25 years ago an unknown Chinese protester stood in front of a tank in defiance of the government. No one knows the identity of the man but he was given the nick name “Tank Man”. This is one of the most iconic photographs of the century.

It’s actually been 27 years now since the incident known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred. The picture above, famously referred to as “The Tank Man” was actually taken on June 5, the day after the massacre. (Which honestly makes him the one of the bravest person, to go back and stand up to a regime after such a terrible event transpired)

So what happened? I’m gonna give the TL;DR version:

Content Warning for video: blood

“Tell the world…”

I cannot stress how important it is that people remember and know about this event. Do you know how China responded? With lies and censorship.

Even now, in 2016, we do not have an official death toll on the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Chinese government doesn’t even acknowledge the event as a “massacre”. And they weaves these cover stories of “counter revolutionaries trying to overthrow the government”. Therefore, the violence was necessary to ~protect~ the people. (Or some bullshit like that)

The amount of lying and censorship in China is, quite frankly, scary amazing. Tumblr, which somehow managed to fly under their radar, found itself being blocked in that country.

After all, tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.

And those who remember the incident in China? …………well, you tell me.

Please at least REMEMBER this tragedy. Untold innocent lives were lost, and a nation has been fed a lie for almost three decades now from their oppressive af regime.

I have never seen this video before.

What the fucking hell.

What the hell.

Tiananmen Square happened when I was seven, and let’s just say children have a really interesting way of interpreting information.

I just remember thinking it was a happy event, because all these people were out on the street, and at first the army were interacting with these people. And it almost looked like a festival because people were singing and talking, and hopeful. And then tv coverage for the events got cut off.

The blocking of the live coverage had all the adults anxious, nobody said anything for ages, I just remember my grandmother saying, “Just be glad your father isn’t in China, now.”

And that stuck with me to this day. Because yeah, if dad had been in China then he would have been in Beijing studying, he would have been on those streets with those other students.

It was the first time I knew that something horrible had happened to all those people I saw on the television. I don’t even remember how I knew that the army must have shot at the civilians, I just knew. Because when you grow up in China, especially in the 80s you knew there were things you don’t say, that you can’t express in a public forum, because that can get you and your family in trouble. You just knew, and it didn’t fucking matter if your were a child or an adult.

To this day I don’t remember how I found out what happened in Tiananmen Square, because the news covered it up, but people found out. My grandparents knew, my uncles and aunts knew. Extended family visited my grandparents, I remember people telling my mother not to mention my father’s name because my father was a Chinese Beijing University graduate, who had gone overseas. Because there were people who died in the protests that my dad knew.

And it was all just so frightening because nobody was telling me directly what was happening, but I just knew that all the people on the streets was probably dead.

Looking back on it, Tiananmen Square instilled in a me a life long distrust of governments, but especially the Chinese government. I’m ethnically Chinese but I never want to return to China, not even for a holiday, and this has been my attitude even before Xi Jinping took power. Because Tiananmen Square was a peaceful protest that ended up with the army using heavy artillery against their own people. How can you trust in a system, in a government like that? Because if my dad had delayed further studies overseas by two years he would have been one of those students, one of those fucking kids on the streets that would have died.

And you know, when the Umbrella movement was happening in Hong Kong I was deeply panicked and just anxious because I kept on thinking all those people, all those kids are going to be killed. And when that didn’t happen it was such a relief.

When I found out years later that Chinese people a few years younger than me didn’t know what happened in Tiananmen Square I was so fucking angry. I can’t even articulate the rage and the sheer tiredness of it all.

Dad and I talked about Tiananmen Square a few times through the years, broadly, politically, and at times with sheer rage on dad’s part. I don’t even know what I wanted to say, but just fuck this fucking regime.

I was In Hong Kong when Tiananamen Square Massacre happened. Hong Kong was still a British colony then and had full freedom of press, and its reporters were there recording live footage while trying to stay as long as possible when tanks rolled in and shots were fired, when students lay in blood and their fellow students piled the injured bodies on those wooden plank carts to get them to the hospitals, while asking the Hong Kongers who were there to support the movement to please remember that night and spread the story of the massacre far and wide, because they already knew they would be silenced, if not imprisoned or murdered.

That night, and in the upcoming months, Hong Kong was in perpetual tears, and in literal shock.

