[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Sep 27, 2018 7:29 pm

Nagini are Hindu and Buddhist mythological creatures and appear throughout Asia in various stories. Notably for the purposes of talking about Korea, a Nagini achieves enlightenment in the Lotus Sutras. Korea of course has 11 million Buddhists and has Buddhist iconography on its fucking national flag.

Getting upset that someone would cast a Korean woman as a Nagini is ridiculous. You could complain about how fundamentally stupid it is to name a Nagini "Nagini." But complaining that someone is casting a Nagini as someone who is from a country where Nagini stories are common is absurd.

-Username17

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Thu Sep 27, 2018 9:47 pm

I haven't seen anyone upset that a Korean was cast as a snake woman. I have rather seen people upset that once again JK is retconning rep, people upset that JK is retconning bad rep at that, the implicit gratuitous gender essentialism of an all female group of nagas, or the optics of "literally the only Korean representation you're ever going to get in this franchise is the willing slave of a white fascist dictator who literally reduces herself to an animal for him whenever she appears in the original series".

Tom Riddle's snake did not need a backstory, and it triply did not need a backstory that makes an identifiable section of the audience know that the only time they'll ever be allowed to see themselves in the fiction is as the willing slave of a fascist dictator.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Sep 27, 2018 10:03 pm

Ok, so the deal with Nagini is that she suffers from a magical disease, sort of like Lycanthropy, but I think congenital rather than than contracted? This disease only affects witches, and they are essentially natural animagi who will eventually get stuck in their animal form.

So, basically, the casting isn't the problem, precisely, the problem is that this is Rowling saying "oh hey, this was always a thing, I just never brought it up before!" to increase the diversity of her story, again. I mean, if this was just "oh, hey, Aragog is black! She was a witch who got stuck in acromantula form!" it would be pretty eye-rolling. But in this case, you've got a white man, Voldemort, controlling an asian woman and treating her like a pet, while this relationship is also the closest, truest relationship Voldemort has, and then there's the whole thing where this raises questions about the exact nature of Voldemort's relationship with Nagini, both before and after her disease trapped her in serpent form.

It's just a big clusterfuck of skeeziness, and maybe a tiny bit of that skeeziness would have been avoided if they cast an actress that wasn't a minority race, but all the rest of it would still have been there.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Sep 28, 2018 3:51 am

Prak wrote:Ok, so the deal with Nagini is that she suffers from a magical disease, sort of like Lycanthropy, but I think congenital rather than than contracted? This disease only affects witches, and they are essentially natural animagi who will eventually get stuck in their animal form.

So, basically, the casting isn't the problem, precisely, the problem is that this is Rowling saying "oh hey, this was always a thing, I just never brought it up before!" to increase the diversity of her story, again. I mean, if this was just "oh, hey, Aragog is black! She was a witch who got stuck in acromantula form!" it would be pretty eye-rolling. But in this case, you've got a white man, Voldemort, controlling an asian woman and treating her like a pet, while this relationship is also the closest, truest relationship Voldemort has, and then there's the whole thing where this raises questions about the exact nature of Voldemort's relationship with Nagini, both before and after her disease trapped her in serpent form.

It's just a big clusterfuck of skeeziness, and maybe a tiny bit of that skeeziness would have been avoided if they cast an actress that wasn't a minority race, but all the rest of it would still have been there.

Voldemort is a Parseltongue, which is a rare talent. He's probably the only person that she could so much as hold a conversation with.

It actually makes sense that a human trapped in the form of a snake would gravitate towards him, because he's only of the very few people in the world who can treat her like a human being.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Sep 28, 2018 5:20 am

I mean, yes... if Voldemort treated anyone like a person...

Basically, this all comes down to Rowling saying "Voldemort kept an asian woman with a magical disease as a, at best, a pet, worst, a slave." With a side of "Neville killed a person."

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Sep 28, 2018 5:22 am

Voldemort's snake has been named Nagini for a long time. Isn't it much more likely that JKR named Voldemort's snake "Nagini" because she was vaguely aware that was a word for magic snakes, and then much later found out that it was afford for magic snakes with a human form and updated the canon appropriately? Harry Potter has never been particularly deep or particularly well written or plotted. Having the character named "magic snake woman" turn out to be a magic snake woman is an extremely unsurprising turn of events.

Yes, it's bad writing. Remember the Deathly Hallows? Like, the whole thing?

