#How many people that disenfranchises and removes from communities

[miraphoenix]

Right off the bean, this is not a callout post. I'd talk to the person this is about 1-on-1, but a) he's had me blocked for 4 years, and b) it's mutual. This is me venting on my personal blog, something that he decided to vague about me doing back when I had my first blog.

With that out of the way. I'm really fucking tired of people stealing from Valenth/Revecroir, and from its creator.

Years and years ago, when they were a literal child, my bff/queer life partner--for the purpose of this post, their name is Leupai--made lizard-critters with hands on their tongues and called them leupaks. Eventually, they ended up splitting off from Subeta where they worked at the time, making an affiliated petsite called Valenth where the leupaks featured quite prominently as creatures in a fantasy-meets-steampunk world.

Unfortunately, their boss was a piece of work, and following a rather large kerfluffle involving another petsite lifting other elements of my partner's work (namely, a dragon concept and a companion concept), my partner was fired by the Subeta head boss. The leupaks were renamed into leupai, and Valenth expanded into Revecroir. This was in 2014, give or take a few months.

Through about half of the Valenth era and into the Revecroir era, Leupai was dating someone else, who went by Sixar at the time, later Kismeti, and the two had a long-distance open relationship. Kismeti also did a fair amount of site art for Valenth, and described himself as Leupai's biggest fan; when he'd met Leupai originally, his username referenced leupaks, he had a bunch of leupak characters, and a leupak sona. I met both of them in 2013-2014, right around the close of Valenth, and started chatting with them both. Leupai was more responsive, Kismeti was more reserved, but I did the best I could.

Over the years, I kept trying to reach out to Kismeti, but found that Leupai was honestly more willing to talk with me, so I did become better friends with them. Note that I was friends with Leupai, and trying to be friends with Kismeti. We chatted, we sent memes, we played World of Warcraft, I bought folks pizza across the Pacific Ocean, you know the drill.

Through this, I became really familiar with Leupai's world, at that point named Revecroir. I got to know their lore, their worldbuilding, their current projects, and the leupai creatures themselves.

The leupai were--and are!--still fat lizards with paws on their tongues, who can open portals between worlds with acid in their claws, who transfer their consciousnesses to other bodies if one is destroyed, and whose strength comes from the realm of dreams and creativity. In the early days, in lore that wasn't publicized, leupai were roaming around to find a world to live on after Valenth. This was a project that was supposed to be worked on with Kismeti, but nothing really ever came of it. Eventually, Leupai kind of moved on from that storyline to write more about Revecroir itself.

At the same time, I tried asking Kismeti about his worldbuilding, because he had characters and allegedly a world of his own, but didn't really get a lot in the way of answers. I saw a lot of Sonic fanart, I saw a lot of homestuck, I saw a lot of MLP:FiM, I saw a lot of Captain Planet. Eventually, I kind of... Gave up asking? And that's on me, but frankly, if you ask someone to share their stuff and they don't share their stuff, I figure that's the signal to stop asking.

As time went on, though, I was seeing some cracks forming in the 10-year relationship between the two, and I was helping Leupai through a lot. I watched as he yelled at my best friend for not responding to messages fast enough. I watched as he made plans with Leupai and then fucked off to do other things for hours, leaving Leupai in the lurch and worried about his physical safety. I watched as he gaslit Leupai about their ability to use a computer. On one memorable instance, when Leupai's internet was unstable while we were all playing WoW together, Leupai left the voice call to go reset the router, and Kismeti decided that it was a great time to shit-talk Leupai's intelligence to me. For a half hour straight. Until Leupai rejoined the call.

Eventually, I visited Leupai in person and watched as they were broken down to tears by Kismeti failing to respect their boundaries for literal hours, until Leupai caved to Kismeti's preferences. That was a rough night, and I remember wondering why the fuck my best friend's partner was treating them so badly.

About a month and a half after I visited Leupai, they decided to break up with Kismeti, because they'd had enough of him verbally berating them for not responding fast enough to memes sent over instant message, among so many other things. He, to put it mildly, lost his shit.

(For the record, I know what went down, because Leupai had me read the messages sent back and forth, to make sure they were grounded, and were reading things right. I've seen logs going back 10 years. His original vague accused me of not knowing what I was talking about, but boy howdy I was either there, or have read the raw logs.)

Anyway, he begged for Leupai back. Leupai gave him a chance that he fucked up within a day. Leupai said goodbye and blocked him. He then started messaging me about this on discord, clearly trying to use me as a go-between to get to Leupai.

At the time, I was going through some Complex Feelings about my own abuse by various people in my life, triggered by his behavior, so was reblogging a lot of support stuff on my original blog. I guess he decided this was vaguing about him, because he made a vaguepost accusing me of not knowing all the details (unbeknownst to him, I'd read everything) and finally blocked me.

I figured this chapter in my life was done at this point, and moved the fuck on. Made a new blog because I didn't feel like getting all his shit off my old one, moved across the country, got a new job, the whole shebang. Leupai and I entered our odd QPP/partners/bffs/???? phase, and I genuinely didn't think much about him, unless I was helping listen to Leupai talk about stuff they'd gone through with him.

Until this year. When I saw some comment of his break containment and end up on my dash, under the name "riftclaw". I had a bit of an inkling, so I broke my "don't look" rule and looked at the linked toyhouse to confirm it was really him.

Turns out, riftclaws are... Lizard creatures. Who open portals between worlds with acid in their claws. Who are looking for a new world to call their own. And who have some divine properties, that may involve body switching.

And all of Kismeti/riftclaw's old leupai characters are now riftclaws.

Oh, and he was planning to make them into a closed species. To make money off them.

Now, leupai were decently popular back in the day. I still have leupai characters, and make some periodically from time to time. There's a tag on tumblr and everything; if you're reading this, there's a decent chance you remember Vee yourself, as a fair number of my followers were there too. People still talk about Valenth from time to time. Leupai still has a folder of old fanart from back in the day with some 800 pieces of art in it. They were, by all accounts, successful until they weren't.

But the height of popularity was back when Vee was still around, in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The only new stuff in the tags is from an archive blog of old Vee assets.

Despite that, though. And I know this from messages between the pair, I know that Kismeti tore into Leupai repeatedly for "being more popular" and "having more eyes on their work". Even though "those eyes" didn't keep Leupai fed or housed, or really give them any income. Even though "those eyes" meant getting 50 notes on a tumblr post as opposed to 20. Even though "those eyes" just increased thievery and the constant pressure to be a Content Creator(tm), and were a major part of what drove Leupai off the internet entirely starting in 2018.

So imagine. Imagine for a moment. Being so hungry for clout and attention. That you steal your ex-partner's species concept that they've had since they were literally 8 years old, barely file off the serial numbers, and then make that your entire online persona four full years after your partner broke up with your ass twice for being an abusive piece of shit over a 10-year timeframe.

To borrow my own tags from this post, which got me thinking about all of this again?

#This is all to say; if you're jealous of someone else's success? Fine. Go have your emotion. But don't lift their shit.#Your emotions are valid; your actions aren't.

(Oh, and this is the smallest thing in the world, the least important piece of this? Riftclaws are already a thing from a game released in 2016 called Grim Dawn.)

[drdemonprince]

This is kind of late re: the culture conversation but I feel like I have a kind of weird perspective on this general idea of cultural appropriation re:embodiment. I’m Italian American, and indigenous South American but I was born in the US and when we immigrated to the US my South American ethnic group is so small and my parents were in Japan so long they culturally assimilated and I was raised in the Japanese immigrant community and literally went to Japanese day school.

This tension between who is “allowed” to participate in a culture or identity has always been deeply fraught for me in a way that has kind of bulldozed my understanding of cultural ownership. Not being “ethnically” Japanese has led to many people deciding for me what the appropriateness of my cultural participation is. And being indigenous South American complicates my relationship to standard cultural alignment with latinidad more broadly.

I have a lot of friends who are white USAmericans who are progressive but also deeply concerned about the boundaries between themselves and the cultures they studied in college and the countries they taught English in as migrant workers. I had a conversation with one of my friends who worked in China and he was talking about how he didn’t mind being legally disenfranchised because he was a white American migrant and didn’t feel it was necessary for him to have the same legal rights as Chinese citizens. And I had to point out that he was living in the same disenfranchised conditions as any other immigrant and there was no reason for him to downplay it. I don’t think it’s disingenuous or appropriative for him to have Chinese art in his house or cook Chinese food or participate in Chinese culture. Not because he lived there or had a complicated legal status in the country or somehow crossed some imaginary threshold of true and genuine cultural appreciation but just because culture is what you do its not a given fact of who you are. It’s a seamless part of his life and just because he sought it out doesn’t make it less genuine to me.

I think because of my complicated upbringing I have spent a lot of time with people between cultures, reconnecting, adopting new ones and feel very strongly that if there is no biological tie to culture people can incorporate whatever they want into their lives and it’s a VERY US American perspective to be so self critical and political about it.

And this isn’t to say cultural exploitation doesn’t exist but when it does happen it’s usually underpinned by a capital motivation to sell an idea of a culture and not a weird white guy who got really into Buddhism or a several generations totally removed Italian American incorporating Panettone into their Christmas celebrations. When people cross the line it’s cringe and inauthentic but it rarely goes beyond that.

When I was in college I had a professor who studied my indigenous ethnic group and I took a couple of his classes. Once I brought my grandmother and mom to campus to speak with him in our indigenous language, and my grandmother spoke to him for three hours straight. He was a white man from Michigan but also one of my only connections to my culture, a person to practice and share my language with, to connect with my family. And all because he thought South American indigenous groups were interesting and got a job with Amnesty International to investigate the dictatorship to get down there. He is the kind of man people wag their finger at and he was one of the most important cultural elders I had.

This is a long way to say basically I just really believe we are allowed to make our lives whatever we want and make ourselves whatever we want. The phenomenon of white Americans in search of culture exists for the reasons you listed below and outside of these political discussions about its appropriateness and its moral boundaries there are just people doing and embodying that cultural fluidity and exchange for a million different reasons that aren’t worth litigating. The small town gay kids who move to big cities and hang out in the leather scene, getting into punk or hardcore or goth scenes, even converting to a new religion function under the same mechanism of the kind of cultural immersion that gives you access to the community and membership in the culture that weebs who immigrate to Japan to teach English, or international students coming to America, or inter cultural or inter faith partnerships undergo.

Anyways thanks for listening to my treatise. So to whoever’s reading this take the dance class or the traditional craft class or learn a new language or learn to cook new kinds of food make all different types of friends and make new traditions out of old ones or old traditions out of new perspectives. Culture isn’t a sacred part of who we are it’s a sacred form of the things we do and embody and connect with others through :-) <3

this is an incredible, wise, compassionate message. Thank you so much for sending it. You've said so much here about the problems of tying cultural identity to a race, ethnicity, or blood, or to regard it as static or isolated. And how much the standard racist American conceptions of racial and ethnic identity make structural discussions about disenfranchisement worldwide hard to have. Said so so much far better than I could, thank you!!

[hanna-lulu]

i’ve been comparing the usa now to germany circa the late 1930s and it is not a favorable comparison.

let’s see what we’ve got:

increasing antisemitism

increasing transphobia

increasing ableism

continued oppression of indigenous peoples

laws being introduced to ban gender-affirming care and remove children from their homes if they are allowed to live as they wish

books being banned for having honest and age-appropriate portrayals of race/racism and queerness/homophobia

pushing maid (medical assistance in dying) on people with disabilities and even people who are just poor (this is more in canada but i’m including it here anyway)

a right wing that is seen as ridiculous and absurd, yet is somehow still managing to hold onto power while liberals/leftists laugh it off as if they’ll run out of steam

it’s important to note that in the 1930s, when hitler came to power, the international community thought he was a joke. his overblown rhetoric was silly, his history was laughable, and nobody took him seriously. they thought it would all blow over. also, he wasn’t saying anything that a lot of people didn’t secretly agree with. antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and racism were widespread throughout europe and the usa, and a lot of people had less of a problem with what he was saying and more with how he was saying it. (think kanye west’s antisemitic comments, which joe rogan did attempt to stop him from making so blatantly, but didn’t actually disagree with.)

the first medical and educational facility for gender affirming care was in berlin. did you know that? the institut für sexualwissenschaft (known variably in english as institute of sex research, institute of/for sexology, or institute for the science of sexuality) was founded in 1919 and headed by magnus hirschfeld, who was both gay and jewish. he helped build a library in the institute that was dedicated to the topics of gender, eroticism, and same-sex love. the research undertaken there regarded sexual health of all people, gay, transgender, and intersex, as well as counseling and treatment for alcoholism, gynecological issues, venereal diseases, contraceptives, and more. sexual reassignment surgeries were performed successfully there. the goal was to help those who were suffering because they could not live as who they truly were and to educate the common people, because people fear what they see as different, what they cannot understand.

you won’t find the books in that library today. they were burned as part of the nazis’ campaign of terror and censorship. in 1933, 6 years before world war 2 officially broke out, the institut was broken into and looted by the deutsche studentenschaft (aka the german student union). young adults who had spent their formative years surrounded by hateful rhetoric were accompanied by a brass band as they destroyed this oasis of understanding and knowledge. hirschfeld himself had fled germany years before, as he had been targeted numerous times by nationalists/far right “activists”.

berlin once had a thriving queer community. germany was a home to many jews, my own great-grandparents included. my great-grandmother’s younger brother had a learning disability. their home turned on them out of fear and ignorance, the people told by their leaders that other human beings were not really human, but degenerate filth. my great-grandparents escaped with their lives. many– my great-grandma’s brother included– did not.

the concentration camps that imprisoned and killed so many jewish, queer, and/or disabled people (as well as romani and political prisoners, and japanese-americans IN THE USA) are not consigned to the past. our prison system disenfranchises those who are placed in it and uses them for unpaid labor. refugees are caged for daring to hope that our country– the so-called “land of the free”– would take them in when their homes turned on them. indigenous people are ridiculed and attacked for wanting to help our planet heal and for asking to conserve the land that was stolen from their ancestors. almost a hundred years since the holocaust, and we still haven’t learned.

don’t look away from this. it’s not going to blow over. those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and we are already experiencing a resurgence of fascist beliefs and rhetoric.

write to your representatives. VOTE. protest if and when you can. show them that we are HERE and we refuse to be written out of the history books, banned or burned away. we are human beings. we live and love and deserve to do so with dignity.

and if appealing to your humanity isn’t enough, remember this poetic version of a quote by german lutheran pastor martin niemöller, an early nazi collaborator and antisemite who later changed his views and opposed hitler’s oppressive regime:

“first they came for the socialists, and i did not speak out–

because i was not a socialist.

then they came for the trade unionists, and i did not speak out–

because i was not a trade unionist.

then they came for the jews, and i did not speak out–

because i was not a jew.

then they came for me– and there was no one left to speak for me.”

there is always another enemy in fascism. anyone who is different will eventually be a target. white supremacy is poison, and fitting the mold of a “perfect citizen” cannot keep you safe. queer infighting and pushing down people who you find “too weird” will not stop the people who hate all of us. to the far right, we are all wrong to our very cores. solidarity in the face of oppression is the only way to survive, live, and thrive.

