Ooh so there’s a line about this (it’s something about the gunslinger and the countess putting asside there differences for this fight?) That was at least recorded but not used – there’s a bunch of extra junkenstein narration if you haven’t heard it? (I can’t find the thing on my phone I can do it later from laptop if you are interested?)
I’d love to see it! I don’t usually play Junkenstein because it’s just so long, and I get impatient with it, and the wikis don’t have all the lines for it.
It does seem strange to me that there’s dialogue between the Countess and the Gunslinger because they’re in different Junkenstein parties? Soldier/Alchemist/Archer/Gunslinger vs. Viking/Countess/Monk/Swordsman
I found the stuff!
ah, so if you haven’t played it the new mode from last year endless you have the choice of eight characters (the four original and the four new ones) so you can indeed have McCree and Widow on the same team.
The line I was thinking of is actually a narration line from Reinhardt that’s “Long had the gunslinger pursued the countess but their battle would wait for another day” (you can hear it here at around 16:30ish – part 1 of that video is here also, I think its just ‘here are the new voiceline files in this patch’ mostly junkenstein stuff and a few other random things)
The rest of those videos are also quite fun for that reason but it’s like an hour long total, the conversation bits are out of order (cause they are mostly in chunks of one person’s lines – most if not all of them are actually in the game though) and a good chunk of it is eight different characters going ‘the tires on the left’ and such. So a lot of its fairly mundane. But other highlights include Jesse asking if “y’all ever tried smiling?” (which I think I may have heard play in game); The other two interesting widow related lines are “the countess had slain the witch as she had sworn many years before” and “the alchemist had no love for the countess but tonight they had common cause”; Poking fun at high noon (”the gunslinger knew that ‘the time’ was coming”); Reinhardt seems to have lines for basically all the abilities which I’ve never heard in game (I assume the action moves to fast to actually use them) most are fairly straight forward description but the sleepdart one is followed by “…but her ally quickly woke it” which is such a playing Ana mood; anything where Rein goes “if only they had a shield”; similarly “if only the alchemist had a valent knight to boost”; The witch offering the adventurers stuff (offers to McCree to fix his arm, Hanzo to bring back his brother, I think); A line about Hanzo realising who the swordsman is; at least two references to a ‘darker power’ than the witch which might proove to be important idk? etc
With deep cover theories in general I find I can never adequately answer the question of what the hell he’s been doing for the last six years since overwatch fell, revenge is a bit too vague? I could see inflitrating talon being a thing he might do personally pre-fall (he could convince them he’s fed up with overwatch or that he needs…whatever Moira is supposed to be doing – incidentally I think if overwatch fires his one way of handling whatever genetic stuff is going on that might be “they left me to become this thing”. or talon don’t know who he actually is? This is possible but I’m not sure it really works, sombra and Moira do at least know him.) But needs something more to it to work as a thing he’s still doing.
But if he did that I don’t think it was particularly successful. I doubt things like widowmaker, ana’s death, mccree leaving, and the Swiss base explosion were examples of things going according to plan. In fact the only thing he’s managed to keep is talons reasonable confidence he’s working for them….which is interesting, partly cause it sort of implys they didn’t try and blow him up. The only thing an initial undercover thing seems to have done is provide him with an in to talon post-fall. Everything else seems to have gone badly wrong despite whatever ways they tried to fight talon (whether that involves someone going undercover or not)
Yeah, also I think you’re right he’s not overly concerned about killing people – he’s probably got people he’d rather not kill (I could see him balking at killing Jack without Ana’s presence, he also doesn’t seem overly concerned with actually killing Winston in recall and the museum short – if he can avoid it at least or this is plot armour who knows) and people he does actually want to kill (possibly also jack) but he’s got no issues killing people like the grunts at volskaya etc.
This is long sorry, I do think a lot of these ‘this doesn’t quite make sense’ things with Gabriel are somewhat a result of overwatch having clearly changed tact with where they are going with his character, which complicates things
From “A Clash of Kings”, an essay discussing perspective, unreliable narrators, “you the player” as an interactive storytelling element, and the motivations of Doomfist and Reaper.
