#Anarcho-biking

[nando161mando]

"Anarcho-biking"

[solarpunk-gnome]

Solarpunk and Cars

Solarpunk walks the middle path between technosolutionism and anarcho-primitivism, so while #bancars has a nice ring to it, I lean more toward using cars where they make sense, but not treating them as the proverbial hammer to the nails of all societal problems like 20th Century urban planners did here in the US.

We’ve explored some of the issues with car-centric design here before, and if you want to explore it further, I highly recommend Not Just Bikes for video or The War on Cars if you prefer podcasts, but suffice it to say that designing the environment around the automobile has had significant deleterious effects on both the natural world and society.

I imagine a few small shared vehicles in a neighborhood for those times when you need a personal vehicle, but otherwise you’d be walking, biking, or taking transit to get around.

https://solarpunkstation.com/2024/10/17/solarpunk-and-cars/

[secularprolifeconspectus]

Hey pro-abort anons, y'all do know I'm a full-time prenatal justice activist, right?

I'm an antifa anarcho-communist bike marshal who got tear gassed and hit by cop cars during the 2020 BLM protests. I lead marches of radicals into the streets to challenge the police state's reign of terror. I let pigs spit in my face to keep the protestors safe who were pulling confederate monuments to the ground with rope and blocking highways with their bodies to demand justice.

And I do the same to protect the preborn from murder by abortion. Your feeble personal attacks are laughable & tell me you have no fucking clue.

I'm not your average pro-lifer, bitch.

[klett161]

About me and why I am on Tumblr

Hi,

My name is klett I am part of the Reddit Immigration Wave (didnt want to loose the Community of 196)

Id call my self a Socialist but depending on the Context Communist and Anarcho-Communist are also fitting labels. Whatever Label you want to assign to me my Worldviews are Fudamentally anti-Authoritarian, anti-Capitalist and anti-Facist.

I am also advocating for more livabile Cities that are Build for people not for Cars. For anyone that dosent know much about City design and wants to learn more I think Strong Towns and the Youtube Channel Not Just Bikes are a good starting point.

In my Freetime Im also writting Articles about the things listed before. If they are not to specifically reffering to things in my Hometown I might share them In my Blog. (I just dont want to doxx myself)

Im also working on my first Book now which I might or might not refere to in future posts.

Also I might post a few rambles or essays about Media or society here, If I feel like doing so

A lot of my freetime goes down for the Music I listen too which Is mostly punkrock but from time to time might also Include some post-punk or Rock n Roll.

[mrfluffles300]

gaming ofc, badminton, and biking (also not recently because c o l d)

@atlasofthestars113 @santas-jolly-backhand-of-chaos @mossie-moss @suddenlysentient @anarcho-neptunism

that tiktok that’s like “name a single hobby of yours outside of media consumption” she got em a bit why lie

[secreteviltwin]

ottawa anon again, I guess I was being a bit cynical, there are definitely a lot of classic chill liberals like you described, lots of bike riding stoner seniors, and people do seem to genuinely care about each other, at least in my neck of the woods.

but the population of brightly dyed anarcho-kweers constantly seeking to fight about something is so much higher than I've encountered in other canadian cities. "protect trans kids" posters in shop windows everyyywhere, pronoun talk all the time. I mean Nili Kaplan-Myrth and Amanda Jette Knox are from here, and from my experience that's not a surprise at all. But I guess you would probably encounter some of that most everywhere now.

It's boring as fuck in terms of events and nightlife also. nice parks though.

yeah ig i know you guys have a couple active gender-critical feminist groups going on which sort of implies a lot of trans shit to react to? my friend's narcissistic nonbinary brother just moved to ottawa so.. sorry about that lol

[auroroboros1]

to do

fix car

fix bike

buy food

go to show

climb a tree

clean my floor

clean my dishes

clean my shower

im done now

[mintchipnicecream]

Azerbaijan to the left, and ovals to the right. the water droplets catch on to the holiness of our peach pie. the scarecrow signals down the road that we had walked on for miles. this part of the stocking is great. the gust front in eastern Nebraska caused gustnadoes to form. the wait to hold hands is finally over. the oysters are celebrating the surprising results of anarcho-punk collectivity, by blowing on various woodwind instruments. in the company of darkness, we take the available dandelions for what and who they are. we are priceless in the quiet enhancements of tomorrow. on sunday afternoon, we ride our bikes to the edge of the land as it makes way for the sea. in instants, we are surrounded by water. the mirages have sparkled in our eyes for decades. supposing we create a more thorough analysis of power networks, even after the Revolution. blackberry pie provided by intelligent blackbirds, telephone wires provide instantaneous communications for people. the agavean solution is posted with a lot of corresponding noise--nectar in all Georgia counties.

