Her Name Was Saly, She Was Five Years Old. She Was Like Any Child, She Probably Liked To Play With Her

Her name was Saly, she was five years old. She was like any child, she probably liked to play with her toys, she was probably learning to read, she probably like to spend time with her family and friends.

Maybe she would have been a doctor, or a farmer, or a engineer. Maybe she would have advanced the field of physics or medicine, written a best seller novel or stared in a major movie production; Or she might have had a quieter life, the world might have never known her name, but her friends and family would have and that might have been enough.

But no one will ever know now because Israel took those lives away from her, the tens of thousands of possibles that lay before each child burning like candle lights in cool summer night sniffed out in an instant. A last story shared by thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.

Gaang redraws!! (Sorry for being inactive here I keep forgetting about this account 😭)

So if you've been following me on Instagram you would have seen me say recently that I've decided to take a step back from posting/sharing/creating Grishaverse content due to what Leigh Bardugo said (or rather what she didn't say) about the situation in Palestine. For context, during the press tour for The Familiar, an audience member asked Leigh about the justification for non-BIPOC authors profiting off BIPOC stories yet not advocating for real-life BIPOC people (since Leigh has been silent on Palestine since October, despite having expressed solidarity with Palestine in the past).

The video (which you can watch here) has been circulating the internet for a while, and I've already spoken about this on Instagram. I just forgot I had Tumblr for a second there, hence why I'm only addressing this now despite having already spoken about this. However, as someone who has an entire online presence dedicated to Leigh's work, it would be wrong and rather hypocritical of me to not address this.

Disclaimer: This is not a conversation about whether or not white/white-passing authors should be allowed to write BIPOC stories, as many people both in the comments of the original video and online generally have taken it. The issue isn't that Leigh is writing BIPOC stories - it's that she's writing them and choosing not to advocate for real BIPOC people.

The audience member asked a confronting but necessary question, and isn't harassing Leigh as many people online have interpreted it. Holding your favourite people accountable isn't "harassment", especially when that person is a successful author profiting off stories that reflect issues in the real world. Art is inherently political whether or not you want to acknowledge it. This also isn't about specifically asking Leigh this question because she's Jewish - it's because she profits off these stories and yet when these exact same issues are prevalent in the real world, suddenly they're "too political" for her to speak up about despite having expressed solidarity in the past. It has nothing to do with her being Jewish.

However, what's going on in Palestine isn't a political issue. It's basic human rights. It's about humanity, and acting as if posting about this issue is "performative" is ridiculous. I don't know what she's doing behind the scenes, so I'm not going to act as if she isn't doing anything outside of social media because I simply don't know, but when you have an online presence as big as Leigh's you should be using that platform to raise awareness and express solidarity. I understand that it's very easy to come across as "performing activism", especially on social media, but Palestinians have asked us time and time again to use our platforms to help raise awareness and amplify their voices. When you're someone like Leigh who profits off stories of the trials and tribulations of BIPOC people, the very least you can do is talk about the atrocities being committed against BIPOC people in real life.

No one is expecting you to be an expert on what's going on. If you've previously posted misinformation, why not learn from it and actually educate yourself and do better? You're literally an author who profits off stories of colonialism, oppression, dissemination, apartheid, segregation and genocide and suddenly that happening in real life is "too political"? And the amount of privilege you have to not want to get involved in talking about a real-life genocide because you "stopped being political on Instagram" is laughable. Just feeling sad about it isn't going to do anything. It doesn't erase the fact that an entire people are being ethnically cleansed in a genocide you refuse to talk about.

The Grishaverse means so much to me, it's gotten me through some extremely tough periods of my life, but I cannot in good conscience continue to support an author who chooses silence over her own humanity. All she had to say in response to that question was "free Palestine", but she instead said something akin to "I know about what's going on and I know silence and feeling sad about it probably isn't enough, but I'm just not going to do anything about it". Again, I know she's advocated for Palestine in the past, but why not continue doing so? No one is stopping her - she's actively chosen to stop.