Hong Kongers were mostly Chinese, just south of the border with people traveling back and forth. It also shared a language, and so HKers could follow the whole movement and hear news that western media had little access to without the distorting effect of translations. And they followed very closely, because by then, Hong Kong was already scheduled to be returned to China in 8 years time. How the Chinese government dealt with the movement would be a sign of how it’d treat dissent, how it’d treat people who’re used to the idea and practice of freedom.

What they saw was deadly. Ugly. It broke the hearts of millions of Hong Kongers who trusted that The Chinese Government had left its Great Leap Forward, its Cultural Revolution days behind. Those who could leave, left. Everyday the airport was filled with families about to be torn apart, who decided to trade the life they had in one of the richest, most vibrant and freest city at the time with the unknown, just so their own children would have the freedom to speak their minds, to have a higher education and not to be seen as the enemy of the state because higher education always led to independent thinking, to questioning, to asking for a better government as those university students in Beijing in the spring and summer of 1989 did.

The heartbreak and fear was almost palpable in its intensity. Most HKers were refugees from China or 1st generation of them. Unlike the HK youths now protesting who are more generations removed, they felt much more connected to the people in China. They still saw themselves as Chinese, like those students in Beijing. They mourned. They cried and cried and cried. They wore black or white everyday like it was the death of their closest relatives. TV stations played these Tiananmen Square clips all day. I can still play many of them out of my memory, can still recite what the students and government officials said (for example, they didn’t use tear gas because they only had three), the songs played — I know every word of China’s national anthem for that reason; the students were singing it. They were patriotic. They demanded reforms because they wanted their country to do better. 8964 was and still is, etched in my psyche. It is just one of the long list of atrocities this government has done against its people, but this one, I was close enough to feel it.

China censored the June 4th Massacre quickly and thoroughly — if you believe China has censored queer material, for example, I’d say this — the extent of that censorship is not even close to what a true China censorship does. A true Chinese censorship is you can’t find the info, or a hint of that info anywhere. You can’t talk about it in a roundabout away. You can’t change some elements of time/place/person and pretend it’s fictional. It would literally ban the numbers 8,9,6,4 from search results, even though the searcher may really be just be interested in the numbers themselves. Whoever speaks of it may be sent to the police station for a “discussion”; their family would be sent, if the speaker is outside China; the speaker may be arrested, and may never be seen again.

The western worlds pretended to be enraged about the massacre for a while and soon forgot about it, kept its diplomatic relations with China and did business with its government as usual. UK returned Hong Kong to China as scheduled, on July 1st, 1997. The city has been the only place that insisted on the mourning the victims and had done so insistently, consistently for 30 years, holding a yearly candlelight vigil in Victoria Park until this year, when because of the protests, the Chinese government decided to not even pretend to honour the international treaty they signed that promised HK its freedom until 2047 anymore. They shut the vigil down in the name of the pandemic (there were <10 cases/day then). Still, some people risked being arrested to go to Victoria park and lit their candles.

The Chinese government fears HKers for this reason. They are outside their iron curtain / firewall but have always been close enough geographically, culturally and ethnically to know and more so, to care. And there’s nothing more a government like China’s fear than people who insist on remembering the truth. With the National Security Law in place in Hong Kong now, probably the yearly vigils can’t continue. To understand how insane that law is, by writing this reblog, by saying things that make you dislike the Chinese government, I’m already in violation of its Article 38. It doesn’t matter I’m writing it in a foreign country. It doesn’t matter I’m a foreign citizen. That law includes everyone on Earth.

Yes, that includes you. And you. And you. And you. They can arrest you for trying to overthrow the Chinese government if you pass the borders of Hong Kong.

Please help remember 8964 Tiananmen Square Massacre. That summer day, Beijing citizens asked Hong Kongers to please remember this event for them because they knew they wouldn’t be able to afford to remember it themselves. Now that Hong Kongers can’t afford to remember it anymore, I’m hoping that everyone who reads this to please remember it, for the students who perished only because they wanted their government to be better, for the Tank Man who, on his way home with his groceries, decided to stand in front of a tank all by himself because it was the right thing to do.

Joanna was also one of the writers who cherrypicks comparisons between Zack Snyder’s Amazonians with Patty Jenkins’. 

She tweeted these two shots to compare the “female gaze” (Patty) with Zack’s “male gaze”:

But here are some other shots of Wonder Woman costumes:

Boob cups? In my Wonder Woman movie? It’s more likely than you think.

