Bonkers to think about artists in Ukraine participating in artfight rn. Like. "Yeagh we are getting actively bombed right now also I have to finish drawing a colorful dog".
I cannot recommend bringing your heritage and culture into how you view media enough.
It is important to consider the culture of the person who created the piece, absolutely; but the different perspectives offered by the viewers is fascinating in and of itself and does not always detract from the message.
As an example, when I was younger, I watched Schindler's List. This movie is famously shot in black and white except for one section, concerning a little girl in a red coat. The camera follows her until her eventual death.
I am Turtle Island Indigenous and I was always taught that the only color spirits could see was red, because it is the color of life and blood.
So the second the girl in the red jacket came on screen, something inside me chilled with fear.
The only color in the movie was that red. At some point, I, the viewer, had died.
I remember sobbing at the sight of the burning human piles that were shown, convinced I was buried in there somewhere. The reason I had only seen red on the girl was that my death was recent. I was the ash in the air mistaken for snow. I had died before her and had followed her, helplessly, until she followed me.
The message I got for that was maybe not what the creator had intended: that there was no "being clever enough" or "good enough" or "kind enough" that would shield or protect you from such a massive tidal wave of evil.
You are not exempt from tragedy, that red jacket whispered. You are not special.
When I told some of my white friends about my experience with viewing Schindler's List, some were shocked and the rest just out-and-out mocked me for my "media illiteracy".
"it was just a filming trick to make you feel something," I remember one saying, which terrified me. How had he not felt anything even before she showed up?
However, when I repeated my viewing to a college class, they were fascinated. The implications of what I had seen and felt made the film all the more terrifying and solemn. It encouraged a lot of people to try to ask themselves what media meant from a cultural perspective, where they hadn't done that before.
Hvaing this come across my dash while I’ve been low-key crashing out over the ignored Jewish elements in X-Men comics (American superhero comics in general tbh) is. It’s a weird fucking feeling.
To be clear, I’m not here to scold @sound-the-horn because how dare they read their culture into a Jewish movie, blah blah blah. It’s more about the reaction they got? Because I have a sinking feeling that if I did the same thing, there’s not an insignificant chance that I would get shut down, too. I am Jewish, and in this hypothetical situation, I would be discussing a Jewish film made by a Jewish film about the Jewish genocide, and I still think there’s a good chance I might get dismissed. I’ve seen the Jewish elements in works by Jewish creators ignore, dismissed, or deliberately ripped out too often to not have doubts.
idk what I’m trying to say here. there’s a discomfort with interpretations outside the cultural mainstream I guess? like, it doesn’t matter whether you’re reading or writing your minority culture into a piece of work, there’s not an insignificant chance that it’ll get sanded away if that work gets popular. does that make any sense?
On a more personal note, @sound-the-horn reading your interpretation reminded me of these two bits from Night and Maus respectively:
Anti-semitism is so deep-rooted and widespread that it is heartbreaking but not surprising that you are made to feel this way. Your views are still incredibly important and your perspective is just as sacred as mine, but I know me saying that is not going to lessen the sting of having others undervalue that perspective.
For the record, I would love to read more about the Jewish elements in X-Men. It may not be my fandom, but reading about cultural analysis is something I am deeply interested in. And I know there are many out there who would be delighted to see it, both within and without of the Jewish community; it's just unfortunate that the bigots are always the loudest and take up the most space.
"Nize Baby!" A comic strip by Milt Gross that made heavy use of comedic Yiddish. In the 1920s and 1930s he was beloved by Jewish immigrants. Some of his characters' sayings, like "Banana Oil!" ("Bullshit!") became memetic.
Mickey Katz : What Gross did with pictures, he did with music. SUPER corny by modern standards but his audience ate it up-representation matters!
Ernie Kovacs: Hungarian-Jewish comedian who went on to write for MAD magazine, a bastion of Jewish humor.
Harvey Moiseyevich Volodarskii: A Russo-Jewish magician character you fight in the Japanese game No More Heroes. Many famous magicians were Jewish, including Harry Houdini (Volodarskii is based off him) and David Copperfield.
I've never really liked or cared for superheroes, but my dad did and probably would've had some things to say about their Jewish origins.
