Abelard: we like the taste of boot of the Imperium. pirates are scum. play nice with the other Rogue Traders. don't fuck with the little robot dudes and they won't fuck with you.

like when he’s yelling “VA TE FAIRE FOUTRE” at Louis while he’s slamming the incinerator door shut in season 1, and then in the divorce court scene in tvl he says the same thing but he sounds like a whiny gay housewife. queerest line read in the whole show, I’d call it a hate crime if it wasn’t so accurate

and then the contrast between him whispering/hissing/drawling “I have the blood of Akasha in me” in season 2 and then his weird blithe tension in the tour bus in tvl when he says the same thing. Like he’s a middle school edgelord saying he has an everything-proof shield on the playground. Wild shit

are you defending (in this instance) Irish Catholics as a proxy to give yourself grace, to lump yourself in with "the good ones?"

what you're actually doing is absolving yourself of action and self-reflection. that discomfort you feel about white people perpetrating racism is asking you to do something to bring your actions into alignment with your values. instead, you're discarding this feeling by doing some feel-good mental gymnastics to ensure that there is a narrative that gives you an escape hatch, an assurance that there are good white people in the world (ones with whom you identify).

instead, let your discomfort guide you to do something real because if you're not actively standing up against fascism and its children, you're laying down to get stepped on. here are some real things to do:

donate to support the people who have been attacked, displaced and traumatized in racist attacks in Belfast:

don't have money to spare? find local organizers, join them, triage immediate needs in your community, then play the long game to move the Overton Window towards inclusive values. i do not want to hear any wailing about how nothing you do matters, no one will do anything, etcetera, etcetera; these are more mental gymnastics that allow you to give yourself permission to to do nothing

don't have time, money, or energy to spare? go to your local library and pick up a book to educate yourself and build empathy:

no access to a library? do the internal work and pick apart your own internal biases about race (i'll give a starter question for reflection: why did you feel compelled to respond to a post about violence against Black people and immigrant communities by centering white people?)

Amaka Umeh as DEE PHARMA