Since LJ is unashamedly making war against privacy, I have 6 DW codes if someone wants them:

YCPYMDEJGF9XKAAABPZ2

DVXPJ8G7PPDJ6AAADU8U

ZFDHMQWGZB2KZAAAJARY

AF6DSZ7F89333AAAJARZ

XS8XNAMDRMVWFAAAJAR3

RHP6PWFTMKHFBAAAJAR4

PQK98V8EB3Z2DAAAJAR5

9J46E77MZRCPZAAAJAR6

GB38V9QJBE879AAAJAR2

Also, I don't need to tell you to NOT crosspost private things on my journal, or private comments of mine elsewhere.

LOLOLOLOL

The Expendables is an upcoming ensemble action/war film written by Dave Callaham and Sylvester Stallone, and directed by Stallone. Filming began on March 28, 2009, in Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and is expected to be released on August 13, 2010. The film pays tribute to the blockbuster action films of the 1980s and early '90s, and stars an array of action veterans from those decades, including Stallone himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, and Jet Li, as well as more recent stars such as Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Steve Austin.

[...] A team of highly-trained, dangerous mercenaries are sent on a mission to a South American country, with the objective to overthrow a cold-blooded dictator. As the mission begins, the mercenaries discover that the situation is not as it appears. The men find themselves trapped in a deadly game of deception.

lol right.

OH THERE'S MOAR: Sylvester Stallone in an interview: "And about the dictators, they're fascinating fellows. They're mad people. At the beginning they might have some king of philosophy, but then they show how insane they really are. And to build'em I've got inspiration in North Korea, Uganda, Cuba, El Salvador, Russia and some Central America Countries. I made a blend of them all. What you see in this movie is a mixture of real dictators."

[...]

Another SS interview: "I just felt that if you are going to do a story about a mercenary, which is always a fascinating character, you try to put them in a situation where he can find certain redemption. And usually it's going to a third world country where he sees people that are impoverished, people that can't defend themselves. He finds his own soul." THE ~THIRD-WORLD~: SAVING FOREIGN SOULS SINCE ALWAYS; THAT'S WHAT WE'RE HERE FOR. YOU'RE WELCOME.

SERIOUSLY, WE ARE NOT YOUR TRAGIC, IMPOVERISHED, DICTATOR-FILLED BACKDROP FOR YOUR UNCREATIVE PLOTS. FUCK YOU.

Not only that. For white mercenaries to find their souls.

brb, loling. This man is a jewel.

Thanks to Mako who made me notice this:

Bita Ghaedi Deportation Cancelled!

[...] the British High Court granted Ghaedi interim relief pending a renewed application to apply for judicial review, while the European Court of Human Rights put a ban on her deportation.

As a woman who fled her husband as well as a political dissident, Bita Ghaedi has legitimate reasons to fear an "honour killing" if deported back to Iran. In his opinion, Justice Nichols stated that the British Home Office ignored a preponderance of evidence highlighting her very real claims to asylum.

Maria Rohaly from Mission Free Iran writes that mainstream media silence, in addition to dereliction of duty from organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, only hurt the case. Still, this case is a testament for how a small number of dedicated people can bring international attention to the horrific ways in which asylum seekers and refugees are treated by developed nations.

--

Oh, Hollywood. When you think it couldn't get worse. Well, it always gets worse.

Genghis Khan? Mickey Rourke.

I kid you not. Oh, how I wish I was.

You know things like anime adaptations don't stand a chance if these fuckers can't even respect a historical figure who belongs to another nation.

Regardless of how I feel about Renee, this isn't funny:

But what the fuck is this shit?

Apparently, the not so smart ONTD crew felt all butthurt (you can see some jewels there) because SHE DARED to say "bad things" about Sandra Bullock adopting a black child (which was pretty spot on), and then went at her blog to troll her with racist, ableist, sexist shit. Because white people can't be racist but they can go to stalk and insult a black woman who criticized a white celebrity.

Pffft, okay this is kinda funny:

From ONTDSupporter:

I'm not an ONTD member but I read it and I'm a supporter. You are one dumb b*tch I'm sorry to say. I too came here to read the disgusting piece you wrote on a woman saving a child's life (Sandra Bullock adoption story) but refrained from commenting because I could not believe the amount of ignorance and hatred in you and your supporters. I let the "disgusting ONTD trolls" put you in your place. But after reading this on ONTD I just had to say something. So here it goes: [...]