“Which brings me…to ‘Perspective.’ One of the things we really like doing with Overwatch is playing with perspective. We utilize perspective when we analyze or when we tell stories about characters, what they’re thinking, what their goals are. And we have a lot of unreliable narrators. We want people to pay careful attention to what characters think about in particular situations. We want them to use their judgment and their knowledge of a character’s thoughts to come up with their own ideas about the universe.
“You the reader” or “You the audience” or “You the player” are not just a simple “witness” of these character interactions, or these events, or these stories. In nearly all of the shorts, comics, and events, “You the (blank)” are your own, separate, individual perspective.
And Overwatch “the larger story” knows that.
And plays upon it.
Reminder:
“Retribution” not only encourages you to explore all four “witness” perspective, but also engage reflexively with your own. This can be as varied as “so, how did hearing about McCree posing as a waiter make you feel?” to
“Which perspective do you trust? And why?”
Moira’s Origin video is deliberately designed to mislead you. Her Hero Profile – as all of the Hero Profiles – is specifically written to be vague enough to “guide your thinking” into the assumption that she joined Talon after she left Blackwatch. However, it is also just flexible enough to leave room for the interpretation that she was in Talon before she joined Blackwatch.
Hell, even the title of the event – “Retribution” – is a very deliberate play on words.
Is it Gabriel’s “Retribution” upon Talon, as the comic wants you to believe?
Or is it Moira’s retribution upon Blackwatch and Overwatch?
“We stand on the brink of a breakthrough in human evolution. I have dedicated my life to unraveling its secrets. I take risks that others would consider to be ‘unwise,’ for I do not share their caution. Overwatch held back the pace of scientific discovery for decades. They believed my methods were too radical… too controversial…
“And they tried…to silence me.
“…But there were others in the shadows, searching for ways to circumvent their rules. Freed from my shackles, the pace of our research hastened – together, we delved deeper into those areas forbidden by law, by morality…and by fear.
“New patrons emerged who possessed an appetite for my discoveries. And with this knowledge…what new world could we build?”
If you play “Retribution” again before this week is over, try ignoring McCree. The game wants you to believe his perspective. Just like “Searching”, it is actively trying to push you into following his “narration” of the events leading up to it, the mission itself, and the events in the aftermath.
The game is playing on your perspective. It knows that you read the “Retribution” comic. It knows that you go into the “Venice mission” expecting Gabriel Reyes to be “a good guy.” It knows that what “you the player” are interested in is seeing how this character:
“Becomes” Reaper.
And it does everything in its power to make you believe McCree’s perspective. It changes the opening narration to McCree’s description of the events. In the “standard” version of “Retribution,” McCree’s voicelines are the ones most frequently activated, and they are furious with Reyes. It closes the “mission” with another McCree narration, which – just like Moira’s Origin video – is deliberately designed to make you doubt Gabriel Reyes’ intentions and perspective.
The game is trying to trick you.
It is using literary, visual, and interactive “sleight of hand” to draw your attention to McCree – his perspective, his emotions, his words, his “story” of the event – and away from Gabriel’s own perspective:
And from Moira’s more hidden, more “masked” perspective.
As I said, it is an ambitious – arguably too ambitious – attempt at interactive, perspective-based story-telling. There is no “reliable, third-person omniscient narrator” here to “tell you the full and utter truth.” Hell, not even Junkenstein’s Revenge is free from “unreliable narrators”, as Reinhardt (the man “narrating” the “story”) often interjects with his own perspective or sense of humor. The “player” is left alone, without direct narrative guidance, in a story mode that is actively trying to mislead them from building their own informed, critical, analytical perspective.
And Overwatch relishes that.
Overwatch wants you to believe McCree. It wants you to play Retribution and “get upset” with Gabriel. It wants you to feel like Gabriel has somehow betrayed Blackwatch’s or Overwatch’s ethics, or its “purpose”, or its…anything.
But Gabriel himself tells both McCree and “you the player” that he himself sees Retribution as him doing what he has always done.
