#Dork Supreme 5000

[leviathanhomecooking]

What’s this weirdo doing

[berniesrevolution]

In the heyday of the internet message board, let’s say in the 1990s, a certain species of idiot materialized. He was male, aggressively pedantic, self-professedly logical, committed to the hard sciences, prone to starting sentences with “actually,” and almost always devoted to the notion that his disbelief in God imbued him with intellectual superiority. This archetype’s golden years were the 2000s, a decade that saw George W. Bush’s politicized creationism and the use of web forums peak in unison. Once that decade ended, the internet tired of his antics and made him central to a series of in-jokes —“neckbeard” described his less-than-stellar grooming habits; and his hat of choice, the fedora, became the butt of innumerable jokes during Obama’s first term. No longer needed or tolerated, this misunderstood paragon of Enlightenment-core values began a journey that brought him to the worst possible destination: the Republican Party.

The Bush years provided militant atheists and amateur debate enthusiasts adequate fodder for their performative condescension. It seems almost quaint in retrospect, but newish, performative Christianity was being lab-tested at the time. Bush himself was a born-again Christian who cited a vision from God when justifying the disastrous invasion of Iraq, and his leadership inspired zealots across the country to up the ante. In 2001, Jerry Falwell, who had recently accused the show Teletubbies of “modeling the gay lifestyle” to children, blamed 9/11 on pagans and abortionists. In 2003, Judge Roy Moore installed a 5000-pound Ten Commandments monument outside the Alabama Supreme Court, refused to comply with court orders to take it down, and was eventually removed from office as a result.

The Bush presidency was a fantastic moment in which to be a self-satisfied dork with a penchant for explaining things to people.

Richard Dawkins’s 2006 The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’s 2007 God Is Not Great each sold millions of copies, and Bill Maher’s Religulous was the highest grossing documentary of 2008. South Park lampooned Mormons, and internet trolls declared war on easy targets like the Westboro Baptist Church and the Church of Scientology. Until his disbarment in 2008, gamers mobilized to stop evangelical lawyer Jack Thompson from filing frivolous obscenity lawsuits against the makers of Grand Theft Auto. Atheists invented a religion around the “Flying Spaghetti Monster,” and demanded it be given equal weight in textbooks, to satirize the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. This subculture was dubbed “New Atheism.” It had a nice jaunt.

Once Bush left office, the promoters of “intelligent design” curricula retreated from the public sphere, and millennials asserted themselves as the least religious generation to date; the group that had coalesced around the practice logically refuting creationists needed new targets. One of the targets they chose was women. Militant atheism had always been male-dominated, but it took several years and a sea change in American politics for the sexism within its ranks to fully bloom. In 2011, skeptic blogger Rebecca Watson described in a YouTube video how a male fellow attendee of an atheist conference had followed her into an elevator at 4 a.m. in order to ask her on a date—behavior that, understandably, made her uncomfortable. The community erupted into what was later remembered as “Elevatorgate.” A forum was created to harass Watson, and Richard Dawkins himself wrote a comment telling her to “stop whining” because she had it better than victims of honor killings and female genital mutilation.

This dynamic played out again and again. In 2012, the popular atheist vlogger Thunderf00t (real name Phil Mason) aimed his sights at Watson in a video titled “Why ‘Feminism’ is poisoning Atheism,” thereby reigniting the previous year’s controversy. This time it took off, leading him to create several follow-up videos accusing women of destroying the paradise that was New Atheism for their own gain. In 2013, Mason inaugurated his “FEMINISM vs. FACTS” series of videos, which attacked Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist video game critic who was then receiving an onslaught of harassment and violent threats for daring to analyze Super Mario Bros. This sort of idiocy, combined, again, with the growing popularity of jibes associating outspoken atheists with fedoras, neckbeards, and virginity, led to an exodus of liberals and leftists from the “atheist” tent. Those who remained for the most part lacked in social skills and self-awareness, and the results were disastrous.

New Atheism and the Gamergate movement of 2014—which sicced vicious online mobs on female journalists and game designers based on spurious allegations of media corruption—overlapped in several ways. They were both male-dominated, the latter almost exclusively so, and they both festered on nerd-oriented internet forums. Both movements resented women and minorities who asserted themselves within those spaces, ostensibly because it provided an unimportant distraction from their respective goals of destroying religion and uncritically consuming entertainment products. The difference, though, was that Gamergate had no basis in reality. The central allegation of that controversy, that a developer slept with a Kotaku writer in order to secure a positive review of her game, was blatantly untrue. No such review existed, which posed a problem for anyone who viewed himself as the protagonist in a battle “vs. FEMINISM.” In order to continue this all-out war on feminists—the curious replacement creationists for a new decade that lacked for them—these New-New Atheists had to break with reality altogether.

The heirs to New Atheism may have a new target and a remodeled ethos, but their rhetorical crutches remain the same. They announce at every opportunity that they revere logic, evidence, and science, even if the opposite is plainly true. We saw this play out with James Damore, the engineer who was fired from Google after spreading a memo critiquing the company’s pro-diversity policies. Damore argued in his memo, titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” that biological differences between men and women, not sexism, could account for the lack of gender parity in the tech industry. In the memo, he repeatedly used the favored buzzwords of atheist pedants. He wrote that he “strongly value[s] individualism and reason,” claimed that “the Left tends to deny science” and asked that Google “be open about the science of human nature.” The repetition of these sentiments failed to strengthen his case, which was made from gut feeling and justified retroactively with garbled logic and irrelevant studies. An investigation by Wired found that two of the researchers Damore cited disagreed with the conclusions he drew from their work, with one telling them that “It is unclear to me that this sex difference would play a role in success within the Google workplace (in particular, not being able to handle stresses of leadership in the workplace. That’s a huge stretch to me).”

