#I thought we were decades past referring to exploited kids this way

[runawaycarouselhorse]

They got it right in the article, at least--"victims of traffickers"--these are child trafficking victims!

Brothels are often, even when legalized, the domain of many pimps and traffickers... police have a hard time telling and it's just not bothered with,

“It was always very difficult to rescue the girls because someone would leak the information and the brothel keepers would move the girls. The girls were not a priority for the system, so the police were not helpful. We had to be proactive in getting the evidence.”

---

“The girls are unable to say anything because they are always being policed. You can’t ask questions, you won’t get the evidence on a silver platter. But when you are going around, you hear things and see things,” Singh explains, sitting in a nondescript office, piles of cardboard files all over the floor, documenting the thousands of girls they have rescued over the years, approximately 4,000 at last count. 

““The girls are unable to say anything because they are always being policed. You can’t ask questions, you won’t get the evidence on a silver platter. But when you are going around, you hear things and see things,” Singh explains, sitting in a nondescript office, piles of cardboard files all over the floor, documenting the thousands of girls they have rescued over the years, approximately 4,000 at last count. 

“Most of the time the girls are locked up and they are only allowed out when a customer comes in. To ensure they are not interacting with the customers, the brothel keepers are always banging on the door and take away the mobiles of the customers.”

As a result of an 11-month long operation, conducted before the pandemic, Guria India were able to rescue 136 underage victims of traffickers, resulting in 61 brothels being shut down.”

In the narrow alleyways of Meerganj, the notorious red light district in the city of Allahbad, a man dressed in a brown kurta with a rucksack walks past the dilapidated brothels shouting ‘lipsticks for sale, good prices.’ 

He barely warrants a glance, one of dozens of street sellers who stroll down the alley daily, hawking their wares, a common sight in the hustle and bustle of cities in India.

Word has got around that he’s selling good quality products like Max Factor and other brands the brothel girls recognise from billboards featuring their favourite Bollywood actresses. He’s cheaper than the other sellers and lets them pay in instalments. 

A group of young girls flock to him, picking up bright lipsticks and face powders, to make them look older than they are, or perhaps not, depending on the client’s preferences.

But this is no ordinary seller. He is from Guria India, an organisation which rescues and rehabilitates women and underage girls trapped in the sex trade. 

He has been working undercover, disguised as a cosmetics seller, gathering evidence of victims of traffickers who have been forced into sex work, many of whom are underage and often thousands of miles away from home.

“You are working on a razor’s edge. There are no second chances. One wrong move and you could be killed. It’s not like a movie where you get a retake,” says Ajeet Singh, Director of Guria India.  

The nature of trafficking is changing and so activists are having to find new and innovative  means to take them on. 

Singh said he came up with the idea of posing as a make-up seller after he found that the brothel owners were always one step ahead of him. 

“It was always very difficult to rescue the girls because someone would leak the information and the brothel keepers would move the girls. The girls were not a priority for the system, so the police were not helpful. We had to be proactive in getting the evidence.”

Using rudimentary equipment he bought from Delhi, including spy cams concealed in a pen and button, he began scouring the streets of the red light district for almost a year. 

“Make-up is something very enticing for girls. If you go to India, you’ll see street sellers in every city so I knew I would blend in,” he said.

“The girls are unable to say anything because they are always being policed. You can’t ask questions, you won’t get the evidence on a silver platter. But when you are going around, you hear things and see things,” Singh explains, sitting in a nondescript office, piles of cardboard files all over the floor, documenting the thousands of girls they have rescued over the years, approximately 4,000 at last count. 

“Most of the time the girls are locked up and they are only allowed out when a customer comes in. To ensure they are not interacting with the customers, the brothel keepers are always banging on the door and take away the mobiles of the customers.”

As a result of an 11-month long operation, conducted before the pandemic, Guria India were able to rescue 136 underage victims of traffickers, resulting in 61 brothels being shut down. 

Social media ‘weapon of choice’ for traffickers

The sting, which was signed off by local people, used undercover filming to collect evidence against offenders. When enough had been gathered, ten members of the Guria India team joined police as they carried out dawn raids, using iron cutters to access properties where the victims were being held.

There are an estimated 1.2 million children under 18 working in brothels in India, many of whom have been victims of sex traffickers. Approximately 75 per cent of the cases Guria India dealt with involved under age victims ranging from just six months to 17.

The majority of these trafficked children are from lower castes and more than half of them are from families living below the poverty line.  

While many of the girls sold to brothels are trafficked by relatives or family friends, in recent years, social media, with its low-risk and high rewards, has become the weapon of choice of traffickers, luring victims in with lucrative job offers or promises of marriage. 

“The internet and exploitative romantic relationships are key factors for trafficking in recent times,” said children’s rights activist Bharti Ali.

“Often, the police don’t start their search in cases of adolescent girls immediately as they believe it to be a case of elopement. Many cases end up in girls being sold further by the boy/person they trusted or who promised them false marriage.

“When girls go missing, parents often try to search within their own community, her friends and relatives. This is when they lose critical time. When they suspect that she may have eloped, they may tend to not report at all to protect family honour … The girls too are unable to report as the traffickers keep a close watch on them.”

For victims of traffickers, their introduction into the world of prostitution is a brutal and violent one, in which they face beatings, gang rape and starvation. Some victims also reported having chilli powder placed on their genitalia and being subjected to electric shocks. 

Among the girls they have rescued is Sarita, who was just 12-years-old when she was sold to a sex trafficker by her older brother and was transported 700 km away to work in a brothel. 

“My mum was working in Mumbai and I lived with my sister. My brother was a drug addict. He told me he was taking me to see my mum but instead he sold me to a trafficker. I was locked in a room and beaten and raped by several men. I managed to find a phone and called my mum,” she said.

Sarita’s mother, along with the police and Guria India activists, were able to rescue her and relocate the family. However, the majority of victims are not so lucky. India remains a socially conservative society and victims of trafficking will often be ostracised by their families and community. 

Rescuing victims of trafficking is only half the battle, while keeping them out of the hands of traffickers presents another challenge. 

Rehabilitating victims back into a society which was already hostile to them in the first place is difficult and often the girls will end up falling back into the hands of traffickers. 

In one case, 57 girls who were rescued by Guria were sent to a shelter home in Agra for rehabilitation, but were re-trafficked by the superintendent of the centre. Just this week, the superintendent was acquitted by the Supreme Court and Guria India is currently fighting the decision. 

Despite the setbacks, Singh remains hopeful. “Although I don’t think we can eradicate child prostitution in my lifetime, I’m hopeful we can set the foundations to make the change,” he said.

And sometimes all it takes is a rucksack and a Max Factor lipstick. 

[sleeplessinsiswati]

Toxic Masculinity—A Contagious Kind of Pollution

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My bad, I know I’m late.

*grumble and murmuring*

My bad. Look, i said my bad.

*lower murmuring*

Look, in my defense, I had the post locked and loaded on the queue and then my internet went out. Boom. Now can we get on with what we came here for?

_________________________________________________

As you may know about me, bell hooks is one of my favorite authors. She has inspired me, moment after moment and time after time, to grow and love myself and others more wholly and fully.  In her writing she uses a combination of autobiographical, common-sensical language and academic, theoretical research to shed light to the various topics. Here, I will attempt to scratch at the masterpieces of her work, and use both theory and my experience to shed the light of truth concerning what I know about what the world has come to refer to as toxic masculinity.

Your story may be different than mine, but toxic masculinity is something that affects each and every one of us. Let me state again, masculinity is not the issue here; there is nothing wrong with “being a man” or being strong or having power. The issue comes in when notions or ideals of manhood force boys and men to be emotionally unavailable, makes us believe we are not enough as human beings, or encourages us to exploit and take advantage of others in an ultimate quest for power. There’s no way around the reality that this is no way to live, and there is the crux of the argument—living. Most of the things that we come to know and associate with being a “man” and “manhood” have to do with survival. Hunting, fishing, fighting, scanning a room and sizing people up, sports, fitness, taking a hit and not complaining, the list goes on and on. Most of these are guys grasping at straws, trying to get a piece, a bit more power than they had before, in order to survive. But this is not living. 

This is why the first step to growth, and leading a healthier life absent of toxic masculinity, is reflection. You must look over your life, your experiences and genuinely ask are you living or are you surviving. Patriarchy, being a system where men and masculine energy dominate spaces of power or with power and women, children, and weaker men are seen as inferior and vessels willing to be dominated or controlled, makes us believe that survival is the ultimate resource and that there are constant, looming threats to us accomplishing this goal. Though at times this may be true, it is not always true, and if we walk through life always scanning rooms with balled up fists we doom ourselves to early graves filled with bitterness, emotions we’ve never experienced, and a life devoid of love. There is more to life than reliving childhood traumas day in and day out, but that more does not come without being able to reflect and to heal. 

I don’t remember at what point in my childhood I started hating my dad; I know that it was not always that way. There’s a distinctly fond memory I have with him—wrestling my older brother and I, both of us no older than seven at the time, he pinned us down and stood on our chests saying, “ Who’s the man? Who’s the Man?” Gerald and I were half hysterical laughing, half having an asthma attack, and shouting, “ You’re the man! You’re the man!” He laughed saying, “ No, God’s the Man. Say, God’s the Man.” We giggle between gasps, “Okay, God’s the Man!” Mom came on to the scene from the back room of our duplex and looked at Dad with that look that only Black mommas can deliver; we were sorry that we got dad in trouble, but to this day I love that time in my life, I love that memory. 

Perhaps it was the pressures of two lives, two similar personalities, and an age difference spanning over three decades that caused there to be so much friction between us; don’t ask me what the first argument was even about, because I couldn’t tell you. I think that it was the silence that ultimately led to it all. Questions not asked by a son out of fear, and questions left unanswered by a father unaware of the shadow his figure casted. What I do know is that early on in my adolescence I became disillusioned with childhood, with being looked down upon and thought to be foolish, and I know it had a lot to do with Dad and things he said, or how he said them. Something as simple as walking into the room that Gerald and I shared, looking around and making an expression, and finally looking at us and shaking his head was all Dad needed to do to express his disappointment. Honestly I appreciated the silent expressions a lot more than the verbal ones, which seemed to have a back-breakingly painful bite to them. Gerald grew to be calloused and joke about it, but I was raw to it; words more than belts and punishments are what would break my spirit. Around fifth grade I realized that love didn’t really matter, or at least it didn’t mean anything—I loved my dad and he kept smoking cigarettes even after my brother and I begged him to stop; I loved my mom but I couldn’t tell her what I felt about the world because she couldn’t protect me from it; I loved my brother but I felt he constantly belittled me, silenced me, and made me feel like I was stupid (I’m sure he took a few pages from Dad’s book, in this way); I loved myself, or I thought I did, and yet I constantly belittled myself, telling myself that in this world I would have to be stronger. Love could not change anything about life, it just made you feel like you couldn’t even more.

Eventually I gave in to this belief system—years passed and I graduated to full blown “I don’t give a fuck about anything”. I was afraid, powerless and with those tools as weapons I was ready for anything at any time because I felt I had nothing to lose; I felt I had lost so much of my soul already, it wouldn’t matter even if I lost my life. Hotheaded athlete, I knew how to mask my shrewd and heartless demeanor with cool, chauvinistic locker-room thuggery. I acted chill, I wanted to be chill, but in my mind, at any moment I was a shoulder bump away from a full blown “nigga moment”, as so accurately defined in The Boondocks. I was a ticking time bomb, an emotionally unavailable mess all throughout high school, and college was more the same with less of the guard rails.

But before we keep going forward, let’s go back. Black Baton Rouge has become well-known in modern society (before the Alton Sterling murder) for one reason in particular, as far as I am concerned, —Lil Boosie. Now, I’m not talking about “Zoom” or “Wipe Me Down” Lil Boosie, that’s mainstream Boosie. I’m talking “Set It Off”, “Murder Was the Case” Lil Boosie; Boosie that I met that one time at the Mall of Cortana and he said, “Wassup, lil niggas” Lil Boosie. That one. The Boosie BR natives knew growing up was trap before trap was cool. Street, gutta, whatever you want to call it, Black BR loved it and they had to have it. Hell the whole world came to love it, but Baton Rouge had to have it so much that they had to mimic it; kids, even, began to walk with certain swaggers, talking lingos picked up from lyrics. It was a damn masterpiece from a mastermind, and there was no escaping it. The problem though, is what this success for one man meant for many boys (like me and unlike me) growing up in that era. Is being a man being that kind of man? The kind of man in these songs? Why do these boys think less of me because I’m not a “man” like they think they are? Do they know they’re faking?

These were the type of thoughts that got me chin-checked on more than one occasion, questioning what someone saw as their manhood, or them thinking I was calling them soft. I was a huge fan of Dr. King in my younger days, nonviolence and all, but I made up in my mind after one good fight that Dr. King must have never been to Scotlandville, Baton Rouge, a day in his life, and that was that for nonviolence as a way of life in my mind. In a classic case of if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them, I entered the wade pool of cool poses and posturizing. If a scrap came I didn’t think twice about it, and I was willing to take whatever bruises and lumps came with it from the school or the fight. Not like I was built or raise for all’lat, but didn’t seem like there was much other option. 

Now let’s press play, back at the start of my university academic career. I had finally made it to the platform where I wanted to be—college freshman, class president, track team, chapel assistant, so on and so forth. And the shit felt as plastic as a maxed out credit card. The aggression, the fight that I had come to know and hate and love—for all its pain and all  its suffering, I missed it; it was home, my home. Not much more than a self-righteous leader already, I quickly threw off the mask of who people wanted me to be as the smart, politically correct leader after freshman year, and allowed my passions to roam freely. I did what I wanted, when I wanted, for no reason other than I wanted to. 

It wasn’t until I nearly lost my opportunities to continue my studies and was threatened with the potential for never finishing undergrad, that I sat down and contemplated what went wrong, and why. It was then that I had to take a journey through my mind, into my past and confront the decisions I made, the reasons I made them, and the consequences of those actions. It was here that I discovered and acknowledged the pain in my past. The memories of desperately wanting the approval of my father, and simultaneously being pained by not living up to his seemingly impossible expectations; Times where he seemed to be emotionally unavailable hurt me more than any belt whooping ever could; fleeting thoughts of being silenced or crying inconsolably from feelings of inferiority or brokenness. From these starting points I came to resent the presentation of manhood before me in my father, and the power that came with it, with hoping to one day overcome (or overpower) it by whatever means necessary. That bitterness spilled over into other systems of power and I came to resent almost all, if not all, forms of leadership. Being on the lower rungs of the power dynamic at home and the frustration that came with it did not get any better in the world beyond those four wals; I was short, readily referred to as “nappy-headed”, and emotionally vulnerable. The ego bruises and self-esteem damage I received from early on in my public school career led me to believe that I had to become someone powerful, or to have power, in order to not be disrespected. This belief would haunt me from the moment of its beginning up to this very day. 

