Pinned
Mutuals DM me for my Substack~
It’s all about the ancient Mediterranean in modern pop culture and also neat stuff I discover while researching my thesis
I’ve added a lot of cool stuff to my Substack since I first made this post. If you’d like to tune in, DM me or leave a comment on this post 🧿
Genuinely disturbing how missionary "work" is still so normal. Like I do not understand how anyone can listen to someone talk about their cutesy little Christian colonizer vacation to a deeply exploited community and not just be horrified and disgusted.
Not just normal, but lauded. Missionaries are praised for (supposedly) bringing resources and infrastructure to impoverished people without it ever being acknowledged that 1) that aid is contingent on converting and abandoning local beliefs and traditions and 2) those communities are usually only impoverished in the first place because of Christian colonialist empires.
It boggles my mind that people will talk about somebody's missionary work like it was some act of charity and self-sacrifice when it's really just going up to a bunch of people who are starving to death and telling them you'll give them some rice if they join your cult. It's 50% White Man's Burden and 50% extortion racket.
Not to mention how often that "aid" is useless to the people who are suffering.
Missionary-built houses are often made with incredibly cheap materials by people who are absolutely not qualified for that work AND they aren't designed with the cultural and social needs of the people they're for or the climate and infrastructure of the area in mind. Immediate aid like bottled water produce even more trash and pollutants that many communities are not equipped to handle. Farming methods taught often aren't designed for the area or climate and don't fully provide for the nutritional needs of the community (and then those people are demonized for poaching by Westerners who don't understand that an animal being endangered means very little when your family is starving). Even educational materials are poorly translated, Western-centric, and strictly Christian (along with often being controlled and modified by extremist, militant, and terrorist groups that control the areas).
And on top of all that, it doesn't include or involve any of the local community in any part of the process. Nobody local is distributing it. Nobody local is building it. Nobody local is producing it. Nobody local is getting training, employment, wages, or any kind of permanent uplifting infrastructure. Missionary aid creates more dependence on the Western Christian apparatus instead of creating any kind of Self-Sufficiency.
I do like the terms beadwork and quillwork though. I think they're a good way to bring attention to the fact that even while those things are interesting and beautiful, they are also WORK that requires time and effort. Let's start calling things fiberwork instead, cut out the middleman.
bearer of the curse known as 'i find it boring when characters in historical fiction think, feel, behave and sound exactly like modern-day people'
Unknown, Cat, 19th century
Polish movie poster for Goncharov by Waldemar Świerzy. Due to delayed release behind the Iron Curtain, the film started screening year later in 1974, which is also the year this poster was made. A classic example of Polish School of Posters.
My latest books cartoon for The Guardian
A summer holidays cartoon for the Guardian
My latest cartoon for New Scientist
agamemnon
ublock origin is not enough i need advertisers to feel physical pain
númenórean pottery fragments dated between s.a. 3253-3319. discovered on the southwestern shores of gondor
well I didn't write that. You are fucked out of luck.
According to Know Your Meme, on August 18th, 2005, Erwin Beekveld brought forth this work into the world. HAPPY TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY, THEY’RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD.
sheds a single tear
every august 18th my notifications break and i go, fuck, tumblr has failed me once again, but it hasn’t. it hasn’t failed me. it’s just the taking the hobbits to isengard-iversary. happy 12 years
I regret to inform everyone that @catchaspark’s reblog was made in 2017 and that Taking the Hobbits to Isengard was actually published 17 years ago, not 12 years ago.
THEHOBBITSTHEHOBBITSTHEHOBBITS
18 years! Happy Taking The Hobbits to Isengard day!