Moira: You did what needed to be done, Gabriel. Don’t apologize. Gabriel: I never have, and I don’t intend to start now. Someone has to be the one to get things done.
McCree: Is this what we’ve become, Gabriel? Gabriel: Blackwatch has always had one purpose: to do the real work of keeping the world safe. I thought you had the stomach for it. Looks like I was wrong.
Because Overwatch wants “you the player” to feel like a “hero” – to feel like you are the protagonist of these characters’ stories. It wants you to participate and engage with the world, the events, the plotlines, and the literal “video game” action of it in a perspective-based way.
And yes –
This has been confirmed by the Principal Software Engineer of Overwatch:
We always knew that Retribution’s ‘A to B’ was going to be dictated almost entirely by the narrative, because we really wanted to bring players into this crucial moment in Overwatch history that we’ve only really alluded to before: exposure of Blackwatch, the rift between McCree and Reyes, and how Reyes goes from being a key member of Overwatch to the antagonist we now know as Reaper. The story was there, and the Blackwatch characters were there. And crucially, the flow of the mission—this extended street fight where you’re trying to escape a city while all these enemies are trying to kill you—was there, too. That said, we realized we’d put ourselves into a tough spot: the Blackwatch team was three offense characters and a single support.
Our job was clear: since we had so many offense heroes, we had to make extra sure that the enemies we designed were fun to kill.
We made a ton of small but very deliberate choices like that in Retribution. As a designer, it’s easy to have mixed feelings talking about this kind of stuff—it sort of feels like you’re revealing a magic trick. Even when a moment is engineered, we want players want to feel like they discovered something on their own, because that’s when you feel the most badass—most like a hero.
I feel like the other (er….) Narative purpose (?) Of Mccree’s perspective/a lot of his dialogue is to repeatedly go “something is very wrong” at the viewer? Then because the viewer has more information than he does the viewer also knows he’s wrong about what that something is, but it’s to make you question and then be more critical of the new things you hear on subsequent playthroughs, maybe?
Because without him what you get is; Gabriel going “this is buisness as usual” or at least “this is the next logical step in buisness as usual”; Genji, who has less context, going “sure okay if you say so” essentially serving as the neutral perspective – almost to the point of apathy as Genji is not in a good place – (alternatively Genji has the most realistic viewpoint of anyone, that walking into countries where you don’t have jurisdiction and killing people pretty much has the same effect whether you initially planned to do so or not and thats not an important detail); and Moira who falls somewhere between supportive of Gabriel and blatently suspicious depending on how charitable we’re being – but also she has a line that agrees with McCree that this is actually a departure (she’s just way happier about it).
While Gabriel has a lot of lines indicating that he considers this to be what he/they have always done, McCree has a lot of lines telling us that he doesn’t. Given there’s no way McCree has just misinterpreted what blackwatch and he himself do for 12 years that still leaves several options; one of them is lieing (nearly definitely Gabriel – McCree doesn’t really have a reason to?), They disagree about what the next logical step in what they’ve always done is (to the tune of “we have to start executing people” “uh…no? We don’t?”) Or this is always what Gabriel has done it’s just not something the rest of blackwatch has actually been involved with/witness to.
Basically Gabriel and Moira spend most of the mission going “this is fine, nothing is wrong, this is normal” and McCree spends it going “this is not fine, things are very wrong, this is not normal”. Even without McCree’s voice here the player probably has enough information to work out it isn’t all as normal (but it’s way more open to the interpritation it is) but with it if the player isn’t going “huh something seems a bit off” they maybe aren’t paying enough attention.
1) The wording in her Hero Profile is just vague enough to imply she is a Talon agent at the time of the Retribution mission.
“The shadowy Talon organization had already been supporting her for years, aiding her experiments in exchange for utilizing the results for their own purposes.”
2) Moira’s interactions with Reyes during the Retribution point to her egging him on, pressuring him, or attempting to “get under his skin”. The most notable one involves Moira saying she wishes she could go to rhe masquerade (of Venetian Carnival). Reyes says he is surprised because she doesn’t seem like the kind of person to enjoy that.
Moira replies, “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”
3) The major bosses utilize technology or “enhancements” that are originally from Overwatch agents.