Once I realized this, and I was able to accept that for the vast majority of my life I had been living in my past burdened by unforgivness, that I had not been the person I really wanted to be, I began a journey of learning to become for the first time. It was exciting being able to unlearn ways in which I had limited my own humanity for fear of not being perceived as manly or displaying some form of power, but it has also been very painful at times. Admitting to yourself the damage that you have done to others, the damage you have done to yourself, and the damage that has been done to you is not easy. There are people who to this day I feel I owe apologies to, for things that I said or ways that I treated them, Black women in particular; for the sake of recovering acknowledgement I didn’t receive in my youth but desperately wanted, I took advantage emotionally of women who otherwise loved me, cared for me, and wanted to see the both of us to succeed. Some people, most people, are afraid to look into their pasts and examine the truth of their actions because they do not want to face that there may be consequences to their actions; even towards themselves there is unforgivness and bitterness. The truth is, without confronting our past we are bound by them and they have power over us. Only by being able to non-judgementally examine our actions, accept that they were wrong, and pay whatever toll to move forward, can we begin our journey of healing. 

Even I was afraid to begin my journey of unlearning toxic masculinity thinking that I may be vulnerable to the world and it’s threats, but I have come to find my wife and best friend, a life of love and laughter and carefree living, and wholeness through this adventure of learning. Yes, I am now more likely to cry in public and yes I share my feelings more with others, but I now see that instead of living a life silencing parts of who I am and distorting other parts of me to seem more angry or more threatening than I feel, I can just…be. 

And that, for me, is enough. 

Pain is universal: we all experience it, feel it, and suffer. But the only thing equally as universal, and infinitely more powerful is the healing from that pain; that healing is love. I challenge you to ask what ways has toxic masculinity been a part of your life, and then challenge your self to live a more whole, more alive life. Only by ending this vicious cycle can we stop the pollution of toxic masculinity, and breathe the fresh air of self-acceptance, self-love, and truly show our love for others. 

Peace.

[askconnectedhearts-blog]

Kingdom Hearts: Modern Day AU

KINGDOM HEARTS: MODERN DAY AU An AU that follows the adventures of everyone after Xehanort’s defeat.

First

Chapter 2: Second Dream, Second Chance

That night, most slept soundly in the tower. A few, still haunted by the past decade and a half, had their share of nightmares, but awoke only to the peaceful quiet. Once everyone was awake, farewells were in order, for everyone had their own homes to return to.

“So you’re not heading home?” Lea twirled his keyblade absentmindedly, much to Yen Sid’s annoyance, “Figured that would be the first place you would want to go.”

“It’s going to be a while before we can put back our home,” Aqua replied, just a little sadly, “But in the meantime, we get to actually be proper masters for our apprentices!”

“I’m not sure about that…” Ventus said, smiling, “at this point, they probably have quite a bit to teach us!” He wrapped his arm around Sora, who jokingly elbowed him back.

“Besides, it’s not like you’re going home either,” Xion said.

“Hey, someone needs to watch over you kids, since the closest thing you got to parents is Mr. Sunshine and Ms. Pure of Heart over there,” Axel smiled, “besides, I don’t think you all really have enough money to pay for a place over in town.”

“First off, I was not involved in that situation, ok?” Kairi piped up, “and secondly, I know I should’ve mentioned this earlier…” she began digging in her back pocket before pulling out a munny pouch closed with a pull string and an odd red symbol on the front. “The King said you could probably use this, especially since you took the time to earn it, and also that he’s added a little extra.”

Roxas took the pouch, looked at it, and laughed a little. “Been wondering where this went, and whether or not Riku decided to go off and spend it all…” Riku hid his smile with his hand as Roxas opened up the pouch, his eyes widening in shock. “There’s...a lot more than 5000 in here…what did you do? Where did you get this much money?”

“Like I said, The King added a little extra. He’s loaded Roxas, this is nothing.” Kairi chuckled a little. “He’s even helping pay for our new home at Destiny Islands.”

“Nice to know we all got a sugar da-OOPH,” Axel was immediately elbowed in the stomach by Roxas as Xion punched him in the arm, while Riku began laughing.

“Axel...please...don’t ever, ever say that again,” Riku managed to get out.

Terra smiled, and then said, “I guess we should go ahead and begin heading out. Everyone packed?”

Everyone except Vanitas and Yen Sid chimed in with a “Yes dad,” which startled Vanitas for a second and only earned a bit of a huff from Terra. Riku and Kairi were the first to pick up their bags and head out the door, followed by Ventus, Axel, Roxas, and Xion. Aqua and Terra followed close behind, but Sora noticed Vanitas lingering.

“Hey, everything alright?” Sora poked Vanitas.

“Yea, I’m alright, I just gotta do something real quick. I be with you all in a second, ok?” Vanitas smiled, “I promise you don’t gotta worry about me.”

“You say that now,” Sora winked, “I’ll see you in a bit then!” As Sora slipped out the door, Vanitas turned to Yen Sid.

“Master Yen Sid...you know of the lost masters, right?”

Yen Sid’s eyes widened a little before he cleared his throat. “You would be correct in assuming so, but why do you bring up such a tale?”

“We both know they’re not tales. I know that they were lost to darkness, along with the rest of their world.”

“You refer to Daybreak Town…” Yen Sid crossed his arms, “What do you want from that place?”

“I...it’s not what I want.” Vanitas looked a little defeated. “Ventus, he...was there, and I have his memories from then.”

“And he does not?”

“As far as I know...no,” Vanitas stood up straight, “But I know he still has people he cares for there. I want to know what I can do to bring it back.”

Yen Sid narrowed his eyes. “There are many worlds still lost to the realm of sleep, a task that I decided could wait until after you all had time to rest. If you would like to go ahead and get started, you’re more than welcome to, but you’ll likely need someone else to go with you as well...preferably someone who’s already had experience with the realm of sleep.”

“Hmph, Sora.” Vanitas smiled. “I think he would be interested in making a little surprise for his new pal.”

“I was going to suggest Riku...but either one should do.” Yen Sid smiled. “You might want to hurry, they’re likely to head out soon.”

“Yes sir.” Vanitas bowed quickly and rushed out the door, running down the steps for about a second before groaning, whipping out his keyblade, and beginning to create a rail down the steps again. However, as he neared the bottom, he saw everyone below getting close to the door. Vanitas shouted, “Hey! Watch out!” before stopping his icy blast, his heels skidding on the step in front of him before continuing to fly forward, diving headfirst into the whole crowd.

“Vanitas...why?” Sora struggled out from under the pile of moaning bodies as Terra popped his head up to make sure no one was injured.

“Sorry, I was uhh…” Vanitas paused as he remembered that he wanted to keep the mission a secret from Ventus, “I was going to ask if you if you saw my comb. Didn’t want to keep everyone waiting.”

“Your...what?” Ventus spoke up as he got himself straightened out.

“My comb! You know, for my hair. I think Sora was the last one to use it.” Vanitas sheepishly replied.

“Why would I use your comb? Is that what you were doing? Looking for your comb?” Sora looked a little irritated.

“Yes, I was looking for my comb. Can you at least help me look for it?”

“Yea, of course.” Sora began walking up the stairs, Vanitas beside him.

“Make sure not to take too long, ok?” Kairi put her hands on her hips. “The train comes soon.”

Vanitas looked a little concerned, but turned and said, “Don’t worry, we should find it soon.”

As they began making their way back up the steps, Sora began to ask about the comb. “Where did you last see it?”

“I uhh, think I saw it in the bathroom? But I left it in there because I thought you might use it, but then I didn’t see it.”

“Why would you think I would use your comb?”

“You know, uhh, we got the same hair.”

“But I’ve always kept up my hair!”

Vanitas glanced down the steps real quick and then spoke in a whisper, “Look I actually need your help with making a surprise for Ventus. Are you up for that.”

Suddenly Sora’s eyes lit up, and said, “Of course! You could’ve mentioned something before I headed down with everyone else! What’s the surprise?”

“Uhhh...it’s a surprise.” Vanitas was still unsure how up for this Sora would be. “Ye-I mean Master Yen Sid’s helping too though.”

“Alright! Well, just tell me what you need me to do, and I’ll do it!” Sora smiled as they reentered Yen Sid’s chamber.

Once they shut the door behind them, Yen Sid began, “So, Sora, are you prepared to return to the realm of slumber?”

“Wait, why am I heading back there?” Sora looked a little nervous. “I mean, I’m up for it, but…”

“Look, here’s what’s happening,” Vanitas began to spill, “Ventus isn’t from the same place as Terra and Aqua. He lost his home a long time ago.”

“So his world is still sleeping? I thought I woke up all the sleeping worlds!”

“There are many, many worlds that none of us in this room have ever had a chance to even know of.” Yen Sid sighed. “A world so old, if we never heard word from it, must either be in the realm of sleep, or the realm of darkness, but considering the exploits of Aqua, Riku, and Mickey into the realm of darkness never revealed any remnants of Daybreak Town, it likely now lays in the realm of sleep.” Yen Sid raised his hands and began to form rings of silver energy surrounded in a purple haze between them. “Go ahead and lie down, and decide on how your dream begins.”

“That one world with the monsters?” Sora asked, already on the ground.

“Sure, that one world with the monsters.” Vanitas laid on the floor, shifting a bit to try to get in a comfortable position, before suddenly sitting up. “And keep your mou...I mean, Master Yen Sid, I would like to keep this a secret from Ven as long as possible. Can you keep your...keep a secret?”

“Of course, Vanitas,” Yen Sid spoke as the energy from his hands began to float over the floor. “I will keep my mouth shut.”

Sora and Vanitas awoke in a large steel building, adorned with a large blue M.

[aion-rsa]

Ranking Every Krampus Movie by Krampus Lore Accuracy

https://ift.tt/2IcU9re

Christmas horror movies have long been one of the best parts of the festive season, and over the past decade interest in the festive beastie known as the Krampus has been on the rise. 

But who is the devilish creature? And which of the eleven feature films (of vastly varying quality) that have taken their name from the Krampus mythology are most similar to the actual ancient folklore that inspired them? 

2020 has been a year of horrors so it seems only fitting to do a deep dive investigation into this most important of Christmas horror queries so you can celebrate this year’s Krampusnacht in style and accuracy! 

The Origins of the Krampus

So the creepy European tale of the Krampus goes a little something like this: Krampus accompanies St. Nick (that’s right, Santa Claus) on his gift giving rounds, but instead of offering rewards for good kids he punishes bad ones. It adds an enticing little bit of nastiness to the classic Christmas traditions which makes it all the more understandable that it’s become such a large part of the cultural consciousness over the years. 

So what is the actual history of the Krampus and where did it first spring from? Encyclopedia Britannica gets into deeper detail, explaining that Krampus “was thought to have been part of pagan rituals for the winter solstice. According to legend, he is the son of Hel, the Norse god of the underworld. With the spread of Christianity, Krampus became associated with Christmas–despite efforts by the Catholic church to ban him. The creature and St. Nicholas are said to arrive on the evening of December 5 (Krampusnacht; “Krampus Night”). While St. Nicholas rewards nice children by leaving presents, Krampus beats those who are naughty with branches and sticks. In some cases, he is said to eat them or take them to hell.” 

Lovely. 

We wrote more about Krampus traditions here.

Mother Krampus 2: Slay Ride A.K.A. Lady Krampus (2018) 

Though it’s titled as if it’s a sequel to our next entry–which is also not about Krampus–there is little to no connection between these movies. This film has no Krampus accuracy as it is not in any way, shape, or form about Krampus. 

What it is about is a group of women who are about to finish their community service but have one last task: to visit an elderly woman and check in on her before Christmas. Turns out that she’s not the weak old lady they were expecting and instead is a slasher who loves terrorizing families and young women. Like I said, there’s no Krampus here and it’s also not a supernatural film. It is exceedingly strange, though, and features an OAP slasher suspect, which is rare. So even without the mythical creature this micro-budget murder movie might bring you some enjoyable Christmas horror chuckles during the festive season. 

Mother Krampus (2017) 

The reason that this movie is close to the very bottom of our rankings is simple. Mother Krampus isn’t actually based on the lore of Krampus at all and is instead inspired by another creepy Germainic folkloric figure known as Frau Perchta. Seeing as the Krampus is more well known, the filmmakers decided to misleadingly name this movie Mother Krampus. 

But the two creatures do share some similarities, hence why the simple but comedic OAP slasher Mother Krampus 2 takes the “prize” as our least accurate title. Frau Perchta is also not too fond of children and in the ancient myths surrounding her it’s said that “she flies through the night sky attended by an army of lost souls, including the demonic-looking Perchten, her army of servants who are visually nearly indistinguishable from Krampus. The only way to know for sure is context; Krampus rides abroad at St. Nicholas Eve while the Perchten tend more toward Epiphany, and the last three Thursdays before Christmas, also known as Berchtl nights or Knocking nights.”

This non-Krampus movie is at least a sort-of accurate version of the Frau Perchta legend and sees a town terrorized by a curse that was put on them by a woman (maybe) wrongly accused of stealing missing children. Now 25 years later, it seems like the Christmas witch, Frau Perchta, is upon them and is planning on stealing 12 children over the 12 days of Christmas. Scary stuff. 

Krampus 2: The Devil Returns (2016)

This incredibly low-budget sequel to Krampus: The Christmas Devil (more on this in a minute) centers on–like so many bad straight-to-streaming horror sequels–some useless cops. They’re searching for missing children who it seems have been stolen by Krampus, so this at least gets one point for a classic Krampus trope. 

There is a naughty list in this film too, although it’s actually held onto by the grimy mall Santa who plays a truly horrible role in this movie that is utterly unpleasant to watch. Generally this movie has little to no Krampus accuracy with most of the plot following the useless cops as they struggle to battle a gang of low level violent criminals including the grimy Santa Claus. 

Read more

Culture

The Anti-Christmas Spirit of Krampus

By Tony Sokol

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Doctor Who: The Weird Anomaly of the 1965 ‘Christmas Special’

By Andrew Blair

That gross Santa actually poses one of the biggest issues to the Krampus accuracy as the movie is more concerned with making a bleak festive crime flick ala Silent Night Deadly Night–but nowhere near as good–rather than making a movie about a scary folkloric figure. That’s why this one ends up near the bottom of our accuracy list, not just because it’s really not about Krampus at all but also because it’s gross, exploitative, and is more concerned with lazy “shock twists” than the story of Krampus. 

Krampus Origins (2018)

Seeing as this movie begins in WWII with Nazis trying to summon Krampus and American soldiers stealing the Krampus summoning machine, this is surely the least accurate… but shockingly, no. 

