justthemoonz]

UNDERTALE: Checkmate

This is basically a take on that old Chesstale AU from back in the early Undertale Youtube themes era Except it actually utilizes chess, but with a more interesting gameplay style You have 4 ACTIONS you can perform: > MOVE - you can select a piece to move it > WAIT - you can just skip your turn > TRICK - you can trick the other opponent into doing something at random, which is also the way you'd perform the "GENOCIDE" route, by cheating > QUIT - you can give up against the opponent, but it only works sometimes You'd also only start out with the King and a Pawn, getting more pieces the more you progress through areas and the story (However this does not apply to bosses, as you get all chess pieces there)

And if you're curious about the Sans fight... well...

Sans only has one Pawn, but it acts like a King and Queen at the same time You can't actually check it, you have to get rid of it from the board, KR also makes your time go by faster, and if you WAIT for a long time, Sans will start moving your pieces in a position he can get them himself, however you have Queens all over the board (BTW this was inspired by UNOTale and that one line from the UT Kickstarted about Toriel telling you that you should play chess instead)

#undertale #ut #undertale au #ut au #undertale: checkmate #pixel art

[transmascpetewentz]

Was talking abt this with my family and decided this needed to be a post on the webbed site:

A fundamental way that antisemitism operates that makes it so difficult to remove from leftist spaces is by taking the broad scope of problems in the world and finding a couple that can be vaguely tied or related to Judaism in some way, then taking "this is tangentially related to Jews" to mean "Jews are 100% responsible for this." It's particularly this sentiment that I see echoed in most of the antisemitic posts that I see on the dash.

It's one of the reasons, imo, why the west is so focused on Israel as opposed to the situation in the Congo, Sudan, or Ukraine. All four of these situations suck and are very clearly, to any person observing, bad. However, only one of these awful situations where war crimes are being committed is one that I hear about every day, that I am told if I so much as block some tags relating to it that I am a bad person. And that's the one where people can blame The Jews for it.

Despite Russia currently committing what I would call a genocide against Ukrainians, many westerners who preach anti-colonialism are completely silent or worse. I thought that silence meant you are directly complicit? Odd, huh? Does this principle of being against historical imperial powers committing genocide against colonized people not apply when the colonized nation has more than three times the relative Jewish population compared to the colonizer?

Yep. And many of the most prominent antisemitic antizionists are completely pro-Russia because Russia claims to be against quote-unquote "western degeneracy," which is literal Nazi shit. As a Russian who regularly speaks out against slavophobia/russophobia/anti-Russian people sentiment on the left and the right, I am horrified by westerners' complete disregard for human life and basic moral principles to defend my country's genocide.

And this idea of blaming all tangentially-related problems on Jews isn't just showcased in how much people focus on Israel, but also in who gentiles tend to call "zionists" and the attributes that they prescribe onto anyone who is labeled a zionist. Zionism is a political movement with historical basis in Judaism, but the actual definition of zionism is irrelevant to the critique I am about to make. My issue is with how some gentiles define, or don't define, zionism.

I have said this before, but when some leftist gentiles are asked to name a few qualities that all zionists share, they might give a list that's something like this: they are pro-Israel, they support Israel's genocide of Palestinians, they are completely anti-Palestine, and they do not have nuanced takes on I/P. Of course, this is a batshit insane and very ahistorical take on zionism, but I would have less of an issue if these gentiles would stick to that definition and only call people zionists if they shared all of those qualities.

Instead, these same gentiles who claim that all zionists share these opinions will claim that any Jew, convert-in-progress, or ally that doesn't hate Jews is a zionist. This circles back to my first point about how antisemitism takes anything where Jews are involved and turns it into "Jews are The masterminds behind this." And that's exactly what this is. The label of zionist being applied to a non-zionist turns their views from nuanced and neutral to racist and genocidal in the eyes of antisemites.

The idea that all Jews one doesn't like must be behind some child-murdering conspiracy is an antisemitic one, no matter how real the child murder happening in Palestine is. Random Jews, even Israeli Jews, are not responsible for the actions of their government (which is being backed mostly by gentiles overseas, btw). Stop fucking taking any instance of a bad thing being tied to Jews or Judaism and blowing it up into calling Jews the masterminds behind it. There is no global conspiracy, no matter how much you wish there was for your daily dose of emotional support antisemitism.

Reading Comprehension Questions:

What do you think that OP means when they say "The Jews" with both the "t" and "j" capitalized? Is he using that language seriously, or is he trying to get another message across?

Is this a post about Israel and Palestine, or is this a post specifically addressing antisemitism within the pro-Palestine movement on the left? Additionally, does OP give any meaningful indication of his views on I/P within the post?

Why does OP talk for two paragraphs about the situation in Russia and Ukraine? How is OP more qualified than the average Tumblr user to have an opinion on Russia?

Why is OP, despite not being Jewish, making a post about this subject? How might OP be more qualified than the average gentile to make a post about antisemitism?

Does OP blame Palestinians for antisemitism on the left in this post? Does OP single out any specific ethnic or racial group as opposed to just gentiles?

Have I sat with and mentally answered to myself the above questions before I clicked on OP's page to send him an anon telling him to kill himself?

#wentz.txt #antisemitism #israel and palestine #obligatory disclaimer: i'm still converting to judaism so please listen to actual jews instead of just taking my word for this #fascism cw #long post

[researchgate]

radblr would rather side with a terrorist group that wants to put women under sharia law and throws gay ppl from rooftops over supporting Jewish people. it's sick. also something I've noticed is how both on radblr and the left in general were always walking on eggshells when it comes to criticizing anything/anyone muslim and the pattern is lowkey similar both w misogyny and antisemitism. for instance it's ok to talk about white men's violence used as a colonial tool (and that should be the case of course btw!). but somehow european women (of all races) expressing concern and fear about Muslim migrants extreme levels of misogyny are privileged bitches (mind you eastern european/balkan radfems have had our people subjugated by muslim imperialists and our foremothers were raped and sex trafficked but hey we're privileged white women so we should shut up ig). Similarly when it comes to antisemitism, it's apparently ok for Muslim countries to pretend hatred of Jewish people is a European only issue and deny the pogroms and ethnic cleansing of MENA Jews. all while antisemitism is on the rise on the left, including by (though of course not limited to) muslim people.

This is so real. And then they say you basically just said reverse racism is a thing when it was never said. When you just said "hey, white women are also victims of misogyny" , they'll come at you like starving vultures come at a carcass of an animal. Like chill gyns. I think some people took the axis of oppression concept way too literally and decided that unless your axes intersect you can't truly be oppressed. At the same time they'll (correctly) say female pets are less likely to be adopted or something like that, because females are viewed as inferior regardless of species, but then treat Jewish women as inferior or subhuman when they were raped and brutalized.

Also, whenever a non-poc woman dared speaking about non-white men being misogynistic towards women of any ethnicity/race, she'd be labeled a racist, and one could only make a point of these men being misogynistic if their misogyny was against other women of color. The oppressed can violate too, and if we take the axes of oppression concept and apply it, one can oppress another on one axis, but the other can oppress the first on another axis. But that's too complex for them. If the rape is done by the Oppressed, then it's okay, especially if the victim passes as white (in their personal standards). They're no different than the leftist men who use "cis white women" before going on misogynistic rants.

And god the amount of genocide denial when it comes to Jewish people's victimhood is fucking annoying. True ethnic cleansing happened in the Arab countries in the 1940's and Muslim countries in general since the 1920s. The reason that nowadays Jewish genetic makeup is diverse is because Jewish people were forced to flee from each place they stayed at, not before several generations of Jewish women were raped by locals. It's honestly laughable to see how people don't give a flying fuck about Jewish history when they make claims about Jews. Well, it would have been laughable if it weren't a clear sign of antisemitism (also, maybe we should start just saying Jew-hatred, so that the "Arabs are semite too" folks will not have any way to sway the conversation lol. Because regardless of how many times you tell them it replaced Judenhass, they keep using their dumb mantra).

also don't get me STARTED about the Balkans and (especially) the ottoman imperialists. People around can see through Erdogan's actions well that he wants a second ottoman empire but fail to realize just how TERRIBLE it was! How kids were taken from their parents into the army, or how parents were encouraged to sell their sons to the army so they know he gets food and education, how women were sold as slaves into harems for either sexual or other forms of servitude. But what about the Sultanate of Women?? They'll ask, not knowing it's a term given by male historians to describe a century they viewed as failed and bad in terms of success. even though this sultanate of women was only possible because the Valide Sultan was the closest adult to the sultans who wer children. That they spoke from behind a curtain as to not be seen at any cost. This was the "sultanate of women". Glorious, feminist, and stunning, isn't it?

I'm so sick of the pandering to non-white men as if they're some precious fragile figurines and not while men who are capable of misogyny just as much as a white man. If we agree Islam is a misogynistic religion, surely we can agree that its male followers are misogynistic and terrible, regardless of their skin color, right? Apparently not! Apparently if they commit a misogynistic hate crime against a white woman it's okay because they're the oppwessed and she's the vile terrible oppressor. So fucking stupid.

honestly idek if Muslims can be considered as included in the Left because Islamic values are certainly different than leftist ones. Had the right wing been less racist and more accepting of the other, even just a little bit, they'd find many similarities between them and islam lol. But the left is far more "open minded" (unless it's Jews) and less racist (unless it's Jews), so they find their allies in the liberals they hate and whom will have next to no rights if not none at all under shari'ah law.

It's absolutely infuriating, isnt it?

Sorry for the rant, btw. Thank you for your ask!

#anonymous #asks #ipc #antisemitism #antisemitism on the left #antisemitism on radblr #f: other

[face4radio]

One thing I think gets lost in the overall conversation surrounding starwars is that the whole "attachment bad" thing was never supposed to apply to everyday people.

The Jedi aren't evangelical.

They are carriers of what amounts to a genetic disorder and their rules exist to help them manage that disorder.

(Whether disorder is the correct term is a whole separate debate for another post. I definitely think it negatively affects their lives along with giving them super powers, and having ADHD myself I feel that.)

They aren't right, but their dogma is understandable when one of the symptoms for the untreated condition is genocidal rage.

This was prompted because I see people saying Andor is a rebuke of the message of the earlier starwars cannon.

Specifically that the importance of family and community in fighting facism counters the earlier message that attachment is bad.

I can definitely see where this opinion comes from, and from a Doylist perspective it may even have some merit, but from a Watsonian perspective it completely misses a lot of key facts about the starwars universe.

Also I think the two perspectives are compatible thematically as well if you look much past the surface level.

Like I said, the Jedi arent evangelical except with other force-sensitives, and I don't think starwars media has ever really been intended as propaganda for those anti-attachment beliefs, even when it has been read as such.