The Heavy Assault Tank: uses Rocket Charge. Originally from the Crusaders. Canonically used by Reinhardt in animated shorts and comics.
The Assassin: uses what appears to be Blink and/or Recall. The chronal accelerator technology was specifically made for Tracer by Winston. If this is true about the Assassin, it also severely limited the time range of Retribution. Canonically appears in multiple shorts and comics (by Tracer).
The Sniper: uses a form of Shadowstep and/or Wraith. Canonically appears in multiple shorts and comics by Reaper.
The last one is the most interesting because it is unique to Reyes and his biotic “enhancements” that he accrued during SEP.
However –
There is one other person who has access to Reyes’ biodata – and the technical knowledge and ability to manipulate and recreate that in other ways (Biotic Grasp, Fade) – to make new technologies, enhancements, and abilities out of that.
Moira.
4) Related to Point 3, Moira has canonically stolen technology from Mercy. We are also told by Geoff Goodman during Moira’s Blizzcon panel that she took Wraith from “Reaper” and “improved” it. Moira has no qualms about taking other people’s research, property, or abilities and then redesigning or reworking them for her own purposes.
5) Moira is the only person who appears HAPPY during the intro video. The later statements she makes where she tells Reyes that he did the right thing by killing Antonio are shady as all hell.
Both of these appeared to be “coincidentally” tied to the sudden rise of Vialli and Maximilien, and Akande overthrowing Akinjide in the wake of Antonio’s death. This becomes significantly less “coincidental” if you consider that Moira may be a Talon agent, or be getting financial support from one (or all) of them.
6) During Reyes’ debriefing with Morrison, Amari, and Lacroix, there are images of two Talon operatives – a Trooper and a Heavy Assault tank.
The third image is of Moira.
(Comparison image)
Remember, Blackwatch continues to operate while suspended. Whatever occurs between Gabe, Jack, Ana, and Gérard during Gabe’s Retribution debriefing isn’t enough to make him leave, nor enough to make McCree leave in the immediate aftermath. Both Gabriel Reyes and Jesse McCree go on to help the Overwatch Strike Team by recovering intel on Null Sector during Null Sector’s Uprising. Genji stays on the team as well, and eventually helps arrest Akande Ogundimu, who is now the third Doomfist.
However, we do not know what happens to Moira after Retribution.
Speculation/Guess: in my opinion, the entire Retribution mission – and Gabriel’s motivations – make considerably more sense if you look at it like this:
The mission WAS intended to grab Antonio, run, and interrogate him later. It does not seem like Gabriel was lying here. In fact, MCCREE originally wanted to kill Antonio, but is told by Gabriel that they’re not going to do that.
However, Antonio reveals: 1) that he was anticipating this move by Blackwatch, 2) that he expected his “friends” to help him walk free from Blackwatch a week later, and 3) that he expected to hurt Blackwatch/Overwatch again.
This is the moment when Gabriel realizes –
He’s been betrayed by one of the three Blackwatch agents in the room with him.
(Note who else is “in frame” but out of focus during this moment).
This is not a sudden turn-about in motivations by Gabriel Reyes –
But instead, the clear and distinct realization that he has walked right into Antonio’s (and Talon’s) grasp.
And letting Antonio live is the LEAST of his worries.
The far bigger threat is the person IMMEDIATELY behind him.
And she knows it too.
In addition:
Pretty much all of Moira’s interactions with McCree involve her putting him down in some way – though always with the ‘plausible deniability’ of a joke, or teasing or ‘oh no that wasn’t sarcastic I promise’. Coupled with her conversations with Gabriel which come off as you say as putting pressure on him or getting under his skin or even sucking up to him in a ‘i understand you, I’m on your side’ way. It could be possible she’s trying to drive a wedge between the two of them, as a longer term goal and going in for the kill when they are arguing by trying to exacerbate that argument.
(Gabriel playing up the ‘I lost my temper’ angle so Moira doesn’t twig he’s clocked her and Jesse (probably inadvertently) helping him do that because Gabe predicted his reaction perfectly is a great idea btw)
“The confederacy of planets and moons that formed the Independent Faction was doomed from the start.”
