Necessity, the Tyrant's plea.

[thesovietbroadcast]

It’s somewhat bleak to think we have so called Marxists that look at a country where workers are essentially worked to death and its main state political organ is overrun by billionaires and think that’s some form of ‘socialism’ like even liberals and anti-communists appear to have a better perception of how China is capitalist and an expanding imperialist power.

[brooding-star-blog]

There are also self-claimed active Maoists in China who are in fact right-wing nationalists or even downright Fascists. Compared with them I often feel that the inconsequential debates of foreigners are almost harmless.

[outerrealmofgenesis]

The first mistake was believing china was ever “communist” to begin with. The CCP was mainly form from the remaining memebers of the KMT Left after the party was high jack by Chiang who repersented right. Chinese cared litte about communism but more about restoring greater china than it was ever about some ideals of some foreigner. What did you think socialism with chinese characteristic means?

Quite frankly China returning to it’s old imperial like state is better for everyone in asia in the long run. Being a “vassal state” of China in the past more often gave the vassals more beniefit to vassal than it did China. One of the reason why China closed of from the rest of the world during the ming dynasty is because lack of fund to fund the return gift and the lavish party for the visiters.

China ultimately will use any means neccasrry to restore it’s own greatness, of that makes up ultra right wing faccist or evil liberal commies than so be it. The Soviet if anything wasn’t any better at not being imperialistic regardless, in fact if they weren’t so focus on communist idealougy they wouldn’t have lost to the U.S, which holds the worse type “imperialism” their is.

[brooding-star-blog]

You obviously know shit about the ever developing history of CPC, or just Chinese history in general. Or 20th century world history. The Party turned reactionary AFTER Mao died, not before, and Ming simply didn’t work like that.郑和下西洋被你吃了吗?台湾岛上的大概不是荷兰人，可能是非洲人吧? Would you please learn to speak Chinese, read a few tons of materials about 土改(Hinton’s Fanshen would be a nice introduction in English if you are too dumb to learn Chinese) and the Cultural Revolution before you judge - oh so easily on your moral high ground - our painful, glorious, groundbreaking Revolution? I would not defy that after the Cultural Revolution ended, the State got controlled by backstabbing bourgeoisie. But to say we never have Communism in the first place? Fuck you. In the 60-70s we were the commiest nation on the globe, never surpassed.

[itzbatz-deactivated20240722]

actually i’ve been meaning to post about this for a long time– like i said it’s bothering me more and more how people still defend the equalists to this day, you would think that in the FIVE YEARS since book 1 we’d be politically wiser

the avatar world has historically and pervasively been divided into four elements, for obvious reasons. important note: NOT benders vs nonbenders, as nonbenders always still belonged ethnically and culturally to one of the four elemental nations, and they form a majority of the population of the world, including many upper class people.

republic city as a major meeting place of these four nations in a constructive rather than destructive way for the first time would naturally have representatives of those four nations as its government, and nonbenders would not have their own representative because they already belonged to one of the four nations at that time. this is important, because we have no evidence that the council members were at any point a “benders” establishment. i mean, sokka’s symbol is literally on the council desk.

then decades go by and by korra’s time the united republic has developed its own distinct culture in which the industrial revolution has gone full steam ahead and nonbenders and their technological advancements have left bending obsolete. at this point we see bending and benders as the following things:

entertainment as sport, which doesn’t pay a living wage despite the probenders being celebrities

hard manual labor like mako’s job at the generation plant

gang activity (the explicitly bending triads) which is a well-known indicator of a group being oppressed, BY. THE. WAY.

the out-of-date council and metalbending police

benders are a minority in republic city. mako and bolin literally grew up homeless in the streets.

meanwhile nonbenders like hiroshi and his kind make up an upper class that believes they should have power rather than the outdated old four nations benders, who have now been reduced to the lower class like i explained in those bullet points. they think it’s unfair that benders are below them yet still legally rule the country. literally if you look at the equalists in the show and the nonbenders who seem interested in equalism, they are all well-dressed and middle-to-upper class, from hiroshi to the rallies to the people listening to the protestor. the only time we see poor nonbenders as a group, in episode 8, they make it clear they’re against the equalists. that’s literally the only time we ever see nonbenders being systematically oppressed, and it was manufactured by the equalists in the first place. I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH, there is zero evidence for benders oppressing nonbenders until the equalists intentionally guide tarrlok into doing it so that they’ll have “evidence” as justification for taking over the city. which by the way they then bombed.