I see Andor, which btw is my favorite starwars ever too, as a much needed look at the non-force-sensitive people of the galaxy and how love and anger and hatred and fear are all important emotions that deserve space, and in extremis are some of the most potent tools for fighting facism.

I don't think Luthen is a jedi but I find it telling that people are speculating in that area because he is the one for whom the story paints as risky the same things that would be risky for a force-sensitive person.

So I dont think Andor is a rebuke of the earlier themes and works except insomuch as by shining a light on the part of the world so many of us knew was there and longed to see, it highlights the negligence of others in not doing it so much sooner.

Andor isnt a change or a slap in the face, it is the missing puzzle piece that has been lost under the couch for the last four decades, and oh does it feel good to lovingly slot it into place.

I am so thankful to Tony Gilroy and all the amazing, talented and hardworking people that gave us this show we all new was missing from our lives.

So not a rebuke, then. More like grabbing the stick of the floundering franchise and shouting a desperate but hopeful "CLIMB!"

#andor #starwars #jedi #andor show #star wars

[thatabitcryptic]

How well do you think sans and Chara would get along if they met? I'm asking this cause of how much the fandom seems to love to depict them as rivals cause of the genocide route and wanna see something different. Sorry if I'm bothering you btw I get really anxious when asking for requests.

I actually think they would be pals!! :-)

If we go by the narrator chara theory they are very sassy and funnie,, I think they would appreciate sans’ sense of humour or at least in the same why that papyrus does (saying they hate puns but laughing along and making their own jokes)

As for sans I think he would feel similarly towards chara as he does to frisk tbh… his dialogue about the anomaly being lonley and maybe needing a friend.. I think yeah,, that applies to chara

I love the hc that chara is guiding frisk through the game and I think sans would appreciate that as an older sibling himself actually :)

The fandom has a bad habit of taking the genocide route as hard canon facts about chara and I feel like it’s not a proper evaluation of them as a whole - anyway chara is good and sans would be pals with them

#I do think chara is cautious not to get on his bad side at first but comes around in later runs #chess.txt #asks #ut #also!! you’re not a bother!! I love answering questions so thank you!! :-)

[bagilgulhaze]

BTW I forgot to add about mandatory service: not only profile 21 could be easily used as "Grey refusing", but I didn't even mention the very possible option of conscious objection. Its completely legal, you just cant state that you oppose israels army or specifically the occupation, you have to claim pacifism or smth neutral (fucked up right?) But really when it comes to just not aerving, theres way out without jail. You don't even have to fabricate medical shit, which hell my non political cousin got because she refused to hold a weapon bc it made her anxious, she was even willing to serve just w/o weapon they just let her go. The people who go to jail, are doing it as form of activism, none of them are there without choosing to make a statement, they (usually also publicly) state they refuse enlisting because of the occupation/genocide etc' and they go to jail for it. Even then, most of them don't do more than a few months (admittedly, not that few when its jail) to get the point across before finding some way out.

I also thought about the statement that jail is the only valid option when enlisting in IOF is the alternative, and I wanted to say that yes.. once we are past the "it's not poor Americans soldiers' fault for enlisting they're targeted to get out of poverty UWU" as a good excuse to kill people in a foreign country, it's not that different to apply to jail. Poverty isn't any less state fostered violence imposed on people, we tend to think poverty is somehow a natural state of being and "getting out of it" is extra benefits, but it isn't really, it is denial of your basic rights upheld by the state, which uses it to manipulate you out of it. It's really the same as jail (and none are good reasons to join the army).

[rosemelodyshah]

Do you know who this Anon Remsha is?

She supports genocide and sucide. She is fine with men and woman dying because they don't fit her criteria

She is literally starting a rally against you and you're telling her your besties account?

You will rot

Hello Anon!

Thanks for the ask, now I know what to avoid.

For the record, I've had my fair share of nativity so it's only natural to let you be naive.

I believe everyone has the rights to their voice, which is why I will answer you.

First of all, thank you for being so concerned about me. It makes me happy to know that you want to warn me against who you think is bad for me.

Next of all, I haven't made my opinion public bc I don't think it bothers anyone (although many people do know what I think). I believe your talking about Palestine here. From what I know Remsha has lost family in war and is greatly against all kind of war, and believes since the zionists have been poking Hamas, applying divide and conquer and causing harm, HAMAS was allowed to fight back when they got a chance to. I am not going to force her to believe otherwise, and as far I'm concerned, freedom of speech gives her the right to state this. I also want to point out that she got hate messages, death threaths and 'go sucide' by the anons and not the other way around. So really she has the right to parade what she believes if the opposition are telling her that they will kill her. As it goes "when the world is silent even a whisper constitutes as a shout".

As for the sucide and men and woman thing? Well from what I know she believes that trans men are trans men and trans women are trans women, and that women and men have a right to want to be differentiated/tell the world how it makes them feel. Again, freedom of speech, all people can tell the world what they believe. She hasn't once said to me that the should die. Also again she's getting the treats so who are her haters to complain?

Next, this rally of hers, STEADY, is hers. She's allowed to run it. She says she's doing it bc she thinks I am mentally hurting myself (don't believe that's happening but as is).

My bestie as @lostwriter--xx3 is well known, I think. If what @anon-remsha is doing is against me, I'm sure my bestie @lostwriter--xx3 will refuse to join.

I will let the two of them continue this thread and clear any further doubts. I believe sign-ups for STEADY can be done on Remsha's account (@anon-remsha) btw.

Feel free to contact me in messages if you have any more worries😁

Thanks for the ask, I hope this ended any fear of being hurt by Remsha (I know I gave the name but I don't think she's planning of hurting me with that name-- besides, she likes the same type of mango as me)

#asks #answered asks

[azzy-the-christian-furry]

See, this is literally what I’m talking about. You people will go up and down calling a literal fourteen year old an incel but when a grown adult goes out manipulating minors and allowing dozens of innocents to be killed you all turn a blind eye because you can’t be bothered to look up a genocide run playthrough despite it having tons of important character insight you can’t get anywhere else.

Eyebrow raise

What do you mean by “you people?”

That’s got some racist connotations, you know.

It’s a video game, btw.

Also, I don’t think there’s anyone turning a blind eye to grown adults manipulating kids and dozens of people being killed (except for the FBI). Fictional video game teenagers aren’t above criticism. Neither are kids that age in real life.

Speaking of, I don’t think Berdly is 14. 16-17 seems more likely, considering Kris is said to be not far off from going to university/college and they share a class.

I did see the SnowGrave route (Spamton fight, Berdly fight, and Noelle moments specifically- didn’t bother with the time in between). I just didn’t play it. The same applies to Undertale’s no mercy run, except I’ve seen like… 95% of it.

I’m defaulting specifically to the not-insane route regardless.

#azzy speaks #an ask! #anonymous #azzy does a politic #deltarune spoilers #deltarune

[toxicsamruby]

hey difference of opinion anon here just wanted to say i'm not denying spn is extremely racist and is built on a foundation of white supremacy and reinforces it over and over again, that's not an opinion, that's facts. and i'm not defending the "found family and queer love is the main theme of spn" post bc it's pretty fucking stupid and woefully misinterprets the source material on which only one character was based but you can also acknowledge that spn has layers beyond that and, at the TIME of its release, 200 fucking 5, there was a certain subversiveness in being queer and not adhering to the nuclear family (i'm not saying that white gays are subversive now, they aren't). op of that post had that point in mind (i'm guessing they read a lot of 90s queer theory) but incorrectly applied it to a terrible racist show that had no fucking clue what it was doing with itself. it was tone deaf but the theory they had in mind had some merit at some point in time. i did think the finale was funny at first just bc it. literally wasn't but as a bi man it stung later. i enjoy ur blog btw didn't mean to come off as combative

i don’t understand the point of this bc like yes different viewpoints on the same piece of art is possible and necessary and beneficial for a bigger discourse on that art. but you can’t just pull whatever the hell you want out of thin air to support your argument you can’t just Decide to apply theory to the story that the story actively disproves. Any reading of a text is valid (and by valid i dont mean GOOD, i just mean legitimate), but readings of the text need EVIDENCE. u need to take into account the entire story without just excluding aspects of it that don’t fit your theory because that’s not analysis that’s fanfiction.

there is subversiveness in being lgbt even white lgbt and i never said otherwise. i think it is possible to do a gay reading of supernatural, and it can even be done well if it’s integrated into an analysis of racism, eugenics, and xenophobia. but 1. it was a gay reading of the text at the expense of any discussion about race, and 2. it centered white gay theory at the expense of the integrity of its own argument.

the argument is based on the idea that hunters are “the other” which is utter nonsense. the ACTUAL Other of supernatural is the monsters. like it’s a basic and fundamental misunderstanding of the actual construction of the show. they don’t even take into consideration the absolute marginalization and metaphorical genocide of monsters, or the racial implications of that. they say that the social isolation, the transience, and the violence of hunting precludes hunters from participating in the society that they protect, which makes them gay-coded. but hunters don’t exist in conflict with the white picket fence, they DEPEND on it. the textual purpose of hunters is to protect the construct of a perfect (white) model of humanity, and without that construct, they wouldn’t exist. their experiences of isolation and trauma are literally more aligned with soldiers, who perpetuate violence against people of color in order to protect the construct of america. 

There is subversiveness in being lgbt both now and in 2005 and of course there CAN be value in lgbt analyses. but i’m genuinely not sure what room there is for a gay-centric analysis before the introduction of castiel, and there is NO room for any analysis of supernatural that doesn’t involve race. it literally was made to imitate the Western genre?? it would be like watching an old cowboy movie and saying that the cowboy killing native americans is actually a metaphor for the cowboy being gay

#like their analysis wasnt just racist it also didn't hold any water as a gay reading #asks #crit

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

Hey Lightning, I was wondering if I could get your thoughts on something. One take that seems to keep returning every once in a while is the "Allura fell for Lotor only after he revealed his Altean heritage," but I know u and others have disproven this many times, which does reassure me. While I love Allura, I definitely think one of her weaknesses was her devotion to Altea and singing Alfor's praises, which sometimes became too much. At the same time, it bothers me when I see some ppl (1/?)

Continuing anon message: “ say that she thought Alteans were superior to all other races, and that when the colony plot twist happened, she became repulsed by Lotor's Galra side, which is why she rejected him. For them, that's why she forced violent memories onto an uncorrupted Zarkon, but somehow "saw the good/redeemed" Honerva, the Altean. I can kind of understand where they're coming from, but for me, it just didn't make sense that Allura suddenly had a change of heart considering for most of s8, she was angry and dead set on going after Honerva. Even with that, I think to a lot of her fans, s8 made Allura so ooc that she became unrecognizable, which hurt to watch. I guess for me it's hard seeing antis and people who don't like her claim that that's just how she is and has always been. Haha sorry for rambling, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, since your arguments ease my mind on a lot of things when it comes to Allura :)”

Hi, anon. Wow, thanks for your extended note! I don’t know anywhere in canon that Allura champions Alteans as a superior race. The definition of racial supremacy is a belief that inherent genetic differences between races determine cultural or individual achievement, with social/governmental policies championing intolerance of other races. To get Allura to fit into such a label:

1.      A viewer has to ignore or undermine all the evidence available about who the main-universe Alteans really were before main-universe Zarkon’s massacre of them.