“While leaders among the scattered outer worlds expressed concern over the formation of the Union of Allied Planets, most folk didn’t much care, figuring it wouldn’t affect them.”
Note the use of the terms ‘confederacy’ and ‘union.’
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“A CIVIL WAR NOVEL INSPIRED THE FIREFLY UNIVERSE. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels from author Michael Shaara was Joss Whedon’s inspiration for creating Firefly. It follows Union and Confederate soldiers during four days at the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. Whedon modeled the series and world on the Reconstruction Era, but set in the future.”
~ Rudie Obias, “23 Fun Facts About Firefly” [source]
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Note similarities between Malcolm Reynolds’ character biography and the biography of actual confederate general Jubal Anderson Early.
When the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered on April 9, 1865, Early escaped to Texas by horseback, where he hoped to find a Confederate force still holding out. He proceeded to Mexico, and from there, sailed to Cuba and Canada. Living in Toronto, he wrote his memoir, A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence, in the Confederate States of America, which focused on his Valley Campaign. The book was published in 1867.
Early was pardoned in 1868 by President Andrew Johnson, but still remained an “unreconstructed rebel”. In 1869, he returned to Virginia and resumed the practice of law. He was among the most vocal of those who promoted the Lost Cause movement.
From the Malcolm Reynolds entry on the Firefly Wiki [link]:
His contempt for the Alliance never completely disappeared (although he once said that he “wouldn’t mind makin’ a buck off ‘em”, and was shown in multiple episodes willing to steal Alliance supplies for a job, as long as it doesn’t affect the people), and, although he was on the losing side of the Unification War, years later he still wasn’t convinced it was the wrong one. Mal expressed what seemed to be his manifesto—"[The Alliance] will swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave.“[1] His anti-government attitude was reflected in his choice to live on a spaceship, drifting from world to world, as far away from Alliance interference as possible.
Yes, that’s right. Joss Whedon asked a black actor to play a lunatic rapist bounty hunter named after a real life confederate general. Joss Whedon has even stated in an interview that he “loves that character.”
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Now I mentioned “cowboys vs injuns reavers” earlier:
In the unaired pilot Simon Tam explicity refers to the reavers as “savages” – one of the more popular Native American slurs used by settlers in the North American “Old West.” In the same episode we see Mal and Zoe riding through an open plain on horseback wearing chaps and carrying shotguns. Right from the get go we have protagonists dressed like cowboys in a spaghetti western, shit-talking an entire culture of supposedly “mindless savages” (yet not so mindless they can’t still practice guerrilla warfare in a fairly organized fashion).
The episode “Bushwhacked” features a character – the lone survivor of a reaver ambush – who’s “gone native” and become a reaver himself. He completes his transformation from sane pilgrim into savage reaver by “cuttin’ on himself’ to making himself “look like one of them” – which he accomplishes by giving himself facial piercings which I, for one, found oddly reminiscent of those warn by certain Native American and Pacific Islander cultures.
He proceeds to attack the Firefly crew using guerrilla style tactics.
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People want to believe that they can weed out the Orientalism, shovel off the bastardization of the Chinese language, and jackhammer their way through the thick crust of cultural appropriation to reveal a better, purer show buried underneath.
But they can’t.
Firefly’s bedrock is racist.
Firefly is racist all the way down to its molten core.
Just go watch Killjoys already.
Fuck’s sake.
None of this registered with me, maybe because I’m not from the US so my knowledge of Civil War stuff is limited (I only found out what ‘Manifest Destiny’ was after you know which movie brought up a discussion) I obviously thought the lack of Chinese characters in a future where everyone speaks Chinese was…fucked up? But this??
How the fuck.
I want a reboot of Firefly that has nothing to do with Whedon, and which corrects his bigotry, racism, and misogyny.
Hi. OP here. I wrote this post because I saw people on my dash saying exactly what you’re saying – “We want a non-racist, non-sexist Firefly reboot.” I wanted them, and you, to realize that racism and sexism is so intrinsic to every single aspect of Firefly’s composition that by the time you take out all the bigotry, racism and misogyny, there’s nothing left to reboot.