Several of the Amazon actors addressed this controversy directly by talking about how Michael Wilkinson (Zack’s costume designer) took their notes into consideration when it came to updating the costumes for their scenes in Justice League:

What I find especially disingenuous about her reporting is that there are huge carve-outs for Marvel and other similar franchises, who get a lot of words excusing them from similar gender kerfuffles. This is one such masterclass in Marvel apologia: 

This article includes links to articles bandying about rumors that Patty Jenkins would fail at Wonder Woman and that the film would be doomed to fail:

Plans were also shaping up at the time for Marvel’s Black Panther, and in the same article, Joanna expects it to be nothing less than amazing, despite the fact that it hadn’t even started filming: 

Even in an article that makes broadly correct points that Warner Bros. had rushed production on Suicide Squad, leading to an end product that had too much studio interference, she chooses to cast a wary eye on the first female-directed, female-led superhero film in favor of making sure Kevin Feige knows he’s “doing great, sweetie!”

These biases have a lot of different motivations, but it has always felt like more than just a distaste for Zack’s work. The brunt of the blame always falls on creatives, even when they admit that the studios are more often at fault for not sticking to solid schedules. Then they actively praise other studios for being perfect and rational, even though it can be argued that Marvel smothers the creative process under focus-grouped, studio-mandated baby steps when it comes to representation, hiring practices, and a drive-from-behind approach that ensures any competing superhero projects get beaten up in the press for daring to do things differently than the biggest studio in the business, Disney, who, by the way, blacklisted the entire Los Angeles Times from reporting on them because they had negative things to say about their theme parks. Warner Bros., on the other hand, invited bloggers who regularly bashed Warner Bros.’ projects onto their sets, giving them inside access that they then used to write more finger-wagging articles about how Wonder Woman was on the brink of failure. 

In their newest “oh, doesn’t this set a bad precedent?” angle, they’re defending studios against fandom interaction, despite the fact that Sony, Disney, and every studio that has ever canceled a show prematurely has listened to fans and course-corrected to create what they believed would be a product with more audience resonance. The common thread is that they don’t seem to … care about artistic integrity – they just want a tightly-run studio ship that listens to them, very important critics, and not fans. The entitlement is fine as long as it’s theirs, and as long as they can retreat to “That’s just my OPINION!” when they get called on their biases/hypocrisy/smears that make the film industry a worse place to be.

Oh, I didn’t know she was the one who had written that “How Disney was right to wait 10 years before making Captain Marvel and how we should all forget Wonder Woman’s impact because obviously the mcu did it better” article.

That explains… a lot.

The Amazon picture always drives me mad, because tumblr/twitter was so quick to judge and condemn only to then deliberately ignore the actresses’ voices when they came forward to defend Zack Snyder rather … vehemently. Imagine pretending to be outraged on behalf of these women only to reject their protestations later on? Oh, the irony.

Not to mention that in the actual scenes of the movie, the Amazons wore just as much clothes as they did in WW. Some wore even more. The criticism comes from the full bodyshots of a few Amazons when they fight to allow Hippolyta to escape and what we see is so far from oversexualization that I would laugh if I weren’t so damn frustrated. We see them supporting the pillars, contracting all their muscles, grimacing in pain and sacrificing themselves for their Queen. We see them being heroic af.

But I agree, it’s a damn shame that WB allowed themselves to be manipulated that easily by a group that had already sworn allegiance elsewhere. Anything slightly different from the Disney formula is straight out rejected and even now that the dceu movies are more in line with their expectations, it’s still not enough. Each new release is supposed to “fix” the franchise but all they manage to do is get a few days of meagre praises before it inevitably goes back to BvS and how it ruined WB’s plans for a shared universe.

It was a losing battle from the start with these people. And the more WB gave into their demands, the more their sense of superiority grew. “The entitlement is fine as long as it’s theirs”. You hit the nail on the head, that’s exactly it. It’s their entitlement that got us Josstice League. Remember how they all praised it when the movie first came out? A few weeks later everyone had already forgotten about it. Now they’re all “The SC will only be a shittier version of an already shitty movie.”

They’re so transparent, it’s actually hilarious.

Anyway, thank you for that perfect addition @joons​ . Even if I hadn’t already been a huge fan of Snyder and MoS/BvS, I would still celebrate the announcement for ZSJL if only because it took these assholes down a peg or two.

She also wrote an article titled “Shazam is DC admitting that Marvel was right all along” which I won’t link to because fuck getting that nonsense clicks but is pretty much what you’d expect from such a title.