-Username17

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Fri Sep 28, 2018 6:16 am

Leaving aside any argument about how badly written the original text was, a badly written original text is an entirely separate issue to constantly trying to claim credit for retroactive representation that was never even hinted at in the books. And, "your Korean rep gets to be the willing slave pet of a fascist dictator" is so bad that I would at least understand if people outright called it worse than having no rep at all.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Fri Sep 28, 2018 6:24 am

Giving tiddies to characters is good writing.

Now Rowlings, you know what the next step is. Say that Nagini was wearing a cute frilly dress filled with ribbons all along.

EDIT: Also reminder that Nagini eats humies during the books.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Fri Sep 28, 2018 6:49 am

I don't remember it ever being definitely stated that Neville wasn't a mongoose.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Fri Sep 28, 2018 6:58 am

Representation isn't a terminal goal. It has a purpose, and that purpose is to normalize the idea that [demographic] can be [thing]. That women can be detectives, or that Asians can be action heroes, or that black people can be super heroes, or that women can be super heroes, or that half-black half-hispanic bisexuals can be super heroes. We do a lot of super hero stuff these days. Anyway, the point is that Black Panther isn't celebrated for being a movie with black people in it, but for helping to normalize the idea that black people can be effective leaders of powerful nations and do incredible things and be a force for good and etc. Retroactively declaring that Dumbledore was gay, Hermoine was black, and Nagini was secretly an Asian woman does not normalize anything because stuff JK Rowling said in an interview that one time does not have the power to ingrain concepts into peoples' subconscious the way actual books and movies do.

Like, the Cursed Child can claim credit for actually casting a black woman as Hermoine (not that there is much credit to be had for representation in media that sucks, because media that no one likes also fails to normalize anything), but JK Rowling doesn't get to back up and say that Hermoine was of ambiguous race despite blushing in a way that would be pretty damn unlikely for a black kid.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Oct 12, 2018 7:52 am

Haters gonna hate

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... cency.html

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Oct 19, 2018 9:10 pm

So . . why is nobody talking about the fact that cannabis has been legalized for recreational use in canada?
http://fortune.com/2018/10/18/canada-fi ... t-cookies/

On Canada’s First Day of Legal Pot, This Enterprising Canadian Girl Scout Sold All Her Cookies in 45 Minutes. Here’s How

i am laughing so hard, i am crying a bit ^^

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Fri Oct 19, 2018 11:42 pm

Girl scouts selling outside of dispensaries in Colorado and California have already been in the news a number of times. It appears to be like, the media's favorite story. Girl Scouts, Pot, cookies, munchies. I'd almost expect that the author is using their own child to write the story that they clearly want to write.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Sun Oct 28, 2018 10:19 pm

Brazil just elected a fascist president and may be on its way to actual genocide. AMA.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/worl ... ction.html

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 12:00 am

Genocide? Against whom?

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 12:08 am

Stahlseele wrote:Genocide? Against whom?

Against me. Bolsonaro is on the record saying that leftists will be "swept off the map".

We're in a situation here where the best case scenario is that all that was just campaign bluster and Bolsonaro governs exactly as he behaved as MP for about 30 years: doing nothing except by sometimes being offensive for the sake of energizing his base.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 1:51 am

Stahlseele wrote:Genocide? Against whom?

This Ain't It Chief.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 1:57 am

Brazil is not a ethnic state of a single ethnicity of "all dem browns who are the same" so the guy running on genocidal dictatorship certainly has the ethnic divisions to genocide people.

Brazil has "white" people like Bolsonaro and "brown" people and "black" people. It has a long history of racial discrimination by the "whites" against "blacks" and he has publicly campaign on returning to that.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 4:38 pm

The main component of the impending disaster here is not even racial, but cultural.

There's a huge racist component in brazilian society: We are almost all mixed. But how much of african ancestry shows on you is a pretty good predictor of how much shit you'll get from society. Still, the current anger brewing here is not against the darker half of the country.

What exists of "racial hatred" going on here is more of a regional hatred aimed at northeasterners. A lot of brazilian northeast is a drought blasted landscape and historically northeasterners just died from hunger and hunger-related diseases in droves from time to time. This kept up right until the 1990s, and finally stopped when the Workers Party finally started a national food stamps program. Those are people who still remember what "dying from hunger or dysentery" looks like, so they still keep voting on whoever Lula points them to. As a result, there's a lot of hate going on here against "dumb northeasterrners". As a people, northeasterners are more darkskinned in general, but the main give-away is their accent. So the actual situation going on here is one where mobs of light and dark skinned southeasterners are inciting and commiting hate crimes against light and dark skinned northeasterners.