Look at the show’s core team dynamic, for example:
Mal is a reboot of Rhett Butler.
Zoe is nouveau!Rhett’s loyal hand (notice she doesn’t call him by his name as one would a friend, but instead always refers to him as Sir – and then consider what it means for a black woman to be constantly referring to her white confederate superior by a title that signifies dominance).
Wash, Zoe’s husband, is the nerdy self-insert though which Joss racially fetishizes Gina Torres and projects his sexual/romantic insecurities (remember how Firefly devoted an entire episode to Zoe reassuring Wash that her relationship with Mal wasn’t a threat to their marriage?) (remember how Wash spent a scene sexually objectifying his wife’s body parts to an audience of Alliance interrogators).
River Tam is a whitewashed anime archetype.
Inara is a whorephobic westernized caricature of a geisha. I’m not going to go into that here but there are plenty of essays that describe the problematic Asian elements of Firefly in greater depth
And that’s just the main protagonists. That doesn’t even take into account the minor characters, villain archetypes, politics, narrative tropes, worldbuilding, etc. of the Firefly universe, all of which are also racist and misogynist.
Also, consider that Joss Whedon thought “rebooting” colonialism as men vs. zombie freaks was less racist than honestly representing the exploitation and genocide of Natives by colonizers.
Racist history needs to be told. Erasing the racist truth of a historical situation doesn’t “take out the racism.” That’s whitewashing. Whitewashing is in and of itself a form of racism. Firefly is racist because it tries to whitewash a racist history. Any Firefly reboot that attempts to whitewash Firefly’s racist premise will only be perpetuating the cycle of whitewashing and erasure.
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I think what people really want is another show about a quirky band of leather wearing gun slinging rebel merchants with snappy dialogue going on adventures in outer space. You don’t need to reboot Firefly for that. Killjoys fits that description, and it’s not a Firefly reboot. Cowboy Bebop and Farscape both fit that description, and they both pre-date Firefly.
Fandom doesn’t need a Firefly reboot.
Fandom needs to give Firefly the boot.
It makes me sad to realize everything you say, @lierdumoa, is true. You have a brilliant analytical mind for sniffing out this sort of thing.
All the conversation lately about Confederate statues and Civil War history made me go back to find this series of posts.
It also led me to read this interesting piece that really gets one to re-examine the narrative of American history that even those who grew up in the North were fed.
Turns out that General Sherman’s often-criticized “total war” campaign in the final weeks of the war – which finally put down the rebellion and saved the nation – might not have been the atrocity it’s depicted as in movies, and was far from the brutality exhibited by the famous American generals of the 20th Century who waged campaigns of true total war.
Yet Sherman’s still considered a villain by many modern Southerners, while our much-worse recent generals are considered heroes.
And this Confederate propaganda has been so successful in shaping our view of the Civil War that douche-canoes like Joss Whedon can get away with creating much-loved shows based on glorifying the villains of US history, and few notice until later.
I feel ashamed now that I once adored this show so much. I blame my lack of knowledge of US history at the time, and I was far from alone among ignorant Northerners who loved it.
A positive conclusion: Gonna have to find Killjoys!
This stuff really does fly right over your head if you’re not from the South. I learned most of what I know about the confederate imagery/storylines/politics of Firefly because I was researching to make a fannish songvid for Firefly, back when I was still a fan, and I fell down a wikipedia hole.
We’ve definitely hit a turning point in politics where Americans living in the North and on the coasts can no longer afford to remain ignorant of confederate history, or remain oblivious to confederate iconography/ideology/propaganda in the media.
What pisses me off the most is that Firefly has such cult status in fan communities – Whedon essentially made it acceptable for racists to cosplay as confederates in fan spaces.
Nick Spencer (what is up with dudes named Spencer being nazi apologists?) has control of the Captain America comic. Now HBO is making an alternate reality genre show where the confederates won and I can only imagine it will get worse. It’s getting to the point where I don’t know if POC will be able to feel safe at Comicon anymore.