2.      A viewer has to ignore or undermine how Allura actually responds to a variety of different races in the show, including her own.  

So let’s start with issue one. To support an “Allura was a racial supremacist” opinion, a lot of antis (and even non-militant, average viewers) are favorable to the opinion that Alteans as a group, including Alfor, were actually evil and violent colonizer elitists before Galrans killed them off. In other words, they question Altean victimhood, and this allows the militant antis to poison and undermine scenes of a woman mourning her home and her beloved family. And it just gets to be a really unsettling conversation, to listen to someone actually try to justify genocide. They’ll also have suspicions that all of our foundational backstory in the s3 finale was just “cleansed” propaganda from Coran. So if antis can undermine Allura’s entire race and family as corrupt, then they can intentionally undermine any of her canonical statements about or efforts toward peace. Which is hilarious, because this racist tactic applied to Allura is actually what a lot of antis accuse Allura of doing with Lotor.

For the record, I don’t think the show production team actually intended the subliminal messaging/cognitive dissonance that I’m about to discuss. The people who designed and developed this show are fans of robot kitties and aren’t PhDs in social issues. But I think there is a very serious issue about the portrayal of genocide victims that feeds into some very real problems in our world, especially regarding the concept of racial supremacy and conspiracy theories about genocide victims.

VLD tried to play with both genocide politics for edge™ points while ALSO playing with shatterglass theory (shatterglass meaning an AU where the heroes are villains and villains are heroes). Combining these two concepts into the same universe creates some incredibly disturbing subliminal messaging about Alteans that very closely mimics ongoing neo-Nazi propaganda against Jews. Nazis and other anti-Semitists justify their hatred of Jews by equating them as terrible villains out for world domination via some underhanded shadow control of the mass populace. It’s an incredibly malicious form of propaganda, because it works so terribly well. And what do you know, VLD plays right into this kind of propaganda. In the season 3 episode, Hole in the Sky, we’re faced with team Voltron confronting an Altean Empire that was actually evil and out for multiverse domination. And oh by the way, they’re using malicious shadow tech to control a mass populace.

It’s like someone on the production team read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and then just copied/pasted that incredibly damaging and widely accepted conspiracy theory right onto Alteans for s3 funsies because edge content.

This is incredibly punishing, for the narrative to wave the carrot stick in front of genocide survivors that maybe some others survived—and then to suggest that Alteans were the evil ones all along. A shatterglass twist worked very well in Captain Marvel (2019) for a lot of reasons, for example, but it just doesn’t work well in the VLD universe given that the show explicitly portrays the genocide victims as evil and validates this concept. And this episode unfortunately feeds ongoing cognitive dissonance in antis that if AU Alteans could be so evil…how certain are you that they aren’t in the main universe too? On the reverse side, the main-universe goes out of its way to portray that not all Galrans are evil, and even that Galrans were the primary resistance (BOM). But in this singular episode, we see a united Altean empire. And the only Altean who moves to stand against it once the shine wears off…is Allura. There is no AU Altean actually shown in the Guns of Gamara. So Allura stands alone as an Altean against her own people.

For this reason, this episode doesn’t function very well as a shatterglass AU either, because the moral “flip” isn’t a mirror balance to main universe. The Alteans of the AU world appear as fully united in their evil plans. And then, no doubt, anti-alluras point out other quirky things about main-universe Alteans throughout the show—the violent language-learning system that scares Pidge, and the ancient Altean terraforming technology that Haggar activates, and the fact that Oriande is a hidden place that keeps out the less magical with a violent guardian. These details, when removed from main-universe world building, create a cognitive dissonance about whether main-universe Allura and Alteans were actually genuine in how they depicted respectful “peace and diplomacy.” So anti alluras who believe Allura was a racial supremacist really rely on this s3 episode and these details to uphold their conspiracy theory.

So let’s focus on Allura in this episode, because it says a lot about who she ultimately is as a person, and people have forgotten how she actually responded in this episode. Allura is unquestionably hopeful at the thought that her and Coran might not be the last Alteans alive. Pretty understandable. If I were the last human, I’d be darn excited to find out there’s more of me left, lol. So her experience as a genocide victim initially blinds her to the evilness of these Alteans. You can even see the ache on her face, of how badly she wants to believe their narrative of peace.

So Allura is initially star-struck that she and Coran are not the last Alteans, yes, and that somehow they’ve achieved a “peace.” She is also not afraid to admit that they would be valuable allies in the war:

And she’s not wrong there, considering that they have what appears to be extensive military resources and a robot force of their own. But she makes a critical mistake in assuming that “these are my people” means that they share main-universe cultural sentiments. The instant Allura hears Slav (so not someone of her own race) call these Alteans out as actually evil colonizers turning people into slaves, she begins to question the narrative she’s received.

In this instance, she actually affords the Alteans the same courtesy she afforded Lotor—the opportunity to deny the accusations.

But in the AU Altean’s case, they try to turn blame back on other parties. Allura listens to Keith when he grows increasingly fearful of what the Alteans might do to the others, and she tries to plead for actual peace:

And actually, this is a pretty interesting moment for Allura. She tries to salvage an alliance…until she realizes that their differences are irreconcilable, and that their definition of peace is inherently different from her own. This probably sets the stage for why Allura was so triggered by Lotor talking about peace while also killing people—because she’s seen people misappropriate that term before. And also probably informs why she trusts the information of both Keith and Krolia (both of whom have Galran blood, btw).

Ultimately, Allura turns against her own people. Violently:

When they get angry about her wanting actual peace, Allura draws a weapon against them and rejects them from her people. This mimics how she spends several seasons fighting an Altean Haggar/Honerva for her crimes, and how she turns against Lotor too.

So case in point here, Allura loves her people, obviously—but she also is holding them to moral standards regarding their behavior, which is something that a genuine racist doesn’t do. As a matter of fact, Lotor is the only person of Altean blood that Allura genuinely bonds with ever again in the series. She’s distant with Romelle, she’s distant with the s8 Alteans… In s8, Allura even says this about Luca, which refers back to her own mistakes she made with initially being star-struck by the s3 AU Alteans who came in “peace”:

Allura herself had been manipulated in s3, wanting so desperately to not be the last Altean alive that it initially blinded her to how Commander Hira was manipulating her. The plight of the s8 Alteans who are deceived by Honerva is inherently frustrating to her, because she can see herself in them.

Absolutely none of this correlates with Allura seeing or perpetuating Alteans as a superior race. At every turn, her own people continue to disappoint her, and she increasingly and progressively separates herself from them in hopelessness, because they’re so brainwashed that they can’t see they’re just cannon fodder for someone else’s military agendas. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a superior race, lol.

So let’s think about anti accusations here. Allura is a racial supremacist…but she’s arguing against her people who believe unquestionably in Honerva, another full Altean like herself? Nothing about that accusation makes sense with her actions.

The fact is, consistently from season 3 and onward, Allura is faced with her own people morally disappointing her.

The good news for the s8 Alteans like Tavo is that Allura is able to remove the dark entity Honerva is using to control him. Which allows other Alteans to “wake up” from being manipulated and try to make amends.

Regardless, Allura makes a very clear line that simply being Altean doesn’t make someone “right.” She sees herself fully at odds with her own people who are drawn in by Honerva’s lies. And she experienced well back in s2 (revealing Haggar as Honerva) and s3 (evil AU Alteans) that any given race, including her own, can house people who do bad things.

The fact is, she’s consistently and willingly drawn weapons against even her own people when they didn’t meet her moral expectations. So her response to Lotor isn’t particularly out of line there. She’s repulsed by a moral flaw.

And actually, Lotor himself wouldn’t have known this, but he very oddly echoed the AU Alteans by getting angry that Allura was angry over the means through which he was trying to get peace:

So Lotor actually reverts to the same logic of the AU Alteans—peace at any cost, just look at the results—

And keep in mind that the AU Alteans also manipulated Allura’s excitement about them, to get her to make the transreality comet usable so they could go into other realities. So Allura has felt betrayed and used before, by her own people.

So when she says this:

Yes, it’s a reference back to how Zarkon manipulated his friends in order to get access to the quintessence field, at the explicit cost of potentially killing his own people. But it’s not without understanding that yes, Alteans can be just as manipulative and betraying as Zarkon. Because she’s experienced it, again and again.  

As a matter of fact, six out of the eight seasons of Voltron: Legendary Defender feature villainous Alteans/Alteans on the wrong side of the war, and we continuously see Allura punished again and again for wishing that Alteans still lived.

No wonder she wanted to die.

This is something that I find uncomfortable about the narrative of the show. Previous iterations of Voltron did in fact have a “blood on everyone’s hands” perspective, such as within the ages 16+ Dynamic Comics. However, Arusians/Alteans in those old Voltron narratives were not victims of genocide. VLD turns Alteans into victims of the worst racial crime possible and then also consistently portrays them as inherently antagonistic to genuine peace efforts in some way, instead of focusing on the evil of the oppressors.

And this is such a double whammy for Lotor’s characters as well, given that he was abused by his parents and threatened with slavery via his Galran culture, and that he was half-Altean too trying to connect to his lost culture.

As a matter of fact, the larger show’s narrative interest in “victims as antagonists” makes it such that when we see victims try to enact actual justice, it feels almost jarring. Let’s look at that s8 Zarkon moment you brought up as an example, where Allura destroys his innocent perspective by showing him his evil deeds.

The s8 Zarkon is a weird topic because 1) This Zarkon actually doesn’t exist outside of Honerva’s mind, so how he has any kind of actual free-will is beyond me, unless someone wants to argue that Honerva actually cursed his true soul just as she cursed the other paladins. It’s hilarious too, because Honerva-mind-Zarkon also calls Honerva a psychopath, so I guess now Honerva is psychoanalyzing herself using her dead husband as the vehicle, while also discreetly helping the paladins to stop herself—

ANYWAY, using this Zarkon as a “proof” of Allura’s “racism” is also cherry picking in the weirdest of ways. Is she angry about his horrific and incalculable crimes, including even how he betrayed the OG paladins and ruined his own planet? Absolutely. Does she want him to be aware of his crimes instead of having to pretend like nothing’s wrong? Yes.

