#(even the ones who’s oppression they’ve been ignoring for the last 4 years)

[area51-escapee]

Like that’s really what it comes down to, we have these third parties, we have other options, but every election is dominated by democrats and republicans because no one is willing to inconvenience themselves to try and make a difference. Change doesn’t happen over night real change means suffering and taking some L’s sometimes, but you can’t achieve anything by just doing nothing and continuing to uphold the current system because stepping outside of it won’t make an Immediate difference. The people who insist on maintaining the status quo, voting blue again and trying to change the system next election, every four years, aren’t willing to risk whatever security they have for the benefit of others. They’re in a good enough place that the only threat to them is the Republican Party, they benefit from the system as long as it’s working in their favor, and they do not give a fuck about those of us who are fucked over no matter what to even consider trying to change things.

[thestobingirlie]

The issue with the extremely cringey Steve's Winnebago Nancy family fantasy is that it flies in the face of what NANCY HERSELF has said she wants for herself. In season 1 she gives a whole speech rejecting a nuclear family life. In season 3 she has a similar talk with her mother. In s4 she literally says TO STEVE "except the six kids, that sounds like a nightmare"

But once again steve doesn't listen. He doesn't HEAR what she is saying because he is too wrapped up in his own fantasy about them. And that's always where Steve and Nancy fell apart - season 1, season 2, season 4 she TELLS him what she wants, what she fears, what she suspects, how she wants to fix things or solve things and he just is like "no. We should be normal. We have to be normal." Saw a guy with no face in the woods outside my house? "That's crazy." Want to try to get justice for Barb because you know the lab is covering up her death. "Ignore it. Let's just go to this party and be normal." Raising six kids sounds like a nightmare? "It's always you with me in that fantasy."

He never once listens to what she wants for herself. And again, THIS SEASON, he doesn't listen to what she wants for herself. She is going to college in the fall. She is trying to be nice to him, supportive of him, but her face in the UD woods is sickened and horrified when he's confessing his fantasy. It is NOT what she wants for herself and she's about to say it when Robin interrupts

The only person who has ever listened to Nancy and heard what she's saying, believed her, has been Jonathan. He's the one who believes her about the man without a face, trusts her plan to help barb's parents, and even though they have to fight through their clashing work priorities in s3 (let's be real: Jonathan DID need that job, his family is poor as fuck and poverty is as oppressive and painful as sexism) he doesn't hesitate to acknowledge and agree that their sexist bosses are terrible, and specifically to her.

I need stans if any Nancy involved ship to understand the most important thing for her in a partner is someone who LISTENS TO HER when she says what she wants and/or needs. And Steve has shown himself to simply not be capable of it.

ok... um

i literally don’t know why you sent me this. i dont ship stancy, nor do i think they work as a couple. they want different things, they process their trauma differently. and i hate that the duffers are trying to bring it back. steve deserves someone that loves him, and nancy deserves someone she loves.

i hate that they are trying to make steve’s future revolve around nancy, i literally can’t express how much i hate it. it doesn’t make sense for their characters, and they’ve written steve to seem pathetic for still being into nancy after all this time.

i think that you should reread the post because at no point was i trying to argue that they work as a couple. they don’t! but steve dreaming of having a big family and wanting to be with nancy doesn’t mean he completely misunderstands her as a person. there is more to nancy than whether she would want kids or not. and i was not talking about any other aspect of their relationship. i was only talking about steve’s fantasy of a big family, and that he shouldn’t be, like, demonised for it.

steve has a fantasy of having a big family when he’s older because he’s an only child with absent parents that has spent the last few years looking after this whole herd of kids. he also likes nancy, and typically when someone likes another person they picture them having a future together. it doesn’t mean that future will happen. it doesn’t mean steve expects it to happen. steve just tells nancy he had this fantasy, and then later says he imagines her there as a way to tell her he still has feelings for her.

anyway, it’s weird that you just anonymously sent this. like. if you don’t agree with my opinion, and just hate steve, literally what are you doing here. just make your own post or something. i tagged it anti jancy just in case, so if you didn’t want to see it, you didn’t have to. or if you hate my opinions, just block me, and you won’t have to read them. why do you care so much about a strangers opinion in the internet lol

[luna-rainbow]

TFATWS 1.06

I have so many issues with the entire script, but overall the final episode provided the neatness that the MCU world needed (yay, no more stray super soldiers!), while ignoring gaping plot-holes it dug for itself throughout the series.

Zemo: while I loved what Daniel Bruhl did with the character, the sheer amount of deus ex machina that occurred to include this character is phenomenal. Starting with Bucky making a completely uncharacteristic and self-destructive decision that out of all the contacts he knew from 70 years of working for Hydra, this Sokovian special op who tried to use him to kill half the Avengers was going to be the only expert on Hydra they have. Sam then makes an entirely uncharacteristic and bewildering decision to agree to take Zemo illegally. The entire world except Wakanda then makes the uncharacteristic decision to just ignore the fact a terrorist has broken out of jail, and in fact there is absolutely no consequence for Bucky. Ironically, the entire super soldier serum issue had nothing to do with Hydra, from its production, to its funding, to its theft or its users. Yes, Zemo was a great help in tricking the refugee kids in telling him information, but why couldn't this have been made to be a character moment for one of the two leads?

Karli: there are fantastic videos on YouTube explaining the deleted virus subplot that would have made the Flagsmashers and Karli so much more sympathetic. The idea of a plague background with a vaccine shortage, and people dying en masse because of inequity or obstructive governments would have given Karli powerful justifications for her increasingly radical actions. In a story like that, she would have died a martyr, but instead we're left with shredded hints of their motivations, a Mama Donya who we only meet in death, a meaningless chant that sounds creepily similar to the Chinese Communist Party's push for One Belt One Road, and no concrete plans or goals that suggest her fight would be worth it. Erin Kellyman did a beautiful job with this idealistic young woman driven to desperation, but the script failed her.

Walker: I like that they decided to make him do something good towards the end, but it also undermines what a redemption arc actually means. He gives up, momentarily, his pursuit of Karli in order to save the van, but has he really learned anything? Has he learned about his prejudices, his arrogance, his recklessness, or his anger issues? No. The blonde blue-eyed boy does one good deed and both Bucky and Sam welcome him into the team, which I thought was the whole point this series is trying to condemn.

Sam: I love what we saw of Sam in the last 2 episodes, but it should have been much more. His growth was all about agency: he took up the mantle on his own terms, in his own time; he tells Bucky to take control of his own identity, and in the end, he publicly calls out the Council for not giving agency to the people who need to be heard. What's frustrating and ironic is that in the first 4 episodes, Sam's role was passive. That's the other problem with including Zemo, because Zemo became the major driver of moving the plot along until they met Karli - in a series where both main characters needed more development. Apart from that one emotional scene of Sam cradling the shield, the script doesn't give him the backstory or the emotional range that Anthony Mackie deserves.

Bucky: I've already harped on about my views on how the series has insisted that Bucky makes amends. They've tried to force a redemption arc on him when what he needs is also agency. He repeatedly tells fellow super soldiers "believe me, don't go down that path" but the frustrating thing is, he never had the choice that they do, and this is never acknowledged by the script except in that 2 second exchange with Yori. His defining characteristic is Trauma, but nothing else is developed beyond that. What motivates him? What does he believe in? What does he fight for, when he's said he's tired of fighting? Even the trauma itself - why is there nothing else apart from guilt? Is there no anger towards his oppressors? No vengefulness? No grief about what he's lost? No fear about the pain he endured?

I've seen meta questioning Bucky's attachment to the Cap legacy, and I agree. Bucky followed Steve - in all 3 movies, he explicitly followed Steve and not the shield. As much as I love the proud, affectionate gaze he bestowed on Sam during Sam's speech, I almost wish we got a version of "I'm following the little guy from Brooklyn" here, rather than the "Nice job, Cap." It's Sam trying to give a voice to the ignored and oppressed that makes him someone Bucky wants to follow, particularly as this was personally identifiable for Bucky, who was kept voiceless for 70 years. I wish this was the point rather than Bucky's incoherent belief that the shield was "family" especially when Steve abandoned the shield every time he chose to help Bucky.

I have so much frustrations with the script because it could have been something more. Sam deserves something as emotionally poignant and universally relatable as Steve's backstory. Bucky deserved to be more than just a broken man defined solely by his trauma. The camaraderie developed so hastily in the last 2 episodes it felt more like watching Anthony and Sebastian than it did their respective characters. Maybe this will get better when I rewatch it in a few months, because watching things weekly definitely gives you time to pick at the little things. I wonder what would have been if Covid didn't happen and they didn't have to scramble the plot.

[dragynkeep]

Top 5 worst male characters and Top 5 worst female characters in RWBY, and brief reasons why?

This is the type of ask that’s gonna get me shit but I have known no hubris in my life so let’s go. These won’t be in the case of being intentionally bad, I’m doing more on personal taste and the quality of their writing. 

Worst Male Characters

1. Adam Taurus

Obviously, Adam is at the top of the list for me. His storyline was butchered from a story of racism and vigilantism to a story about domestic abuse, his brand was cheap shock value with very little substance, he stopped being threatening after the Fall of Beacon and instead became a whiny little bitch, and his voice acting is just bad.

He sounds like he’s gonna call me a slur on Xbox Live.

2. Jacques Schnee

Yeah, the abusive rich man who runs slave mines is bad, but that’s not the main reason he’s on this list. I could accept a character like that if the writers made him good, but they didn’t. Jacques wasn’t intimidating at all. He wasn’t smart at all. The man who conned his father in law and wife into giving him complete control of the most powerful company in Remnant is not the same man we get in the actual show.

He’s whiny, cowardly, and a useless villain who’s entire downfall was treated like a poorly made joke, and now only serves as comic relief in the Jailbirds scenes in V8. 

3. Hazel Rainart

Same issues with Jacques and Adam, but less egregious. Hazel was actually a pretty interesting villain in his earlier volumes, and even after his blunder at the Batlle of Haven, he went back to being kinda good in V6 with his protective behaviour towards Emerald. And then V8 came around and I grew to hate how stupid his reasons for joining Salem were, and the fact that he just beat the shit outta Oscar while whining about his dead sister.

Bro, Idgaf about someone I never met while you’re maiming a 15 year old boy because you wanna be mad at the guy in his head. 

4. Qrow Branwen

It’s the same case with Hazel. I actually liked Qrow up until V6, and even then I cared enough to try and see where his alcoholism arc went since it’s a serious issue that affects not only my family, but my people. I started to dislike him after he punched Oscar and kept being horrible to the boy, all without apologising in the end, but v7 and 8 made me really hate him. 

I don’t care for his edgy attitude, and I don’t care that he got his self-help book boyfriend murdered by a crackhead. Add onto CRWBY butchering a serious topic about alcoholism with him, and he’s just sank right down writing sense.

5. Ghira Belladonna

I never liked Ghira. I think the others are higher than him on this list just on the virtue that I liked them, or the idea of them, and the writing just pulled them down so much.

But I never had that problem with Ghira, so the disappointment doesn’t sting as bad. He’s just an unnecessary character that cheapens Blake since she’s now a princess, a useless father who somehow couldn’t get his own 12 year old daughter back even thought she didn’t even bother to change her own name, and then featured live on a tournament channel that the whole world saw. He was a useless leader, his ideology was stupid and almost got him and others killed, and he was so ungrateful towards Adam for saving his stupid furry ass that I completely sided with Sienna calling him the fuck out.

At least he’s not on my screen anymore, but I know that won’t last forever and I gotta look at his dumb face again.

Worst Female Characters

1. Cinder Fall

God, she is the worst villain and character in this show. She’s so flat, her stans are annoying as fuck, her voice leaves a lot to be desired, and the fact that there’s hardly anything to her for seven years makes it even worse now that we finally got a backstory for her, and it’s one we ALL GUESSED.

Who would’ve thought she’d be a Cinderella who killed her abusive family, I am shooketh. 

2. Blake Belladonna

Blake was my favourite girl in RWBY and I’m mad at CRWBY for what they’ve done to her.

It says a lot that a girl still affected by the abuse and trauma of fighting in a terrorist organisation has more personality and backbone than one who’s supposedly broken free of her traumatic past and moved forward. Blake now is spineless, flat, boring ass cardboard cutout of what she once was, who would rather let her human friends defend her from racists than call them out herself like she did to Weiss in Volume 1. 

She’s spoiled, priviledged, annoying, and Arryn has such a flat voice on top of being a gross ass person that I get annoyed every time she speaks. She’s no longer an oppressed minority fighting for the rights of her people, she’s a princess who would rather go to a club with people she didn’t even like than a rally against the man who caused so much suffering to her people. Even her talk with Nora about not letting yourself be taken over by who you’re with romantically is hypocritical, since that’s exactly what’s happened to her since she’s been paired up with Yang.

She couldn’t even have the spotlight of fighting her own VILLAIN, Yang was the one who broke Adam’s Aura and had the big triumphant moment of throwing his sword in the river while she was too busy fucking rock climbing. 

3. Yang Xiao Long

Yang was my second favourite girl in RWBY and I’m mad at CRWBY for what they’ve done to her.

Yang wasn’t super developed in the earlier volumes. Honestly, I didn’t think much until her talk with Blake about Raven in Burning The Candle, and her dismemberment leading her towards depression and PTSD. Come Volume 4, I was alright with the portrayal of her recovery. I don’t think they gave enough time between her trying on the arm and then being good enough to leave, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t bad. 

What was bad was everything after. Yang became a hypocritical, moody bitch who would drag everyone for their bad decisions while ignoring her own. Her PTSD, something VERY personal to me, was ruined and up and vanished by V7 since she’s now killed the man who gave her the disorder so obviously it’s cured! She is always on Ozpin’s case for the birds shit, and then keeping secrets, but then goes and does the exact same thing while giving little resistance to others doing it because they’re family.

Even her argument with Ruby in V8 was tame as fuck. She blamed Ruby for things not going well while ignoring that it was her own dumbass decisions that contributed to it. Ruby didn’t tell Yang to go and spill the beans to Robyn, her stupid cat girlfriend did that, and Yang went along with it while being unrepentant later on when Ironwood was RIGHTFULLY pissed about it.

Add onto v8 then having her worry about how BLAKE thought about her, rather than RUBY, and I just hate her. This ain’t Yang, I want Yang back. 

4. Nora Valkyrie

Nora is just a flat character. Her voice is annoyingly high pitched and screechy, her jokes aren’t funny, and all the things I loved that she got in v4 was later dropped entirely. She had such good moments in V4 that actually made me appreciate her more, and then she just became another hypocrite in v7 who wanted to yell at Ironwood while refusing to look at her own flaws.

On top of her kissing Ren when he was clearly not in the mood to talk, and it made me hate her. It’s not a cute ship moment, it’s a creepy disrespect of someone’s personal space. If it was the other way around, no one would think it was cute.

5. Robyn Hill

Similar to Ghira’s reasons, I never liked Robyn, so she’s low down on the list compared to the others since at one point I loved the others (Minus Cinder but she’s just so bad that she’s #1).