Even as a Black Firefly fan aware of most of the deep problems with the show, I’ve always been beyond incensed that Joss Whedon named a Black man Jubal Early, after a real life, virulently white supremacist, pro-slavery Confederate general who had a major role in structuring the ridiculous Lost Cause narrative. And then he made the Black man a sexual predator of White women. Like.
Like real Jubal Early believed Black people to be barbarians and a threat to the safety of White people. And then Joss Whedon basically made Black Jubal a barbarian that’s a threat to a White woman. 😒
Firefly is deceptive because if you don’t look close enough, it seems like a cool diverse show. A few years ago when this blog was just starting out, one of my first asks was wondering what shows/movies I thought had good representation for Black women. I put together a list with a note that people could suggest shows I missed. Almost immediately, people wanted to add Firefly. It has a badass Black woman! And she also has love! And it’s interracial!
People were surprised at the oversight, but I was not happy about the suggestion. Like many people, I couldn’t put all of my aversion to Firefly into words, but, despite the fact that I’d just made a long post about intersectionality in media and how Black women having love stories in media is feminist and progressive, I could not stand ZoeWash.
It seemed amazing at first glance, but it became clear that Zoe was Wash’s ultimate Black Amazon fantasy, and that the pairing was meant to be weird. Worse, it became clear that Wash pretty much existed as her husband to make sure no one got the wrong idea that she might become romantically involved with great white Mal. Zoe was supposedly Mal’s equal, but she never got her own story arc.
So yeah. I wish I’d had this thread to link to at the time, because there was a lot of confusion about why my diversity in genre media blog didn’t support Firefly.
“Imagine if people had been going ‘don’t fight hate with hate’ back when Hitler was around.”
Fam…let me tell you bout Poland.
Let me tell you about how the entire rest of Europe sat ack and watched the invasion of Poland because they thought it would be “improper” to send military aid. How they were unwilling to enforce the treaties that Germany was breaking, because that would make them “just as bad.” They sat back and wrote strongly worded letters while fascists grew in power because they didn’t want to dirty their hands. They thought reasonable discussion and politics would be enough to stop a fascist dictator from rising to power.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t enough.
like yes, people literally did try that argument then too.
Everywhere there’s fascists there are fascist apologists hiding under the guise of pacifism, ready to enable their shit and demonize resistance.
“America First” was their isolationist cover, and then it became the motto of the KKK, and now it’s the slogan of the Orange Nightmare.
“America First” Makes America Worst
Guys, as regards “the entire rest of Europe sat back and watched the invasion of Poland” … you are aware the invasion of Poland is … why the Allies … declared war on Germany and started WWII? And marks the end of Appeasement as policy at least from the French & British governments?
I mean, there certainly were still people in Britain who wanted Appeasement to continue – including the communist party by the way – and the USA took another two years to join in, but the invasion of Poland, September 1939 is literally the starting pistol of WWII. But by all means don’t let the facts get in the way of your argument.
Mate, Utterly aside from “we aren’t complicit in the invasion of Poland just all the other countries prior to that” as a positive being one of the worst arguments I’ve ever heard. (Mostly because yes that complicity is still there).
Britian and France declared war then Poland was given so little actual help during the invasion that this period is called the phoney war, so what actually is your point here?
There were already 6 concentration camps by the time of that declaration of war – no one comes off well in discussions about appeasement and similar post war declaration policies, ‘eventually we actually did something’ is not good enough.
Cai my argument here is this, when you’re talking about the evils of the appeasement policy it is ridiculous to choose as your prime example of appeasement the event that caused the end of appeasement. If OP wanted to talk about how Poland specifically got fucked over by appeasement, by far the better example is what you mention in the tags, when Stalin invades and basically takes over and the other Allies do nothing. [I guess we can speculate at our leisure why tumblr doesn’t like so much to talk about the Soviets doing shitty things.]