the equalists’ rhetoric is literally taken straight from violent oppressor groups like, most pertinently today, white supremacists. the equalists refer to bending as an “impurity” that must be “cleansed”, they falsely blame everything wrong in the world on bender-on-bender violence, they falsely portray benders as in control and pulling the strings, they scapegoat disenfranchised “thugs” and gang members as evidence benders are violent and abusers of the ~pure and good~ nonbenders. the equalists talk about how “it’s time to take back our city” COUGH COUGH. they literally make bending illegal.

and as for “equalizing the world” aka their goal of bloodbending every bender in existence, the show makes it ABUNDANTLY clear that removing someone’s bending is a huge violation of their personhood. a violation that is the fantasy equivalent of something between cultural genocide, r*pe, and murder. and you would actually care about this if you cared about korra herself, the main hero of the damn show. not only this, but amon can’t personally bloodbend all of the millions of benders in the world. this tells us that they must have had other additional plans to “rid the world of bending”.

furthermore, the leader of the equalists is literally a self-hating bender. noatak/amon is someone without love and pride. HE is korra “gone wrong”, not kuvira (don’t even get me started on that). the show draws many obvious parallels and contrasts between korra and noatak and i think one of the big ones is that korra having self-love and pride in herself is a GOOD thing, it’s something noatak could have used when he was an abused child who hated his bending and then came to republic city and hated it even more. that’s why i will love and defend proud, confident, bold and brash book 1&2 korra to my death, her personality in those first two or three books was the single most powerful and important political statement the whole avatar franchise has ever made.

and guess what? all of this is specific to the avatar franchise! it is not a direct parallel to any real world oppression, because axes of oppression based on magical powers that let you control the elements are unique to this series! it is complex because it is an additional type of identity that we do not have in our world. but we can still analyze it all based on what we know of the human condition, and with critical thinking uncover who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed.

moving on, and then what happens when the council is disbanded and they have “open” elections? a nonbender is elected president.

all this is to say… that there is a reason the equalists were also referred to as “anti-benders”. in the show what we were actually shown is that the equalists were nonbender supremacists made up of wealthy upper-class nonbenders who were “racist” against benders, a poor and oppressed minority class. poor oppressed nonbenders exist too, and they are shown to be in solidarity with benders, for obvious reasons. i have been thinking about this for five years, there is nothing to refute it.

so anyway i have literally spelled it out for you and there is no reason for anyone to defend the equalists anymore or act like there was bender-over-nonbender oppression. thanks

in conclusion, in episode ONE when korra told the equalists “you’re oppressing yourselves”, she was RIGHT

[brooding-star-blog]

Fuck you and your imperialist bullshit. The fictitious world of Avatar is visibly based on China, and the Equalist party is visibly based on the Communist Party of China. The Republic City is visually based on Shanghai (the birthplace of CPC) and HongKong (formerly a colony of British Empire). This animation is in essence another typical anti-commie propaganda-entertainment of American imperialists, decorated with the shallowest appearance of Feudal Chinese culture. You people turn our history and culture into marketable brands, demonize the Revolution which saved our country from imperialists, turn our Chinese symbols into childish fantasies of bourgeoisie ideology and then PROFIT from all of this. Shame on you.

[thesovietbroadcast]

It’s somewhat bleak to think we have so called Marxists that look at a country where workers are essentially worked to death and its main state political organ is overrun by billionaires and think that’s some form of ‘socialism’ like even liberals and anti-communists appear to have a better perception of how China is capitalist and an expanding imperialist power.

[brooding-star-blog]

There are also self-claimed active Maoists in China who are in fact right-wing nationalists or even downright Fascists. Compared with them I often feel that the inconsequential debates of foreigners are almost harmless.

[thebeachboys-deactivated2020050]

the cpp thinks China is "as imperialist as the US" that's not nuanced or complicated it's just wrong. it's wrong in a way noone living in the imperial core ought to be able to be

compared to

[thesovietbroadcast]

Nothing of this changes the reality that China is a growing imperialist power – if you can’t recognise that, maybe it’s because revisionist Marxism-Leninism has yet to evolve beyond a 20th Century analysis.

