much better footage of the haka that shut down parliament today

@endless-demon thank you so much for asking! it's a little complicated but I think simplification does a disservice to the issue and is exactly what people like David Seymour rely on to spread lies about historical context and current consequences. I'm putting this in a reblog because it's long, and I'm putting it on this post because I'd rather this video be the one to get seen. as always I'm pakeha and also not an expert, so I'm very open to corrections on details but im confident of the broad strokes.

so when the English first arrived to build settlements in aotearoa, they formed a treaty with Māori (te Tiriti o Waitangi), the people already living there, that the English can govern their own settlements, as long as they allowed for continued māori sovereignty (tino rangatiratanga). there exist two versions of the text, English and te reo Māori, which do not perfectly match. after this, the English settlers began acquiring massive swathes of land by legally questionable means, and asserting absolute sovereignty over these areas. these culminated in the land wars, which then lead to massive land confiscation as a form of both political punishment and colonization. the end result is that now the crown own nearly all land in aotearoa and claim absolute sovereignty over it.

now, the Māori text does not claim sovereignty over the property that the crown recognizes Māori own. the text promises, among other things, self determination for Māori, which is essentially impossible under a westminster system of government because they are currently a demographic minority. it's only very recent in our history that the crown has acknowledged the legitimacy of the te reo Māori text, and even more recently that we began to actually implement any of its principles. one of the biggest ways the treaty is used in modern day is to guarantee Māori have an opportunity at the table for major national decisions (particular those of environmental significance), and to defer organizational power for Māori issues to Māori communities.

the treaty principles bill seeks to water down these promises by allowing these rights to all new zealanders, "democratising" the treaty and removing those guarantees that have been so hard fought for by Māori. but, more importantly, it seeks to seed division and racism within this country to gather more support for the ACT party who are sponsoring this bill.

this bill was part of the coalition agreement by our current 3 party right wing government. the national party agreed to sponsor this bill to first reading (allowing public submission on the bill) but no further. I personally believe, along with many others, that when the time comes to vote for the second reading the act party will threaten to pull out of the coalition if the bill is not passed again, and our prime minister will not have the strength of character to stand up to his deputy. regardless, the relationship between the crown and Māori has already been damaged, both by the simple introduction of the bill as well as all the changes our current government has implemented.

as Paul Goldsmith, Minister for Treaty Negotiations outlined in his speech during the bill, the National party believe that te Tiriti must be killed, not in a single action, but by a thousand cuts, like the removal of references to the treaty from our legislation and curriculums, and the disestablishment of agencies like the Māori Health Authority, cuts to Māori advisors to govt departments, removing māori seats from local government, etc.

there's so much more to this issue, like the centuries of abuse and mistreatment of Māori by the crown authorities, how this abuse is ongoing to Māori children and adults today in state care, how iwi voices are our last line of defence against environmental and ecological damage by industry, the unilateral natural of the treaty reparation settlement process... but this is why this protest was staged in parliament today.

(in fact, there is a much larger protest taking place nationwide, scheduled to arrive the day the bill was supposed to be introduced. the bill was in fact introduced a week earlier, in a move many suspect was done to prevent exactly this kind of protest.)

as far as I'm concerned though? I think te pāti Māori achieved exactly what they wanted by this protest. they forced the government to drop the mask of civility, and force the protestors out of the building. and they showed their supporters that their protests are working - they felt threatened enough by this that they lashed out, felt a need to retaliate by suspending hana-rawhiti maipi-clarke from the house for 24 hours. the coalition are getting nervous

I'm gonna be honest, I still sort of miss the "tragic" prototype for TLH. Yes, yes, I'm aware CC has said there wasn't quite an original version, there were options and all, but there were also vibes.

Like given how with the build up to CoT we kept having characters in the present talking about that particular period of the past like "wow, that was horrifying, tragic, life-changing, heartbreaking, a tragedy we must not repeat", it did have the vibes that it was going to be a disaster.

And then... well. It didn't.

It just feels awkward now lmao. Like I would sort of argue what happened in TID ended up being WORSE than what happened in TLH. Yes, Eugenia and Christopher died, which sucks, but in comparison... Nathaniel, Jessamine, Jem (sort of), Benedict (at least in terms of emotional damage for the family, same as Nathaniel), Henry losing mobility of his legs... comparatively, the damages were worse for them than for the next generation.

It just makes it all feel a little off to me.

I think the funniest thing about Druash is that ash is gonna be like “Dru is the prettiest girl I have ever seen, I’ve never felt like this before… she lights up my life” and than Dru is gonna be like “this guy looks vaguely familiar”

real talk can anyone name any "the children of this very popular cast of characters are now having their own adventures!" concept that actually worked well. because imo it always creates a the same problem where the original cast are forced to sit out on most of the action of the story because they're no longer a part of the main cast of the new story but especially in fantasy/action/scifi scenarios this hardly ever makes sense because why would someone who went through horrible stuff as a teenager/young adult just let their kids go through the same things without intervening? why would you bring blorbo back just to tell me she's a terrible mother

The Mortal Instruments Graphic Novel Vol. 8 characters

1) Jace Herondale

2) Raphael Santiago

3) Magnus Bane

4) Alec Lightwood

5) Camille Belcourt

6) Luke Garroway

7) Lilith

I am forever haunted by Nate and Tessa's fucked up and terrible sibling dynamic. Maybe it's just because I related to Tessa too hard when I was twelve and heard "this is her older sibling who's the coolest person in the world and reuniting with him is her number one priority" and went "yup, makes sense!" but his betrayal is genuinely one of the defining aspects of TID to me.