Robyn isn’t a good freedom fighter. She runs in without thinking about things and then proceeds to deny any responsibility of her actions. She won’t accept that maybe her agreeing with the same serial killer that nearly killed her and Fiona, on top of succeeding in murdering some of her supporters and Forest, and starting a fight with Clover in an enclosed space wasn’t a good idea. 

Add onto the fact that she’s really just incompetent. She steals supplies from Ironwood to fix the wall and help Mantle, but after time we see that nothing has been done. 

Christina Vee is wasted on her honestly.

[fiercestpurpose]

I love seeing your input on JeanScott, so I have a question. Ignoring Hickman’s current run, if the comics picked up from everyone coming back together, do you think Jean and Scott would get back together? How? Why?

YES! GOD YES! I wanted them to sooooooo badly lol

Realistically, I think that post-Rosenberg, they should have taken some time before getting back together, and talked about things. See, Scott and Jean, even when they’re in love, aren’t the best at communicating (see: Silver Age X-Men, X-Factor when Scott just doesn’t tell Jean that he’s married, Scott’s reaction to Jean becoming Phoenix, etc.). What separates healthy long-term couple Scott/Jean from hopelessly in love but sort of doomed Scott/Jean is that they’ve learned that they need to communicate, and they do this both through their psychic rapport and by having actual, out-loud conversation.

And after Jean comes back to life and then Scott comes back to life, they have a lot to talk about, including but not limited to Scott cheating on Jean with Emma and Scott being possessed by the Phoenix Force and killing Charles.

So let’s say we have an Uncanny title as our flagship (Storm, Jubilee, Wolverine, Kwannon, Nightcrawler) and they’re working on solving the problems of mutants. All problems, all mutants. It sort of picks up where Rosenberg’s left off, this is a harsh world and harsh times, people are against mutants, hated and feared, etc.

And then we have the B-team, which is X-Factor - Scott, Jean, and Hank, and then we pick up some of the X-Force members, Bable, Rictor, and Sunspot. That’s a lot of good threads to pull on - Scott and Hank were at each other’s throats for a while there, Rictor’s back with X-Factor when he hasn’t really connected with them since he was a teenager, Berto really loved Cable and Bable is Cable but also killed him, and Bable is Scott and Jean’s unruly teenage son who they raised in the far future but then abandoned (again). And, of course, Scott and Jean still have to talk.

I imagine X-Factor as sort of a return to basics, the characters involved all using it as a way to learn/reconnect with why they’re part of the X-Men anyway. It’s a way for Scott (Mr. Mutant Revolutionary) to remember that he’s helping mutants, it’s a way for Roberto (Mr. AIM) to come back from the Avengers and just reconnect with the more personal parts of being a superhero, it’s a way for all of them to take a step back from the big noise and just help mutants. They work out of a basement under a mutant community center (probably in NYC). The jobs are things like tracking missing mutants, helping the Morlocks move house without getting attacked by the police, making contact with new mutants, stopping mutants from hurting other people but by addressing their concerns and not by handing them over to the legal authorities. It’s a very ground-level, anti-police, confronting-oppression-by-helping-the-individuals-affected-by-it approach (in contrast with the flagship, which is much more big picture). And I think a key part of that is having them not be in charge of their own missions – they’ve been disconnected from the broader mutant community for so long that they don’t really have the right to say “This is what this community needs.” So it’s also a way for them to let go of leadership responsibility – not that they aren’t all capable of it, but it’s important for them to have some time off, to let someone else guide them for a while.

I think this sort of mundane setting would be an excellent opportunity for Scott and Jean to get back into working as a team. It’s an escape from all the chaos of normal superheroics and a chance for them to do real, concrete good together. It would also give them plenty of downtime – say X-Factor is supposed to make contact with a runaway mutant, so Rictor and Bable go to handle that, and Scott and Jean man the office and have a chance to talk.

They have a lot to talk about, and I think you’d need to spread it out over several arcs. They can have one serious conversation every 4-5 issues. One arc involves a virus that is being used to make people commit crimes, and Jean and Scott disagree about whether the people who are possessed are in fact responsible for the crimes, and it turns out they’re really talking about the Phoenix and they should probably talk about their experiences with the Phoenix rather than projecting that onto a different scenario. At one point Bable goes way out of line and Scott and Jean have to acknowledge that they’re still his parents, and they really do need to step in and exert some influence over him. And they sort of reminisce about when life was simpler and they lived in a post-Apocalyptic future raising their son. I think you leave the conversation about Emma for last, and the important thing is to build up their relationship in a natural way over the course of the series. (In this ideal world, perfectly good series don’t get canceled or rebooted every year just because Marvel wants a temporary sales bump.)

So that’s the how. As for why… I just think they make sense together. I think that a couple that you can only break up by having one of them die is a couple that, when they’re alive, would want to be together. They didn’t just “grow apart,” the way some people claim, they were forced into extremely OOC behaviour because Morrison thought “powerful women don’t make good wives.” From an out-of-universe point of view, they deserve a chance to rebuild an interesting, compelling relationship that was ended for no good reason. From an in-universe point of view, they’re in love, they’re good for each other, and they deserve to be happy.

Thank you for the question, I love talking about Jean and Scott and an alternate universe where I get to run the X-office. :)

[strad-214]

Sunday, 06/14/2020 The Force:

The Force… the energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the universe together. It was discovered before the founding of the Republic… before the founding of the Jedi even. Its applications are limitless, so long as one has a strong enough link to it and knows how to control it. Control it, yet listen to its will. Allow it to give life, and understand when it destroys life. Bask in its light, and be able to wander in its darkness. To trust it, listen to it, feel it, see it, touch it, touch the universe with it, become one with it. The Force is everything and nothing, it is even possibly real… let us explore it now together.

Approximately 100,000 B.B.Y., the Sith civilization took shape beyond the outer rim in what is now counted as the Trans-Hydian Borderlands, the bordering systems of the latter region in the New Territories, and the northern tip of The Slice regions of the Galaxy. Together they discovered the Bogan, the Dark Side of the Force. They began to use these magics, as they called them, to manipulate their surroundings, to conquer and enslave each other, and to build weapons. Likewise, literally across the other side of the Galaxy in the wild, unexplored regions and around 30,000 B.B.Y., the Rakata people also discover the Bogan and use it in similar ways. They create hyperdrives and invade the core systems, wielding this power to enslave many races and build technology. The Rakata rule the Galaxy at large for nearly 5,000 standard years, but infighting and greed got the best of them and the empire implodes, as often happens to civilizations that practice the ways of the Dark Side of the Force. In the wake of their own demise, the Core Systems begin to reach out to one another for support and soon, the Galactic Republic is born from the ashes of tyranny and oppression. With them, many philosophers and scientists began to study this mystical power the Rakata were able to wield. They went to the ancient world of Tython to investigate this power and test the limits of its applications. These early scientists named the power the Ashla and decided that, unlike their oppressors, they will use this power to help and aid the peoples of this new Republic. And thus, the Jedi Order was born. Not all Jedi agreed with using this power to help and aid others, however, and a schism formed in the Jedi Order. Many wars followed this first schism; much of these wars were fought exclusively against the Jedi. By 7003 B.B.Y., a second great schism occurred. This time, one singular war occurred, between legions of Jedi Knights and Dark Jedi, wielding the Light and the Dark sides of the Force respectively. For one hundred years this war lasted, bringing death and destruction to the fledgling Republic. Once the war was over, the remaining Dark Jedi were sent into Exile to the far reaches of the galaxy… to the Sith Empire, which not even the Rakata had known existed. There, in the darkness, the Dark Jedi overthrew the Sith Lords and took over their empire. They expand the Sith Empire in faction and power, and they return to the Republic to exact their revenge in 5,000 B.B.Y. The event is called the Great Hyperspace War, and it ended with the fall of the Sith Empire, the remnants of which were sent back from whence they came, scattered and broken. Every time thereafter that the Sith have returned, they have taken another slice of the Galaxy with them back to their graves, a little more goodness, a little more disaster. But every time, they were indeed defeated and the Jedi stood victorious. Thus the balance of the Force has always swung one way or another for many eras of time. It only came truly into balance when the Prophecy of the Chosen one was realized in 4 A.B.Y. when Darth Vader, the last of the original Jedi Order and Sith Lord, destroys his Sith Master and himself, perishing due to damage to his life support systems. The only Force wielding major now left in the Galaxy was his own son, Luke, who’s knowledge of the Force was segmented at best. And his Jedi Order—in both versions of canon—never amounted to the strength as that of those first who rallied together on Tython those many years ago.

The Force has been described to be this mythical energy that is created by the living creatures of the Galaxy. It emanates from all beings touched by the Force and its will is our command. Whenever we come across a coincidence too good to be true, whenever our instincts and our reflexes perform beyond our realm of capabilities, whenever we have a strange feeling and wind up finding out why, this is the Force speaking to us, guiding us. This, in all versions of Jedi lore, is constant. There are believed to be two sides to the Force as a whole: The Living Force and the Unifying Force. The Living Force is the energy that directly emanates from living beings; through the Living Force, the Jedi can connect with their colleagues, those they protect, those they fight against and the environments they explore. The Unifying Force is the cosmic energy that travels between stars; this energy is what makes up the gaps between nebula and the rippling fabric of space and time. When Jedi study the Force, they first study it as Youngling Initiates. The extent of their abilities are limited to self directed applications of the Force all labeled “Control”. These abilities are designed to help a Jedi protect themselves and others: Tutaminis is the ability to diffuse radiations by using the benevolent energy of the Force; it’s application could be as simple as protecting one’s skin from too much sunlight or as forceful as reflecting a blasterbolt or even wild electric tendrils like Force Lightning. Curato Salva is a whole family of abilities that focus on healing. Jedi can draw on the Force to refresh their own energy, to increase the growth of new cells when healing wounds, to flush out toxins and poisons from the bloodstream and ignore the affects of which, to locate and burn out clusters of disease in the body, and to increase one’s tolerance to pain when you cannot heal yourself. Altus Sopor is the practice of deepening one’s connection to the Force, it is the act of directly reaching back through your connection to touch the Living and the Unifying Force, so that you can strengthen your access to it and your understanding of it.

Once a Youngling has mastered the family of “Control”, they then, as Padawans, train in the families of “Sense” and “Alter”. Under “Sense” abilities, a Jedi can now use what they’ve learned from “Control” and reach outward, feeling the same energies they’ve learned to manipulate around them. Through this they can detect other life forms, feel the energies they emit and through that, their intentions and feelings. Like feeling the life of other creatures, Jedi can also feel the Force wherever it is strongest like on Ilum, Ossus, Dagobah and Tython. By learning how to control and protect their own bodies through the Force in Curato Salva, Jedi can enhance their own physical senses, seeing farther, smelling deeper or hearing more sensitive than they naturally could, even being able to deafen their ears to all but one sound they seek in a sea of noise. Some Jedi can apply their sense abilities to the Unifying Force, in doing so, they can see moments in time, even perceive visions of the future. If this ability where applied to an object, a Jedi could perceive what happened to that object and the person handling it. This ability is called Postcognition or Psychometry.

Under “Alter” abilities are the powers we see a Jedi perform more often. This is the practice of indeed applying the Force to the environment around a Jedi. “Telekinesis” is the ability to move objects with one’s mind. The Jedi is enacting their will on an object, causing it to move at their desired rate and direction. In this ability Jedi can push, pull, lift, levitate, throw, crush, open, or close anything no matter it be the size of a molecule or the size of a planet, for “size matters not.” Jedi have been known to part rivers, build bridges, construct their lightsabers, fuse items together, fill oxygen tanks, lift ships, boomerang their lightsabers, leap great distances, knock over armies, split open glass, and levitate themselves just by careful practice of this ability alone. If a Jedi were to apply “Telekinesis” to themselves while accessing the Unifying Force, time around them would slow while they themselves do not slow down. To their adversaries, the Jedi would be moving at an unnatural speed and have a very dramatic effect on the environment. This ability is almost exclusively tapped into instinctually, for a Jedi’s remarkable increase in speed has almost been entirely witnessed as a reaction, like for dodging. If the Jedi truly focused, they could apply this ability to specific parts of their bodies—say, their fists—and thus punch at a ridiculous speed, being able to possibly punch straight through durasteel plating. They better protect the part of their body they are using or risk irreversible injury. The Jedi can also use this ability to reach a great distance over a short time. But using this ability can be remarkably exhausting.

“Affect Mind”, more commonly known as the “Jedi Mind Trick”, is the ability to relate directly to the individual the Jedi is trying to affect and override their basic impulses. If a Jedi controls their inner most instincts enough and reaches out to the mind of a beast using this technique, they may be able to calm their primal rage this way as well and even possibly control them and communicate with them. In doing so, you can convince the person or the beast to do nearly anything. If a Jedi is particularly good at “Affect Mind” and can swim in both the currents of the Living Force and the Unifying Force at once, they can deeply meditate and affect the layout and outcome of an entire event. This is commonly called “Battle Meditation”, since most Jedi used this ability to bolster their troops in battle and to discourage the enemy troops.  While deeply meditating in this way, a Jedi can also create immaterial copies of themselves or their comrades and project them into the minds of those around them. This allows a Jedi to confuse, distract, or overwhelm their opponents without ever having lifted a finger. This ability has been called either “Force Projection” or simply “Doppelganger”. 

With enough time, study, and patience, a Jedi can also apply their manipulation of energy outward. If they do, they can possibly produce lightning from their fingertips just as the Sith do, except the emotion of rage and power hunger is removed and replaced with a determined sense of justice. When lightning is cast and is rooted in a sense of justice, the lightning may appear a bright emerald in color. A Jedi may also contain this raw energy into an orb called a “Kinetite” and throw it at their adversaries. Some Jedi and Sith have even been known to throw waves of fire using this method. If a Jedi focuses this energy the right way, they can also possibly interact with droids and other technology on a synaptic level. In focusing and training at the advanced and basic levels of all these abilities, a Jedi can apply the Force in so many various ways, many of which may not have even been considered yet. 

 Now... let us next address the controversial topic of the Midichlorians, because this is a focus on all aspects of Star Wars and the Midichlorians are in fact a part of this universe. First and foremost, Midichlorians are NOT the Force. The Force and its history has been described in detail here and in previous essays already. The concept of Midichlorians came to Lucas as a way of describing a tangible way of making the Force real. He did that by taking the two power houses of the living cells in our real every day life: the mitochondria of animal cells and the chloroplasts of plant cells, and combining them into one tiny sub-cell. Scientists today believe that mitochondria and chloroplasts were once single celled organisms that found a symbiotic relationship with another single celled organism. One cell absorbed another and before it could digest the absorbed cell, that cell began to provide high levels of energy and nutrients for the cell that absorbed it. Over the centuries, as life began to diversify on Earth into plants and animals, those symbionts grew together and helped each other evolve into the multicellular organisms we are today. Proof of this can be found in the separate DNA strands housed in both the mitochondria and the chloroplasts that are organized like that of a single celled organism and code out to be exclusive to those organelles of the cell, not the organism of which they are a part of such as a dog, fish, bird, tree, cactus, or human being. And, the more mitochondria or chloroplasts the individual cell has, the higher rate of energy production that cell has and the higher the metabolism of the organism as a whole. This is sound, proven science. The more batteries you hook up to a generator, the longer it runs. The more cables you hook up to an antenna, the more stable your connection. The more midichlorians you contain, the stronger your connection to the Force. The midichlorians are the conduit, just as the batteries and the cables are. It would make sense to distinguish the difference between Force Sensitives and everyone else this way, especially if “all life is touched by the Force and produces the Force”. Then who can wield it if we are all touched by it? It’s no longer special if we could all access the Force directly, and yet, the fact remains that we all exhume the Force. So we all carry these conduits, some of us carry more than others. These are the ones who are Force Sensitive. Thus, the midichlorians play their roll. They do not define a Jedi’s ability to become strong, anybody can achieve anything if they train hard enough, but they do define their accessibility.