[brooding-star-blog]

We r actually closer to what Lenin would call an imperialist country as - unlike US - we have literally billions of proletariats and peasants living within our country, exploited by the other few million people in the big cities. It's a bit like new york plus Brazil I guess? Except that this york is only miles away from this Brazil. It's funny that while China is in fact a bourgeoisie dictatorship, Marxism-Leninism still plays a dominant role in the national compulsory education. Kind of schizophrenic.

[brooding-star-blog]

‘Liberalism is okay with reducing murderously oppressive structures into mistakes and shrugging off the oppression of Indigenous people, as long as it has a progressive face. … For liberalism, "it’s not what you deserve, it’s what you believe,“ because liberals believe in “love” but have no intention of providing any deserved fixes to the ravages of white supremacy. Liberalism is okay with the same type of white supremacist logic that Diana espoused, which is why the liberals behind the film cast a supremacist in the leading role. And it is my liberal tendencies which allowed me to go see the film in the first place, instead of taking time to listen to my Palestinian siblings who were organizing protests. But liberalism will not save us. ’

[brooding-star-blog]

Duterte refuses to be America’s puppet and is now called a dictator. Why am I not surprised. Westerners are just as ignorant, hypocritical and evil as ever.

[komraekenkru]

Friendly reminder that you can not like Wonder Woman and still be a feminist. Friendly reminder that you can not like Wonder Woman and not be a misogynist. Friendly reminder that not liking Wonder Woman doesn’t automatically make you a misogynist. Friendly reminder that you can support girls being into comic books and super heroes and not like Wonder Woman. Friendly Reminder that there’s nothing wrong with not liking Wonder Woman.

[brooding-star-blog]

Friendly Reminder that if you like Wonder Woman then you like Western Imperialism

[brooding-star-blog]

Wonder Woman is DISGUSTING

Ye Western Imperialists are as shameless as a century before

[brooding-star-blog]

Trump stops funding Tibet Fund & Ngwang Choephel Fellows. Hooray!

Haven't been on this site for a long time, but, genuine, unironical kudos to dear ol' Donald! What a lovely contribution to real prosperity in Asia. To hell with all those 藏独

[lehdenlaulu]

Hey, do you have any PotC fic recs (otp or ot3 :3)?

So glad you asked! :D

First of all, I must recommend Outlaws and Inlaws, starting with The Swan in Flight. If there’s a favourite post-At World’s End headcanon for me, especially one where there’s a kid involved, it’s this one. It kind of includes every PotC ship imaginable, but it’s mostly sparrabeth. And it’s so so gloriously good.

“Once upon a time, there was a Queen who was the beloved of the Ferryman, and who took a mortal man as her consort, a trickster who went to the land of the dead and back. A bard stood behind her throne, and the Lady of the Sea blessed her.”

Another favourite post-AWE headcanon is Name Game.

“James laughs.

You’ve been waiting for him since before you met him. Stop waiting. He always comes to you eventually.”

And a random assortment of faves:

Nine Pieces of Eight (gen)

Crossing Paths (jack/elizabeth)

ice and fire (james/elizabeth)

Infuriating Companions (jack/elizabeth + james)

And, if you’re interested, I have written some bits here and there as well. OT3 stuff (that doesn’t involve Will anyway) is lamentably scarce, so I suppose I’ll have to write my own. Wouldn’t recommend the older stuff, though, it’s dire. :p

[andarthas-web]

[brooding-star-blog]

I clicked in through the masterlist, thinking this might be talking about the comics slightly addressing the economic consequences of the Depression in USA, which in turn caused chain reactions across the globe, leading up to political Fascism, or maybe even the role America played in the Treaty of Versailles, which directly forced Germany into a poverty-stricken cornered beast, as the Kraken's lines in Cap Steve Rogers issue 6 is basically a slightly altered version of the Communist Manifesto, talking of the oppression of American capitalism. But I got Arentt instead...😂

[brooding-star-blog]

The fact that basically nobody is discussing how ‘Avatar: The Last Air Bender’ and ‘Legend of Korra’ are fundamentally Orientalist cartoons proves that Orientalism and Racism are still very well intact in this field, despite whatever their fans may claim. The most beloved pairing in the fandom is a relationship between a feudal God’s mandate and a capitalist bourgeoisie, sugarcoated by colored skin, vaginas and Oriental elements. This popularity clearly demonstrates the typical progressive-in-name-only-and-is-in-fact-conservative-as-hell nature of capitalism. (Often found in the First World culture nowadays.)