[hatefully-crafted]

I just... Folks. It's 2023. What is this? What is this pantomime of an argument from 2012? Are we doing this? I guess we're doing this.

Most people don't know most of the stuff about most of the things. People don't know half of what's happening in most of the tools, services, and societal constructs they participate in every day. Getting them to a point where the care about the sky being broken being an actual task up to this point should make that fairly clear. The key for a movement that cares about something is to positively educate under the assumption that the ignorant can be aided in learning. Not to denigrate people for not knowing what you know. Because, if that had been how most people who care about the thing were treated when THEY first came to understand it, no movement would ever have any followers ever.

Also, just to round back to the top idea of there being mandates of ideological understanding and intensity in related topics surrounding a greater idea... It REALLY isn't that simple when it comes to ideological movements. Sure, you need people in general not holding beliefs that, indirectly, undermine the core tenets of a movement (e.g. Being anti-corporate, but also against collective action, worker democracy, public trusts, etc.), but emotional investment in other related stuff? Less critical so long as it doesn't get in the way. Sure, if someone thinks the solution to the climate crisis is, like, get everyone in Sub-Saharan Africa to pedal on a generator bike for clean energy, obviously their opinion on colonialism is conflicting with the notion of climate equity. But if they just think that getting all the fuckers dumping money into oil should instead focus on Solar, Wind, Etc. And stop stonewalling adoption, and haven't spared much thought for how exploitation of the Middle-East and other underprivileged nations have both facilitated and contributed to this status quo, that's a problem we can deal with later. Revolutions good and bad have made deals with WAY less scrupulous people who, by sharing a common enemy with the movement, bolster its numbers. It is important to draw the line further down. Or there WILL NOT be enough people on your side of it to make change. Especially when anyone potentially near to the line is shouted away from it for being not good enough at the moment you found them.

Like... Does anyone have that GIF of the Kangaroo and the guy, talking about how one's a Communist, and the other's an Anarcho-Socialist, and how they can get along for the remainder of the revolution, but after that stuff gets difficult? That. That idea. That's the whole ballgame and we NEED to cleave to that if anything is to get done.

not to go over this again but you literally cannot be a environmental activist and not be against settler colonalism like you are not a environmental activist of you think that shit is ok. every part of settler colonalism is environmental and ecological destruction....

[estuarine-space-communism]

This Bike is a Pipe Bomb - The Star Song

one of the stars in your eyes has gone out, so we lay back on the rooftop late at night in hopes that a shooting star might take root in the hole in your head

and we'll wake up in the morning being stared down by an ashamed sun, shamefully covering behind a cloud or two, old man you've followed me down, you've beaten me down, and tonight I got the best of you

[nando161mando]

Solidarity bike ride to Strancally Castle - Vuelta en moto solidaria a Strancally Castle

[elancholia]

And Elon Musk said on twitter once that he was an anarcho-syndicalist.

I'm pretty sure he was making a Monty Python joke.

Anyway, I think part of it is a loss of confidence on the left (plus liberal resurgence) in the last two to three years, plus COVID sort of breaking people's brains. You could say these people (I mean the video essayists for this part) are imitators, I guess--they're a wave of people inspired by a thing, who quite naturally cannot entirely capture it, for regression to the mean reasons, and because inspiring things are better than average (but they can still get popular, because demand for YouTube videos is either very elastic or high enough).

Part of it is definitely the algorithm thing, though. A lot of stuff feels...smoother, now? You know, it's like the difference between a desktop and a phone operating system. (Like, this is a vibes description, but I'm meeting you where ur at, ok?) The Tumblr algorithm thing has sort of driven home how dead set the modern paradigm of social media is on the uncurated content-feed model, and this feels related to that, either causally or because the same Form underlies them or whatever. (I do not believe in Platonism, but you know.)