In it, she says the idea of doing a tonal and thematic counterpart to the MCU was in itself a bad idea and says losing Ezra Miller is acceptable if he’s still loyal to Zack Snyder’s vision.

The idea that she thinks she can be trusted to be impartial on this subject is laughable.

You’re also right that it was never enough and was never going to be enough.

WB made nearly half a dozen lighter DC films and each one got a fairly snide backhanded response and they were expected to keep up a level of ongoing atonement.

If these people were capable of any kind of self-awareness or reflection, this would be the start of growth for them.

But they won’t do that.

This is literally me every time DC has put out anything for YEARS now, just without the frustrated roars and growling

Day 4 - Caranthir

@feanorianweek

Day 4- Caranthir > Weapons, People Skills, childhood, Betrayal, Lordship, Dwarves & Humans, Marriage, Appearance

(See bottom for notes.)

…

He’d pulled the curtains open so that light streamed in from the window directly onto the bed. She loved the sunlight. She’d appreciate that when she woke up.

And she would wake up. The healers had been very clear on that. Firien would wake up. It was just the herbs the healers had given her that were keeping her unconscious now.

The healers had been much quieter on other matters. Like how fast she would heal once she woke up.

If she would heal once she woke up.

Caranthir clung a little more tightly to the little bundle in his arms.

Useless, all of them. What good were they if they couldn’t even tell him if - 

The bundle squirmed, and he took a deep breath. He couldn’t afford to let his temper get the better of him. Not now.

A very quiet knock sounded at the door.

He didn’t want to call to let them in. It might disturb her, or the little one, so he stalked over to the door and yanked it open with his free hand, the other arm still carefully holding his precious bundle.

“My lord.” The messenger kept her voice low as she bowed, and Caranthir appreciated it. “Your brother has arrived.”

He blinked. Relief rushed through him in a wave even as doubt raised its ugly head. “Already?” He’d sent the courier mere days ago. Unless Manwe’s eagles had deigned to carry him, surely he hadn’t reached Curufin yet.

“One of your other brothers, my lord,” she corrected. “Lord Celegorm. He arrived in some … haste.”

That could mean nothing good. “Were they pursued?” he demanded. Now, now of all possible times for the Enemy to attack … 

And if Celegorm had fled here, alone, and not to Maedhros or Maglor, who were far closer -

Quick, harsh footsteps echoed across the flagstones as Celegorm all but ran around the corner in the narrow hallway. He was still covered in the dust of the road, and his hand was on the hilt of his sword.

One of Caranthir’s guards was trailing behind him looking helpless and a little apologetic.

Keep reading

The Grandmothers

Isengard  by Ivan Cavini

Melkor by https://twitter.com/StephenGraWalsh

Mingling BY Marhelf

“In those unhappy things which later came to pass, and in which Fëanor was the leader, many saw the effect of this breach within the house of Finwë, judging that if Finwë had endured his loss and been content with the fathering of his mighty son, the courses of Fëanor would have been otherwise, and great evil might have been prevented; for the sorrow and the strife in the house of Finwë is graven in the memory of the Noldorin Elves. But the children of Indis were great and glorious, and their children also; and if they had not lived the history of the Eldar would have been diminished.” (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Inktober by https://www.facebook.com/TheArtOfJennyDolfen/

1. Eowyn (m/b)

2. Feanor

3. Melian

4. Maglor

5. Finrod Felagund

6. Fingolfin

7. Elrond

8. Fingolfin

9. Finarfin

10. Aredhel

Sam Gamgee for Jessica ♥ commissions/store/ko-fi/instagram   

Of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

—— Nolofinwëan week, Day 2

Angrod & Aegnor

For @arafinweanweek

Okay babes I don’t have enough time to do one drawing a day for @nolofinwean-week ,,, but I still want to participate

Of the crossing of Helcalaxe and the ruin of King’s Tower.

—— Nolofinwëan week, Day 3

@nolofinwean-week day 1 - anairë and fingolfin

@nolofinwean-week day 5 - +argon can you spot him (5/7)

FINDUILAS

Day 5 of Arafinwean Week!

Kings of the Noldor

I need to draw more fanart, or else what’s the point of reading/watching all these amazing things if you don’t put the inspiration to use? Also, need to reread LotR!

art trade with @princess-faelivrin​ - thank you! 

Orodreth, who deserved more than (and was not made for) a 400-year war and being stepped on by pretty much everyone, including (probably) the father of dragons