[hussyknee]

Twitter feels like an even split between pro-Palestine supporters and the most horrific kind of racists, Zionists and white supremacists. Tumblr is by comparison overwhelmingly in support of Palestine. And yet the level of dehumanization, isolation, Othering and casual racism on here is so much more unbearable and suffocating than Twitter could ever be.

Tumblr wants to be seen as the anti-racist good guys on the right side of history while reinforcing the racist white supremacist western-centric status quo. Black and brown people are given platform under strict conditions of what values can be challenged and how far white comfort can be pushed. It's on Twitter that we have our own communities, our own power of advocacy, and a collective drive to interrogate and dismantle structures of power.

It reinforces what I have known for a long time— Tumblr's hatred of Twitter and TikTok is based primarily on refusing to tolerate the reality of equal representation, leftist action and racial justice. A true diversity of power and perspectives is messy, chaotic, conflict-driven and upends the sense of stability and space that can only come with a homogeneity of racial demographic. The majority of disenfranchised people understands that power structures and bureaucracies are built on purpose to exclude them — the poor, the sex workers, the incarcerated, the ghettoised, the disabled, the colonized. We have to fight to be heard, and our reality and political investment cannot be separated from the minority trauma that informs them. True equality entails not having to funnel that trauma through behaviour and ethics that makes their expression more palatable or considering of others; it removes all respectability politics and allows us to behave with the same unpunished toxicity that is unleashed on us by white and western people. Conflict, cacophony and having to tolerate the untempered emotions and self-interest of all groups is the price of true diversity and honest dialogue. It also primarily empowers Black and brown people and disempowers whites. In contrast, the "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" on predominantly white-driven and Western-oriented spaces is a simply a neoliberal farce that requires us to perform our own humanity and ask validation from whiteness. This is why you see only the worst aspects and negative effects of Twitter and TikTok and use them to reject the the platforms wholesale while creating a narrative of moral superiority around Tumblr's relatively low levels of conflict and glossing over the receding presence of Black and brown people in its userbase.

Race is not a layer of oppression. It's the fundamental bisection that creates the underclass on which the colonial capitalist world order is built. It's the caste hierarchy of humanity; who gets to be labourer and profiteer, the exploiter and exploited, the worker and producer, the consumer and consumed, the masses and the individual. The living bodies and embodied lives. The experience of every other marginalization is shaped by its waters. White women and queers will neither understand nor share in the oppression of women and QPoC from both diasporas and the Global South. Even further, every marginalization becomes a weapon against BIPOC in the hands of its white demographic. Black and brown people of those marginalized communities will always only be a token and shield for their white counterparts, while being the workhorses behind their struggles.

It doesn't matter how many times you post "Free Palestine" when we know its only the product of your preoccupation with your own personal moral landscape. Politics based on egoism will always be eclipsed by threats to your material reality. This is why a userbase that spent its entire existence grandstanding against Nazis now cannot see Zionists as Nazis and begs people to participate in a political establishment that has revealed itself to be a genocidal white supremacist regime in the clearest possible terms. Fascism against its own enfranchised is the end stage of an empire that has begun to collapse under the weight of its war-mongering and now resorts to eating itself to survive. No amount of moral distance between yourselves and its machinery of death, no amount of scapegoating the lives crushed underneath it, will stop the roofs you sheltered under falling on top of you. This the truth that the colonized, enslaved and indentured people that built your house have lived all along.

[bigshoeswamp]

"In 1897, a group of soldiers returned to their hometown of Rio de Janeiro after months in the battlefield. Poor, unemployed, and lacking any kind of government assistance, they settled in one of the city’s poorest areas, then called “Morro da Providência” (Providence Hill). Not long after, due to the overwhelming presence of those destitute soldiers who fought for the Republican Army, the area lost this name and earned a new epithet. Years later its name became a worldwide synonym for disenfranchised urban communities, which it retains until today: Morro da Favela (Favela Hill). Favela or faveleira is a plant common to Brazil’s semiarid regions. Its existence became nationally known as thousands of army personnel – together with cannons, machine guns, and other industrial weaponry – were sent to fight and destroy a backland town in Bahia between 1896 and 1897. Surrounded by these favela plants, the town of Canudos was the stage for one of the bloodiest episodes in Latin American history, which historians reckon left some thirty thousand dead. At the end of the war, newspapers celebrated the progressive forces of the Republic for ridding the country of an unwelcome community of thousands of backland free poor, indigenous people, and the so-called “May 13th” (a derogatory term for formerly enslaved persons who had become free when Brazil passed the emancipation law on May 13, 1888). However, unable to explain how the rebels were able to put up a formidable fight against the country’s official army, many – from contemporaries such as the journalist Euclides da Cunha to twentieth-century academic historians – chose to explain the rebels’ endurance and brave resistance as the effect of a messianic movement. Ignorant and gullible – so the story goes – the poor inhabitants of Bahia’s backlands had become blind followers of a charismatic leader, Antonio Conselheiro, who supposedly had promised them heaven on earth. Such a simplistic explanation, though, not only fails to account for the hazardous impacts of decades-long liberal policies – from land encroachment to criminalizing laws – but also for poor peoples’ ability to understand and resist them. Unwilling to conform, the Canudos rebels were labeled as fanatics and denied a place in modern society. Exclusion in this case, as in many others throughout Latin American history, literally meant demise. The violence of the War of Canudos extended beyond the slaughtering of Bahia’s rebel poor. The very soldiers who committed this massacre returned home to encounter nothing but poverty and exclusion: They became the inhabitants of the Morro da Favela. As it happened so many times in nineteenth-century Latin America, the poor killed one another to further the projects of visionaries who could not care less about the welfare of ordinary men and women. Those who survived the wars the elite had created encountered poverty and exclusion at every turn. But the elites were more than satisfied: Another obstacle – another alternative way of life – had been removed from the path to political and economic 'progress.''"

Monica Dantas; Roberto Saba. Contestations and Exclusions In: The Cambridge History of Latin American Law in Global Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2024.

[gascon-en-exil]

a non-FE question from a person with a tenuous familial connection to quebec (anglo father adopted by a québécois couple) who's always curious about the different francophone experiences: my dad spent a lot of time in new orleans and loved it, but how do the new orleans francophones generally regard the québécois? are there any particular culture clashes?

Unfortunately there aren't many actual culture clashes because there's so little contact. Louisiana and Québec are separated by thousands of kilometers and a national border, and everything from vastly different climates to separate experience with resisting forced assimilation has caused us to diverge from one another quite substantially. I'm glad that I've made friends in Québec, and it seems like every week we're discovering some point of commonality we share in spite of everything that divides us, but that's an entirely personal connection that I sought out myself. Just a few days ago for example a few of them were sharing this post on Facebook:

and they asked me to tell them more about Louisiana king cakes, our spin on the traditional French galettes des rois which are still prepared in Québec apparently just as they are in France.

But let's see if I can condense our biggest differences to some bullet points.

Language: Québec is well known for being a majority French-speaking province, whereas Louisiana is...not. Practically all of the Louisianais are fluent English speakers, because starting from the 1870s French in Louisiana was stigmatized and systemically excluded from education, business, and politics. In recent decades there have been attempts at reviving the language, but they've been slow to take root without a foundation in the home to build upon. Both the Louisianais and Québécois practice code switching (the linguistic term for switching between languages in casual conversation), albeit in opposite ways. The Québécois speak mostly French but will include occasional English words and phrases in their speech, whereas as mentioned the Louisianais primarily communicate in English but use a variety of French terms and names as well as direct English translations of French not used in standard English (ex. "making groceries," a literal translation of faire les courses). This stark contrast is because of...

Population and politics: I won't pretend to understand the Québécois political system in any real depth. I do get however that a large part of the reason that they've been able to maintain a limited degree of autonomy as well as preserve their language is that ethnic French people vastly outnumber Anglos in Québec, and Québec constitutes a much larger percentage of Canada's population and economy than Louisiana does the US's, even back in the 19th century when New Orleans was a much larger city relative to the rest of the US than it is today. Beginning shortly after the Louisiana Purchase, Anglo-Americans began moving into northern and central Louisiana, establishing settlements and slowly pushing southward toward and even into New Orleans. This combined with various political maneuvers that progressively weakened Creole control in the area - splitting what are now coastal Mississippi and Alabama, which had initially been settled by the French, off from Louisiana, moving the capital from New Orleans to a then-barely-inhabited upriver border fort: Baton Rouge, which is mostly Anglo-populated despite the name - resulted in the Louisianais having far less control over our own state than what the Québécois have. Compound that with the aforementioned stigmatization of the French language, and many of the Louisianais have been left feeling disenfranchised and unwilling to participate in national politics. Louisiana is a "red state," in US political parlance, because its biggest voting demographic consists of the very same sort of people that make up the surrounding Bible Belt. Speaking of...

Religion: Québec had its Quiet Revolution in the 1960s, largely removing the presence of the Catholic Church and moving closer to France's model of laïcité/secularism. By contrast, Catholicism is still a highly visible element of life and culture in southern Louisiana, and Catholic education continues to be the standard in New Orleans. This is down to several factors, ranging from the poor quality of public services (not helped, surely, by the voters of northern Louisiana who like US conservatives in general recoil in horror from anything that might be dubbed socialism) to a matter of cultural preservation. The Bible Belt is an aggressively Protestant region, dominated by denominations that have historically held Catholics in poor regard. The US at large also has a long history of anti-Catholic discrimination, particularly in large cities like Boston and Chicago where Catholic immigrants formed a large percentage of the working classes. Southern Louisiana, however, has been majority Catholic since the colony's founding over three centuries ago, and presided over by specifically Latin Catholics in spirit if not in actual practice for all that time. The Louisianais have used that to make allies of other Catholic populations who've moved here, mostly the Spanish and Italians but also more recent immigrants like the Vietnamese. While I wouldn't describe most of us as religious in the sense that the US conceives of that term (I'm certainly not), Catholicism is still a crucial part of our heritage and the preservation of this region as a cultural enclave. I've had trolls calling me a conservative religious nut job because I call myself a Catholic, and yet ironically here we associate the Church with the city's decadent and libertine atmosphere. The focus on visual aesthetics, the relaxed attitude toward alcohol and sex and even sin itself...it's all in sharp contrast to the austerity of Bible Belt Protestants who descend upon New Orleans at regular intervals to protest Mardi Gras and Decadence and call us the new Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. And finally...

Climate: I said it before and it's a comparatively much more straightforward issue, but it really does make a difference. When we're in the height of our social season courtesy of mild subtropical winters, Québec is buried under snow. The reverse is true in summer, which in Louisiana is long and lethally hot and humid and plagued by disease-bearing insects and the ever-present threat of hurricanes. This has also affected our cuisine. Louisiana has a rich and internationally-recognized culinary tradition that builds upon a French foundation with a wealth of local innovations based on crops that thrive in this climate as well as the bounty of the Gulf of Mexico. Québec has...poutine. Obviously I'm joking a bit there, but it's telling that there are multiple Louisiana-themed eateries in Montréal - but the reverse is not true. I've always heard that hot weather climates produce richer and more diverse cuisines than cold weather climates, and I suppose that in this case at least it's true.

[thediktatortot]

I keep seeing like 5 different ways that people are wanting to help tumblr, change tumblr or fight against tumblr and I have still yet to see anyone make any concrete ideas as to what it is people are supposed to do in order to keep the site from being monetized & become something it's not.

