#“But wait fascism is all the bad things and communism is all the good things so how does that work”

[slyandthefamilybook]

I think we need to have a serious re-evaluation of what "leftist" means bc there ain't no fuckin way authcoms are on the same left as me lmao

[opartnermine]

putting together some interesting thoughts about the next media focus; normal-person victory fantasy. it’s hitting gaming communities like crack—helldivers, hunt showdown, lethal company, forever winter—and collaborative media like SCP—see the amazing Overlord fan film—and I think it’s starting to show up in books too, though I don’t read enough published fiction to have good examples. movies are the longest dev cycle cause they have to go through all the suits, so we’ll see.

gen z are tired of supermen. much as we grew up on them. and im including stuff like Percy Jackson and Harry Potter (I do genuinely think hp had more influence on the rise of superhero fiction than any comics). stories where the hero and the villain are both larger than life; where someone finds or is granted power and uses it for good by fighting people with similar power who use it for evil. it ties in with the generationally-ingrained helplessness among millenials; they grew up with 9/11 and climate change and being told they’d change the world and the moment they hit adulthood they were simultaneously barred from economic or political relevance, of course they want themself or someone else to be granted sudden fantastical power that they use to fight the unassailable enemy. but gen z are tired of that.

we, much like millennials, grew up in a world where fantastical, unassailable threats are a fact of life. the NSA spies on everyone. social media algorithms and corporate board meetings determine elections. global warming might not be beyond fixing, hypothetically, but fossil fuels companies would topple nations with mercenary armies before letting anyone cut into their profits in the name of saving the planet.

but at the same time, we live in a time of unprecedented democratization of information, and thus of power. random people become celebrities overnight, and existing celebrities post about their daily lives and you see that they’re just people—we talk about parasocial relationships and creepy stans now not because they’re new but because for the first time we’re realizing that’s bad: chappel roan screams at paparazzi and people, generally, aren’t calling her a bitch, they’re saying ‘yeah honestly fair.’ unprecedented genz turnout in the US, inarguably driven by social media given that we don’t watch or read the news, was largely responsible for the unusual Democrat victory in biden’s midterms. a 3d-printed, crowdfunded, gen-z-led revolution in Myanmar has occupied almost a third of the nation’s former borders for months now and seems to be winning.

we don’t feel powerless. gen z’s dream is a bunch of normal people, bolstered by revolutionary changes in technology, communication, social arrangements, trying and maybe succeeding to change things that once felt beyond our comprehension and ability to shift.

of course we love helldivers and warhammer and SCP. of course milsims are taking off in popularity like never before seen. of course destiny fans are begging for grounded, challenging dark ages gameplay, and the remaining Battlefield 1 servers are often set to some degree in hyperrealism mode, and despite community complaints Tarkov is going strong. of course it’s just in recent years that damage-rebalancing mods for Fallout games (making you and enemies able to kill each other near instantly) have spiked in downloads, and Elden ring with its absurdly large bosses failing against odds to squish little old you was such a phenomenon.

of course cries of ‘lisan al gaib’ and other forms of quasi-fictional nationalism rapidly became running jokes; we’re waiting for a cause to step together and put our bodies and minds behind.

that cause might end up being fascism, to be clear. im not saying any of this is inherently good, despite pride shining through my writing here.

but just as superhero media was emergent of millennial helplessness, this small uptick in homegrown, indie stories of ordinary people defeating cosmic powers against all odds really does seem to be predictive of an upcoming media trend, rooted as all mass trends are in the material conditions of contemporary life.

like. maybe im seeing ghosts here. maybe this is just because i absolutely love this stuff. but if you look at the video games in the last years that are doing something new and being loved for it—death stranding, deep rock galactic, shadow of Mordor, helldivers (yes i keep saying it, it’s just the perfect game for this zeitgeist), foxhole, signalis—it’s all this arrangement. no more destiny and overwatch, no more marvel and PJO; people want escapism where they’re just a normal person, or at least they’re just a cog in a far greater machine.

…oh my god it’s the strand type game. kojima thought it would be about connections and stuff—no no no it’s about a regular person doing their job, working with other people like them, and making a real difference against unfathomable, powerful forces. death stranding is literally this, with all the extraneous stuff boiled away, before most of these came out. what the fuck he’s a prophet. lisan al gaib Kojima, show us the way.

[painfullymeta]

In my feels again, tumblr

Back in 2017 or so I wrote a story about anxiety. It was absolutely rooted in the political environment of the moment; it was absolutely rooted in the particular stresses of the moment for someone who passes for cishet and is not. It's about a closeted, neurodivergent (unspecified but he has enough echolalia to be a PITA to write) trans man who is being increasingly hemmed in by the misogynistic component of creeping fascism and is forced to choose whether or not he becomes himself or lets the world win.*

The world is full of choices, and they don't actually get less scary when the moment passes, because gods know those moments are still out there waiting for their chance (if life were made of moments, even now and then a bad one— but if life were only moments, then you'd never know you had one**) and I'm just me. (Am I not hot when I'm in my feelings?***)

Sunday I had a chance to talk with the trans kid who was a big chunk of inspiring my last big in my feels tumblr post and tell him his speech meant a lot to me, as someone who doesn't know what the fuck I am. And to tell him my Tradition has a canonically transmasc god, because it does, and even if he isn't pagan anymore, he's someone it's safe to say that to.

The teens give me life, yo. (Nonbinary kid at the coaster park stabbing into their ice cream cup with a spoon and yelling at their jimmies, "I CAME OUT, WHY WON'T YOU" will live rent-free in my brain forever. In the good way. In the best way.) One of my kids made me a nonbinary flag friendship bracelet. I love everyone in this bar never mind that none of y'all are old enough to drink there.

I spend a lot of pointless brain cycles worrying about how much of my life I'll blow up if I make more of a point of anything. Though at least being at "now accepting all major pronouns and thon" about it makes the casual human interaction a little less fraught. But I loop back around and through the petty anxiety about it all the time.

Anyway. That is all setup for the bit I am actually in my feels about.

I happened to glance at Discord and saw activity in a server for a meatspace social group. So I went to see what it was.

What it was, was a friend who is, as far as I know, cishet, posting this:

Which I suspect he did because a) it's June and b) one of the other folks there has Star Wars as a special interest.

I peered at it, and I peered at my anxiety, and I replied to say that in related content, one of my kids made me an enby-flag friendship bracelet.

Within less than a minute, that comment of mine had a thumbs up react from a cis gay friend who hadn't even been logged in at the time I said it and I am fuckin' verklempt ever since.

It's such a tiny thing, but I have such anxiety about my whole deal in my meatspace life y'all and here's this quiet in-person-person in-community support and it means the world to me and...

... anyway I flapped my hands incoherently at him in DMs because it fuckn mattered. (And I know he can parse "I am too autistic to words usefully here".)

Never underestimate the power of a well-placed thumbs up emoji.

We are more than we're made to be We got more than meets the eye When we stand strong, together you and me We can save the world ****

* "The Company Store" was published in Recognize Fascism, an anthology edited by Crystal M. Huff and released by World Weaver Press in 2020.

** Yeah I'm putting in the echolalia because I talked about Rory's origin story it's just gonna happen that way and also I am deep in Alexithymia Bros right now so I'm talking around my feels. That's from Into the Woods, by the way, "Moments in the Woods", by Sondheim and Lapine.

*** "I'm Just Ken", the Barbie Movie

**** "We Can Save the World", Blaseball: The Musical (The Deaths of Sebastian Telephone)

[secretgamergirl]

The Entire Plot of Final Fantasy 14, with all the expansions, and some serious analysis of how good it actually is. (Part 2 - Post-ARR)

Quick heads up, there’s gonna be a bit of saucy language in a screencap of a famous quote when I get down to Shiva.

When we left off, we had just finished enduring a bunch of long-winded speeches from main villain of the thing Gaius van Baelsar, beat him up, beat his robot up, and killed some loser calle Lahabrea who at the time was possessing some loser called Thancred. And I mean I say we, but the whole point of this series of blog posts is I played this whole game to summarize it so that you, someone who theoretically values your time more than I do, can follow people’s conversations without sitting through a real freaking slog of nothing plot. You know what though? You’re going to humor me here a bit. You’re gonna get this whole damn speech.

I honestly have kind of a love-hate relationship with this speech. First off like I said the game is structured in a way that you hear it a LOT. Normally, there’s a quick little cutscene when you enter a dungeon, another as you reach the boss, and one after beating the boss. Social etiquette says you stop and wait for anyone there for the first time to watch the cutscenes, but in this final dungeon there are some extras and they are LONG. So apparently it used to be a thing where people would just go screw it, skip those, and you’d finish your big imperial general speech to see people killing the guy who gave it and doing their victory dances, and the fix was to make just these ones in the final couple areas unskippable... and also give people huge bonuses to XP and end game loot tokens if they replayed them, so, everyone who plays the game has heard this like 50 times any any other scene probably once.

Also the content of it is worth commenting on. We get a pretty good grounding of where the evil empire is coming from, philosophically (and again, it’s pretty much just fascism), their wannabe Roman thing where they build crappy sheet metal roads everywhere they go, their regard for the rest of the world as a bunch of primitive savages, and hey credit where it’s due, from there end there’s no lines drawn between the various races that count as “human” and the ones who arbitrarily don’t (because he doesn’t count any of them as human... side note “pure-blooded” imperials have “a third eye” or at least claim to, from where I sit they just have a weird habit of embedding gemstones into their foreheads). There’s also a bit in here about “your leaders” being just as bad and doing the whole god summoning thing which... really feels like a 1.0 thing.

See there’s this whole Zodiac of 12 gods, you pick one as a patron when making your character, and in that end of 1.0/intro movie cutscene, Louisoix does in fact do the standard summoning thing, and that actually really should come up as an issue. Spoiler alert though, the writers totally forget about this until the end of the 4th expansion when they have a character break the 4th wall to remind you that not-for-lack-of-trying but they haven’t resolved EVERY dangling plot thread and “the twelve” we’re still gonna get to. Also honestly, every head of state you deal with seems to be a pragmatist with no real use for religion (except Kan-E-Senna with her weird communing with elder tree monster gods thing), and while your party, AKA the Scions, do have kind of a religious bent, it’s all about Hydaelyn the Mother Crystal, the big space rock from the start of the game which also gives you some divine intervention in the final boss fight. Anyway for now we’re hand-waving the importance of any of this because one of the moons exploded, Bahamut busted out, blew up like half the world map, and sure Louisoix did some sort of summoning thing but whatever he summoned was only around for a few seconds and everyone present has a big convenient memory gap mainly to avoid the question of whether people playing in 1.0 days are still canonically that character or not, so it’s fine.

Post-A Realm Reborn

So that brings us to where we are when the very long credits finish rolling and you get slammed with like 5 interim patch teasers, most notably the one where there’s an incredibly loud roar you can hear a couple countries away to remind you that we never did address the whole world-ending-threat-that-is-Bahamut thing. On top of that though, a truckload of sidequests open more or less at once, and everyone wants to talk to you, but really the most important thing is you unlock your own Amano art style Magitek Armor and when you’re riding around in it it plays Terra’s theme, and there’s even a big snow field with a town in the distance right near where you are.

Once you’re done being a big FF6 nerd, and also over the initial novelty of having flight unlocked across the board for every base game area, allowing you to get around MUCH faster and see the jank low poly cliff tops that show these early maps absolutely weren’t designed with the assumption you could fly over them later, yeah there’s a lot of new content to check out. Just doing some quick math, before going into the endgame stuff, there are all of 7 (9 if we count the two endgame ones) mandatory dungeons and 5 optional ones, to which we are adding another 17 (only 2 of which are mandatory), and that initial count of 3 standalone boss fights against summoned gods and our final boss Ultima Weapon, we suddenly have another 22(!) boss fights added into the mix (5 of those mandatory), between stuff clearly left on the cutting room floor, lead-ins to the first expansion, and fun optional side content. And these counts are all before factoring in the randomly generated rogue-y dungeon I honestly still haven’t touched, and the “raids,” where as tradition in every one of these between-expansions periods, we have one area where there’s a string of about a dozen 5 minute bops exploring a storyline with a mix of breezy mini-dungeons and boss fights for 8-player parties (the standard size for standalone boss fights from here out), and a set of 3 sloggier dungeons you chaotically stomp through in a ridiculous 24 person mega-party. There’s also nearly no filler quests between all these new things unlocking, so the “it gets better after 50″ crowd aren’t lying or suffering from Stockholm syndrome, the game does suddenly open way the hell up the second those credits roll. BUT we’re here to talk about the plot.

So our first major concern is that no seriously, we introduced a bunch of these bad for the environment, bad for the radicalization aspect god summons we didn’t get around to killing, and need to get that done with. Oddly we start with the wildcard that is... Good King Moggle Mog XII. So moogles are a thing, this being a Final Fantasy, played here as kinda pixieish magical creatures we retcon in the first expansion most people can’t see, which is kinda weird because their main role is delivering mail for people. They also hang out in Gridania just kinda being cute and useless. Anyway they summon their god. Or, technically, they summon a recreation of a real world historical figure who they revere like a god but... yeah that still counts. So we get this weird bit where golly gee gosh we didn’t know this was bad to do, but we have to call in the designated god exterminator to fight a whimsical cartoon bunny-cat-fairy thing while listening to a delightful little song that is 100% stealing the tune of This is Halloween. It’s an entertaining change in tone from the usual stuff.

Next we have Leviathan, but being a big sea monster you need to build a custom boss battle barge to even get to, we’ve got some buildup there, which is largely spent trying and failing to make Ascians interesting, explaining how they’ve been teaching the local fish people their trick of being bodysnatching immortals in a fun show don’t tell way, where Merlwyb shows up to lend a hand, just shoots their high priest, and he immediately takes over the body of the next mook to the left, and then just ultimately gets eaten by Leviathan because, again, human sacrifices also help them with the whole aether hoarding thing. It’s entertaining, there’ll be a quiz later. Thancred also shows up during this, doing a bunch of sick ninja flips and stabbing people, because they realized, if a bit late, we really should do something to make you like the guy who got possessed and needed rescuing. It’s something.

