"life Doesnt Get Better, You Just Get Stronger" Does NOT Include Ages 11-17. Life Does In Fact Just Get

Character study based on E01S01 of Ragnarok • Magne's and Laurits' faces are beautiful but hard to capture! Also from a sibling's perspective it's funny that they both sit at in the back of the car.

I've noticed that zionists, especially Israelis see themselves as perpetual victims and are thus blind to whatever privileges they have in reality and the harm they cause or are capable of causing. They've created this narrative where the persecution of jewish people throughout history can be linked to criticism of the modern state of Israel, causing them to invoke the plight of their ancestors in 1800s Russia or feudal Europe or whatever.

To illustrate, I've seen a comment from a jewish zionist which compared the destruction of Gaza to the ten plagues of Egypt in the Exodus. The OP mentioned the concept of "Midah k’neged Midah" or "an eye for an eye", implying that like the Egyptians from the Exodus, Gazans brought their suffering on themselves for attacking the jewish people like how the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites. They also said that such chaos and that the Torah states the Israelites celebrated Seder while the Egyptian firstborn were dying.

It brought me to mind an article I read sometime ago about how Purim can be used to teach people to reflect on their privilege, how rather than automatically seeing themselves as the good guys of the story Esther and Mordechai they should question what they have in common with the bad guys as people in positions of power and privilege. So maybe, jewish Israelis should reflect on what they have in common with the "bad guys" of the Torah.

Zionism has created this nationalist narrative where the ancient Israelites from biblical stories and history are the same as jewish people today, with Israeli jews being their modern direct descendants, so the idea that Israelis can be the oppressors and gentile Palestinians the oppressed becomes an unthinkable notion. But if you let go of identity politics you'll see that in reality, the modern state of Israel is built on jewish supremacy and dehumanizing Palestinians as "the other".

During slavery, enslaved black people saw their struggles and yearning for freedom in the Israelites in the Exodus, and Pharao as their slave masters. Palestinians have suffered nearly 8 decades of occupation, being forcibly displaced, massacred, having their homes stolen and being terrorized with impunity. They would not the Egyptians in the Exodus metaphor.

@stoptheantisemitism

@autistic-ben-tennyson

The Roofs of Paris (1886) by Vincent van Gogh

LADY SNOWBLOOD (1973) dir. TOSHIYA FUJITA

Thinking of Kyle Maclachlan

The Peacock complaining to Juno (1881) by Gustave Moreau

Mr. Trask, it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world. Don't ask me - even if you could - how I know that. I just know it. It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel. And that's the way Cal has always felt, Mr. Trask. All his life! Maybe you didn't mean it that way - but it's true. You never gave him your love. You never asked for his. You never asked him for one thing.

EAST OF EDEN (1955) dir. Elia Kazan

Ballad of a Soldier (Grigoriy Chukhray, 1959)

Cast: Vladimir Ivashov, Zhanna Prokhorenko, Antonina Maksimova, Nikolay Kryuchkov, Evgeniy Urbanskiy, Elza Lezhdey, Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Evgeniy Teterin. Screenplay: Grigoriy Chukhray, Valentin Ezhov. Cinematography: Vladimir Nikolayev, Era Savelyeva. Production design: Boris Nemechek. Film editing: Mariya Timofeyeva. Music: Mikhail Ziv. 

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union there used to be jokes about how Russians claimed to have invented everything from the light bulb to baseball. During a thaw in the Cold War that led to an exchange of films between the Soviets and the Americans, American audiences learned that the Russians had at least improved on a familiar Hollywood genre: the glossy, sentimental wartime romance. Even Hollywood was impressed, giving director Grigoriy Chukhray and his co-screenwriter Valentin Ezhov an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. Ballad of a Soldier was a substantial hit, thanks in large part to its appealing leads, Vladimir Ivashov and Zhanna Prokhorenko. Ivashov plays Alyosha, a private serving at the Front who single-handedly cripples two German tanks and is rewarded with a leave to return home and see his mother. But it’s not easy making it cross-country in Russia during wartime, and he is forced to bribe his way onto a freight car carrying bales of hay. At a stop, he is joined by another stowaway, a young girl named Shura (Prokhorenko). She initially takes fright at discovering she has a traveling companion, but they begin to fall in love, only to face an inevitable separation. The two young leads – they were both untried actors still in their teens when they were cast – are touchingly fresh and innocent, making the contrast with the harshness that surrounds them more poignant. It’s a road movie as well as a love story, with some fine character bits by people they meet along the way, especially Evgeniy Urbanskiy as a soldier embittered by the loss of a leg and fearful of how he will be received by his wife. Although the core of the film focuses on Alyosha and Shura, their story is framed by some spectacularly filmed battle scenes at the beginning and Alyosha’s painfully brief return home at the end, sequences that surround the love story with scenes of urgency. Chukray has a real gift for pacing and rhythm, aided by his editor, Mariya Timofeeva, though he sometimes allows his cinematographers, Vladimir Nikolayev and Era Savalyeva, to indulge in camera tricks: At one point when Alyosha is being pursued by a tank, the camera does a head-over-heels rollover shot that ends with Alyosha and the tank upside-down on the screen, a giddy, gratuitous bit of fancy photography. Ballad of a Soldier certainly didn’t break any new ground, but it managed to make its genre clichés feel fresh.

James Dean as Caleb Trask East of Eden (1955) dir. Elia Kazan

I always told you, your sweet side is your best side. …I guess that’s why you’re the only one who’s ever seen it.

— Kill Bill: Vol. 2