But notice here, this Zarkon actually shows remorse. He is actually crying over those memories and recognizing that he had done something wrong. And Allura can work with that. In fact, out of everyone standing around and doing nothing, it’s Allura who gives him a second chance and offers an alliance with Zarkon in order to stop a crazy Altean: 

Keep in mind too, Honerva didn’t have memory loss at the end of s8. She knew exactly what she’d done and had given up and had to actually be convinced to do anything halfway constructive. That’s a very different circumstance than mind-Zarkon had, who jumped at the chance to do something to fix what all had happened, and gets even morally righteous about it, calling his own wife a psychopath, lol.

So generally, antis who believe Allura was a racial supremacist haven’t watched the show holistically. We see her hold the same standards to her own people as she expects out of others. This show would look incredibly different if Allura were a true racial supremacist.

Ah, you ask. Okay, so we’ve refuted the big pieces of “evidence” used to incriminate Allura. But what about all of those weird details about ancient Altean history? The violent language-learning program that scared Pidge? The violent terraforming tech that almost kills Voltron? The concept that Alfor tried to play “police” over the Galra and actually blew up their planet? The Alteans’ ongoing discussions of “peace and diplomacy” and spreading it throughout the universe while they happen to sit on a massive load of ancient power?

The s3 finale and other facts throughout the series very heavily smash the claim that our canon, in-universe Alteans were evil colonizers like the AU Alteans. The biggest piece of evidence to the contrary is that the Altea we know was one (1) planet. You counted right. One planet. Not an empire, but a singular planet. The s3 finale corroborates this, showing Altea as being largely isolationist from a military perspective while Daibazaal and Nalquod warred "for generations," right in front of their salad.

So some viewers would have you believe that Alteans were these big bad, intergalactic police state colonizers. But for all of its great power and knowledge, the singular planet of Altea didn't even canonically interfere in the wars of its own galaxy for actual millennia? And looking at the screenshots upon the stabilization of the alliance, Alfor is revealed to not have had experience with a neighboring culture. His face while exploring Gyrgan’s homeworld is an indication that it’s all rather new for him too. So again, we have evidence showing that Alteans were not colonizing or even functioning as a police state.

Note here that in the s3 flashbacks, the show confirms that it actually wasn’t just Alfor who suggested an alliance. All five leaders had common interests in protecting their galaxy from even worse threats, so all five came together at the same time. This is actually the first piece of evidence we have of Altea entering into some kind of intergalactic military agreement to stave off said worse threats.

And all of this is on top of a history where in s6, the Galran Archivist confirms that the Galran Empire had existed before Zarkon for 3,000 years, with times of “expansion.” It’s very easy to see that Blaytz’s people were actively fighting off Galran occupation of their homeworld within this past.

And that’s actually what I think makes Alfor and the OG paladins some pretty interesting characters. Here, we had colonizing Galran empire setting down its sword and accepting the value and space of its neighbors. Here, we had master alchemist Alfor giving up military power within their group by acknowledging Zarkon as the superior strategist. Here, we had Blaytz who had previously been battling Galran occupation…fully accepting the Galra?   

So the OG Paladin backstory represents a pretty incredible alliance that removed a lot of intergalactic toxicity and helped heal broken bonds. But it required all five leaders to agree to that. Alfor did not throw his weight or power around within this. There were several checks and balances here.

But this backstory also helps to explain some of the quirky details about Alteans. Their planet existed within an active war zone, and it’s very likely that they’d had to fight off Galran occupation just as Blaytz’s people did. So the violent robot trainers and fear-based language learning systems start to make sense. Alteans weren’t just simpering people playing harps all day and eating grapes. They were actively prepared to defend their planet and their culture.

So when Allura says in season 1 that Alteans were “spreading diplomacy” across the universe, the only pieces of evidence we have of that is the OG paladins themselves, in which Alfor was a big part in creating that alliance—and then possibly the Alteans with the Balmerans, given their deep collective rituals with that planet while the Galra literally just came in and ripped the planet nearly to death. Allura tries to mimic what it means to accept and interact with a culture without changing it well in season 1, when she stumbles through trying to respect Arusian culture and its demands on its people. Also, there is a big fact that antis like to overlook:

The fact is, despite the untold numbers of civilizations we interact with across 76 episodes, no outside race remembers Alteans as evil colonizers. If they were really so big and bad, we would have heard it, like, “Man, yeah the Galrans are bad. Just as bad as those Alteans, back in the day.” Or something. But nope, nothing.

So I heavily question the history of Altea as an ancient colonizing race. If they were, then Altea wouldn't have just been a single planet with limited resources to fight wars in even its own galaxy. All of this supports the idea of Altean children being raised to fight--because they were preparing to defend themselves when/if diplomacy fails.... But the fact that the Balmerans see Alteans fondly and that literally every other race we run into is explicitly suspicious of Galrans and not at all of Alteans says something.

I think the only piece of evidence there might be for a genuinely colonizing ancient Altea is the use of terraforming technology, as mentioned in s4. Haggar discovers it and activates it to try and kill Voltron--and she nearly succeeds, because said tech destroys the entire crust of the planet to reform it. But you have to step back for a second and wonder--if ancient Alteans were so powerful, why was Alfor struggling so hard to even hold his own planet together in the midst of all these other cultures warring and larger threats? If they had this technology--and they did know about it because Allura recognized it right away as ancient technology--why the heck wouldn't they use it? Or were they using it, and it was to reform uninhabited planets to help sustain displaced peoples? Why is it, if Alteans were so terribly bad, we have no record across ANY of the many alien races being cautious of them? Even Galran Lieutenant Lahn snapped at Allura only because he was jealous of the general security she had back on, you guessed it, explicitly Altea. There's a lot of potential explanations for a positive use of terraforming technology, and the evidence against colonization and Altea committing omnicide against other races is incredibly more aligned with the other details in the canon.

And even Alfor’s creation of Voltron and the blowing up of Daibazaal—that’s something that antis like to position as evidence of his police-state ways to underhandedly control other cultures.

So let’s tackle those too while we’re at it.

Honestly, I know people like to hate on Alfor, and I do think his character picks up some misogynism just from the writers....But I don't think he was as much of a controller as people think he was. He was already in an alliance with four other leaders to try and stop bad things from happening in their galaxy. That meant they were expending incredible amounts of time and resources to accomplish that end—resources that were not renewable and may have been straining various planets. We know that he started building Voltron with Zarkon and everyone else's blessing because he called them "clean ships," but it's only after the rift creatures attack that suddenly Alfor's perception of Voltron moves from "clean energy" to "omg we need a more powerful weapon against this unknown enemy.”

So these are his intentions BEFORE he discovers rift creatures are a threat to the universe. While Zarkon states that these new ships are to be endlessly powerful for the Galra Empire, Alfor shames him by offering what his desire is for them:

  After the rift creatures nearly destroy Daibazaal, intentions change.

So here, we see the game change in a BIG way. Voltron is not just about offering a more renewable way of sustaining peace-keeping efforts. Alfor is now adjusting and finishing these ships with the explicit knowledge that if they are not powerful enough, then Daibazaal and the Galran people will die. Alfor’s got a LOT of pressure on him now to deliver a mighty and powerful weapon to stop this new threat. So even his creation of Voltron as a superweapon involved using it to protect people from imminent death—not to police them.

And about Alfor blowing up Daibazaal—once again, it’s Alfor trying to clean up Honerva and Zarkon’s mess. Honerva had convinced Zarkon that the rift needed to be wider, and so Zarkon deceived the paladins into widening it.

So keep in mind here, at this point in time—the rift was destabilizing and eating an entire planet. The entire universe was now at stake. Alfor had to choose between a bad fix and an even worse option of allowing everyone to die, but he very clearly evacuated people before destroying Daibazaal, as part of his promise to keep Galrans safe. So that no one would have to die.

And as a matter of fact—about that terraforming technology. How sure are you that Alfor didn’t intend to use it to build Galrans a new home? It’s entirely within the realm of acceptable conjecture that he allowed for the existence of that technology because it could restore what had been lost.

And here’s where the story gets really screwy and feeds into some anti hate. Because when Zarkon wakes up as a zombie, he desires more quintessence as zombies do.

So he’s pissed that Alfor just cut off his gateway, and he manipulates his people:

And it’s here where we get the idea that Alfor was an evil controller. The idea came from Zarkon, who—we can look around pretty easily and see that he was not a man of honor, ultimately. Even if you chose to not believe the s3 finale flashbacks as being objective, there’s something wrong with Zarkon. (It’s clear that the show thought using Coran was a smart way to shell off massive amounts of info, because clearly if this were truly in Coran’s perspective, we would NOT have had intimate looks into Zarkon and Honerva’s bedroom as Zarkon is tending to her, like omg.) Numerous sources, histories, and cultures outside of Coran confirm that Zarkon hit a point of no return on the evil scale, and that he projected his own blame for Daibazaal’s destabilization onto Alfor in order to raise up his new regime in the name of Quintessence™.

So at the end of the day, even Alfor was a victim. But yet somehow, various antis choose to believe Zarkon’s victim-punishing narrative because said antis can’t or else refuse to connect one scene to another since it undermines their justifications for why they can hate on Allura. And that’s not so much an issue with the story itself as it is just poor critical analysis or malicious weaponization of content against other fans.

Now, at this point, we’ve talked about Allura and we’ve talked about Altean history. I have numerous other posts about Allura’s interactions with other races and Galrans and overcoming trauma to give the entire universe a second chance. So if there is anything in this show that suggests Alteans were in any way a superior race, then it’s probably within the show’s own worldbuilding. The show contradicts its own definitions of what quintessence even is by suggesting Alteans have “bluer/purer quintessence” in order to justify why Lotor would even be trying to sacrifice them for anything. The show-championed concept that Alteans have a bluer, purer life force above all other people, and that only Altean energy could interface with the fabric of space-time. Now, this is a problem in the later seasons’ world building itself. And you know who wrote that in? The production team. So once again, we do have racial issues in this show, in ways that shows like Star Wars desperately try avoid by showing racial diversity in who has Midi-chlorians.

That said, I’m not a perfectly woke storyteller either. I think every story and show is going to have something problematic™, but with VLD it’s very clear that its disrespectful handling of genocide politics and shatterglass conspiracy theories, on top of its weird master race angle created the perfect storm. These mishandled and quirky details have created a cognitive dissonance with the provided narrative, resulting in some people in the anti fandoms to champion what aligns very closely to actual neo-Nazi propaganda against Jews, who according to them are not victims but instead the true perpetrators of all bad things. For the sake of the antis, I’m pretty sure they’re not intentionally looking at VLD this way and are probably just looking for any easily graspable reason to hate on Allura for interfering with their ship or something.