This also ties into some future expansion foreshadowing, where this boatload of refugees arrives from Doma (wait, the Samurai city from FF6, with Cyan, that Doma? Yes) and everyone is making this big deal about how hard it is for anyone to take them in. Then eventually after a lot of hemming and hawing they get introduced to Merlwyb and she’s just like hell yes I’ll make room in my cool pirate city for the elite ninja rebels, why the hell did you think I wouldn’t? There’s also a bit where their leader hides her face out of fear of being seen as a monster, but really it’s because she’s a not-yet-introduced race, which... playing today is available for PCs right out the gate so it seems extra silly when we get the reveal.

Anyway, Ramuh’s kind of an unimportant speed bump, so is Odin, but Shiva is kind of a special case. There’s a whole cult/terrorist organization who are fighting on team dragon in that whole elves vs. dragons war going on up north, following someone who goes by Lady Iceheart and claiming to be the reincarnation of Saint Shiva, who... OK have you seen this thing that’s been floating around the internet for years?

That is actually a very specific reference to the backstory for the whole first expansion of FF14. This terrorist gal has access to secret knowledge that despite this whole war with dragons that’s been going on forever in the region, way back when it was first settled some elf lady fell in love with this big dragon and everyone lived in harmony until sometime later when some elves decided to just be huge jerks and kill one of the more important dragons. The elf pope has been covering that history up forever and insisting dragons are evil and aggressive. Terrorist gal (Ysayle) believes herself to be the reincarnation of that historical dragon-banger, and has an interesting trick where rather than externally summon a god, she personally transforms into one... and really that kinda seems to be the way to do it because if you don’t count the “I am the reincarnation of this historical figure” bit she seems pretty rational and survives boss fights against her in big ice lady form. But yeah this is all Heavensward foreshadowing. Mostly you’re just following around as her and her gang do terrorist attacks on the city off the north edge of the map (Ishgard) and slowly piece her motivations together.

But wait hold up what’s up with Bahamut? Funny story, most people who play this game don’t ever get an answer to this. What’s up with Bahamut is the subject of the first “normal raid,” The Binding Coil of Bahamut, which due to being tuned crazy hard but not showing up in the random lottery for crazy hard quests means parties for it basically never happen and you’re probably never going to see it unless you think to dip back for it later when you’re massively overleveled and turn off the normal level-adjustment thing. Which is a shame because it’s quite neat honestly, and serves as a general hub for resolving outstanding 1.0 plot threads. This also makes it weird and confusing if you’ve never played the version of the game that hasn’t existed for over a decade.

So... OK this is something I need to get into now anyway. While the retroactive overarching narrative covering this isn’t properly fleshed out until we’re a few expansions deep, the world has a very long history with a bunch of apocalypses generally called “Umbral Calamities” in it. 7 to date, specifically. Most of these really aren’t touched on, but #4 involved this ancient civilization called the Allagan Empire who were basically a bunch of ridiculously overpowers science wizards with absolutely no concept of ethics who left a bunch of rad ancient artifacts lying around. Flying continent, core modules for giant robots, cloning facilities, monster making projects, giant crystal tower, they got around. They also declared war on like whoever and were into slavery and such so they butted heads with the dragons way back when.

Dragons incidentally come from space. Their home planet got more or less destroyed by rampaging death robots, and one particular dragon called Midgardsormr (whose corpse is the most visible landmark in Mor Dhona, the area with all the imperial fortresses, thanks to a cool 1.0 cutscene) took all his personal eggs and just flew across space to find a better place to raise his kids. This mostly worked out well but Allagans gotta suck, did a lot of killing and enslaving, the dragons got desperate and did the summon thing, here’s Bahamut. He’s a real big chonky dragon god... and knowing that killing him would just lead to him getting summoned again, they did the sensible thing and built a big artificial moon as a prison for him instead. That came crashing down and busted open at the end of 1.0, and the good news is that whole bit does apparently end up with Bahamut dead after all. But, the Allagans are way into failsafes, so their pan for any eventual Bahamut summoning s to line the prison walls with torture chambers imprisoning a ton of dragons so that should Bahamut die they will of course immediately resummon him back inside the moon prison which can just restrain him again.

So... when I mentioned Alisae, one of the twins, has her own thing going on? She’s finding the main bulk of this wreck while trying to work out what happened to her grandfather, so, yeah big giant roboty moon chunk full of tortured wall dragons and a half-revived Bahamut. Also while you’re in there you find out Louisoix is less dead than advertised... but also he kinda went and turned himself into the god Phoenix and became a huge jerk, and the main imperial antagonist from 1.0, Nael van Darnus, who incidentally was kinda the one responsible for the whole “hey let’s drop the smaller moon on these primitive jerks in Eorzea” thing that lead to the whole game ending apocalypse. Nael kind of isn’t mentioned ANYWHERE in the game as is besides this raid chain, but apparently there was this whole thing with people assuming she was a guy and so it’s a big surprise to people that she isn’t here, but also she’s totally Bahamut’s slave, and has this dragon winged boss form, so it’s a bit “hey, congrats on your transition, that’s a cool new fursona you have to.” And a boss fight that’s a pain even if you are massively over-leveled. But yeah, major figures from 1.0 die, Bahamut gets a proper boss fight, you shut the whole place down. And again most people skip just ALL of this.

So... the other thing about Nael is she apparently had this very special gunhalberd (the Empire kinda loves hybridizing their weapons with guns see)  that was all powered up in the process of bring-down the moon shennanigans wand for some weird reason is called Bradamante. This tied into this late in 1.0 questline about this idiot detective named Hildibrand Helidor Maximilian Manderville (Hildy for short), and his also an idiot catgirl sidekick who likes explosives. They got up to some wacky hijinx back there which end with Hildy taking Nael’s ridiculous weapon and accidentally blasting himself up to the falling Bahamut prison moon with it. He of course survives this by virtue of being a wacky comedy character prone to slapstick stuff, and has a whole long sidequest chain in each of these pre-expansion periods having various wacky shennanigans. Also his dad is like the most supernaturally strong guy in the world, the owner of... we just straight up brought in the Gold Saucer from FF7, frequently hangs out in his underwear, and moonlights as miniskirted-FF14-Santa once a year.

The Hildy stuff is WILDLY polarizing. Either these comedy quests are the absolute greatest thing in the game, or the absolute worst thing depending who you ask. Personally I think they’re pretty great overall even if some of the running gags get old fast. This is running long again, so let me see how quick I can cover the major points of this outing.

So you’re introduced to Hildy partly by way of there being a bunch of zombies off in the desert clearly imitating his whole deal. Turns out he was presumed dead after being sent into space and frozen and crashed back down and was buried, and when he crawled out of his grave he was pretty out of it, so, honest mistake. Anyway the zombies really like him and make him their king. Once that’s all cleared up he takes a new case where someone is going around stealing various priceless antique weapons from people. Also on the case is this actually competent detective named Briardien who kinda sorta works in a Miles Edgeworth sorta way, and this big friendly guy, Gilgamesh from FF5. He suggests maybe calling him “Gil” for short, and Hildy procedes to spend the next forever introducing him as Greg.

Conveniently Gilgamesh doesn’t need an excuse to be here since just kinda randomly showing up in other Final Fantasy games looking for cool weapons has been his personal running gag/superpower forever. He’s very nice and we’re doing this real idiot plot so things stretch on for an impressively long while before anyone pieces together that the big weird looking guy stealing priceless weapons everyone’s looking for is, in fact, he big weird looking guy with like a dozen weapons strapped to his back who’s been helping look for the thief. He doesn’t make the connection himself because from his perspective he never stole anything and just won all these in duels where the other person forfeit. Also he misses his friend Enkidu from 5 and named a chicken he dyed green after him. Eventually of course you end up confronting him about this while he’s checking out the biggest bridge in the world, because that song has a name, and also at one point he’s sitting next to a big pile of crystals missing non-chicken Enkidu so, a summon happens, you fight’em as a team.

Also somewhere along the way in there... Ultros from FF6 just kinda randomly shows up, along with his pal Typhon. Here there’s less of an excuse for the cameo. We literally go with “a wizard did it.” Someone was trying a summoning ritual or something and out popped this weirdo.

There’s a bunch of other convoluted stuff in this plot line, involving a face-changing thief and the eventual reveal that Ul’dah was not in fact originally the home of the horrible little capitalist scumbags, and they in fact took it over after releasing some kind of zombie plague on the original citizens. Which is a hell of a detail to only come up in the wacky comedy side stuff. But yeah, in the end, you get fun boss fights against these wacky comedy characters from 5 and 6, a lot of shenanigans happen, and Hildy kinda gets smacked off into the sky to show up again next time.

So, hey, that bit I mentioned with the Allagans making a crystal tower, AKA Syrcus Tower? That’s the huge-party raid set. It’s also just... straight up the end game of FF3. Emperor Xande, Cloud of Darkness, Amon, Doga, Unei, gang’s all here. Full disclosure, while I have played FF3, I played the 3DS port, which kinda sucks, and got to be such a slog at the end that I didn’t quite get to the pile of reference bombs we’re dropping here. Playing all of 14 is already kind of a heavy load, OK? Other entries in the series are totally on the to-play pile. But... yeah. We’re basically just straight up saying that the Allagan empire is straight up the empire from FF3, those are historical events for this game. Or a minor variation anyway. While we’re at it we’re also dumping a bunch of FF6′s backstory with the warring triad on them, they built the Ultima Weapon... “the Allagans” is the answer to a whole lot of questions. Oh and the reason we have all these named FF3 characters around is they were into cloning. And interdimensional stuff.

Anyway, big weird tower, it’s hard to get into, this big dorky catboy nerd named G’raha really wants to do some archeology though, so, Cid is on the case.  There’s a bit of technobabble and grabbing magic rocks from all over, you mostly get in, but there’s a retinal scan/magic blood test. Fortunately, also on the case is Cid’s on-again off-again boyfriend/rival Nero who you... probably don’t recognize at all, because he doesn’t show up wearing his big ridiculous red helmet from his time as one of the 4 main imperial general types. I guess this technically makes him the first character who couldn’t be bothered to stay dead (or is that Hildy?), but honestly when you fight him there’s a big deal of him just kinda being gone right after the fight, so him making it out before the Ultima Weapon goes and casts Ultima and vaporizes the whole fortress seems reasonable. But yeah, he’s a semi-evil semi-nazi nerd who’s super jealous of Cid and it’s super super clear that they used to date. And will again. He’s here to try and turn over a new leaf somewhat and help get the weird tower open. And also around really conveniently are (clones of) Doga and Unei who pass the DNA scan so, hey, door works, in you go, go fight a bunch of FF3 bosses.

Eventually you kill the... clone of the evil emperor from 3/the Allagan Emperor, but oh no, we’ve got a portal to hell, AKA The World of Darkness, AKA the Void, AKA the 13th. Anyway yeah, we’re doing the full FF3 end game, gotta fight that Cloud of Darkness, gotta have some Nero oscillating between villainy hey I can use hell powers to be the greatest scientist and oh no gotta help get everyone out of here stuff, and by the end of it Doga and Unei end up giving G’raha a magic blood transfusion which boosts his own secret Allagan royal bloodline powers he secretly had  and once all the hell portal/giant pile of clones stuff is sorted out, he ends up locking himself inside the tower to try and work out what the whole deal is with it.

Now at this point I need to go on a little tangent because like... he’s a catboy. FF14 in general is really unclear on the matter of whether the various playable races are separate species, or if everyone’s human and just, hey, this is a world where some humans are really tall or really short or have cat ears and tails or whatnot... but the implication here seems to be the latter? Which also gets me wondering wait, when people go around using “whoresons” as an insult... is that an in-universe slur against catboys? Because NPC wise, catgirls and sex workers match up shockingly close to 1 to 1, and when the game first launched playing as a catboy wasn’t even an option (pretty sure G’raha is introduced in the same patch allowing them, also female orcs).

Also I’m just kinda using my own informal names for all these, so, real quick breakdown for clarity. Our essentially human races save those introduced in expansions and their canon names are:

Humans (Hyur)- you’d think they’d be the default but mostly they seem to come from fantasy Tibet (Ala Migo) and fantasy Japan (Doma) which have both been under imperial occupation forever so they tend to be refugees/generally down and out.

Elves (Elezen) come from the city of Ishgard in the country of Coerthas to the north, where there’s a jerk pope and a bunch of noble houses full of jerks. A lot also live in Gridania, in the Black Shroud forest.

Horrible little capitalist scumbags (Lalafell) come from Ul’dah in the country of Thanalan and no for real they are the worst. Canonically there are maybe half a dozen in the whole world who aren’t corrupt merchants basically or actually in the slave trade, colonialists, crime lords, scuzzy pimps, or just general gross creeps. I’m sorry if you play one, individuals can be cool, but culturally yeah they’re awful.

Orcs (Roegadyn) big usually easygoing folks whose names are either Welsh or ridiculous mountain puns like Curious Gorge. A couple are major NPCs (Merlwyb being one), otherwise they seem to all be either chill retired pirates or fresh-faced adventurers.

The other orc of note is this woman named Moenbryda, who is introduced in one of the most astoundingly “we want you to instantly fall in love with this new character and feel like she was part of the gang all along” ways I have ever seen. So all the scions are just super super thrilled to see this giant woman with a giant axe who’s a giant nerd and has this “I am emphatically not straight” old friend swing by, and I mean yeah I’m not going to say she isn’t pretty instantly likeable (I mean she’s basically just a spare of my character).