The Jedi Order has frequently been labeled as a religion of sorts because they study this almighty power. In order for the Jedi’s practice of the Force to be a religion, there would have to be deities to worship. There are supernatural beings like The Bendu and The Father, The Daughter, and the Son on Mortis, but their involvement in the story of Star Wars has been to accentuate main characters and their faults or strengths and the Jedi do not worship these beings, they acknowledge and study them. The Force itself may be considered a deity, but the Jedi have yet to be described as a people who offer sacrifices—vital, immaterial, or monetary—to the Force or even pray to the Force.

They study the Force, study being the key word, by directly communing with it, attempting to understand its intentions, and testing its limits; all very scientific approaches, approaches that are rooted in philosophy, not worship. The Jedi simply attempt to apply what they know about it to the Galaxy around them, and they have indeed proven it to be very real. This doesn’t make the Jedi not a religion, but I think simply calling them a religion is falling short of their true meaning and purpose which has always been to expand the boundaries of what’s possible and nurture life.

I ask you all reading my essays, is the Force real? Do you believe it can be real? Do you have to be able to lift a car with your mind and an outstretched hand in order for the Force to be real? After reviewing what the Force is already, I don’t think this is the case. The Force is much more than the superpowers we can tangibly see in the movies; it is the energy we feel between two lovers making a connection, it’s the miracles we witness when we hope hard enough, it’s the coincidence that we exist here. Some call it the hand of God, some call it evolution and perfect mathematics. I ask the religious, we were created imperfect so that we can grow and experience, so why would there be such perfect things around us, things that we cannot yet perceive or understand? Yes, that may be God’s doing… who’s God? Which God? Why are there so many versions? Well, the logical answer is because we are all individuals with individual ideas and we share those ideas… what a coincidence that those ideas happen to be so similar and so different at the same time. Like how Zeus is the God of Gods all living on Mt. Olympus together and each being responsible for specific things on the Earth below and how the Christian God is THE God and his Angels are instead responsible for specific things on the Earth below. The two religions are centuries apart in the founding, but the idea is the same. It’s really just a way for us to rationalize existence in the universe, but they all represent the same thing, they represent “a Force” that makes this Galaxy spin, that makes gravity work, that allowed all the right compounds to form at the right time in the right way to evolve into us. Here. On our planet. And we can feel that every day just by remembering that we’re here and that we can indeed feel that energy, when we make a connection between each other and the world around us. We feel that through the same emotions the Jedi maintain control over— inspiration, desire, belonging, and compassion— and the ones they avoid so they can keep a clear mind— frustration, hate, prejudice, and desire again… That hate and frustration we feel when we don’t know which side is right in a war… that desire when we want something better and don’t know how to reach it… that inspiration when a jazz band is silently communicating to weave the sweetest of melodies the likes of which never been played before… that compassion we as a race are compelled to offer each other when we forget those prejudices we all are bound to have… that is the Force.

 I’m sorry this is a week late everyone, life has taken a bit more precedence lately. I hope you gained something from this. Enjoy the rest of Jedi June.

May the Force be with you.

@jedijune

[islamicrays]

Assalamu aleikum ♡ Could you please recommend me some hadith (or Qur'an verses) about times such as this, like the plague, and about dealing with emotions such as fear, anxiety and all the negativity that follows such challenging times? Thank you very much and may Allah bless you for all you're doing here!

Walaikum Assalaam

Don't be anxious. Whatever is meant to happen; it will happen. If we are written to be tested then we will be tested. We cannot change the circumstances but it's in our control how we respond to it.

“No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future. Go easy on yourself for the outcome of all affairs is determined by Allah’s Decree. If something is meant to go elsewhere, it will never come on your way, but if it is yours by destiny, from it, you cannot flee.”

-Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him)

Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala won't burden us with something that we can't handle. Read these quotes it will help you in shaa Allah

"The Prophet ﷺ said, ‘There isn’t a man who stays in his house during a time when the plague occurs with patience, hoping for reward and knowing that nothing will afflict him other than that which has been written for him - except that he will have reward similar to the reward of a martyr.’ (Ahmad)

Ibn Hajar said whoever does the following three things will have the reward of a martyr whether he lives or he dies. Look at the beauty of this religion! The reward of a martyr for sitting at home. La ilaha ila Allah Muhammad Rasulallah ﷺ"

-Via Shaykh Mohammed Aslam

"If you’re feeling panicked, find a mushaf in your home. Even if you haven’t opened the Quran in such a long time- pick it up, hold it to your heart, and hug it. If you aren’t ready to start reading it, then just hold it and allow your heart to seek comfort from the Divine Words of the Most Merciful. And keep doing that until you start to open His Book.

Remember Who is in control. We are allowed to feel all of our emotions and it is valid to be so anxious you can’t sleep. In those moments, know you don’t have to be scared alone. Make istighfar- ask for His forgiveness. The Quran talks about this as a form of bringing so many different blessings into your life.

And when you’re overwhelmed at home trying to juggle your children’s needs and work, start saying Alhamdulilah- thanking Him. Because if you’re reading this on your smartphone, you might also be living in security with enough food in your fridge. There are people everywhere facing the virus without these basic necessities.

Many of you have empathized with oppressed populations, but not actively remembered their plight. This is our opportunity to remember the fear which they have lived with for decades in our daily prayers and call out to Him with a sincerity for them that we may have lacked when we simply didn’t know.

This is a time to process our emotions through our relationship with God. With the closing of masajid, the quarantining at home, the sudden unexpected rates of death and disease and the impact on that on our economies and daily lives an entire globe - isn’t it time to turn back to Him? The fact that you still have time to do so and are considering it- that’s a sign He has already turned to you. So turn back to Him."

-Ustadha Maryam Amir

"DO NOT squander this time. This is a windfall if you actually think about it.

The one thing that everyone regrets the most when they die is the time they wasted.

Life is a precious gift. No matter what your situation is right now, don’t forget that you were given EXISTENCE by the Creator of the Heavens and the Universe.

He WILLED for *you* to be here.

He CREATED *you* with intent.

He CREATED *you* to experience all the beauty and wonders of the world…to KNOW…to FEEL…to WITNESS…to HEAR….to TASTE…to LOVE…but perhaps you’ve forgotten what that really means and this is all to remind you!

Maybe you’re spared this illness so that you can actually take inventory of your life and get back in touch with who you are and what you’ve forgotten all these years distracted by work, responsibility, commutes, bills, taxes, school, family, friends, community service, etc…

Maybe you’re forced into spending time with your family because you’ve forgotten just how important they are to you or vice versa.

Maybe you’re supposed to have those long moments of panic and anxiety so that you move away from looking at the pantry shelves to looking at your children’s faces and realizing how much time has passed since you once held them in your arms and how the future is uncertain for you and them, but what matters is NOW and alhamdulillah you are with them and they are with you; healthy and together.

Maybe you’re supposed to scroll through pages of news and newsfeeds about this virus so that your neck begins to crane and you finally look up to see your spouse; the one whom, whether you’ve intended to or not, have taken for granted. You each have your roles to play and like ships passing each other in the night, you’ve found a rhythm, an efficient system to keep the family together…but what about you two? When is the last time you actually looked at one another with the loving gaze of someone who feels the value of the person in front of them upon their chest like a heavy weight? When is the last time you looked at your partner as if you weren’t guaranteed to see them tomorrow? Perhaps you’ll learn to do that now…and perhaps as a result, you’ll always see them that way and will never talk down to them, hurt them with insults, ignore them when they are in need, slight them in front of others, or treat them as though you are entitled to everything they do for you.

Maybe you’re supposed to wake up in the middle of the night sweating and unable to go back to sleep, so that you surrender to the solitude of the night and draw closer to the One who sends His angels looking for the ones who are looking for Him.

Maybe all of this started because of a dangerous virus with the potential to kill, but it will end by renewing life and light into hearts that died long ago; victims drowned by the turbulent waters of this dunya.

May Allah ﷻ guide us through these times to not squander the opportunities before us and to live and love fully, with presence, sincerity, transparency, and wholeheartedness. Amin."

-Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi

"In the midst of all this uncertainty and panic, I know things look bleak today…

-I personally had to cancel travel plans for the next two months.

-Some of my dear friends had to cancel a major event they’ve been planning for almost a year.

-Some of my friends who are immunocompromised are worried.

-Some friends reached out to me because they don’t know what to do about their children attending school.

-Some friends are worried about their elderly parents.

-Some friends are worried about their livelihood and businesses not being able to survive.

Whatever the case may be, let us keep perspective that as Muslims our Shariah compels us to preserve five things:

1. Faith

2. Life

3. Sanity/Mind

4. Lineage

5. Property

Our utmost concern right now should be to protect our faith, our lives, and our mental wellbeing.

This virus is on this planet and doing what it’s doing SOLELY by the permission of its Creator.

Our response should be to SUBMIT to our Creator, prioritize our faith, and beseech Him for protection.

We must also act responsibly to preserve our own safety as well as the safety of everyone else (family, friend, or stranger) that we come in contact with.

Thus, we must “tie our camel” and put our trust in Allah ﷻ to protect us from any and all harm.

This balance of submitting to God FIRST and then preparing and being responsible for the worst will protect our sanity so that we do not become paranoid and unreasonably afraid.

We must also remember that whatever opportunities or sustenance we have lost was never ours to begin with, and the Most Generous will either replace it with something better in this life or the next, IF we remain patient and accept His decree.

So let us not fall into despair, sadness, fear, and anxiety. Let us be wise, patient, and use the time of imposed isolation to reconnect with our faith and our Lord, as well as with our families.

Sometimes it takes calamities like this to recalibrate our hearts and remind us what our priorities should really be.

May Allah ﷻ protect and guide us all. Amin."

-Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi

Recite Astaghfirullah as much you can. As narrated in hadith

If anyone continually asks pardon, Allah will appoint for him a way out of every distress, and a relief from every anxiety, and will provide for him from where he did not reckon.(Abu Dawud)

Following are some dua that you can recite:

1.“Verily, distress has seized me, and You are the Most Merciful of all who show mercy.”

(Aayah No. 83, Surah Al-Ambiya, Chapter No. 21, Holy Qur’an).

2. Recite “Hasbunallahu wa Ni’mal Wakeel” when you feel restless

“Allah is Sufficient for us, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs.”

Ibn ‘Abbas (May Allah be pleased with them) said: When (Prophet) Ibraheem(عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّم) was thrown into the fire, he said: “Allah (Alone) is sufficient for us, and, He is the Best Disposer of affairs.” So did Messenger of Allah, Muhammad (ﷺ), when he was told: “A great army of the pagans had gathered against him, so fear them”. But this (warning) only increased him and the Muslims in Faith and they said: “Allah (Alone) is sufficient for us, and He is the Best Disposer of affairs (for us)”. [Al-Bukhari].

3. O Ever Living, O Self-Subsisting and Supporter of all, by Your mercy I seek assistance, rectify for me all of my affairs and do not leave me to myself, even for the blink of an eye.’    [صحيح الترغيب والترهيب 1/273]

4.It was reported from Anas (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (Peace and Blessings of Allaah be upon him) used to say, when something upset him:

“Yaa Hayyu yaa Qayyoom, bi Rahmatika astagheeth (O Ever-Living One, O Everlasting One, by Your mercy I seek help).”

5. Allahumma inni a’oodhoo bika minal-hammi walhuzni, wal-’ajzi wal-kasali wal-bukhli wal-jubni, wa dal’id-dayni wa ghalabatir- rajaal

"O Allah! I seek refuge in You from anxiety and sorrow, weakness and laziness, miserliness and cowardice, the burden of debts and from being oppressed by men."

I hope it will be helpful. May Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala forgive us and guide us to the straight path.

Ameen

[comeallyelost]

The Handmaid’s Tale 3x08 Thoughts

I think I'm getting a clearer picture of where this season is headed, but the way they are going about it is not at all ideal. 

Four sections to this post:

June

Aunt Lydia

General Episode Notes

The Racism Problem

1. On June’s Sanity

The plot is barely moving forward, but we're seeing more of June's descent into madness/ desperation and her loss of humanity as a result of losing her closest allies. (I'm gonna loop in Serena and Nick here because for a while at least, I think June believed Serena was in her camp post pinky-finger). 

So based on the looks of things, Nick's absence and ambiguity HAS to be intentional since it's having a direct effect on June's ability to cope with the horrors of Gilead.

This episode most definitely was used to paint June as the villain and Natalie/OfMatthew as the victim. They turned it around on us, implying that anyone can go mad here, even our protagonist whom we've been rooting for this entire time. And like, I don't really want to draw too many parallels here, because the development has been a better on THT and there is a much more tangled web of *things* going on, but I'm getting similar "mad queen" Dany vibes that were happening on Game of Thrones.

But honestly, what irks me most about this whole season is how we all came in expecting a season about the resistance. About Mayday, about June fighting back. June STAYED in Gilead for a reason. For Hannah. Or so we thought. Where is that narrative? We've gotten nothing so far. 

I would argue that it does makes sense for June's character to go darker, to go to extremes she would have never considered before. Especially without someone to anchor her down. Nick was her rock and he's gone. Not just physically, but in her mind she feels like she lost the person she thought he was. HOWEVER, just because these elements were removed, it serves no point for her to stray in this direction and lose sight of her daughter, of the fight against Gilead.  The handmaids this episode played out like a Mean Girls skit and poor Janine is this series' punching dummy and I'm getting tired of that.

Side note: Another facet of June’s spiral is the lack of flashbacks. Her ties to Luke, Hannah, Moira, and her life from before are fading. Nick keeping her sane and helping her survive in present Gilead was one side, but her ties to her humanity are also very much embedded in the person she was before. She may not be the same June, but it’s those memories that keep her fighting, that keep her going. And I don’t think we’ve seen a flashback since like...the beginning of ep 5 if I’m not mistaken.

It's been EIGHT episodes gdi. What do we have left? Five? I sincerely hope they're not wasted. But my hope is dwindling. Watching this week's ep I honestly felt like I was watching an entirely different show from the one I was so obsessed with last year.

2. On Aunt Lydia’s backstory

Yay! Woohoo we finally get a backstory for someone new. Except it’s Aunt Lydia, and I don’t think I ever found her compelling enough to merit a backstory. 

What I mean is, I always found her to be as pious as they come in Gilead and she serves the regime wholeheartedly. Her character was always finding a way to help others in some twisted radical christian logic and I was right!