I agree that the modern American/Western decades paradigm (60s = flower power, bell bottoms, 70s = Creedence Clearwater Revival presents: the Vietnam War, 80s = various action movies, kids on bikes, pop songs), which centers unserious pop culture stuff because it's a vector for nostalgia marketing and describing the vibes of your childhood, doesn't take hold until, like, the 50s. Arguably, you can extend it back to the Gay 90s, but the stuff we remember about the 10s, 30s, and 40s is very serious war/Depression stuff.

You know, one of the phenomena of that era is the rise of mass culture, of the modern paradigm of pop culture. Maybe that's a phenomenon that happens periodically, subsuming the period's image into itself.

Though, to be honest, the 70s is my archetype of when things were real and serious!

And the civil rights movement! Incredibly serious. Student politics, at least, took itself very seriously back then. '68. The Port Huron Statement.

Thought for a moment in the 2010s that we were entering a new serious era (e.g. 1920s, 30s, 40s), but it seems that we're instead in an increasingly tacky era (50s, 60s, 70s). Like look at the change in YouTube. Well you all are textheads you don't do video, I know that. But like. In 2017 there was ContraPoints. Agree or disagree with her opinions, what she was doing was conceptually and aesthetically serious. Even her early, low-production-value stuff. She was talking about incels and other internet shit, but the internet is part of the real world, that's fine. In fact that's what gave me hope for another serious era, people were finally talking about internet stuff the way 1920s German intellectuals or whatever talked about the cultural trends of their day. Maybe because Contra has half a philosophy PhD and was explicitly influenced by those German intellectuals.

Another example from a totally disjoint cultural niche was Digi a.k.a. Trixie a.k.a. Ygg Studios or whatever they go by now. Drunk, smelly, and unkempt—yes. Or at least so went the persona. Talking seriously about anime—also yes. When they claimed they were the only good anime reviewer on the internet it made a lot of people mad. But they were right!

There were thinkers, we had thinkers. My generation, or roughly my generation, had thinkers. To be clear, when I include Contra here I'm not including all of her ilk, I'm not including the leftist-theory-regurgitators and so on. But Contra herself was a thinker! Digi was a thinker! We had thinkers.

But that era is over now, on YouTube at least. I go on there and it's all algorithmic drivel. I look for anime content and as I've explained it's all about #hype and #epic and how the new season of whatever #hits different and other empty meaningless bullshit. No analysis, no thought, fundementally unserious bullshit. Tacky! It's tacky! The the YouTube thumbnail O-face is fucking 70s-ass fake wood paneling tacky bullshit!

MrBeast. I've never seen a MrBeast video but I hate him for what he represents. I used to watch this channel called Wranglerstar, he made videos about different types of axes and forest fire fighting equipment and various other stuff. "Modern homesteading" I believe was the tagline. And it was always evident that he was a far-right guy but who gives a shit, his videos where good. Serious videos about interesting topics, that a fucking normal guy might watch. Well around 2020 he basically started flooding his channel with covid conspiracy bullshit and "the Chinese are going to attack us any day!" bullshit and other unserious crap. And I had to stop watching. How could I find any of that compelling? It's vapid nonsense.

And I don't know if it's a shift in the algorithm or people becoming more savvy to the algorithm or what, but all of YouTube is like this now. Vapid clickbait empty meaningless bullshit for another tacky commercialized bullshit era.

And you know, I felt like it might just be localized to YouTube for a while, but I started to look around, and it just feels like everything is like this. Backsliding to the tacky times. God I hate tackiness. I hate unseriousness. I'm having a little meltdown. At least SMW kaizo hacks are having a renaissance. People are doing serious shit in that space, serious shit that is also not anachronistic, you know, it's kept up with the modern world. It addresses modern concerns (fun to play hard Mario). But it's serious. People are serious. One of the few serious things happening in my orbit.

Even in science it feels like people aren't serious anymore. You know, standard Sabine Hossenfelder complaint about particle physics. But I don't really know enough about that to say. Get the vibe that biology is still serious these days.