The film follows the young inhabitants of an orphanage who end up with the Krampus box. From this viewer’s perspective it’s definitely a movie that probably began life as a non-Krampus film and had the folkloric figure hamfistedly added at a later date because Krampus barely makes an appearance. Also, does this title imply that these are the origins of the Krampus? Because that doesn’t make any sense, seeing as the box summons him from his ancient world, so he clearly already had origins there that are not explored here at all!

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Movies

The 21 Best Christmas Horror Movies

By Rosie Fletcher and 5 others

Movies

The Christmas Chronicles 2: Who or What is the Belsnickel?

By Natalie Zutter

Despite the fact this is mostly a not very entertaining film about ye olde depressed kids in an even more depressing orphanage, like most of our other entries the 2018 film does stick to two key Krampus lore points: the Krampus (briefly) featured here does love to hunt kids and has big scary horns. His arrival is also heralded by an enigmatic child called Nicholas, which seems like it’s a reference to Krampus’ connection to St. Nicholas, but maybe we’re being too generous. 

Krampus Unleashed (2016)

Apparently the idea of the Krampus just appearing each Krampusnacht and terrorizing local kiddies is a bit too much for filmmakers to stomach as this is the second movie in our list that includes a very specific plot line about Krampus being trapped in the past and then freed by Americans. Here, though, he’s freed by a group of prospectors who at the open are looking for the mythical treasure of Eric Klaus. They come to a very gnarly end at the claws of the old Krampus who is looking very much like a goat-man here which is a step up from the usual red horned devil representations we’ve gotten in some of the other Krampus movies. 

Alas, this is otherwise pretty light on Krampus-accurate lore as we spend most of the runtime with a family having some Hallmark-esque Christmas gathering in a desert ranch. For most of the movie the Krampus seems to be controlled / represented by a magical orange shiny rock which doesn’t appear in any lore we’ve seen but is a smart way to keep the budget low.

Krampus: The Christmas Devil (2013)

A voiceover gives us a slightly confusing rundown of Krampus history as we venture into this micro-budget movie. Apparently in this world Krampus is St. Nicholas’ brother which is definitely not the case in any Krampus lore we read about. But we do get to see Krampus putting a naughty kid into a sack and then trying to drown them which is both brutal but also pretty accurate for Krampus lore. The creature also has some solid claws and has a naughty list which he uses to find the bad girls and boys that he has to kill. Krampus: The Christmas Devil is also the only movie in our list that specifies that Krampus has just one night to do his terrible deeds. 

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DuckTales Season 3 Episode 18 Review: How Santa Stole Christmas!

By Shamus Kelley

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How Darlene Love Brings the Holiday Spirit and Soul to The Christmas Chronicles 2

By Tony Sokol

In this film’s defense, it does have more Krampus action in its opening than some of the films on this list do in their entire runtime, and it makes use of some good weird out-of-license Krampus art during the opening and credits. 

But after the first few minutes we get sucked into a boring crime story about (you guessed it!) useless cops trying to find kids that the Krampus has apparently stolen. When Krampus does pop up in brief moments throughout the film, he’s killing anyone who gets in his way, losing the spirit of the Krampus Christmas. Plus, the original folklore doesn’t have any mention of cops let alone an entire Krampus duology of low-budget movies centered on them. 

Krampus: The Reckoning (2015)

This one begins with a solid retelling of the Krampus legend which makes it one of the most Krampus-heavy offerings in our list. According to this flick, Krampus is as old as time itself and as the grandma warns her child “as Santa rewards good children, Krampus punishes the bad.” Which is all very true! Congrats creepy, horror grandma! 

Interestingly, this film adds in a weird Krampus voodoo doll which is created by a young girl so she can wield the power of the monster against those who do her wrong. In a non-lore but still entertaining twist, the Krampus here is essentially a Jason Voorhees-style killer who just murders everyone including beginning with an abusive couple who’ve been having some pre-marital sex. On the naughty list you go!

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By Delia Harrington

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13 Best Blumhouse Horror Movies Ranked

By David Crow and 3 others

The big change from the legend is that Krampus is controlled and summoned by a little girl who uses the monster to exact revenge on adults who harm children. So ironically this one would have been better under the title Krampus: The Avenger. Revenge movies are fun, but even though there’s some good “what is Krampus” wiki moments, that big twist means this one slides down the Krampus accuracy rating pretty quickly. 

A Christmas Horror Story (2015)

This freaky and festive anthology is a whole lot of fun and includes an interesting visual representation of Krampus. To really get into this entry would be to ruin its secrets, but on the surface it’s about Santa Claus as he battles his elves and Mrs. Claus who have been turned into nightmarish zombies. During the finale, Santa battles the Krampus who is definitely one of the best and most interesting versions that we’ve seen on screen: a true representation of the half-goat half-man creature that we’re all desperate to see. 

This is a really cool Christmas anthology that utilizes the Krampus in an interesting way that adds to the story, even if when all’s said and done we can’t say that this is a wholly accurate Krampus movie. 

Krampus: The Avenger A.K.A. Krampus vs. Vikings (2019)

This historical horror entry is at moments surprisingly “accurate” (well, at least as far as Krampus movies go). 

Set in England during 820, the film centers around a Viking troupe trying to take over the castle of the British king. But their plans are waylaid by a demonic horned beast who lives in the forest and comes each “Yule Day” to kill families. This isn’t technically correct as Krampusnacht is usually on December 5th, the night before St. Nicholas Day on December 6th, plus Krampus is usually most interested in stealing/harming children rather than whole families. But early on in the movie we see Krampus talking about the naughty list, which gains the movie another accuracy point, and visually the practical effects heavy Krampus looks relatively like the creature we all know and fear, although it’s arguably more like a standard devil than a half-goat half-man beast. 

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20 Christmas Movies for Badasses

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Best Modern Horror Movies

By Don Kaye

Just like the majority of this list, Krampus the Avenger is a super low budget movie that is mostly concerned with the easy to shoot action of the Vikings and the royal family and less so with the Krampus. In fact, I would go so far to say this likely could have been a random Game of Thrones style knock-off that added a few Krampus reshoot moments… but that’s just a guess. Either way, the miniscule but present Krampus storyline is more accurate to the lore than usual until it gets lost in a strange wishing / vengeance / murder twist which makes little to no sense. 

Krampus (2015)

A modern Christmas horror classic, Krampus is truly a joy to watch. With an all-star cast featuring Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, and Allison Tolman, this dark comedy is all about that titular creature even if it strays a little from the classical lore. 

When a family gathers for Christmas, their stress, tension, and bitterness around the season begins to seep into their celebrations which comes to a head when the young son tears up his letter to Santa and throws it outside. It’s a mistake that will change all their lives forever as it summons the Krampus, a huge blizzard, and a nightmarish evening they’ll never forget.

This Krampus looks just how you’d expect the beast too, with huge horns and ghoulish goat hooves. But a big change in his motivations means that this Krampus is sent out to punish those who have lost the Christmas spirit, which is very different from dragging bad kids to hell or whipping them with sticks. Saying that, the entire family is objectively very badly behaved and really deserves the punishment the Krampus gives them. The final twist also strays from Krampus lore but is really creepy and overall this is a magnificent example of a Krampus tale. 

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)

Ironically, the film that feels closest to the origins of the Krampus doesn’t use the word Krampus once. It’s also one of the best films on our list, so if you haven’t seen this cult horror hit now is the perfect time. Rare Exports does feature a horned beast but here he’s known only as Santa Claus and is only ever seen frozen in a block of ice, which to be honest makes him even scarier. Directed by Jalmari Helander, this creepy classic begins when the local people of a small Finnish province which is thought to be home to the original Santa Claus, Joulupukki (which translates as Yule Goat), discover something incredibly strange. Their entire town was built on an ancient burial ground used to trap a strange ancient horned creature…

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The legends of Joulupukki and Krampus are incredibly similar, though the most interesting difference–which the film plays on–is that rather than being St. Nick’s helper, Joulupukki is the original Santa Claus. While we don’t get too deep into Krampus lore here, there is an evil horned beast, kids in peril, multiple evil Santa-type figures, and some good chilly Christmas horror. If you want something that lives up to the creepiness of the Krampus, and adds lore and depth to the story you already know, then Rare Exports is the ultimate Krampus movie pick. 

The post Ranking Every Krampus Movie by Krampus Lore Accuracy appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[ppdoddy]

Wynton Marsalis

With the crescendo of public outcry and proliferation of opinions and justifiable expressions of outrage by so many experts, officials and popular celebrities, I fear there’s little room or need for yet another person voicing a commonly held opinion. I also believe that the everyday tragedies that are commonplace and routine to our everyday way of living, should be addressed when they happen, not when so much pressure has built up in the system that it must be let out. It’s also much more difficult to draw a crowd every day for the sanctioned and accepted forms of corruption and disrespect of Black Americans that are shouted from countless recordings and videos and even more powerfully whispered in the form of discriminatory laws, practices and procedures that result in unfair housing and employment practices, and more tragically, lengthy unjust prison sentences.

Much of this “cacophony of crazy” is executed officiously and with a warm and innocuous smile. Therefore, Americans of all hues pass quickly from anger to acceptance, and as months turn to years, our daily silence and inaction is willfully misread as endorsement and back we go to go the illusion that “we’re past this”, because the daily grind is more important than what we find if we just open our eyes and keep them open.

This particular tragedy, however common it’s become across these last decades, is perfectly symbolic of this specific time and place. And this global pandemic has given it a clear and more pungent stage. This murder is so distinctive because of the large size and gentle nature of the man who was murdered, because of the smug, patient and determined demeanor of his killer and of the other peace officers protecting the crime in full public view, and because our nation is always attempting to escape its original sin with the loud shouting of other serious, though less egregious, transgressions. This fully recorded public execution yet again demands our full attention and interest, IF we have the slightest remnant of belief in the morality, reason and intelligence required to realize, maintain and protect a libertarian democracy.

In each of the four decades of my adult life, I have addressed our myriad American social and character problems with an involved piece that always defends a belief in the progression towards freedom that my parents taught us was perhaps possible for all. Experientially, artistically, and spiritually, I’ve had a lifetime relationship - akin to obsession - with confronting this national calamity and conundrum.

As these decades have passed and our nation has retreated from the promises of the Civil Rights Movement that my generation grew up believing would substantially improve economic and social opportunities for those who had been denied by our ‘traditions’, I have spoken, written, played and composed about the toll that American racial injustice has taken on all of us—our possibilities, our presence and our promise. Those words, notes and more seem to have been wasted on gigs, recordings, in classrooms, in prisons, in parks, on tv shows, in print, on radio and from almost any podium from the deep hood to palatial penthouse in cities, towns and suburbs in every state and region of our country day and night and sometimes deep into the night for over 40 relentless years.

Just yesterday, I was walking with my 11-year-old daughter and she asked me, “Did you see the video of the man in Minneapolis?” “Yes” I said. I always talk to her about history and slavery and all kinds of stuff that she is not interested in - and probably overdo it for that reason. She asked, “Why did the man just kneel on him and kill him like that in front of everybody?“ Instead of answering I asked her a question back, ”If I went out of my way to squash something that was harmless to me, and stomped on it repeatedly and deliberately to make sure I had killed every drop of life in it, and then looked defiantly at you, as if triumphant. Why would I do that?” She said, “You hate bugs.” I laughed and said, “Let’s say it’s not necessarily a bug, just whatever I go out of my way to utterly destroy. Why would I?” She said, “Because you can.” “Yes,” and I further asked, “Why else?”

“Because you want to”, and then I said “Yes, but can you think of another more basic reason?” She thought for a while and just couldn’t come up with it. I kept it going saying and aggravating her,” It’s one of the most important ones.” After a few minutes she rolled her eyes and said, “Just tell me.” I debated with myself about telling her this last reason since it’s almost always left out of the national discussions when these types of repeated crimes by our peace officers are committed, but I figured, it’s never too early to consider the obvious. So, I said, “Because he enjoyed it. For him, and for many others, that type of thing is fun. Like them good ole boys in Georgia chasing that brother through the neighborhood to defend themselves.” It’s no more complex than that. She said,” hmmmmm....” unconvinced. And I said, “this type of fun is much older even than America itself.” I considered how different her understanding is of these things, if only just because of time, place and experience.

During my childhood, raw racism and pure absolute ignorance was just a fact, but so was enlightened protest and determined resistance. It was the times, the 60’s going into the 70’s. With our Afros and the consciousness music of James Brown, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, younger brothers were determined not to put up with any bullshit at all, unlike our ancestors, who we felt had willfully endured and accepted disrespect. And it was so easy to believe they were acquiescent in their own degradation because we didn’t know anything about the deep deep sorrow and pains of their lives, because they bore it all in silence and disquieting shame. Now, those old folks are long gone, and each passing day reveals the naïveté of our underestimation of the power and stubbornness of our opponent. Now, our ancestors loom much larger albeit as shadowy premonitions in the background of a blinding mirror that is exposing us all, black and white.

Racist mythology, social inequality, and economic exploitation used propaganda and physical lines of demarcation to create and enforce a state of mind. It was called segregation. Because my parents grew to adulthood in it and I was raised in it, I unknowingly believed in it, and even referred to myself as a minority. The late Albert Murray, my mentor and intellectual grandfather in Harlem, New York, dissuaded me from the segregated mindset with a penetrating question, “How are you going to accept being a minority in your own country? Is an Italian a minority in Italy?”

Well, let’s see. That’s a question our country has to ask itself. If we are plural so be it. But we aren’t. We are segregated in so many more ways than race and if we are to be integrated, a nasty question remains: whose genes will recede and whose will be dominant? Who is them and who is us? Mr. Murray once told me, “Racial conflict in America has always been black and white versus white.” We see that in the current riots that have sprung up around the country. There are all kinds of folks out there and always have been. Any cursory viewing of protests in the 60’s reveals Americans of all hues.

But when all is said and done, and all the videos and photos become just a part of a protester’s personal narrative kit to be pulled out for kids and grandkids as a testament of their youth. When the enormous collective wealth of America passes from one generation to the next, who of our white brothers and sisters now so chagrined will be out in the streets then? Playing loud defiant music in your bedroom means one thing at 15, but it’s very different when it’s your house. Who will be out there making sure that their darker-hued brother and sister in the struggle has enough opportunity to feed their family, and a good enough education to join the national debate to articulate an informed position in their fight for their rights and responsibilities and the financial security to enjoy older age with the comforts of health, home, and happiness? If the 80’s Reagan revolution is any indication, don’t hold your breath for the “post racial America” that we were supposed to have achieved without having corrected or even acknowledged any of the real problems.

The whole construct of blackness and whiteness as identity is fake anyway. It is a labyrinth of bullshit designed to keep you lost and running around and around in search of a solution that can only be found outside of the game itself. Our form of Democracy affords us the opportunity to mine a collective intelligence, a collective creativity, and a collective human heritage. But the game keeps us focused on beating people we should be helping. And the more helpless the target, the more vicious the beating. Like I was trying to explain to my daughter, something just feels good about abusing another person when you feel bad about yourself.