What I do keep seeing people post about that I disagree with is that she “turned” on the young mom because she was rejected by a man. Her motivations are more complex than that. She mentions “moral weakness” enough that I think her compulsion to help others in the way she thought she was helping Noelle was to rid them of it. She thought herself above it, or at least she carried herself as someone who overcame moral weakness and thought it her calling to help others in overcoming it as well. 

So when she found herself displaying it towards the principal, I think something snapped in her. His rejection in the middle of their (intense) make-out session served as a wakeup call to her imo. And she blamed Noelle for making her “morally weak”.

So what we can draw from this flashback I’d say, is that Aunt Lydia’s whole schtick is helping others overcome their moral weakness as she puts it. She truly believes she is doing God’s work. She was totally okay with taking Noelle’s kid away from her. And so the brutalities she’s committed as an Aunt are not seen by her as such. She fits right in. A perfect fit for the role.

3. Thoughts I had while watching the Ep: - the chanting scene in the school gym felt like a nightmare/dream sequence - June’s posse is super clique-y which I kind of like if only they used their powers for the good of the resistance and not to terrorize OfMatthew/Natalie - June tattling on OfMatthew/Natalie was super petty. Can she please focus on the bigger picture? - Hannah and the Mackenzie’s are GONE. What now? I really really thought we were gonna see Hannah get out this season. - Janine is literally the only sane one and yet probably the one who has suffered most - Commander Lawrence's "Do not presume to speak to me about my wife" last episode versus. "I'll bet that felt good" this week - I didn’t quite understand OfMatthew’s behavior. I know she was terrified, and I know June outing her for her sinful thoughts rattled her, but her being on edge enough to beat Janine, kill a guardian, and take his gun? What broke her? - I also hated how that scene was filmed. It felt like a shooter video game sequence

4. On the racism problem:

THT's "colorblind" approach from the inception of the series was already problematic. Margaret Atwood's version of Gilead was based directly on the inequalities she saw in (her) present day. I completely get rejecting the notion of an all-white cast and their logic that a fertility crisis would take priority over racism, but hell, if there is one thing that is inherently american, it's RACISM. A fertility crisis wouldn't ERASE racism altogether. And that's how Hulu's version made it seem. 

Also, another element of Atwood's Gilead and the fertility issue was the underlying eugenics of it all which is not present whatsoever in the series. If we're exploring a fascist, oppressive regime, eugenics is definitely playing some sort of role. Casting a diverse group of women as handmaids and marthas was not a bad move. But simply having the POC ones making the background more "colorful" won't cut it. I think there could still have been a diverse cast with some sort of oppressive racial hierarchy in place within Gilead. The LGBTQ community is targeted, the women are entirely powerless and assigned roles within certain constructs, but they won't even mention race? It's like an unspoken elephant in the room they've decided to ignore. Which then makes all the actions against POC in the series that much more unsettling.

I'm questioning whether this racism is intentional then? Or just a consequence of the ingrained, learned racism we've all grown up with. Either way, it's a complete disaster. Diversity is not just seeing POCs onscreen. It's GIVING THEM A VOICE. It's letting them tell their version of things. Serena as the embodiment of white feminism, I thought, was intentional at first. June's ability to get away with SO MUCH and suffer hardly any consequences in this awful regime, I'm thinking now, is another example of white privilege in this society. And it can be. It would actually be a great tool IF IT WERE ACTUALLY ADDRESSED IN THE SERIES. But instead we just see POCs suffer, get no back stories, no voices, and just see June, Serena, and the other white handmaids carrying the series.

This episode we did get Aunt Lydia saying one of the households didn't want a handmaid of color. So there we had a teeny tiny glimpse into the fact that there is some underlying racism going on somewhere. But again, like all of the other snippets we've seen this season, it leads to nothing. It's not explored or examined or ever addressed again.

I was skeptical of OfMatthew's (Natalie) role as June's partner from the get go. No one here is doing anything except trying to survive. There are imo few actual villains in Gilead except those who constructed it for their own gain. Every single handmaid, martha, ~insert oppressed role in here~ is playing a role in order to survive. 

I've mentioned before that one of the elements I love (or maybe loved in past tense at this point) about this show is how it highlights humanity's capacity to endure suffering or see others endure suffering. When do you snap? Who falls in line and who resists? What are the triggers? What moral standards do you uphold when society as you knew it to be has been erased?  

So taking all that into consideration, OfMatthew/Natalie was never a villain for me. Annoying? Maybe in her intro. But she's popped out 3 kids. She's about to give birth to a 4th and is legit terrified for her daughter. Her snitching on June was shitty, but she was just trying to survive like everyone else. The fact that it cost the life of another martha (who was a POC) and June faced no repercussions was even shittier on the writers’ part.

This show has me going in circles honestly. Questioning whether these decisions were intentional or not. I don't know which one is worse. If it was intentional, the lack of actually addressing the racism in Gilead makes it pretty shitty on the part of the showrunners. If it was unintentional, then they really need to reexamine the writers room and staff more POCs. Like wtf.

[wordssplatteredoncement]

The World Is On Fire (and So Am I)

There are times in your life where you experience things that you know will become a memory that lasts a lifetime. Several of those moments have been pleasant in my experience. A shared moment with a friend where you realized you both inched your bond towards something more. Various parties thrown where you watched the weeks worth of thought, time, and effort payoff in a night that will be talked about for ages. A concert where the band’s connection with the crowd transcends the usual “musician/ audience” role play, and a melding of minds makes the show something unforgettable. This year has been one most won’t soon forget, but for all of the wrong reasons. 

“FUCK 2020!!” A sentiment uttered by many, and one I’ve said more than my share. The reality... 2020 isn’t the problem. The issues that have arisen have occurred due to years of neglect. The change of a calendar isn’t going to bring back the lives of hundreds of people of color who have died at the hands of those pledged to “protect and serve”. The turn of a year won’t suddenly erase a pandemic that has killed a half a million people worldwide, and shows no sign of slowing it’s destruction on any semblance of normalcy we’re yearning for. And, on a personal level, 2021 brings no promise that my body will stop feeling as though it’s trying to burn from the inside-out. Instead of leaning hard into this notion that the turn of the next 365 will somehow cure our sorrows, why don’t we take some responsibility for the moment and do our part today to ensure tomorrow is aimed in a direction of correction and healing?

I’m going to start by reflecting inward. The last time I touched this blog was nearly a year ago. I wrote about the horrible pain I’m experiencing on a daily basis. My asshole feels like Satan decided to relocate Hell inside of it. I truly feel as though like I’m on fire from the inside out. Today marks the 2 year anniversary of this pain that has completely upended up my life. Earlier this week, I had my 4th procedure in hopes of finding some reprieve from this pain and, for 2 days, I thought maybe I was healed to a level I could cope with. The pain had largely subsided... and then yesterday happened. I didn’t really see any fireworks on the 4th, but I felt them. My body ignited from beyond my balloon knot and the pain has lingered to this very moment. I spent a good portion of the day on my couch, partially in hopes of reprieve, but mostly in wallowing over another disappointment. I peeled myself off of the couch and decided to splatter a few more words in hopes that I could inspire those who give the blog a gander, but also to help myself out of a seemingly hopeless situation. 

8 minutes and 46 seconds. My 2 years of asshole-aflame don’t hold a candle to the suffering the neglect, hurt, and tyranny 5 dickheads wearing a badge made to an entire race in our country. In those near-9 minutes, we all witnessed a man completely prone and in constraints, cry out for his mother as he suffocated in cold murder. Immediate responses from cop-defenders shot out with “All Lives Matter”, “Blue Lives Matter”, and “not all cops are bad people”... Here’s the problem with all of those statements, this isn’t a one-off occurrence. This isn’t a singular police officer who went rogue. In this very instance, 4 other cops watched, with hands in pocket, as this man, George Floyd, had his life taken from him. The uprising that came in the wake of this atrocity was a natural response to the oppression of a culture long held down by those in authority. Peaceful protests over the mistreatment of African Americans have existed for years, each met with hostility in the way of thinly veiled racism and clearly falling upon deaf ears, all while more instances of death at the hands of oppressors pile up. Breonna Taylor, a 26 year old black woman, was shot in her sleep when three police officers, in plain clothes mind you, broke into her home with a no-knock warrant... erroneously... AS THEY WERE IN THE WRONG HOUSE. In both of these instances (two of hundreds, I must add), the police were not arrested until met with the pressure of the public in the form of protesting. Sure, some protests have been met with opportunists. Buildings have been burned. Statues brought down by force (and I stand that these statues dedicated to slave-owning southern leaders should have never been erected in the first place), but PEOPLE ARE DYING AT THE HANDS OF THOSE IN AUTHORITY. And yet, I hear more about these buildings and statues from our “leader” on down to people I come in contact with, than the human lives taken. White privilege at its finest, folks. I’d love to hear an “All Lives Matter”-crier, shout “All Cancer Matters” at a breast cancer awareness event to experience the absolute ignorance of that statement. Everyone matters, you dumb fucks, but there are times that call attention to a specific group... this isn’t your time. “Blue Lives Matter!!”.. you aren’t born blue.. you choose that life. You don’t choose to be a person of color. Let’s take a fucking second to recognize that there is a disparity in this world in how we are treated and figure out how we can correct our ways. 

So that brings us to the last bit of “2020″, the year is “cursed and doomed”. COVID-19, aka coronavirus. A pandemic that was written off as nothing more to be worried about than a flu by our “genius” leader. Trump compared this pandemic to the number of lives that are taken yearly by the common flu and thus created the great divide in America. Half of our country decided that everything was cool.. our president said “we’re good”. The other half, listening to the CDC, and other health experts, whose literal job is to track and control the spread and containment of disease, followed advice from those who have dedicated their life to the education of well-being. Trump slowly had to cater to those health experts when it became very clear this was something far more serious than a “flu”, and we were ordered to stay indoors. People went into bat-shit-crazy-survival mode. Toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and canned goods became the new gold as the masses flocked to stores in droves to ensure their asses were wiped, hands were.. sanitized.. and goods had a shelf life of several months. Hospital ICUs were strained as the number of people needing to be treated met new highs. We were asked to wear masks in public and keep 6 feet away from those we don’t live with. And the response from a wide number of Trump’s supporters.. “THIS IS CRAZY.. YOU’RE INFRINGING ON MY FREEDOMS.. THE ECONOMY!!!!”. As stated earlier in this blog.. human lives > businesses and the economy. Due to this outcry, backed by the moron-in-chief and his plethora of tweets (seriously.. what job have you ever had where you can sit around and call people names through social media all day long??.. certainly not mine..), the shelter-in-place orders were lifted, just as we were starting to see a leveling out in the number of cases our country was dealing with. And Americans, being as stubborn as they’ve proven to be over the years, went out en masse. With this, the number of cases has risen to absurd levels. The president, always one to find a way to suck his own cock, daily gives praise to this being accredited to the great testing he has imposed. Even taking it so far as to say we might be testing “too well” and that if we just test less.. the numbers will go down.... I’ll take a minute to let the absurdity of that statement, which he has doubled down on, sink in. I work in health care. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t a farce. This isn’t the flu. This isn’t a conspiracy. 533,000+ deaths isn’t a joke. Wear a fucking mask. Stop going out for the sake of killing boredom. Start thinking and do your part. Your parents, grandparents, and neighbors count on it.

So there you have it. 2020 hasn’t been kind but, as I’ve stated, this isn’t the problem of a singular year. This is years of neglect and a current state of ignorance. January 1st will come and go. It changes nothing. The only thing that will cure the issues we’re facing is recognizing there is indeed an issue and taking action to improve our current state. Nothing is solved if we don’t accept reality and inflect on how we can do our part to make a change. Stating “Make America Great Again” is a stupid way of saying we’ll revert to a past laced in hatred. Instead of looking over our shoulder the days that we’ve progressed from, let’s focus on a future that provides equality for all. Instead of crying about our freedoms being removed over having to stay indoors or wear a mask, let’s think about those we might be saving by stopping the spread of disease. As for my butthole.. I got off the couch to write this, all while in a fair amount of pain. I can reflect on a time I didn’t feel this, or I can accept what this is and do my part to seek improvemnt. I opt for the latter.

[faeratil]

It really pisses me off that as soon as people started calling for the arrest of the officer who murdered George Floyd and the other officers who did nothing to stop him, the ads and articles I started seeing were trying to drown out the information about George by trying to make it seem like looting a business was worse and demanded more attention.

People are more important than businesses. And the fact that social media outlets are trying to smother the news about police brutality and police murdering POC and about the tear gas and violence against protestors, and they’re trying to replace it with news about businesses who have way more money than they need getting screwed over? It’s bullshit and it is outrageous and I am so fucking proud of my friends and my followers and even the people I don’t know who have stood up to fight against this and are calling out the media for trying to stifle news about racism and oppression. And I mean actual oppression, not Karen being too high maintenance to go one month without a fucking haircut and demanding people who haven’t been considered essential until the virus hit go back to work and be in danger because of an inconvenience.

I am a white woman, yes. But I’m not going to sit back and do nothing. I’m using my white privilege to give all of my friends who are minorities a voice. I have my group of friends on Xbox, and a majority of them are black men who are good people, who have families they care for, who don’t break the law, who try and help anyone they come across even if it’s with something as small as beating a boss in a video game. But in the past couple days alone, I have watched and listened as random people on the internet log onto their streams or join their voice chats just to call them racial slurs and threaten to call the police on them just because they’re black. It got to the point where about 90% of my clan mates stopped playing the games they’ve always loved because random people online have been harassing them and it’s nonstop.

But it didn’t just start a few days ago with George Floyd’s murder. They’ve been getting threats and slurs thrown at them and have been batting off hate speech of random people for years. This incredibly unjustified and diabolical event just increased the hate they get. I know I can’t do much with people online, but my friends took screenshots of the twitch usernames and Xbox usernames of all the people harassing them and myself and the clan have been blasting the information across our social media accounts with detailed recaps of what was said and what was threatened and how often it’s been happening and I know for a fact that those people who chose to harass my friends just because of their skin color have been reported and outed by everyone in the clan and by sharing on social media by at least another 100 people (we have a big clan and if even just two friends of each member reports them, it’s well over 100 reports).

I’m fucking pissed. I’ve also seen POC in my home state treated like shit in public spaces just for being there. I’ve taken every opportunity I can to step in and help them when I am able. I am a tiny woman though so not a lot of people take me seriously, but at least I don’t stand by and watch it happen. My last job where I was in a manager position, I had 4 black teenage boys working in my store. They were just kids so they’d goof off every once in a while, but they always did their jobs, they were always respectful of customers, they were good people. But the number of times I would have customers come in and ask to be helped by a different employee, to have their food made by a different employee, to complain about being disrespected because they were told we couldn’t fulfill their requests by one of those boys, to sneer and whisper slurs just loud enough that the boys could hear them, it’s just ridiculous how many times it happened. When customers would demand to be helped by someone else, I would have them try to explain to me why exactly they didn’t want to be helped by one of the boys and more often than not they’d get too embarrassed and stutter and wouldn’t be able to think of anything to say because they didn’t want to straight up say “because he’s black”. When they’d ask if someone else could make their food, I would tell the customers that everyone went through the same training with myself and knew what they were doing so what was it that worried them about the quality of food from that particular employee. They’d shut up too. When they’d ask for a manager because the employee was unable to fulfill their requests (often asking for food items we don’t carry or asking for free food for waiting two minutes longer than they felt necessary), I would stand next to the employee and have them repeat exactly what they had said to the customer and I would then say “it seems to me that he explained our store policies exactly as I would have, so what seems to be the problem?” When I would hear the slurs being whispered, I had full permission from the owner of the store to refuse service to those customers. It would be called out in front of everyone and they would be asked to leave, and if they threw a fit or caused a scene, security would be called.