Sibling relationships are such an underexplored way to fuck somebody up in fiction, in my opinion. Nate has been the one constant in Tessa's life, and no matter how aware she was of his flaws that could never overrule the fact that he's her person. She trusts him on a fundamental level that she just can't experience with anyone else, and part of it is because of how fleeting all her other relationships have been, but a lot of it is just the fact that he's her brother and she's loved him for as long as she's been alive. More than that, she idolizes him. Her entire life crumbles around her when Aunt Harriet dies and she ends up held hostage by the Dark Sisters, but Nate is still there and perfect in her mind. He's her anchor when everything else goes insane; if she can just find her brother then things will be okay again. She's more able to handle her world being shattered by learning about the supernatural because all that magic shit is secondary to the fact that she needs to save Nate.

And then of course she does save him and he turns around to betray her. And again, it hits harder than any other betrayal possibly could because he's more important to her than anyone else could possibly be. By this point she's built up bonds with Will and Jem and the other people at the Institute, and eventually they all become woven into her being, but not when she's sixteen and has known them for a week.

Looking at it from Nate's perspective, the thing that's always fucks me up is the way he tries to convince himself that he sees Tessa as a monster. He's genuinely just a shitty enough person that he set his sister up to be a child bride for a mass murderer because of the payout, but he can't handle thinking of it that way so he clings to this idea that Tessa isn't really his sister, isn't really human. And while yes, that's biologically true (they're not even technically related to each other), it doesn't change the fact that they're siblings in every way that matters. She'll always be his little Tessie, even if he doesn't want to admit it, doesn't want to let himself be the villain in this situation. He does the same thing with Harriet, arguing that she deserved to die because of all her lies because otherwise he would need to admit that he killed his mother out of pure selfishness.

Nate isn't the most evil guy in the world, but he is greedy and allergic to principles. It's so much worse than if he never loved Tessa, because he does love her till the very end and that love just isn't enough to override the allure of wealth and power. That's always the most painful type of relationship to me; the one where a person has just enough good to make it impossible to unequivicobly hate them.

Maybe Will could just write Nate off as a terrible person, but Tessa will always know every detail of his best and kindest moments. I have to believe that he haunts Tessa for the rest of her immortal existence, this knowledge that the person who made her life worth living for the first sixteen years was the one to sell her out. All the pain in the world isn't enough to erase that bond; she'll always have to live with the memory of him dying in her arms, the knowledge that his goodness and love was just as genuine as his duplicity.

Yeah this ended up being a lot longer than I intended, I just have a lot of feelings about the Gray siblings. Nate wasn't a part of the world where Tessa eventually found a home, she'll never have anyone else who understands the knot of emotions surrounding him. She can get sympathy but never empathy. Yes the rest of the TID crew are aware of him, but they barely met him and she outlived all of them too. Nate's so lost in her past, I bet that most people don't even realize that she used to have a brother, that she grew up as a sister, as half of a set. She carries the Gray name forward through her immortal life, and nobody else knows about the family that used to share it. She's still got Jem and Magnus who have been her friends since she was a teenager, who keep the memory of Will and the others alive; but no one else was there for her childhood.

I'm not quite sure how to end this, I'm just feeling emotions about Tessa Gray on this fine Tuesday and felt like sharing them.

Remember when Cassie dropped Kit's letter and then Tr*mp won? God, what a horrible fucking night that was

of the same steel and temper as joyeuse and durendal…⚔️

it’s been far too long since i drew my girl cordelia! @cassandraclare 🌼

follow me on instagram! @/illustratinghan

the bucktommy anniversary scene is so so hilarious. they go to the same restaurant where they had their absolutely disastrous first date. buck doesn’t get him anything for their 6 month anniversary. tommy gets him lakers tickets even though buck hates basketball. then says “take eddie if you want” to which buck says “uh… really?” then these girls hit on buck and buck’s like “wow it’s so insane that i’m bisexual. i wonder if my boyfriend of 6 months is bisexual?” it’s apparently the first time he’s ever thought this. tommy is not bisexual though, but he WAS engaged to a woman. and because they apparently never talk about anything ever, this is the first buck is hearing of this. and then it turns out his ex fiancé is abby. then he calls buck a himbo on accident. and then he’s kind of weird and misogynistic about abby. date over.

There's a really funny fic premise somewhere in here where Buck realises he has feelings for Eddie, and that Eddie has feelings for him, but instead of dating Eddie about it, he starts trying to aggressively matchmake Eddie with other men so that Eddie can get his APPARENTLY DOOMED?? first queer relationship out of the way with someone who isn't him.

I love EddieJosh but Buck would 100% set Eddie and Josh on a date where they stare at each other for 5 minutes before mutually deciding to tell Buck a made up story about their date and why it didn’t work out

Eddie: yeah we tried, Buck, but I guess it felt too much like… like dating a coworker.

Buck (feeling extremely weird about this justification): uh, but that’s not always a bad thing, right?

hot priests gonna leave the priesthood after this

i know it will be a mindfuck for kit when jem says ty looks just like jesse bc why are you telling the kid his situationship looks just like the kids dead brother-in-law when in fact the situationship is HIS DESCENDANT

Dru drawing from Halloween 🎃