We can’t be feeling that good about our nation right now. Separated by wealth disparity, segregated in thought and action, poorly led on the left and on the right, confused in values of institutions and symbols of excellence, lacking in all integrity from the highest to the lowest levels of government, undisciplined in exercising the responsibilities of citizenship, disengaged and overfed on meaningless trivia and games, at each other’s throats all the time for every issue. We seem to be at a dead end.

It’s funny to think this whole experiment in democracy could end with a populace that is so polarized and self-absorbed that it can’t imagine atoning for the slavery and subjugation of other human beings and sharing enormous wealth (financial and other) with each other. But it wouldn’t be that surprising, because no matter how many times we find ourselves with the opportunity to right tremendous wrongs, we just keep coming up with the same wrong answer. It’s like having the solution to a math problem, not knowing the underlying mechanics to actually solve it, and lacking the patience and humility to ask for help-to learn. It’s the damndest thing to just keep doing the same wrong thing over and over again, and more forcefully wrong each time......or maybe, that wrong answer we keep coming up with—maybe it’s just who we actually are.

Life is not a book or a movie. It is itself much too complicated and simple to be understood from any one person’s perspective. Its truths come to their own conclusions that live as facts though lies may stand as temporary history. But George Floyd lying in the cold cold ground at this moment is a fact, as was the fact of Eric Garner and all of the other Americans who didn’t deserve to be killed by their peace officers. The murders of both men are eerily similar. And they, taken together though almost six years apart, are not even a referendum on the offending officers, but a view into how we can’t get past the illegality and illegitimacy of our courts and our politics that snatched back the North’s victory from the South in the Civil War. This successful legal and political wrangling to recast slavery as peonage and to maintain an underclass is still going on. Its victories, in effect, spit on the graves of 700,000 Americans lost on both sides in that conflict. And we refight our Civil War every day. It was interesting hearing Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Mayor of Atlanta and Killer Mike both reference the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement and this moment in one breath. They put this present moment in its proper context – a continuation of the struggle for human rights and civil liberties against the legacy of slavery and unapologetic racism.

These were Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on slavery:

“I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republic an example of its just influence in the world, enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites, causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.”

Notice the list of corruptions that Lincoln laid out 160 years ago - there is no better definition of our current position. He must have come up out of the grave to tell us yet again. Sad as it is to say, contemporary Americans just may not be up to the challenge of democracy. A lot of countries in the world seem to be openly retreating from it. But that open retreat will be different here, for our credo of equality, freedom and the dignity of persons requires us to construct elaborate ways of eliminating stubborn problems that we seem to not have the will, wherewithal, and humanity to solve.

And it’s the slow, slow choke out of everything black: that fake construct of blackness that was invented in America for the express purpose of elevating an equally fake whiteness; that blackness that has been parodied and mocked and shamed, been raped and robbed and lynched, cheated and fooled and straight up hustled into slapping itself under the banner of entertainment, still seeking the attention and resources of its masters by hating and disrespecting and killing itself; that omnipresent blackness to be named and renamed again and yet again for the purposes of denying its very name and birthright, that blackness that shows up in everything from a bowl of grits and a Southern twang to a whining rock guitar and a piece of fried chicken, to The Constitution itself. Yeah, choking all the blackness out is going to be hard. Because it shows up as state’s rights versus federal authority, as the root of the electoral college and as gerrymandered districts and the modern repression of some people’s right to vote. That inescapable blackness is always a primary subject in the discussions that elect Presidents where it shows up as immigrants, criminals, and disavowed preachers. It’s clearly seen every day and night in our richest cities staggering down the streets in a tattered stupor with a sign saying, “do you see me?” and bearing the dates 1835, 1789, 1855 and all of those slavery years. And all those ghosts remind you that we rolled back Reconstruction, we denied the Afro-American heroism of WWI with the segregation of WWII, that we denied our citizens access to equal funding and equal housing and equal education and equal health care and equal opportunities and that we rolled back the gains of the Civil Rights movement under on the very watch of many of us that are alive to read this post. And that at each broken promise, said with a smile, “fare thee well brother, fare the well”.

That slow choking of all the blackness out of the American DNA will prove to be impossible because we are written into the original Constitution – albeit it as 3/5ths of a person. Black folks’ struggle, more than any other, has advanced the integrity of that document down through these bloody centuries. The challenge that faces our country now is what it has always been: Can we reckon with the idea that the opposite of injustice is not justice, it is corrective assistance. The question that continues to plague us across centuries, decades, years, months, days, hours, minutes and even seconds: Do we have the will and the intention to get that 3/5ths up above 5/5ths and create a productive society the likes of which has never been seen?

One thing I know for sure, that’s not ever going to happen with your foot on a black neck, and I’m not talking about the most current, obviously guilty police officer. This is about all of us rejecting the injustices of our collective past with consistent and relentless individual action that goes far beyond giving money.

This has been my response to injustice in our country and in the world across the last forty years:

Black Codes (1984); Blood on the Fields (1997); All Rise (1999); From the Plantation to The Penitentiary (2006); and The Ever Fonky Low Down (2019)

– Wynton

[son-of-alderaan]

Here's how the new Star Wars novels will connect to The Last Jedi

The ‘Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ books will explore details from the history of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia

The Stars Wars movies can only cover so much; it’s up to the books to do the rest. And there is still a huge amount of unexplored space to chart.

As Comic-Con International begins, EW has an exclusive preview about this fall’s full slate of “Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi” novels and storybooks that will contain hints about the upcoming sequel while also seeking to recruit new fans.

“It’s important to explore all areas of the Star Wars universe — the known and the unknown — because all stories matter,” says Andrew Sugerman, executive vice president of Disney’s publishing and digital media. “That’s the beauty of Star Wars. There’s one shared universe, so the films connect to the games, which connect to the books, which connect to the animation, and so on. A story told through publishing enriches the larger universe.”

Some of the most ambitious titles are YA books that reveal backstories for classic characters like Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker in their younger days while also containing details and motivations that will turn up in the new film (which will become obvious only after it opens Dec. 15).

With The Force Awakens, there were three decades for books to explore between its story and the events of Return of the Jedi. But the new film picks up right where the last one left off — with Rey returning Luke’s long-lost lightsaber, so there’s less room for connective narrative tissue.

“It’s just a different journey than last time,” says Michael Siglain, creative director of Lucasfilm Publishing. “There are still some Easter eggs in a couple of pieces that will make sense after seeing the film. But this one is more thematically tied to The Last Jedi.

”There won’t be books delving deep into the history or lineage of Rey or Finn. That’s still heavy-lifting for the movies to do. But the motivations of General Leia Organa and her exiled Jedi brother Luke? That’s open space for scribes. 

For instance, the previous “Journey to The Force Awakens” book series had to avoid discussing Skywalker for the most part, preserving his mystery. Now that he has been found, a new collection of interlocked short stories will unlock parts of his past we don’t know.

The Legends of Luke Skywalker

“You know how Han Solo says, ‘It’s true, all of it’? Well, was it really?” Siglain says. This book by Ken Liu presents its stories as rumors circulating through the galaxy.

It’s a clever way to avoid tangling up canon while still delivering tales about the farmboy-turned-hero’s experiences between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens — and also showing what other denizens of the galaxy know about his true exploits.

“For kids coming out of that movie, for casual fans coming out of that movie, you hear about Luke Skywalker for that whole film, but you only see him for two seconds at the end. He doesn’t even say anything,” Siglain says. “This book is a book that goes into some of those stories that were told, some of those legends of Luke Skywalker. Are they true? Well, maybe. Maybe not.”

The book, which hits shelves on Oct. 31, has a structure similar to a cosmic version of The Canterbury Tales, with each traveler telling his or her story to the group over the course of their journey.

Did Luke Skywalker actually take down 20 AT-ATs in the Battle of Hoth? Was he just a charlatan who made up the story of his Death Star run? Is it possible he was at the Battle of Jakku chronicled in Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath novels?

“What are those stories that Rey has been hearing, that the rest of the galaxy has been hearing, and what has Luke been doing since then?” Siglain says. “The framing device for this is there are a bunch of kids on a cargo ship that’s traveling to the casino world of Canto Bight. Someone says something about Luke Skywalker, and they say, ‘Oh, he was just a myth. That’s just a legend.’ And others say, ‘No, no, no. I know a story about him.’”

Then Liu unspools six different stories, including a first-person account (told second-hand) about a flea-like alien who claimed to be on Luke’s shoulder during some critical history.

“It’s a mole-flea named Lugubrious Mote that is present during the time of Luke’s interactions with Jabba, including his battle with the Rancor and the fight on the sail barge,” Siglain says. “The mole-flea is not present in The Last Jedi, nor on the ship to Canto Bight, though he does help to illustrate Yoda’s point that ‘size matters not.’”

Leia: Princess of Alderaan

This YA novel about Leia Organa’s teenage years is being written by Claudia Gray, who explored the character’s middle age as a post-Return of the Jedi politician grappling with insurgency and the public revelation she is Darth Vader’s daughter in last year’s adult novel Bloodline.

While we see her in her much older years in The Last Jedi, which will feature Carrie Fisher’s last performance as the character, this book takes Star Wars fans back to when she was a teenager, not yet a revolutionary. It’s pretty far in the timeline from the events of the new film, but Sugerman says these stories still contain clues to the new story.

“As for exploring the ‘long time ago’ aspects, the past informs the future. There are still many unanswered questions, and we’re looking to fill in some, but not all, of those blanks,” he says.

Princess of Alderaan’s title also recalls the classic A Princess of Mars sci-fi novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. While Gray’s book (out Sept. 1) won’t have much else in common with that 1917 book, it will reveal Leia’s rise to power by showing how she first became an agent for the Rebellion — not long before we see her escape with the stolen Death Star plans in Rogue One.

“This is where she started,” Siglain says, noting that it’s also about her friends and relationships to her parents — a sci-fi adventure, but also a coming-of-age story. “It’s still a YA novel, so it’s still her going against her parents who are trying to protect her.”

He also assures fans “there’s a very strong connection to some things from The Last Jedi, which, again, once you see the film will make sense.”

It’s set on the eve of her 16th birthday. “She’s realizing that there is more to the galaxy and to her life than what’s going on. And she’s at a point where her parents just being secretive,” Siglain says, referring to her adopted parents Breha and Bail Organa (played by Jimmy Smits in the films).

“She decides to become involved in the fight against the Empire, regardless of what her parents think. As a parent, what situation does that put you in? Do you want your daughter to fight for what is right, or are you trying to just protect her so she doesn’t get hurt? And as a 16-year-old, do you really know as much as you think?

”All kids rebel against their parents at some point, but they don’t always join a Rebellion.

Phasma

One word. One name.

Delilah S. Dawson’s new novel (out Sept. 1) will go beneath the chrome armor of The First Order’s most merciless Stormtrooper.

“You have a very mysterious character,” Siglain says. “You don’t know who this person is. You don’t know what her background is. All you see is that expressionless mask. And so the thought was, well, what if we could shed some light onto who she is. She does have a secret in her past that she guards. And when that secret is threatened to be revealed, what will she do to keep that secret hidden?

It’s a difficult thing to tell a whole story around a villain, but Phasma doesn’t hold back on the character’s cruelty. Think of it as a galactic House of Cards, where you’re simultaneously rooting for the main characters and despising them.

“She is a ruthless and a cunning character. This takes that to the next level,” Siglain says. “You will be afraid of this character. You will know why she is a captain in the First Order.”

Marvel is publishing a separate miniseries comic called Captain Phasma that will reveal how Gwendoline Christie’s character escaped the trash compactor on Starkiller Base before it was destroyed in The Force Awakens. But Dawson’s novel, like the Leia book, will go back much further to the character’s origin as a young girl.

This novel will “show how she got off the planet that she was on initially and came to the First Order and what did she have to do to get there and what will she do to protect her secrets,” Siglain says. “It cuts between the present and the past and shows her as this fearsome warrior on this brutal world that she was on. The First Order comes to that planet, and she sees a great opportunity when they arrive.”

Maybe we’ll finally learn her full name, too.

Canto Bight

This collection of four short stories will focus on creatures from the glamorous casino world of Canto Bight, described as the galactic version of Monaco. The book, which hits stores on Dec. 5, will be written by Saladin Ahmed, Rae Carson, Mira Grant, and John Jackson Miller.

“It’s a city filled with opportunity. There are very high stakes in this city,” Siglain says. “You’re going to follow four different aliens who will lead you through some of the gambling parlors and the racetracks and, you know, just this beautiful, lush city that’s as far from the Episode IV cantina as you can get. This is Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous for Star Wars. But looks can certainly be deceiving, and everything isn’t always as beautiful as it seems.”

The writers, editors and Lucasfilm story group went through images of the creatures from Neal Scanlan’s creature shop for The Last Jedi and picked curious beings they thought might have interesting stories to tell.

“The effects team had a lot of ideas about the characters that they were creating, even just some of the background aliens. ‘I think this is his backstory or this is her backstory.’ And we’ve been able to take those and run with them. We looked at this as Casablanca and Rick’s Café by way of Monte Carlo.”

Star Wars Made Easy

This one won’t tell lifelong Star Wars watchers anything they don’t already know, but Lucasfilm hopes it will mint more such fans.

With the eighth film in the saga, a stand-alone spin-off, and two animated TV shows (not to mention all the books and comics), the sheer volume of Star Warslore might be intimidating to newcomers.

This guide by former EW writer Christian Blauvelt is meant as a primer for little kids (or adults who peaced-out on this article around the time we wrote, “Did Luke Skywalker actually take down 20 AT-ATs in the Battle of Hoth ?”)

“Star Wars is supposed to be for everyone. It should be for everyone,” Siglain said. “We want to make sure that we do have books out there that can be given to, kids, tweens, teenagers, adults, older fans, new fans, that show they will find something for them.

”Siglain says the idea for the book came from a personal experience: turning his wife into a Star Wars obsessive like himself. “Years ago, I went to a bookstore, and I was looking for a book to give to my wife to kind of get her up to speed,” he said. “She had seen all the movies and stuff, but she didn’t know all of the lore, and some of it could be confusing. What was from Episode II, what was from Episode III?”

He said Lucasfilm needed a book that core fans could give to a casual fan to draw them deeper into the universe.

“If you don’t know the difference between a Jawa and a Jedi, is there a book that can very simply walk you through the franchise and tell you, ‘Okay, this is Star Wars, this is Empire, this is Jedi, here are the prequels, this is what Rogue One is,” Siglain said. “This book does that. It’s our Star Wars 101. It’s our Star Wars for Dummies.”