I even worked at that particular store with a few Latina girls who were also in high school, and they were honestly my best employees and are still some of my best friends. But I had to do similar policing of the customers where they were concerned as well. I had one customer ask for the manager upon walking into the store, he hadn’t even ordered and refused to speak to anyone but me. I asked him what the problem was and he said “I don’t want one of those illegals to help me, they’re probably high or some shit. You get me right? It’ll be great when the government finally sends all of those wetbacks and n*s out of our country.” That man did not get helped. I told him to leave. A security guard who was great friends with everyone at the store and was also a POC walked up to the counter at the same time that I told the racist asshole to leave. The guy started getting angry and looked like he was about to yell, but the security guard stepped in and said “sir are you going to leave peacefully and respect that businesses have the right to refuse service to anyone, or do I need to escort you out”. The guy left and we never saw him again. The girls were in the back crying and the security guard asked me what had happened and if anyone had been hurt. I told him what had been said and told him that as long as I was in charge of that store, racism would not be allowed and anyone who escalated it or directly targeted my employees — my FRIENDS — would be shown the door.

I hate that so many people just ignore it or stand to the side hoping someone else will do something about it. If POC are not being heard, what better use for white privilege is there than to give them a voice and to demand justice and to treat them with the same respect that you would treat anyone else. It doesn’t matter if you are a tiny person that people rarely take seriously. If you stand up, more often than not someone else will stand with you in backing those who are being oppressed. Every single one of those cops who was on the scene when George Floyd was murdered is guilty. Not a single one of them did anything to stop it from happening. They are all guilty. I grew up with a sheriff for an uncle, but if he had been there and hadn’t done anything I would be calling him guilty too. It doesn’t matter if the cop wouldn’t do it themselves. They are guilty if they don’t stop it.

[kittyprincessofcats]

Thoughts on SU - Change Your Mind (4/4)

- That entire part with the screen being split in two because we’re seeing things from the perspective of both Stevens is amazing.

- “SHE’S GONE!” This was the best part of the episode, hands down. This entire scene and its message were absolute perfection. Steven is not his mother, he’s truly his own person, his gem belongs him and no one else, he needs both his gem-side and his human-side to survive, and Rose/Pink is not secretly alive inside his gem - she’s dead and gone and never coming back. 10/10.

- Connie carrying Human!Steven, White yelling “I only want you to be yourself!” (did someone call for a trans metaphor?), Gem!Steven being able to withstand White’s power beam because no power in the world can stop someone from being themselves (at least that’s how I understood it), the two Stevens hugging and reuiniting, Steven saying “I’ve always been me”, White throwing a temper tantrum and Steven and Connie just laughing about it... GOD, this whole scene is PERFECT. This really is the only part of the episode that I can wholeheartedly say I loved.

- “I am a child. What’s your excuse?” Okay, on the one hand that was a savage burn and I love it. But how does White Diamond even know what a child is? Gems don’t age, so why would “acting like a child” be the first insult she goes to?

- Did you see Peridot climbing on top of Amethyst right away? Because I sure did. #AmedotLives. And Pearl jumping into Bismuth’s arms? Yeah, that was nice.

- “Welcome back.” I mean, this line in itself is sweet, but I hate how we never see Pink Pearl again after this. I mean, what happened to her after this? Does she even remember anything? Does she know who Steven is? And why didn’t Steven and the Crystal Gems take her to Earth with them? She’s not in the ending scenes, so I’m assuming they didn’t. Did they just leave her there with White, who mind-controlled and abused her for thousands of years? Did they just leave her there as White’s property, as a slave to her abuser? This is my main problem with this episode: In “Together Alone” Steven promised his friends he’d fix everything about homeworld, but now he’s not fixing anything! It looks like he’s just saying “Welcome back, now have fun being a slave again, bye.” Which is probably not how the writers intended it, but by not giving us any resolution on what happens to Pink Pearl after this, it’s the impression we’re left with. It wouldn’t have been hard to give Steven a line where he tells White she won’t get to hurt Pink Pearl anymore and that he’s taking her to Earth with him. They could have included her in the healing fountain montage, with the fountain healing her eye. Instead we got no resolution and are left with the impression that she’s traumatised and alone on homeworld, while still being White Diamond’s slave. But hey, at least the Diamonds are a happy family now, yay.

- Wait, so blusing counts as being “off-color”? In that case, wouldn’t every gem we’ve ever met be considered off-color? Every single one?

- “I’m supposed to be flawless.” SAYS WHO? WHO TOLD YOU THAT? WHO CREATED YOU? First Yellow and Blue say they’re under so much pressure from White and they’re only killing people for White. Now White’s saying she’s “supposed to be flawless”... but WHO told her that? I feel like this show’s trying so hard to shift the blame away from everyone that we’re left with a void of “but who did that?”. A message about how everyone is good and no one is truly evil doesn’t work in a universe that has introduced so many evil concepts to us. It makes it look like evil things just happen for no reason. But the Pearls didn’t enslave themselves. The Cluster didn’t create itself. The Off-Colors didn’t start persecuting themselves. Thousands of plantets didn’t conquer themselves. The Diamonds did those things and they should be held accountable. And no, this is not about me wanting Steven to “solve things with violence”. I just want him to actually address these injustices. It’s possible to be a pacifist without turning a blind eye to things that are morally wrong.

- Needless to say, White’s redemption makes even less sense that Blue’s or Yellow’s. She was set up as the big bad of this show, this very episode did such a good job at portaying her as evil and twisted, only to backpeddal into “She just wanted everything to be perfect” at the last minute. Are people really not seeing why I’m unhappy with this? It’s like taking Voldemort from Harry Potter and redeeming him in the last book because “He only wanted the wizarding world to be perfect”. It’s a disservice to White as a villain, and considering all the themes of oppression in this show it sends a really disturbing message.

- Steven and Greg’s reunion was sweet.

- Lars’ and his crew showing up in the end feels lame. I wish they’d served more of a purpose in this story than just “showing up in the end”.

- “We finally made it! No more running, no more hiding, no more Diamond Authority!” ... “Well, we’re cracked.” This line was played for laughs, but I just really didn’t find it funny, I found it awful. These gems have been hiding from the Diamonds their entire lives. They don’t know any other life than running and living in fear. They don’t know homeworld as anything but caves underground where you have to hide because you’re wrong and will be killed for exisiting if you’re discovered. The Diamonds are the reason their lives were like that and the reason they felt so much shame and self-hatred that they didn’t even know what a compliment was. And then they finally get away from that life, finally manage to make the long and hard journey to a planet where they’re promised a life in safety and freedom, Lars sweetly says “Welcome home” when they arrive... only for them to suddenly be face to face with three Diamonds. There’s nothing even remotely funny about that. And if he didn’t still need the Diamonds to heal the corrupted gems, I would have wanted Steven to turn to the Diamonds right then and there, and tell them to leave and never come back to this planet again. Because the Off-Colors deserve a safe home where they’ll never have to face the Diamonds or be scared ever again. And I still wish he’d have told them just that after they healed the corrupted gems.

- “Off-Colors, meet the Diamonds. Diamonds, meet the Off-Colors.” Steven honey, I know you’re trying, but NO. Believe me, the Off-Colors know who the Diamonds are and they shouldn’t have to get to know them or give them a chance. They ran away from them for a reason and it’s not your place to tell them otherwise. And the Diamonds know who the Off-Colors are, too. Well, not this specific group, but you know. And I strongly disagree with the idea that the Diamonds “just need time to get to know the Off-Colors”. They’ve had time. They’ve had 5750 years (and 8 months) since Garnet first formed. And they spent that time murdering off-color gems. The idea that bigoted people just need to get to know someone from an oppressed minority and they’ll change their mind isn’t bad, but it doesn’t work when these characters are the reason that minority is oppressed in the first place. These aren’t some random homeworld gems who’ve never had to question their beliefs before. These are the Diamonds - they’ve been shattering these gems for thousands of years. (And now they actually have the nerve to look offended when Padparadscha is scared of them? REALLY?)

- “Padparadscha, it’s okay.” SHUT UP LARS, YOU DON’T KNOW THAT! You’ve only been on homeworld for a few hours! Who are you to know if it’s okay?

- I like the new version of “We are the Crystal Gems”, but I hate how during the line “Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl and Steven” it’s showing the Diamonds with Steven instead. That’s kind of the theme for the whole episode. I wanted Steven and the Crystal Gems, and got “Steven and the Diamonds” instead.

- That moment of Pearl and Garnet crying as the corrupted gems are being healed and then hugging each other? #blessed

- How’s Jasper the only one that almost starts to fight after being uncorrupted? These gems were all on opposite sides of a war? I mean, okay, maybe at first they’re just happy about being healed, but isn’t this going to lead to conflicts later? And since many of the were former Crystal Gems, why aren’t they a bit freaked out about the Diamonds being there?

- So the Diamonds leave, but what does that mean? This leaves so many questions unanswered! 1) Are they just going back to conquering worlds and commiting genocides? 2) Are they going to change homeworld society now? Will they set their Pearls free? Will they stop shattering gems? (I kinda doubt it, since Steven never told them to do any of that. Also, I don’t want change to come from the Diamonds. In real life, change never comes from the oppressor. It comes from the oppressed fighting for their rights. I don’t want the Diamonds to just see the error of their ways and let gems be themselves. I wanted to see the gems of homeworld standing up for their rights and fighting for them. And the only homeworld gem we’ve seen do that was Jade. What happened to her, by the way? Another question this episode just leaves unanswered.) 3) Are the Diamonds going to be regular visitors on earth now? Should the Off-Colors look for another planet to live peacefully on? Does Steven care more about his new happy dictator-family coming to visit than the trauma of the gems they’ve hurt? 4) Are the Diamonds ever going to face any consequences for what they’ve done? Are they at least going to spend time in prison for every gem they shattered and tortured or nah?

- And that’s my main problem with this episode. It painted the Diamonds as nothing more than an abusive family, and ignored all the other WAY WORSE things they’ve done. It’s a good message about families, but it feels out of place in this setting. If this was where they were going to go with the Diamonds, they should never have made them this evil in the first place.

[tealtowntar]

Heres why the Sharks did deserve to win

First things first: the call

Cody Eakin was given a 5 minute major for crosschecking Joe Pavelski. A play that resulted in Pavelski losing his balance and checked again by Paul Stastny, landing on his head and drawing blood.

This call has been criticized to death by people saying it was not the right call.

1) Drawing blood is a 4 minute double minor on its own

2) Pavelski was knocked out on the ice, a pool of blood coming from his head and had to be half carried to the dressing room

3) If you say Pavelski is weak or exaggerating or playing it up you’re blind. Did you even see the blood? What, did he carry extra blood out on the ice like Logan Couture apparently carries extra teeth(see game 5)?

But sure, lets say it wasn’t the right call.

4) Joe Pavelski is the beloved captain of the Sharks. Every guy in that locker room would fight to their last breaths for him. Joe is the captain, that means so much. There are so many leaders on that team- Joe Thornton, future hall of famer one of them. The coaching staff has their pick of basically anyone there but year after year they pick Pavs. In Worlds, Pavelski was chosen not just to play for the team but to wear the C for Team USA. Of any American hockey player in the nation they chose him to lead their team.

That should give an idea of what Pavs means to us, to them, to the country.

5) When you wear the C, that means you’ve earned respect. It’s a symbol that shows you’re a leader, you’re a mentor, you’re an example of your team, you’re the face of your orginization. The heart of your team. You don’t just knock out a captain with no consequences.

Maybe your argument is the call wasn’t technically correct, but when something like what happened happens, someone has to pay their dues.

Second, the comeback.

The Sharks were down 3-0 in the last period of the series. The team rallied together and scored 4 goals on the Eakin major penalty to give them the lead.

1) Every one of those goals was hardly to fight for their playoff lives. All four goals were for Joe Pavelski. Those boys love their captain, their leader, their mentor, their brother. My mom said “that really lit a fire under their butts!” But she wasn’t quite right, it lit a fire in their guts, in their hearts. The boys said, “You don’t mess with our captain and get away with it. You’ll pay for that one.” Even as a fan, seeing Pavs go down sparked a determination to win for him thay would not be satisfied until it was done.

2) A lot of fans are bitter(extremely) about the comeback, saying that it was all BS. This may be ignoring the fact that Vegas gave up 4 goals on the penalty kill. I think it goes without saying that that means the penalty killers weren’t on top of it. It’s not like taking the major meant Vegas was hopeless to keep the Sharks from catching up.

3) The Sharks would not be denied. Before play resumed after Pavelski went out, Logan Couture told the media Thornton said to them, “Let’s get three”. For him. The Sharks weren’t getting it done for themselves but they did get it done for Pavs.

Third, “The refs handed this one to the Sharks”

1) No. If this is in reference to that one call, the refs did not score four goals. The refs did not give the sharks free shots on Vegas, the refs did not take Vegas out of play and leave them hopeless to do anything. The Sharks beat the penalty killers and the goalie to get them back in the game.

2) If this is in reference to the series, also no. Both teams got some good calls and a lot of bad ones. I might be biased but I’m not unreasonable. Vegas got multiple game changing calls in their favor.

a) Earlier in the game, there was a goal for none other than Cody Eakin. The play was a deflection from his stick into the goal, a stick that was under review for a high touch. If it was ruled that Eakin scored the goal off a stick above the normal height of the shoulder, the goal would be called off and the Sharks would remain at a 1-0 deficit. To many and maybe most people, the touch was blatantly high and should have been called off. It was not. The Sharks went down 2-0.

b) In game 2, a goal from Couture was called off as goaltender interference, a goal that would have given the Sharks the lead in the game for the first time after battling back from another 3 goal deficit. No matter who you’re rooting for or not rooting for, this goal should not have been called off. On any other play I could give the benefit of the doubt but on this play I am confident that this was the wrong call. The reason is that Marc-Andre Fleury was unquestionably out of his crease. If a goaltender is out of the crease and a goal is scored with them being “interfered with” thats on them. If this goal was not called off, the game may have seen a different ending. Eye for an eye Vegas.

c) Both the Knights and the Sharks had penalty calls go their way, myself and other fans would argue that Vegas got more game influencing calls in their favor though I am willing to overlook that in the spirit of just telling Vegas to shut up about a call.

Fourth, it’s not like Vegas didn’t have 3 chances to advance to the second round

Vegas took a 3-1 series lead after game 4. It was win or die for the Sharks three games in a row.