Then this person writes three long paragraphs with a bunch of nonsense that goes like: Renee is feeling "pissed" because ONTD people "outnumber her" (how old are these people anyway?), she has to STFU about this Sandra Bullock/ONTD issue, but at the same time she has to accept that people have different views because this is the internet! And 3) she is an ignorant bitch. She doesn't know about Sandra Bullock and other white celebrities Holly Mission like this person who "wrote an essay" (by their own words) clearly does. No, wait, 3) is apparently about stealing, what it is and what isn't, and how she is a hypocrite because she has downloaded a song. (Yeah, I got confused there for a moment, even when I disagree with Renee, uhm, I don't think any of those things are even equivalent. ETA: Wait! Apparently they just assumed she downloaded music and movies. I mean, she obviously did those things because this is the internet, and it serves their purposes. So, uhm, she is an hypocrite. Because, in their minds, Renee downloads music and watch movies from the internet for free like you and me. Even when she never actually wrote a post implying she did those things -that I can remember-, but she had to! Probably Lady Gaga's songs*.)

You have to love these people and their simplified lives. I guess in the world of celebrity gossiping there are no nuances due to politics, issues are never complicated by differences of power, economics, history- heck, race is apparently a thing people just use to oppress the white beautiful actresses!

So, feel for white rich ladies and their inalienable right to adopt kids of color. But women of color on the internet have to shut up about the issue and their own articles published on a comm for white hipsters who love celebrities from USA.

And for once, I don't agree with her in that post about linking without permission, and I don't think I will ever, but seriously? Seriously?

* Nothing to do with my position about her post on that aspect. She probably has her own reasons, I have no idea, I still disagree with her. And with the trolls that say not wanting your blog article posted in other sites has to make you condemn music and mp3 free downloads. Heck, I'm not even interested in discussing that issue, I'm just pretty amused that they are accusing her of something they don't even know she does.

Neil Gaiman's fail caught Will Sh****ly and his faithful bigots attention. So as you can imagine, it has all the racist and creepy stalkerish (looking for information about some people's real lives) fail you would expect from these people. But now they are spending their time also attacking Kynn's gender identity (in the entry where he apparently is teaching Pam Noles about Malcolm X by the way, yeah I'm not capable of reading that but just needed a laugh today). [Edit because Jesus Fucking Christ: Oh for fuck's sake, I removed the link because Sh****ly is making use of the attention that thread is receiving to keep outing and showing his stalkerish tendencies towards coffeeandink, his favorite target, who has no relevance in the discussion at hand. No relevance, I tell you. Damn creepy man. I don't think his blog is that hard to find on google if you so want to see it, but not going to link it here. You can go and read coffeeandink's explanation of the issue, which, by the way, still has nothing to do with the original discussion we are having here, but the man just saw this like an opportunity to bring it back.]

Here at some of the quotes on that thread about Kynn's gender identity:

Some shitty human being in Sh***ly blog:

Yeah, I'm not going to be nice to Kynn about that, especially as I have to imagine he thinks he's a girl dragon inside or some shit. That's about his speed.

Sh****ly:

When did Kynn become a woman? I refer to her as a woman because I believe in common and uncommon courtesy, but when speaking of the time when she was male, that male pronoun has to be appropriate.

Those who knew Kynn as a male might well think of her that way, just as someone's mental image of a person may be of a dark-haired person, though the person is now gray-haired. Identity is tricky. I don't get bent out of shape when old friends call me Bill.

Yeah, the brilliance is mind-blowing. I know.

Oh, nothing is anyone's business. But if you knew Kynn as male, it seems to me it's right to refer to him then and her now. And if you don't know when Kynn transitioned, that would suggest any reference to Kynn in the past should be male, while Kynn in the present should be female.

As for your second point, yes and no. A mind is a mind, no matter what the body, unless you're a sexist asshole.

Shitty human being again:

Yeah, well, having had to deal with the asshole for a long time, I prefer to believe he just strapped on being trans because he really, really, really, really always wanted to be a persecuted minority. And now he is one, presto!

Fuck that guy, right up his missing vajayjay.

Also, shitty human being is being all "I do not like Kynn, so obviously Kynn isn't trans. So I'm not transphobic, I met a trans woman who liked me once."

For the record, DO NO ENGAGE WITH ANY OF THESE PEOPLE.

I just want to show that this is what happens when marginalized people dare to talk against oppression. You see how vulnerable trans women are and how their bodies and identities are ridiculed by cis, white, straight men when they denounce privilege and problematic behavior.

