The global reaction to Aaron Bushnell’s self immolation has been very jarring. I understand how powerful and scary it is to witness such a young man set himself on fire while screaming for a free Palestine, but to now see comments like “his death will not be in vain” and “the video will haunt me forever” is very strange considering the depravity of the videos we have been seeing coming out of Gaza for 4 months. It seems like people are now using Aaron as the “perfect martyr” of Palestine that we can put all of our efforts into celebrating as if there has not been 30,000+ Palestinian martyrs that we have been begging you to acknowledge
something. about. the horror of being sent on an impossible (death) quest and obligations and hospitality politics. the trauma of not having a home, and then the trauma of being in a house that becomes actively hostile to you, one that would swallow you whole and spit out your bones if you step out of line. all of this is conditional, your existence continues to be something men want gone.
it's about going back as far as I can with the perseus narrative because there's always a version of a myth that exists behind the one that survives. the missing pieces are clearly defined, but the oldest recorded version of it isn't there! and there's probably something older before that!! but it's doomed to forever be an unfilled space, clearly defined by an outline of something that was there and continues to be there in it's absence.
and love. it's also about love. even when you had nothing, you had love.
on the opposite side of the spectrum, this is Not About Ovid Or Roman-Renaissance Reception, Depictions And Discourses On The Perseus Narrative.
edit: to add to the above, while it's not about Ovid, because I'm specifically trying to peel things back to the oldest version of this story, Ovid is fine. alterations on the Perseus myth that give more attention Medusa predate Ovid by several centuries. this comic is also not about those, either! there are many versions of this story from the ancient world. there is not one singular True or Better version, they're all saying something.
Perseus, Daniel Ogden
Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, edited & translated by Stephen M Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephen Brunet
I was looking through the US Copyright Office to see who owns Spyro now (Microsoft) and I found this list of titles being renewed.
Between a bunch of Crash Bandicoot characters and Spyro is "Single heterosexual" (1996)
Does anyone know what game this is??? I want to play it.
Universal Interactive merged with -> Vivendi Games who merged with -> Activision who merged with -> Microsoft who now owns the rights to "Crash Bandicoot", "Single heterosexual", and "Spyro the dragon".
So many of you are genuinely monsters and you think you're the heroes. Forgive me for not believing that any of you ever actually gave a shit about Palestinians, as you sit here in your pro-hamas rallies with swastika flags while you chant "gas the jews!" and tear down posters of kidnapped hostages. You glorify Hamas, the terrorist organization that uses and abuses Palestinians, that shoots them if they try to evacuate from zones that Israel has warned they're going to strike.
You have been silent for decades while Lebanon and Jordan keep their Palestinian population in refugee camps. You have been silent when no other neighboring country has given Palestinians citizenship status that would enable them to live a comfortable, normal life. You were silent when Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas rockets misfire and kill innocent Palestinians. You were silent when Hamas steals aid meant for civilians. You were silent when Hamas dug up water pipes from the ground so that they could make more rockets.
If you were silent then, you're using Palestinians as a mask for your Jew-hatred. If you want to really advocate for Palestinians, keep the same energy for every country, not just the only Jewish state, and try to educate yourself on what Israelis have been doing to try to help Palestinians, because I promise you it's way more than you've ever done in your life.
my fave thing is when the typical body panning sexualized male gaze-y shot of a woman happens in a scene with all female leads so it ends up looking incredibly lesbian
at a certain point i think we need to acknowledge that art is very rarely created accidentally. if you can see a theme in a work than that theme was, more likely than not, at least somewhat intentional on behalf of the creator. you don't put a piece of yourself out into the world without thinking about what it means at least a little bit.