And as for death rituals...I said the Shema for him on his deathbed. He had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (throat cancer) and couldn't say it for himself.
this!!! is!!!! what!!!! I’m talking about!!!!!!!!! this is deep space nine babey!!!!!!! it’s easy to be a saint when all your basic needs are met, when you have the room for personal growth. and when you don’t you frequently have to make some hard fucking choices and sometimes those are bad choices but sometimes bad choices are all you have
We need to isolate and start selectively breeding the plastic eating bacteria so we can optimise their efficiency, and then somehow splice their DNA into the gut bacteria of an obligate carnivore, so we can put it in our cats gut biomes so they'll finally be free of having to choose between whether they want to eat plastic or whether they want to live.
I know this is meant to be funny but it actually makes such a good point about how ADHD and executive dysfunction can impact people in really major ways, including financially
Consider following political and social justice tumblrs under a different login than the one you use to find cool art / cat pictures / fandom stuff / kink stuff / etc
Or like just in general, if you're getting most of your political news in the same apps where you do most of your fun / sexy shit,
pls give some thought to where and when those streams get crossed, esp if you haven't really thought about it before
For some people it doesn't matter much, but for some people it does.
There's a concept in psychology called "overcoupling," which is basically when a person's trauma is super cross-wired, so to speak, with the present or with a certain topic
Overcoupling can both cause and worsen intrusive thoughts and depression, especially for people with a history of trauma
Or, more simply: If you're mentally whipping back and forth between cute animal, funny joke, porn, genocide psa, and hate crime footage at the speed of scrolling, that can really mess with your head, and sometimes it takes people quite a while to pin it down
Or, if the place you go to relax and look at fandom shit is also where you get all your news about ongoing global crises, that's gonna seriously mess with your ability to actually relax and rest
That sort of thing, if that makes sense. It's not "Don't do this or else!!" It's just kind of a "hey make sure you didn't accidentally frogboil your stress responses or something"
#craaaaaaap. #fuck. #fuuuuuuuck. #i gotta do smth about that. # thank you twin # but WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH #CHANGING ACCOUNTS IS SUPER HAAARD WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH #how do I know if this shit is even messing with me anyway #how did YOU know this shit was messing with people #what book did you get your strange eldritch knowledge from???
Oh! So funny story but I actually edit psychology books for a living lol
So, many books, but the knowledge isn't eldritch - it's evidence-based!
Also, before I go into it:
This isn't something anyone needs to stress over or especially panic over, especially if you don't really feel like it's affecting you personally.
I simply was having a thoughtful night and wanted to share a nudge/tip/data point to help people be more intentional
Best of luck!
But yes, further explanation!:
The concept of overcoupling specifically comes from Somatic Experiencing, which is a type of therapy and bodywork. It was invented by a psychologist and trauma survivor, Dr. Peter Levine, in the 1990s. The idea behind Somatic Experiencing, as well as other somatic ("body-based") healing practices, is that, as we know, trauma is stored not just in the mind, but also in the body - and therefore SE says, in order to heal after trauma, we must work with the body too. They have some really cool articles and theses on the org's Research page here
But the reason I know isn't specific to somatic experiencing itself, I just know a lot about trauma, psychology books, and "mind, body, spirit" publishing (kind of a genre tag for a lot of these books, especially for alternative and non-Western healing practices).
Sooooooo,
If you want specific book recs for the eldritch-evidence-based knowledge, I highly recommend:
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
by Stephanie Foo
and
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
by Peter Levine
Also major publishers in psychology and healing that I really like and respect:
New Harbinger Publications (huge leader and force in evidence-based psychology publishing)
North Atlantic Books (Peter Levine's publisher, they have a lot of really awesome and innovative books, and are the main publisher for somatic experiencing) (Ironically, they're on the Mid-Pacific Coast tho lol)
(Note since I've been asked before: This is in no way an ad or an affiliate link. I have never used either of those on reasonsforhope/directactionforhope, and I never plan to bc I believe in eliminating perverse incentives in my activism, etc. I do trust both those publishers bc I've personally worked with them, but they're in no way paying me to say this (or paying me rn in general; I'm on medical leave / sabbatical); I chose to work with them because I really like and respect them and their books.)
--
On a different type of note, in terms of how I figured it out:
I figured it out because it messed with me a lot when I was in college. And I was in college during the start of the Black Lives Matter movement and the first Trump presidency - there were a LOT of horrifying things on social media.