But this kind of subliminal propaganda that undermines victims, and the effect it has had on fandom morality politics, is deeply concerning to me. I really wish that we’d had an opportunity to respectfully and critically discuss this with the production team of the show, because a Y7-FV show about “strength in unity” should NOT result in us needing to have a conversation about people walking away with neo-Nazi-ish propaganda sentiments against genocide survivors. Like. Clearly, VLD is fictional, but it’s feeding into a real-life beast that it does NOT need to feed. And it’s keeping alive ongoing conspiracy narratives against some of our most vulnerable populations on the planet.

So, we need better stories. We need a production team that, if they’re going to get paid to do something involving portrayals of genocide and politics, that they need to do their research on those topics. Nobody is going to be perfect with a creation, but VLD validated some very damaging things—and it ALL is something that could have been fixable. I think it would have been incredibly validating to hear the production talk about and accept that these were issues that cropped up unintentionally, and to hear them confirm that these issues are not the sorts of things that VLD was supposed to champion.

The greatest tragedy of all of this is the potential that this show had to really champion some great and validating messages, and the potential that we as a fandom had to come together and do something that fandom was meant to do—which was celebrate the things we love. Because that’s why we’re all here. That’s why this crazy tumblr of mine even exists. It was supposed to celebrate things.

For that reason, I’m going to end this here. I’ve written several responses now as to my thoughts on the inappropriate narrative lens of the show, its contradictory and damaging worldbuilding about the purest race, and how it champions demonizing or punishing genocide survivors again and again. Within all of that, I’ve talked at length about Allura’s character and behavior over 8 seasons and how she built even empathetic connections with militant Galrans like Commander Lahn. In fact even her own homesickness is how she emotionally connects with Lahn, because she understands that desire to call something one’s own. To have a home. A family.

I now really would like to get back to writing stories that I find meaningful to me using these characters and these worlds—and trying to find the hope in all of this darkness, haha. And maybe with any luck, I can hope to do VLD some justice, knowing that I am still on a learning journey as well.

But I appreciate your note, and I hope this very extensive response helps to settle your questions and concerns once and for all regarding VLD Allura. If you should have any remaining questions, please feel free to reach out via a private message to discuss. Thank you!

#Volron #VLD #Allura #VLD Critical #Alfor #Zarkon #Honerva #Lotor #I hope this helps explain my perspective #I think this might have to be my last refutation to the Allura as racist/racist supremacist conspiracy theory #at a certain point #people either watch the show holistically or they don't #you can't convince an anti #so this meta will probably not help an anti #but if you're sitting on the fence and felt drawn in by anti propaganda #then I hope that maybe this post provides an alternate perspective #and one that tries to be more holistically fair to all 8 seasons of the show #and to the intentions and general oversights that can occur during production #Ultimately it doesn't matter if someone likes or dislikes Allura as a fictional character #we need better entertainment that can handle these hard topics and handle them well #And we also need a fandom who's willing to look at all of the information and not weaponize it to specifically demonize and silence others #Maybe a family TV show shouldn't be appropriating conspiracy theories from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion #real-world fans are incredibly vulnerable to such conspiracy theories #and it creates a lot of real-world strife as a result

[jeanjauthor]

Addams Family Thanksgiving

As a white person...

I was genuinely thrilled with this “plot twist.”

Rewatching it decades later?

Still thrilled.

But as for the reality of how indigenous people are treated in America? (And Canada, since y’all are right there with us in this, in the sense of not actually treating First Nations peoples very well... *glares at the Highway of Tears, & at its curiously unconcerned goddamn government*)

Not Thrilled At ALL.

Now, disclaimer:  Most of my ancestors were lily-ass-white colonizers.  I am even related to four of the Pilgrim families at Plymouth Rock.  You know, the ones who came over on the Mayflower? The ones like “Sarah Miller” in this video clip?  Yeah, related to those ungrateful patriarchal fucked-up-the-rest-of-our-society-for-CENTURIES sons of bitches & daughters of bastards.

On the other hand, one of my ancestresses a century or two later was Haudanusaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), specifically Kanienkehaka (Mohawk), and yes, she married an European...after Europeans brought diseases that decimated or even flat-out destroyed various indigenous populations...and then further desecrated & destroyed populations via actual warfare, poisoning (it’s an ongoing thing to this day) naturally lactose intolerant people with charity-offered cheeses, and far too much more.

I am literally missing millions of my kin in this world because their ancestors were wiped out--either unwittingly or maliciously--by my other ancestors, before they could beget a next generation, and a next...

But mostly it wasn’t just accidental deaths through the introduction of unfailiar diseases that became massive plagues parallel to COVID-19. Colonizers were far more intolerant than they were tolerant...and the reason why I despise what they did is because the Paradox of Tolerance applies to what they did.  Too many of their descendants are still far too intolerant to this day...and the Paradox of Tolerance applies to them as well.

By the way, the “blood quantum” cards or whatever they’re called?  The ones that count “how much of X Tribe” you are, if you’re Native American / Indigenous North American?  They only count ONE tribe affiliation by blood.  So if you’re 6/16ths Blackfoot and 7/16ths Apache and 3/16ths European...you only get to count EITHER your Blackfoot OR your Apache status, and the other nation doesn’t get counted.  (This was only an example bloodline, not a real one.)

Oh, and you have to be at LEAST 1/16th of any one particular tribe (indigenous nation, etc) to “count” as a tribal member...and some require 1/4th.  Btw...1/16th means one great-great grandparent; my ancestress was two generations further back, making me 1/64th...and no, I am not claiming I’m Mohawk in any shape or way. I literally live over 2,000 miles away from Iroquois territory, I don’t know the culture, the history, the people...why would I claim something I don’t know?

...Which introduces the horrors of forced assimilation, ripping children away from their families to incarcerate them in indoctrination (brainwashing) camps, aka “white education centers” and “boarding school institutions”...which means they don’t grow up learning anything about their culture, their parents grow old, their elders die, and within 3 generations, they won’t know NEARLY enough about their own culture...but I digress.  Let’s get back to how much ancestry you have, and why it’s genocidally regulated.

Blood quantum measurements are enforced by white-made laws DELIBERATELY to force indigenous populations to either inbreed themselves to death...or outbreed themselves or other indigenous nations to extinction.

To retain “enough native blood” to qualify, you have to keep inbreeding into the same gene pool generation after generation...and since those genepools were whittle down by disease & violence brought against them...they aren’t very large pools to begin with.  Not like they could’ve been.

If you’re supposed to “stick with your own kind” but you cross-marry into another tribe / nation...then you have to decide what inheritance your children “get” to claim...and that means denying any other genetic affiliations / inheritances they may have.  If you’re forced to go with the Apache in the above example because it’s bigger in percentage than your blood quantum for Blackfoot...what if Blackfoot’s population loses too many people to outbreeding “thinning the bloodlines”...?

And that’s without the consideration of, what if you’re 1/16th Kanienkehaka (Mohawk, remember), and you fall in love with someone from, oh, say, Thailand?  If you marry that person and have children with them (presuming it’s a pairing that you can do that with them)...then your children will be 1/32nd...too low to “count”.

Even if you raise them to know and honor their heritage as a member of the Eastern Door of the Great Longhouse of the Iroquois Confederacy.

Your choice is to marry & live with & raise children with the person you genuinely love and care about...but reduce the future population of your nation...or never get to have children with the person you love, and find someone to tolerate who will keep your indigenous heritage headcount alive.

Blood quantum laws are genocide.

Now...why would this bother me so much?

Well, aside from the fact it’s genocide, and yes that bothers me quite a lot...

I’m a romance author.  I grew up reading (and not knowing better) the “Sweet Savage Love” style romance novels, historical westerns with the hunky tanned shirtless Native American and the barely bodiced babe clinging to him, her skirt hiked up far too high on her thigh, blah blah blah.  (Don’t @ me, I can love images of muscular guys, including non-European-descended muscular guys, and being bi, I can totally admire a sexily posed lady, too!)  And some of the stories actually addressed issues of social stigmas, racism, & so forth.

But what those books did, in a much more insidious way, was not just fetishize Indigenous North American men (and women, in very rare cases), but promoted how romantic it is to thin indigenous bloodlines, even as these blood quantum laws existed, through the fetishization of the “romantic native romance hero” archetypes and plot tropes.

Now, this is not to say I am against “interbreeding” (I am literally gagging at having to put it that way, sorry; bear with me here).  What I am AGAINST is the demand that you “have” to be X amount of blood and ONLY X-Amount-Or-Higher To Qualify.

Being a part of a nation, a culture, a bloodline, isn’t a goddamn carnival ride!

That is what I am against.

Membership in an indigenous nation / tribe should be a matter of being a member, and that means being in the community, interacting positively with the culture, promoting the continuation of the community / culture / nation, its knowledge, its belief systems, its historical records, its various traditions.  Ideally one should have blood ties to that indigenous population...but it’s literally the participation in the culture that keeps that particular culture alive.

What I’d love to see is something like this:

You could be less than 1/16th of a particular tribe / nation, and still be counted, if (say for example) the community / elders sign off on your “membership” via how much you do participate--this would bring spouses into the community headcount, if that spouse (or domestic partner) willingly & helpfully participates in the culture.  Why the spouse / partner?  Because through participation, they can help teach the next generation, whether that’s their own kids with their partner, or other kids in the community.

Additionally, I want to see cross-quantum affiliations.  If you’re Blackfoot AND Apache, if you participate in both cultures, both should be able to claim you!  And if you don’t, but you still have a strong blood tie to both, you should be counted for both.

There is a fine balance between preserving a genetic inheritance in sustainable ways...and not restricting all aspects of one’s inheritance so much that it does lead to an essentially effective genocide by legal fiat.

...Remember, all that reservation land (what little is left of it over the centuries of theft by colonizer whites) goes back to the white folks’ nation, if there are no more members left of the indigenous nation...according to the “rules” the white folks insist everyone has to play by.

So yeah, I am genuinely thrilled at what Wednesday & the other outcast children at that summer camp decided to do.

There are some vengeance stories that just need to be told...even if they’re fictional.

[cesium-sheep]

ugh, and then when I was double-checking my response to that email with a friend, they had the gall to refer to them in a really dehumanizing way, so that’s a whole other thing I also had to deal with today. yeehaw.

just a quick psa, there are lines we don’t cross, y’all. no matter how annoying or outright horrible a person is, there are lines we don’t cross. you are not personally obligated to put in the work to help a bad person become better, but you absolutely do not get a pass to lash out at them in awful and damaging ways, because that makes shit harder for those who will put in the work, including the people you lash out at.

a couple examples: direct dehumanization, slurs, misgendering, death threats/kys

I get that not everyone is viewed as capable or worthy of rehabilitation, even though I’m iffy on that. but that doesn’t make it okay.