1) Many Vegas supporters after this series have been overlooking the fact that even though game 7 didn’t go the way they expected, they have been blaming it all on the Sharks or the refs, not taking responsibility for the fact that Vegas almost swept us but the Sharks fought harder. They had every opportunity to knock SJ out, not just this game.

Fifth, the Sharks deserved this more

Sure you could say this is subjective. Here’s why it’s true:

1) Despite what Vegas fans might think, you are not oppressed™️. Vegas hasn’t suffered a thing in its whole existance and its time to cash in your crimes. Pay your dues. Your storybook franchise and coddling from the league comes with a big bill of hockey karma.

2) The Sharks have had contrasting treatment. The Sharks orginization has class and is fun and cool and badass. What do we get from the league? Doubt and disrespect. You may say, “It’s because the Sharks are bad and always choke in the playoffs!” You’re right about one of those. The Sharks are not bad. In the past 15 seasons, the Sharks have played the second most playoff games in the entire league. That would make them one of the most consistantly good teams in the last decade and a half. The Sharks are good and they deserve to be acknowledged, they deserved to win this series.

3) Our veteran players deserve to win. There’s a reason we have “Do it for Jumbo” shirts. No matter who your team is or how much you don’t like the Sharks, it is undeniable that Joe Thornton deserves to win the Stanley Cup. He is a legend of hockey and any player or coach or person who knows/has known him says he is an incredible person. But it’s not just him. Vlasic, Burns, Pavs, they’ve been with this team for a long time and they never want to leave. They are all elite at what they do and they deserve to have their names on the Stanley Cup.

4) A lot of hits Vegas put on the Sharks were dirty. I’m not saying SJ played a totally clean game but we got called for it most times. Again and again, Vegas’ dirty plays would be overlooked and the Sharks got beat and bruised. Players like Reaves, McNabb, Stone, even Fleury(bro why tf is your goalie so chippy) put on bad hits, slashes, crosschecks that did not get called. Who paid for it? The Sharks in blood. Their grit pulled them through and they won in spite of all of it.

5) When have you ever seen a stronger example of a team rallying around another teammate like that? You know the boys were so scared for Pavs. They love him so much. Have you ever felt that swell of determination that fills you up and turns your focus into a lazer beam? That’s what the Sharks felt from the time Pavs went down to Goodie getting the OT game winning goal. After the first goal Cooch said “Thats one!!!” They knew they weren’t done. No amount of goals would be repayment for losing Pavs but they were going to try their damn best. They felt the hockey gods in the building at that moment and it was time to make Vegas take their first real L. #ForPavs

So that’s why the Sharks deserved to go to the second round over Vegas.

[badmousestuff-blog]

Unheard Voices of WANA

PragerU: The most persecuted population in the world are Christians

Prager U is correct.

SUBSCRIBERS: 0

Ok, jokes aside, this is a serious topic, I hope you watch till the end.

Last month CPGB-ML released this reactionary article, it’s been a common trend of their online presence and really stinks, but then I also remind myself I am in a left that is no longer respectful of these vulgar, outdated gestures, and the left of today truly is a very progressive bunch. We fight for the rights of gendered minorities, stand with people at the forefront of racial oppression, far outside simply the economic realms. They say that oppressions align, and when you look at the left of today, you really see that.

But as time goes on, there can be a tendency for our viewpoints to become clouded with a prevailing dogma.

This is a video about one of them.

This is West Asia [or “the Middle East”] and North Africa, a region collectively termed WANA or MENA, it is home to many different ethnicities that are not of Arab Origin. Some you know, some you don’t. Within here are numerous ethno-religious minorities. Assyrian Christians, Coptic Christians, Yazidis, Mandaeans, just to name a few.

2 years ago, Caabu did a study to find out the nature of racial profiling in the UK. Only 1% of respondents listed the Middle East as being linked with Christianity.

Image:https://i.imgur.com/JHYsKPj.png

Source:https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/racial-profiling-british-people-muslims-arabs-support-security-anti-terrorism-attacks-survey-caabu-a7966666.html

The on the ground reality is that millions of Christians live and breathe in the Crescent, it is after all the birthplace of the Yahweh religion.

Contrary to the very bland, pastiche Christianity that tends to fill the Western temples, Christianity in the WANA is distinctive in being very diverse. To the followers, the faith is particularly sacred and, in many times, a physical part of their identity, in a similar way to how Irish Catholicism in the north might be.

Images to use:

http://www.just-images.com/media/k2/items/cache/768cfd00cdf8b0455e0493699392583d_XL.jpg?t=-62169984000

There are maybe somewhere around 16 million Christians in West Asia, a number that has been gradually decreasing throughout the 20thcentury, and largely this is due to a considerable amount of persecution and repression, including genocide, and within all this, they have very little access to representation.

Source:https://harpers.org/archive/2018/12/the-vanishing-christians-in-iraq-syria-egypt/

Which to PragerU’s credit, they’re right, when we’re talking about religious minorities, Christians are one of the most highly persecuted. But I know that these people are being insincere here. Dennis and his entourage represent, or at least promote, is what could only be described as the white man’s Christianity, the collective Western tradition of Imperial, Crusading, Nation conquering religion of Manifest Destiny and Got Miht Us [what is this? Couldn’t find anything on google]. Malcolm X was not wrong when hecalled Christianity a white man’s religion - that was all he could see at the time. And all of these people’s religious conceptions would appear highly unorthodox if they were to ever go and visit these groups.

Yet how often is it that you see right-wing commentators and outlets picking up on Christian oppression in the global south to regurgitate their hatred and vitriol and encourage further discrimination against Muslims in the west [Show following tweets]:

https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/953302360637493248

https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/1058426287948218368

https://twitter.com/StefanMolyneux/status/993593881341059072

Just a quick search on Breitbart, and you’ll see how many times they’ve covered the plight of Assyrians and Copts alike [show screenshots]:

https://i.imgur.com/VM3DnAg.png

https://i.imgur.com/CMi3eyo.png

And when right-wingers do resort to the lowest of the low of arguments (whataboutism) in order to get their points across, the Left responds in a very appropriate and effective manner… (gurning)

“What about the crusades?”

I can’t be the only one thinking this…

There’s a contradiction here that we need to talk about.

On the one hand, we’re advocates of intersectionality and dynamics of oppression, looking out for the nuances of thought and removing ourselves from binary choices and assumptions. But on the other, we can’t help getting away from very Euro-centric conceptions of various topics. In other words, we do choose binaries here.

Christian = Oppressor

Muslim =  Victim

Many Western leftists tend to look at religion through this lens. They incorrectly view Christianity as a global oppressor, completely overlooking the many cases where this isn’t the case and thus ignoring many groups who are severely marginalized, particularly when it comes to some indigenous groups like Assyrians and Copts.

When discourse gets going, it picks up like a steamroller. And after a while, we forget about the fact that we’re just regurgitating a dogma.

For us, “Islamophobia is racism” might be fine to say, because we realize that in Western society, Islam is heavily racialized and so those that may “look Muslim” are also targeted. But often, expressing this to a WANA Christian can rightly come off as reductionist, especially when that’s the few times they’re given attention here in the West. Add this onto the fact that when WANA Christians want to speak up about their oppression, they’re often accused of being racist themselves, along with other accusations of bad faith.

how the criticism and mentioning of muslim persecution towards christians [?] is all seen as islamophobia = racism which to them is fine but to us its scrutiny - the wording of the first line

Just as Islam has largely been racialized in the west, the same formula applies to Muslim majority nations regarding how Christianity is viewed. When attacks are caused in the west by Islamists, Muslims in the area are rightly quite terrified and anxious about upcoming reprisals that might be made against them. We do not, however, see why an attack from a White Supremacist against Muslims would also result in a similar effect to Christians in the East. Even though Religion might not even be uttered in these atrocities, Anti-West rhetoric has been heating up over the last 70 years, and with it the false assumption that Christianity is intrinsically Western. The result has been the demonization of WANA Christians as 5thcolumns to western Imperialism.

The effects of the Left’s lack of vigour can be observed. quite harshly.

Assyrian Christians are one of those ethno religious minorities indigenous to the region and have faced over a century of persecution and genocide.

Many of us know about the Armenian genocide of 1915 by the Ottomans – which is still denied by Turkey today, and still not recognized in the UK and US . But what many of us don’t know is that at least 300,000 Assyrians were also victims, alongside the Armenians.

·         Images:https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/5ff06342-7a14-4ce6-89d2-c59a04deb676.jpg

A book that discusses the 1915 Assyrian genocide in detail is Year of the Swordby Joseph Yacoub:https://global.oup.com/academic/covers/pop-up/9780190633462

In 1933, in the village of Simele in Iraq, after waves of anti-Assyrian propaganda, the Iraqi Army slaughtered 6,000 Assyrians and decimated over 60 villages.

Image: https://i0.wp.com/www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/simele-massacre-survivors.jpg?resize=789%2C460&ssl=1

Sources:

https://medium.com/@DeadmanMax/the-simele-massacre-in-iraq-a-legacy-of-trauma-and-british-neglect-ae21d96afe4d

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/simele-massacre-1933-assyrian-victims-still-seek-justice/

Both the atrocities of 1915 and the Simele Massacre in 1933 is what prompted Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin to later coin the word ‘genocide’.

Image of Lemkin:https://www.ushmm.org/m/img/2453436-700x468.jpg

After the assassination of Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul al-Karim Qasim (KASIM) in 1963, the following decades saw the rise of Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party in Iraq, and what came with it was a new wave of violent anti-Communism. Many communists were killed and imprisoned, effectively culling the Iraqi Communist Party – of which a sizable percentage at the time were Assyrian.  In fact, the party’s first secretary was an Assyrian named Yusuf Salman Yusuf, who was found hung over a decade prior, on 14thFebruary 1949.

Image of Qasim:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Karim_Qasim

Image of Yusuf:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusuf_Salman_Yusuf

Source:https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alexander-a/2008/xx/iraqcp.html

With this, and general increasing repression towards their identity, thousands of Assyrians fled the country between the 60s and 70s.

The most recent mass exodus was from the Iraq War. In 2003, there were around 1.5 million Assyrian Christians in Iraq. That number is now less than 275,000. It was only five years ago [2014] that IS committed a genocide. Christian homes were marked with the Arabic letter “N” [show image] for Nazarene, to denote Christians, followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/for-christians-symbol-of-mideast-oppression-becomes-source-of-solidarity/

The population of Assyrians is now between 2 - 4 million, with most of them in the diaspora. There are half a million across Europe, Australia and Canada, and around 400,000 in the US.

https://unpo.org/members/7859

The lack of vigour in the west to understand their plight and the plight of other minorities can be felt severely.

A large portion of the diaspora in the US were supportive of Donald Trump during the 2016 election, a politician who appears to be completely against their interests, the very group that would be the first on the pecking order of deportation. And in due course, that is what the reality has been for them, now after putting in their pledge to live and work, they are now thrown asunder and betrayed by whom they thought they could trust.

Yet just as the opportunity might arise for a show of solidarity, left wingers from across the spectrum were largely silent, and many liberals even said they deserved to get deported, effectively defending their genocide. Did anyone even think about asking their story?

[show initial tweet, and responses to it]

https://twitter.com/VivianHYee/status/882599546244747264

and the comments here:

[show article, then the comments]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/27/detroit-judge-halts-deportations-of-more-than-1400-iraqi-nationals-nationwide/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.46e259345883#comments

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/09/michigans-iraqi-chaldean-community-is-fighting-to-protect-dozens-of-people-from-deportation.html

We [western leftists and liberals] further egg on this anti-Christian backlash in the way we discuss these topics via previously mentioned binaries. For instance, take a look at the travel ban. Eventually, it hurt everyone in the region, regardless of its initial intent to target Muslims. Liberals, instead of taking on a general anti-xenophobic stance, instead increased anti-Christian sentiment by mocking the insertment of preferences towards Christians (which again, never materialized). Take a look at the way that John Oliver and Stephen Colbert discussed the travel ban, for example. And while trying to mock Republican politicians, Colbert inadvertently mocked Syriac patriarchs and made off-handed comments about them and their language.

“While his administrationhas reducedMuslim refugee arrivals 93 percent compared to the final months of the Obama administration, it has still slashed Christian refugees 64 percent. He has also cut Syrian Christian refugee arrivals by 94 percent and those from Iraq by 99 percent. He has admitted just 20 Syrian Christians in all of Fiscal Year 2018.”

Source:https://www.cato.org/blog/trump-has-cut-christian-refugees-64-muslim-refugees-93

Source 2:https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/08/13/trump-admits-only-23-christian-refugees-from-mideast-in-2018/#175295838dd7

The right has been the stickler when it comes to appropriating leftist talking points, as I’ve spoken about numerous times. The EU used to be a more conservative tradition, opposed by many factions of the left including Tony Benn, but after sections of the Right-Wing discourse took it by their shoulders all the left could seem to do was go “No, EU good” in response. The EU is an undemocratic monolithic entity that controls large hegemony over the continent. This is what the left has always been against, and how we seem to have been shuffled into the Pro-EU corner to own the Right is baffling, how dare we allow them to take charge of the narrative.

Many on twitter were stunned a while back with the revelation that Alt-right youtuber Braving Ruin, formerly EdgySphinx, was of Egyptian descent, in other words he’s not white, in a movement almost entirely made up of White Nationalists this seems like a baffling contradiction. It’s not.

He’s a Copt. Another Christian minority native to Egypt that have been increasingly targeted in recent years <quickly show various screenshots of articles from NPR and others about this to prove the point>.

In November 2018, seven Copts were killed by gunmen and 19 more were wounded. “All but one of those killed were members of the same family, according to a list of the victims’ names released by the Coptic Orthodox church, which said among the dead were a boy and a girl, age 15 and 12 respectively.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/03/egypt-attack-gunmen-kill-coptic-christians-bus-ambush

It was from Braving Ruin’s own testimony that we find what led him towards the right was very much so a conflict of his knowledge.

Because for all we try and ignore the issue, these groups are dying. There isn’t that convenient option for the displaced, vulnerable diaspora, coming to a place where they no longer fear being lynched. For them, when they arrive to see a Left whose only regurgitated knowledge has been Eurocentric, they gravitate towards the side that is saying “The Left hate Christianity”. While this might sound silly to you, these minorities don’t have that privilege. And when the right-wing are the only ones talking about their issues, with mostly silence or dismissal from the left, what more would you expect?

We’re not even presenting faux dramatizations of anger. We’re completely turning our back to their voices in favour of pleasing narratives.

One of those narratives that has sprung up in recent years been the conflict in Northern Syria.  There can be a good case made for Kurdish autonomy, and this is in part something that has galvanised support from Leftists in the West towards the issue. Yet it ignores that there are serious issues with the new governments and hegemonies that have taken root, going far beyond US funding.