Unfortunately I’m pretty media savvy and it immediately struck me that the only possible reason to try and get players to instantly fall in love with a character being introduced out of the blue like this is because the writers are really jonesing to do a big tragic death and aren’t willing to sacrifice any of our existing characters for it. I’m really compressing this down for this summary, and she’s probably actually around for a chunk of this free patches span equal to everything I’ve mentioned so far, but, yeah, that’s totally what she’s here for. Shame, really. We’ve still got a bunch of not really established yet Scions around, could have killed one of them and brought her in to fill the seat, but no.

There’s a whole big run-up to this though. Short version is there’s another one of those Ascians going around causing trouble, and big splashy end of game cutscene power aside, they tend not to stay dead when killed. So Moenbryda and Urianger (the m’lady dork in the hoodie) have a science jam session and make a special Ascian-killing device that basically makes both the target and the user’s soul explode. There’s also a bit in here where forgetable Ascian villain of the day kidnaps Minfilia, just full damsel in distress style. It sucks. Again like everything involving Ascians sucks. They’re terribly written undeveloped villains and every time one shows up we need to stop dead for a ton of exposition on what we’re even trying to do with them now. But yeah, end of the day, Moenbryda shows up, is cool and likeable, heroically sacrifices herself to kill a super unimportant villain and rescue just the worst character, everyone is very sad, especially Urianger. We move on.

Or at least in this summary we move on. In game there’s like 3 or 4 plot threads all kind of advancing at once since this was all added in over multiple patches and, yeah, it skips around and opens up some. The next important thing though is Midgardsomnr, the cool dead snakey dragon up on the tower? According to the new pals from Ishgard you met dealing with the whole Lady Iceheart thing, he’s maybe less dead than advertised. This is honestly a property dragons seem to have in general, and this dragon in particular. They don’t really seem to particularly follow the rules on the whole alive vs. dead thing. You can kill’em, it’s pretty inconvenient, but they’ll hang around as a ghost, possibly powerful enough to manifest a new body, and then you can suck out all their ghost juice and they’ll just take a nap for a while. This would be a pretty annoying thing to get into if we were setting up a new antagonist or something, but... Midgardsomnr is actually a pretty solid pal. Mostly he notices that all your divine plot armor that lets you go fight bosses and not get mind controlled has lost its juice, and offers to do a weird soul pact thing with you to cover you until that gets recharged. Plus he knows you’re going to spend the whole next expansion dealing with his kids. He also manifests this tiny cutesy version of himself you can equip in your little pet slot to hang out for the next expansion or two, who still has this deep booming powerful father of all dragons voice, so, that’s great. If weird and confusing.

Anyway, one final major plot thread to get through before the next expansion starts properly. So one thing we’re trying to do here is actually establish real character for the Scions here since they’re our in it for the long haul supporting cast. Thancred gets to hang out with ninja pals and stab a fish cult, doing some snarking, Urianger gets to be said about Moenbryda being dead and also really do the big science nerd thing beyond everyone else’s exposition dumping, Minfilia is just a lost cause, the damseling was kind of the final straw. Next on the list though is Alphinaud, the twin you officially have in your little group. He’s got this big idea that after having saved the whole continent from an evil empire and several rampaging gods, you could probably get more done as an organization if instead of just being one semi-professional god exterminator and a little over half a dozen research nerds, you had maybe your own whole private military force, independent from what are technically three city-states’ private armies in a longterm alliance. Not a terrible plan on paper, none of the heads of state have an issue, so you help recruit a bunch of vollunteers from all over. And you actually snag existing NPCs from various bars and outposts and stuff, and end up with your nice little blue uniformed pals standing guard in places and doing little missions.

Then political problems start cropping up. Mainly, a couple of those horrible little capitalist scumbags are staging some kinda coup in this weird convoluted way where on paper they’re improving life for those human refugees all over but it’s kind of a front. Have I mentioned yet I kinda love these guys as villains because they all have these goofy names like Pittlety Dittlety and it’s impossible to take them seriously? There’s also an issue where it’s becoming increasingly clear that oh hey this private army you recruited off the street might have some people in it who are kinda corrupt and working against you. Whoops. And again, this is all kinda running parallel with these other plotlines, it’s not like things go horribly the INSTANT you form your army. It’s like, at least a week later.

Anyway all the political machinations come to a head with you getting invited to a big heads of state party in U’dah to talk about future plans, getting Ishgard into the alliance mainly if I recall, stuff like that. Somewhere in there, the Sultana pulls you aside to her personal chambers to split a bottle of wine and tell you how she’s planning to get onto that short list of little capitalist monsters I actually like by abdicating her throne and establishing a democracy, so this corrupt as hell merchant council can’t run things any more. At which point the poison in her glass kicks in.

So things get real serious real quick. Dead head of state, you’re the prime suspect. It’s actually a coup staged by some awful little merchant lords. Her boyfriend/bodyguard Rauban the big ex-gladiator finds out what happened, knows damn well who’s actually responsible, cuts some little piece of garbage’s head right off while everyone’s having dinner. Oh hey, one of the highest ranking people in your personal army who are here running security is also in on all this, for the... honestly pretty understandable reason that he’s one of those fantasy Tibet refugees and the little piece of garbage was pushing for more rights for them. They fight, he cuts off Rauban’s arm. The other two heads of state kinda go “you know what? We should probably go,” which, yeah, fair. Meanwhile the whole place descends into chaos, and hey not only are you being framed for the murder, you kinda... did bring in one of the actual people who did it and all his personal goons, so, it’s time for you and your pals to get the hell out of here while basically pursued by an army.

There’s a big escape sequence, lot of those “I’ll hold them off, go” moments, most of your party goes for this last ditch “this teleport spell is almost definitely probably safe” exit, you get out on foot, end up meeting up with the same caravan driver who brought you into the game to begin with from parts unknown, and the only people you can confirm made it out besides you are Alphinaud, and Tataru, who I don’t think I’ve even mentioned yet? She’s the Scion’s secretary/bookkeeper and really not relevant to anything until you’re fleeing the country with just her and Alphinaud. Super major character from here out though so have an image. Anyway, you’re bound for Ishgard, because you did make some friends with some people up there, and they’re a super militarized isolationist nation state. Good place to lay low, and credits roll on this interlude.

So... wow that was MUCH longer of a write up than I expected it would be. Things actually move fairly briskly through all this, so you’re likely to run out of plot before you run out of fresh new dungeons/bossfights/grinding those tribal quests out. Part of what all the glacial pacing in the base game does though is repeat a bunch of setting history and groups-of-guys-whole-deals at you like 20 times, so things do at least end up pretty damn firmly anchored, plot wise.

I still wouldn’t call the plot for this end of things good though. Most characters still have nothing really established, villains don’t especially exist before they’re relevant, the whole “how to kill an Ascian for real” bit is really long-winded and doesn’t actually really come up again past there. And... I guess this is a “spoiler” of sorts for a post or two from now, but you know what else doesn’t come up again? This whole exciting coup/criminal status thing. Like mechanically you can just turn around and head right back into Ul’dah like nothing happened, which... it would suck if you couldn’t because you have to for a third of the class quests and such, but even long-term plotwise? Post-Heavensward turns out the other coup orchestrator just wanted to preserve the status quo, the poison put the Sultana in a coma rather than kill her, and he just kinda... walks the whole thing back all no-hard-feelings. Terrible decision. Nothing really sticks besides your party getting scattered around and Rauban being short an arm from here out.

Anyway, if you’re digging this whole plot summary project or just, you know, want to help me remain alive, Patreon link?

We’ll be picking this up probably tomorrow with, as they say, The Award-Winning Heavensward Expansion (which if I’m honest I didn’t actually like that much).

[kob131]

https://lilithfairen.tumblr.com/post/697042296860016640/you-know-whats-actually-just-dawned-on-me

You know what’s actually just dawned on me, regarding the whole “Atlas/Ironwood aren’t fascist you stupid RWBY fans” indignation that’s been going on lately in the “critic” community?

That James isn’t fascist due to lacking any sort of religious fascination with the government in people’s lives, acting as though it is some mystic force? That this was a fucking stupid thing to say? That you gave Dex a softball?

Atlas and Ironwood share several traits commonly identified in fascist governments, so while it’s a bit of a stretch, it’s not surprising to see people associate fascism with Atlas/Ironwood, particularly after Ironwood institutes martial law and makes his authority the authority.

Totalitarianism is not fascism. Not all fingers are thumbs.

But you know who really demonstrate common elements of fascism?

It’s Ironwood supporters.

... What

And that’s not even an exaggeration. This came to me off of reading a list of 14 characteristics of fascism, and realizing that even if Atlas/Ironwood don’t check off all of the traits, Ironwood supporters themselves qualify for almost all of them.

... You’re fucking serious.

Honestly, let’s actually go through them all and elaborate.

Place your bets, who thinks she’ll actually correctly identify fascism.

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism. Ironwood supporters agree with Ironwood’s choice to place Atlas above the rest of Remnant, treating Atlas and its citizens as more valuable and worthy of survival than Mantle or the rest of the world.

No, they believe that James was right- Remnant was impossible to save and that this was a ‘best of a bad bunch’ situation.

Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights. Ironwood supporters whitewash his oppression of Mantle’s citizens, or how his apathy for maintaining Mantle’s infrastructure and diverting needed resources endangers the lives of Mantle’s citizens.

That is not disdain for human rights, this is a ‘for the greater good’ situation,

Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause. Ironwood supporters vilify Team RWBY, the Happy Huntresses, and their allies for their opposition to Ironwood. Not only do they vilify the characters, but they vilify the creators of the show for how Ironwood is written, treating his characterization as an offense against them.

Multiple James fans SUPPORT Team RWBY.

Supremacy of the Military. Ironwood supporters treat Ironwood as worthy of obedience due to his military status, and accuse the writers of the show of vilifying militaries in general based on his role as an antagonist.

That is not supremacy of military, that’s just ordinary admiration and dumbassery.

Rampant Sexism. This obviously goes without saying, but-

You crying wolf falls on deaf ears? A-yep.

Controlled Mass Media. Ironwood supporters downplay Ironwood’s use of media to control the population, with propaganda promoting Atlas and threats against dissent being broadcasted. And let’s not forget the obvious: that these people genuinely believe they should be able to dictate what media is and isn’t allowed to exist.

Him displaying warnings and assurance is not propaganda. Shut it.

P.S. “Madoka Magica is good”

Lilith: *Snarls like a wild animal*.

Obsession with National Security. Ironwood supporters insist that all of his actions are necessary to maintain order in Mantle, despite the fact that we’re shown in the show how it’s Ironwood’s own decisions that instigate unrest and distrust in Mantle. This argument is used to justify Ironwood’s attempts to unlawfully arrest those who interfere with his plans.

This isn’t demonstrating an obsession by the way.

Religion and Government are Intertwined. Religion isn’t a big part of Atlas, so this aspect doesn’t really apply.

Wait wait wait.

So the one thing unique to fascism, defined by the man who made the word HIMSELF Benito Mussolini, doesn’t apply...and yet you didn’t immediately go “Huh, this is stupid”?

... You’re an idiot.

Corporate Power is Protected. Ironwood supporters excuse how Ironwood’s choices are meant to spare the elites of Atlas from discomfort and insecurity, while Mantle is forced to take almost all of the burden. They also excuse how Ironwood’s choice to abandon Mantle is spurred by Atlesian society’s devaluing of the poor and unprivileged citizens of Mantle.

This is not protecting corporate power. In fact, James’ actions HURT corporations.

Labor Power is Suppressed. Ironwood supporters excuse the martial oppression and surveillance of Mantle’s citizens, even the criminalization of refusing to cooperate. They are uncaring about Mantle’s plight and the consequences Ironwood’s actions have on its citizens—even to the point of endangering their lives.

You are aware that this is in reference to forcing people to work certain jobs right?

... Oh yeah, of course not.

Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts. While not present in the show proper, Ironwood supporters constantly prove themselves hostile towards art they do not approve of based on their obsessive vitriol towards RWBY. They also attack fans who present detailed analyses of the show, including those which refute “critic” attacks on the show.

Sorry, I must have missed an asterisk saying “except those I approve of” somewhere.

Obsession with Crime and Punishment. Many Ironwood supporters believe that Team RWBY deserve to be punished in some way for opposing Ironwood, such as having allies die (and often specifically female allies), failing to save people, or being maimed in some way. This even included the idea of taking away/disabling an amputee’s prosthetic arm, because they believe she should be unconditionally loyal to Ironwood for providing her with said arm.

Lilith, define ‘obsession’.

Rampant Cronyism and Corruption. Ironwood supporters excuse Ironwood’s abuses of power, such as how he uses his military authority to carry out his project without approval or knowledge of the rest of the council or to divert needed resources from Mantle. They also excuse the questionable actions of his Ace-Ops, such as attacking and arresting the protagonists without warning when they had just protected Mantle from a Grimm attack.

Only one you got right and Dex beat ya to it.

Fraudulent Elections. While Ironwood’s apathy towards Mantle allowed the election hack to happen, he was not directly involved in such. Still, Ironwood supporters approve of his use of military authority to skirt and seize governmental power, culminating in outright authoritarianism by the end of V7.

“Well, this is wrong...but CRITIC BAD! SEXIST! RACIST!”

To repeat-

The one thing here that defines fascism from totalitarianism (religion and government) she admits DOESN’T FIT.

... And yet she went on anyway.

Typical Fairen.

[pixeljade]

The virgin media moralizer:

• needs their stories meanings handed to them on a silver platter

• cant enjoy complex nuanced things because "its not clear if its denouncing bad acts"

• thinks protagonists must be the good guys

• secretly believes that there is such a thing as objective good and bad in real life as well

• Unable to have deeper conversations about morality because everything they consume has the complexity of children's TV

• has a heart full of judgment rather than one full of joy

• Probably saw that this post is a virgin vs chad meme and immediately thought "Wait those represent problematic views on virginity and masculinity" instead of actually engaging with what it has to say

The Chad Moral Ambiguity Liker:

• Loves a good sexy villain

• Recognizes that moralization of media is heavily connected to fascist ideals of moral absolutism

• Is capable of having deeper conversations about the intricacies of morality, including how to break cycles of abuse

• Has a wide and beautiful spectrum of human experience represented in their media

• Doesnt judge people, including the Virgin Media Moralizer, because he understands that Media Moralization is a natural if reactionary response to a harsh and scary world, and instead seeks only to inform Virgin Media Moralizer of the fact that in his pursuit of a better world he has rejected the organic and messy nature of humanity in favor of the rigid order of fascism. But he can come back to the other side any time he wants.