If the site does not pay off it's debt, it will eventually cease to exist. If you don't petition for change, it will continue to label queer bodies as mature and sexual, continue to remove BIPOC folk from it's premise and continue to allow white supremacists to infiltrate this site.

So what's the options? What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to change a site without everyone sitting down and actually talking about what change means and how to get there?

I see so many people just tossing out ideas that in theory do work in one way or another, but might not fix all the problems so there HAS to be something that can fix things without disenfranchising half the communities on this site?

There's so many "don't do this, this hurts these people and now your a horrible person for suggesting this thing." When most the people on this site have no idea who most of each other are and why or how it would effect people.

Give actual insight as to what could be done to get Staff to pick up their fucking big boy pants and do their job. Going around and telling people that they are horrible people for trying to suggest a solution or the people who share those solutions in an attempt to help isn't going to help anyone.

This isn't aimed at one post or idea in particular either, I've seen NUMEROUS ideas floating around that in theory could work for one thing or another and all there is, is people shooting these ideas down without actually backing up with something that might work.

Half the people on this site are children who have no idea how websites work on a corporate level, the other half are adults who've been on this site since they were children and just want the site to stay online and not disappear. There's disabled people who need this site (I'm one of them) to keep having a social life, there's artists who need this site to contuse having any form of recognition, there's writers who've got their entire portfolio on here and people who's entire blogs are dedicated to helping queer and trans kids learn about themselves and communities dedicated to finding people like themselves so they don't feel so alone in this world.

So what is it? What are we supposed to do? Without money the site fades away, with strikes you completely disenfranchise entire groups of people, without fighting against the staffs changes, current policies and lack of care about the white supremacists and TERFS that run rampant then people are still going to get harassed, reported into the ground and completely removed from the site for no reasons at all.

So if you have any fucking ideas then please actually tell people because at this point, everyone's trying to not get people to do one thing or another and yet no one is backing up these ideas with actual action that will work.

[patricia-von-arundel]

CONTENT WARNING: transphobia, other prejudices, suicide/murder, violence, family and religious trauma

I am going to tag with "transphobia" for now, but please let me know if there is another tag you need, especially considering how curious the human mind gets. Anon is on if that's your preference.

And for the record, I am not trans.

Irony being that she blocked me yesterday (TDOV) for saying there are reasons to include pronouns in your info besides being trans after this:

Well, lady, I'm long past silence, period, with people who refuse to realize that they are perpetuating the same sorts of dehumanizing behaviors they would likely call horrendous when safely viewed through being decades removed from it. It's theoretically no longer acceptable (wantonly and unapologetically - you have to at least pretend there was some other reason... like being trans/gay) to murder, ostracize, belittle, etc., people for their religion, or skin color, or ethnicity, or political orientation, or or or...

I know it happens everyday. I'm a lot of things, but stupidly naive isn't one of them. Not my point here -

And that point is, that openly making fun of, demeaning, or verbally abusing a particular group of people generally only happens when the person doing it knows they will have at least some community support. This is true in people from the moment they can toddle around with enough balance to hit the kid who has the toy truck they want. The 2-year-old gets upset not because of empathy with the other, but because they got caught and in trouble.

Empathy develops to some extent for most. But not all. 🤷‍♀️ And many adults never seem to escape the desperate need to be part of an in-group, and potentially dehumanize or disenfranchise an out-group to be given that part.

While being "normal" gay/lesbian (aka, "stop complicating things and get in the box we've assigned you!") has slooooowly begun to swing closer to being mainstream acceptable or at least somewhat tolerated (and I would dearly love to take a stick to "love the sinner, hate the sin" bullshit), those who do not fall neatly into such categories are still stuck fleeing the field of open season.

I do have a question, though, for those who mock gender identities, pronouns, etc. -

My grandmother died 13 years ago. She grew up in the rural Southeastern US, born in the 1920s. She supported the Civil Rights movement.

But she would not let POC use the bathroom in her house.

My question is: do you think this acceptable? Do you think it is okay to use a particular time, place, and social norms to justify continuing to support and perpetuate microaggressions that were seen only 60-odd years ago as normal?

If you would find it demeaning and horrifying that there are white people who continue to refuse to let black people pee in their toilet, answer me honestly:

How is it not just as demeaning and horrifying to refuse someone's preference for what you call them, in names, or pronouns, or both?

"But I never actually hurt anyone!"

Yeah - neither did my grandmother.

"Look, it's funny. Sorry. But it is. What the fuck is a Ze/Zir? Sounds like some crazy lesbian sci-fi move. 🤣"

Verbal aggression is still aggression.

And here is what I said that got me blocked:

Human history is full of people who shrug and accept the status quo, people who look the other way, and people using the former behaviors to justify their own. Mocking and demeaning seem "harmless" - until they aren't.

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?!" asked Henry II, frustrated that his new Archbishop of Canterbury was being difficult. After all, Thomas had been picked specifically so that he would side with the king and nobilty over the pope and church! And now he wasn't cooperating. At all.

And maybe the quote above isn't quite how it went. The Zapruder manuscript has yet to be found. 🤷‍♀️ But he said something while grumpy and sulking.

And by the end of 1170, Thomas Becket's brains were splattered all over the altar at Canterbury Cathedral.

I'm not saying one obscure author mocking pronouns is going to end up with anyone murdered. Almost certainly, it will not. But such microaggressions can snowball. If more and more people find more and more dehumanizing behavior acceptable... where does it stop?

With heads smashed open before a church altar? With the wanton murder of thousands through Crusade? With civil war and invasion? With slavery and genocide? With forced marriages, chemical castration, jail, banishment?

All have happened.

But whatever your personal stance on pronouns... even just mocking, arguing that the trend of choosing gender and pronouns is "absurd," may leave you one day wondering if anything will be capable of scrubbing away the stains it may leave on your hands.

Ask yourself what your grandchildren might think of your behavior, one day.

And for anyone reading while dealing with your own trauma and self-harm, please reach out, if at all possible, to people who can help you. You deserve to be safe, and respected, and loved.

You deserve to live. And I hope we can keep working together to make that a life you'll love to live. 💖🏳️‍⚧️

[bootsykitty]

Repost from Substack

Also some topics I plan on covering at one point or another…

Discussion of Attribution Theory and its real world consequences.

How Capitalists are bad at doing capitalism and frequently shoot themselves in the face with regards to long term viability and profits.

Related, short term vs long term thinking. So much of our society is rushed and as a result much of our “solutions” come from reactive ways of thinking and viewing problems, rather than more long term thinking both in the past and into the future and addressing our issues in a proactive way.

Scarcity mindset driving “pick me” mentality among people suffering at the hands of capitalism in its myriad of forms. It as a form of assimilation or safeguarding oneself, often at the peril of the remainder of the community one belongs to.

A basic concept that has been discussed before, but the reality that everything is made up. We only stick with it because everyone else does and it’s easier to go along than risk being ostracized by groups who would find change uncomfortable to say the least.

Most of us don’t know how to think because we haven’t been taught robust ways to think. Instead we’ve been taught broken ways of thinking that will never let most of us get back to the core problems that we are suffering from.

Socialization is a tool of oppression. From marketing to the indoctrination many receive through religion, the very real risk of ostracization and the rewards and punishments that keep us in line. And that these can come from a myriad of sources; family, friends, marketing, and just broader society which we engage with every day.

Our way of being socialized to deify the rich and demonize the poor. And the myriad of psychological impacts that ensure this stays in place, from the notion that we may wish to escape our circumstances and see wealth as a path out, to the fear inherent in a society that might no longer care about and messaging that says those who suffer such a fate deserve it and the psychological break we must have in order to feel like that surely could never be us…that we aren’t bad so it can’t happen to us.

Community vs Isolation (Individualism). The notion of bootstraps pulling as the only way to survive capitalism. It’s a convenient way to separate us from each other and put an undue burden on ourselves…of surviving without community, despite that not being reflected in our evolutionary history. And because people can’t make this untenable solution work, they are left to conclude that the failure is their own. All of this is to stifle the ability to organize among workers, family, friends, as everyone has their issues no matter how much they may try to deny it, and everyone needs help from time to time, and acting otherwise is unnatural and self-defeating. It also has the effect of separating families before they should be. Driving generations apart and removing the learning aspect from elders at much too early of an age. Leaving young folks even more bereft of a healthy knowledge base that could make their lives easier. This further drives other paranoia like the concept of white erasure, where birth rates among white folks are lower. But it s capitalism that is removing familial support. Capitalism that is not paying enough to afford a family. Capitalism that is driving toxic masculinity among disaffected white boys, who then have an unhealthy outlook on what they should expect from a spouse and what is expected from them.

Next is the concept of desperation as a way of driving distraction and fear. Similar to individuality removing familial and community supports…people who are desperate don’t look for help until it’s too late if at all. And these same people, so put upon by their situations, often don’t look to a political system that disenfranchises them as a way to solve it. They don’t have community, and often suffer from loneliness, and often just want an escape. And they are provided such an escape through the myriad of shallow distractions to keep all of us bought into the system and away from critical analysis through shallow tv and movies that even if containing deeper analysis, are never explored as we are largely taught as a society… (cont)

[ojiilemon]

I say this unsarcastically and in earnest: it sounds to me like the only way we can have a world, like *at all*, is, AT BEST, complete political disenfranchisement of the conservative population. No idea how it can be achieved, and I know it would be undemocratic as hell. But Christ alive, I don't see another better choice. People who oppose climate action and believe God has ordained that climate change must kill us all, or who don't want kids to be educated or saved from a viral pandemic... simply cannot be allowed to wield political power. At all. They have completely abandoned empirical reality and insist on dragging everyone down in their suicidal madness. It's existentially unacceptable, and we can't survive their continued political engagement. They should be fed, housed, afforded the same rights we demand for ourselves, but I don't see how they can be included in the political process without us revisiting this situation every generation. And this is the best solution I can come up, the most humane.

The less humane one is just... rock to head. Reason clearly fails to deal with these people, I don't think reeducation can work at the scale of the conservative population, so it really just becomes a matter of how much force must be employed to remove them from power.

im only half joking when I say we should bring banishment back. Like give them all a flotilla of cruise ships or let them pick some land to make their weird ass version of jonestown on. Unfortunately, as appealing as this is, it’s too complicated and 1/3 of the american population has been indoctrinated so our society would collectively collapse.

I wish there was a clean cut solution to this but we’ve let it fester for so long and in every tissue fiber of our society that it’s akin to necrosis. At this point I think we just have to stop it from getting worse and stop it from spreading to Gen Alpha as much as we can. It all starts in childhood.

I know a lot of people want a revolution but we’re not organized or unified enough for that. The left has too many factions and absolutely will not be able to agree on one course of action to take. So we wont be able to face this head on unless things collapse or there’s a violent collective attack on us first (which is unlikely. fascism is a slow drip and that’s why it’s so effective).

I think what will end up happening is that we’ll have to weather the storm in the long term and hopefully the damage won’t be so bad that it leads to our extinction. The planet is going to be here for a long time and other creatures in the wild have an easier time adjusting to adverse conditions than humans do.

Who knows. Mayne dogs will evolve to be the apex beings of earth or something. Who can say. I’m at a point where all I can do is support my community and my close people and hope for the best. Im trying to accept that I don’t have control and that it’s not my job or responsibility to come up with a blanket solution if the people in charge refuse to. I won’t feel guilty anymore for being unable to enact that change because it has been systematically and deliberately taken from me. All I can do is hope that the suffering happening right now eventually gets balanced out.

[talkingpointsusa]

Ben Shapiro tackles the real issues facing Americans today....like "Woke Kindergarten"

And where does that leave you Ben? (Source; The Ben Shapiro Show on Daily Wire)

Ben Shapiro is one of those people that is deeply ridiculous and yet is very good at concealing how deeply ridiculous they are. Since we last covered him he has unhitched his wagon from Israel-Palestine and hitched it to immigration. He is also a terrible rapper now so that's great. Anyway, he has thoughts on woke kindergarten and the nature of reality so let’s get into it.

00:00, Ben Shapiro: "One of the beauties of life is the simple fact that no matter how stupid things get, reality always wins."

I mean, kind of. I feel like the Daily Wires success kind of runs counter to that given how many times I've shown on this blog that very little of their coverage is based in reality .

00:41, Ben Shapiro: "One of those dumb ideas that has obviously taken center stage as of late has been the dumb idea of woke, woke is a foolish idea."

Yeah, "wokeness" is something that these guys like to complain about. Dave Rubin also talks about it a lot. It's basically a right-wing outrage based catch all term for "ideas that I don't like". However I'll give Ben this, unlike most of these guys he actually tries to define what "woke" means. Too bad he is completely incorrect.

00:46, Ben Shapiro: "Now what exactly is wokeness? We've defined it before on the show. Wokeness is the basic idea that if there is any sort of disparity between group outcome in American life, that somehow that group disparity is due to discrimination and the only corrective is therefor reverse discrimination. Some form of discrimination that is going to equalize the outcomes of the various groups."

That's not even what "wokeness" means. The term woke essentially means that you are aware of social issues. Also, this makes absolutely no sense. Can Ben name an example of reverse discrimination? Is it that thing about less white people being in movies that Matt Walsh was whining about a while back? Who knows! Like a lot of what Ben talks about, this is super unclear and vague.

01:19, Ben Shapiro: "The reality is the vast majority of group gaps are either inborn or they are the result of culture and environment."