To be clear, everything I'm saying here is pure vibes. I'm just saying shit. I'm just saying shit that I feel. But I'll be deeply disappointed if I have to live my youth in another tacky era, god damn it. Even the 80s seem like they were better than this.

[sbelikeswords]

I am the polyamorous transsexual vegan anarcho-cyclist your parents warned you about. Oooooooooo scaryyyyy 🦹‍♀️🧿 . [text]: As I was riding my bike across town after eating a vegan breakfast, I was thinking about three of my partners until I felt my tuck coming out. And at that moment I realized I am an absolute parody of a leftist . . . . . #transbeauty #transwomen #transgirls #transgirlsrock #transgendergirl #transgenders #transgenderpride🌈 #transgenderfemale #transgenderwomen #transgenderawareness #transgendercommunity #transwriter #writersofig #writersofinstagram #writersden #queerlove #queerwomen #queerfemme #queergirl #questioninggender #lgbtaccount #lgbtq2s #queerwriters #transwomanofinstagram #transwoman #questioningmygender #transwriters #transgirlsarerealgirls #transmotivation https://www.instagram.com/p/CSjpEtpnMEH/?utm_medium=tumblr

[weatherman667]

What Is Capitalism?

AnCaps will say that Capitalism is a completely free market.  The government has no right to get involved at all.  But, this is why there’s a difference between Capitalism and Anarcho-Capitalism.  A better way of explaining is making doing business as easy as possible.   Building roads and managing ports helps trade, and the thing that turned most small towns into megacities is trade.  Other factors can boon a time, like being made a capital, or having a large military base, but the biggest cities are always ports.  There’s other things, like having a maximum amount of rat feces in grains, as there is definitely a maximum amount that is tolerable.  This ensures that you can buy a product from any competitor, and be ensured of a minimum level of quality.  The other side is that there is a huge difference between building roads and the trillions of dollars major countries use in taxes.

Mega Corporations and Communists will say that it’s mega corporations, which is a lie perpetuated by both of them for their own benefit.  Mega Corps because they are mega corps, can communists to have a rallying cry for their delusions.  A better way of describing it is that with risk goes rewards.  And one thing that mega corporations, and their political puppets, don’t want you to know is that mega corps are just as vulnerable to shuttering as mom-and-pops, at least without corporate welfare.  The larger the corporation, the less nimble they become, and the easier it is for small competitors to fill in an unfilled niche.  This is why major cities have multi-national couriers, and independent bike couriers.  They fill different roles.  The best a multi-national courier can do is next day, or maybe end of day, but bike couriers can get it there from 10 minutes to 1hr.  As another example, during the 2008 economic collapse, (the start of the Great Recession), we have six and seven figure financial managers become destitute, and needed to be bailed out.

In Capitalism, you take your Capital, and build your business.  If you succeed, you get to keep all of the rewards, if you fail?  Bankruptcy, or a box under a bridge.  What a lot of people forget is that most mega corporations started off as mom-and-pops.  Jeff Bezos basically started in his parent’s basement, and is now one of the world’s richest people.  Yes, there is a problem with this, as you might not be able to afford to start a business, but if the government helped you to set up a business, they would have the right to say what you can do with it.

In Capitalism, Competition is God.  Capitalism seeks / assumes Perfect Competition.  In a Perfectly Competitor Market, as the market shrinks, (as it always does), the least efficient player will be squeezed out of the market.  As the market expands, new players will enter the market.  So, getting a market to as close to perfectly competitive as we can is one of the biggest goals for Capitalism, i.e. making it as easy as possible to start a business.

Corporate Welfare is anathema to Capitalism.  Monopolies are anathema to Capitalism.  Government control is anathema to Capitalism.

But, on the other hand, free men are free to starve.