[Source]

[ruffoverthinksthings]

God Help The Outcasts (Part 2): The Monster

“Jesus Christ, you’re an even uglier motherfucker in person than you are on TV!” is Claudine’s first reaction to meeting Quasimodo in person.

Quasimodo’s reply to that is to smile, and say, “Yeah, the make-up artists here in Auradon are real miracle workers.”

Claudine is initially incredibly distrustful of Quasimodo, both for his physical appearance (“the uglier the mug, the meaner the motherfucker” is a very reliable rule of thumb on the Isle), and how Frollo framed him as someone who would “betray those who cared and loved him for years, all for the sake of a demonic temptress who poisoned his mind, clouding it with lust and sweet lies.”

(“Did you even understand all the claims he was making? As in, knew the meaning of all the words he was throwing about?” Esmeralda thought of asking once.

“Hell no, but it sounded confusing and terrifying, a combination you learn to fear pretty quick,” Claudine replied.)

It doesn’t help that, as a break from his usual work of being a paid public speaker and a frequent accomplice of Esmeralda in all her political activities, he’s taking the time to help Claudine and the “Third Wave” VKs adjust to life in Auradon.

This entails both being their Remedial Goodness Teacher (filling all the desks in a class with only one teacher is a never-fail recipe for trouble), and being their legal guardian, as Ben already has his hands full being legally responsible for the Rotten Four, plus Freddie, CJ, and Zevon.

(In the case of the latter two, they’re on parole, or under a special manhunt lead by Ben.)

Because of the prior successes of the first two waves of VKs brought over to Auradon, the Third Wave is a LOT more expansive, requiring both good attendance, keeping up a certain grade point average, and “(Relatively) Good Behaviour” in Auradon Prep, alongside participating in at least one after-school activity that forces them to interact with, help, and try to integrate with the larger community outside the walls of the school.

Because she has experience talking to people, is one of the most well-spoken and literate of the VKs, and is one of the most conventionally attractive next to Evie, Claudine often ends up as the representative of the VKs alongside Quasimodo, being the one to shake hands and smile for the camera, sit in at meetings beside him, and be the speaker for all of her fellow VKs.

This all actually goes well and good for the first two weeks, when the media has eyes, interest, and most importantly, cameras and live feeds on the various programs, everyone doing their damndest to give the best shots they can and show that the VKs and the residents of Auradon ARE playing nice with each other, and can get along.

It all steadily starts to collapse as the media moves back to adorable puppies and kittens, the exploits of romantic couples from the non-royal classes going through their respective movie-esque adventures as their relationships develop, and the less serious and very topical, frivolous political scandals going on about Auradon.

(“Breaking News: The Quarterly Lace and Silk Union’s Meeting In Jeopardy as Organizers Unable to Decide What Colour the Linens Should Be!”)

Claudine steadily starts to see the ugliness and the plasticity behind Auradon’s sunny, happy facade, realizes that so many of these people are suffering just as much as the people on the Isle just in completely different ways, and gets absolutely disgusted by how willfully ignorant they are or how even they, the oppressed and suffering, decide to play it off as “complaining too much about nothing,” to outright encouraging them to just accept it as a part of their life, and that they should even be thankful for the fact that it is incredibly difficult for them and their children to get off the farm and into higher education.

“Just think of what Auradon would be like if we didn’t have you and our families tilling the fields, pouring all our love and hard work into growing the food on everyone’s tables!”

It doesn’t disgust her just yet to positive action, as it just reinforces her belief that the world is a completely shallow, awful, judgmental place where everyone’s lying to everyone, sunny smiles and good behaviour are only for not getting thrown onto the Isle or suffering Maleficent’s wrath; people talk bad about you behind your back all the time; and beauty really is only skin deep as she meets plenty of attractive people just as petty and ugly as she is on the inside.

“The only difference between us is, I’ll happily admit I’m a bitch, they keep on believing they’re perfect little angels who can do no wrong.”

It bothers her even more that Quasimodo is still so incredibly nice and kind in the face of all this plasticity and insults, the odd mean-spirited joke or unintentional insensitivity as these past two decades have done him no favours.

He never gets angry, he ignores them, and like with Claudine’s first meeting, he joins in with the joking at his expense.

Meanwhile, Claudine is constantly firing jabs back, spends quite a lot of time on her new phone thinking up the worst and most vicious burns to her various “Pharisees” both online and offline, and happily “flies her bitch flag high” because it means she’s not hypocritical like they are.

It all comes to a head when during a speech at a big community event at a Christian church, an ill-timed joke from the MC and a sleepless night spent in Flitter wars combine, and Claudine explodes in a flood of vitriol and hatred, teaching many young children and AKs an entire dictionary’s worth of “colourful language” before giving them a handful of visual references for rude gestures before the Royal Guard finally succeed in hauling her off the stage.

(As with my fanfic Reunions, hauling away an actor, and hauling away an actual violent, angry, and dangerous individual are two VERY different things.)

Fittingly enough, Claudine and Quasimodo end up locked together in the office of the priest.

“I’m not apologizing for anything I said back there, if that’s what you’re going to ask me to do,” Claudine asks as she perches on the desk.

“Is this the kind of person you want to be, Claudine?” Quasimodo asks quietly.

“No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t want to be the daughter of holier than thou horndog, only here because your new king wanted to do something different,” Claudine snaps.

“I don’t mean your past, Claudine,” Quasimodo said. “I mean now, and your future—do you always want to be like what other people think you are, a ‘bitch’?”

“To be fair, it seems to be as set in stone for them as the original Ten Commandments! Don’t want to make so many people look stupid by proving their stupid-ass biases dead wrong, wouldn’t I? That’d be mean!”

“This is your chance to turn to ‘Good,’ Claudine!” Quasimodo cries. Quietly, he adds, “Please, don’t waste it—you may not ever get another chance.”

Claudine scowls as her hands ball into fists and shake once more. “I have tried ‘Good’ before, alright? I spent the first ten years of my life, doing everything I could to be the most saintly person I could be on that hellhole on the Isle.

“And what did it get me?

“A father that stopped loving me the moment Mother Nature signed me up for a monthly subscription to Satan’s Waterfall. Getting humiliated, bullied, and shunned by pretty much everyone but the crazies in my father’s congregation. Did what every ‘Good Christian’ should and tried to turn someone to the light, and ended up almost getting burned alive for it.

“And I only got out of that fire because of all the exercise I had climbing up and back down those fucking bell towers, each and every single day, like a Good Little Christian Girl.”

“I am done, trying to be good, alright…?” Claudine said, raising a shaking finger at Quasimodo. “All the ‘good’ trying to be ‘good for goodness sake’ has brought me is a super-sized personal hell in a handbasket.”

“Auradon is different,” Quasimodo said. “Believe me: they’ll come around, you just have to try.”

“And what in the hell am I supposed do to try and change these people’s minds?!”

“You act good, and you try not to do evil, until they realize they were wrong.”

“So what, I’m just supposed not deck someone for talking smack about me right in front of my face, let them humiliate me like the Pharisees did JC, before they rile everyone up, put me through a phony trial, and convince the masses to nail me to a fucking cross?!”

Quasimodo nodded. “Yes. But without the crucifixion part.”

“This fucking sucks!” Claudine cries as she throws her hands up in the air. “I’m the victim here, they’re the ones at fault for letting the Isle exist in the first place—hell, they were probably the people that probably voted ‘Aye’ as soon as the question came up!

“How come I have to bust my ass trying to prove I’m not a hell-raising, home-wrecking, 2nd-Deadly-Sin-Tempting succubus when they’re the ones that made me who I was in the first place?!”

Quasimodo shrugged. “I’m sorry, Claudine, that’s just how the world works,” he says sadly. “But, if it worked for someone like me”--he gestured to his face--”it’ll work for you, right…?”

Claudine stared at him, before she dropped her hands, and a look of pure, absolute hopelessness coming over her face. “You know what? Fuck it,” she says, all the bite and the sarcasm gone from her voice—now, she just sounds tired. “Fuck it, fuck this whole ‘Villain Kid Rescue and Reformation’ Program, send my apologies to Big Ben, I’m fucking done.”

Quasimodo got up and walked over to her. “Claudine, you can’t just quit now--”

“And why shouldn’t I?!” Claudine cries, her voice choked, her eyes watering. “Why shouldn’t I quit when there isn’t a light at the end of this fucking tunnel, it’s just a giant ‘Maybe’?! What’s gonna happen if no one changes their mind, huh? What’s gonna happen to me, when I bust my ass and give everything I have trying to be ‘Good’ again, but it just turns out once more that my all just wasn’t good enough?!”

Tears started streaming down her cheeks. “What will I have, when I have nothing left to give, I have nowhere to turn to, and have no one but myself…?” she whispered.

Quasimodo smiled and opened his arms. “You’ll have me,” he said softly. “And Esmeralda. And Madellaine, and Phoebus, and Zephyr, and Ben, and all the other people here in Auradon who want you to stay, who will stand by your side, who believe—no, who know you’re not like your father, at all!

“Claudine… you’re not a monster… you’re a person, just like me.”

Claudine just stares at him, eyes blurred and red from crying, hiccuping and sniffling from the snot clogging her nose.

“Do you need a hug?” Quasimodo asked.

Claudine lunges for him and wraps her arms tight around him. As she buries her face into his shoulder, she shouts, “Don’t tell anyone about this, or you’re dead, you hear me? Dead!”

Quasimodo just smiles and hugs her right back.

“I won’t,” he says. “I promise.”

[studentsofshield]

5 Characters That Deserve a Spotlight in DC Rebirth

By Vincent Faust

(This was originally published on April 19, 2017)

The DC Universe: Rebirth one-shot came out in May 2016. Next month will make a full year of this fantastic era of DC comics.

Amazingly, not a single title has been canceled yet. All 32 books have been running fairly smoothly. Only three of those (Justice League of America, Super Sons and Batwoman) have been introduced since the initial planned waves, though one of which was teased from the start.

Compare that to Marvel’s recent strategy and results…

Not to diminish the magic that DC’s editorial staff and creators have been cooking, but comic fans love the speculation game. So, what character deserves to get a shot at an ongoing title in the Rebirth line? On top of that, can we match a fitting creative team to some of these hopes?

Let’s get a few things out of the way. We know something New Gods related is coming from Tom King soon. (Update - we know it is Mister Miracle and it looks awesome)

King has become the surprise wunderkind of the superhero comics world in the past year or two. He started off as the lesser known co-writer on Grayson. Then absolutely blew people away with his writing on the Kyle Rayner-starring Omega Men. Whose rabid fans saved from cancellation through yelling at Dan DiDio on Twitter. A quick skip over to Marvel and King wrote a dense Vision book celebrated by critics and fans alike. To complete his “King in Black” meta trilogy, the Vertigo Iraq war mystery Sheriff of Babylon comes in. So of course the man gets to write the flagship Batman book.

He’s been teasing what is clearly New Gods for the past few weeks.

Though this project will likely turn out to be the 12 issue miniseries with Mitch Gerads that the two have promised.

We also know at some point down the line that the Justice Society and Legion of Super-Heroes will show up in some way. Johnny Thunder made a brief appearance in the Rebirth one-shot, with Wally West urging him to find the JSA. A girl was shown in police custody with a Legion ring. These franchises are sure to pop up as the underlying Rebirth narrative continues. Jay Garrick, the first Flash, has already been shown on covers to the Batman/Flash “The Button” crossover. Which starts this week, so we may see our friends sooner than expected. (Update - sorta)

With those out of the way, who should DC pass the baton to for the next wave of Rebirth books? I’ve picked the following five and want to hear what you want to see in the comments below.

Booster Gold

Michael Jon Carter is a man from the future. He traveled back in time with future technology in order to exploit his knowledge of history to become rich and famous. Booster is an arrogant, egotistical narcissist. Or, rather he was in 1986. Michael has gone through hell and back (probably literally) in the years since. This Dan Jurgens creation has developed deep relationships with fellow heroes, evolved his morality and seen his best friend die in the line of duty.

The 2007-2011 second series of Booster Gold is one of DC’s most underrated runs. I mean, if Geoff Johns chooses to reboot a character, you know they’re special. The emotional rollercoaster of Booster dealing with the grief over Ted Kord’s death at the hands of their former leader Max Lord was powerful character work.

I’ve thought of two ways for DC to execute the return of Michael Carter.

He could get his own ongoing series. His creator and signature storyteller, Dan Jurgens, is back at DC continuing to do supreme work 30 years into his career. Hand the writing reins on a Booster Gold series to Jurgens himself. He is currently penning two titles, Action Comics and Batman Beyond. Superman is his other signature character and he’s doing well in forwarding that franchise through its evolution across Lois and Clark and Multiplicity. On the other hand, Beyond is not doing so hot. Its most recent issue settled in the bottom third of Rebirth sales. With Terry McGinnis’ adventures taking place in the future, its connections to the rest of the Rebirth line are tenuous. If Beyond got canceled, this would free up Jurgens to return to his favorite hero. There was a mysterious tweet from Jurgens in February possibly alluding to some work on the character. Wear your pajamas inside out for me.

The other route to take for Booster is to reunite the classic Blue and Gold. His friendship with Ted Kord Blue Beetle is among the greatest in the medium. Their playful antics and heartfelt moments were the emotional core of the Justice League franchise for the entire International era of the 1980s and early 90s. As mentioned, Ted’s death in the lead up to Infinite Crisis was a tragedy felt by all fans and especially Booster.

Many of those classic stories were written by the all-star duo of Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis. Are they writing a book right now? Why yes, they are. And that would be Blue Beetle. Whereas Batman Beyond’s sales are iffy, Blue Beetle has been the lowest selling Rebirth title from its launch to today. Reuniting the Blue and Gold to mentor Jaime Reyes just might be the special sauce needed to reinvigorate this book.

Shazam

Yes, I know the character is Captain Marvel. Phew, what kind of heathen do you think I am?

Allegedly Warner Bros. wants to make a Shazam movie. And a Black Adam movie. The comics sector at DC really ought to start promoting this beloved character. Billy Batson will always be a bit of a mess. DC didn’t originally create the franchise, rather acquired it. Though that hasn’t stopped DC from publishing Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman and the Atom, which were originally published by All-American Publications before the 1944 merger. The Marvel Family has legal mumbo jumbo though, which disallows DC from titling books after the actual starring character. Oh well, make it happen.

The Marvel Family had their most recent reboot back in 2012 near the start of the New 52. Geoff Johns and Gary Frank did a Shazam backup in the pages of Justice League. Personally, I am not a fan of their take. Billy Batson is portrayed as a mean spirited kid and the costume design is horrendous.

DC need look only one place to assemble their perfect book. The ever-underrated Jeff Parker and Evan “Doc” Shaner worked together on two tie-in issues for the 2015 event Convergence. This tragically brief book showcased everything fans of the World’s Mightiest Mortal have been wanting for years. The art beautifully captures the old school optimism and fun so linked to the character.

