This is a static copy of In the Rose Garden, which existed as the center of the western Utena fandom for years. Enjoy. :)

#1 | Back to Top11-13-2015 05:32:44 PM

Giovanna
Ends of the Fandom
From: Edmonton, AB
Registered: 10-12-2006
Posts: 8797
Website

I feel like I've been here before... (Regarding Paris)

Waking up and hearing about something so ludicrously horrible that I laughed and didn't believe it. First time it was my brother telling me about planes hitting the WTC, which was obviously a load of a horseshit because I was about to go to NYC and figured he was pulling my leg.

This time it was waking up, browsing reddit, and hearing about a "Mumbai" style attack in Paris and being like "Lol fuck no it's reddit, ffs" and it honestly didn't sound likely until they mentioned where the attacks were somewhat bundled. We stayed in the 10th, just a few blocks west of one of the locations of the attack, last year at this time. It's a heavily Muslim area, fairly segregated  in that you don't see the immigrant Muslims interact with native Parisians much, but I never got much of a whiff of religious tension.* You could see the area becoming more and more gentrified, which was going the way it always does for the brown people. The attacks were in the more gentrified area east of the canal, we stayed west of it.

*In retrospect, why would I? Only Muslims lived there. We stayed above a mosque, but I can't recall seeing a single church in the area. I did see people run the gamut of Muslim though, there were plenty who wouldn't have looked out of place in Alphabet City in NY, and had the lines of hair salons to show for it, but there were also burqas and women begging because they couldn't work. (How many of those were genuine and not con artists I couldn't say, but if I was trying to scam people by gathering pity as an oppressed Muslim woman, I wouldn't have chosen that neighborhood.)

So far no one on the BBC has said Muslim anything of course, and if it's unrelated, I'll happily dislodge my foot from my mouth. But it occurs to me how little I've really thought about this since 9/11. And yet, how much a part of the social conscious this is that I, and I consider myself pretty good as far as spoiled white Americans go, still heard about this, made an immediate connection, and then kind of settled down and thought, "Oh, well, that figures."

By the way, Friday the 13th, huh?


Akio, you have nice turns of phrase, but your points aren't clear and you have no textual support. I can't give this a passing grade.
~ Professor Arisa Konno, Eng 1001 (Freshman Literature and Composition)

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#2 | Back to Top11-13-2015 05:41:48 PM

Riri-kins
World's End
From: Cloud Nine
Registered: 09-22-2008
Posts: 2354

Re: I feel like I've been here before... (Regarding Paris)

You know what this is about, right? We got Jihadi John and now the extremists are getting revenge any way they can. At least that's my theory.


Proud Saionji and Mikage fangirl
My Utena fanfiction: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2000115/Riri-kins

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#3 | Back to Top11-14-2015 04:39:11 AM

BunB
Ohtori Paramouri
Registered: 11-03-2015
Posts: 91

Re: I feel like I've been here before... (Regarding Paris)

So you didn't believe the likelihood of the attacks until you remembered the area had a large muslim population? As a muslim I guess I shouldn't really be surprised given how muslims have been portrayed in the media since 9/11

Last edited by BunB (11-14-2015 05:21:34 AM)


Must the sign of the negative proposition be constructed by means of the sign of the positive? Why should one not be able to express the negative proposition by means of a negative fact?

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