• Can recognize that while the Virgin Vs Chad meme does carry with it a number of problematic elements, it is to some degree simply the parlance of the times and thus has use as a communication tool

• Also recognizes that the Chad vs Virgin meme is itself a moralization tool, and so seeks to inject nuance into the text of their own meme so that it becomes clear that the Virgin is not some unforgivable evil and the Chad is not some unshakeable good.

• Uses the fact that it does go against their own ideals by nature to represent their very point; if they can in fact embrace a meme format which is imperfect, then they can embrace a humanity that is imperfect. We are all simply monkeys who are strapped to a rock hurtling through the abyss. Demanding purity and perfection of ourselves may be natural as our flaws do cause harm at times, but it is equally as harmful in that it forces an impossible standard upon ourselves.

[auctionpolh]

Vampire the masquerade 5th edition alpha pdf download

VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE 5TH EDITION ALPHA PDF DOWNLOAD PDF

WHY IS A GAME BOOK PREACHING TO ITS READERS?! I can't even find the core elements of gameplay without rooting through the Index and you're wanting to talk about Gender Identity?!ĭID A BLOODY MALKAVIAN PUT THIS THING TOGETHER?! "This is not a fascist-friendly game" and immediate condemnation and scolding. Are we really going to-? I couldn't help the morbid curiosity and read the first paragraph. "Fascism" jumps off the page at me, in bold, black letters, front-and-center. I require some comforting and there must be some sort of tip to get over this trauma. right before 30 pages of fluff prior to anything about the game. Let me check the Appendix that the first page mentioned. PUNCH me! I seriously must be having a bad dream. they're not here? Nor are the Giovanni and Ravnos? They've gutted three of my favorite clans! I need someone to hold my hand. What a mess.ĭISCIPLINES! Yes, let's check those! Dementation is now a power from combining two disciplines? Wait, what? Okay, well, let's see how they set up the character creation and. Okay, let's just see if they give more history on the next page. No real mention of warrior scholars, shots fired at the political right, gender studies. "Molotov-wielding protesters." Uh-oh! I think I see where this is going. Okay, weird, since I've literally never played with people who couldn't tell me "this makes me uncomfortable" like an adult, even when I played these games as a teenager. They open the book with a full-page warning label that directs you to an appendix about handling sensitive subject matter with your troupe. I made the costly mistake of purchasing a physical copy, in hopes that they shed some light on changes between V20 and V5E.

VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE 5TH EDITION ALPHA PDF DOWNLOAD PDF

I didn't buy this as a PDF someplace else. That's as close to "classic" as you're gonna get. You know the ones, in the nightclub, with the blonde hair. The best it does is pay lip service to established characters in Bloodlines that have become pop culture figureheads. If you're hoping for a continuation or some kind of expansion, run away. This is NOT the Classic World of Darkness. See more arguing on a public forum about a game you love, and presumably want more players to find and join.Ĭouldn't review because I didn't buy it online, so I hope this helps somebody. Just something to bear in mind when you're. If you went to a con and walked up to a table you were gonna play at and all the people were yelling at each other, you'd probably just keep right on walking. Everyone is so worried about being right that they miss the fact that they're essentially chasing people away. That said, if I had never played VTM and was here thinking about grabbing a PDF to see what it was all about, the comment section here would likely have me deciding to go try something else and avoid the community in general. Our GM is awesome, the players in our group are awesome, and if the GM says we're going to V5, well, we're going to V5. For me, all the good and bad points really don't mean a thing. I barely have time to play, let alone get into the drama involved in version infighting. I'm only here because we're playing V20 and the GM is talking about going to V5 at some point, and I figured maybe I'd pick up a copy and get a head start on it. Mature Warning: Contains graphic and written content of a mature nature, including violence,sexual themes, and strong language. The terror of the Second Inquisition, the conspiracies behind the Gehenna War, and the rekindling of the War of Ages: these are the building blocks of the modern V5 chronicle. While the rules have been redesigned, this new edition honors the deep story of the original, advancing the metaplot from where it left off and detailing exactly what has happened in the world of the Kindred up until tonight. V5 is a return to Vampire's original vision, moving boldly into the 21st century. Powered by the innovative Hunger cycle, the game also includes rules for creating system supported character coteries, Loresheets to directly involve players with their favorite parts of the setting and The Memoriam, a new way to bring the character's detailed backgrounds and expand on them in-session. The classic that changed roleplaying games forever returns! This fifth edition features a streamlined and modern rules design, beautiful new full-color art, and a rich story experience for players. You are a vampire, struggling for survival, supremacy, and your own fading humanity - afraid of what you are capable of, and fearful of the inhuman conspiracies that surround you. Vampire: The Masquerade is the original and ultimate roleplaying game of personal and political horror.

[unclewarwick]

people are like im 37 years old and assumedly have a whole life with a job and friends but i spend sooo much energy thinking about how the biggest problem in the world is that pedophilic content is censored and not easily available and i make infographics about it and how awesome it is to be attracted to children and how it is ABUSIVE BEHAVIOUR to tell someone online that it’s disgusting, and actually i think it’s just like homophobia (i’m allowed to say that because i’m queer) and we need to celebrate our FREEDOM to do anything we want (be attracted to children) and if you point out my age YOU’RE BEING AGEIST and we cherish our precious incest ships because there’s nothing better than a story about forbidden love (and if someone is trying to CENSOR a specific kind of story, that means it should be celebrated so much more [i hate oppression sooo much... btw i hate most Black characters, for mysterious reasons]) and also i have a huge over-reliance on tropes because there’s absolutely no substance to what i write and everything i read has to be the same story over and over again and i have mental breakdowns over people telling me every day that im a bad person? that i am dangerous to kids (again, i’m queer so this kind of statement sounds very suspicious and familiar. ignore the fact that i enjoy sexual content about children)? that i should touch grass? that i should stop pretending criticism of people like me spawns from puritanical beliefs? that i should stop pretending this is meaningful commentary on fandom culture? that i should stop reminiscing about the good ol’ days (REMEMBER FANDOM HISTORY!!! THIS IS FOR SOME REASON SO INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT!!!!! REMEMBER WHERE YOU CAME FROM!!! WHY ARE WE ACTING LIKE THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT CULTURAL THING!!) when apparently everyone in fandom loved pedophilia, before you pesky KIDS came along and ruined it.......... oh.............. that i should stop pretending my ideology is against bullying and harassment (ignore how i sic my badass pedophile friend group onto people to make clumsy insults about them if someone DARES to try to say anything critical about me flaunting my attraction to children)? that i am repulsive and my life has no value and i add nothing to this world and i should die HEY WAIT that sounds exactly like fascism, don’t those guys try to eradicate certain types of people? you seriously want to do a pedophile genocide? oh, you’re just saying it on an individual basis and you don’t think there should be a systemic ability to kill people for any reason? i can’t believe you openly hurl DEATH THREATS at people... isn’t that morally reprehensible? what if i said i think people are born this way? i can’t change this about me, so why should it be condemned (ignore how it’s very much a choice to seek out pedophilic media and constantly engage with it and spends hours upon hours drawing or writing that shit and posting about it and making it my entire personality and life)? am i supposed to just NOT reply obsessively to each and every comment that rightfully upset fourteen year olds leave on my posts and act like i deserve a reminder every second of the day that my choices are fucking terrible and i make a very dangerous environment for everyone, but especially young people who simply want to talk about their cartoons in peace? am i just not supposed to post my explicitly sexual art of the characters while using the main tags and putting no kind of warning (ignore how i love to tell people to curate their online experience and say that we ALWAYS make it easy to avoid seeing this shit) hey also, this time, the art wasn’t even depicting characters who are minors so i don’t know what you people are getting so upset about! i can’t believe every single one of you folx who are AGAINST people like me definitely all know each other and all communicate in a giant group chat and talk about how to conspire against us innocents! i can’t believe that you would say such things to VICTIMS OF CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE (nobody else except us has ever actually experienced this btw and differing views are just wrong, but i am totally a reasonable normal person) or say that our background means nothing regarding our choices and actually makes it worse because we use our victimhood as a way to groom people into our cult or try to soften what we really get up to or that we encourage abuse victims to read triggering content because no no it’s soooo healing and normal and healthy - ONE therapist i heard of said it was okay - or if you have intrusive thoughts because of ocd, you should also totally engage with pedophilic content- have you ever heard of immersion therapy? it’s the exact same thing and it won’t do anything weird to your brain at ALL and you’ll have really regular, healthy perceptions of the world and people, and be able to interact with others in a really Usual and Not odd way. if you have a problem with my online presence then uhhhh i think you’re a big whiny snowflake, you’re probably like TWELVE years old (i evidently really hate kids, they’re ALWAYS pestering me and snivelling so uh KIDS DNI, but also i just read smut involving a kid this same age) and you wouldn’t survive anywhere in the REAL world... but anyway yeah, fiction has no affect on reality and that’s why i have such a tight grip on all this fiction i enjoy and spend every waking moment of my day thinking about.

also please tag any criticism about media i like. it will ruin my day if i see a worldview that differs from mine, or anything that adds complexity or nuance to my interests. thank you.

[thickest-antivirus-programs]

I know im not the victim here but i learned about how capitalism sucks and child slavery still exists through tumblr and really lost faith in humanity... its weird cause i cant go back to who i was as a child and teenager because all my dreams were fuelled by a very inacurate view of the world (i guess thats what growing up is but i thought there would be more similarities) and on one hand its good i dont wanna go back, on the other i have to go against alot of things i promised myself..

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Wrestling with the Bible’s most disturbing stories

An excerpt from Rachel Held Evan’s book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

“Growing up, I noticed the ugly details in the Sunday school stories; children always do. I remember I was deeply troubled by the fact that God drowned all but two of each kind of animal in the Great Flood (to say nothing of all the people), and wondered aloud at the dinner table how God could be all-knowing and all-powerful, but also filled with regret. A friend's seven-year-old captured the angst well when she recently asked, 'Mom, is God the good guy or the bad guy in this story?'

This question of God's character haunted every scene and every act and every drama of the Bible. ...Feminist scholar Phyllis Trible aptly named these narratives 'texts of terror.'

'If art imitates life,' she wrote, 'scripture likewise reflects it in both holiness and horror.'

Rereading the texts of terror as a young woman, I kept anticipating some sort of postscript or epilogue chastising the major players for their sins, a sort of Arrested Development-style 'lesson' to wrap it all up -- 'And that's why you should always challenge the patriarchy!' But no such epilogue exists. While women are raped, killed, and divided as plunder, God stands by, mute as clay. I waited for a word from God, but none came.

...When I turned to pastors and professors for help, they urged me to set aside my objections, to simply trust that God is good and that the Bible's war stories happened as told, for reasons beyond my comprehension. 

'God's ways are higher than our ways,' they insisted. 'Stop trying to know the mind of God.'

It's an understandable approach. Human beings are finite and fallible, prone to self-delusion and sentimentality. If we rely exclusively on our feelings to guide us to truth, we are bound to get lost.

When asked in 2010 about Joshua's conquest of Canaan, Reformed pastor and theologian John Piper declared, without hesitation, 'It's right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.'

Piper's dispassionate acceptance represented pure, committed faith, I was told, while mine had been infected by humanism and emotion -- 'a good example of why women should be kept from church leadership,' one acquaintance said.

And for a moment, I believed it. For a moment, I felt silly for responding so emotionally to a bunch of old war stories that left the rest of the faithful seemingly unfazed. 

But this is the deleterious snare of fundamentalism: It claims that the heart is so corrupted by sin, it simply cannot be trusted to sort right from wrong, good from evil, divine from depraved. Instinct, intuition, conscience, critical thinking -- these impulses must be set aside whenever they appear to contradict the biblical text, because the good Christian never questions the 'clear teachings of Scripture'; the good Christian listens to God, not her gut.

I've watched people get so entangled in this snare they contort into shapes unrecognizable. When you can't trust your own God-given conscience to tell you what's right, or your own God-given conscience to tell you what's true, you lose the capacity to engage the world in any meaningful, authentic way, and you become an easy target for authoritarian movements eager to exploit that vacuity for their gain. I tried reading Scripture with my conscience and curiosity suspended, and I felt, quite literally, disintegrated. I felt fractured and fake.

Brené Brown warned us we can't selectively numb our emotions, and no doubt this applies to the emotions we have about our faith. If the slaughter of Canaanite children elicits only a shrug, then why not the slaughter of Pequots? Of Syrians? Of Jews? If we train ourselves not to ask hard questions about the Bible, and to emotionally distance ourselves from any potential conflicts or doubts, then where will we find the courage to challenge interpretations that justify injustice? How will we know when we've got it wrong?

'Belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man,' Thomas Paine said. If the Bible teaches that God is love, and love can look like genocide and violence and rape, then love can look like...anything. It's as much an invitation to moral relativism as you'll find anywhere.

I figured if God was real, then God didn't want the empty devotion of some shadow version of Rachel, but rather my whole, integrated self. So I decided to face the Bible's war stories head-on, mind and heart fully engaged, willing to risk the loss of faith if that's where the search led. 

I listened to sermons. I read commentaries and theology books. I became a real downer at dinner parties:

'If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?' 'Have you seen any of the Oscar-nominated films this year?' 'What's your Enneagram number?' 'Do you think God condones genocide?'