(Continue Reading)

[jamesttiberius]

obikin fic recs!!

the majority of ones i read for them are clone wars-era. all fics are complete! find more on my fic recs tumblr swficrecs! new ones at the top

teacups and droid repair by rocket_sith

Summary: Written for a kink meme prompt: Anakin/Obi-Wan. Arguing and bantering as foreplay. That's it. That's the prompt.

Anakin is being an obnoxious little kriff trying to get Obi-Wan's attention. He definitely gets it, but not exactly how he had in mind. (This is another tale from the fluffy bondage crypt. Tons of bantering and playing around, a little bit of an Anakin character study, but mostly it's just silly fluff. Nothing too explicit here, but it's scandalous enough to get a nice wholesome R rating.)

Rating: M 

Length: 5534 words

Thoughts: I love this?? rocket_sith just has an excellent grasp of their characters and this is wonderful. It’s a little bit of a tease, and I would have gladly read another 5000 words of this. Just. Wow. So great. I can totally see Anakin wanting this - he’s always going at a thousand miles an hour and gah this is just so, so amazing.

come to the jedi temple in the next ten minutes if you want an asskicking by destiny919

Summary: Anakin just shakes his head. "The Chancellor was right. You'll never really love me."

His mouth is already opening to retort when what Anakin actually said registers with Obi-Wan. "The Supreme Chancellor of the Republic said that to you about me?"

Rating: T

Length: 2952 words

Thoughts: This fic basically rewrites ep.3 by having Anakin and Obi-Wan actually talk to each other?? So that’s great. It’s made better by Obi-Wan calling Anakin darling and dear one (i loVE it) and some iconic humor like:

Suddenly, Anakin whips his head back around to stare at him with all of his intensity, which is what the kids call a metric fuckton.

and

He huffs. "Next time I see Master Yoda, I'm punting the little green troll across the Temple.“

There’s also some really sweet lines that speak to how much these two dorks love each other, and Obi-Wan refers to Ahsoka as “our padawan” which is my isH.

battle scars by rocket_sith

Summary: "If they couldn't find strength and peace in each other during the galaxy's darkest times, there was no point in fighting in the first place, and certainly no viable way to keep it up."

Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka deal with the fall-out of the Zygerria slavery incident. Anakin deals with his past, Obi-Wan deals with Anakin, and Ahsoka deals with nightmares. And with Anakin.

Rating: T

Length: 3874 words

Thoughts: A very nice coda to the Slaves of the Republic arc in Clone Wars. It’s not very heavy on the obikin but the interactions between them and Ahsoka in this is just so amazing. Anakin and Ahsoka are so pure™, and Obi-Wan just loves his dorks so much. There’s also this great line:

"Not to mention disgracing a proud tradition," Anakin added in mock seriousness. "I'll have you know we come from a long line of masters and padawans bonding through exchanging irreverent bullshit."

It also includes some discussion of the Jedi using the term master and how Anakin adjusted to that, which is something I think about a lot and enjoyed seeing dealt with like this.

five hundred by handacrossthesea

Summary: "My thoughts need to be on something else other than idle misuse of the Force.”

“Misuse? You certainly didn’t say that on Nar Shadda when I-“

Obi-Wan stops him with a finger to the lips. “Do try to remember where we are – and there is a time and place for… misuse… and it’s not here.”

Rating: E

Length: 8673 words

Thoughts: A smutty fic in the middle of the Clone Wars. The beginning scene at the medbay is definitely one of my favorite things I’ve ever read. Unexpectedly some of the best dialogue I’ve ever read, too, in or out of fics.

starbird by imaginarykat

Summary: As far as Anakin’s concerned, Obi-Wan is the picture of a perfect Jedi.

or, Anakin thinks he knows everything about Obi-Wan but doesn't. Anakin thinks a lot of things, actually, and he's wrong about most of them. Anakin's whole world view is turned upside down. Obi-Wan is having the time of his life.

Rating: T

Length: 8856 words

Thoughts: imaginarykat is one of the staple writers for this pairing, and it’s so easy to see why. Characterization and dialogue so on point, and such interesting concepts, too. I particularly enjoyed the motifs in this one about the legends Anakin remembers from Tatooine, and of course, I loved the way Obi-Wan is written here. That picture-perfect poster-boy Jedi is simply a facade, and here Anakin finally realizes it. Just really satisfying from the Obi-Wan is a badass point of view.

we should run after each other (and be with one another) by resacon1990

Summary: Even though he’s still full of anger and rage, he pushes it all aside to force a smile and squeeze Anakin’s shoulders.

“No, Anakin,” he says quietly, “I could never blame you for his death.”

It’s the first time Obi-Wan ever lies to Anakin.

or

Five times Obi-Wan lied to Anakin, and the one time he told the truth.

Rating: T

Length: 12026 words

Thoughts: 5+1 fics are kind of my favorites, and this one is so good. Wow. Amazing. Brilliant. It hurts, but it’s about Obi-Wan, so that’s not surprising. Touches on 5 moments starting when they first pick Anakin up from Tatooine and through the Clone Wars. It’s just - wow. The emotions in this are so well written, and I have no words to describe them. To be honest, I kind of don’t love the very end, but the rest of the fic is just so brilliant I had to include it.