[uneasylisteningradio]

Audio & Playlist for May 18, 2019: Bikes

Critical mass, Budapest Here for you is a show of songs about bicycles, the human-powered kind! Coming soon there will be a show about motorcycles, mopeds, scooters etc but FIRST this coming Saturday May 25 will be a show about summer or war or both for Memorial Day! After that I will be away for 2 weeks!

link to audio Playlist: Bay City Rollers - Saturday Night (Uneasy Listening theme song) Desperate Bicycles - Cars

DJ speaks over James Last - The Pushbike Song

Clyde McPhatter with Billy Ward and His Dominoes - Pedal Pushin' Papa Sportchestra! - Changing Gears Tomorrow - My White Bicycle XTC - I'd Like That Thee Hydrogen Terrors - Sissy Bar

Sugarcubes - Motorcrash Poly Styrene - Bicycle Song Vaselines - Rory Rides Me Raw Diskonto - Sexmanaders Cykler Fats Domino - Rockin' Bicycle Eastfield - Second Fastest Cycle Courier in London The Mixtures - The Pushbike Song

The Ex - Human Car Pink Floyd - Bike Brad Anders - Don't Paint Your Bike in the Garage Shonen Knife - Cycling is Fun Half Man Half Biscuit - A Lilac Harry Quinn

Fifteen - Helter Smelter Dot Wiggin Band - Banana Bike Shellac - Riding Bikes The Roches - My New Bicycle Dukes of Stratosphear - Bike Ride to the Moon Hawkwind - Silver Machine Donovan - The Fat Angel

Trunk Boiz - Scraper Bike Sportchestra! - Mountain Bikin' The Swallows - Bicycle Tilie Jason Crest - Turquoise Tandem Cycle Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - I Have Come Out to Play

Desperate Bicycles - Handlebars XTC - Season Cycle Mental Conspiracy - Wear Your Bike Helmet Tribe 8 - Daredevil Delivery Debbie Harry - Bike Boy Inch - Velocipede

The Buff Medways - Medway Wheelers

[gayathreya]

leftist suriya characters appreciation post

since soorarai pottru, been thinking more about all the explicit leftist characters suriya has played in his career. and i actually mean explicit - characters that are supported by the narrative framing and structure and not just my own headcanons and stuff or a throwaway generic goody-shoe typical hero line. i have been itching to talk about this cos it’s obviously in my field of interests

suriya has played 4 openly various brands of leftist now, and that’s pretty cool! i love that none of them are cookie cutter personalities of each other, they all have their own select trait. this post is a toast to them;

michael vasanth (ayutha ezhuthu, 2004)

vimalan (maattraan, 2012)

iniyan (thaanaa serndha koottam, 2018)

maara (soorarai pottru, 2020)

[small write up on each character with pics behind the cut]

*****

1. michael vasanth (ayutha ezhuthu, 2004)

so michael was his first, said to be inspired by an actual university popular marxist student leader, george reddy. michael is very obviously somewhere along these lines - he himself is within the film known as the leftist student leader on campus with a huge following, much to the chagrin of his professors who want to stamp that out of him. he’s openly engaged in campus politics as well as politics outside, and he’s most definitely no weak willed liberal because he has no problems with violence or direct action, which he organises. he organises villagers to stand against others on their own feet, never once preaches about lying down and taking it easy or playing polite. which was nice to see lol i hate liberals who have morals about property damage but in ayutha ezhuthu, michael clearly doesn’t give a fuck. he and his group break things and smash cars and lorries on their way and threaten physical violence on their opponents too which is the way it should be because to him human lives are worth more than any property or vehicular damage. he never shies away from that. hell yes to violence and structural damage!

probably the most definite trait of michael compared to other suriya leftist characters is that michael still believes in the establishment and electoral politics, which u don’t particularly see his other leftist ones talk about. but here, michael works within the system, and trusts it to bring change if u put in the effort into that. though, it’s not as frustrating as it sounds cos michael’s work is not geared towards other liberals, but in villages and rural districts where he goes to spread word, and makes them choose their own leadership to represent. it’s way more marxist aligned and ~rise of the proletariat~ here instead cos he bypasses liberal bougie nonsense and never once is his voice used for that, but used towards and for the working class directly to both take up arms and resist violently themselves + hold ranks for themselves and choose their own leaders to influence their local politics/protect their environment.  

michael is fundamentally very marxist, with a dose of direct action plus violent resistance if need be, and supports organised proletariat uprising within an established political system playing towards electoral politics