So, if that's the case I can't wait for Ben Shapiro to use his platform to advocate for a greater focus on education reform in disenfranchised communities or helping to improve job prospects for minorities.

Also, is he trying to say that minorities are naturally less intelligent than white people? Because I am trying to understand how saying that group gaps being "inborn" could lead to any other conclusion.

01:28, Ben Shapiro: "That does not mean that every result is the result of inborn differences. For example, differences in outcome intellectually very often are about educational differences or cultural differences as opposed to say, IQ."

Ah, good save. Again, I guess Ben Shapiro is for education reform now. How very non-conservative of him.

01:45, Ben Shapiro: "This sort of stuff happens throughout life and looking at the rationales for why things are different in terms of outcomes between groups is a good way of crafting good policy but we have basically thrown that all out in favor of stupidity and now we are going to educate our children in that stupidity."

Uh Ben...I hate to tell you buddy, but the left are the ones making all those good policies you are talking about and your team is actively fighting against those policies. Also, Ben would just call any of those good policies "woke" if he covered them on his show.

02:04, Ben Shapiro: "According to the San Francisco Chronicle, 'A Hayward elementary school struggling to boost low test scores and dismal student attendance is spending $250,000 in federal money for an organization called Woke Kindergarten to train teachers to confront white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression and remove those barriers to learning. The Woke Kindergarten sessions train teachers on concepts and curriculum that’s available to use in classrooms with any of Glassbrook Elementary’s 474 students. The sessions are funded through a federal program meant to help the country’s lowest-performing schools boost student achievement.'"

Yeah, I looked into this organization and they seem like a total scam to me. The name "Woke Kindergarten" alone raises red flags, but the fact that the press was met with an automated email saying that the person who teaches the sessions was conveniently recovering from surgeries should say it all. If they aren't a scam, they are on the most extreme end of left-wing educational organizations and don't represent more reasonable left-wing educational policy.

Also, if you want to talk about political indoctrination in our schools, the Daily Wire owns PragerU which is currently pushing its PragerU Kids videos into public schools. If Ben were to argue against this honestly, he would have to be against PragerU Kids content in elementary schools as well. But he isn't because that hurts the grift.

02:35, Ben Shapiro: "And again, the basic theory behind this program is that if you just teach kids self-esteem they will magically become smarter and better performing. If you teach them about the radical injustices about the life they lead in the freest country in the history of the world, then magically they will perform better. Only one problem, it fails cause reality always wins."

Again, the views of this for-profit contractor that is probably a grift of some sort do not represent the left as a whole. I would personally think that we should put way less focus on outside contractors and way more focus on increasing teacher salaries as well as funding schools in disenfranchised areas. I'm sure most people on the left want that as well.

Also, while I don't think it should be the sole force driving the curriculum, yeah we should devote some time to teaching kids self-esteem. Mental health is important and teaching children the skills required to protect it is important as well.

02:54, Ben Shapiro: "According, again to the San Francisco Chronicle; 'Two years into the three year contract with Woke Kindergarten, a for profit company, student achievement at Glassbrook has now fallen prompting some teachers to question whether the money was well spent given the needs of students who are predominantly low income. Two-thirds of the students are English learners and more than 80% are Hispanic/Latino. English and math scores hit new lows last spring, with less than 4% of students proficient in math and just under 12% at grade level in English — a decline of about 4 percentage points in each category. Efforts to reach the organization were not successful."

Lets think about this critically for a minute. This is the only school I could find online that employed this company in the past, the website is super vague and doesn't really have any success stories or testimony, their founder Akiea Gross seems to have mostly done coaching stuff in the past and it seems like she hasn't actually fully implemented this program anywhere else, the fact that it seems like the school district was lied to about the success of the program, and the curriculum they created was ridiculously stereotypical and seemed to be only filtered through the bizarre conservative outrage version of the left.

I personally think Israel should be defunded but it shouldn't be taught in schools. This is mainly because kids in elementary school will not give a shit nor will ever give a shit about international politics and I don't expect them to.

I disagree with this program (if it is even a legitimate educational effort and not a grift) but I also disagree with the way Ben frames it in this episode. This thing feels more like a caricature of the left brought forward by guys like Ben instead of anything even close to actual left-wing politics. And there's way more evidence of a conservative effort to propagandize education than a left-wing one. They tried some educational method out, it failed and nobody will ever use it again. Problem solved, can we move on to actually important stuff now?

NOPE!

03:28, Ben Shapiro: "Now again, that is not a particular shock because again, woke kindergarten is a stupid idea. Teaching kids terrible ideas is likely to make them perform worse not better."

It's not that you are teaching kids "terrible ideas", it's that you are teaching kids ideas that are way too advanced for them to even grasp. Plenty of people are taught leftist ideas in universities and come out perfectly intelligent.

03:53, Ben Shapiro: "One of the most amazing things about the nonprofit world, and this is true virtually across the board, is that nonprofits are constantly exacerbating the problems they are supposed to fight so they can raise money to fight those problems. This happens all the time in nonprofit land."

OK, remember when I said that Ben Shapiro is a more serious commentator compared to other people in the griftosphere? I take it back because it seems like Ben forgot that Woke Kindergarten is a for profit company literally a minute after saying that it's a for profit company. This is not the kind of thing that a serious person who is interested in reporting the news truthfully does.

Also, can I get some evidence or data on that claim about nonprofits?

04:06, Ben Shapiro: "And when you talk about companies like Woke Kindergarten, if all of a sudden achievement rose based on you know, actual metrics of performance, the need for Woke Kindergarten would disappear."

This makes absolutely no bloody sense. I would argue that this whole fiasco in California has insured that absolutely nobody will ever hire Woke Kindergarten again. Since Woke Kindergarten is a for profit company, which Ben seems to either have forgotten about or is willfully ignoring, they are dependent on school districts hiring them to make changes to the curriculum. Since their curriculum has been proven to be a failure, nobody else is going to hire them.

If their program was extremely successful compared to other educational methods, the need for Woke Kindergarten would actually increase because that educational method would become well known as an example of what to do in schools. They would be in high demand amongst school boards across the country. This is the worst thing that could possibly happen to Woke Kindergarten and that's even assuming that they aren't some kind of grift.

04:16, Ben Shapiro: "One of the jobs of politically motivated people on the left is to exacerbate inequalities so as to claim inequity. That is the goal because if at any point those inequalities actually narrowed as a result of freedom and good incentive structures, then what would they do for a living?"

Ben, your team has been "exacerbating inequalities" enough for every political party under the sun. Also, freedom and good incentive structures don't combat inequality, policy does. And since Ben is against policy that helps combat inequality, he is as a result helping to exacerbate inequalities.

Anyway, Ben reads some of the curriculum that Woke Kindergarten was putting forward. Again, I think trying to teach first graders about international politics and foreign policy is an extremely stupid endeavor but I don't agree with Ben's bizarre assessment that this for-profit non-profit is using this curriculum to exacerbate equalities and as a result bolster their business by doing something that logically would destroy their business.

05:52, Ben Shapiro: "You have to understand that Woke Kindergarten is just the stupidest boiling down of what is in fact an extraordinary amount of educational theory. There is a theorist of education who is very often quoted in these terms named Paulo Freire. Paulo Freire was talked about by James Lindsey who we've had on the Sunday special before. He was a Brazilian educator who talked about what he called the Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the basic idea was that you were supposed to inculcate in students not knowledge or wisdom or even ways of solving problems, you were supposed to impose in students a revolutionary ideology. That was the entire goal."

That's a pretty stupid way of interpreting the Pedagogy of the Oppressed. For starters, the educational theory he posed wasn't called the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, that was the name of his book. The theory he discussed in his book was actually called Problem-posing education. The basic idea behind Problem-Posing education is that the current model of education primes students towards indoctrination at the hands of oppressive systems. Freire referred to traditional education as the banking model where teachers "deposit" information into students who as a result are predisposed towards ignorance and uncreative thinking.

Problem-Posing education on the other hand is more focused on engaging the student. Freire proposed that instead of "depositing" information into students, instructors should instead attempt to think and collaborate with their students in order to help students, particularly oppressed ones, gain greater critical development.

It's certainly an interesting thing to think about and is way more complex than the 2-D caricature version that Ben has presented to his audience.

06:57, Ben Shapiro: "Their goal is not to increase the math scores, their goal is not to increase the English scores. The goal of these educators is to exacerbate, again, inequities. It is to present America as a terrible place that must be overthrown. That is the generalized goal of the system."

Who is them? The founder of Woke Kindergarten? Again, assuming that she's not some grifter who took the school board for a ride, she's just one person. I have met many educators who lean left who keep it out of the classroom. More than can be said for PragerU Kids videos by the way.

She did say that America has no right to exist which I agree with to a point in of that no government necessarily has the right to exist. People have rights, governments do not. Again, what would the elite (or "them") stand from the overthrow of America? They'd lose all their power. Also, we still haven't acknowledged that Woke Kindergarten is a for-profit company. I'm just gonna assume that Ben doesn't realize that despite having said it on his show. That alone gets him a D- at best.

Ad pivot and then he plays that clip of her saying that Israel and America have no right to exist.

09:21, Ben Shapiro: "If she does not believe in America as a country and believes that anyone who is not originally on this continent needs to be thrown off the continent, what the Hell is she doing here?"

She didn't say that she thinks that anyone who is not originally on the continent needs to be thrown off the continent by the way.

This is something Ben does a lot. He makes up a version of his opponents argument that sounds unreasonable and then argues that version instead of what his opponent is actually saying.

09:33, Ben Shapiro: "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the way kids are being taught in public schools."

So, because one school hired an organization that taught something that is mildly similar to the ideas expressed in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, every single public school in America is adopting the ideas of Freire in teaching. If you read that little breakdown I wrote about Freire's ideas, you would know that this argument makes zero sense.

Really, this is just Ben justifying America's poor education system to his audience using absolutely ridiculous arguments. "No, this isn't the fault of conservatives who are basically waging a war on education, it's the fault of too many schools adopting the ideas of Paulo Freire.

God, I feel so sorry for the teachers and principals who are going to have to deal with parents regurgitating Ben's bullshit.

10:21, Ben Shapiro: "Meanwhile reality is setting in at an enormous number of American institutions. So Dartmouth actually got rid of the SAT during COVID and now they've decided to put it back in."

Yeah, getting rid of the SAT had nothing to do with social justice and everything to do with the fact that there was a pandemic going on. The pandemic was causing people massive amounts of stress that would lead to them potentially submitting tests that aren't representative of their academic potential. On top of that, it is pretty hard to conduct SAT's remotely without running the risk of students cheating.

10:35, Ben Shapiro: "Why are they using the SAT again?"

Because we've more or less returned back to normal and pretty much all classes are in person again? The reason they gave was because of research showing that SAT's help to predict college performance.

10:37, Ben Shapiro: "Because originally, again these equity fools have been suggesting that because there are disparate outcomes with regard to the SAT. That for example, black students do less well on the SAT than say white students and white students do less well on the SATs by the way than Asian students but they don't mention that part. Whenever they say there are group disparities in SAT outcomes, they claim the test itself is racist."

That's kind of one of the criticisms of SATs. I say kind of because it's a complete backwards-ass misrepresentation of the actual criticism. The actual criticism is less about race and more about affluence. One of the concerns regarding SATs is that they can be very easily passed by wealthy people who have access to resources that less wealthy people don't have such as private coaches and tutors. Some highly intelligent people don't do well on SATs but do well with their grades and assignments.

Here's the thing, I am a Canadian university student. We do not have to take SATs here. The country has yet to fall into ruin.

12:08, Ben Shapiro: "They adopted it in 2020 not as a result of COVID but as a result of the quote-on-quote 'social justice' protests surrounding the death of George Floyd. Because a lifelong criminal and drug addict died and this rejiggered all of American life up to and including whether you have to take an SAT in order to get into Dartmouth."

That's a really funny way of saying "He was murdered by the police". Also, a lot of universities opted for standardized optional policies during COVID. Dartmouth even says it was because of COVID. It was because of COVID.

12:49, Ben Shapiro: "In fact the simple fact of the matter is an excellent way for people who are in bad neighborhoods to get ahead is testing. Testing is a pathway out. If you're a really smart kid and you were stuck in a crappy public school in a bad system and you didn't perform in that crappy public school and bad system because you were surrounded by bad influences but you score high on the SAT, that's a great way of overcoming that particular burden actually."

This is a deeply deeply stupid argument to make.

There are some people who are naturally more intelligent than others (although intelligence is kind of hard to define but for the sake of argument lets use memorization and processing speed as the characteristics that define "intelligence"), the knowledge required to pass SAT's isn't something that just naturally pops into the brains of people being tested because they are intelligent. They need the resources and if they are in, as Ben so eloquently put, a "crappy system" they most likely don't have easy access to those resources.

Also, all the data shows that kids from lower-income families score lower on SATs than kids from wealthy families so this argument is complete bunk. It ignores all the data in favor of a seven year old's idea of both intelligence and education. I'd be impressed in a nine year old walked up to me and made this argument but to see a guy who many regard as an "intellectual" making it is absolutely painful.

Ben does an ad pivot. Ben decides to talk about the police.

14:36, Ben Shapiro: "Eventually we are going to have to make a choice in this country between whether we actually want police officers to be able to do their job or whether we don't want police officers period. There is no third option where police officers are magical dispensers of justice who never make mistakes and everything looks pretty on camera. That's not the job of cops."