The explanations came hurried and certain. Oh, God told Israel to wipe out the Canaanites because the Canaanites were super-duper evil, like the worst people ever. They worshipped idols and had orgies and sacrificed children to their gods. So God condemned the practice of child sacrifice...by slaughtering children? Well, that's just how things were back then. It was kill or be killed, tribal warfare and all that. Israel did what it had to do to survive....

I began to feel a bit like the disheveled Berenger, a character from Eugène Ionesco's play Rhinoceros, who grows increasingly bewildered as the people of his provincial French town acclimate to the sudden presence of rhinoceroses in their community. In one scene, a rhinoceros thunders through the town square, trampling a housecat. After their initial shock, the villagers get sidetracked debating whether the rhino had one horn or two, and whether its origins are Asiatic or African. And on it goes throughout the play, as the townspeople themselves transform into rhinos, one by one, arguing all the while over pointless trivialities, until only Berenger remains human.

The play is about fascism, I think, but it reminds me a bit of Christians and their Bibles. Sometimes it seems as if there are all these rhinoceroses barreling through the pages of Scripture, pooping on sidewalks and flattening housecats, but we've grown so accustomed to defending their presence we end up debating the length of their tails.

...

My questions came with consequences. We left the church in which I was raised, and rumors of my 'rebellious spirit' circulated around town, prompting more than a few well-meaning interventions. ...

But accepting the Bible's war stories without objection threatened to erase my humanity. ‘We don’t become more spiritual by becoming less human,’ Eugene Peterson said. How could I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength while disengaging those very faculties every time I read the Bible?

So I brought my whole self into the wilderness with God – no faking, no halfway. And there we wrestled."

[furiousgoldfish]

Recognizing abusive friendship is really hard once you get invested. I've been in so many and I still never recognize it when it starts. Abusers looking for targets will aim at someone who's generally not very-well accepted in their community, struggles with isolation and desire to be acknowledged, is lonely or desperate for friends, because it's easy to make someone believe they got something they desperately want to have.

They will share your interests and opinions, immediately have tons in common with you, make fun, engaging, supportive coversations, tell you stories that make them look good and sweet, make you feel safe and like you have a real chance in having a best friend in them. They will also want to test your compassion by revealing some vulnerabilties and painful events, to see if you will rush to comfort them and try to make them feel better. Once they know enough about you to use your weak spots against you, and to always be able to play the victim and make you feel sorry for them when they hurt you, it's a game of time - either you will eventually realize this person has no empathy for you and is willing to put you thru horrible shit and feel nothing about it, or they will take the last piece of your energy and patience they can and then abandon you brutally, when you need them the most. They will of course, frame it as your fault, because how could you expect them to be your friend.

I'll try to list some of the things I've noticed repeat in abusive friendships:

1. Lack of boundaries. This person will find one way or another to have problem with your boundaries, they might act like your boundaries are hurting them, or criticize you for "not trusting them" or "not caring for them enough" if you want to keep some things private. They will also make you feel like taking distance and space from them is hurting them, and act as if it's an act of aggression or betrayal, and you were supposed to be there for them at all times.

2. Very fast progression. They will want to have won you over in shortest amount of time possible, so they could start getting what they want. They could start acting very affectionate, as if you're already close for a long time, reveal too intimate, too vulnerable details about themselves, and get you to do the same, talk as if they already know all about you, or plan things as if it's already settled that you'll be friends for a long time. They will convince you that they're a perfect person for you right away, and you're the perfect person for them.

3. Feelings of obligation. You feel as if you're the only one who can help this person, only one who they trust to never abandon them. You feel as if you lead this person on to rely on you, to count on your friendship, and you cannot bring yourself to take this away from them. You are the only one who knows how hard they're struggling, how badly they need your help and friendship, and it feels like they're always in some kind of a crisis and desperately in need of you. Even when they hurt you, you feel obligated to care about their situation more than yourself, and put your own feelings in the back to focus on what they're going thru.

4. Fear of being the bad friend. You've heard so much about how others have hurt this person, and you grow scared that you'll become one of those bad people. After comforting this person about their bad experiences, it would feel really bad to cause them another one, and make you look like a hypocrite. It gets so bad that you have to watch out what to say, how to put boundaries, and how to call them out on anything, out of fear that you will hurt them, they seem too fragile and too easily hurt to ever be able to handle even an implication that they're doing you wrong. In the end, you let them get away with anything, convincing yourself they would never be doing it on purpose, and finding yourself unable to let them know out of fear that it would hurt them. If you do tell them, you end up having to listen about how bad they felt about having to hear it.

5. You can't live up to their standards. This person has expectations of you, and if you fail them even a little, there's consequences, and you might find yourself at the receiving end of criticism, verbal abuse, insults, humiliation and blame. There's a narrow frame of who you're allowed to be and how you're supposed to act and feel, and you're not allowed to exist outside these criteria, and you can tell that your friend will either hurt or abandon you completely if you grow and branch out beyond what's acceptable for them. You end up fretting their backlash at any risky action you take, and end up hiding your opinions and general state of mind just to stay safe. You might end up changing for them, subtly, and feeling constant anxiety that they will abandon you if you don't act as required. (Just to be clear, standards of "no racism, no homophobia, no sexism, no trashing minorities, no supporting dictatorships, and being against rape, fascism and genocide" are good standards. All of you should be having those standards. Bad standards are about how you look, what you weigh, what grades you have, how much you earn, how much abuse can you take without breaking, how much shit can you tolerate, which ones of your interests are good, what you're allowed to feel and talk about - nobody should be inflicting those on you. None of that is for your own good.)

6. There are repeating periods of good and bad times. Even abusive friendships can have periods where everything seems just fine, calm, your friend is in a good mood, so you are allowed to be in a good mood as well, you get to have fun and you start to forget there ever was a time when this friendship made you feel awful. These periods are essential for keeping up the friendship, because any person would get away from a friend who made them feel horrible at all times, and abusers know this, and make sure you get nice and relaxed before they decide it's safe to lash out at you, or throw another crisis at you. Friendships are not supposed to have intense ups and downs, they're supposed to be your refuge, your safe place where you can count on things remaining stable.

7. You are getting stressed, insecure, upset and sad. Friendships should not make you feel this way. Of course, there's always a possibility in long term friendships that something happens that gets you upset once or twice, but a new friendship, short friendship or any friendship should never be able to cause you repeated stress, pain, insecurity and drama. If a friend is cause of all these feelings, it is very likely they don't have compassion for you, and don't actually care what kind of effect they're having on your life - which means they're not your friend. Actual friend would care deeply about what they're causing you, and would go far to avoid making you stressed, upset and sad - after all, don't you make sure you're not making their life filled with stress and anxiety?

8. Your instincts are telling you something is wrong. You might be getting surges of anger or feel trapped and repressed, you might notice you're not able to express how you feel, and always have to play down your reactions and responses, you don't feel free to take your time for yourself as you'd want to, you always feel guilty or like you failed your friend, and you know this is not how a friendship should make you feel. Still, you feel a lot of affection and care for this person so you can't just walk away from them, even if things do feel wrong, and you want to give it another chance or wait to see if it gets better, so you bear with it and try to ignore your instincts, at least for a while, because the alternative has became scary for you.

9. You're scared to leave. Even when you realize this friendship is adding stress and pain onto your life, and that it's became toxic for you, leaving it becomes a big, almost impossible task. You're worried about how your friend will cope, how will they react if you tell them, if there will be backlash, if they'll be in the middle of crisis and you'll add onto that stress, if they will start insulting you and telling you that you're just as bad as anyone else in their life, if they'll badmouth you to other people, and worst of all, you're worried if you would deserve all that by leaving the friendship. And no, you wouldn't. You don't have to nurture anyone who hurts you, and you're allowed to walk away from anything that harms your life.

 If you thought of someone while reading this, I hope you will know that you have the right to be upset with this person, regardless of weather it would hurt or upset them. You have the right to consider that maybe this person isn't the ideal friend for you, and that you don't owe them your friendship no matter how obligated they make you feel.

I need to mention that you don't have to prove or know that someone is abusive in order to cut them out of your life. There are bad friendships that aren't abusive, sometimes two people just don't mix well and if supporting one person is harming another, that's not working out well, and shouldn't continue. You have the right to demand only good friendships, only positive ones, that bring warmth and care to both you and your friend. You don't have to struggle thru bad ones, you don't owe anyone to make their life better at your own expense. Needing different type of friend is reason enough. There are friendships that are good for both people, and that's the only type you should strive for.

[evilelitest2]

What is the dirtbag left? People keep talking about it but I have no clue what it is

Oh this answer is gonna suck.  Good question as always though.  

Ok before we can get into the dirtbag left, I want to talk about the major factions of leftist in the United States, and I am discounting Moderates/Centrist/Blue Dog Democrat's, I am specifically focused on people who support actual left wing policies.  Roughly speaking they can be broken up into the following groups though each group is a lot more complicated than I am implying here

The first and most dynamic faction are the progressives, people who are focused on the rights of marginalized people.  Sometimes they are called “identity Politics”  They are further subdivided into a bunch of specific interest groups, but their main unifying argument is “society is specifically persecuting towards certain groups and we need to address that” 

Civil Rights, who focus on the rights of African Americans 

Feminists who focus on the rights of women

The Queer Community, who are focused on the rights of Gender and Sexual Minorities (Gay people, Trans people, Non Binary people, Bi people, intersex, asexual ect

This group is really divided within itself but lets not get sidetracked

Groups focusing on the rights of Latin Americans, both citizens and immigrants

Groups focusing on the rights of Muslims/Middle Easterners

Groups focusing on the rights of Jews/Combating antisemitism

Groups focusing on the rights of Asian Americans

And finally groups focusing on the rights of the disabled 

The next major group is the labor movement, who focus on the rights of workers, focusing on things like Unions, increasing the minimum wage, addressing the wealth gap and very New Deal FDR policies, and tend to be anticapitalistic or at least Social Democrat.   

Environmentalists, who want the world to not die

Anti War advocates

Pro Education/Pro Science anti Fundamentalists' people who just want good goverment.  

And some post modernists thrown in because why not?

The two main groups that make up the left are the first two, the issues of Identity Politics and Class, and there is a LONG history of these two groups having trouble le working together.  One of the major issue is that a lot of poor whites would happily welcome a lot of leftist social policies, but vote conservative if they believes those policies will help black people, even if it hurts their own best interest.  I mean take the New Deal, which was among the greatest economic period of US history and was popularly supported by most Americans.  However a lot of poor whites supported it because Latinos and Blacks were not allowed access to most of its benefits.  ANd once the Democratic Party started to pursue desegregation and women’s rights, these poor whites abandoned the party which gave them a future and voted for policies that hurt their own best interest because of their extreme bigotry.  Which is the most frustrating part of American History.   

And among a lot of Democrats (mostly centrist) there is this idea that the best way to win elections is to stab marginalized communities in the back in order to win Republican voters.  When Bill Clinton won in 1992, he did so in large part by abandoning a lot of leftist principles, he embraced Third Way style Liberalism and deregulation (which led to the 2008 crash thanks Clinton) but he also happily supported Right wing ideas about trying to keep crazy radicals minorities from advancing too far in politics.  Basically try to rebrand the Democrats as “we aren’t as crazy as the Republicans, but we ditched all of that lame uncool parts of politics that makes your family uncomfortable”.  

So the Dirtbag Left (there term not mine) was like “Hey could we do this...but for communism?”  And like most bad things, its origin is with Nazis.

The Dirtbag Leftist are Marxists who think the best way to win Trump voters over to the left is to combine Socialist style economic/welfare policies with conservative styles attacks on “Free Speech” and “Identity Politics.”  The “nicer” version of these guys basically say “ok we win them in with the economic policies and once we implement that, we can work on the other issues”.  The cruelr version of that basically want a socialist state...for white straight men and nobody else.  

This happened because some communists were looking at how the Alt-Right was radicalizing apolitical young men and were like “wait we can do that too”  

See if you have ever had the misfortune of being in Nazi/Red Pill/Gamergate style spaces you will notice that they actually share a lot of the left’s complains about the status que.  They dislike both parties, they don’t like capitalism, and they think our current consumerist way of life is souless drudgery.  So some communists were like “What if we found the exact same demographic as these guys but tried to turn them to communism instead of Fascism?”  Which sounds like a good idea but here is the problem

The type of people who become Nazis had to already be bigoted anti intellectuals in the first place.  All you have done is given some of them Marxist Rhetoric rather than Nazi Rhetoric, they are the exact same toxic people.  And in trying to cater to them, you have allowed them to infiltrate's your movement.  

The other quality of the Dirtbag Left is that they think that the Centrist Democrats (Clinton, Obama, Biden ect) are a greater threat than the conservatives, and that if the Far Right and the Far Left can team up to destroy the center, the radicals can work out their issues.  Which has never worked ever in human history but they keep trying.  

Initially the DIrtbag Left was basically vulgar leftists who wanted to down play the issues that trigger conservatives (Abortion, minority rights, feminism, being nice to people) in order to get them to support their social/economic policies, but it quickly became co-opted by the Alt Right themselves, and now they are basically just advocates of a Herrenvolk style social state.  Or really...they are what would happen if the Nazis actually tried to combine Nationalism with Socialism.  

And  while they aren’t a large group, like the Alt-Right they are really really prominent online and are constantly engaged in wide spread harassments campaigns that are basically find/replace Gamergate harassments campaigns.  They attached themselves pretty hard to Bernie's Sanders campaign and did a really good job in ruining his chances in both primaries, and then attached themselves to Tulsi Gabbard’s fucking toxic campaign after that.  At this point they are basically just Alt Rightists with a socialist brand reskin.   Sometimes called the Red Brown Alliance

[hopeatermeetsgodzilla]

Chapter 17

“Holla, Emily Kane. Sure is nice to finally meet the person who keeps breaking through our security system.”

Despite the initial surprise, the woman quickly shook her head, gaining her bearings back. “And you must be Julian Cyan Flor��s.” She answered back.

