ZanarkandAbesFan
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User ID: 2935
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
There have been quite a few funny stories coming out of this entire clown-show. I've seen comments on reddit about people using pictures of Keir Starmer to pass age verification.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
You can't tell me that making this pun while happening to also be white is a knowing dog whistle.
I didn't.
However this was like 20 years ago and I have no idea to what extent the woke has penetrated fantasy.
I haven't read as much fantasy recently as I wish I had, but from what I have read, my impression is that while I don't agree that it's as extreme as @YoungAchamian makes out, there's usually at least some element of wokeness in most things. For example, here's a list of some of the things I've read over the past few years and what stands out in each of them as particularly culture-war driven:
1/ The Chronicles of Castellane (Cassandra Clare): Everyone seems to be bisexual by default, although the main characters look at this point to all be ending up in heterosexual relationships, making the bisexual angle come across as oddly token in retrospect.
2/ The Library Trilogy (Mark Lawrence): One villain is the rabidly racist, anti-immigrant king of the city where the events of the story take place (whose name happens to be one letter away from "Donald"). Also involves inter-species romance.
3/ Where You Must Not Go (Emil Haskett): A Swedish urban fantasy book. Of the five main characters, one is gay and one is a straight male SJW who sometimes wears makeup (and whose parents are a gay couple). One of the villains is a violent, racist, homophobic ex-mercenary who's also a repressed homosexual. Nothing too extreme but all together a collection of profiles that would be quite statistically improbably IRL.
4/ Age of Madness trilogy (Joe Abercrombie): By far the most high-profile name on this list and also the only grimdark series mentioned here, which you'd think would be particularly resistant to woke influences. Arguably woke features include universally hyper-competent female characters whom everyone is in love with, a racist country lord who's also a repressed homosexual and finally a memorable scene where the urbane and sophisticated prince lectures this same country lord on the merits of diversity and multiculturalism during a visit to the capital (and truthfully speaking makes a much more articulate case than Sadiq Khan ever does). That such elements were noticeably absent from the same author's previous books, e.g. The First Law trilogy, does throw into sharper focus the exogenous changes that seem to have occurred in the broader genre.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
I'd have assumed she's uncontroversially mixed race.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
See also the rather contrived accusations of Sino- and Hiberno-phobia.
Hiberno-phobia? I can only remember one Irish character, and I don't remember them being portrayed particularly badly (apart from being bad at quidditch).
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Noice.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
The nuts are their staffers and their boots on the ground and so it seems keeping them happy is more important than being able to say, "sometimes its just a cute girl making a pun".
My guess, for whatever it's worth, is that it's not just a pun. I don't think for a second that AE is trying to usher in a new age of white supremacy but I feel they were being deliberately provocative because they figured this blowing up would be good for them. They're probably right - I wouldn't be surprised if a fair few people who previously wouldn't have thought twice about the ad now decide to buy there just to annoy the scolds.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
it's ignored unless you're a US adversary.
Surely it's the other way around? If you're not meaningfully dependent on the US then the opinions of the educated elite there don't matter. Azerbaijan and Armenia would seem to be an example of this, as well as your example of the USSR.
US backed forces ethnically cleansed parts of Iraq and Syria.
I don't know enough about this to comment.
Turkey is an ally and military/economic partner to Israel and has always been, regardless of what politicians on both sides like to say in public.
You know better than me, but that's... not the impression I've gotten. Hosting members of Hamas doesn't look like what a military partner to Israel would do. I've also seen reports suggesting Turkey is involved in financing Hamas activities (they're Israeli sources, though I don't know what they'd stand to gain by lying about it).
Also I live and pay taxes in a country that does send the direct/indirect aid.
You live in the US? I'm not aware of any other country that sends aid to Israel.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
If the IDF offered food and a trip out of Gaza for the family of anyone who accurately reported Hamas hiding spots I bet they would win fast.