#side note: assassination attempts don't fall into the same purview of death threats to me #my morality is just really weird sometimes don't worry about it #I suppose it's a question of using things we think are unacceptable when others do them #to maliciously create an atmosphere of fear #as opposed to putting your money where your mouth is #really think the world will be vastly better off without a specific person? #actions speak louder than words #this doesn't apply to suicide attempts btw because you're waaaaaay more biased against yourself than say #a genocidal fuckhead #like a genocidal fuckhead is probably as awful as you think they are #you on the other hand are extreeeeeeeeeeemely rarely as awful as you think you are #and you also have the option to put in the work to make yourself a better person #which you can't impose on a genocidal fuckhead in the same way #rather than throwing yourself out as irredeemable trash #(and tbh I don't think there is such a thing as irredeemable trash) #(I do think there are people who can't be helped fast enough to prevent atrocities) #(and I understand the trolley problem that gets into and I think the answer is to minimize harm) #(but minimizing harm also means only doing harm to others when it actually stops additional harm) #(rather than just cuz you're petty or hurt)

[janiedean]

archetteetc ha risposto al tuo post “Lavinia, are Italians a mixed race people? Because of moorish and Arab...”

Also, “Italians are white” is another statement of US-centrism in action. Ask any darker-looking Italian in Northern Europe if they feel othered, if they get asked “where they’re from” and all the questions that POC everywhere get asked. Urgh. Racism exists everywhere, but the discourse and context are vastly different.

THANK YOU, and like... the problem is that italy has a lot of racism but it’s directed at various categories and just, on a language level, poc in italy means only black people when it the US it doesn’t, and it doesn’t have the same weight, and for that matter there’s discrimination in between northern and southern italians never mind the romanians/romani which get a whole different brand of shit never mind that a black american gets treated differently from a black african immigrant same as some rich russian person who comes to buy fashion clothes in milan will be treated differently from some poor person from idk belarus who cleans houses for a living and so on. no one ever said that we don’t have racism. but ffs it doesn’t work like in the us of a and *race* is not a socially acceptable term to use. like, the moment you say that human races exist, people deduce you’re yourself racist and nope out of the conversation. because after wwii it just doesn’t fly to do it when such a worldview is what led to, uh, mass genocide. I understand it’s not the same in the US, but if europeans would rather use ethnicity or nationality it doesn’t mean we’re negating the existence of racism, it means we talk about it in different terms, and I’m honestly tired of even US *language* being used to describe our issues when it’s not right for them.

like, doesn’t seem to me like it’s such a hard concept to grasp and I’d have no issues talking to an american who uses race as a word bc I know that to them it’s not inherently racist to use that term, but ffs can I not use since it makes me feel dirty? thank you very much.

ETA: btw italians all identify as white and people in europe in general do too so I don’t like to describe this issues as a white vs nonwhite problem because we’re not poc even if we’re subject to discrimination especially in northern countries still, I just wanted to make that clear in case someone says that now I’m saying italians are poc which I never said, but like... in europe the concept of white privilege is useless bc you get privilege over nonwhite people and it’s a factor but being from the nation in question is the key privilege card, like in italy a white romanian and a black african both get discriminated over people who are born in italy and live in italy out of not being italian so while the white card has weight when it comes to the black african, it doesn’t when it comes to the romanian, and anyway everyone here considers themselves white regardless of shade unless they have a black parent (if you have a parent from idk china you’re half chinese not poc and so on). like... it’s complicated. it’s not the same as the US. and it’d be nice if people could just make peace with the fact that white/WASP privilege in the US is a thing that exists in that context and doesn’t automatically apply to others.

#archetteetc #janie replies #racism cw #jfc #ikr

[evangelineartemiasamos]

have you read the dragon republic? what do you think of it?

Sorry this took me so long, but I didn’t want to reply with “haven’t read it yet, but I plan to”, so I waited until I’ve finished the book.

I’m somewhat disappointed with it, mainly for two reasons. Spoilers!

1) Rin is quite an irritating protagonist. It’s strange when she claims to be morally right in the first place given that she is a woman who committed genocide, but even worse is that she doesn’t have a moral compass but rather a moral rollercoaster. First she says one thing, then the other, depending on wholly subjective, unreasonable standards. Like, she is more angry that some people have to eat but not that other people have to starve in the first place? Like, she’d rather all people suffer equally???

Her motivations are an even bigger conundrum. First, she just wants to survive, then she wants to die, then she wants to lead, then she wants be ordered around, then she is pissed off when people don’t agree with her opinions, then she feels guilty about what she has done, then she stops feeling that way, only to feel guilty about something else that isn’t even her fault etc etc. And later on, she complains (again) that people pick a side just to survive as if she hasn’t done the same thing. IDK what the destination of her character is, all comes down to being angry because she needs to be angry about something, just because. Probably Kuang wanted to write a a character who is rightfully angry but the way she wrote Rin as always being angry just erases the cause of her rage: It doesn’t matter anymore if something is unjust and wrong when you’re angry for the sake of being angry because you begin to contradict yourself and you stop to care about the things you claim to be angry about. Rin’s anger isn’t rightful, it’s part of her mental illness. You can blame the Phoenix for it, though the book claims she stops hearing the Phoenix at some point, so make of that what you will.

All in all, Rin’s sole conflict is whether “to burn or not to burn” which is also her main military tactic: kill as many people as possible or necessary, she has never other advice when she takes part in war meetings. As if she didn’t go to a military academy and learned warfare and strategy! She doesn’t deserve to be treated like having literal firepower is the only thing she can contribute to war. This is esp. frustrating in the middle section where she loses her superpowers so The Guys™ (more on that later) can talk actual strategy while Rin is only supposed to ask where to run and who to kill. It’s like Rin lost her brain because of her mental illness and the possession of the Phoenix that burns up her character. It’d be different if the book recognized that but I don’t really see it in TDR; it acts like it’s a natural progression that Rin is reduced to anger and her mental illness nothing to be concerned about.

And her whole, “I don’t care about democracy, I don’t care about politics”-attitude really made me question why I should root for Rin of all people in the book, and not someone who knows what to strive for. 

I also don’t like that she wants Nezha to become a shaman although the book makes it abundantly clear that being a shaman is totally shitty apart from the superpower. Like, the book never stops reminding us that shamanism only brings madness and death. Nezha wants to remain sane, is that so bad? I also think that Rin should consider that - trying to care for her mental health instead of reducing herself to a soldier who is a living mass-destruction weapon. That she and everyone else only consider her as that is sad, not making her important. BTW, Nezha suffering from constant pain which never stopped him from being a capable fighter? Talking about ableism …

2) The book is disturbingly sexist and violent to women. Here are some examples. There is no relevant female character besides Rin who isn’t a villain, and all female side characters are equally villified or raped or killed off or described as weak and incompetent. Even the empress is called weak and the narrative likes to point out that the empress only made it this far because her deity is so strong and because she is sexy enough to seduce people to her side. Repeat: The empress isn’t powerful because she is competent but because she is beautiful. She isn’t clever, but has a sexy body. It’s peak sexism to code a female villain this way. In contrast, male beauty inspires loyalty?

When the empress uses a cruel strategy costing innocent lives, she is a vile monster that has to be stopped, when a male general applies the same strategy, it’s ugly but necessary. This is most apparent when it comes to Jinzha: He is often called cruel but his deeds are shrugged off and accepted as okay and when he dies, it’s portrayed as the tragic loss of a good leader. What?

Otherwise, it’s disturbing how Rin reacts when women are killed: She rather feels with the murderer or the man suffering a loss (sometimes the same person!!) than with the woman who dies. There’s a scene when Rin hears of a myth about a goddess whose suitors drown in the pursuit of her. The goddess is called “a bitch” for letting those men who harassed her die. Seriously. And is there any reason why the Sorqan Sira and Qara have to die??? Oh, I suppose it will matter in the next book but still: That cemented the book’s sexism for me. A female leader isn’t allowed to stay alive and in power. I felt like I was in an sjm book.

But hey, even though the other female characters are treated like shit, we still have Rin as the female lead, right? Well, that’s what I thought in the first book. But with book 2, I’m not so sure anymore. First of all, Rin’s gender doesn’t play a role in her story, but okay, that’s not a must. Yet on the other hand, I don’t think her story is written as empowering in general.

Rin never gets to be right from the start. She is always wrong somewhere, she comes to false conclusions, acts rashly, and makes mistakes and then she has to be corrected, to be chastised, to suffer abuse, only to learn and start again from a weaker position. Her fate revolves pain, abuse and destruction, period.

She also never gets encouragement. No one tells her she is more than a weapon, that she doesn’t deserve to be dehumanized, called insults and used like a tool. No one protects her against (verbal) abuse. Actually, being called useful are the only moments when she feels worthy of respect! Duh, I said I don’t agree with her often, but that is too much. To me, it’s clear the narrative wants her to suffer and nothing else. If the only empowering moments for her are when she uses her superpower, it’s not empowerment at all, because she still isn’t respected for herself (note that I believe superpowers are overrated as metaphors for empowerment in general because they are unrelatable for real life people compared to learned skills. EG in Captain Marvel, Maria flying through the canyon will always be more inspiring than Carol suddenly being able to crush spaceships with a wave of her hand).

What I like the book though is that - once you’ve steeled yourself for the grimdark, violent content - it’s rather easy to read and never boring. Naval battles on rivers are something fresh, too. It’s creative too that Kuang made-up a western country and religion instead of picking and adapting one european country and branch of christianity - not that they wouldn’t deserve it. It’s still the same bullshit in different words and a strong call out of the horrors of colonization, social darwisnism, white supremacy and christianity.

Also, the last hundreds pages make up for some of my frustration as finally, the characters realize what goes on behind the scenes and begin to doubt and act on their own. On the other hand, I don’t get what stopped the characters from figuring out that shit in the first 550 pages as many readers will certainly wondered EG about Vaisra’s real plans. I hope in the next book, Rin will show more of her leading skills now that she’s a general and see herself as more than a weapon (please).

I’ve read by now that Rin is supposed to become a dictator like Mao Zedong and that makes me excited, tbh. I’d like to read about a villain protagonist but please let it be one with a brain and a purpose.

#regina reads #spoilers #rf kuang #the dragon republic #the poppy war #review

[racefortheironthrone]

Thoughts on House of X #5

Time for the issue where HoX/PoX horniness kicked off!

Society Comma We Live in One:

Time to talk about an issue that definitely merited the coverted red issue status. The issue starts with Magneto and Polaris having a dialogue on society that comes off as a bit writerly, more about Hickman creating an opportunity for him to talk about his ideas about society than what Magneto and Polaris would actually be saying to one another (unless Polaris just arrived on Krakoa and is being given the tour, but that doesn’t quit fit her dialogue).