Both Parker and Shaner have shown a deep respect and love for the characters in interviews. Shaner particularly references artistic influences from CC Beck to Don Newton.

Question

Here’s an underrated character. The Question has always been a unique hero allowing for gritty crime drama and exploration of political themes. The character was famously created by the enigmatic Steve Ditko at Charlton Comics. Ditko used him as a cipher to project his objevtivist views through, before creating his own independent Mr. A.

Over the years, the mask has been reinvented. Denny O’Neil and Denys Cowan crafted an influential late-1980s run. That book ran alongside spiritual companions (and sometimes crossover accomplices) like Mike Grell’s Green Arrow, Grant Morrison’s Animal Man and John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad. Rick Veitch had a short take in 2005 that reinterpreted Question as being a shaman-like figure using hallucinogens to “communicate” with cities.

The original Question Vic Sage died of lung cancer in the weekly 52 series while training his successor in GCPD officer Renee Montoya. Though we’re in the post-Flashpoint, post-Rebirth era. Anything can happen.

My pitch – The Question starring Vic Sage. Written by Gail Simone. Co-starring the Huntress aka Helena Bertinelli.

The two crimefighters were depicted as romantic partners in the second season Justice League Unlimited episode “Double Date.” That was written by the very same Gail Simone. The relationship was hinted at in the 2000 comic Batman/Huntress: Cry for Blood. Simone clearly has an affinity for this pairing and is the undisputed signature writer for Helena thanks to her years on Birds of Prey.

Adam Strange

Marc Andreyko has quietly been tracking the adventures of Adam Strange for a while. Through the Rann-Thanagar War spiritual sequel Death of Hawkman and a surprise continuation in the Adam Strange/Future Quest crossover special.

Why not give this character a dedicated spotlight. Without an attention grabbing creative team, perhaps DC isn’t confident in a solo book. Maybe this is the perfect opportunity to bring back the backup feature. DC had some success with co-features in the pre-New 52 era with characters like Jimmy Olsen, Captain Atom, the Metal Men, the Atom, Ravager and Manhunter.

Going back decades, DC’s legacy is built on anthology titles. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and so many others debuted in multiple feature titles like Action Comics, Detective Comics and Sensation Comics. For most of the Silver and Bronze Age, these books continued to contain several stories. These were a perfect opportunity for more obscure characters to continue having their tales told.

Adam Strange himself first appeared in the anthology Showcase. DC can use this history and tie it into the overall tone of Rebirth in their marketing.

Slot an 8 page Andreyko and Aaron Lopresti Strange feature behind Justice League of America, one of the Green Lantern books or the struggling Cyborg.

Swamp Thing

Last but not least is one of my favorite characters. Swamp Thing has been polarized by one character and career defining run. Alan Moore truly created a masterpiece, leading to the entire wave of Vertigo and the infusion of those themes and tones to the genre and medium at large.

However, Swampy has been great before and after that fateful era. It is clear that DC fans and Rebirth creators love this mysterious avatar. Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason recently used him in their first Superman annual. Tom King teased and teased, finally revealing that Batman #23 will be titled “The Brave and the Mold.”

Swamp Thing survived almost all the way through the New 52 in his own title. Initially thanks to a praised (and beautiful) streak by horror master Scott Snyder. Who was writing Batman alongside it (aye, King, there’s a legacy to fill). Charles Soule then arguably surpassed his predecessor by taking the book to new heights. Swampy’s second series lasted an incredible 171 issues from 1982 to 1996 and “his” New 52 series went 40 issues. Plenty of support for another kick at it.

And there’s my list of the characters I most want to see featured next in DC’s Rebirth initiative. Let me know what you’re most excited for.

[kristablogs]

The truth about Area 51 UFO sightings, according to a local expert

What's the real story behind the mysterious lights over Rachel, Nevada? (Phil McDonald/Deposit Photos/)

Reprinted with permission from They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers by Sarah Scoles. Published by Pegasus Books. © Sarah Scoles.

Arnu arrives at the A’Le’Inn in a big SUV, pulling up and saying hi to the hungover twentysomethings rocking in rocking chairs out front before he greets us.

“You ready?” he asks, and we pack into his Tahoe and head right back out on the Extraterrestrial Highway.

Arnu has owned property in Rachel since the early 2000s. Back in its boom, when the tungsten mine near Tempiute Mountain was still digging wealth out of the planet, around 500 people lived here. Today, it’s a small town—just around fifty residents, who meet up at the collective mailbox when the Postal Service arrives. Young people, Arnu says, tend to leave. There’s no TV reception. There’s just a squeak of cell phone service. Few places exist to build a career, none to go to college. Some people work at what they simply call “the test site,” an umbrella term that could refer to any of the secret-squirrel operations nearby—the Nevada National Security Site, the Tonopah Test Range, or Area 51.

Around ten people also work at the A’Le’Inn, by far Rachel’s biggest employer. They’re always hiring, because people are always leaving. But people are always showing up, too. “Sometimes they come up here because they are interested in Area 51,” says Arnu, “and they just get stuck.”

That’s what happened to Arnu, decades ago now. It all started with online research into Area 51, reading a website run by a former programmer and airline worker named Glenn Campbell. In the 1990s, Campbell ran the Area 51 Research Center and two UFO newsletters—The Groom Lake Desert Rat and the just plain Desert Rat. The newsletter logo featured a sentient rodent with safari shirt, walkie-talkie, and binoculars, underneath the tagline “The Naked Truth from Open Sources.”

Recalling this, Arnu speeds along the straight road. “He was one of the first that brought the attention of the general public,” he says. But Campbell was mysterious, evasive. “I wanted to know what’s really going on here. Are there UFOs are there no UFOs?”

So Arnu took a day trip, traveling from his home in San Francisco. And when he arrived, he found a place that was fascinating as much for its terrestrial qualities as its celestial hypotheticals. “I had never really experienced the desert in this way,” he says. “And it was just like, ‘Oh my God, this is a whole different world.’ ”

He thought of it, thinks of it now, in terms of motorcycle trips—a hobby of his that he just calls “riding.” “It’s always my thing: I want to see what’s behind the next turn, the next hill,” he says. And despite how this highway feels—unchanging, flat, forever—if you veer from it, turns and hills and the secrets behind them abound.

Release date: March 3 (Courtesy of Pegasus Books/)

Arnu went back home knowing he would return. The presence of the place loomed over him, shook him. Soon enough, the labor market gave him a chance: His company downsized, so he took a severance package and car-camped around Rachel.

Soon after that, Arnu started his own website, mostly a blog detailing his daily exploits: As he summarizes it, Today I went out to this gate, this is what I found, check out my pictures. More important than anything he wrote, though, were the comments sections.

“It’s like people were only waiting for a place to congregate,” he says. He soon started a forum—still going strong today—dedicated to such interaction. “We’re geeks,” he says. “We’re loners. But at the same time we also want to discuss what we do with like-minded people.”

He moved to Vegas in 2002 and then bought the property in Rachel, working remotely a lot so he could spend a week at a time in the remote desert.

“And here I am,” he says. “Years later. Still unraveling the mystery of Area 51.”

Arnu looks through the Tahoe’s windshield and points at a prominent peak ahead of us. If you can get to the top, you can see inside Area 51, which would then be 26 miles away. This high spot is the only one left with that view, the military having gobbled up all closer vantage points in a series of land grabs. Here’s what the base looks like from up there: Dark, if you’re doing it right, because the interesting stuff happens at night. But all of a sudden, way across the valley, a runway illuminates itself, a long line of lights dotting the landscape. “You know something is about to happen,” Arnu says. Aircraft bulbs streak along the runway, as a Whatever speeds to takeoff. And as soon as the Whatever is airborne, its lights blink out of existence, and so do the runway’s. The Earth becomes as optically opaque as it was before.

It’s not that they appear. It’s that they disappear.

Nevertheless, the base continues to give away information invisibly: Pilots talk on radios, and if the chatter is not so secret, you may be able to catch a monologue.

Arnu has a radio scanner, which he now turns on, mounted to the dash of his Tahoe. It runs through many Hertz in search of such communication. As the display rolls across frequencies, I prepare to tell Arnu about what we saw last night, feeling silly and like every other overexcitable person who’s ever visited the region.

I know from our prior emails that Arnu doesn’t ride the alien train. Sure, creepy stuff happens here. Sure, there are strange lights, technologies we can barely fathom. But they don’t require invocation of the extraterrestrial: They’re just the government, doing things the world isn’t privy to—the growing up of projects perhaps born classified, just like it always has here.

That started with the U-2, which flew twice as high as a commercial jet, and much higher than anything else at the time. Workers commuted daily on passenger jets—a secret service people call, in its modern incarnation, “Janet airlines”—partly so that permanent residences would not reveal the scale of efforts here. U-2 pilots, though they worked for the CIA, wore civilian clothes and pretended to do weather-related research, according to the book Area 51 by investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen.

Later, Area 51 hosted the Oxcart spy plane project, the U-2 successor that also flew close to the sun but showed up dimmer on radar. Jacobsen writes that FAA and NORAD employees were instructed “not to ask questions about anything flying over 40,000 feet.” And when commercial flights crossed paths with an Oxcart, and a pilot did report it, the FBI would meet the plane at the gate, asking passengers to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Rachel is the closest town to Area 51, a top-security Air Force testing ground in the southeastern Nevada desert. (Alexey Stiop/Deposit Photos/)

Around the country, people nonetheless spotted spy planes and reported them as UFOs. Says a CIA report from 1997, “Over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States.” Many, including UFO skeptics, dispute this take, but it doesn’t seem absurd that the government would use UFO reports to understand how conspicuous its technology would look in less friendly skies. And it doesn’t actually want people to see skylights and think “spy planes.” So it is sometimes in the feds’ best interest to let people attribute the phenomenon to something mysterious, unearthly, not them. And—bonus—because many people thought UFOs were woo-woo and not “real,” whoever heard about these UFO sightings would likely dismiss the very real U-2 or A-12 their kid had just seen. The government’s secrets could stay secret. If you wanted to create a theory about why the military hasn’t come out swinging against some of its pilots’ more modern sightings, you might consider this part of the past.

“ ‘Oh, well, these people just saw another UFO,’ ” mimics Arnu. “In actuality they may have seen something super-secret ... If you make people look like fools when they say they saw something, if they say they saw something super secret, what better way to discredit them?” Given the government’s history of passive deception, and active secret-keeping, here, is it any surprise that people suspect it could be hiding something more inside Area 51?

But I want to know what Arnu, who sees this stuff every day, thinks of my sighting. So I describe the on-off lights, their hovering, and my theory that this was some kind of hide-and-seek exercise.

Arnu frowns in concentration. “Were the lights kind of orange?” he asks. “A bright orange color?”

“Yes!” says Carolyn from the backseat. Arnu nods and then goes on to describe exactly what we saw, detail for detail, as if he were there.

“That was flares you were seeing,” he says. A plane chases another plane, and the chaser sends off a (fake) heat-seeking missile. The chased plane drops flares, which burn so hot that they distract the missile, which then chases them instead of the jet’s exhaust. These planes drop flares in patterns—disc shapes, sometimes—to send the missiles clear off course.

Hearing this incident repeated back, with more meaning, makes me feel the way people do when they discover their seemingly singular experience is, in fact, universal: equal parts relieved and disappointed.

Arnu’s first UFO sighting, turns out, was also flares. He had been camping right where we did, in the gravel parking area. “I looked over Tikaboo,” he says, referring to one of the peaks, “and all of a sudden, I see this disc-shaped object of orange orbs hanging in the sky.”

It’s all true, he recalls thinking. They’re coming to get me.

But they weren’t and they didn’t. He was just primed: He thought he had witnessed a UFO because that’s what he expected to witness. “Your eyes see what you want them to see,” he says.

He then begins to talk about YouTube videos of cars disappearing on the Extraterrestrial Highway. They’re not disappearing, he says: They’re coming down from summits, hitting dips.

“We saw that!” I say, and describe how I scared ourselves into thinking that the guards had set a trap.

“That’s why I’m such a skeptic,” says Arnu. “Because I’ve seen it. And I know for a fact what they’re describing is very explainable.” Talking to Arnu feels like seeing a therapist who understands, even when you don’t, that your problems are all because of your mom.

[scootoaster]

The truth about Area 51 UFO sightings, according to a local expert

What's the real story behind the mysterious lights over Rachel, Nevada? (Phil McDonald/Deposit Photos/)

Reprinted with permission from They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers by Sarah Scoles. Published by Pegasus Books. © Sarah Scoles.

Arnu arrives at the A’Le’Inn in a big SUV, pulling up and saying hi to the hungover twentysomethings rocking in rocking chairs out front before he greets us.

“You ready?” he asks, and we pack into his Tahoe and head right back out on the Extraterrestrial Highway.

Arnu has owned property in Rachel since the early 2000s. Back in its boom, when the tungsten mine near Tempiute Mountain was still digging wealth out of the planet, around 500 people lived here. Today, it’s a small town—just around fifty residents, who meet up at the collective mailbox when the Postal Service arrives. Young people, Arnu says, tend to leave. There’s no TV reception. There’s just a squeak of cell phone service. Few places exist to build a career, none to go to college. Some people work at what they simply call “the test site,” an umbrella term that could refer to any of the secret-squirrel operations nearby—the Nevada National Security Site, the Tonopah Test Range, or Area 51.

Around ten people also work at the A’Le’Inn, by far Rachel’s biggest employer. They’re always hiring, because people are always leaving. But people are always showing up, too. “Sometimes they come up here because they are interested in Area 51,” says Arnu, “and they just get stuck.”

That’s what happened to Arnu, decades ago now. It all started with online research into Area 51, reading a website run by a former programmer and airline worker named Glenn Campbell. In the 1990s, Campbell ran the Area 51 Research Center and two UFO newsletters—The Groom Lake Desert Rat and the just plain Desert Rat. The newsletter logo featured a sentient rodent with safari shirt, walkie-talkie, and binoculars, underneath the tagline “The Naked Truth from Open Sources.”

Recalling this, Arnu speeds along the straight road. “He was one of the first that brought the attention of the general public,” he says. But Campbell was mysterious, evasive. “I wanted to know what’s really going on here. Are there UFOs are there no UFOs?”

So Arnu took a day trip, traveling from his home in San Francisco. And when he arrived, he found a place that was fascinating as much for its terrestrial qualities as its celestial hypotheticals. “I had never really experienced the desert in this way,” he says. “And it was just like, ‘Oh my God, this is a whole different world.’ ”

He thought of it, thinks of it now, in terms of motorcycle trips—a hobby of his that he just calls “riding.” “It’s always my thing: I want to see what’s behind the next turn, the next hill,” he says. And despite how this highway feels—unchanging, flat, forever—if you veer from it, turns and hills and the secrets behind them abound.