[poof-tylee]

Woah, dude. What’s wrong?

[brooding-star-blog]

I’ll try to be brief, as the list of offences is rather long. Three out of four kingdoms are visibly based on different eras and regions of China, the fourth a hybrid of Inuit lifestyle and Taoist philosophy. The American creators probably think combining two very distinct cultures is doubly correct and interesting. In fact, it is doubly colonist and insulting. Fire Nation, considering the clothes style, the hairstyle and the way its people sit (i.e. kneel), is loosely Han, the most prestigious Dynasty in the history of China, as the biggest ethnic group in China is named after Han, and the Chinese language is literally called Han language in Chinese. It would not be wrong to say that the concept of Han stands for Chinese culture. However, such a Hannish state is presented as the villainous conqueror in the series, equipped with the embodiment of the Industrial Revolution, the steam engine. Now, the problem is, the actual villainous conquerors equipped with engines in China’s painful history were the British, the French, and, alas, the Americans. They came, they killed, they enslaved, they colonized. So the symbol of Chinese civilization is knitted with the WESTERN symbol of COLONIZATION in a show aiming for children, who have no idea and would swallow all of these unconsciously. Thus, audiences ignorant of colonies history would have an impression in which the colonized Han people are depicted as colonizers, while the REAL colonizers, the Europeans and the AMERICANs and their bloody crimes and exploits, which were never punished or even accounted for in the real world either, are edited out of this narrative, pleasantly forgotten. And that is only the first line in the series. Bravo. Then let’s move on to the Earth Kingdom, which is overwhelmingly Manchu, clothes style and hairstyle etc. The kingdom is attacked by colonizers. No problem. It did happen. The colonizers look like Han. Huge problem. The King had no idea what’s going on. That’s okay too, for this did happen in late Qing. Then a character Azula gave a speech about primogeniture, glorifying inequality. So far so good, since she is a villain, therefore the show seems to be at least against inequality. And then the hero Aang came to stop her. Aang is, essentially, a violent medieval Pope. His authority is legalized - and his violence justified - by the Divine (and the narrator), not by the consent of the governed. He hold actual power over lay politics. And he is visibly Tibetan. The popular narrative in the West is that the exiled Tibetans are poor victims of the oppression of the tyrannical communist party, and we compassionate Westerners should do something to help them, eg putting them in a cartoon and depicting a divine Tibetan boy as a survivor of genocide and a savior of mankind. Good for you Westerners. I’ll point out some other facts. For example, in Aang’s remembrance of his people, nobody produces anything, nobody ever does any labour. Has any audience of the show ever wonder where do these monks get their food? Because that is the key of the problem. Because the Tibetan monks were the ruling class of a theocratic society built on slavery. They did not have to produce anything themselves, because their serfs did it for them. The old Tibetan religious system was essentially a superstructure built on serfdom, with its every doctrine justifying slavery and terrorized the poor slaves with horrors of hell and afterlife, so as to brainwash the slaves not to revolt. And just like their Indian equivalent Dalit, the Tibetan serfs are not seen, not touched, not mentioned and most importantly, not heard. They are edited out of the narrative, just like the actual white oppressors. It goes like this, because the Westerners who covered these stories never care about the ACTUAL Asian people. All they ever have paid attention to are the exotic culture, the Other, the Oriental, and whatever bullshit required by ideologies. And many audiences, denied the access to historical accounts from the other side of the iron curtain, have bought and are still buying this Orientalist narrative.

[john1106]

Ok reblogged for some interesting perspective here. The same way I did for the attack on titans being accuse for fascist propaganda. I can’t really comment much about it since i’m totally lacking the history knowledge and there are alot of things here that totally went over my head.

Not sure if your orientalist perspective can same applies as well for legend of korra. But i don think want to dig deeper into that because it is getting complicated for the show that are supposed to be for children entertainment. 

[brooding-star-blog]

It applies for Legend of Korra, which, considering the Chinese historical era it bases on, is even MORE colonist than the last airbender. And one of the biggest problems is exactly that such an Orientalist and Colonist Narrative is aimed at children. I call it entertaining brainwashing with ‘consent’, starting from younglings.