To start with, Magneto is making an argument that “the one good thing humanity taught us was society,” but attaches this to the concept of human beings shifting from settler-gatherer to agrarian cultures. Notably, in Magneto’s version, this shift also has implications for national identity, what with the whole “this is a good place - it is...ours, and from this land we will not be moved.” 

At the same time, it would be highly inaccurate to suggest that hunter-gatherer cultures don’t have societies or engage in (what Magneto is really getting at here) cooperation. The main difference between hunter-gatherer and agrarian modes of cooperation is that, by creating substantial surpluses that allow more people to not engage in food production, the agrarian mode enables a new form of cooperation based on specialization.

All of this applies pretty directly to Krakoa and the resurrection ceremony that Magneto and Polaris are witnessing: as long as mutantdom was constantly fighting for survival (the time when “the greatest necessary traits in mutantdom” would be “strength and aggressiveness”), it was essentially stuck in a hunter-gatherer paradigm. But once mutantdom established themselves on Krakoa, “intelligence, ingenuity, and creativity” started to come to the fore: the Krakoan flowers and medications, Doug’s interface and the resulting Krakoan systems, KASA, Cerebro, and now a new one. Contrary to certain implications from the Librarian in Powers of X #6, rather than simply relying on their “natural” mutant powers, Krakoan society is technologizing them. 

The “Five” are a great example of this process at work. I’ll get more in detail on how this particular Krakoan biomachinery works when we get to the infographic (which brings together all of the information into one place), but there’s some more subtle details at work here:

I love how the (Fab) Five’s social/cultural status is prefigured by their on-page introduction, which looks like nothing so much as the slow-motion group shot from Resevoir Dogs combined with a supergroup pose complete with spotlights.

As many people have pointed out, Hickman’s reinterpretation of Goldballs’ “seemingly benign and pointless power” shows how a different social and technological context completely changes the way we think about the value of different x-genes. 

As someone who’s spent their fair share of time studying the history of science, I do like how much the Five’s introduction re-emphasizes themes of cooperation and specialization rather than the Lone Genius myth: even with Goldballs’ limitless “eggs,” he still needs Proteus to make the eggs viable, and so on and so forth. As Magneto puts it, ““separate...they are great mutants, but only significant, not transcendant. Together..."

An interesting commonality in Krakoan biotechnology is the use of psychics and other mutants - in this case, Hope plays a similar role to the Cuckoos in KASA - to allow the group to work in unison without the need for the literal hiveminds of the machine consciousness. Something to keep one’s eye on.  

At the same time, the Five’s biomachine relies on two other forms of technology of varying levels of technology. As the red diamond on the syringe confirms, Mister Sinister provides the DNA to grow the husks and (and this is one of the Big Reveals of the issue) Cerebro downloads the mind into the body. 

Playing her role in the Socratic dialogue admirably, Lorna raises the vital question of whether these clones are “just their bodies...not them.” What’s really interesting about Magneto’s response is that he’s not just talking about downloading the mind of the mutant, but also “the essence..the anima...[the] soul” of the mutant, which implies a pretty strongly spiritual conception of Cerebro’s primary purpose. (It’s an interestingly monist approach to the question of the soul as a form of data that can be copied, uploaded, downloaded, etc. I wonder what Nightcrawler thinks of this?)

Xavier’s statement that “even knowing I could bring you back...a part of me dies when any of you do” really backs up what I was talking about re: Xavier’s motivation for changing his worldview. Resurrection doesn’t change the emotional impact of death, especially since the system requires Xavier to be psychically linked to the X-Men he’s sending into harm’s way, so that he’s experiencing all their pain and suffering. This also reads quite differently in the wake of Powers of X #6, because it suggests that (quite aside from his broader plans for Krakoa), Xavier’s shift to being even more of a pragmatist has a lot to do with years of compounding trauma.

BTW, a clear sign that there is a high degree of continuity of consciousness going on is that Scott’s first thought after being resurrected is “did it work?” For all intents and purpsoes, this is the Scott Summers who died on Sol’s Forge.

We See Them, Do We Know Them?

I’m going to take this opportuntity to get on my high horse for a second and take parts of the X-fandom to task. While I wouldn’t go so far as to accuse anyone of arguing in bad faith, I do think there has been a tendency to not grapple with the text in an honest way when it comes to certain characters or themes, with the Resurrection Ceremony as Exhibit A in this tendency.

Rather than being about cults or nakedness (more on both of those soon), what this scene is actually about is the coming together of the foundational aspects of Krakoan society/culture, and how two groups of heroes - the five and the strike team - will be treated in this new world. 

As we might expect, there are both parallels and differences in how the Krakoan masses treat and are expected to treat these groups: as we’ll learn later from the Resurrection Infographic, the Five are “universally revered...as cultural paragons [something sacred to be treasured].” 

Storm’s exhortation provides the text that is supposed to shape and give purpose to this popular attitude, that the Krakoan masses should “love them...for they have righted the wrongs of men and defeated our great enemy death.” As with many RL human cultures, historic grievances are used to define in-group and out-group, but at the same time, the Five’s “miracle” is defined as a victory over “our great enemy death,” (which neatly ties together anti-mutant violence, mutant-specific epidemic diseases, all the forces of the “on the brink of extinction” stories we’ve seen for almost twenty years). 

Given that the Five are responsible for A. reversing mutant genocides which have directly and indirectly affected all mutants in profoundly traumatic ways B. making mutants functionally immortal, it would be utterly unprecedented if a cultural and social change of this magnitude did not have some element of spiritual or religious feeling behind it. World religions have been founded on far less than this.

By contrast, the Strike Team are described in more secular terms. For removing the existential threat of Mother Mold (let alone Nimrod) which had loomed over mutant society, Storm describes them as “heroes of Krakoa,” but not so much cultural heroes as secular military heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their nation: “through their deaths...a great victory was won for our people.” 

Another sign of difference is that the Strike Team’s public reception is conditional, requiring a further ceremony where the community asks “we see them, but do we know them?” I love the way that Hickman turns the meta-question of whether these resurrected mutants are the real thing or “just clones” into a cultural question. 

Thus, he has Storm act as the Master of Ceremonies for a ritual that’s all about recognition and confirmation of individual and social identity, and uses X-comics continuity nods that readers will recognize in the same way that Storm does as the clues:

Cyclops remembers losing the leadership to Storm in UX #139, and I like this particular deep cut because it’s a great contrast to their present-day respect and affected, and because Scott’s inability to commit to his marriage to Madelyn Pryor will help kick off Inferno.

Similarly, Jean recalling line-for-line what she said to Storm in UX #242 works especially well because it’s a line about asserting your identity in the wake of death, resurrection, and the existential questions of cloning, and because once again it recalls Inferno. I’m not sure whether it’s a good sign or a bad sign that Hickman gets Jean’s voice better here when he’s quoting earlier authors rather than writing original dialogue.

And finally, in a great Rule of Three joke format, Monet breaks the pattern by going for a character beat - Monet has strong personal space boundaries - rather than a deep continuity callback.  

Having done my close-reading due diligence, let me get to the point: this is not a cult, and you don’t need to take much in the way of Anthropology coursework to see that. Call-and-response between an officiant and the congregation are incredibly common across many religions, as are ceremonies in which the individual’s membership in the group is confirmed, and so on and so forth. If you want to describe this as a cult, or cult-like, you need to point to qualities that are specific to cults as opposed to other forms of religious activity.

Similarly, I find it quite strange to describe Storm as acting out-of-character in this sequence. Storm, who’s all about giving speeches at the top of her lungs, who’s been worshipped as a goddess in multiple countries, would have a problem with giving a sermon and carrying out a basic ritual? This is the sort of thing that makes me think that a lot of these comments are just people trying to disguise personal preference as story critique.

The scene ends with pulling back to see Xavier and Magneto reacting to all of this, and their feeling of tempered joy is a pretty good synecdoche for how things stand at the end of HoX/Pox: while the “good work” is clearly a cause for joy, it’s clearly at a very early and vulnerable stage, and there’s a feeling of determination that it has to continue “until it is done.” Interestingly, both Charles and Erik view this aspect of Krakoa as more “foundational” than any other element, and I wonder whether this could be part of why they don’t quite see eye-to-eye with Moira any more.

Another sign that things are not as secure as they’d like is that Krakoa still hasn’t gotten over the hurdle of UN recognition, which requires getting around a veto from a permanent member of the Security Council.

Resurrection Infographic:

So let’s talk about the Resurrection process, now that we have all of the information in front of us.

The Infographic really confirms that Mister Sinister is absolutely crucial to the Genetic Base working - “without this, we have nothing.” But given that we learn in Powers of X #6 that this was very much in opposition to Moira’s wishes, I wonder how the original plan envisioned this working. I wonder whether Magneto’s statement to Emma Frost in Powers of X #5 that “we are not ahead of ourselves...we are woefully behind” suggests a motive. Mister Sinister already had a comprehensive DNA database on the go, they might have gone to him because they wanted to accelerate the time table for reversing the Genoshan genocide.

At the same time, you can already see how Sinister has become the snake in the garden. At the moment, Xavier and Magneto have “limited...current mutant modifications...to “optimal aging,” but we can already see Sinister’s influence in the line “it is believed that in the future, designer modifications will be possible.” Unless they are very, very careful, this is how the chimera singularity could topple all of this into the abyss of the singularity.

The Five:

As I discussed above, each of the Five are a crucial element of the overall process.

Fabio Medina (Goldballs): produces limitless eggs for limitless husks. Without Goldballs, the resurrection process would be extremely limited in how many people could be brought back at any time by all kinds of resource constraints; with him, the process can be turned into one of mass-production.

Kevin MacTaggart (Proteus): turns unviable eggs into viable eggs; without Proteus, Goldballs’ innovation would be effectively stillborn. Kevin’s presence here is also a strong indicator that this was part of Moira’s plan, so as with so much in HoX/PoX what we’re talking about is a question of means vs. ends. 

Joshua Foley (Elixir): “kick-start[s] the process of life, initializing cell replication and husk growth.” Without Elixir, the DNA might sit dormant within the egg; with Elixir, you have a bridge between the raw building blocks of life and the end product of a viable husk. 

Eva Bell (Tempus): “temporally mature[s] a husk to a desired age.” This is potentially an under-appreciated aspect of the whole process: without Tempus, you’d still have to wait decades for resurrected mutants to come to maturity and all throughout that time, the process would be incredibly vulnerable; with Tempus, mutants are brought back to life as fully-grown adults capable of doing their part for Krakoan society. 

Hope Summers (Hope): has the more nebulous task of “enhancing and synergizing...to ensure the success of each resurrection.” As Magneto explains, resurrection is “delicate, almost impossible work.” Hope’s unique power set allows her not only to boost the powers of the rest of the five, but also to improve coordination and thus quality control, so that the overall process has a success rate of 100%.  

