Eterimorikawa - Snufkin

Again and again and again I see (mostly) westerners accusing Ukraine of "opressing russian-speaking minority" by our language law (without reading the language law itself, obviously). It really looks like people have some kind of pavlovian reflex to the word "minority", immediately jumping to the assumption that minority = opressed by the majority. But a minority by numbers does not automatically mean minority by power. Billionaires, too, make up a minority of population, does that mean that they are opressed by the majority class? Are gaelige speakers in Ireland priveleged in comparison to the English? Are Elon Musk's white emerald mine owning family opressed by the majority black African population?

For the 1000th time, the relationship between Ukraine and russia is that between colonised and coloniser. It is russian identity, russian language, russian culture, russian world that has been privileged on the territory of ukraine for at least last 400 years. It is ukrainian language, ukrainian culture, ukrainian identity that people have been repressed and killed for.

russian propaganda takes this assumption westerners have about how the world fuctions (minority=oppressed) and uses it to twist the reality. To make you believe that Ukrainians somehow "deserve" to be genocided. To make you believe that it's the best course of action for the West to abandon Ukraine to be raped and plundered by russia. But we can call it "peace", because russians won't allow western journalists to report on it, and we all know that if the west doesn't talk about something, it means it doesn't exist :))))

Here are statistics about the "opression of russian language" from 2012 - during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovich, russian puppet and a literal mafioso [source]:

More than 60% of the total circulation of newspapers, 83% of magazines, and about 87% of books (most of which are imported from Russia) are published in Russian in Ukraine.

In October 2012, only 28% of the prime time on the top 8 TV channels was devoted to Ukrainian-language programs, 44% to Russian-language programs and 28% to bilingual programs.

On the 6 top-rated radio stations, songs in Ukrainian account for only 3.4% of the total number of songs in prime time (last year - 4.6%). At the same time, songs in Russian account for 60% of the total number of songs.

Out of 290 restaurants in 29 cities, only 50% of them have signs in Ukrainian, 46% have menus in Ukrainian, and only 36% have employees who answer Ukrainian to Ukrainian-speaking customers (in another 11%, employees switched to Ukrainian during the conversation).

The "oppression of russian speakers in Ukraine" is nothing but the tyranny of russian chauvinism and imperialism losing its footing. Y'all had no trouble understanding how white ethnonationalists complaining about "the great replacement" is nothing but fear of losing the privilege. Y'all had no trouble understanding that "white cis male is the most opressed person" is a moral panic not grounded in the real power structure of the western society. But in this question, you've decided to ally with the opressor.

What advice would you give to young or beginning writers?

Read everything. Read the stuff you like and read the stuff you don't think you'll like. Read the things that people think it's good for you to read and read the things they seem worried about you reading. Read prose and poetry and fiction and non-fiction. Get off your phone and read books without interruption. Read the classics and read the cutting edge. Read everything you can get your hands on.

– @neil-gaiman

this.

i hate you booktok i hate you overly organised bookshelves i hate you hard cover supremacists i hate you reading challenges i hate you colleen hoover i hate you people who can only seem to read ya or romance i hate you same style of cover in every modern book i hate you rupi kaur i hate you plain boring prose i hate you buying books just for the "aesthetic" i love you pretentiousness i love you being a snob

“If you’re happy in a dream, does that count?”

— Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Network (1976) dir. by Sidney Lumet

“magic isnt real” — plants just grow out of the ground. for free. everywhere.

September Affirmation (Don’t Be Afraid) by Keaton St. James

where i should belong:

Quiet by Stepan Ohiy, 1950s