[Digression. If I remember my military history correctly, Britain in particular in 1939 did not have the capacity to launch a ground offensive, their land army was really weak at that time. They started naval & some air battles from the very beginning of the phoney war, I know less about the French situation but given just how powerful the German army was, the phoney war is IIRC the Allies trying to actually get their armed forces mobilised and even slightly ready to fight the war they just started. So could France have mobilised faster & done an all-out attack on Germany in the 5 weeks it took them to conquer Poland? Maybe but probably that leads to France getting conquered a year earlier. I mean the Allies basically lose on the land war until about 1943, they were pretty out-gunned. So it’s “you ought to try at all costs” vs “do what helps win the war long-term”.]
I’m not denying that a] appeasement was a terrible policy, b] the phoney war did not see much fighting, or c] Poland got probably as a nation the worst deal out of everyone in WWII. I just disagree with the characterisation of the response to the invasion of Poland as trying to stop it by politics or thinking it would be impolite to start a war when 2 of the 3 major regional powers respond by ending political discussions and declaring war.
But the facts that a) it took until the invasion of Poland to actually declare war b) the non-engagement in Poland even after appeasement as an official policy had ended or generally summed up as ‘what happened around the invasion of Poland’ which is what that post is talking about (and not appeasement and only appeasement) are extremely relevant to the point that a lot of people (some of them in positions of power) were against getting involved and were then subsequently against getting further involved. The reaction of people in the rest of Europe to that declaration of war as ‘this is too far’ is also extremely relevant.
[Digressions and such: I don’t think you are in favour of appeasement as a policy in the 30s (although ‘i never directly said that’ is a silly argument – I am sorry if you took that I thought you were from what I said but then ‘i never said that’ either xD). I do however think you are buying into this general ‘we did as much as we could’/’we went above and beyond’ attitude much of Europe does to discuss the nazis, and the denial of complicity that comes with that. Britain not having the troops would hold a lot more water as an argument if they weren’t simultaneously turning away refugees in this regard for example – this is not making sacrifices now for the long term, that’s actively fucking people over. And, I can absolutely hold small countries (and indeed all countries) to the standards set and proved to be possible by say, Denmark or Albania. And I can hold Britain/France/Russia/the US/etc to the standard that they should and could have done so much more. Denmark is an interesting example as they both successfully prevented some of the worst effects of Nazism (to the extent they could given the countries resources) and post-war hold the position (more or less) of ‘we could have and should have done more’. Most countries did/do neither, that includes Britain, Russia and France (France handle the actions of their country during before and directly after ww2 atrociously – (independent) Latvia, as that’s the example you gave, also beat out France arguably because that’s not very hard – Poland struggle they are also god awful at this, and it’s saying shit like ‘Poland got the worst deal’ that allows them to get away with that btw). In many many countries the policies following the official abandonment of appeasement are still extremely collaboraty or at the very least going as little out of your way to help people as possible (particularly in the case of Britain) and that is still a massive problem as is the acknowledgement of the problems and nature of those policies in the years since. It does not matter why people collaborated and whether that was to do with the policy of appeasement or not, it matters that they did and it matters that people are doing it now]
When we are talking about various countries trying to obtain a temporary peace at someone else’s expense this continued with Poland and elsewhere after the active policy of appeasement was abandoned. Declaring war but then not actually doing much of anything does amount to sitting back and doing nothing while the invasion happened this post is not incorrect (although it may be hyperbolic) in that just because Britain and France had officially abandoned appeasement as a policy and had officially declared war – ‘but that’s when appeasement stopped and war was declared’ just isn’t a very good point against what this post is saying. For example, it specifically states ‘sending military aid’ and not ‘starting a war’ which is what you have taken the post to mean for some reason.
Appeasement is not the only bad policy or approach in this time period and it is not the only one the post is talking about so the fact that it came to an end isn’t that relevant given it coming to an end didn’t change much for Poland itself, or the reaction in the rest of Europe – or indeed for those countries already annexed and those people who had already been sent to camps before countries with enough clout to actually do something started actually preparing to do so and their policies post appeasement continued to allow these things to happen. Fundamentally you have taken the post to be referring to a much more narrow set of reactions than it is, it is talking about the evils of a lot of policies and approaches aside from appeasement.
fearlessstateofmind backup 