Increased scrutiny of the police so they don't murder minorities isn't asking them to be "magical dispensers of justice", it's holding their actions to account so that they don't abuse their power and murder minorities.

15:10, Ben Shapiro: "All the people on the left who watch a police officer tackle somebody and say 'Oh my gosh, that looks so rough' 'Oh my gosh, that looks so terrible' Are you the one policing for drugs? What is it that you do?"

It's not "tackling" that I'm pissed off about, it's unjust murder. For goodness sakes, it's fine to make an argument but at least base it in reality. For a guy who titled his episode "reality always wins", Ben is extremely detached from reality.

15:20, Ben Shapiro: "And the reason I ask that is not because cops don't do things wrong. There are certain times where cops absolutely do things wrong and when they violate the rules then obviously there should be punishment for that. But instead what you have typically is people who don't like the fact that the police have to do rough things to rough people to maintain the police."

If Ben thinks that there should be punishment for cops who do bad things, why does he routinely defend cops who do bad things? I am seriously questioning what Ben Shapiro views as crossing the line for a cop.

Ben reads a little bit of an article that Heather Mac Donald wrote over at the conservative magazine City Journal. The first policy that Ben talks about is the "How Many Stops Act" in New York City. At this point I am kind of fact checking Heather's article through Ben so lets cut through Ben's bullshit for the time being and look at the excerpts from Heathers article that he used;

"On January 30, the New York City Council passed the How Many Stops Act, over the veto of Mayor Eric Adams. The law requires New York police officers to fill out a form nearly every time they interact with a civilian. If, for example, an officer asks a potential bystander to a shooting if he had witnessed that shooting, the officer will have to complete a form listing the bystander’s race, sex, and age. Are there other potential witnesses in the area who urgently need to be contacted before they disperse? Too bad. Identity-based paperwork comes first. (If an officer waits to the end of his shift to finish filling out the forms, he will still likely need to have made some contemporaneous record of his encounters.)"

This is incorrect. The How Many Stops Act is mostly about something called "consent searches". Consent searches are essentially searches that a police officer asks a civilian on the street to consent to based on a "suspicion" of criminal activity. These are referred to as level two stops. Level one stops, for clarity, are the cops approaching someone on the street and asking them to present identification as well as pointed questions (ie: Where are you going?) due to the suspicion of criminal activity. The How Many Stops Act forces members of the NYPD to document level one and level two stops. This is to help combat racial profiling and it has absolutely nothing to do with witnesses to a shooting.

"The How Many Stops Act is innocuous, however, compared with California’s data-collection requirements for police officers. New reporting obligations under the Racial & Identity Profiling Act require California officers to fill out an eight-page form (up from four pages last year) with nearly 200 fields when they make what is known as a custodial stop (meaning the civilian is not free to walk away). The form, generated by the California Department of Justice, comes straight from race- and gender-studies classrooms. The officer first documents whether he, the officer, is a “cisgender man, cisgender woman, transgender man, transgender woman, or nonbinary person.” To avoid placing a retrogressive “gender” straitjacket on the state’s public servants, the form allows an officer to check both “Nonbinary person” and one of the other categories, such as “Cisgender woman.”.

Then the officer documents the civilian’s “perceived sexual orientation: LGB+ or Straight/Heterosexual” and the civilian’s “perceived gender: Cisgender man/boy, Cisgender woman/girl, Transgender man/boy, transgender woman/girl, or nonbinary person.” Here, too, the discerning officer is allowed to surmise that the person stopped is both a “Transgender man/boy” and a “Nonbinary person.”

The operative word is perceived sexual orientation. The officer doesn't have to stand there and ask the person they've stopped what their sexual orientation is. Here's the protocol list that I found on the LAPD's website. One thing that you will notice is that there is a lofty list of exceptions that cover the things that Ben and Heather are concerned about such as shootings. It also says that if you are dealing with somebody with a warrant on them, you don't need to fill out an AFDR (automated field data report). It's also not written, it's electronic and a lot of the things such as the officers name are auto generated upon the entry of the officers serial number. It can probably be done quite quickly if you are between stops and have nothing better to do.

The fact of the matter is that these kinds of things are necessary to combat racial profiling. Black people are disproportionately killed in traffic stops. Now back to Ben.

18:10, Ben Shapiro: "The predictable result of this is why the hell would you join up as a cop?"

It's a part of the job. I guess the conservative where you aren't supposed to complain about your job do not apply to cops.

18:23, Ben Shapiro: "They are scared to death of being on the street. Not because they are scared of the bad guys but because they are afraid that if they deal with the bad guys and there's a bystander with a camera and there are a bunch of morons watching NBC that the officer will spend the rest of his life in jail."

Again, the only way that would happen is if the officer in question did something extremely serious such as say murdering somebody. This really just feels like Ben justifying police brutality.

19:02, Ben Shapiro: "In July 2023 the New York Post reported the number of people interested in taking the NYPD exam is cratering, likely hitting a new low as the city struggles to fill positions left vacant by senior officers leaving in droves."

I'll give Ben this, a lot of senior police officers are leaving the force due to the increased measures in the wake of George Floyd. The police are recruiting more people compared to previous years however they're losing faster than they can hire. However many have argued that this leads to a net positive of hiring qualified candidates that are prepared to handle policing in a less aggressive and more community oriented way.

In my opinion, a more community focused form of policing and a focus on reducing police brutality incidents to a minute number would help fix the reputational problems the police are facing and as a result more people would be willing to apply. The unfortunate thing is that that takes time. Loosening regulation meant to protect minorities is not the answer as increased police brutality will only worsen the perception of the police and lead to even less recruits.

Ben does an ad pivot. He then plays a recruitment ad from the Detroit PD. The woman in the ad mentions that they have programs for people with outstanding warrants (such as traffic tickets) and exercise programs so that people can pass the exam. A lot of cops take desk jobs and some take lower level positions like parking enforcement so I'd imagine that a lot of people in that stream would be assigned to that sort of position.

More importantly, the Detroit PD isn't deeply desperate as recruitment actually went up last year. Anyway, Ben plays more stuff regarding police recruitment numbers going down and it's basically more of the same.

Ben's next segment is about how Joe Biden is currently poling low. While I am not the biggest Biden fan in the universe (although he is better than the alternative), I think there are a lot of factors that need to be considered when you think of Biden's poll numbers. It's a contentious election between two contentious people and a large amount of the public thinks that Biden stole the election from Trump. This is not a normal election and Trump is poling only slightly better than Biden (and only in certain states). The rest of the episode is just polling talk and it's relatively useless to cover.

Conclusion;

Well, Ben is a lot more annoying than I remember. I feel like him arguing about a for profit company as if it were a nonprofit speaks volumes about the way he argues. Ben Shapiro is still definitely the most sane of all of the Daily Wire grifters but that's certainly not saying much.

Cheers and I'll see you in the next one.

[deadstuffguy]

How about instead of “drugs should be fine in this case but still illegal in this case which if you look at it from the perspective of how police would handle the situation would actually just make it easier for the privileged to get off Scott free and the disenfranchised to get punished more harshly” we say “drug addiction is a complicated problem that does real harm and should be solved by treating the underlying causes instead of punishing those who fall into any of the many societal traps that lead to drug use and abuse”

Maybe? Just maybe? Perhaps???

“Well I don’t blame people who are addicted to pain meds because they suffer from untreated health problems” how about “healthcare should be free so that health problems can be caught and treated before they turn into bigger problems and there needs to be massive change made in how healthcare professionals are trained to reduce stigma and bias within the industry”

“Many homeless people turn to drugs to cope with the wretched reality of being stuck in a negative feedback loop of struggle and punishment” how about “our society should consider the idea of someone going without food or shelter to be unacceptable and there should be systems in place to ensure basic human needs are always met such as free housing programs, free access to safe water, and programs to provide free meals to anyone who needs it”

“Mental health problems can lead to drug addiction” how about “mental health is health and just like healthcare should be free mental healthcare including therapy, psychiatry, and addiction recovery services should be free”

“But what if people do drugs anyway and the drugs make them do crime!” it should be obvious that making drugs legal doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want on them. Coffee is legal but robbing a bank after drinking a cup of coffee is still illegal. Drugs don’t make people do crime, the same shitty social structures that can lead people to drug use can lead people to crime so all the above is really a several dozen birds with like 4 stones type deal. Also we could consider a justice system that is built around support and reform instead of punishment. Prison doesn’t help people, it hurts them. Community service, court ordered therapy or addiction recovery, half way house type programs, all good ways to reform people. Removing people from society should be a last resort and it should still be done with compassion if it needs to happen.

Lotta people on tumblr are progressive until you bring up drugs. Then they turn into authoritarian fucking nightmares who Ronald Reagan would adore.

If your progressive values disappear the second a human being does drugs, you aren't as progressive as you fucking think.

[letterboxd]

Wigging Out.

Choreographer and director Jonathan Butterell tells Gemma Gracewood about stepping behind the camera for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, his love for Sheffield, and making sure queer history is kept alive. Richard E. Grant weighs in on tolerance and Thatcher.

Of 2021’s many conundrums, one for musical lovers is why the narratively problematic Dear Evan Hansen gets a TIFF premiere and theatrical release this month, while the joyously awaited Everybody’s Talking About Jamie went straight to Amazon Prime.

And yet, as the show’s lyrics go, life keeps you guessing, along came a blessing. There’s something about the film streaming onto young people’s home screens, with its moments of fourth-wall breaking where Jamie speaks straight to the viewer, that feels so important, given the content: a gay teen whose drag-queen destiny sits at odds with the less ambitious expectations of his working-class town.

Director and choreographer Jonathan Butterell, who also helmed the stage production (itself inspired by Jenny Popplewell’s 2011 BBC documentary, Jamie: Drag Queen at 16) agrees that the worldwide Amazon release is a very good silver lining. “I made the film for the cinema but, in 250 territories across the world, this is going to have a reach that—don’t get me wrong, cinema, cinema, cinema, collective experience, collective experience, collective experience—but it will get to people that it might not have got to before.

Jonathan Butterell on set with star Max Harwood, as Jamie.

“It feels as niche a story as you could possibly be. But also for me, I wanted it to feel like a universal story, that it didn’t matter where on any spectrum you found yourself, you could understand a young person wanting to take their place in the world freely, openly and safely.”

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, with screenplay and lyrics by Tom MacRae and songs by Dan Gillespie Sells, sits neatly among a series of very specific feel-good British films about the working class experience, such as Billy Elliot, Kinky Boots and Pride. The film adds some historical weight to the story with a new song, ‘This Was Me’, which allows Jamie’s mentor, Hugo (played by Richard E. Grant), to take us into England’s recent past—the dark days of the discriminatory Section 28 laws, at a time when the HIV/AIDS epidemic was still ravaging the community.

Hugo’s drag persona Loco Chanelle (played in the flashback by the stage musical’s original Jamie—John McCrea from Cruella and God’s Own Country), sports a wig that looks suspiciously like the Iron Lady’s unmistakable head of hair. Grant confirms that was Hugo’s intention. “His heyday was in the 1980s, so as a ‘fuck you’ to Mrs Thatcher, what better than to be dressed up like that, at six-foot-eight, with a wig that could bring down the Taj Mahal!”

Richard E. Grant as Hugo, getting to work on Jamie’s contours.

In light of the current pandemic, and the fact that the 1967 legalization of homosexuality in Britain is only “an historical blink away”, Grant’s hope is for more tolerance in the world. “Maybe Covid gives people some sense of what that was like, but with Covid there’s not the prejudice against you, whereas AIDS, for the most part in my understanding, was [seen as] a ‘gay disease’, and there were many people across the globe who thought that this was, you know, whatever god they believe in, was their way of punishing something that they thought was unacceptable.

“The message of this movie is of inclusivity, diversity, and more than ever, tolerance. My god, we could do with a dose of that right now.”

Read on for our Q&A with Jonathan Butterell about the filmic influences behind Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.

Hugo in a reverie, surrounded by his drag menagerie.

Can we talk about the new song, ‘This Was Me’, and the way you directed it in the film? It’s a show-stopper, with Richard E. Grant singing in that beautiful high register, and then moving into Holly Johnson’s singing, as you go back in time to show that deeply devastating and important history. Jonathan Butterell: It felt inevitable, the shift, and necessary. Myself, Dan Gillespie Sells, the composer, and Tom MacRae, the screenwriter, we created this piece together, the three of us, and it’s a film by the three of us. We lived through that time, we went on those marches. Actually, in one of those marches [shown in flashback], Dan’s mum—actual mum—is in a wheelchair, by a young boy who was holding a plaque saying “my mum’s a lesbian and I love her”.

That is Dan with his mum back in the day, and it all speaks to our stories and it moves me, I can see it’s moving you. It moves me because I lived through that time, and it was a complex time for a young person. It was a time that you felt you had to be empowered in order to fight, and you felt very vulnerable because of the need to fight. And because of that disease, because HIV was prevalent and we lost people—we lost close people—it was a difficult time. I wanted to make sure that that story kept being told and was passed on to the next generation.

It’s so important isn’t it, to walk into the future facing backwards? It still exists, that need to fight still exists. The conversation, yes, has moved on, has changed, but not for all people and not in all communities.

What would be your go-to movie musical song at a karaoke night? My goodness. There’d be so many.