Kynn is a white woman, so these people used part of her identity they could attack without any guilt to show superiority towards her anti-racism discourse. Because we know that mocking trans people's identities is not only acceptable, but encouraged and rewarded in today's society.

ETA: Something that I think is very important to notice is how Kynn talking against oppression was such a great threat for these people that they decided to put her in danger. We all know how the "man in a dress" rhetoric is used in today's world. (People may said I accuse them of putting there "things they aren't saying," but really how much in a bubble you have to live to think this couldn't end in transphobic violence, specially when these people say they personally know her. Heck, they just need to talk about a trans woman that way for someone more violent to hear it and the situation could be really dangerous. That's why everything we do has an impact, our actions never interacts with vacuum. But you know how Kynn just want to be oppressed. Like, right, how many cis women do you know who are "claiming" to be trans women even online? As you can see, people like these specimens make society a really hateful place for trans women.)

Relevant: stoneself: the cost of speaking up.

Via the_future_modernes: James Cameron, showing his assholery and ignorance know no bonds.

"I felt like I was 130 years back in time watching what the Lakota Sioux might have been saying at a point when they were being pushed and they were being killed and they were being asked to displace and they were being given some form of compensation," he said. "This was a driving force for me in the writing of Avatar – I couldn't help but think that if they [the Lakota Sioux] had had a time-window and they could see the future… and they could see their kids committing suicide at the highest suicide rates in the nation… because they were hopeless and they were a dead-end society – which is what is happening now – they would have fought a lot harder."
. . .
Cameron also defends himself from accusations of meddling. "I think one of the biggest questions is: 'What is your standing? What are you gringos doing here? What gives you the right to tell us how to run things within our country? It's our problem, it's not your problem.' I get all that," he said. "But North America is Brazil's future. We can come to Brazil from the future and say: 'Don't do this.'

.... Why?

-

Also, there is a reason why I shouldn't start talking about politics in a shonen manga comm. Because I may die by eye rolling. And for once, I know that the issue with copyright laws is complicated, but really? "Stealing is illegal in any country!" Pfffft.

Uppity Brown Woman: My mother did not have a choice in having me

As my mother explained to me, I felt a familiar sadness inside of me. She told me that she eventually decided she couldn’t go through with it because it would be too big of a shame on her, and she didn’t want to commit a sin, even though giving birth meant gambling with financial ruin. She had internalized the shaming of women who had abortions that it impeded her own decision-making process. Certainly, she wasn’t forcefully coerced into having an abortion (or coerced out of having one), which I find dominates discussions about abortions, and for good reason. But, the culture of shaming matters too. I don’t want to live in a world like this. If it did not break several laws of the universe, I wish I could have been there to support my mother, comfort her, and tell her that whatever decision she made, to terminate or not to terminate, had to be made for what was best for her, not for what other people thought of her.

Often, you see anti-choicers relaying stories from ‘abortion survivors’, or those whose mothers made the decision to not abort (therefore everyone should). Do they want to hear my story? Unlikely. They don’t want to accept that they forgot about my rights after I was born. Every day, I have to live with the fact that my mother felt shamed out of getting an abortion. This was not a choice. The option was there for her, but she did not take it, even though she wanted to, because of the rhetoric and stigma surrounding abortion – sinful, devilish, shameful. While she says now that she doesn’t regret having me, I cannot be anything but pro-choice. I do not take pride in being the product of a forced pregnancy.

---

In other issues, wonderful Deepa as always: An Open Letter to Charles Tan

But transcultural traffic is hardly such an egalitarian affair. You say: "That there is a small but growing awareness of the literature of other cultures is, in my opinion, a liberty that only occurred because of humanity's continued struggle for "enlightenment" but this flies in the face of a vast body of historical evidence that cultural currency has been a tool of capitalist trade and colonial enterprise. Furthermore, by whose standards are you defining awareness of such literature "small"? There are many Indians who will tell you about Rustam and Sohrab, about Laila and Majnu--stories not actually from our subcontinent. And as Fatemeh Keshavarz points out, Iran has a long history of translating books into Persian.

[...] I do not understand how you can consider writers to be a proletariat worthy of defending against the elite excesses of their readers. Racefail was primarily about the impact of books on readers and how we saw the world, whether we aspired to write ourselves or not. Critiquing a book's faults because we find it hurtful, offensive, unresearched or otherwise lacking in craftsmanship is something we do in our free time, without payment, out of a sense of community with others who may have struggled against the same issues. To demand that such criticism place the needs of supporting authors above our own needs as readers devalues us.