I'd go on tumblr, or facebook, to relax and see some cute animal pictures - and then I'd end up seeing them sandwiched between genocide PSAs, and every new #MeToo announcement, and videos of unarmed Black people being murdered
It did, indeed, lowkey frogboiled my stress responses, which I noticed bc every time I ended up going on tumblr, I ended up feeling way worse than I started. And it was specifically messing with my sleep a lot bc I'd be scrolling before bed, as we all do, and then - BOOM ! DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS HORRIFIC WAR CRIME?
like every 3 posts
and I was actually in a city with that was targeted by a lot of right-wing extremists, so there wasn't like, a lot of space between "horrifying news shit" and "my life" and things like "is it safe to walk to the store right now?"
It wasn't great for me!! I ended up quitting tumblr for like 6 years, until the COVID pandemic started and I was hella bored in lockdown, and in all that time I continued to be glad I left tumblr. Honestly, if I didn't run reasonsforhope on here, I would've deleted my account on here again a couple years ago lol
I will say tumblr is actually in many ways far MORE chill about politics and social justice than it used to be. But that's because the bar was subterranean!!!!
But yeah, at the time, what I did was start by filtering things a lot better and blocking tags and using social media less.
It helped, but ultimately I decided I just didn't want to deal with any of that shit anymore. So I quit tumblr for years, and I deleted Facebook off my phone and just kept Messenger (this was like 2016; young ppl still used facebook), and it helped my mental health a lot
So I went "Great, awesome, clearly that worked, keep it up." And now I periodically just reassess to make sure that I engage with politics and triggering shit in a more intentional way
So, if you want to check if it's messing with you, you could try things like:
making a new account for a few days, and curating a new dashboard, and see how using that feels / start there
take a break from tumblr or switch to like exclusively social media playlists of cat videos for a few days, and see how that feels
filter a bunch of tags or unfollow a couple blogs for a week or two, and see if that makes a difference
take a few days to make a conscious effort to use different social media for fun than you do for serious shit / news / triggering shit. see if that feels like it's worth exploring more
And, psa just in general. Not because I think people can't take care of themselves or can't make their own decisions, but because sometimes these things really can frogboil you before you realize:
If you see a post that makes you spiral or triggers you, please take at least one step to make sure you won't see the post again
e.g., block the tag, filter a term, unfollow the blog that posted it, click "no interest in this post" on the dropdown. you can also go to tumblr settings and tell it to show you fewer posts from people you don't follow and communities you're not in, which can help a lot, esp since posts with a lot of engagement are often more controversial or upsetting
Anyway, yeah - this isn't something to panic over, especially if you don't think it's affecting you just a data point to help people be more intentional
this is prime proof that this ENTIRE WEBSITE is autistic because nowhere else would a no tags post that's just an informative list about slang get this much traction.
It feels like I’ve talked about this before, but to me the funniest version of Portal is if Chell is deaf.
Like, most of the major story beats, at least the ones that directly affect her, have a prominent visual component so she’s following along with the basics. But she has no idea who cave johnson is, or what wheatley was trying to explain to her, and she certainly wasn’t hurt by any of glados’ insults.
but the best part of this headcanon is imagining glados checking chell’s personnel file years down the line, noticing the word “deaf” for the first time, and just going “WHAT???”
So I know that a lot of sources including google are claiming or are under the impression that Ringo Starr doesn't have the elf stones so I just wanted to clear things up reliably once and for all:
Yes, he did post about to gifting them to Barry Keoghan, the actor portraying him in the upcoming films, as a good luck charm for his role. However, the photo he posted was of him handing Keoghan a small leather sack, while elf stones famously erode all kinds of skin. Additionally, Ringo is on the record (I think? I swear I read this but I can't find the interview. Please reach out if you know what I'm talking about) that he keeps the stones away from cameras to prevent power-dampening effects.
It's likely that what he gave was a pouch of prop elf stones as a show of good faith, which could also be related to the old legend that a false elf stone will become real in a moment of need. Some people when presented with this evidence claim that while the photo was staged, the real stones were handed over in private, but this seems far fetched to me, especially since it's widely accepted that Ringo bound himself to the stones for nine and ninety years when he acquired them.
With all that said: Please stop spreading misinformation about the elf stones. If you don't have all the info, don't state your own assumptions as fact. And please do not listen to google's AI on important topics like these. All signs point to Ringo Starr currently being in possession of the elf stones.
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