“Alright, I’m gonna have to stop you right there chica- it’s just Florès, J.C. if you’re a friend. And if you were trying to be intimidating by using my full name: that is nowhere long enough to be my actual name.” Florès informed her, shaking his head. “Anyway, did you guys know the military thinks you guys are Monarch agents in disguise?”

“What?” The woman on the screen- Emily Kane- asked incredulously. “Well that would explain why no one has come after us- wait a minute, did you just- !?”

“Expose the existence of your group to the military and blow the cover you guys didn’t even know you had?” Florès asked, before smirking. “Sure did, chica.”

Serizawa blinked, before turning toward the younger man. “How did you do that?”

“Serizawa, I’m the one keeping the firewall so solid.” Florès told him, really looking like he wanted to deadpan but restraining himself. “I know every single attempt to breach it, failed and successful alike. By the way,” The younger man turned back to the screen, brows furrowed. “Pretty smart to hack the cameras the one moment I’m not looking at a screen. Too bad the footage you got is basically useless now.”

Kane sighed. “What do you want from me, Florès? And don’t try anything sneaky, I know what you’re capable of.”

“And you think I don’t know about what you’re capable of, Emmy?” Florès started, his teeth flashing almost menacingly as he smiled. “You’re twenty-six years old, an orphan, and you got yourself a master in bioengineering with a minor in programming two years ago. You live alone with three cats- that’s sad- and the reason you decided to join the Titan Liberation Front is because Jonah is the only one who didn’t dismiss your talents because you’re a young black woman in field dominated by white male.”

She seemed surprised at that. “How do you know all that!?”

“Oh, idle snooping around in Jonah’s files. Dude needs a better firewall, and to trust his employees enough to not collect every single bit of info on them: official address, names of loved ones, birthplace, social security number-”

“Florès, we get it. You snoop around.” Emma started, getting up from behind her desk with her husband not far behind her. Until the Ghidorah fiasco was resolved, Monarch had allowed her to stay and help, and this was, in fact, what the earlier argument between Monarch’s head-scientists and the military had started about. “What I want to know is what the Titan Liberation Front thinks it’s doing.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Kane asked. “We’re saving the world.”

“By releasing the Titans- that doesn’t make sense!” Mark retorqued back, before Emma put a hand on his shoulder.

“Actually, it... does.” She started. “As impossible as it may seems. You know how the planet is slowly being cooked by pollution?” He nodded. “A very possible theory here at Monarch is that the Titans can fix it.”

“Indeed.” Kane started back, taking a deep breath. “Humans... w-we’re a sickness. An infection on the planet. But like all organisms, the planet has unleashed a fever to kill it’s infection. It’s rightful rulers. The Titans.”

“Is that what you actually think, or is that what Alan ‘Eco-fascism is my middle name’ Jonah fed you so he could get you to abandon your ideals and work for him?”

“Florès.“ Serizawa admonished before turning toward the screen.

“Jonah made me see the truth.” Kane snapped back. “If the human infection continues to spread, the planet will perish, and everyone with it. Unless we let the Titans do what they must do.”

“And what will be left then!?” Mark exclaimed. “A dead, charred world overrun by warring giants-”

“No, actually.” Kane answered, shaking her head. “The Titans- they emit radiations that keeps the planet going. It’d be more like a land buried under the ashes of a volcano bringing life back to the land. And the survivors will be able to reap the rewards.”

“This is a dangerous path.” Serizawa hissed. “You’re all messing with forces beyond our comprehension- gambling with the life of millions!”

“And what are you gambling with?” Kane answered back. “Monarch is on the verge of being overtaken by the military, and all the resources you’ve dedicated to merely studying the Titans will be used to enslave them, destroy them, use them as weapons- if that happens, the planet will die!”

“The planet will die if Ghidorah is allowed to do as he pleases!” Graham started, visibly at the end of her patience. “They’re not from Earth! They are hostile Titans from outer space, who have always been malevolent, and your group forced one of our own to free them!”

“I understand where your intentions come from, miss Kane- I used to think similarly when I first joined Monarch.” Emma started. “But if we let this happen, there will be no going back. Tons of lives will be lost, and what will be left will be plunged into chaos. And that’s only with what we know about Earth’s Titans: Ghidorah isn’t part of the natural order, and they have the potential to disrupt it severely, if not destroy it beyond repair. Do you really want to to risk so much just for a slight chance of the planet healing?”

“... If that’s what it takes, yes.” Kane rubbed her eyes. “I suggest you all take refuge. We know Monarch has built bunkers in case of a mass extinction event caused by the Titans. I suggest you find them before Ghidorah comes out hiding.” Before anyone could say anything, she cut communication, plunging the room into a consterned silence.

You could hear a mutter of “That bitch.” from Dr. Chen, 

“Well,” Stenz started. “I’m certainly surprised her message idn’t resonate with you people-”

“You. Shut .Up.��� Florès hissed, glaring at a bewildered Stenz through the screen. “As far as I’m concerned, Ghidorah being free is your fault, and I don’t want to hear you tell us how Monarch should do their job, or that they have any affiliations with those madmen from the T.L.F., ever again, got it!? If you do, you’re next on the list of people I have to do some... idle snooping around about.”

“... Got it.” The admiral closed the screen shortly afterwards, a sigh of relief coming from almost everyone at this.

“We need to find a way...” Serizawa muttered under his breath, before turning toward the programmer. “Florès? I’m going to ignore the fact that I should probably fire you for cybercrimes on two conditions: find as much information as you can on the Titan Liberation Front, and use it to make their life a living hell.”

Florès smiled. “Of course, Serizawa.”

“Everyone else: get to work. We have to start preparing for the worst.”

-

Alright, Rodan had been back for a while now. He just needed to walk up to him, give him that stupid stone, and walk away. It was simple. A child could do it. Too bad the literal hundreds of nightmare scenarios going through Ni’s head simultaneously prevented him from moving from the rock he was hiding behind.

He took a peak, looking at Rodan. The bird was currently eating a fish, facing away from Ni’s point of view. He also seemed to be struggling with it, for some reason. Ni took a deep breath through his nose to steady himself, before getting up and walking up to him. “Rodan.”

“Gah!” Rodan exclaimed, turning toward Ni, before deflating a bit. “Don’t scare me like that.” He then turned back toward his fish, taking another bite and pulling a face as he did so. “Urgh, rotting flesh is the worst...”

Ni raised an eyebrow. “What do you usually eat?”

“Roots, nuts, insects, fish but prefer when it’s fresh... sometimes, humans would leave me grain in offerings, always a nice surprise.” Rodan answered. “... kind of palled to when they would kill one of their own in front of me as spectacle, but hey.”

“You don’t know what a sacrifice is?” When Rodan shook his head, Ni sat down. “It’s... an gift mortals give to gods by destroying or abandoning something dear, often the life of the sacrificed.”

“... yeah, sounds like something Quetz would’ve liked.” Rodan muttered, before shaking his head. “Don’t they know I’m not a god? I just... live here.”

“You’re bigger than them, at least one element obeys you, and you pretty much decide whether or not this island explodes.” Ni deadpanned. “To them, that’s enough.”

“... Uh.” Rodan took another bite of his fish, cringing as the flesh hit his tongue.

“If you don’t like it, stop eating it.”

“I can’t just stop eating it, I can’t find any other kind of food around here!”

Find food he can eat to get on his good side. Got it. “Why not just absorb energy, then?” Rodan seemed to freeze at that. “Well?”

“... can’t absorb any if I’m not in lava...” He finally muttered. As Ni opened his mouth, he snapped. “And no, I can’t just live the rest of my life in lava. Sure, it’s warm and I don’t risk ever being hurt in it again, but... I’m the only thing it doesn’t burn to the touch. I can’t see. I can’t hear. I can’t talk with anyone. I’m... I’m all alone.” Rodan shook his head. “That’s no way to live, so I try to stay out of it.”

“... San could teach you how to do it.” Ni finally said, Rodan turning toward him with a perplexed expression. “He’s the more spiritual out of the three of us... and he’s better with words than me... since we’re talking about San-” Ni took a hold of Rodan’s wrist, the bird screeching before realizing he was just putting something in his hand. “He found this, and wanted me to give it to you.”

There, it was done.

Ni closely watched Rodan as he reacted to the gift. After a few seconds of watching him, bewildered, he actually looked at the rock on his hand. After a few seconds of confusion, Rodan’s eyes widened, and his face turned a bright orange. “I- uh- erm-” He put the stone down, doing a strange gesture with his hands as he looked away.

Ni frowned at that. He understood, logically, that Rodan’s blood was lava-like from their fight. But why was it coming to his face? Was he overheating for some reason? Was he dying!? Was that why he couldn’t speak!? No no no no no, they needed him alive to get out of here.

Ni picked up Rodan, the bird squawking as he dragged him up. “I- what are you-” He started trashing in his grip as he realized that he was bringing him to the water, clutching at him with both set of claws. “No, NO- DO NOT FUCKING THROW ME INTO THE WATER-”

“You’re overheating, you need to get cooled down-”

“Overheat- I’M THE FIRE GUARDIAN, I CAN’T OVERHEAT!!!” Rodan finally screeched, freeing himself from Ni’s hold.

Ni’s only reaction was to frown. “Then why was your face turning red?”

“I was flustered! That happens!” Rodan exclaimed. “What, have you never seen someone flustered before!?”

“I have not.” Rodan blinked at Ni, before sighing. 

“I’m fine. Your gift just... caught me off-guard.” There was a heavy silence, before Rodan broke it. “Do you have something I could use to wear it, like a thin rope or something?” 

“No... wait.” Ni grabbed a few of his hair, tugging them out and braiding them together in a thin rope. “Hand me the stone, sit down, and turn around.” Rodan quickly followed the instructions, Ni wrapping the cord around the stone to make a necklace. “There we go... What was that thing you did with your hands earlier? He asked as he tied the cord around Rodan’s neck.

“Oh, sign words. I was saying thank you.” He answered. Ni made an inquisitive noise. “Basically, you speak with your hands instead of your mouth. Mothra taught me some time after I became the Fire Guardian because my transformation wasn’t finished and I couldn’t speak. I think the monkeys are the ones who invented it to talk with their worshippers.”

“I see... would you... mind teaching me?” Ni asked, trying to make his voice seem softer.

Rodan blinked, before nodding, turning toward Ni and sitting down. “Alright. Let’s start with the basics...”

[larsmaischak]

Race, Gender, Class and the Old vs the New Left

With an afterword by Sojourner Truth

1960s

Capital:  Maybe we look bad, now that the Soviets have female tractor drivers and engineers, and Africa is governed by actual Africans, while we have a labor market that privileges white men?

New Left:  The Old Left has not done enough to recognize the specific ways in which women and African-Americans are oppressed.

Old Left:  Who has been leading all those Civil Rights marches, if not the left?  Who has been paying for the field organizers and buses, if not the labor unions?  Who has been pushing for equal pay and equal rights for women, if not socialists like Margaret Sanger?

1970s

Blue Collar Workers: Let’s beat the crap out of some hippies.  USA!  USA!

New Left:  See?  The Old Left is for the war, and against the counter culture, and all that.  They are squares!

Old Left:  You know that the craft unions representing those reactionary white, male workers have a long history of exclusion of women, immigrants, and African-Americans that goes back to the 1880s, right?  That’s different from our industrial organizing tradition that goes back to Eugene Debs, the Wobblies, the CIO…

New Left:  Workers are the enemy!  Let’s focus on women and people of color!

Old Left:  Now wait a minute!  95% of women and people of color rely on wage work for their income!  They are working class!

New Left:  Let’s march through the institutions!  I’ll be a lawyer!  You can get tenure!

1980s

Capital:  Let’s squash Communism and the unions!

New Left:  What unions?  Were there any left?  How quaint!

Old Left:  We have to defend the rights of workers!

New Left:  Workers are (a) fine, and (b) sexist, racist, reactionaries.  Shut up!

1990s

Capital:  Look, the Soviet Union is gone!  Let’s modernize our economy, and return personal responsibility to the individual!

Old Left:  Responsibility for what, exactly?

Capital:  For how they survive a modernized economy without adequate wages, health care, housing, and retirement benefits.

New Left:  Did you know that all those old, secure, well paid jobs were held by - gasp! - white men?  It is about time that they let go of their privilege and give women and people of color a chance.  Did you know that women and people of color like flexible jobs and thrive in them?  The kinds of jobs for which working class men are frankly not suited?  That require intelligence and education?

Old Left:  You mean making wage-work less secure and rewarding, more stressful, and placing the burden of obtaining the required education on the individual workers is good for women and people of color?

New Left:  Aha!  You are still your old racist, sexist, unreformed selves!

2000s

Old Left:  Fight Globalization!  For the rights of indigenous people, women, workers, for environmental protection!

New Left:  Hooray!  You know how we can get all those good things?  By opening up our markets for Free Trade!  Modernize!  Knowledge economy!  Global village!

Old Left:  That sounds an awful lot like the stuff corporate consultants are saying …

New Left:  Many corporate consultants are women, people of color, and even gay or lesbian!  We are not surprised that you fossils are still afraid of those groups gaining power at the expense of white men!

Old Left:  White men, like the indigenous women in Chiapas backing the Uprising?

New Left:  Cultural appropriation!

2010s

Old Left: Listen, have you paid attention lately to the free fall of the working class through the tattered social safety net?  There’s a swath of human misery and devastation from opioids, the starving of public institutions like schools and libraries, neoliberal schemes to penny-pinch urban areas that literally poison people with their tap water, …

New Left:  OBAMA!  Oh, the dreamy, well-spoken, intelligent, Obama!  Sigh!

Old Left: … as we were trying to say …

New Left: It is the Millennium of Modernity!  History is at an end!  All contradictions in the world, all conflicts, have been laid to rest!  Hosiannah!