Knowing where Hamas are hiding has never been the IDF's problem. It's been trying to target Hamas members while causing as little collateral damage as possible, given that Hamas invariably hides among large clusters of civilians. But for something closer to your example, the Israelis have for almost a year been offering $5 million to any Gazan willing to return a hostage (I assume helping to return a hostage carries a similar reward). As far as I'm aware, they've had no takers.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
There are a lot of truly baffling statements in this post (Israel controls law enforcement in Gaza?), but I'll focus only on the most bizarre one:
They effectively have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
Oct 7th, and the war against Israel that Hamas has redirected all resources in Gaza towards, represent an Israeli monopoly on the use of force in Gaza. Right.
The latter might be a Pyrrhic victory if the rest of the world turns against Israel.
That might be happening anyway, so at some point that stops being a disincentive.
Losing western support would be bad for Israel, but I think it's unlikely it ever becomes truly friendless. Being the most intellectually advanced and militarily capable country in the middle east means there'll probably always be someone willing to do business with them.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Israel exercises all the power over Palestinians that a national government would,
I can only assume this is a joke statement. So, holding the power of government over Gaza, Israel decided to redirect all of the resources there into a total war with...themselves?
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
we can finally stop sending them massive amounts of direct and indirect aid.
Aren't you Turkish?
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Again, everyone (apart from you) claiming that people are dying of starvation now has been claiming this since the end of 2023.
And if the debate centered around how people's views of your aunt depended on her belonging to a specific outgroup, such as women, whether or not she had balls would be pretty relevant.
The "ceasefire now" folks totally miss that all of this cycle will just repeat when the next terrorist attack happens
The mistake is thinking this is a bug, rather than a feature of this way of thinking for these people. I don't think I'm being overly cynical when I say that most self-described Palestinian supporters don't want peace, they want a war where Hamas is winning. "Ceasefire now" is only a slogan that gets brought up when Israel has the military advantage.
You know, the more I learn about Palestinians the more I'm convinced it was a bad idea to move ethnic cleansing into the category of "never under any circumstances even thinkable actions". Palestinians are brazenly explicit about their refusal to ever accept Jews living in the region and their commitment to "resistance" under all circumstances - a state of affairs practically unique in history because just about every other society to ever exist has known full well that the rewards for being even a fraction as belligerent would be getting wiped out. If they've shown after nearly 80 years they're still not going to behave, maybe threatening to move them somewhere else is the only thing that will get them reconsider their attitude.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Almost everyone claiming that Gazans are starving now has been claiming the very same thing since the war started.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Besides, even for broadly the current location, there would have been better solutions (proper ethnic cleansing followed by the establishment of a firm border, not the current slowly expanding blob with partially incorporated territories).
No arguments there.
Not really, unless you want to broaden the scope of the debate to include possibilities that I doubt OP had in mind like the Jews having a sovereign state in Madagascar (which I do think would have been preferable but has not been a viable choice for about a century).
"Israel actually makes Jews less safe!" as a statement by itself is almost always concern trolling, and the rest of your comment basically confirms that's what you're doing. But for what it's worth, here's why this is straightforwardly incorrect:
1/ There were hundreds of thousands of Jews living in mandatory Palestine prior to Israel's war of independence that the Arabs tried to slaughter as soon as the Brits moved out. Establishing the state of Israel was the process of not allowing this to happen. On a pure lives saved vs lost basis, this by itself justifies the existence of Israel even considering all Jews killed worldwide since then.
2/ Israel makes Jews unpopular, but Jews have always been unpopular, so once again this is a bad faith line of argument. The idea that Jews might have reacted to the holocaust by thinking "maybe we shouldn't establish a sovereign state, because then people might really not like us" is hard to entertain with a straight face.
ZanarkandAbesFan
2mo ago
My parents threatened to kick me out when I expressed my desire not to go to university, and only relented when I found an HVAC apprenticeship- because it was my job as a middle-class man to have a career, not just a job. These are of course an illustration.
Did you ever go back to university? I used to assume from your username (and that you live in Texas IIRC) that you were a chemical engineer or something like that.
ZanarkandAbesFan
2mo ago
Most monarchs still don't/haven't chosen the peasant life instead, suggesting being a monarch is preferable.
I always thought Dr Nick in The Simpsons was Asian. It happens to the best of us.
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