Release date: March 3 (Courtesy of Pegasus Books/)

Arnu went back home knowing he would return. The presence of the place loomed over him, shook him. Soon enough, the labor market gave him a chance: His company downsized, so he took a severance package and car-camped around Rachel.

Soon after that, Arnu started his own website, mostly a blog detailing his daily exploits: As he summarizes it, Today I went out to this gate, this is what I found, check out my pictures. More important than anything he wrote, though, were the comments sections.

“It’s like people were only waiting for a place to congregate,” he says. He soon started a forum—still going strong today—dedicated to such interaction. “We’re geeks,” he says. “We’re loners. But at the same time we also want to discuss what we do with like-minded people.”

He moved to Vegas in 2002 and then bought the property in Rachel, working remotely a lot so he could spend a week at a time in the remote desert.

“And here I am,” he says. “Years later. Still unraveling the mystery of Area 51.”

Arnu looks through the Tahoe’s windshield and points at a prominent peak ahead of us. If you can get to the top, you can see inside Area 51, which would then be 26 miles away. This high spot is the only one left with that view, the military having gobbled up all closer vantage points in a series of land grabs. Here’s what the base looks like from up there: Dark, if you’re doing it right, because the interesting stuff happens at night. But all of a sudden, way across the valley, a runway illuminates itself, a long line of lights dotting the landscape. “You know something is about to happen,” Arnu says. Aircraft bulbs streak along the runway, as a Whatever speeds to takeoff. And as soon as the Whatever is airborne, its lights blink out of existence, and so do the runway’s. The Earth becomes as optically opaque as it was before.

It’s not that they appear. It’s that they disappear.

Nevertheless, the base continues to give away information invisibly: Pilots talk on radios, and if the chatter is not so secret, you may be able to catch a monologue.

Arnu has a radio scanner, which he now turns on, mounted to the dash of his Tahoe. It runs through many Hertz in search of such communication. As the display rolls across frequencies, I prepare to tell Arnu about what we saw last night, feeling silly and like every other overexcitable person who’s ever visited the region.

I know from our prior emails that Arnu doesn’t ride the alien train. Sure, creepy stuff happens here. Sure, there are strange lights, technologies we can barely fathom. But they don’t require invocation of the extraterrestrial: They’re just the government, doing things the world isn’t privy to—the growing up of projects perhaps born classified, just like it always has here.

That started with the U-2, which flew twice as high as a commercial jet, and much higher than anything else at the time. Workers commuted daily on passenger jets—a secret service people call, in its modern incarnation, “Janet airlines”—partly so that permanent residences would not reveal the scale of efforts here. U-2 pilots, though they worked for the CIA, wore civilian clothes and pretended to do weather-related research, according to the book Area 51 by investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen.

Later, Area 51 hosted the Oxcart spy plane project, the U-2 successor that also flew close to the sun but showed up dimmer on radar. Jacobsen writes that FAA and NORAD employees were instructed “not to ask questions about anything flying over 40,000 feet.” And when commercial flights crossed paths with an Oxcart, and a pilot did report it, the FBI would meet the plane at the gate, asking passengers to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Rachel is the closest town to Area 51, a top-security Air Force testing ground in the southeastern Nevada desert. (Alexey Stiop/Deposit Photos/)

Around the country, people nonetheless spotted spy planes and reported them as UFOs. Says a CIA report from 1997, “Over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States.” Many, including UFO skeptics, dispute this take, but it doesn’t seem absurd that the government would use UFO reports to understand how conspicuous its technology would look in less friendly skies. And it doesn’t actually want people to see skylights and think “spy planes.” So it is sometimes in the feds’ best interest to let people attribute the phenomenon to something mysterious, unearthly, not them. And—bonus—because many people thought UFOs were woo-woo and not “real,” whoever heard about these UFO sightings would likely dismiss the very real U-2 or A-12 their kid had just seen. The government’s secrets could stay secret. If you wanted to create a theory about why the military hasn’t come out swinging against some of its pilots’ more modern sightings, you might consider this part of the past.

“ ‘Oh, well, these people just saw another UFO,’ ” mimics Arnu. “In actuality they may have seen something super-secret ... If you make people look like fools when they say they saw something, if they say they saw something super secret, what better way to discredit them?” Given the government’s history of passive deception, and active secret-keeping, here, is it any surprise that people suspect it could be hiding something more inside Area 51?

But I want to know what Arnu, who sees this stuff every day, thinks of my sighting. So I describe the on-off lights, their hovering, and my theory that this was some kind of hide-and-seek exercise.

Arnu frowns in concentration. “Were the lights kind of orange?” he asks. “A bright orange color?”

“Yes!” says Carolyn from the backseat. Arnu nods and then goes on to describe exactly what we saw, detail for detail, as if he were there.

“That was flares you were seeing,” he says. A plane chases another plane, and the chaser sends off a (fake) heat-seeking missile. The chased plane drops flares, which burn so hot that they distract the missile, which then chases them instead of the jet’s exhaust. These planes drop flares in patterns—disc shapes, sometimes—to send the missiles clear off course.

Hearing this incident repeated back, with more meaning, makes me feel the way people do when they discover their seemingly singular experience is, in fact, universal: equal parts relieved and disappointed.

Arnu’s first UFO sighting, turns out, was also flares. He had been camping right where we did, in the gravel parking area. “I looked over Tikaboo,” he says, referring to one of the peaks, “and all of a sudden, I see this disc-shaped object of orange orbs hanging in the sky.”

It’s all true, he recalls thinking. They’re coming to get me.

But they weren’t and they didn’t. He was just primed: He thought he had witnessed a UFO because that’s what he expected to witness. “Your eyes see what you want them to see,” he says.

He then begins to talk about YouTube videos of cars disappearing on the Extraterrestrial Highway. They’re not disappearing, he says: They’re coming down from summits, hitting dips.

“We saw that!” I say, and describe how I scared ourselves into thinking that the guards had set a trap.

“That’s why I’m such a skeptic,” says Arnu. “Because I’ve seen it. And I know for a fact what they’re describing is very explainable.” Talking to Arnu feels like seeing a therapist who understands, even when you don’t, that your problems are all because of your mom.

[hanzi83]

To Be Clear I am Not Suicidal

Just when I take a break from writing scathing blogs to spew out the irrational hatred in my head that constantly flows, while all these people perpetuate those attitudes with their targeted harassment of me, their secrecy, yet their transparency they take it to another level. You know how I always point out these people, whether it is Stern trolls, other online trolls, right wingers or even people I know personally, don’t actually care about my mental health unless something happened so they can pretend they care, well it kind of happened when they reported my account because I seemed suicidal.

They have seen these irrational tweets before and know I vent so I don’t actually do anything to anyone or myself but they felt the need to report my account. It is funny that if you were so concerned you could have reached out personally and try to talk to me but these people didn’t care, they just wanted to report me and censor me because the shit I am saying makes them feel uncomfortable about selling their soul, working with evil people in the industry, potentially being bribed for sex and becoming employed fan boys and when you generalize and just take guesses, you can tell what can get to them. It is hilarious because I don’t have the resources that they have, yet I can get on my social media and say the things I do, and it triggers your pussy ass, and you tell me I am the snowflake and call me a terrorist and claim I am becoming radical.

I already suspect the people doing it and it is more Stern Anon type of people, that is what some of these trolls refer to it as and it must have some truth to it. Whenever I post a picture with local people at certain times, they inform me that certain people in those pictures are working for Stern Anon and it makes sense, it is probably why they are allowed to become legit in this world, and get access to the industry pussy and dick they crave, or allowed access to celebrity events, or advanced knowledge in which way to act accordingly and then still use me for some financial gain because I have sneaky suspicion, and this goes for all exploited whack packers of the Stern Show, that their people who are close with them use them to pimp them out and sometimes it is done knowingly or unknowingly and it will continue with me. I have called it out, that I am only granted limited hang out to make it seem like there is some kind of normalcy, but when something really important goes on they make excuses and lie about it ad nauseam and if I dare point it out it becomes way too much for them to handle and their fragility shows because when someone, who is mentally ill like I am, is questioning their agendas or their values they can’t stand it because I am supposed to be lower on the spectrum, they shouldn’t be taking it from me.

I don’t have any intention of killing myself but I am allowed to be irrational and speak my mind, and I realize they come with consequences but if you actually understood mental illness and the true ugliness of why this shit happens, maybe more people would come forward about it. But even when discussing mental illness, the pretentious twats in the media love to pretend it comes in this nice little box with a bow attached to it and that is is so simple to understand and then when the real mental illness shows up, these people dismiss it and call you a conspiracy theorist or put you in the Alex Jones category.

It is scary because the very  people I am supposed to trust have used my mental illness against me like they learned from their master Howard Stern how to make them seem like they are concerned but their subtleties show they use it make you feel less than and since becoming more in tune with how they operate, they got me on different medication and have used it as ultimatums if I wanted to see others in my life, and it is basically a tool for them to kind of have their backhandedness out there while showing off their luxurious lifestyle while taking immense pleasure that they know I have earned that right, but because they control the finances I may have earned, that people on the internet tell me, when they point out I was Stern Show contributor, or that people make money off putting on live feeds on the dark web to watch me, it just drives me crazy and they are pushing me more and more to the edge. Even these blogs, they will monitor and read but will never disclose it because they have to act like they don’t do such things or dissect every tweet I send out in their private group chats.

I don’t want to harm myself or anyone but I am allowed to want someone to permanently end me. It is so selfish to keep me here when they know I don’t want to be here, but they will make the most of keeping me alive for this mental torture because everyone involved will use their power and try to get me to be radicalized and then even independent media types won’t ever cover it and downplay mental health issues and the causes because they don’t want to tread into the conspiracy waters and it is fucking pathetic how much they will just stand there idly by and not investigate anything that Stern may be guilty of, we don’t know right, but when something does happen to me, they will use it for their click bait videos and dissect it after the fact because all of them are money grubbing assholes who care about when it is convenient to get on the trend.

None of these conspiracy theorists have ever dissected Stern Show type of shit for some reason, when a lot of mysterious and strange thing have taken place with the characters involved but because these people are all subservient to the powers that be and people will never believe that Stern doesn’t hold any real power and will continue to say he is some irrelevant shock jock whose career is dying. It might be true that in the lexicon of pop culture he might not be a blimp on the radar as much as he used to be in his heyday but that doesn’t mean that these people don’t accumulate power behind the scenes, and that is why I hate this narrative that he used to keep it real back in the day, when a lot of what he did at his height was propaganda, but you see the limited narrative of these people presenting themselves as lame liberals, is meant to discredit liberals and make it seem like that conservative mindset is being the target of being censored. They are the biggest pussies yet always have their chests out when it comes to talking down to the marginalized people of the world and these dumb ass followers believe it. So designing yourself as a corporatist neoliberal makes people think that is what liberalism is, because you might speak about good things to an extent, but you are still advocating for what these extreme right wing types want, which is lip service to the military and the corrupted police departments and of course protecting Israel at all costs because if you dare bring in to question what shadiness they have been involved in/with then you are an anti Semite.

I am all over the map and I am even debating posting this up. So if you see it, I guess you got your answer, but most likely if this stays private, it will still be seen by the ones who monitor my computer and move my cursor whenever I write and they will keep it going further and further. No one in the media cares how my mental health is being targeted nonstop. They will keep pushing me until I completely go off the rails and one can argue I already have gone off the rails, depending by what standards you judge people on, because most of you are pretentious and will judge me while adding to the world of corruption and then they let people like yourselves raise kids in this world. I feel sorry for them because they might grow up to sociopathic like their parents.

I will always root for myself to be dead at any given time, but they won’t allow it. I will never fucking do it, as much as they continuously try to make me do it. They do it by proxy from other people who have shows online but now are scaling back from those shows and part of me wonders if that is legit or are they finding a new underground way to keep the heat off them and still act psychotic in private to fuck with me. They make fake accounts representing me, and it is not even in the name of parody account, legitimately trying to fool people. It will never stop. They don’t want me tweeting out shit either because they get triggered by what I am saying and I notice whenever I call out right wingers, local people, Stern trolls, this shit will happen and they are probably planning on fucking me over even more at some point.

At least there is documentation from the last decade out there that shows where my mind was in certain times in my life throughout the course of history and  I may be repetitive in most cases but it is constantly in my head and  doesn’t stop and I am imagining probable scenarios mixed with my painful past of not expressing my true emotions at certain time. It is dangerous to put this out there, because the vultures will use this and try to manipulate more but since I know these people exist and how they think and what kind of people the system recruits to do their bidding, it is easy for me to get an inkling of how these people think. I know they are desperate to get laid, and watch people nonstop, they have miserable marriages that they use t seem normal, they spend too much time in group chats because no one in their personal lives really have much respect for them and they have had to compromise themselves sexually and mentally and are basically blackmailed into doing this.

These people don’t care about anyone’s mental health and will continuously try to fuck with me because I am not snapping enough or doing enough periscopes because these people use it for their platforms for content to see what I am doing and the fact that I can kind of write out these thoughts it makes them even more nervous that I can half ass convey my message and not lose my mind completely because it still triggers them and their flaws. They will keep paying attention and bring me up on the surface once and a while but realize that anyone who has partook in this harassment and have profited off my misery I will always wish the worst for you and I never want to speak to any of you ever again, just like you don’t want to really speak to me. You invite me out to limited gatherings to help you and try to fool me by giving my information out so you can send things to my house or get me swatted, which is something they have done to others. It is fucking pathetic how these people can operate and they have been given permission do those kinds of things.

[jmrphy]

On turning left into darkness

In the past week, many associates of mine on the radical left have expressed grave concern about my recent cultural politics. If you haven’t been following, here’s my best shot at a succinct, impartial recap. I have been blogging about what it means to engage intellectually with smart people on the right. By “smart people on the right,” I mean people with non-trivial intellectual projects defending right-wing perspectives, potentially even including some that appear horrifying and/or evil. I use the word “smart” only to exclude from the mind two images that have come to define “conservatism” in the left-wing imagination: infantile and fundamentally disingenuous politicians, and then mindless, racist armies of trolls. Specifically, for instance, I have expressed interest in the writings of Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin (Moldbug); I recently hosted a podcast with psychologist Diana Fleischman that included discussion of controversial topics such as “human biodiversity” (some say this is a euphemism for racism and some say it’s an empirical reality). Obviously not the usual talking points for a left-wing intellectual, but to be clear nobody is accusing me of writing or saying anything particularly impeachable. I did receive some very thoughtful concerns, however, so one goal of this post is to clarify at least one or two of the most fair and important criticisms I have received. This is a caring thing to do, and I still believe deeply in caring.

On the other hand, any culture of absolute kindness becomes a conservative system of unspoken violence insofar as painful truths get repressed and all participants become deformed over time. It is because I genuinely love my friends on the left that I am stepping up to publicly state, and seriously pursue the implications of, dozens of difficult questions we have basically had an unspoken pact to not speak about for perhaps decades now.