Old Left: ... and these unaddressed problems will not just go away.  We have to pay attention …

New Left:  Will you SHUT UP ALREADY about the flyover states and the human scum that dwells in them!  We’re trying to listen to NPR, here.

2020s

Capital:  Enough with this democracy business.  It allows the wrong people to have their dirty fingers on the levers of power.  Didn’t we have a pretty good system in place for dealing with this stuff?  Steve?

Bannon:  Heil Trump!

Capital:  Sounds good.

Fascism:  Cultural Marxism has too long incited women and other inferiors to aspire to a status far above their place.  It is time to restore America to Greatness by putting these people back in their place.  By force, if needed.

New Left:  See what you’ve done!  All your decades of coddling the working class, those reactionary white men!  Now they’re back in full force, and all because of you and your idiotic refusal to go with the program.  We had it all!  Tenure!  Professional jobs!  CLOUT!  NPR!  MSNBC!  And you ruined it all!

Old Left:  Let’s talk about SOCIALISM …

New Left:  All the rights of LGBTQ+ people, women, people of color, and you want to throw that all out by capitulating to the Fascists?

Old Left: No, actually, we want to fight capital, so that the reactionaries are deprived of their funding and support.  Then we can rally the vast majority of the people, who are working for wages to survive, around their common interest as working, suffering, hoping, creative, loving humans.

Sojourner Truth:

I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. …  That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?

Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/sojtruth-woman.asp

[savrenim]

Hey mx savrenim its me again and I'm wondering: how you maintain tension in a story with characters with future vision? Especially in a story with no guaranteed future, where seers can ensure the best possible future for themselves

oooooh v v good question, once more under the cut

so there are a lot lot LOT of ways to do this that all depend on the tone that you want your story to go for, and Imma reference a few pieces of media that do this in various ways, but this is pretty much a subset of the question “how do you maintain tension in your story when your character is very overpowered”

1. Just very realistically explore that “in theory able to do things perfectly” and “in practice able to do things perfectly” are very very different things.  Another Faust by Daniel Nayeri had pretty much someone with Seer-like capabilities (namely, the ability to loop back I thiiiink as far as they wanted in time?) that they could use to make sure they always said the right thing, got the right answers on tests, etc etc, and it just.... didn’t work out for them perfectly. Because perfect knowledge didn’t fix everything. If you know how every single play is going to work idk in a baseball game, that gives you an edge, but it doesn’t actually mean you win the game unless you are good enough at baseball to hit that ball and run those bases

In that case, the more effective the Seer wants to be, the more they have to actually train the skills that they care about, so that they can carry out the actions physically that lead to their ideal future. And building physical skills is hard and takes work and practice, and anything you have to work to get better at to reach a goal is the starting point of tension. 

Also to continue the sports metaphor, having perfect knowledge of a baseball game and even being the best player in the world doesn’t guarantee you a win because you cannot play every single position, there are other people on the team who are going to be doing actions that at most can have secondhand versions of your knowledge. Trying to manage the human aspect leads to human error. So maybe there is tension because the Seer aggressively self-isolates so that Other People Will Not Fail Them and tension comes from interacting with other people they have extreme trust issues. Maybe the tension comes from them playing puppetmaster and trying to figure out which people they are willing to sacrifice for their goals, which people will fail them and which people they can and should hold onto, and from nobody really trusting them because everyone is well aware that the puppetmaster is willing to make sacrifices.

And finally -- just knowing the future doesn’t mean you can fix it. I don’t know about you, but even if I had perfect foreknowledge of the future, I would not be truly happy just personally thriving as idk rich and a famous mathematician and physicist and married to my fiance and maybe the books that I want to be published published and enough money to give to all my friends too and maybe can we have warp drives I want to go to space and inventing some solid if not immortality-tech then life-extension tech would be cool -- which, like, is everything I could personally wish for from life and more -- but in the world that we have? like, climate change SUCKS. fascism SUCKS. racism SUCKS. sexism and homophobia and poverty and class wars disguised as generational wars and all of the existing structures that reinforce all of these things SUCK. and even personally having perfect foreknowledge of the future enough to either start with or build up a bunch of political power and money, to try to change any of that would mean going against incredibly entrenched institutions that I honestly have no idea how effective one person could be at changing. Like if B*zos suddenly decided “wait let’s save the world and make a socialist utopia” do you actually think he would succeed? or even get very far? even applying every single resource he commands? or would he just.... lose a lot of his money and power trying to do that and then someone else becomes the richest person in the world who does want to maintain the system. because a lot of that power are things that do not exist, like stocks, it’s imaginary money that the moment you stop playing the game you get kicked out of the game and maybe you can make tiny changes but the game itself doesn’t stop

so baaaasically consider making your Seer a radical anarchist or at least someone who cares about tackling large-scale problems that one individual will never be able to solve, to play the “well if a very powerful individual had a single-minded focus on trying to fight these things could we at least get further than every single powerful person wanting to screw us over or just not caring?” game -- that creates tension because global problems can only be solved by global and communal actions, and one individual, no matter how perfectly they can see the future, cannot do that on their own

2. “Psychic powers don’t make you popular.” This is my obligatory “I just rewatched Mob Psycho 100 and am obsessed with it seriously consider watching it if you haven’t.” I know I keep bringing up MP100 but hear me out my favorite media is where the main character is stupidly overpowered so I don’t have to be stressed at all consuming it and MP100 maybe is the most touching but also well thought out and interestingly plotted version of that I’ve ever seen  But the basic premise of Mob Psycho 100 is that the main character, Mob, is a middle schooler with the most powerful psychic abilities in the world. The tension comes from: (1) Mob is not in total control over his powers and feels really really bad when he loses control and for example uses his powers against another person even in self-defense because that’s a Rule he made for himself that he really doesn’t want to cross ever. Which with a Seer, maybe you have a Seer that Cares Deeply About Other People’s Privacy, or who Cares Deeply About Having Real Relationships That They Do Not Manipulate, or who Cares Deeply About Their Achievements Being Their Own and so they don’t use their powers in everyday life out of moral considerations, except sometimes gods in stressful situations you just want everything to be okay so the tension of “do I fix this right now or is this crossing a line” drives your story. (2) because Mob isn’t using his powers in everyday life, while he is having these giant badass psychic battles with ghosts and evil psychics as a part-time job after school and yeah yeah you know he’s going to win, the tension and growth in the story comes from the gains that he is making in his personal life of, like, “oh he made a friend!!!!! oh he stood up for himself even though that’s really hard for him and he set a boundary!!!! oh he’s working really really hard towards his goal of being better at running!!!!! oh look he’s grown so much at episode 1 he didn’t talk to anyone his own age or have anything to do and now he’s doing things for himself!!!” Having your Seer take the ethics of not using seeing into the future to manipulate the people around them really really seriously, working very hard at tiny life things and then being a complete fucking badass that is putting down world-threatening threats as hobby that they kind of don’t view as that important in defining them as a person or defining their accomplishments or how they feel about themselves means that it doesn’t matter how overpowered they are in terms of their abilities, your audience will care and be invested in the tiny life accomplishments that they are working so hard to do on their own, and will be proud of their personal growth.

3. Blind Spots. Exactly what it sounds like, can your Seer really see everything? Perfectly? And if they do see everything do they know the exact effect that acting differently will cause? Or are they limited visions -- they only come at certain times, they only are about very specific things, the Seer cannot control when they happen, etc. The more specific and limited your visions are, the harder they have to actually work to figure out how to interpret them and best play the cards that they have, so maybe finding that perfect happy life isn’t actually all that easy. 

Alternatively, your Seer can only see the natural future, what would happen if they do not change their actions. If they change their actions, they can’t re-glimpse the new version, so it’s up to their best guess as to whether or not their plans to make things better will actually make things better. You can create a shit-ton of tension there if only because Plans Never Go Perfectly. Honestly at this point you’re just writing a slightly different version of those “MC is a Super Genius” books that instead of them making good plans because they are a Super Genius, it is good plans because they can see the future, I stand by childhood me that the first three Artemis Fowl books are great and honestly I’m pretty sure the plot wouldn’t really change too much if you added “Artemis can see what future would happen if he didn’t take any actions to interfere” and it would just be another interesting trait that was a part of his planning process.

And even if your Seer can see re-glimpse the new version, they are human. They have only a finite amount of time, and a finite amount of brain space. You don’t need to make the rules of Seer powers be that “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” They can miss things by not thinking something is important and looking in a different direction. You can build up tension around they can only look into the future, not the past, they missed something, and now they don’t know what they missed and what to target to fix it. Or play the finite amount of time bit very hard: if they see the effects of deciding one particular course of action, it takes [x] time for the vision to complete, then they need to try to see the effects of one other particular course of action, and they can only effectively run a handful of simulations -- or even hundreds or thousands, but the answer is still a finite number of dear gods is nature chaotic / the butterfly effect is built into every single physics equation that there is that describes the world -- so tension comes from even if they can check that a plan is good, they still have to come up with a plan to change the future, and can only come up with so many plans in the time that they have. 

4. Existential Crisis. You made Seer powers “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” idk I would find life terribly boring and have an existential crisis over that probably? of am I even human? does anything I do matter? does anyone else exist, really, since I can see and control every aspect of their lives? am I a god? how do I relate to anyone? how do I care about anything? 

In this setup, your main character would not be the Seer, it would be a person or group of people who are either trying to Save The World or Accomplish Something Important or even Accomplish Something Selfish who spend the story trying to befriend the Seer and get their help goddamnit because the moment the Seer is on their side, they win. and then the tension comes from the Seer keeps refusing but is ~slowly opening their heart~, jaded older mentor figure adopts tiny adorable hopeful child is the found family JAM and then your main character finally decides they aren’t getting the help and goes off and does the incredibly dangerous thing alone and the Seer realizes too late that oh nooo my tiny son is in danger and at just the last moment decides fuck it and leaps back into the game to try to help and save them and oh both the glorious drama and all the best tropes all of them seriously if you write this book ping me I’ll read it I’m a sucker for jaded old loner adopts Naive Hopeful Hero Who Is Going To Save The World Even If It Kills Them and jaded old loner just spends the entire time going “oh no. oh no tiny child. oh gods I’m coming out of retirement aren’t I. tiny child please. please have you considered just being chill so that I don’t have to come out of retirement” and then just. the SATISFACTION. when they come in at just the right moment and the tension leading up to it when you didn’t know if they were going to or not. it’s poetry.

This can also pretty easily be done without the Seer having godlike powers, just pretty strong powers-- have them have made their life perfect, found it empty, and fallen into a depressive fugue then use the above plot for the same effect. 

5. Make Them Your Villain. The final way of dealing with making tension and having an overpowered character is, uh..... it’s only no tension when your protagonist doesn’t need to struggle to reach their goals. if the antagonist is walking down easy street that only makes things all the more stressful because how do you beat that? and that is all of the tension in your book: figuring it out.

a subgenre of this is Seer v Seer: the best possible future for one Seer is not necessarily the best possible future for another Seer, so if you have multiple Seers, Seers clashing against other Seers that have the same powers which means their powers aren’t necessarily an advantage is a shit-ton of tension. That is.... pretty much the plot of trash novel? So I’d rather not go into detail about how I personally am doing it, but anytime people who have the same abilities fight, they’re on equal ground, you don’t know who is going to win, so boom, tension.

6. Seers are illegal/ kidnapped by the government the moment they are discovered to work for the government only/ targeted for kidnapping by all sorts of powerful groups, so your Seers need to aggressively hide their powers and the more they use them to make their life perfect, the more in danger they are; even if they can use their abilities to avoid ever being captured, they will be on the run their entire lives if they get found out.

[tsthrace]

What does a girl do when she realizes she needs to cut an entire chapter from her WIP because it doesn’t fit? She posts it to tumblr. 

So yeah, this starts to build a scary world that might look a little too close to our world. It might introduce you to this badass trauma surgeon, Dr. Griffin, who needs to make a quick escape. And then it might leave you hanging. Forever. 

Well, not exactly forever. This is now Clarke’s backstory for my WIP. She’ll resurface years later on a church-turned-farmstead. Guess who’s the priest of this church? So yeah...

Content warning: mention of rape (but no rape itself) and just general hits-too-close-to-home: you know—fascism, totalitarianism, misogyny, toxic masculinity. Oh, and Clarke swears a lot.

It’s angsty. That’s what I do.

3,260 words. No tagging for Clexa, because Lexa doesn’t come on the scene yet.

It’s also posted over on ao3 if you’d rather read it there.

---

We all thought it couldn’t happen here, even as it was happening here.

Clarke had been running for so long that she wasn’t sure if she was still being chased. She had spent the last six years wandering through parts of Washington she never knew existed. First to an abandoned sawmill a few miles east of Mansford in the mountains. It was a glorified barn, really, but a community of refugees from Seattle had been gathering there, doing their best to patch up the building’s roof and walls. Then, there was still enough gas to transport what they needed if they rationed properly. But they were all adjusting to life without electricity, without phones, without any sense of who they were without those things. 

She was there only three months when word came that a militia had materialized in Darrington and was registering children and looking for doctors and healers. Healers. That’s what they called women with Clarke’s skills. People who had gone to school for 13 years, who had prioritized their craft over their health, their family, their relationships for a grueling residency followed by an only slightly less grueling fellowship. They called men doctors, even if they were less educated, less skilled, and less practiced.

Fuck them. Clarke’s response had become reflexive. It was her internal response when the police came that first night of what some called the Resistance but what the police called the Riots. 

Unrest had been brewing for months, but It was when the President “temporarily” suspended the First Amendment right to assemble that all hell broke loose. Thousands of protestors became tens of thousands, even in small cities like Spokane and Tacoma. Police traded rubber bullets for real ones, patrol cars for tanks, pistols for AK-47s. Dozens of people landed in Clarke’s hospital, some gone before they were taken out of the ambulance, ripped apart by the people sworn to serve and protect them. 

That was the night two officers were trawling the halls of her ward, looking for “resistors” to arrest. 