As we can see already, this is a system with a lot of irreplacable parts, which means a bunch of potential points of failure. No wonder, then, that Krakoan minds are at work trying to overcome these problems. We already see that “Synch or Mimic” have been floated as “upgrades/extensions/stand-ins” for the Five, which suggests that they’re already thinking about ways to improve functionality by adding to the “circuit” or about ways to maintain service if one of the Five needs to be replaced. 

Similarly, I love how the “Proteus problem” shows how Resurrection is changing our perceptions of so many things in Krakoan society. From his introduction, Proteus has been shown as inherently dangerous because of the way that his powers damage his body - but with the Resurrection system, Proteus is just a mutant who happens to have a chronic illness that can be treated. One interesting question...why is Proteus’ “backup mutant husk” based on Charles Xavier? Charles isn’t his father, so it’s not a question of genetic compatibility. 

The Mind:

Here’s where we really get into the philosophy of identity. Hickman gets really emphatic here that these are not “just clones,” because the backups include “the essence of each mutant, how they think, how they feel, their memories, their very being.” 

I’m personally inclined to agree with Hickman. Even without transference of consciousness as a real thing, I don’t think a strict view of continuity of consciousness can really hold, given the fact there are plenty of breaks in said continuity - we don’t consider people who get knocked out or blackout drunk or just have a nap to no longer be the same person, so what’s the rationale for saying that any of the Strike Team aren’t the same people who they were before?

I also love how the Cerebro part of the system adds all kinds of new problems: there’s the technical complexity of scanning every mutant mind on the planet and then storing and copying that datat to “multiple redundant “cradles,” as well as new philosophical and ethical issues about what happens when you put someone’s mind in someone else’s body, etc. More on this in a bit. 

Scale:

So at least at the time that this document was written, it looks like the mutant population is back to 100,000 (although how much was the Five isn’t clear), but that there are 1 million de-powered mutants (many of whom might want to use the system to regain their powers), and 16 million mutants who were murdered and whose resurrection is a key ideological drive for Krakoa.

As Hickman points out, this brings up issues of productivity and efficiency that we’re used to seeing in industrial and technological processes. The Five’s initial rate of 200 a day would take 300 years to accomplish the goal of reversing Krakoan genocide, which is way too long a timeline.

However, it turns out that there’s a mutant version of Moore’s law: the more the Five do this, the better they get at it (with a nice nod to Wolverine, so “its estimated that capabilities could possibly reach around 30,000 a week” (or 6,000 a day), bringing the timeline down to a far more manageable decade. 

A final bottleneck: Charles Xavier “is not capable of” 6,000 daily downloads, and we already seen Krakoan minds thinking about “a workaraound or a team of telepaths” to supplement someone who’s also busy attending U.N meetings, Quiet Council sessions, plotting world domination, etc.

On a policy wonk side note, I was trying to figure out how Hickman worked out these numbers, and I realized that his math assumes that Krakoa has a five day work-week. As we’ll see in House of X #6, there are major open questions about what kind of economic policy (and thus, what kind of society) this new nation-state will have. Good to see that Actual 19th Century Robber Baron Sebastian Shaw isn’t getting his own way.

One particularly odd thing about Krakoan biomachinery, according to “extensive testing,” the Five don’t actually experience “exertion,” but rather a “blissful experience” of self-actualization. This suggests the psychological equivalent of a perpetual motion machine - rather than requiring more and more labor, the damn thing requires less and less and produces “total fulfillment” as a byproduct. Weird.

Another interesting side effect is that the Five have become “an inseparable family unit” who are undergoing a process of symbiosis - given all the discussion of mechanical hiveminds, it’s worth wondering whether we’re seeing a biological one forming and to what extend is individuality being maintained.

A final, slightly odd note: this Infographic describes the Five’s socio-cultural status as that of “cultural paragons” rather than “something achievable through works,” even though the Five are explicitly described as having carried out “good works.” So what gives?

Resurrection Protocol:

One last bottleneck: the whole process seems to take at least 42 and as much as 52 hours to complete. Although they can clearly work on multiple eggs in one batch, getting that figure down would no doubt be useful in further increasing productivity.

An interesting sign of the cultural/philosophical impacts of the system: Krakoan society now has “fears regarding duplication” of an explicit moral character, and thus requires an elaborate system of confirmation to bring someone back from the dead. Thus, we start to see the formation of mutant law-enforcement entities to deal with “mutant missing persons and suspected deaths and murders,” which is presumably going to be X-Factor rather than X-Force as initially believed (since X-Force turns out to be the intelligence service instead).

A Grateful Nation:

Speaking of the burdens of statecraft, the scene shifts to the aftermath of the U.N recognition vote, where it emerges that Emma Frost used her telepathy to push the Russian ambassador to abstain rather than veto, which Xavier is ok with. Krakoa is now an internationally-recognized nation-state in good standing, something that previous mutant nations never quite managed. 

This gave some parts of the fandom a good deal of trouble, but let me say as someone who’s taken a couple courses in diplomatic history, this is really quite mild stuff compared to the usual run of vote selling, wiretapping, blackmail, threats of economic or military retaliation, and other kinds of skullduggery and corruption. The world of nation-states is not one of moral purity.

Also, if we’re talking about characters being in and out of character, as much as Charles Xavier has been described as an idealist when it comes to his ultimate ends, he’s always been a pragmatist when it comes to his means when it comes to psychic powers. Mental compulsion, altering or erasing memories, mind-wiping people into mental vegetables - as long as it’s for the greater good. 

I’m curious what Emma Frost’s reward will be. This scene explicitly comes after she made her bargain with Xavier and Magneto for a fifty-year monopoly for the Hellfire Trading Company and three seats on the Quiet Council, so I wonder what this bonus will be.

Mutant Diplomacy Infographic:

Speaking of the moral ambiguity of international relations, we learn from this infographic that “all current mutant diplomacy...is dependent on relationships with human nations centering on their need for mutant pharmaceuticals.” On the one hand, it’s better than basing your diplomacy on military aid. On the other hand, it’s notable that Krakoa isn’t building its diplomacy on the basis of human rights or cultural exchange or other elements of “soft power,” it’s all very transactional. (It’s also not a good sign that “nations that have rejected a trade treaty with Krakoa are considered to be naturally adversarial.)

We then get a list of non-treaty nations. Some of these inclusions make sense, others are a bit puzzling, and I have some questions about why certain nations didn’t make the list.

Asia:

Why just Iran in the Middle East? OPEC should be losing their minds about the potential for Krakoan portals to undermine the value of oil. Likewise, plenty of Middle Eastern regimes might be worried about other ethnic minorities using the Krakoan precedent to redouble their own pushes for national independence. And if it’s religious ideology, why is it only a Shia issue and not a Sunni issue?

Madripoor: given where Krakoa is located, this is probably an issue of being afraid of a new power in their sphere of influence. Also, Madripoor has tended to get up to a lot of mutant-related crimes, so they’d probably be worried about this.

North Korea: this being listed as an ideological issue is a bit strange. The official state ideology of North Korea is really peculiar, even among putatively Communist regimes, so it’s hard to tell 

Europe:

I imagine the E.U’s role in negotiating trade deals probably is responsible for the relative lack of European nations on the list, but I’m surprised that none of the right-wing populist governments that have sprung up in central/eastern Europe in recent years who aren’t particularly friendly to real world minorities wouldn’t have an issue with a powerful nation of mutants.

Latveria: probably because Doom is a paranoid, egomaniacal autocrat who pursues economic autarky generally. I am curious, however, about other Marvel-specific nation states - we know that Namor isn’t going to go to Krakoa, but what is Atlantis’ foreign policy on this issue? What do the Inhumans think? Etc.

Russi: as we’ve seen from House of X #1, Russia fears a new global superpower. What’s interesting is we don’t see them exerting any successful influence on Central Asian or Baltic or ex-Soviet eastern European nations. 

South America:

Brazil: is this Bolsanaro's cultural conservatism at work or something else? Because...

Venezuela: is kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum from Brazil’s current government, so it would be odd to see them on the same side of this issue. The only thing I can think of is that this might be due to Chavezista anti-imperialism. Because...

Santo Marco: contrary to what Magneto said in House of X #1, mutants have not been entirely free of the sins of conquest and imperialism, and in one of his first appearances, Magneto conquered the Republic of Santo Marco and ruled it in an extremely brutal fashion. That’s the kind of thing people remember for a long time, so I’m not surprised that you see some South American countries taking a negative view of Krakoa as a result.

Terra Verde: Similarly, Terra Verde’s government was briefly overthrown by the supervillain Diablo, and although mutants were not involved, they may be generally wary of superpower-led nation states. 

Central America:

Honduras: it’s not that I think it’s implausible, but what makes Honduras different from other Central American countries on this issue?

Africa:

This is where we get a potentially really juicy plot hook. As late as X-Men Red, Wakanda has been generally positive towards mutants, especially since not only does T’challa have a personal relationship with Storm, but in the current run of Black Panther, Storm has been popularly worshipped as Hadari Yao, the Walker of Clouds. 

Given that Wakanda is seen as a threat because “they do not need mutant drugs,” this may be a case of Krakoan/Moira’s paranoia that Wakanda’s advanced technology and self-sufficiency might mean that the post-human revolution might start there. 

At the same time, the fact that the rest of the “Wakandan economic protectorate” also reject a trade treaty might suggest that we’re just seeing a simple story of nation-state competition for spheres of influence.

Krakoa Is For All Mutants:

In a very straight-forward example of X-Men dissenting from Xavier’s plan, we see Wolverine - who’s about to take up a significant post in Krakoa’s national security infrastructure - has a big enough problem with the amnesty program that he mentions wanting to beat “Chuck” to death for general smugness and condescension. 

A whole bunch of supervillains cross-over, but while some of them will become significant as members of the Quiet Council or Captains, Apocalypse is framed as the most significant one, because he’s the only one with a pre-existing connection to Krakoa

Indeed, he goes full Disney Princess on page 27 because Krakoa “knows me, and I Krakoa,” which might be a big problem later on if Krakoan’s earlier and deeper connections to Apocalypse come into conflict with its more recent alliances with Cypher and Xavier.

At the same time, at least for the moment Apocalypse is the most ideologically on board with Xavier’s broader project, seeing it as the culmination of his life’s work. 

Thus, he’s happy to say the words: “we submit to the laws of this land, be what they may, and acknowledge from this day forward, we all serve a higher purpose than want or need. One people from this day forward.” It’s an oath of citizenship, but it also speaks to the conditionality of the amnesty. And there are penalties for breaking it. 

#xmen #xmen meta #house of x