You may have seen the images below of protests breaking out in Northern Syria against the school closures. (Show Images)

PYD authorities ordered the closure of Assyrian schools that refused to teach the DFNS-Rojava curriculum on August 7th, 2018. Members of the Assyrian security force, Sutoro, opened fire to disperse the crowds, but were overwhelmed. (Show Video)

https://www.assyrianpolicy.org/news/assyrians-in-syria-protest-pyd-s-closure-of-schools-in-qamishli

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOS5VKckUpA

Western leftists, rather than question the establishment, instead drew attention to the flags that they were holding. Those are Syrian government flags yes, but it does not mean they are fanatical supporters. In the essence of oppression, anti-Imperialism requires the use of certain representatives as a rallying cry, which is the very reason why Assad still has so much support.

https://www.assyrianpolicy.org/news/kurdish-self-administration-in-syria-release-assyrian-journalist-souleman-yusph

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Christian-journalist,-betrayed-by-the-indifference-of-the-West-over-Syria-45312.html

Despite the oft claimed assertion of the progressive and inclusive constitution, we should know by now that on paper does not always mean in practice, actual reports from the ground level by Assyrians are skeptical to a high degree. The school protests have come after a series of attempts to impose an aggressive series of actions largely targeted at minority groups, including seizure and occupation of property, forced reparation payments, and all manner of targeting and assaults.

On paper, the MFS (Syriac Military Council) are allied with the PYD. But were you aware that the council is mostly made up of Arabs and Kurds, not Assyrians? And that the groups claimed to have been showcased as examples of Syriac-Kurdish unity are in fact on the fringes of Assyrian opinion?

In a similar situation, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq have forcibly removed mayors and are occupying Assyrian towns. Assyrians have protested consistently, to, again, little coverage or outrage on an international level.

Image:https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Assyrians-outside-the-Kurdisch-Regional-Government-office-in-Stockholm-protest-against-the-removal-of-the-Assyrian-mayor-of-Alqosh-north-Iraq-e1501247282519.jpg

Source:

http://www.aina.org/reports/erasingassyrians.pdf

We can talk romantically about the Kurds. But why should their self-determination come at the expense of Assyrians?

As Westerners we have this privilege, we can pick what we like from the orient, but ignore the darker sides of the conflict. Anti-Imperialism is a no brainer, but there can be a tendency amongst some leftists to end up ignoring how imperialism often affects the most vulnerable – indigenous and minority groups. It’s not “too complicated” to talk about this. There’s also the case of generally just needing to listen women and minorities without an immediate assumption they all have an alternative, reactionary agenda. They do have a voice, big and small, and the least we could do is respect that in line with our standards.

And we may also want to even look at our standards in how we might engage with folks who have not regretted their participation in butchery vs the coverage of the Yazidis who who have faced a very recent genocide.

There was recent discussion surrounding a British ISIS bride who was extensively interviewed by a variety of Western outlets, portraying her as a victim. Yet she had no regrets for what she did to communities ISIS subjugated via violence. Western narcissism gave this ISIS bride more coverage than to victims of genocide like Yazidis, who recently protested outside the White House [show tweet]. Again, the only coverage given to them was except from far-right outlets [show breitbart article].

https://twitter.com/Free_Yezidi/status/1106623531939438597

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/03/19/trump-admin-yazidi-protest-outside-white-house-youre-not-forgotten/

I don’t make this video with the intention of bringing about more hatred towards Muslims, yet I can’t help but feel disheartened that this is even assumed. There arenuances we need to start to come to terms with, that will include understanding the different power and privilege dynamics outside of the West, and how that might affect the mindset of the diaspora. Some leftists say this is too complicated to discuss, but it never stopped you before.

You must be able to breach the topic of understanding both Western Islamophobia, and Islamism in the Middle East, without caving into a Western reactionary narrative or allowing right-wingers to continue to fill up the void in these discussions, which they already have done so quite successfully.

So, it’s time we as leftists take back these narratives and rectify our ignorance on the situation instead of continuing to allow the right-wing to dominate this. It’s simply not right to ignore this problem because “conservatives already talk about it”, when we know their intentions are not for the betterment of all, especially when it comes to the oppressed. We cannot grow as a movement when we are pushing so many people away.

So how can we help? The first thing would be to remove Eurocentric understandings of race and religion from our mind, to realize how dynamics work in the global south. And as with everything else, keep up with what’s going on in the region, discuss these issues with your friends, family, comrades. Use your platform to raise awareness. Reach out to and listen to these people and don’t speak over them or use them as props for ideological or partisan fighting.

It may feel good to say, “Jesus was a brown Jewish socialist from the Middle East!” as a “gotcha” to the Conservatives, but we know they don’t really care about that, and more to the point what are you doing for the Christians of the region right now?

Organize with them, declare statements of solidarity, make this a part of your activism. Let them know you’re there for them when they need it. These are marginalized, oppressed people with real, pressing concerns, and deserve more than token appreciation.

The left has brought about, in recent times, a grand spectrum of inclusivity to more oppressed groups. If it wishes to continue this line, then we must start strengthening ourselves and asking the difficult questions. There need not be any slander of groups here. 1 can be split into 2, and we must break away from our Eurocentric understanding of global geo-politics in all aspects if we are to build ourselves and our credibility to the larger world.

Like I said, its never stopped you before.

[lady-griffin]

There’s also the discussion of how it’s not so much that the Councilors had a change of heart, but changed their minds because there are now actual consequences to their exploitative practices.

When was the last time Piltover and or the Council experienced actual consequences for their oppression and abuse? Years? Decades? Have they ever?

There’s no reason for them to change how things have been, because all the bad things that have been happening are so far removed from them and their lives. It’s not like they’re heartless monsters who are incapable of empathy, but there is no immediacy to what they know is happening in the Undercity.

There’s also sort of the impression that they blame the Undercity for how bad things have gotten. It’s their fault for not “working hard enough” and overcoming their adversities and making it up to topside –

“You found a stray.”

That line says lot about how Cassandra Kiramman views those of the Undercity and she’s not even the most aggressive or hostile member of the council towards them.

Also, I don’t think any of them know how bad things actually are in the Undercity, so they are woefully ignorant, but that’s not really a plus or defense for them. Because they never cared enough to go and look.

Powder’s whole entire song in the opening scene of the entire show, is asking the people of Piltover to cross the river and see them and give them some charity and kindness.

(x)

The council knows things are bad and are getting worse in the Undercity, but even with that – they seem more concerned (ep. 4) that they can’t control the Undercity not the fact that people are suffering.

Councilor Shoola is the only one who kind of touches upon it – but even then, she only says they’ve lost touch with the people down there. An understatement to say the very least, but compare to sheer hostility of the others – it’s something. Not a whole lot, but something not terrible.

But now, someone from the Undercity is able to not just attack them, but kill their enforcers right in the heart of their city – The Academy Square.

Said person now has a gemstone and can be even more of a threat to them.

Said person also managed to attack their bridge and make their enforcer blockade completely ineffective. They also killed their sheriff.

For the first time the Undercity is not just attacking them, but actually hurting them; and in a way that can’t be ignore by the Council. Piltovans are dying on Piltover soil, not just any Piltovans, mind you, but their police/army.  Their protectors.

And as far as they know, this is just the beginning.

Their own Sheriff, the highest position of an Enforcer wasn’t even “allowed” to arrest this person, because he was corrupted by Silco. And their own corruption allowed that to go unnoticed for years.

Silco is a problem, not just because Vander tried to kill him, but because of the Council’s years of abuse and neglect towards the Undercity. They created the monster that Silco was.

Silco’s actions led to the creation of Jinx and because of Silco’s power he was able to protect and care for Jinx, until she became an even worse monster than him –

An actual deadly force of nature that is unstoppable as far as anyone is concerned or at least at the end of S1 she is.

-

While Jayce is being sincere when he is talking to Silco and says he is trying to save the people from the Undercity from annihilation and that those on the Council couldn’t care less.

He’s also not being completely honest.  

The other Council members wanted to strive for diplomacy with Silco, Jayce is the one who didn’t. Jayce was all ready for war, until he actually experienced it.

Which is fair.

It’s one thing to be fueled by frustration, pressure, fear and anger and ready to attack and go for this idea of war, and it’s a completely different thing when you are confronted with the death of a child you killed. When you realize how far you’ve gone and what you’ve become or could become if you continue down this path.

It’s good Jayce stopped and said ‘no this is not what I want’ and ‘I’ve lost my way.’ It’s good Jayce is seeking peace, that should not be ignored; but the other councilors were already ahead of him in that regard.

Not necessarily due to altruistic reasons, but because war can hurt both sides.

“No one wins in war,” as Vander said. But now that statement is truer than ever; the Council and Piltover are in legit danger and the Council is getting more and more aware of that.

The Undercity has become an actual threat to them. Like sure they have hextech; but how quickly can Jayce make weapons or defenses if all those shimmer-big daddies and whatever else Silco had in the works decided to attack Piltover right then and there?

How many Piltovans would die?

Sure, Piltover might win a war against the Undercity, that’s not a crazy statement or belief.

But Jayce is acting like it would be a one-sided war; but would it?

Vi and Jayce made it out of Silco’s shimmer factory okay or at least alive, but a few Enforcers were definitely killed when they attacked. So not everyone did okay.

Then you add the reality of Sevika and Vi’s fight, which always came across to me – as saying that it wasn’t so much that Hextech was necessarily superior to Shimmer - but who is fighting is also important, if not more so. Hextech and Shimmer are just the tools. 

Vi won, not Hextech. She used hextech and it helped her, but Vi really won because she got back up and kept fighting. And that’s more of a Zaunite trait than a Piltovan one, despite Piltover talk of failure when it comes to inventing.

I also feel like it’s to safe to say Vi was an important element to Jayce annihilating Silco’s factory. Vi is an exceptional fighter, even for Zaun’s standards she’s beyond remarkable, and her fighting for Piltover would be a great thing for them -- but not everyone is Vi (that’s what makes her remarkable).

I’m betting the average Zaunite is better at fighting than your average Piltovan.

Jayce is also acting or presuming the war will only take place in the Undercity. When the war could easily, especially now, cross the bridge and kill just many Piltovans who can’t defend themselves.

Which leads me back to my point.

For years, only the Undercity has suffered from the conflict between Piltover and Zaun. 

Not just because of the oppression, exploitation, and neglect. But anytime the Undercity tries to you know fight for their rights and make a stand for themselves, the fight (and violence) doesn’t seem to even be able to make it across the bridge into Piltover.

We see Vi glaring at the end of the first scene of the entire show at the pristine Council building above all the red debris and carnage, untouched. The pristine Piltover was able to move on, seemingly without a care, despite the fact Vi and Powder (and others) lost so much that day. 

I’m sure Piltover also lost people, but I’m betting one side was more impacted.

No matter what the Undercity does, it feels like they can’t touch Piltover.

That is until Jinx.

We hear Piltover’s alarm system three times and all three times were in response to one girl.

Powder in episode 1 – accidently blowing up a building.

Jinx in Episode 4 – “accidently” blowing up the ship at the hexgates

Jinx in episode 8 – “blowing up” the bridge.

For the first time Piltover and the Councilors are not able to handle a threat caused by their mistreatment and corruption. Largely, because they’ve ignored and suppress the problems of the Undercity for so long (because their corruption was never a problem for them) so said problems in the Undercity have now grown and fester under Silco’s reign, creating the perfect environment that allowed Zaun’s most perfect monster to reach her deadly potential.

-

Even Jayce’s demand for Jinx isn’t about justice. It’s about punishment and I would argue revenge.

Jinx isn’t being punished for all the people she killed in the Undercity. Not even close. She’s being punished for the Piltover Enforcers that she’s murdered (and I would argue only them).

The Enforcers are the monsters of the Undercity, but they are the figures of protection for Piltover. So the fact that she easily did away with them like they were nothing, is probably very scary for Piltover.

Including Marcus, Jinx kills a total of 17 Enforcers. 

Remember how in Act 1, Grayson and Vander said topsiders needed to feel safe.

How safe do they feel with all these enforcers dying left and right? I’m betting Jayce believes that once the culprit is arrested and thrown into Stillwater, the people (topsiders) would feel a lot safer and protected. Probably because Jayce will feel a whole lot safer on top of the satisfaction of having Jinx punished. 

Now to be clear, I don’t think Jayce knows the extent of how bad things are in Stillwater and it’s not like he’s planning for Jinx to be beaten to death (though let’s be real, that’s probably what would happen to her).

He still wants her to ROT in Stillwater.

As far as he’s concerned, that’s what she deserves.

But I would argue it’s not so much for all her crimes, it’s for who she specifically killed in Piltover. 

Silco and his actions have got to have killed so many more people that Jinx has; also, as far as Jayce knows, Silco ordered Jinx’s attacks on Piltover. So, he’s also responsible for them. Jinx is just a soldier for Silco, as far as Jayce knows.

I mean even Finn called it Silco’s stunt topside (stealing the gemstone), so even in the Undercity there’s the idea that Jinx was following Silco’s order and while they presumes she went overboard, no one seems to guess she went off on her own.

But there’s a reason why Silco isn’t the one who is required for the deal and it’s not just because he’s the head of the snake.

As much as Silco hated Piltover, he did far more damage to Zaun than he ever did to Piltover while in power.

Silco never directly attack or order one on Piltover. I think in his own messed up way, he tried to build up Zaun’s power so they could stand a chance, but it was never going to be enough power to compete with Piltover, or so Silco believed.

Silco create this stalemate for himself. He kept growing all this power, but it was never going to be enough – because Piltover has such an unfair advantage over them.

Before Silco was “okay” with that or accepted that reality when he was first making plans against Piltover. But when he got control of the Undercity Silco never attacked, because now he didn’t just have things to gain, he had something to lose. He had Jinx.

So, it’s interesting that she’s the one that actually attacks Piltover.

She does so three times and all technically operating on her own accord.

-        Silco told Jinx to take some time off and instead she attacked the academy square to steal the gemstone.

-        Silco didn’t know Jinx lost the gemstone, so when he told her to finish the weapon, she went off to retrieve it.

Even if you count that as her not really acting on her own accord, Jinx only released her bombs because Vi was running straight for Marcus and a bunch of enforcers with guns to try and save Caitlyn.

Vi would’ve been shot.

Jinx could’ve gotten the gemstone from Marcus in a different way, even if he wasn’t going to just hand it over to her, though he likely would’ve, you know out of fear for his daughter’s life. I mean, Jinx can operate effectively and even discreetly…I mean she manages to kidnap three people without a single bomb being used.

-        Silco did say everyone else could burn in the finale, but those weren’t his last words to Jinx. His last words were to comfort her. He didn’t tell her to attack Piltover. I know some believe Silco was manipulating her to attack Piltover, but that’s a weird and ineffective attempt at manipulation in all honesty.

The man is on his dying breath, like if he truly wanted to make sure Piltover suffered – he should not be subtly trying to push Jinx towards that direction.

I think people believe too much in Silco’s power and him being “two steps” ahead of everyone. Silco in the end is human and he was very human with his last moments alive - not an evil chess player.  

Jinx chooses to attack Piltover herself. 

Silco is definitely a factor, the major one to be clear, but Jinx is still choosing to do this.

Jinx is trying to fulfill Silco’s promise to her - to them when they first met; she will show the council and Piltover what they have created and make them fucking regret it. She will show them the monsters that have been lurking below.

She will show them all. 

This is to honor Silco and his cause – The Nation of Zaun.