I mean, is it going to be a Cabaret, a Chicago showstopper, or something more Mary Poppins, something from Rent? I think what I would go to, which is what I remember as a little boy, is Curly singing ‘Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’. It’s such a kind of perfect, beautiful, simple song. That, and ‘The Lonely Goatherd’, because I just want to yodel. It would be epic. Trust me.

What is the best film featuring posing and why is it Paris Is Burning? It’s always Paris Is Burning. Back in the day, I was obsessed with Paris Is Burning, I was obsessed with that world. In fact, at one moment I even met [director] Jennie Livingston in trying to make a theater piece inspired by that. I lived in New York for eleven years and I met Willi Ninja. I just adored everything about him, and he would tell me stories. And again, it was so removed from the boy from Sheffield, I mean so far. That New York ballroom scene was so removed from my world, but I got it. Those two boys at the top of the film, I just wanted to be one of those boys who just hung out outside the club.

Harwood and Butterell on set, with Lauren Patel (right) as Jamie’s bestie Pritti Pasha.

What films did you and Tom and Dan look at to get a feeling for how to present the musical numbers? Actually, a lot of pop videos, from present day to past. There’s an homage, in the black-and-white sequences, to a little ‘Vogue’ Madonna moment. Pop is very central to me in this story because pop is what a working-class kid from a working-class community will be listening to. That’s in his phone, that’s in his ears. Not that many young people listen to much radio at this moment in time, but that’s what will be on Margaret’s radio, that’s what’s coming into the kitchen. And that was central to the storytelling for me.

Bob Fosse also really influenced me, and particularly All That Jazz and where his flights of imagination take him. I felt that was so appropriate for Jamie, and again in a very, very different way, but I could see how Jamie’s imagination could spark something so fantastical that would lead him to dance, lead him to walk on the most amazing catwalk, lead into being in the most fabulous, fabulous nightclub with the most amazing creatures you’ve ever met in your life.

For me personally, the film that most inspired me was Ken Loach’s Kes, because that is my community. Both the world in which Jamie exists—Parsons Cross council estate, is my world, is my community—and the world of that young boy, finding his place in the world with his kestrel friend, I remember identifying with that boy so clearly. He was very different from me, very different. But I got him, and I felt like Ken Loach got me through him.

Ken Loach made a few films set in Sheffield, didn’t he? But also, Sheffield is a setting and an influence on The Full Monty, The History Boys, Funny Cow and that brilliant Pulp documentary. So Jamie feels like a natural successor. It absolutely does. Sheffield’s where I grew up, it’s my hometown. Although I moved away from it, I always return. To have a chance to celebrate my community, and particularly that community in Parsons Cross council estate. If you’re in Sheffield and you’re in a taxi and you said, “Take me to Parsons Cross,” they’d say, “Well, I’ll drop you there, but I’m not staying.” Because again there’s a blinkered view of that community. And I know that community to be proud, glorious and beautiful.

And yes, that community, particularly through the ’80s, really suffered because some of that community would serve the steelworks and had three generations of unemployment, so they became disenfranchised because of that. But the community I grew up in, my Auntie Joan, who lived on that road, literally on that road, was a proud, working class, glorious woman who served chips at school.

Aside from Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, what would be the most important queer British cinematic story to you? (And how do you choose between My Beautiful Laundrette and God’s Own Country?!) You can’t. My Beautiful Laundrette influenced me so much because, one, Daniel Day Lewis was extraordinary in that film, and two, because of the cross-cultural aspect of it. I went, “I know this world”, because again I grew up in that world. And it affirmed something in me, which is the power and the radicalness of who I could be and what I could be.

With God’s Own Country, when I saw that film—and that was Francis’ first film, which I thought was extraordinary for a first-time filmmaker—I knew he knew that world from the inside, from the absolute inside. And I know what that rural community was like. I read that script, because we share agents, and I was blown away by it—again, because of the two cultures coming together.

Jamie Campbell, the film’s real-life inspiration, with screen-Jamie Max Harwood.

Richard E. Grant’s character, Hugo, is such a pivotal mentor for Jamie. What did you need to hear from a mentor when you were sixteen? Don’t let yourself hold yourself back, because I think it was me who put some limitations on myself. And of course I came from a working-class community. I was a queer kid in a tough British comprehensive school. And did I experience tough times? Yes I did. And did I deal with those tough times? Yes I did. But the song that speaks to me mostly in this is ‘Wall in my Head’, in which Jamie takes some responsibility for the continuation of those thoughts, continuations of the sorts of shame, and that’s a sophisticated thing for a sixteen-year-old boy to tackle.

I also was lucky enough to have a mother like Margaret—and a dad like Margaret as well, just to be clear! And I remember my mum, at seventeen when I left home, just leaving a little note on my bed. It was quite a long letter. She said, Jonathan, you’ve probably chosen to walk a rocky path, but don’t stray from it, don’t steer away from it. That’s the path you've chosen, there may be rock-throwers along the way, but you’ll find your way through it. That stayed with me and I think that’s what resonates with me. And when I saw that documentary, Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, I felt that that sparked the need for me to tell that story.

Sarah Lancashire as Jamie’s mum, Margaret New.

We need more mums and dads like Margaret, don’t we? We do, we do. And the wonderful thing is, Margaret Campbell will say it and I think Margaret New in the film will say it: she’s not a Saint, she’s an ordinary mum. And she has to play catch up and she doesn’t understand in many ways, and she gets things wrong and she overprotects. But she comes from one place and that is a mum’s love of her child and wanting them to take their place safely in the world and to be fully and totally themselves.

Related content

Eternal Alien’s list of films Made in Sheffield

Letterboxd’s Camp Showdown

Persephon’s list of films recommended by drag queens

Passion’s list of films mentioned by Jaymes Mansfield in her Drag Herstory YouTube series

Follow Gemma on Letterboxd

‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’ is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.

[sebastianshaw]

House of M fic

( @sammysdewysensitiveeyes  @the-home-kvetch Toad has a cameo in the second section and Pyro in the third. They basically disappear after that, though, then reappear at the very end for a brief but heroic mention , so if you only want to read those parts I shan’t be offended! I read a lot of stuff only for my own faves and then tap out, lol! The Gai are not Marvel canon. I needed some Generic Alien Invaders, so that’s what I came up with!) “So, now that you’ve seen what A.I.M. can truly do. . . can I count on your continued support?” Dr. Monica Rappaccini knew that she had taken a big risk bring a civilian to their Australian base and revealing so much of their operation here. But this civilian, a Ms. Radha Dastoor, given the moniker “Haven” years ago for her good deeds, had the same goals as her---human liberation from the boot of mutantkind. And what set Haven apart from so many other “sapiens” who wished the same was her resources; the woman was ridiculously rich. She’d already been a generous donator to A.I.M’s more. .  .legitimate faces, mainly concerning supplying disenfranchised human communities with medicine, clean water, and access to education. And some of her gifts had gone to these, as had been promised, but many had actually been funneled to A.I.M itself for its more. . .radical usage. Indeed, Monica was willing to bet a fair few pieces in this very facility were purchased indirectly by the unwitting Ms. Dastoor. But she wasn’t unwitting anymore. Monica’s agents had been easing her into more and more illicit aspects of their activism. While she didn’t seem ready to condone violence, she had expressed that she did not condemn it in an oppressed people either, just has she not condemned mutantkind for the same before the world’s tables had turned. Monica felt in this woman a kindred spirit, someone who wanted to even the balance, to help the helpless, and who, despite her pacifist demeanor, understood more deeply than she let on that breaking--or blowing up---a few eggs was a necessary ingredient in that omelette. She just couldn’t say so publicly, or the Red Guard would have her head in a second. Even her peaceful, benign activism surely had her on a few watchlists just because of how prominent she was. But here, she could speak freely. And Monica thought she knew what she would say. Monica thought wrong. Now, if Haven had had something affecting her mind, say a demonic entity of evil and chaos speaking to her at the most vulnerable moment of her life, Monica might have more than likely swayed her. But being in a stable mental state — “I am truly sorry, Dr. Rappaccini,” she said, and to her credit she did look it, “But I cannot be party to this methods. I understand the desperation that has driven you to them, and I even admire the---” “How can you say that?” Monica demanded, “After all I have shown you?!” “It is because you have shown me, Dr. Rappaccini, that I--” Haven was cut off again---this time by the klaxon alarm blaring throughout the building. ***