“They’re unconscious,” Clark said slowly. “They’re sedated because they’re waiting to go into surgery.” She knew it was a bad idea to talk to them like they were kindergartners, but she couldn’t stop herself. What these men were doing was sick. Her patients were here because of them. Some of them filled with bullet holes, their lives barely clinging to them, others with collapsed lungs caused by broken ribs, others with simple fractures who would be out to fight another day. But Clarke wasn’t going to tell these guys that.

“Is there someone else we can talk to?” The officer said. His name badge said Blakely. “Maybe your boss?”

Clarke felt her fingernails digging into her palm. “Officer Blakely—”

“Corporal Blakely.”

Clarke went on as if she didn’t hear him. “I’m the person with the highest seniority here right now. If you’d like me to call the Chief of Surgery...”

Blakely pulled out a pad and pen. “What’s his name?”

“Her name is Dr. Marris.”

Blakely scoffed but wrote down the name.

“Is there a problem?” Clarke bent a little to catch his eye with her glare.

“Not at all.”

After that night, everything changed. The President sent in federal troops. There were tanks outside police precincts, and men in uniform carrying AK-47s stood at every corner in downtown and Capitol Hill. They rode the light rail, searching for enemies and booting out anyone who fell asleep on the trains. Curfews were instituted. Clarke had to have her ID and a letter from the hospital ready after every shift. The same soldiers (or were they cops?) stopped her every night, even after the sixth time when everyone knew everyone’s names. She had written theirs down. Because fuck them.

Two months later, the Seattle PD renamed themselves Washington’s 1st Militia when the President had encouraged all “patriots and protectors of freedom to band together, arm, and fight for American values.” Police departments across the country took this as a rallying call. They traded their police uniforms for military fatigues. They tore off their city badges and replaced them with a thin blue line. Bros before everything else, even democracy. 

They pulled her out of the OR as soon as she wrapped up a craniotomy. It was her third surgery of the day, and her hands were stiff, her scrubs covered in sweat. The two soldiers’ assault rifles startled her, but she’d seen enough gore in her time to know how to keep a straight face. Blakely was back, but this time he was dressed like he was serving in a desert war zone.

“Officer Blakely.” She remembered he was a corporal but fuck him.

The corner of Blakely’s mouth lifted in a sharp smirk. She watched as his eyes glided down her body. “Congratulations, Ms. Griffin, you’ve been recruited to Washington’s First. We are in need of fine healers like yourself.” 

Fuck you. The words raced through her mind, but she kept her mouth shut. She understood by now that those words aloud could do nothing but put her in danger. “How can I be of service?” she asked evenly, looking him straight in the eye. She had heard rumors that the militias were taking medical workers from their hospitals and clinics to set up their own facilities, but she thought they’d only take men for their specialists and surgeons.

“You need to come with us,” Blakely looked down at the sweat stains under her arms.

Clarke didn’t move. “What kind of healers are you looking for?” she asked in her most neutral tone. 

“A variety, ma’am.” Blakely’s jaw stiffened.

A small crowd of the floor’s staff had gathered at the nurses’ station, halfheartedly pretending to work while they watched the interaction.

“Like nurses? There are a lot of nurses here who are much better at their jobs than I would be.” Clarke laughed lightly and glanced at the nurses. “I’d make a terrible nurse.”

A few of the nurses nodded, their eyes smiling because smiling with their lips might bring trouble.

“We already have healers for that kind of work.” Blakely took in a breath and looked around the floor, frustrated. He knew he’d said too much. “Maybe we should go somewhere—”

“Then I can’t possibly think why you’d need me. I’m sure there are doctors who can meet your needs.”

“Ms. Griffin—”

“After all, there are two other trauma surgeons on staff here more suited to your, uh, preferences.” Clarke glanced down at Blakely’s groin.

“I was sent to find you, Ms. Griffin.”

The more he called her “Ms.,” the more her resolve solidified. “I just can’t imagine what anyone would want with little old me.” She covered her voice in maple syrup. “Dr. Lee and Dr. Bancroft are very fine surgeons, very respectable. Dr. Lee graduated top of his class from UW. I’m supervising his fellowship, and he’s very skilled.” Clarke let the words roll like waves along a beach on a calm day. “And Dr. Bancroft is who we call whenever we need a feeding tube done right the first time. His focus on fundamentals is exceptional—”

“They want you,” Blakely said more loudly than he intended.

Say it, she taunted him with a sharp look, though the words that came out were light. “I’ll call Dr. Lee. I’m sure he’d be more suitable to you—”

“Ms. Griffin—”

“You’d rather have Dr. Bancroft? Sorry. I thought you’d want the more skilled surgeon, but to be honest, we do perform a lot more feeding tube placements than major—”

“We know you’re the best.” Blakely growled, giving in. 

Clarke had won, but she still felt empty. “You can’t even call me a doctor.” 

“Protocol.” Blakely refused to look at her. “Come with us, ma’am.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You can appeal on grounds of pregnancy or motherhood.”

Clarke scoffed. “Of course.” She didn’t even try to hide her disdain, though she knew she had to play along. She looked down at her scrubs. “I need to change.”

“Of course,” Blakely said. His smile was sharp, an insult. “Though we’ll need to supervise.”

Clarke bit down hard. She had not joined the Resistance, but she’d been obsessively keeping track of their Instagram posts at @emeraldcityjustice. Militiamen never raped, she’d learned, especially if the woman was white and of marrying age. They didn’t call it rape, though, they called it “sexual theft.” They were not to spoil another man’s property (or potential property), and that meant no touching. This restriction forced men to get creative, find new ways of dominating without ruining the goods. Resisting, the posts said, meant speaking the militia’s language. 

“But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Clarke had memorized some key verses, and she said this one loud enough for everyone around the nursing station to hear it. “Matthew 5:28. I think those are words in red. You know, Jesus. The son of God himself.” She would not let these fuckers anywhere near her. 

Blakely squinted and his face turned to stone.

“The locker room is on the second floor,” she said. “You two are welcome to wait outside the door, if you like.” Clarke strode towards the elevator. Blakely glared at her a few moments before nodding at his partner. They followed her into the elevator. Clarke looked at her watch. 10:15 p.m. Shift change. The locker room would be packed. 

“We need to sweep,” Blakely said as they stepped off the elevator and approached the locker room door.

Clarke sighed loudly. There was no use in arguing. Blakely nodded towards the key swipe. Clarke swiped her badge and a little red light on the handle turned green. Blakely opened the door then turned conspicuously so that his back was facing the opening.

“This is Corporal Blakely of Washington’s First Militia,” he shouted into the room. The volume of his voice made Clarke jump. “Private Cooks and I will be doing a sweep of this locker room in two minutes. Those who are not appropriately covered at that time will be taken into custody.” Blakely let the door close behind him and set a timer on his Apple watch.

Are you fucking kidding me? Clarke didn’t say out loud.

Five minutes later, Blakely and Cooks were back out in the hallway. Clarke knew they wouldn’t find anything. The locker room was a windowless space that was mostly concrete and tile. It had one exit, a fire hazard long ignored because that part of the hospital had been built 140 years ago. The only other door was a closet full of cleaning supplies.

Blakely nodded at Clarke to go inside. 

“You have five minutes,” he said, fiddling with his watch again.

“I’d like to shower.”

“Four minutes and fifty-seven seconds. If you don’t come out on time, we will come in.”

Clarke swallowed and pushed through the door. Dozens of annoyed eyes lifted as she walked in. She just shook her head as she walked past them. 

Because it was an old hospital, doctors—female doctors, even surgeons—shared the locker room with nurse supervisors, charge nurses and other medical staff who had seniority. (Male doctors, especially surgeons, did not share a locker room with anyone, of course.) It bothered Clarke on principle, but for the most part she liked being around the non-doctor staff, and it didn’t hurt to have a friendly relationship with the nurses when she was on the floors. 

The women’s eyes quickly went back to their tasks of leaving. Between the unrest and a new virus no one seemed to know anything about, the hospital, which was already under-resourced, had been over capacity for weeks now. Everyone was tired, stressed, and getting more and more afraid. They just wanted to get home as soon as possible. The later at night, the more aggressive the patrols got. 

Clarke walked to her locker and took a few deep breaths as she quickly spun the lock to its numbers and pulled it open. She took off her white coat and hung it on the hanger inside. She pulled out her backpack and checked that her phone charger was inside. She pulled her wallet out and stared at her driver’s license for a long moment, not sure if it would be a liability. She decided to bring it, along with her curfew papers, and a used copy of The Obelisk Gate she’d picked up from Horizon Books a few weeks ago but never opened. Next, she stuffed her street clothes inside along with two sets of clean scrubs (only later would she wonder why she took the scrubs). Finally, she grabbed the two boxes of protein bars and four bottles of Gatorade that she kept there to keep her energy up on long shifts.

Clarke almost laughed at how much could fit in her small backpack. 

She looked at her watch. Three minutes left. Shit. She almost forgot to switch watches. She pulled off the little cheap thing she used at the hospital and replaced it with her dad’s chunky but sleek metal piece. It was heavy on her wrist, but that’s what she liked about it. Somehow she felt safer with it on.

She swallowed. She needed to move, but to move meant everything would be different. She threw her shoulders back, lifted her hands in front of her, palms up as if making an offering, and took in a deep breath. It’s what she did whenever she was about to make a first cut. She closed her eyes, felt the ground solid under her feet, felt her heart slow to steady saunter. 

Clarke smiled to herself. It was a heavy smile, sad and defiant. Fuck them.

She grabbed her backpack, slung it over her shoulder, and walked to the broom closet.

“You alright, Dr. Griffin?” A voice rang out. Veró, the charge nurse from the post-op wing, looked up as Clarke was about to go inside. Her eyes were nervous.

“I will be,” Clarke replied as she closed the door. “Take good care of yourself, Veró. Be safe. You didn’t see me, okay?”

Veró nodded. “You stay safe, Clarke.” She closed her eyes for a long moment. Her smile was heavy with concern. “I didn’t see nothing.” 

Clarke held Veró’s eyes for a long moment, then nodded, stepped into the closet, and closed the door behind her. It was a small space, but large enough for two people to fit—a fact Clarke had exploited with Lu, a nurse from the Telemetry unit, several times. There was a small, dirty, pointless window at the top of the closet that she and Lu had covered with a tray from the cafeteria so that the janitors in their breakroom across the alley couldn’t watch them taking their break. During the day, thin streaks of light leaked in around the edges. Clarke was grateful it was so late and that the alley outside got so little light. The metal shelving served as the perfect ladder, sturdy and wide. She disrupted the toilet paper and big bottles of cleaner as she climbed, leaving hints of her escape, but there was nothing to be done about it. The top shelf was blessedly empty, too high up to be useful.

She pulled the tray out of the way to reveal a window that was smaller than she expected. She turned a small latch and pushed the window. It didn’t budge. She pushed it again, harder this time, though she didn’t have much leverage. Nothing happened. The shelf wobbled minutely under her.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. 

It held steady as she gingerly pulled her full body onto the top shelf. She barely fit up there. She checked her watch. She maybe had a minute. Probably less. Clarke hit the base of the window with the flat of her palm. Nothing. She hit it again. Still nothing. She took a breath and closed her eyes. 

Please.

She hit it again and heard a tiny scrape. One more push, and the window swung open with an achy shriek. It might have been shut for decades. Clarke was lucky. The drop from the second floor window to the sidewalk was short. The alley swept upwards from 9th Ave., ending at the top with the fifth floor’s windows being at street level. 

She was out, and she had no idea what to do. By now, Blakely and Cooks would have noticed that she hadn’t come out. Maybe they’d give her another minute. She remembered the Apple watch. 

Her mind churned and tumbled. She had opened holes in skulls with drills and saws. She had cracked ribs to expose hearts that stopped beating in front of her eyes. But now, on this warm summer night on an empty sidewalk, she didn’t know what to do. So she ran. The hospital was a mess of old buildings connected by narrow alleys—easy to get lost. But Clarke had done her residency and fellowship here—spent nearly a quarter of her life here—and while she didn’t know the alleys, she knew the buildings, recognized the skyways above linking everything together. She slid from shadow to shadow in the direction of the interstate. It was an intuitive decision, the way she knew exactly where to find the bleeding in surgery. 

She kept moving, the rolling rumble of the highway getting closer. Finally, she found herself at the parking garage and knew exactly where to go. She walked calmly through the first level reserved for people going to the ED. She was careful to avoid the security booth where Mitch would be. He was a good guy, and Clarke didn’t want to bring him any trouble. She moved quickly towards an emergency exit which brought her to a fire escape facing the interstate. During her first year as resident, she and Dr. Salem used to meet there to smoke a joint after a 30-hour shift. 

She paused. Think. She pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts. Her breath caught when she came across her mom’s contact. You could have called, she could already hear her saying. We would have figured it out. Even if there was enough time for her mom to get from Whidbey Island to the city—and there wasn’t—it wouldn’t be safe. Anyone she called could be implicated and punished. Unless she chose to crawl back into the hospital, she was now an RRL, a Resistor of the Rule of Law.

This is moment everything changes. The thought cracked across her mind like lightning and disappeared just as fast. The thunder would roll on for years and years.

She closed her contacts and opened Instagram instead. She went to the @emeraldcityjustice profile. Her grin was grim as she hit the Message button. How ridiculous this world had become.

“Canada or the mountains?”

“What?” Clarke shook herself out of a haze. The driver hadn’t spoken since he picked her up from a dark corner under the interstate where @emeraldcityjustice had told her to go. They immediately turned east over the lake to Bellevue.

“You’ll have to decide at the drop point in Everett,” the driver went on. “They can either get you on a ferry to Canada or you can head to a refugee community in the mountains.” He glanced over his shoulder to the back seat where she was lying down to avoid facial recognition cameras on the interstate. “Do you want to escape or do you want to fight?”

THE END. THAT’S IT. I’M SORRY.