As for my accounts? I'm still deciding what to do with them. I won't be deleting them, I'm not going anywhere, but I won't be posting edits or sharing analyses or general posts about the Grishaverse until Leigh decides to do better. This blog will probably turn into a multifandom blog, but who knows at this point. All I know is that I won't be promoting Leigh's work.

Little Zuko animation :3

Not people saying “Fandom has always been like this” in that vent post I made. No. It hasn’t always been like this. Fandom has NEVER been like this until recently and if you were in fandom pre-tumblr purge, pre-twitter, pre-netflix boom, pre-tiktok….then you would fucking know it was nothing like this.

We still had the drive to create. We still sold prints and charms and made zines…but it was never like this.

The introduction of streaming, binge shows that drop all at once, tiktok and vine RIP i still love u vine but you were the beginning of a particularly ugly era) creating this bite sized, quick paced ‘content’ era of creation and it bled out into fucking everything else.

Fandoms didn’t die down when the show ended or the season was over. You didn’t mass unfollow artist, writers or moots just because they changed fandoms. There wasn’t this need to please the algorithm in order for your posts to get seen by people and enjoyed.

Fandoms used to last YEARS. Star Trek is literally the oldest running fandom out there and you got people in there that could care less about the new stuff and still have been happily prancing through their fucking fifty year old fandom today. Hell, even SPN after all it’s fuckups and shitshows has a dedicated fanbase STILL creating tons of art and fic.

There is no patience anymore. No calm feeling of taking in fandom and friends at a pace that which doesn’t make you stressed and is still fun.

Do I blame fandom for this? Of course not, but people are complacent with it and start changing their vocab to accommodate and end up making the situation so deep it cant be fixed.

We call Art & Fic Content now, completely stripping the value of what it is to a level of consumerism instead of personal entertainment & community bonding.

I was punched and pepper sprayed by cops that my university administration set on student protesters yesterday. Including once where a cop ripped my mask off my face, grabbed my jaw, and sprayed pepper sprayed straight into my mouth. The university sent out an alert in the middle of our protest canceling classes for the rest of the day, only citing “adverse conditions”. After protesters dispersed under threat of even more violence and three buses of riot police from all over the state with rubber bullets and bully sticks parked in front of one our school’s famous landmarks. I staggered over to a couple of friends who were watching on the sidelines. They gave me water and an apple and held a bag of ice on my very pepper spray irritated face. As they were walking me back to my dorm we ran into one of their roommates. She had taken cancelled classes as an opportunity to get crumbl cookie with her friends. Standing in front of her, happy in a floral blouse with her box of cookies, in my pepper spray and water soaked tshirt, keffiyeh sadly hanging off my shoulder, holding an ice pack to my mouth, felt like a slap in the face.

After putting my pepper spray soaked clothes, shoes, and keffiyeh in a plastic bag and taking an extraordinarily painful shower, a friend and I went for dinner just off campus. There we had a pot of green tea and ramen to soothe pepper sprayed throats. We got ice cream after (shared a cup with chocolate and raspberry pomegranate with strawberry pieces on top, it was very good). From our spot outside the ice cream place we watched a steady stream of groups of sorority girls in matching jeans shorts and blue bikini tops walking back to their apartments after some apparently raucous parties. The cognitive dissonance was insane. I really felt a little like I was going crazy.

Even this morning, waking up to the smeared sharpie of the National Lawyer’s Guild’s phone number on my arm, a black and blue chest from where a grown man straight up clocked me while I was held up by two other protesters in a wall, and a still sore throat and eyes from the pepper spray, life goes on like normal. I still have final papers to write and a math exam to review for.

I’m not sure I really have a point. But, this feeling only makes me want to fight harder for a free Palestine. So, fuck Israel for being an apartheid state and all of their crimes over the last 76 years. Fuck university administration for not disclosing their level of investment in Israel. Fuck university administration for not divesting from this genocide. Fuck Joe Biden for actively supporting this genocide. And fuck the police.