[brooding-star-blog]

The fact that basically nobody is discussing how ‘Avatar: The Last Air Bender’ and ‘Legend of Korra’ are fundamentally Orientalist cartoons proves that Orientalism and Racism are still very well intact in this field, despite whatever their fans may claim. The most beloved pairing in the fandom is a relationship between a feudal God’s mandate and a capitalist bourgeoisie, sugarcoated by colored skin, vaginas and Oriental elements. This popularity clearly demonstrates the typical progressive-in-name-only-and-is-in-fact-conservative-as-hell nature of capitalism. (Often found in the First World culture nowadays.)

[poof-tylee]

Woah, dude. What’s wrong?

[brooding-star-blog]

I’ll try to be brief, as the list of offences is rather long. Three out of four kingdoms are visibly based on different eras and regions of China, the fourth a hybrid of Inuit lifestyle and Taoist philosophy. The American creators probably think combining two very distinct cultures is doubly correct and interesting. In fact, it is doubly colonist and insulting. Fire Nation, considering the clothes style, the hairstyle and the way its people sit (i.e. kneel), is loosely Han, the most prestigious Dynasty in the history of China, as the biggest ethnic group in China is named after Han, and the Chinese language is literally called Han language in Chinese. It would not be wrong to say that the concept of Han stands for Chinese culture. However, such a Hannish state is presented as the villainous conqueror in the series, equipped with the embodiment of the Industrial Revolution, the steam engine. Now, the problem is, the actual villainous conquerors equipped with engines in China’s painful history were the British, the French, and, alas, the Americans. They came, they killed, they enslaved, they colonized. So the symbol of Chinese civilization is knitted with the WESTERN symbol of COLONIZATION in a show aiming for children, who have no idea and would swallow all of these unconsciously. Thus, audiences ignorant of colonies history would have an impression in which the colonized Han people are depicted as colonizers, while the REAL colonizers, the Europeans and the AMERICANs and their bloody crimes and exploits, which were never punished or even accounted for in the real world either, are edited out of this narrative, pleasantly forgotten. And that is only the first line in the series. Bravo. Then let’s move on to the Earth Kingdom, which is overwhelmingly Manchu, clothes style and hairstyle etc. The kingdom is attacked by colonizers. No problem. It did happen. The colonizers look like Han. Huge problem. The King had no idea what’s going on. That’s okay too, for this did happen in late Qing. Then a character Azula gave a speech about primogeniture, glorifying inequality. So far so good, since she is a villain, therefore the show seems to be at least against inequality. And then the hero Aang came to stop her. Aang is, essentially, a violent medieval Pope. His authority is legalized - and his violence justified - by the Divine (and the narrator), not by the consent of the governed. He hold actual power over lay politics. And he is visibly Tibetan. The popular narrative in the West is that the exiled Tibetans are poor victims of the oppression of the tyrannical communist party, and we compassionate Westerners should do something to help them, eg putting them in a cartoon and depicting a divine Tibetan boy as a survivor of genocide and a savior of mankind. Good for you Westerners. I’ll point out some other facts. For example, in Aang’s remembrance of his people, nobody produces anything, nobody ever does any labour. Has any audience of the show ever wonder where do these monks get their food? Because that is the key of the problem. Because the Tibetan monks were the ruling class of a theocratic society built on slavery. They did not have to produce anything themselves, because their serfs did it for them. The old Tibetan religious system was essentially a superstructure built on serfdom, with its every doctrine justifying slavery and terrorized the poor slaves with horrors of hell and afterlife, so as to brainwash the slaves not to revolt. And just like their Indian equivalent Dalit, the Tibetan serfs are not seen, not touched, not mentioned and most importantly, not heard. They are edited out of the narrative, just like the actual white oppressors. It goes like this, because the Westerners who covered these stories never care about the ACTUAL Asian people. All they ever have paid attention to are the exotic culture, the Other, the Oriental, and whatever bullshit required by ideologies. And many audiences, denied the access to historical accounts from the other side of the iron curtain, have bought and are still buying this Orientalist narrative.

[tragicsock]

This might be an oversimplification, but would you say that a show which depicts a diverse set of cultures (fictional as they may be but inspired by fact) can only be wholly inoffensive if the people who create it are of the cultures which the show’s own people were based on?