(of course, a point to note in why this isn’t as frustrating as it sounds as mentioned above is cos this film was released in 2004. would michael still believe in the establishment and electoral politics now? things in 2020 are very different with all of us more aware of things around us and globally, it’s definitely a debate to be held. i doubt he will, since he’s not a pacifist or liberal. he’d say fuck electoral politics, all my homies hate electoral politics)

2. vimalan (maattraan, 2012)

second very openly communist character he played. prob gone a bit forgotten for others since he does die halfway through the film (which itself isn’t a favourite of anyone either, fans or neutrals) rip but can’t go by without mentioning cos i remember liking this character a lot and i teared up in the cinema first watch when he died. i was mad they killed the suriya i loved instead of the other one whom i found annoying lmao

vimal supports workers’ strikes and unions against bosses, even when that boss is their own shitty father. this automatically makes him stand out instantly considering he is sympathetic to the working class despite at the cost of his father’s annoyance with him. he’s also the first character suriya plays who’s explicitly anti-capitalist with line(s) about it, since michael had no canon lines regarding capitalism from what i recall. vimal outright does.

the leftist imagery tied to vimal the most is che, which is a nice touch. his room has at least one poster of him, and his phone’s wallpaper is also him. u can also see bhagat singh and ho chi minh books on his shelf. so.. safe to claim where vimal’s political ideologies are. it’s both tied in pictures and him siding with workers for their rights against corporations, since he obviously likes revolutionaries. vimalan was a class traitor and a supporter of the working class poor bb tragically gone too soon. ilu u didn’t deserve your terrible fate, sweet commie good boi :(

3. iniyan (thaanaa serndha koottam, 2018)

iniyannnnnn i love him and i think it’s a suriya char with one of the best character arcs in his whole career. mostly cos he had a very distinct ‘’yes i want to work for the government and change things from within’’ phase which gets squashed over the course of the film. we see him start off obviously in a very blatantly communist neighbourhood in a song that is also very specifically anti-establishment/politicians with a lot of hard resistance vibes. the entirety of sodakku is a very good introduction to him and what he stands for - in general the film promises upon wealth disparity, useless bougie politicians, and the rest of us being crushed under them.

what happens to him at the end of the movie is FANTASTIC because he no longer gels with what he wanted at the start of the movie. iniyan’s key leftist trait to me is that he’s the most anarchist of suriya characters, varying from other leftist suriya characters. he refuses to work with government powers and authorities, he looks down on their entire establishment and institutions (he does not at the start of the film, which is vital cos again, he wanted to work alongside them at first), and depends more on the good will of individual people over job titles, while clearly engaging in mutual aid and distributing wealth. these are very distinct anarchist ideals. i’d still peg him as anarcho-communist but would say he leans more towards anarchy and progressing on mutual aid over official state resources or state people for any kind of positive change since his faith in them has pretty much diminished by the climax. he does not give a shit about politicians, cops, or any kind of authorities at all, leaving them in the dust to raise his black flag and do his own anarchist hot shit.

iniyan is a good example of an anarchist arc for me in tamil cinema in simple commercial terms without heading too deep into actual words and phrases in a big hero movie, cos it’s also very easy to explain to anyone the shift in his ideas and his eroding faith in institutions with power. good for him!

4. maara (soorarai pottru, 2020)

this should be fresh in everyone’s memory, but yes, a character who is obviously in your face about it since he has an actual line - ‘’you’re a socialite, i’m a socialist’’ which caused all of us with good taste to whoop and cheer. plus he was very sexy in this whole scene, so what a bonus. it’s the most explicit thing said by him in the film, but there are also other little things peppered into his speech and background imagery showing u the kind of person maara is.

he gets married to bommi in a self-respect wedding ceremony. no priests or any kind of traditional hindu iyers/chants involved. u see it clearly with a periyar pic hanging behind him explaining who he is. he wears black a lot in the film, which fits him being a periyarist so i’d label him as such and consider it his standout trait from other leftist characters suriya has played previously because this is the only character with explicit periyar symbolism (i kid u not i saw multiple sanghis being very angry suriya dressed in black in this movie and were harassing him on twitter constantly since sp released. die mad, uglies). obviously, this also fuses well with the little things we see of him implying he’s ~lower caste~ like his in-laws being embarrassed about him on behalf of their own caste, and paresh sanitising his hands after shaking hands with maara on the plane, which is not subtle at all and trademark casteist behaviour about touching someone ‘’lesser’’ than you and u view them as ‘’dirty’’ or beneath you. as well as maara’s remark about breaking the class and caste barrier during his radio interview. being a periyarist fits seamlessly.