If you are one of my comrades on the left who is generally overexposed to human docility or illness, I must also warn you, caringly, that you might be alarmed or confused by what follows. Many of you are now accustomed to a particular script: comrade is “problematic,” group pulls moral alarm, comrade begs forgiveness and (even in the best of cases, not to mention the horror shows), comrade dies a little on the inside, group feels reassured comrade will do no harm, group grows old and gray wondering why they never changed the world. Well, I have seen this script performed too many times to play along any longer; over the past several years I think I have learned a thing or two about why our groups don’t change the world. One reason is that we punish our own for grappling with questions we pretend to understand but are in fact to fearful to seriously consider.

So at the same time this post will charitably respond to some left-wing critiques of my project, in the same breath I am going to unapolagetically push further outward on my perspective that so horrifies many of you. I will no longer fight rearguard battles against fearful and disingenuous people on the left who would rather condemn something than admit they don’t have the time to read and process it; but neither am I here to cozy up with right-wing currents, as so many on the left assume of anyone who starts really speaking up and speaking out. I should like to become a worthy opponent of the smart wings of the new reaction, rather than merely pretend they are stupid; for I consider it a great embarrassment that the revolutionary left has yet to generate anything as genuinely interesting and creative as The Dark Enlightenment or Unqualified Reservations. If so-called left-acclerationism is our best response, then we’re in deep trouble (see below). Fortunately, I think we can do much, much better, but we won’t know until we try.

One of the key objections put forward by my more thoughtful critics from the left is the following. They argue that it is ethically and/or politically wrong to entertain a frame of debate in which racist implications appear likely. For example, my podcast with Diana is ethically or politically bad because by even discussing biological differences across groups, I am effectively increasing the perceived legitimacy of notions that can and will be used to support racist ideas or policies. I think this is a reasonable concern based on a plausible model of culture. Yet after reflecting on this for several years, I believe this idea is fatally mistaken in ways that have not yet been fully grasped or written down anywhere (that I know of, anyway). Here is a first, short attempt.

This idea that it is ethically or politically wrong to entertain a certain frame of debate is a fatal error in both the normative and empirical sense of that term. First, on the normative level, the idea of refusing to engage people with certain frames of reference dehumanizes people who have no access to anything other than those frames of reference. In short, this objection writes off large swaths of humanity as inhuman. I believe that this monopoly on humanity claimed by educated leftists is now, on net, a more violent and reactionary phenomenon than any legitimacy that would be given to racism by even talking with a proper racist (let alone decent people who merely have dicey or controversial positions). What many on the left ignore is that today large swaths of human beings are, through no fault of their own, socialized into right-wing and often racist frames. There exists a large number of people who are racist because they were sociologically doomed from birth to be racist (e.g. poor undeducated white kids in racist families and geographies are statistically doomed to be racist). Their humanity has been robbed from them (as it’s increasingly robbed from everyone).

It is my view that the revolutionary left is absolutely obligated to treat such people as the humans they truly are despite the dehumanization they have been subjected to. When the “humane” leftist says thou shall not engage with any racist “framing” of a conversation, they are saying that large swaths of essentially innocent people do not have the right to think, speak, or participate in public life, i.e. this position coldly writes off the past and continued dehumanization of literally millions of people. Leftists think they are being radically humane, guarding the last line of defense against the collapse of human equality, but the horrifying mistake nobody is willing to reflect on is that this is actually saying “keep those filthy animals out of the little circle of humanity I still get to enjoy with my educated friends.”

The genuinely humane, revolutionary-emancipatory position in contemporary culture is that we must dare to do the cognitively and emotionally terrifying, and dangerous, work of extending whatever last shreds of humanity we have, to everyone we possibly can. Therefore, the truly humane, caring, revolutionary gambit today ethically requires us to “engage with racist frames.” As a militant antifascist, I also believe in drawing lines across which absolute refusal or physical resistance becomes the correct move: to me, the clear line is if someone is actively engaged in violence or directly inciting it. I would not have a conversation with a neo-Nazi marching in my town throwing bottles at immigrants; I would, with my community, physically remove them from my town. All I am saying is that to draw this line of militant non-engagement at the level of “thinking and speaking with a racist frame” would require us to tell millions of people to go die in the cesspool they were born into. We have been effectively doing that for decades now, and not only does it fail, but it appears to engender or intensify novel mutations of racist politics (e.g., carefully non-explicit white “identitarian” movements, etc).

Continuing from the previous part, the second problem is as follows. This notion that it can be wrong, a priori, to consider certain frames of reference is a grave error in the practical or strategic sense as well, because to cast off so many people as inhuman casts off all of the humans we would need to change anything. It empirically dooms the left to never achieve the fundamental transformations we claim to be fighting for. If you listen to smart people on the right, they are currently laughing their way to the end of humanity as the left continues to push deeper and deeper into the mistakes we are actively refusing to learn from. It is very difficult for the few revolutionary leftists still alive to confront this, because it’s genuinly so vertiginous and horrifying that it really approaches what is cognitively and emotionally unsurvivable for genuinely caring people: there are at least some objective reasons to believe the human species may be genuinely crossing the threshold at which exponentially increasing technological efficiency makes the absolute end of humanity an objective and irreversible empirical reality. I think it’s debatable where we are at in that process, but it seems undeniable this question is now genuinely at stake and I simply don’t see a single person on the revolutionary left seriously considering this with the radical honesty it requires.

If folks like Srnicek and Williams and the “post-capitalism” types are the best the radical left has to offer on this front, I’m very sorry but we’re in serious trouble. No disrespect to those folks, they are all very good and smart people. But that is exactly the problem. A really profound problem nobody on the left wants to consider is that being a “good person” imposes psychological constraints on your most basic capacities to think and express yourself honestly. To understand this, we need to take a little historical detour.

Recall that capitalist society only emerged and grew on hypocrisy as the standard mode for cognitively and emotionally managing the necessity of having to brutally exploit each other to survive. This hypocrisy is what the word “bourgeois” means, and it is nothing less than the naturalized lifestyle of everyone who qualifies as a “good person” in modernity. Because living as a human being under capitalism requires hypocrisy, being empirically correct about what is happening and how the world functions (science) as well as interpersonally adequate to each other (what is called “caring,” or saying/doing what helps specific other people in specific moments) are mutually exclusive to a substantial degree. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown with several years of research that people who identify with the political left are disproportionately interested in “care” as a value; conservatives have a more multi-dimensional “palette” of moral foundations). To be clear, I am in fact deeply interested in the value of care, which is one reason I find myself sociologically on the left-wing of political culture. The unique challenge I don’t see anybody on the radical left seriously confronting is how our committment to care comes with the cost of certain systematic errors we happily ignore by dishonestly repeating over and over that we ignore them because we “care.” The issue here is that, it is programmed into the nature of a capitalist bourgeois society that to pursue unlimited “care” means that you objectively do not care about changing reality. This is because changing something as complex as “society” requires an extremely sophisticated empirical rigor deeply at odds with the care we also need to exercise in order to cooperatively change things together as diverse human beings. How to achieve the optimal balance of these genuinely contradictory tendencies is, in my view, one of the million-dollar questions for any serious revolutionary political thought today.

(An aside. The first and most stupendous person to see all of this in the early stages of capitalist modernity, who so clearly saw the doomed destiny of any society organized on hypocrisy, that he preferred to sacrifice his public “goodness” to produce monuments of honesty so outrageous he hoped they would raze the hypocritical order altogether, was, of course, Rousseau. Now, Rousseau did not squash the rise of bourgeois hypocrisy, but he had demonstrable effects in generating the modern revolutionary left tradition as we know it, from the French Revolution to Fanon and beyond. There are many good critiques of Rousseau, but if there is one example of how a sincere individual can craft a life that contributes to genuinely collective, world-historical waves of revolutionary political change, it is surely Rousseau. If this aside does not help you to see the world-historical difference between my own perspective and the neo-reaction, then it is unlikely any other citations ever will.)

In my view, this tradeoff between being correct about how the world works and caring for each other enough that we can cooperatively change it in the direction of peace and abundance for all—this is perhaps the most vexing and urgent puzzle for a genuine revolutionary left today. Yet remarkably I am not aware of a single person genuinely risking themselves on solving it, so I’m going to try. At present I am working on understanding the mechanisms whereby such an important problem has somehow been so stubbornly invisible to so many of us for so long. My wager is that we if we can truly understand the mechanisms of our own blindness, we will find pathways to the holy grail of the revolutionary left tradition: the flourishing of all human beings in peace and abundance, immediately, without recourse to all of the right-wing solutions that get raised in direct response to the left’s willful neglect of exactly this impasse.

It is because of this tradeoff between being correct and caring that I have recently become interested in what I have been referring to as the “smart” right-wing. Many people are concerned that my recent interest in intelligence means that I’ve become an IQ elitist or something. On the contrary, I am keenly suspicious of the politics of high-IQ subcultures, precisely because I know there is a trade-off between being correct and caring. Because we care about each other, there are certain things we refuse to see or else refuse to tell each other about what is really true. That’s fine, and perhaps a hard constraint of the types of beings we are on the radical left. But “smart” far-right people, who do not give a fuck about how people feel, they might just be the only ones capable of telling us those truths we need to process if we are ever going to have a sufficent command on reality to generate the systemic transformations we believe in. But at the same time, I am highly skeptical that the evacuation of care is a viable political project, because warmth is a condition of life for we creatures who require the sun to live, we creatures who are literally composed of a once-exploded star. I think right-accelerationists are wagering on the possibility that, if technologically super-charged hypercapitalism is understood correctly (hence the call to minimize care), that is objectively the most likely path for the possibility of surviving, perhaps into the becoming of something post-human.

For instance, a remarkable feature of Nick Land’s current writing is his obsession with coldness; I have never read anyone who so conscientiously endorses the absolute evacuation of care as a political project. Many on the left find this so evil they are resolutely insisting that if one so much as speaks his name with even one non-negative adjective in the same sentence, that very act is enough to force the speaker out of the publicly defined circle of “good humans” into that outside zone of cast-off inhumanity (consider that Land’s handle is @outsideness), via the same intellectual-social process I described above. If we self-servingly cast off human beings as if they are sub-human, we cannot then feign surprise and indignation if they say, “OK then! I’ll go off to become one with the superintelligent eugenically produced cyborg overloads you’ll be enslaved by in a couple of generations and I will laugh my ass off all the way to the singularity!” That’s the vibe I get when I browse Nick Land’s ongoing work, and when I look at the objective reality of runaway global finance and the tech sector, it does not seem implausible that something like this could potentially be underway. Of course I find that horrifying, which is why I am calling absolute bullshit on the people who say that it’s “too evil to engage.” On the contrary, it’s too alarming not to engage.

The more evil you think someone is, the greater should be your concern to ensure there is not the slightest chance they understand something better than you. If they are so evil, and they understand even one tiny thing you don’t, perhaps they are off using that edge in knowledge to engineer you out of existence. This suggests to me that when people say, “intellectual engagement with person X is prohibited,” what they are actually saying is “we are so afraid they might be part of the superintelligent cyborg army coming to enslave us that, even if they are literally preparing to, we do not want to know about it, even if there is a chance that we can still stop them!” And this is where I get off the train to nowhere, for this is where moderate respectable leftism (including most currently existing “radical” variants) converges with the most insiduous and cowardly conservatism. If there is some chance that hyperintelligent cyborgs are preparing to overtake humanity once and for all, because there is some chance that for generations now they have been operating on a model of the world we made it our pact to never consider, then I’m going to take a real look. Not everyone has to be comfortable doing so themselves, but at this point I think that any honest, decent, thinking being on the radical left will at least allow me to try.

I believe that currently, a dirty little secret on the the left is that for some people, the “left” is an agreement to protect each other’s right to look away from the most horrifying and potentially tragic realities of planetary life today, to (implicitly) secure amongst ourselves the last bits of interpersonal warmth available on the planet, agreeing to allow the rest of humanity’s descent into irreversible coldness. It helps to explain why, if you even approach these issues with the slightest indication of analytical coldness, you have to be ejected from the warmth cartel, for ejecting such existential threats is a condition of its survival. But I believe it has always been the vocation of the revolutionary left, properly understood, to risk its own survival on deploying just enough analytical coldness to engineer the unique machine that would take as an input the left’s unique material resource (warmth or energy via care) and produce as an output non-linear, systemic dynamics the ultimate equilibrium state of which would be peace and abundance for all. What that machine looks like is the question, and this is only a formal statement to illustrate the revolutionary left position today as an engineering problem. There are many reasons that have been adduced as to why such a machine cannot exist, and I do not pretend to offer responses to them here. I am only suggesting that any revolutionary left today, worthy of the name, would need to “solve for X,” as it were. The point of the engineering metaphor is not that everybody in the revolutionary movement will need to be an engineer, not at all; the point is only to show that any left-revolutionary project, to succeed, will have to solve this engineering problem.

What does this mean for revolutionary politics, in plain conversational terms? By putting all of our eggs in the basket of care and kindness, the radical left is now suffering from an engineering crisis it does not have enough engineers to even notice. In short, making revolution is a complex practical problem we are not solving because we are now generations deep in a long-term strategy of prohibiting people who are good at high-level problem solving but bad at being polite. Not to mention people who are good at creative and social openness, but bad at obeying rules. Thinkers of the respectable-radical left, people such as Paul Mason or Srnicek and Williams are selling a hope of technological super-abundance, but they are too sweet to tell any of their left comrades that all of the people you would need to actually produce that super-abundance are off building hyper-exploitative super-capitalism in part because they once went to an activist meeting and everyone treated them like fascists. To bring this back to anti-capitalist basics, the reason left post-capitalist thinkers don’t reflect much on such little problems as this one is because selling books is as mutually exclusive with truth-telling, in the short run, as is being a “nice person.” Hence the need for a fundamentally anti-bourgeois revolutionary intellectual culture cold enough to seek all of the darkest truths, but still warm enough not to betray the calling of solidarity. I’m not saying the left should start worshipping cold analytical power; all I’m saying is that if we genuinely believe in the necessity of changing the world, a revolutionary culture would have to be at least minimally hospitable to a minimal number of people who have knowledge of how complex things work and how they break, and people with the traits and inclinations to maneuver among diverse others. Both types of people are effectively prohibited from those who currently define radical progressive politics. Contemporary radical left culture is now so fully doubled-down on the wager of kindness over intelligence and creativity, that I am afraid it is almost vacuum-sealed against learning why it might be on the verge of extinction. I am writing this, and will continue writing to this effect, on the last-ditch possibility there exist other people out there, somewhere, who can see in this something more important than a moral offense.

from Justin Murphy http://ift.tt/2ppFcmI