So if Mike, Bryan, and their entire team were all Chinese, Tibetan, Inuit, etc, and still created both shows with the exact same story, would you still have the same issues with the material?

Of course, there are historical inaccuracies in both shows—it’s obvious where the source material is for each culture, but someone from the Fire Nation isn’t Chinese. The creators drew inspiration from the culture, sure, but they didn’t divest the entire history of every REAL culture in the show.

I’m not sure if I understand the argument correctly, but I’m interested.

[brooding-star-blog]

I would. It will still be offesive. The problem lies within the content of the show, which goes beyond the mere ethnic identity of its producers. (p.s. as a Non-Westerner I don't buy Identity Politics) I am not trying to accuse the show merely of historical inaccuracies. It is fiction, afterall. And, to be honest, among all the popular Orientalist works in Western popular culture, the Avatar series count as one of the most accurate. Relatively. BUT that only intensifies the dreadful and often unnoticed effects of its COLONIST NARRATIVE. It's not about whether they present real Chinese history or not. It would not be colonist narrative if it is really real. The problem lies EXACTLY with what is NOT real, with what the fictitious story have LEFT OUT, TWISTED, DISTORTED, DEFORMED. And the show got popular. The show left irrevocable IMPRESSIONs on its young audience in the First World. As most of them do NOT interact with the actual Asia in their lives, the show constructs an 'Asia' for them. The written language within the fictitious Avatar world is CHINESE. Every character writes it. And every word is spelled correctly.(that's rare; Firefly does it all wrong) This speaks way louder than 'fire nation isn't chinese', because, I tell you what, the language is tremendously older than the English word 'chinese', and is in itself an ancient sign and symbol long before any Westerner had any concept of China. In Asia (another name termed by Westerners), the language stands for Han, and Han stands for the language. For all that matters, the fictitous states in the Avatar series ARE China, and is a fake 'China' totally constructed by a colonist narrative.

[brooding-star-blog]

The fact that basically nobody is discussing how ‘Avatar: The Last Air Bender’ and ‘Legend of Korra’ are fundamentally Orientalist cartoons proves that Orientalism and Racism are still very well intact in this field, despite whatever their fans may claim. The most beloved pairing in the fandom is a relationship between a feudal God’s mandate and a capitalist bourgeoisie, sugarcoated by colored skin, vaginas and Oriental elements. This popularity clearly demonstrates the typical progressive-in-name-only-and-is-in-fact-conservative-as-hell nature of capitalism. (Often found in the First World culture nowadays.)

[poof-tylee]

Woah, dude. What’s wrong?

[brooding-star-blog]

I’ll try to be brief, as the list of offences is rather long. Three out of four kingdoms are visibly based on different eras and regions of China, the fourth a hybrid of Inuit lifestyle and Taoist philosophy. The American creators probably think combining two very distinct cultures is doubly correct and interesting. In fact, it is doubly colonist and insulting. Fire Nation, considering the clothes style, the hairstyle and the way its people sit (i.e. kneel), is loosely Han, the most prestigious Dynasty in the history of China, as the biggest ethnic group in China is named after Han, and the Chinese language is literally called Han language in Chinese. It would not be wrong to say that the concept of Han stands for Chinese culture. However, such a Hannish state is presented as the villainous conqueror in the series, equipped with the embodiment of the Industrial Revolution, the steam engine. Now, the problem is, the actual villainous conquerors equipped with engines in China’s painful history were the British, the French, and, alas, the Americans. They came, they killed, they enslaved, they colonized. So the symbol of Chinese civilization is knitted with the WESTERN symbol of COLONIZATION in a show aiming for children, who have no idea and would swallow all of these unconsciously. Thus, audiences ignorant of colonies history would have an impression in which the colonized Han people are depicted as colonizers, while the REAL colonizers, the Europeans and the AMERICANs and their bloody crimes and exploits, which were never punished or even accounted for in the real world either, are edited out of this narrative, pleasantly forgotten. And that is only the first line in the series. Bravo. Then let’s move on to the Earth Kingdom, which is overwhelmingly Manchu, clothes style and hairstyle etc. The kingdom is attacked by colonizers. No problem. It did happen. The colonizers look like Han. Huge problem. The King had no idea what’s going on. That’s okay too, for this did happen in late Qing. Then a character Azula gave a speech about primogeniture, glorifying inequality. So far so good, since she is a villain, therefore the show seems to be at least against inequality. And then the hero Aang came to stop her. Aang is, essentially, a violent medieval Pope. His authority is legalized - and his violence justified - by the Divine (and the narrator), not by the consent of the governed. He hold actual power over lay politics. And he is visibly Tibetan. The popular narrative in the West is that the exiled Tibetans are poor victims of the oppression of the tyrannical communist party, and we compassionate Westerners should do something to help them, eg putting them in a cartoon and depicting a divine Tibetan boy as a survivor of genocide and a savior of mankind. Good for you Westerners. I’ll point out some other facts. For example, in Aang’s remembrance of his people, nobody produces anything, nobody ever does any labour. Has any audience of the show ever wonder where do these monks get their food? Because that is the key of the problem. Because the Tibetan monks were the ruling class of a theocratic society built on slavery. They did not have to produce anything themselves, because their serfs did it for them. The old Tibetan religious system was essentially a superstructure built on serfdom, with its every doctrine justifying slavery and terrorized the poor slaves with horrors of hell and afterlife, so as to brainwash the slaves not to revolt. And just like their Indian equivalent Dalit, the Tibetan serfs are not seen, not touched, not mentioned and most importantly, not heard. They are edited out of the narrative, just like the actual white oppressors. It goes like this, because the Westerners who covered these stories never care about the ACTUAL Asian people. All they ever have paid attention to are the exotic culture, the Other, the Oriental, and whatever bullshit required by ideologies. And many audiences, denied the access to historical accounts from the other side of the iron curtain, have bought and are still buying this Orientalist narrative.