there’s also a bts vid of suriya on his bike where you can see an ambedkar pic pasted onto the side. i can’t remember any scene in the film where u can see his bike from this angle but it doesn’t matter, cos u can definitely tell the kind of person maara is and how he was envisioned as a character - an explicit socialist and periyarist, with a natural fondness for ambedkar too since ofc they overlap as many do irl as well. it is very in tune with his background in the film and i liked seeing the tiny aspects of these things seeded within the movie throughout from beginning to end. it’s explicit in a way that isn’t jarring or artificial, and a nice layer to him and feel endeared to since maara is a great character. u support him all the way with him being unquestionable in his stance and ideology. the sexiest leftist suriya character, if i say so myself, ahem.

/////

5. ngk (ngk, 2019)

bonus: THIS IS IT. THE BIGGEST SIKE. THE BIGGEST WHIPLASH. THE BIGGEST BASTARD.

it’s here cos damn, when they released that first look, i completely lost my shit cos that poster was sooo heavily che inspired and very, very obviously marxist. cue me thinking that holy shit suriya is openly playing some kind of marxist guerilla revolutionary in ngk and he’s gonna be some brand of violent radical leftist i’m gonna fall in love with. the beret, the raised fists, the red.. i was ready to be head over heels for this guy.

except of course, none of this was true, cos once the film released, u know that poster was only meant to signify how his village looked up to him before he sold them all out. it’s literally just a mural on the wall where a kid stares up at him in a larger extended poster. he COULD have been that character, but ngk’s character arc was a negative character arc and his moral downfall from the start to the end of the film, sacrificing all he stood for to arrive at his end point which was just dragging his village and all the youngsters who believed in him to the pits before jumping party to the winning group and abandoning all of them after manipulating them to act in his favour to gain sympathy. not to mention, also selling out to corporate tools to harness their power and influence in order to rise to the top himself, something he very openly states at the beginning of the film to his mum and wife that working like that is no way to live. he has a full reverse by this point, compared to how ngk was introduced to us as an audience with that first look of him.

the marxist poster was a complete 180 to how ngk falls on the spectrum at the end, but it was a great ride nevertheless and at least one thing was still true - i still fell in love with him cos he was such an asshole bastard but still so hot i had to give in. biiiicchh. i love u, non-leftist regressive jerk. u may have pulled the biggest sike on me, but.. my heart is yours, slut <3

*****

ok that’s really it and all i wanted to say so hopefully at least a few people read this lmafooo. i do think these characters and time have sort of seeped into suriya over the years as evident by his shifting left in the last couple of years, and openly also saying he has had a lot of perspective changes on things around him. he has been noted in recent interviews saying stuff like how he’s in favour of a cashless society, talking about a whole new level of poverty class being created during this pandemic. his written articles/statements/agaram related speeches takes jibes at india’s education system being brahministic/casteist in nature and how it creates barriers for the lowest strata of society while also being very sensitive about student suicides, showing understanding of it as a systematic failure and not an individual one, courts not functioning for justice, not demonising protests as it’s the only act left for the voiceless, etc. it’s nice. i wouldn’t go as far as to call him a leftist until he proves that to me (suriya is still very much in that liberal zone of appreciating the police and military institutions so i will never consider him one of us until he sheds these allegiances and rethinks his stance on them in society), but i’d say he’s definitely the furthest left of all prominent actors in tamil cinema as no one else really has said or written the things that he has, for which i’m very proud of him.

so keep up the good work and hot shit comments and ballsy articles, suriya, i look forward to u shifting further left and pissing off everyone from right wing patriotic assholes, to centrist bootlickers, and even cowardly liberal pacifists. i believe in u and i hope he crosses that steep liberal curve soon since we were all there at some point as well.

that’s all goodbye i love suriya thanks for reading