Perhaps Jinx even feels guilty that Silco chose her over his dream and yet she didn’t believe in his love for her and accidently killed him. She didn’t choose him when it mattered, but she will now.

Up to this point Jinx has not really been a fighter for Zaun, despite literally fighting for the cause, since she’s been really fighting for Silco. But she hates Topside too. Zaun is not her main motivator in season 1, but it’s not like it doesn’t matter to her. She’s suffered and seen people suffer under Piltover’s rule. 

Now Jinx is also a selfish individual. She’s not going to give herself up for the good of others nor would that fulfill or achieve Silco’s legacy - despite what some say.

Jinx is his legacy, not Zaun.

Silco chooses to be Jinx’s father, not the father of the Nation of Zaun.

Also, why should she give herself up?  Why should she want peace for the two cities? Why does everyone else get to be happy when she rots away in Stillwater? 

Is she really the only monster?

Why does everyone else get to enjoy the peace that’s only possible because of Jinx’s attacks? Why should she care about anyone else, when as far as she is concerned the only person who truly loved and cared for her is now dead?

She wants to hurt the people that hurt her and Silco; to hurt the people that made her think that Silco was going to betray her, the people that told Silco it was her or Zaun.

She also just wants to hurt them, because she’s hurting and if all she is capable of is death and destruction, she might as well put it to some good fucking use. If she can’t be happy and find peace, then why not go all the way for war?

Why not make those that have been oppressing her and her people long before she was ever born finally pay?

Isn’t it about time Piltover and the Council suffered for once? Isn’t it their turn to be afraid of monsters?

It’s great that the council all voted for peace.

But it’s easy to want to end the cycle of violence, when the cycle has largely not impacted you in the same way as the other side. It’s easy to say that peace is the way everyone should go, when it’s your turn to be punched in the face.

Also, now that Jinx has not only attacked, but officially declared war - are Jayce, Caitlyn, Mel and others still going to want peace when they’re the ones who are hurt and suffering? Are they going to want peace now that they’ve lost the ones they care about. They’ve now been attacked and could very muchwant revenge for the wrongs against them.

Cycles of violence are cycles for a reason. It’s not just out of petty anger or grievances. 

It’s great the council voted for peace and while Jinx is 100% to blame for choosing to fire a rocket at them. Is she really the one to blame for the bad timing of it all?

They’ve had years, decades, centuries technically to try and do better.

Is it honestly Jinx’s fault that they spent so long dragging their feet, literally ignoring the suffering of the people that they are supposed to be the rulers of, the people who are also technically Piltovans, except for the fact they were never treated as such, so they created their own identity? 

It’s great they voted for peace, but it was already too late; also, maybe they should’ve thought about making things better, before things got to the point that there’s now a young woman pointing a shark rocket at them.

The rich piltover councillors who were happily making money off the suffering of the people of zaun deserved to get jinxed at the end of episode 9.

They had it coming.

"But it was wrong for Jinx to blah blah blah" don't care. They still had it coming.

[coolman229]

"Anyone claiming to be knowledgeable about writing that praises the shows are just shills" so any professional writer(which, you are not. writing for a long time makes you neither professional nor good at it) who doesn't nitpick and tear into the show like you is a shill? because they have a different opinion on RWBY or SU than you?

Okay I’m going to deal with you one last time. You clearly don’t want to talk about this. You’re just trying to pin me with something so you can bash me to validate your hate of me.

RWBY and SU are badly written. This is a fact. RWBY has an extremely inconsistent story that builds up numerous things through the show and then doesn’t deliver on them. Many things that are base level for the lore and something much of the world is based on are simply never properly explained. What are Aura and Semblances? We get some basic explanations early in the show but we don’t have any rules on them. We don’t know how they function, and in fact the show has completely changed things over the course of the show. Aura shields used to be something you’d put up purposefully, then Vol 3 rolls around and completely changes it to a discount energy shield from Halo. Semblances are still, after 5 seasons, completely abstract. They’re some sort of power each person has, but other than that we don’t know anything about them. We only ever get an explanation of Yang’s Semblance while everyone else’s is completely ignored or never given any details making it really confusing. Not to mention that now it seems they’re trying to retcon Ruby’s Semblance from super speed to just turning into a cloud of rose pedals for some reason.

RWBY also suffers heavily from a complete lack of direction. It’s not as apparent in the first couple volumes because that’s so early a full story hasn’t really come into play, but from Vol 3 onward you can start to see a complete lack of focus. Vol 3 didn’t know what it wanted to be, focusing heavily on the Vytal tournament but then pretty much dismissing it for the Maiden plotline which the writers admitted they pulled out of nowhere for the season. It’s really bad writing to pull a plotline like the Maidens that completely takes over the entire series when there’s no build up to it. Not to mention that Vol 4 also pulls things completely out of nowhere like Blake’s parents that completely wreck the story. I love Ghira and Kali but them being Faunus royalty and Ghira being the former leader of the White Fang completely destroys Blake’s character arc. She was heavily implied to be living in borderline poverty and oppression and fell into Adam’s radicalism because of it. It ruins her character to make it so that she lived a comfortable and privileged life on tropical island Menagerie and she could at any point just go home and live in the biggest house on the island. She chastised Weiss for being rich in Vol 1 yet she has an even better life than Weiss did. Weiss has an abusive father and a hollow personal life. Blake had loving parents on a tropical island. This doesn’t even touch on the overall plot which seems deseperate to push the Maiden plotline when it’s 1) Not every interesting, and 2) Not even properly set up to be as important as it s.

SU is even worse off than RWBY. It starts getting good during the latter part of season 1a, and ends on a fantastic note with Ocean Gem. And while 1b has a lot of stupid things we still have at least a decent season finale. Then when the show builds up that there are two villains and a sort of ally out there and Homeworld knows about things going on at earth..... nothing happens. The show spends so much time on filler it made it difficult to watch. We had more time dedicated to the internal drama of the Crystal Gems throwing fits at each other like children despite being thousands of years old. There are more episodes focusing on random things like the Beach City citizens than the intergalactic war plotline. The show is literally dealing with intergalactic fascist dictators who want to destroy the Crystal Gems and earth....and the show is more focused on characters like Ronaldo and Sally. Even when it does touch on the plot it almost desperately runs back to the episodic Beach City stuff even when it makes no sense. When Peridot introduces the Cluster you think that’s gonna be a huge arc where they save the world with the help of Peridot....nope we’re immediately thrown back into filler so Pearl and Peridot can have a robot battle. That was the point I immediately gave up on the show. Even checking out newer things don’t help because it just makes it clearer that the writers can’t handle the huge expansive plot they set up. Why even bring in a character like Bismuth if they’re just going to shelve her immediately despite her having a VERY interesting conflict with Steven? You could fill a whole season with stuff involving Bismuth but she’s relegated to a single episode to maintain the status quo, and that’s just boring.

"I actually know a hell of a lot more about writing then they do. I’ve actually strived to learn more about writing ever since I got into it." why do you presume to know more about writing then SU or RWBY writers because you've been doing it as a hobby for what you THINK might be longer than them? you have no idea how long they've been writing, so i don't know where the presumption that even if you have been writing as a hobby longer than they've done it as a hobby+a job means you know more?

I never claimed to be writing longer than them. I just spent my time actually trying to become a better writer by analyzing narratives, breaking down the goods and bads of stories, learning what good and bad writing is, and how narratives work. Yes I do it as a hobby, and if you think that somehow makes me a worse writer than people who get paid regardless of how bad their writing is that’s your problem.

I’m done here. I’m not gonna give you any more attention after this.

[hillvalleyfilmsociety]

I saw three movies in the last week. They were pretty different to each other, but I quite enjoyed all of them, so I'm resurrecting my film blog to write reviews of them. To 2018, and resolutions to write more!

Call Me By Your Name (2017) Dir: Luca Guadagnino

I was very interested in this pre-release, even though I had never read the book. Luca Guadagnino caught my eye with 2015's A Bigger Splash, which is stylistically very familiar to CMBYN, and which I really enjoyed. Guadagnino shines in the aesthetic of his films, in the beautiful scenery and silences between sparse dialogue. Both create a languid, sumptuous mood - wealth and privilege on show, yet somehow not ostentatious to the viewer.

But where this mood creates distance and miscommunication between the characters of ABS, it brings the characters of CMBYN closer, creates warmth between them, bringing the viewer into Elio's extended family as easily as they welcome Oliver. The film is set over a summer in Northern Italy in 1983, and Guadagino skillfully captures the feeling of a slow, lazy summer pre-internet, where all there is for the teenaged main character, Elio (Timothée Chalamet), to do is lie around the pool swimming or reading, long family meals, piano practice or biking into town.  

Before I go any further, I have to discuss the opening credits, which go on for at least ten minutes and effortlessly set the tone for the casual opulence of the world of the film. Gentle, upbeat classical music plays over photos of classical sculptures - something that Elio's academic father and the grad student who he invites to work with him over the summer seem to be working in the field of - while the credits are written in a messy but elegant script, in a warm yellow shade. All of this somehow worked to already create the mood that pervades the rest of the film - casual wealth and intelligence, warmth and inclusion - before you even meet the Perlmans, and the beautiful villa they spend holidays in.

Some viewers might dislike watching films with wealthy people languishing in villas on holidays, but in the way that Guadagnino presents it, it's enchanting. I loved the feeling of seeing the easy, comfortable way the Perlmans (Elio's family) live on holiday, with their freshly made apricot juice and their family meals in a shaded grove. As I mentioned earlier, it creates a very welcoming vibe that helps you understand the mindset of the newcomer to this idyll, grad student Oliver (Armie Hammer).

The movie is really Chalamet's, and more on him below, but Hammer does quite well in a less showy role as Oliver - who has been invited to spend six weeks at an Italian villa working with an academic he seems to not have personally met before arriving. A great honour, clearly, but it's also awkward, and Hammer plays this slight dissonance well -  he's a non-European American (like the rest of the Perlmans) which is both exciting and awkward to the gathered family and friends of the Perlman. Hammer's Oliver is a lot of contrasts, both interested and scared/offended by Elio, both very confident towards him and very hesitant, both cool and dorky. Armie Hammer's being doing a few lower budget indie, and more off the wall projects since the Lone Ranger debacle didn't launch him into the leading man blockbuster stratosphere, and personally, I think he's much better in these than attempting to be another leading man type. (And for that matter, I am genuinely annoyed both he and Michael Stuhlbarg were passed over for Oscar noms, so they could give two to Three Billboards. It's not like Hammer would have got it, but I think he certainly deserved the nomination.)

As I said though, Chalamet is the standout - it's his story and he does a lot with it. His Elio is very reminiscent of the frustrating uncomfortableness of being a teenager - he's awkward, moody, bitter, cheeky, afraid, delicate and above all, real. What was beautiful about this film is how much everyone loves Elio - he's not always kind and good, but he is also a teenage boy - but his sexuality doesn't shut him off from other people. It's not an isolationist story, like a lot of queer film narratives are. While I can understand the urge to show that side of things, it's incredibly gratifying to see a film about a queer boy in the eighties, where if everyone doesn't know for certain they probably are aware of it in some respect, and they don't seem to care. They just love him, and Chalamet plays Elio's connections with everyone (not just Oliver) beautifully. He certainly deserves his Oscar nomination, even though he's not the favourite to win. He's also in the Oscar nominated Lady Bird, and my feeling is that (hot take alert) he's gonna be big.

Further from this, I love how tactile the characters in this film are. Elio is very cuddly and childlike sometimes with his parents, who are very affectionate to him - and no one tells him "a seventeen year old boy shouldn't do that" which is a blessing. He's very affectionate with the girls he's friends with. His later dynamic with Oliver - once they've admitted to feeling something  for each other - is very affectionate too, kind of awkward but in a sweet way. Not all their encounters are just these highly eroticised moments (which is not to say that none of them are). This makes their burgeoning relationship very real, like a seventeen year old boy fumbling his way toward a relationship that will always be meaningful, a first love more than just lust. Not that his dynamic with his sort-of girlfriend Marzia is unloving, just different, but no less sweet in its newness to the both of them.

On that note, I'm sure some people will say that there was a “lack of explicit sex scenes” in this movie. To that, I say PAH. It’s not like this movie is sanitised and sexless (hello, peach scene. yep.) It’s quite erotic in parts, quite good at conveying Elio's attraction to Oliver, and vice versa. But it feels like (unlike hetero love stories) that queer media is often all or nothing: either completely sexless, even affectionless even in a good relationship (Mitch and Cam on Modern Family didn’t even kiss on screen till like mid season two or three) or incredibly sexualised, and featuring intense sex scenes. This movie walks the rare line between the two - very affectionate (in private, natch) but allowing them the dignity of not being watched - as they always are, even by relatively benign eyes around them - in the moment of consummation. (For more on this - Jason Adams' delicate and moving review, Call Me With Kindness) It’s not even as though there are no on-screen sex acts in the film, either, so I'll say that I think it was a good, well-done balance.

If I had any slight problem with the narrative, it was that I found it hard to understand the progression of Elio and Oliver's relationship pre the mutual reveal of feelings - but that seemed to be a stylistic choice, and ABS was much the same, where the characters barely verbally communicated for a lot of the beginning arc of the film. It could be deliberately unclear- neither of them really know what the other thinks of them until they admit things together, while they're alone for once. Either way, it didn't much mar my enjoyment of their story which is emotional and complex but also very sweet.

The last thing I have to talk about is Michael Stuhlbarg, who is rapidly becoming one of my favourite actors (and who again, I am furious has not picked up any Oscar nominations for any of the great work he did in 2017). He was in two thirds of the films I saw recently, and he managed to be very moving in two small-ish roles. The scene where he tells Elio not to mock his friend and his male partner, that if he can be as knowledgeable as him and as good he'll be "a credit to him". Elio's father is a good man, and you can tell from this moment he doesn't care who Elio loves as long as he doesn't grow up boorish and ignorant. In fact, as much as the love story is engaging, my favourite scene of the file is when Elio and his father discuss Oliver after he has left. It was incredibly affecting to me - Elio's father doesn't come out and say he knew for certain about them, but refers to their "friendship" in the kindest, most respectful way, possibly even hinting about his own sexuality - not necessarily that he's closeted, but that he may have had an Oliver in his past he was too afraid to have anything happen with. Stuhlbarg is just so good, so affecting and plays really well off Chalamét, who allows Elio just the right amount of vulnerability and emotion.

Not to mention, Sufjan Stevens' two gorgeous original songs for the film, but I'll close this out by saying that there's a certain kind of idea about the kind of queer romance film that gets the Academy's attention - that it has to be sad, that the characters have to suffer and end up unhappy, and everyone can discuss how tragic it was. That sort of story is fine, because yes historically many LGBT people couldn't be open or take chances, and many did suffer. But that's not the only LGBT narrative to be told, even when set decades ago - and I'm thrilled to see films like 2016's Carol, 2017's Best Picture Winner Moonlight, and CMBYN tell a new kind of queer narrative where the characters are allowed to be happy even in an oppressive time, where the characters can break up and be miserable because of that (and not because of illness or bigoted violence), where the focus is just the love story. It gives me hope for the generation of younger LGBT viewers to see themselves outside of misery narratives.

4/5 stars