One last thing - you say in the beginning of your essay that ethnocentrism is "a flaw that a lot of cultures fall prey to (Germany being the primary culprit during World War II)".

I strongly urge you to reconsider this statement. Germany was certainly not the primary culprit of ethnocentrism during World War II, given the glorification of the British Empire and the neo-colonial national pride of the U.S., or indeed, any of the ethnocentric strains within the patriotic anti-colonial movements in large swathes of Asia and Africa. If Germany is to be accused of being the primary culprit of practising anything, it is Anti-Semitism and genocide on an industrialised scale never seen before, though both have happened before and since in many other nations and cultures.

So before going to bed:

Gratuitous spamming post here. Comment with something awesome. Can be anything, you just have to find it awesome. Thank you very much.

*blinks in front of monitor* *blinks more*

It's pretty unfortunate that my first post of the year (decade? there is a lot of debate about that) comes, and surprise! Yet again ranting against humanity.

But let me tell you something internets. Truly, you may not believe it, but there are more important matters than your enjoyment of slash fiction. You are not trivializing important issues because you are darker and edgier, you are doing it because you are young and very privileged and cannot grasp the severity of the matter in question.

No love, me.

I'm still very pissed so much I can even sleep when I have to get up early.

So. Since tomorrow I will start doing a daily post here featuring an Asian actor who works in the western world. Maybe it will come with picspam a la skywardprodigal.

I know it has bee done before, but since it's my fandom, I will just link it the next time the stupid comes around. I leave this written because you all know how lazy I am, seeing this will make me stand to my word.

Do you know what privilege is? Privilege is consuming, enjoying, fetishizing a work while totally disrespecting the people behind it. Erasing them and replacing them with people who not only look like you, but have a deep and pervasive history of colonization towards the people who are made invisible. (And not, Japan being rich doesn't give you free pass, and you paying for it actually make it worse.)

So. Tomorrow, education for the white weaboo who can't even name one Asian actor besides Jackie Chan starts.

Una sabe que el mundo anda mal porque este manga existe. Pero mejor lean la entrada de Fu donde se describe el argumento detalladamente. LA PROTAGONISTA VIVE INTIMIDADA (y abusada sexualmente una y otra vez) POR ESE MUNDO TAN SALVAJE, PINTORESCO Y EXÓTICO.

POR QUÉ NADIE ME DIJO QUE EL MANGA DE UTENA LLEGABA A ESTOS NIVELES DE... HORROR. Yo así me lo leía porque cosas como estas no se ven todos los días.

ETA: Y es que el problema de Latinoamérica es que la gente no sigue el Sistema Judicial como se debe. Todo queremos hacerlo a los palos y a la "justicia por mano propia." No gente, cuándo veremos la luz, nos dejaremos de revoluciones, seguiremos Las Perfectas Leyes de la Civilización, y progresaremos.

Also. Nuestros líderes son bishonens rubios, y eso se debe a las ruinas mayas. El colonialismo no tiene nada que ver. Los morochos son todos violadores de mujeres Japonesas.

Primera semana y tengo 8000 tareas. Una de Toxicología que hay tiempo de entregar "hasta el Domingo a las 11:59 de la noche" según las palabras textuales de mi profesor (sí, hay que enviarla por mail).

I want to bring something to your attention:

Kazuhiko Fei Ryu. 琉・F・和彦

So. Clover happens in a dystopian, cyber-punkish, and probably AU universe which, like everything, is still completely and absolutely based in our current reality.

Note how those names are written in Kanji (except for Suu) and not only katakana like in, let's say, Full Metal Alchemist.

I want to do a thinking exercise. If a hypothetical western fictional, alternative universe is adapted to a live-action movie, and the protagonist who is only described as a man with pale skin and who is also called, I don't know, William K. Bryan is suddenly cast as an Asian man? I KNOW, like 100% sure, the fandom will flip their shit off.

SO I'M GOING TO FLIP MY SHIT OFF IF KAZUHIKO IS CAST AS A WHITE MAN. And this leaving aside that casting a white man as an obviously Asian character in a Hollywood movie is nothing like casting an Asian man as a white character (for reasons I don't have the energy to discuss, you should have some clue if you are reading this journal).

Colorblind snowflakes? Get away from me. I'm going to need a lot of alcohol to get through this "live action Hollywood movie" thing if this project goes somewhere.