The Red Guard was storming the base. The technological hurdles had been considerable to get over, but once those were overcome by the tech division---S.H.I.E.L.D’S mutant technopaths helped considerably with that---the sheer physical power of the agents was practically bulldozing the poor A.I.M guards. Agent “Toad” Toynbee used his agility to spring off the walls and land on the agents shoulders, jumping from on to the other, knocking them off balance with each landing, allowing his fellow agents to hit them while they were distracted. His comrade and friend Agent “Nightcrawler” Darkholme used his teleportation to scout ahead, Agent “Marrow” Rushman punctured organs and blocked guns by firing bone spikes right up the weaponry barrels, while Agent “Rogue” Darkholme and Agent “Diamond Lil” Crawley simply barreled and brawled their way through every body in their path like the bruisers they were.  “Too easy!” Crawley bragged as she slugged one of the guards, who had practically been propelled into her fist by the thrust of Toad’s feet.  “Precisely”, concurred Director Shaw gruffly, and he grabbed the nearest scientist before the cowering woman could flee. They were deep in enough that the brains the operation were starting to be sighted between the garish yellow A.I.M. suits. And unlike those suits, the white coats over office casual clothes worn by the scientists exposed skin. Just hands and faces, the occasional legs from beneath a mid-length sensible skirt, but that was more than enough. “Agent Darkholme,” he said, and though he did not specify WHICH Darkholme he meant, Rogue knew it was her. She removed a glove and brushed a single finger against the woman’s whimpering face for the briefest of moments. If Shaw wasn’t telling her to dig deep, that meant she didn’t have to, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to go sucking someone’s whole psyche into hers just for fun. But she got enough to confirm what Shaw was suspecting---a trap. “We gotta get out, y’all!” she exclaimed, the whites of her eyes widening, “If someone gets past the guards, there’s orders to blow the place to kingdom co---” *** The clearing that had once been green and dotted with trees was now scorched black, dotted with flaming wreckage of what had once been the AIM base and the bloodied, moaning remains of what had once been its members. “Save any survivors you can!” Shaw barked, “We need them for interrogation! And Allerdyce, get out here and get the fires under control! This is potoroo country!” Shaw, Rogue, and Crawley all possessed mutations that allowed them to survive the blast, allowing Nightcrawler to only need to get Toad, Marrow, and Pyro out, which he could do in one trip, albeit an exhausting one, and on to the safety of their jet. Thus, they were all safe, though Darkholme was winded and done for the day. Hearing Shaw’s command over his earpiece, Agent St. John “Pyro” Allerdyce made a swift thanks to his teammate and ran out to push the flames back from touching the rest of the forest. Potoroos were a protected species, and their safety was of utmost importance in the House of M! Meanwhile, Rogue and Crawley dug through the wreckage, the former tossing car-sized hunks of metal aside like pillows and the latter just punching a path through it, as Marrow pinned down anyone who attempted to flee using bone spears---through their clothes, since Shaw insisted on them alive—and Toad tripped them up with his tongue before pulling them back so their leader could place them in cuffs. “That’s all of them!” the amphibious mutant proclaimed proudly as the last yellow-suited AIM member—the last MOVING one, anyway---was hauled into the jet. “Clear out then” Shaw ordered, surveying the scene a final time. Something caught his eye. “Wait---Allerdyce! Those flames there, in the center---get them somewhere else, there’s someone caught in the center!” “Get them somewhere else, he says, like I can just freaking teleport them or some shit,” Pyro muttered, but he cleared the flames, revealing indeed something who had been surrounded by them. It was a wonder that her long hair and salwar kameez---yes, Pyro know the term for it, thank you---hadn’t been caught alight, but more miraculous by far was the way the wreckage encased her in such a way that she had been protected from harm. She just also couldn’t get out. Not on her own, anyway. Shaw strode towards her, flanked by the flames that Pyro had pushed aside Moses-style. He took the cage apart carefully, knowing that pulling out the wrong piece could bring the whole thing crashing down on the woman inside. It wouldn’t have mattered much to him if this had just been another AIM flunkie; they had more than enough for the Psy Division to scan for intel. But this woman. . . he recognized her, and he didn’t know what she was doing here---though he had a hunch---and he wasn’t about to let her be hurt. Not until he had the full story. “Don’t try anything, dirtbag!” Marrow hollered, coming to Shaw’s side as the last of the metal prison was removed from the soon-to-be prisoner, bones ready to hurl should she make one move that the mutants didn’t like. “That won’t be necessary, Agent Rushman,” said Shaw calmly, not looking away from the woman, to whom he reached out a hand, “Can you stand? Please, let me help you. There we are. Lean on me. We’ll have you treated for any injuries immediately. And. . . Radha Dastoor, it is my duty to inform you, that you are under arrest.” *** The AIM prisoners had been brought in, read their rights---such as their were---and the charges brought against them, given their prison jumpsuits, and put in holding awaiting prosecution after the Psi Division got through them. That was what counted for interrogation these days. The crude, ineffective ways of sapien grilling and guesswork were over. But Director Shaw still speaking with one of them personally. Just one. “Our telepaths confirm your story, Ms. Dastoor,” he said. The pair of them were seated on either side of a table. Shaw was still in his uniform. . . Haven, in her newly issued one. Orange was a good color on her, though perhaps not fitting in this amount. She was cuffed as per protocol, and while Shaw did things by the book, his eye twitched slightly at the sheer absurdity of it. But he did not remove them. He didn’t get where he was by making exceptions.  “We know you were not knowingly in league with Dr. Rappaccini,” he continued, “But we also know that you did knowingly aid and abet several illicit activities.” “Yes,” Haven replied calmly, with neither coldness nor defiance, but nor any submission or remorse, “I did.” It was matter of fact, and perfectly polite.  “Your forthcomingness strengthens the decision I’ve made,” he said, his own voice also matter of fact, though his was more frank and detached, “To advocate for leniency in your case. You have been cooperative, you have denied nothing---as some people do even when faced with their own memories as evidence---and, as noted, you were not involved in Rappaccini or AIM’s terrorist activities. Your crimes, rather, have been more along the lines of providing funds, food, and medicines to, say, illegal protestors. Given your history, I am inclined to believe you will not escalate to more extreme measures, and should not be considered a public threat.” “I appreciate that, Director Shaw.” “It’s not a gift, Ms. Dastoor. Merely my professional opinion.” “Nonetheless, I do.” “I do have to ask you now, because you will be asked on the stand---once you have served your time and are duly released, will you cease in all such activities?” “No, Director Shaw.” There was a long, grim silence. “Ms. Dastoor, I cannot give you my recommendation for a reduced sentence if I believe that you will re-offend.” “It would be very disrespectful of me to lie to you now, Director Shaw, just to help myself, after you have shown me such goodwill.” “There will be no goodwill, Ms. Dastoor, if you do not.” The conversation didn’t last long after that. He soon escorted her back to her cell. A private one, to protect her from the AIM prisoners. “You can ask the guards from anything within reason and it will be provided to you if possible. if you feel you have been mistreated in any way, get word to me and something will be done about it if your claim proves true. Shaw wasn’t bending any rules for her. None of this was outside the law, or even a gray area. It just wasn’t something he had ever told any prisoner short of the occasional foreign royal who had fucked up but still had to be handled with care to avoid political disaster.  As Haven started to thank him for the courtesy, an alarmed voice called over the intercom, ”Director Shaw---the AIM prisoners! They’re all dead!” *** The one person that hadn’t been recovered from the base was the real prize---Monica Rappaccini herself. The assumption of SHIELD was that she had escaped before setting off the blast; the idea she’d simply been blown to pieces was too optimistic.  In fact, neither was the case. Monica had a much safer plan than escaping the building---she’d stayed in it. More specifically, in a blast-proof container specifically survived to withstand it, which dropped down a shoot far underground where the bomb wouldn’t reach it anyway, and she wouldn’t be found by the accursed Red Guard. The fools---they hadn’t brought a psychic to sweep for any minds missing, but it wouldn’t have mattered, the tech was telepath-proof too. If only they could do that for the entire place, but alas, it was difficult, tricky, tended to only work on a small scale. But that was enough for her. Once the danger had passed, Monica emerged and got in contact with her best agent---Thasanee Rapaccini, aka the Scorpion. Monica’s daughter. In another world, her name was Carmilla Black and she worked for SHIELD, against her own mother! But in this world, Monica had raised her, and raised her well. She was a (mostly, usually, except for a hiccup) loyal agent to AIM and mommy dearest, and she wanted to see the mutant tyranny she’d grown up under fall as much as Monica did.  But, like all teenagers, she could be a bit rebellions. Like questioning her mother. Something Monica would never have allowed her to do and survive if she hadn’t been her own preciously bio-engineered flesh and blood. ”Is that really necessary, mother?” Thasanee asked when given her new mission, ”They’ve already psy-scanned all the agents by now for sure anyway. What are they going to get from that lady’s mouth that they didn’t get from our guy’s brains?” ”It’s not about containing information,” Monica explained, ”It’s about public opinion. Haven can do more damage to us now than Magneto himself. She’s well-respected by the rest of the humans rights activist movement and even by many mutants. If she publicly denounces our cause, it will rob us of countless new recruits, funding, everything. She’s the most dangerous threat of all---a moderate. Do you see now? They’ll offer her a deal--leniency for collaborating with us, so long as she denounces A.I.M and everything we stand for. And people, even those who share our goals, our beliefs, will listen.” ”You really think she would?” Thasanee asked “I mean, all that good stuff she did for humans. . . maybe she’s just not cut out for our work. You’ve said yourself not everyone is. But that doesn’t mean she’d hang us out to dry.” ”I wish I had your faith in people,” Monica sighed, and it was true. She certainly wished she could be certain that Radha Dastoor wouldn’t do exactly that. But, she’d been so sure that Haven, who shared her cause, would join her and begin providing direct funding, and she couldn’t have been more wrong about that. So she couldn’t take a chance on Radha here either. ”And listen,” Thasanee continued, “If you’re worried about us looking bad, won’t we look WORSE if we kill her? I think that’s what REALLY would get people mad at us! Our own allies too! ”Thasanee,” Monica’s voice turned sweet, cajoling, truly motherly, as she put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder and looked loving into the girl’s green eyes, ”My beloved child. I know this is difficult to understand. But Radha Dastoor dying mysteriously while in S.H.I.E.L.D custody would be very, very good for our cause. A peaceful activist, a nonviolent offender, a model moderate. . .and after her arrest by the Red Guard, who claim such a person was in cahoots with a terrorist organization, she dies while in their hands, and they try to blame that same organization? My dear. . .connect the dots the way the Average Joe would, and see what conclusion it brings you. The kind that makes the opposition look like the monsters we know they are.” Thasanee was a clever child, and she clearly got exactly what her mother was saying. Her conflict was clear on her face, her lip twisting in thought, her eyes flitting doubtfully downwards. But she reached the right answer, as Monica knew she would. ”I’ll do it, mother. You can count on me.” *** ”So what happened to them?” Jessica Drew asked as Agent Darkholme---Mystique, who had not been on the earlier mission---returned from attending to the matter of the AIM agents dropping dead. ”Chemical implant,” Mystique replied, “Rappaccini must have put it in them when they joined up with AIM. Probably to “motivate” them if they ever get cold feet. Or, in this case, fail her by getting captured.” ”G’awful way t’go,” Rogue shuddered. Whenever she had any doubts about what the Red Guard did, people like AIM reminded her who the good guys were. ”What I wanna know,” said Agent Crawley, “is who is this Dastoor broad, that she gets the royal treatment from Sebastian Stick-Up-His-Ass Shaw?” ”No idea,” Rogue said, putting her cooling coffee to her lips. “Before your time, daughter,” Mystique explained, ”Back when mutants were actively oppressed by humanity, before the rise of Emperor Magnus, Radha “Haven” Dastoor was one of the few sapiens on our side.” ”Our side?” Rogue looked intrigued. ”A sapien?” Crawley looked doubtful.  ”Oh, she didn’t go all out for us, not by a long shot,” Mystique scoffed, “Don’t get the wrong idea---she was a peaceful protester. Didn’t get anything done. But. . .she did reach a lot of her own kind, or try. And ran with a very upscale crowd, so there was. . . influence, I suppose. Ran some shelters and such.” The blue-skinned woman sniffed slightly, torn between wanting to give credit where credit was due, but also not wanting to oversell the woman as a saint when she’d barely done the bare minimum in Raven’s view. ”Anyway. Now that the tables have turned, so has she. She’s all about her OWN kind’s rights now. As if things are as bad for them as it was for us. Ha! Not even on our best day back then, were we ever treated with the grace that Magnus has granted THEM. But trust a human to not even be able to stomach a DILUTED taste of their own medicine. She shrugged her azure shoulders, “But since Director Shaw is old enough to remember her work---such as it was---I suppose he thinks she’s earned some professional courtesy. And he is, after all, nothing if not professional.” *** As promised, Haven was well treated while she was held at the Australian S.H.I.E.L.D base. She would be taken to Genosha to stand trial tomorrow, but in the meantime. . .  In the meantime, Thasanee Rappaccini had spent all evening infiltrating the base successfully without setting off any alarm to her presence. It was no mean feat, as one might imagine, but she had been trained for this from birth. Not infiltration specifically, but anything and everything relevant to taking down Magnus’s mutant-supremascist empire. And, much like how many unlucky souls never noticed a scorpion in their shoe before it was too late, this Scorpion had creeped in subtle as a shadow, unheard and unseen and undetected by man, mutant, or machine. And now. . .now she had a clear shot with her Stinger, as she called her left arm from which she fired energy bolts containing concentrated toxins. Like the Rappccini’s daughter of myth, Thasanee was literally poisonous. Yeah, she was pretty sure her mother hadn’t been born with that surname.   Haven didn’t even notice as the slim girl slid into the room. She was busy tending to a flower in a pot, to Thasanee’s surprise. Who had given her that? Scorpion had expected to find the captive in chains, not--- BOOM! CRASH! The entire base rocked as Scorpion’s eardrums rang, and it wasn’t just shock that made it difficult for her to keep her balance.  Thas had a clear shot, not for any gun but her Stinger; the name she had given her left arm, from which she fired the accumulation of toxins and poisons her naturally immune body stored in her left lymph node. Then crash that rattled entire base. A klaxon began to sound, reminding her unpleasantly of the one that had blared throughout the AIM base before its destruction. Yells, shouts, and more smashes reached her ears through the alarm as well. Thasanee had just enough time to wonder if her mother had sent Adaptoids to attack the place before one of the hulking culprits burst through the wall, sending Thasanee leaping into the hiding among the dust and debris; she could hear Haven cough from the same, but, she noted, the woman never screamed. Odd. Maybe she was too petrified too. She’d seemed like such a refined ladylike priss, Thas would have thought--- The Gai. That’s what was causing all this. Thas had encountered them a few times before. They were alien invaders, huge and monstrous, looked part insect and part reptile with a turtle-like shell from which their six limbs extended. Some wore additional hi-tech battle armor but this one was bare. All of them were the same thought; they didn’t care who they killed, only that they killed everyone. Human or mutant, warrior or prisoner, all Earthlings were the same to them. Something to be wiped out. Why, no one knew yet; telepaths couldn’t get in their heads and they were seldom in the mood to talk, though Haven seemed to be trying as the beast advanced. Thas was about to--- BONK! It was an almost comical sound, followed by a crack, as the force from Director Shaw’s fist collided with the stone-like shell of the Gai and, a moment after impact, splintered it.  Where did he come from?! Scorpion wondered, then saw he must have rushed in after it through the hole it left, then leaped on to its back to strike his blow. And then another. And another. He was hitting it with every step he made over its back, but once he got to its head, it tossed him like a rodeo rider being thrown from a bull before he could punch its ugly skull in. Scorpion wasn’t sure who she was rooting for.  Shaw was launched into the bars of Haven’s cell, and they bent in under the force of his indestructible body like overcooked noodles. Haven, luckily for her, had moved out of the way, and he wasted no time getting in front of her as the Gai advanced. Scorpion wasn’t sure how smart the Gai were--no one knew if they were sapient beings or merely mindless drones sent down to fight by a greater intelligence---but she for one thought it must be thinking how convenient it was that Shaw had taken down this obstacle for it.  Until he wrenched off the end of a bar and impaled it through the Gai’s bulbous multifaceted left eye. However alien this creature might be, it had a commonality with most beings on Earth, which was that getting a long sharp metal rod jammed into your skull was an unpleasant sensation, and the Gai responded in kind, reeling back and . . .shrieking? Scorpion wasn’t sure that was the right word for it. She wasn’t sure there was a word to describe it. Like all the sound files in the world glitching at once. She had to cover her ears, but Shaw was apparently part deaf---it was the only explanation---because he didn’t even pause as he grabbed Haven and ran. Scorpion was fairly sure he didn’t see her on the way out though; the Director clearly had bigger things on his mind. Like the Gai, which was more dangerous than ever as it thrashed around in pain. Scorpion supposed to humane thing was to put it out of its misery. . . not to mention, it’d be valuable to know how susceptible they were to poison. . .  But she had a target already, and it had just breezed by her in a bright orange jumpsuit. No time for mercy kills; Scorpion followed them.  She didn’t notice who was following her too.  *** Shaw lead Haven at a rapid pace through the sleek corporate-esque hallways of the building, which were even more rapidly being destroyed. They dodged the claws of more Gai, huge chunks of falling walls and ceilings, sprays of crumbling dust that she might inhale. . . or rather, Shaw dodged the claws and dragged Haven with him, shielded her with his force-absorbing body from the falling walls and ceilings, and commanded her to hold her breath through the crumbling dust from the destruction. He faced a few more Gai on the way out, and while hurting them was easy once they provided him with enough energy, keeping Haven safe---his priority---was difficult to do in tandem. But Shaw was professional, and Shaw was experienced, and Shaw not only got her out alive, she didn’t have a scratch on her. “Everyone good?” he said into his ear piece as he steered Haven towards the door that would lead them out at last. In addition to guarding her, he’d been guiding the Red Guard and the rest of the personnel as best he could over the communicator. “I’m getting the prisoner secured, after that we can---hello?! Over?! Over?!” The line had gone dead. It could be an accident during the destruction. But Shaw wasn’t sure about that. He’d figure it out soon. Getting Radha Dastoor to safety came first though. And he believed he had succeeded. They made it out the front doors, to the jet, into the jet--- And then Shaw cried out and fell to the floor, green toxic energy crackling around him. Not the kind he could absorb, either----it was pure concentrated poison. Scorpion stepped out of the shadows. “Took you long enough, old man,” she said, “I made it out way sooner. Of course. . .” Her eyes traveled to Haven, her real target. “. . .I didn’t have a load to carry. You must be tired from that; please, don’t get up.” She fired another blast into Shaw, who had been rising to his feet, despite the fact the first should have been enough to kill him.  Haven cried out this time in front of Shaw, throwing herself in front of his fallen form, begging Thasanee to stop. “Don’t worry, I’ll get to you,” Scorpion assured her,  “But before I do, I want to know one thing from him.” She addressed Shaw again, “Why has a mutant fascist pig like you been risking your life to defend a human? I saw you in there. You protected her. Why? Is it because of what she used to do for you guys? Has she been a double agent all along? Is she really a mutant?”