[brooding-star-blog]

The fact that basically nobody is discussing how ‘Avatar: The Last Air Bender’ and 'Legend of Korra’ are fundamentally Orientalist cartoons proves that Orientalism and Racism are still very well intact in this field, despite whatever their fans may claim. The most beloved pairing in the fandom is a relationship between a feudal God’s mandate and a capitalist bourgeoisie, sugarcoated by colored skin, vaginas and Oriental elements. This popularity clearly demonstrates the typical progressive-in-name-only-and-is-in-fact-conservative-as-hell nature of capitalism. (Often found in the First World culture nowadays.)

[riverofmolecules]

I am never letting this go because I never let things go but I remember when someone was all about how great and non-Orientalist Avatar is compared to Jackie Chan Adventures and I was like, “You know Avatar was made by white people while Jackie Chan Adventures was made by an actual Chinese person, right?”

And I was watching the show while doing data entry yesterday and I realized that in addition to representing the Eight Immortals and their symbols accurately (although they have become banishers of demons on the show), they also accurately include the ba gua trigrams and their ‘elements’ like for two broken lines over one unbroken (which also represents thunder) represent the demon of thunder. They only switched out lake for moon.

Meanwhile, Avatar’s dragons have wings.

[postingmachine9000]

it’s really funny how no one complains when Superman, another, arguably even more blatant Jewish power fantasy, has gone through the ringer of offensive stuff and no one bats an eye. Like to wit:

Superman became a fascist dictator (Injustice)

Superman was raised by an antisemitic dictator and became the embodiment of his will (Red Son)

Superman was manipulated into serving a character that was explicitly based off of Adolf Hitler in a manner similar to Captain America now (DCAU)

Likewise, despite his Jewish roots, everyone understands that using superman in a manner contradictory to his origins isn’t terribly insulting or offensive. On one hand, it could be because Superman was created for the purpose of being blatant war propaganda. On the other hand, it could be because DC has consistently tried to avoid pandering to the most toxic elements of this fucking hellsite.

[brooding-star-blog]

I could see that the Cold War propaganda is still very well intact in the Western world, and basically every ‘progressive’ person here is still buying that ‘socialism=tyranny’ ‘Soviet is as bad as or maybe worse than Fascism’ bullshit. Look, if Stalin is just an 'antisemitic dictator’ in your narrative, then you bloody well deserve to have your so called Jewish hero - in fact just a marketable, profitable as well as ideological brand in the consumerist machine of capitalism - 'offended’.

[postingmachine9000]

So before we embark on some merry discourse, can you at least give me a frame of reference WRT your ideological identity?

[brooding-star-blog]

That is already self-evident in my other repost.

[brooding-star-blog]

A hint: mine's not Western.