As for the main component of the hatred here, it's cultural, aimed at LGBT people, feminists, socialists, History professors and other "communists", where communism has been rebranded to mean "everybody who aren't heterossexual, capitalist christians". Bolsonaro rose up based on a tripartite platform of "promising to fix things up" (but being unclear on how), "stopping communists" and "being tough on crime". Since there are not revolutionary communists in Brazil anymore, with the Worker's Party actual government being firmly the social democrats' camp by any sane parameters, this entire communist-hater platform was and is based on fake news and conspiracy theories, mostly started by this Virginia, US resident here.

And then the tragedy being brewed here is that Bolsonaro, despite sounding like a bona-fide fascist, has his economic policy drawn by ultra-liberals (using the word in the European sense) who already promised to keep and increase the savage cuts on welfare and social security that the current illegitimate government has started. This will in turn lead to our economy tanking, not growing, because math. And then they'll need someone to scapegoat.

Finally, the above is based on the absolute best case scenario that Bolsonaro doesn't start 2019 by simply doing what has been a more or less obvious subtext on his and his vice's speeches and declare opposition illegal. So, things will get dire here, with the only unknown part being if the bad times will start in 2022 or right on 2019.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 6:09 pm

nockermensch wrote:Finally, the above is based on the absolute best case scenario that Bolsonaro doesn't start 2019 by simply doing what has been a more or less obvious subtext on his and his vice's speeches and declare opposition illegal. So, things will get dire here, with the only unknown part being if the bad times will start in 2022 or right on 2019.

Can he just do that? If he needs to find a legal pretext, is there any way other components of government will be able to stop him?

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 7:23 pm

Blicero wrote:
nockermensch wrote:Finally, the above is based on the absolute best case scenario that Bolsonaro doesn't start 2019 by simply doing what has been a more or less obvious subtext on his and his vice's speeches and declare opposition illegal. So, things will get dire here, with the only unknown part being if the bad times will start in 2022 or right on 2019.
Can he just do that? If he needs to find a legal pretext, is there any way other components of government will be able to stop him?

He can't do that. Doing that would characterize blatant dictatorship. But as Putin, Trump, Erdogan and others have demonstrated, we're again at that age where strongmen just do what they think they can get away with, and societies around the world aren't stopping them.

As for legal pretext, assuming they care about it, it could be even Pink Floyd's Roger Waters doing shows here last week where he dared to call Bolsonaro's openly fascist campaign for what it is. Bolsonaro's lawyers are seriously trying to sue the Worker's Party for campaign finance shenanigans, because when a rock star calls a fascist a fascist, that can only mean that the rock star has been bought off.

But seriously, if he doesn't do that it'll be because his pro-market allies will convince him that killing part of his population is bad for business.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 7:37 pm

I don't know if it's been covered in this thread, but the fascist military that already threatened a coup if the Supreme Court didn't rule to lock up the Worker's candidate for president, and the fascist police force that even before the election was raiding colleges to arrest "dissidents" and destroy "communist propaganda" (anything that accurately described Bolsonaro as a fascist) are fully behind him.

So if he wants to end elections, or lock up opposition.... well he doesn't have to because they literally already did both those things before he was elected.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 8:58 pm

This is a rolled twitter thread about some of the crazy ass shit the "liberal" government that locked up the worker's party leader and candidate for president and/or the military were doing because the fascist was elected.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1055 ... 22496.html

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 9:21 pm

Kaelik wrote:This is a rolled twitter thread about some of the crazy ass shit the "liberal" government that locked up the worker's party leader and candidate for president and/or the military were doing because the fascist was elected.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1055 ... 22496.html

"Public Universities" in Brazil are actually that: 100% funded by the state, being free for the students. So the reasoning behind these police actions was that "public money and public workers during work hours can't be used to influence an election".

The problem with this reasoning should be obvious: One of the candidates has dropped all the pretenses and is actually talking like a fascist, while his followers are acting like fascists.

For someone to allege that hoisting the Antifa flag on a public University is an attempt of influencing the election is also an admission that they know that one of the candidates is a fascist, and that they're pretty much okay with it.

We're so fucked.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 11:20 pm

And then the tragedy being brewed here is that Bolsonaro, despite sounding like a bona-fide fascist, has his economic policy drawn by ultra-liberals (using the word in the European sense) who already promised to keep and increase the savage cuts on welfare and social security that the current illegitimate government has started.

wait . . what?
i thought it was supposed to be the conservatives doing that kind of stuff? O.o