“Because. . . “ Shaw croaked, using all the strength he had left just to lift his head as Haven knelt down beside him, “She. . . is the State’s prisoner. And I. . . am a representive of the State. Of SHIELD. Of Emperor Magnus. It is my duty. . .to protect those in our custody.” He took a moment to breathe, and then continued, less labored this time, but still unable to do more than speak. “I find her activism sentimental soft-minded tripe, and I will see her stand trial for the parts of it that break the law---but I shall NOT see her harmed while she is still my responsibility. Not by the Gai, and nor by YOU.” “Wow,” Scorpion said, and she was genuinely impressed,  “Ok, so----I don’t take back that you’re a mutant fascist pig, but you’re a mutant fascist pig with some honor. Not gonna lie---I’m surprised. Enough that I’ll let you in one something before you die---I’m not going to kill her.” Both Shaw and Haven looked shocked. “Yeah,” Scorpion said, and answered the question she knew they must have, “My mom wants her dead, and I was sent to do that, but like. . .I’m just going to fake her death, get her out of here, set her up somewhere. That way--” She turned her gaze specifically to Haven,  “That way, you can’t denounce us---if that was ever even your plan---without A.I.M knowing you’re alive and killing you for real, so you won’t, right? And I don’t have to kill you for something you haven’t even done, and maybe were never going to. Everybody wins. I mean, except grandpa there, but I count wiping out one more SHIELD fucker---the Director, no less!---a win. Talk about cutting the head from the snake; he’s one step from Emperor Magnus himself!” “I wish I could be proud of you for this, daughter.” As if she had teleported, Monica Rappapccini appeared before her daughter. Who, judging by her reaction, had NOT been expecting this. ”Invisibility device,” Monica tapped a metal bracelet on her wrist, “I’ve been by your side this whole time. And you were doing so well, too. . . .up until now.” She sighed, “I know adolescence is a time to question authority but  you have to follow orders even if you find them difficult. That’s really more what this has been than anything---a test to see how far out of line you’ve fallen. The scientist in me, always having to test a hypothesis before I consider it proven. “ “Well, consider it proven, Mom!” Thasanee barked back, her feelings akin to how a normal teenager might react to finding out her parent had been in her room, “Now what! Going to kill ME too?” “Don’t be silly, you’re far too valuable,” Monica tssked, “As are these two as hostages. Dastoor for her money, Shaw for his political worth to the House of Magnus and SHIELD---much as I truly would love to slaughter him in so many ways. Indeed, I think I might just do that anyway once he’s served his purpose. He deserves it. Do you know how many people he has---” And that was when Exodus, Toad, and Pyro teleported onboard and saved the day. They made short work of Dr. Rappaccini, but alas, Scorpion got away. Shaw made a full recovery after receiving medical aid. And Ms. Dastoor awaits trial for her crimes. 

[bustedbernie]

not american, so feel free to correct if i'm wrong but even of rbg had retired as so manu people say she should have, wouldn't it have come a point where inveitably the supreme court would be on the line and therefore should be considered when voting? from my point of view it should always be taken into account, but again not american so my perspective is solely an outside thing

It should be a consideration. In fact, it has been a consideration for the right-wing for a couple decades, now. There has been a deliberate attempt to use the courts to their advantage, for all the projecting the GOP does about the dems supposedly doing this, it really is a GOP phenomenon. Holding up Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland was unprecedented and purely partisan obstructionism.

But yes, if you’re an American, and you vote, then the potential slant of the Supreme Court is something that should be considered when weighing your vote. In 2016, the slant of the court was brought up, as was the danger of the GOP’s obstruction and politicization/partisanship in terms of the court. Those dangers came true as evidenced in the corruption of the Kennedy Retirement, the fact that a SCOTUS justice’s wife paid to bus in January 6th insurrectionists, the Kavanaugh hearings, and the complete disregard of their own “standards” in order to nominate Barrett. If you were voting in 2016 and you voted for Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders or wrote in “Harambe,” this is on your hands. What are you gonna do to rectify that??? 

There’s evidence that the GOP began this politicization of the Judiciary as early as the Clinton Administration. In my view, given that, SCOTUS should be one of the central reasons why anyone should vote for Democrats, and Democratic-nominees to the White House. To pretend that it was still an apolitical institution in 2016 both ignored history, but also the recent politicization. It was a smokescreen to hate on Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and remove oneself from personal responsibility. That’s not a possibility, and these folks are now responsible for their pathetic choices that are already hurting the courts and could very well lead to a destruction of precedent that has moved ever more toward justice. 

For those saying “This could motivate dems in the midterms and shows the court IS apolitical, and that dems ought to use this anger to their advantage,” on some points, yes, we SHOULD use this to push court-reform. We should directly threaten the courts with this. But was this worth it? Not at all. How many decisions will be made that will be a disaster? How many people will suffer? Again, this is a smokescreen to avoid personal responsibility. If these dirty ass Jill Stein voters aren’t on the front-line working for the Democratic Party up and down the ballot everywhere, if they aren’t working to register and facilitate voting in disenfranchised communities, If they aren’t donating whatever time/money they can to the groups doing the above, then I don’t buy anything they have to say about empathy or policy. If they really see the effects of their past choices, now is the best time to grow the fuck up and start trying to remedy that. Well, the best time was November 2016. But that’s already the past. I guess we’ll see if they shape up and do the right thing or keep being sexist dogs. 

[writingwithcolor]

Destroying Imperialism to avoid Discussing Racism

Hello! I wanted to write a mostly light-hearted story about cowboys escorting a mysterious stranger to the Atlantic and the weird encounters they have along the way. I know how racist the Western genre normally is but I didn’t think I was the right person to write about the racism Native Americans faced since I’m not Native. To get around this I created a backstory for the world to explain the lack of it:

A century ago during the Age of Imperialism alien asteroids struck the earth, destroying most of Europe and mutating Earth’s flora and fauna. In the ensuing confusion the Native nations banded together and pushed the invaders out, with the freed slaves staying with the Natives. The cowboys are all descended from these former slaves, with the only white person in the entire story being the escort. Since the story involves traveling the cast will meet a lot of Native people on their adventure.

At first I thought this was okay but as I this was okay but as I thought about the idea more I grew less confident in it. I didn’t feel like it was okay for me to attempt to side-step a very serious issue like this. Is there a way to repair this premise or should I just scrap the entire story since I seem to be coming at it from the wrong angle?

I wouldn’t say “wrong angle” so much as “potentially ahistorical to a fairly extreme degree,” which might not be possible to mitigate. There’s a lot of points in here that need addressing for it to be even plausible, and I’m only covering the major ones.

Point the First: Natives Owned Slaves

Part of it was to get in good with the white man, but this is something that happened. I’m not Black-Indigenous, so I won’t speak for their struggle, but I will say that anti-blackness is fairly large in Native communities, and many Black-Indigenous people are denied any sort of place in the tribe. 

I’m not very well versed in that history, and I would rather pass the mic to Black-Indigenous folks who have in some cases experienced generations of tribal disenfranchisement thanks to prevalent colourism and anti-blackness in Native communities.

I’m sure some tribes were anti-slavery. But others very much weren’t. This is something you will have to explore, extrapolate, and listen very closely to Black-Indigenous folk for their experiences and preferences.

Point the Second: Some Nations (temporarily) Benefited A Lot

The Metis were a nation with a lot of political power and a lot of wealth, all thanks to the fur trade. They came about through political and/or love marriages between white men and Native women, then grew into their own distinct thing with an intermingling of French, Scottish, and primarily Cree settlers in Canada’s Prairie. 

This isn’t counting how relations between Quebec and the Natives in the region were actually very good for a time, the Iroquois were war allies to the British in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Texas has a treaty that has not actually been broken. 

These nations/confederacies would be hard pressed to want to throw Europeans out, because for a long period of time, they got a lot of perks. They got money, the ability to expand their territory, help against their enemies, guns, horses, metal, and resources in general.

Point the Third: Colonialism Was Slow To Boil, Or Devastated Quickly

There is no one exact spot where you can pinpoint it got bad for everyone all at once. When America got its mind on manifest destiny, that was terrible for the Plains, Mountain, and West Coast Natives. When the Spanish came (well before the Age of Imperialism in the 1400s) and enslaved practically all of Mexico and Florida, it very quickly destroyed many, many, many nations that are working on revitalization efforts but will never truly exist as they were again. 

Canada’s Prairies got hit hard from the 1800s, onward, but the Inuit were slow to connect with Europeans so their colonialism is very recent and very sudden. The Maritimes in Canada got hit devastatingly before the Age of Imperialism really took hold, but then Quebec Natives hardly had that happen until everything soured. The Iroquois might’ve had even longer in a place of status.

As a result, you cannot assume everyone would either be hurt or feel hurt. In some cases the Natives only realized how toxic settlers were when America actively cheated them out of land. Others when their children were taken to residential schools.

Point the Fourth: Cowboys Existed Because of Colonialism

Cows are a European animal, primarily, as are horses. Ranching began as Spanish and then American people wanted to buy/steal large swaths of land from Natives in both Mexico during early colonialism (I reiterate: before the period your supposed asteroid hit Europe), and the Plains during the manifest destiny era. 

Ranching and Native peoples have a hard time coexisting together, because in the plains, you’ve got rancher needs fighting with buffalo needs, just to name one example. 

It might be possible to create a respectful cowboy situation, but you’d have to think pretty long and hard about how to not push out Native peoples from their territory, and how to share the land for two very large animals and their different needs. 

Also, you’d have to account for how ranching is a Spanish thing, so if Spanish people hadn’t had a chance to import all of their practices, then the whole concept of cowboys in North America would be bust. 

Is it possible to have cowboys be adapted, maybe be influenced from a few places in Asia or Africa  (because Africa does have pastoralists) instead of the Spanish, and make them respectful? Probably. How? You’d have to do your own research on the needs of cowboys, animal husbandry in East Africa, and what tensions existed between them and Native/Indigenous peoples in both North America and whatever region you’re borrowing from.

Point the Fifth: Colonialism Became Self Sustaining Very Quickly

Aka, they wouldn’t have been impacted much at all by Europe getting wiped out, especially the older colonialism like New France (1500s), Mexico (1500s), Rupert’s Land (1670), New England (1600s), etc. They might have lost some trading partners and a reason to over-produce goods, but they wouldn’t have been devastated. These people:

1- did not rely on Europe after a generation or two, maybe 3-4 at most

2- were often already genocidal

It took all of a generation or two for colonial structures to be self-perpetuating (when families came over like in America, or the active sponsorship of girls to come such as the Files du Roi in New France), and to have killed off major swaths of Indigenous people in the area (although New France did take longer to get bad). The Pequot village massacre that is the reason Thanksgiving is annual was in the early 1600s, after all.

This is not getting into the Caribbean, Asia (British shadow-rule of India started in the 1700s, but they had been trade partners for longer), or Africa, or South America. Colonialism was a long, long, long buildup, and the Age of Imperialism was just a small portion of that. 

The likelihood of the Indigenous numbers existing to remove cities that had purposely spent all of their early time “clearing” the land of unwanted Indigenous people is… possible, but low. 

This is why non-violent colonialism is an oxymoron, which I’ve discussed at length this week. Many were violent from day one, so unless you change Europe’s history to remove their manifest destiny attitudes and just have them expand to new lands and not be colonists, then your solution is too little, too late.

Also, news travelled a lot slower at the time. People might not’ve even found out about the asteroid for months if not years.

In the End

I highly doubt it will be possible to get the kind of story you want without discussing racism of some sort. The fact you’ve only targeted the Age of Imperialism, and as a result have kinda majorly glossed over the Spanish era (starting in the 1400s), which was majorly devastating to Mexico/Florida and resulted in many peoples being rendered extinct, plus being the root of cowboys… yeah.

It sounds like you’re trying to avoid learning about our struggles/putting in the work to write respectful background characters. You’re too hung up on trying to make it all better instead of learning how to write situations without making the whole story about that situation. I’d take a look at our Can I Write About X? tag for more information on how to write background stuff.

Like I said. It might be possible to create a respectful cowboy/Western story… but I really doubt that this solution is enough. It just doesn’t account for the sheer length of time colonialism happened, and by the time Native peoples have supposedly banded together, colonialism would’ve been self sustaining in many of the regions you’re discussing.

~ Mod Lesya