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ihaspoorgrammer · 4 years ago

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Legend of Korra: Alternate Season 2

In honor of LoK coming to Netflix, I’ve decided to vomit all my feelings towards that show the best way I can - creative writing - In a “What I think Should’ve Happened” essay for your reading pleasure. For those who don’t have the time, I’ll just come out and say it -- Legend of Korra was created with one season in mind, and that’s how it should've stayed.

All the concepts and ideas they introduced in the first season (and The Last Airbender) were more-or-less abandoned by the sequel so they could flounder and come to a deflating end.

So, I wrote this as a way to actually make use of them in a meaningful way that the creators so casually disregarded:

A few months after the battle with Amon, the Equalists have splintered into different cells throughout Republic City. Amon being revealed as a Waterbender weakened them, but that doesn’t take away from the larger points they championed about Bender/Non-Bender inequality. As a consequence, the United Forces soldiers are still a presence in the city, and Chief Biefong has made use of them as additional keepers of the peace, working with the Metalbending police to help rebuild and establish order, and has benefited greatly from the leadership of General Iroh and Commander Bumi.Korra is still airbending training with Tenzin as well as learning about the Avatar State, and she seems to have done a complete 180 in terms of her training; now dedicating herself to it full time to it. Tenzin is naturally happy about this development, but cautions her that the training will have to come naturally and it’s not something she can force, and is wary of how deeply her fight with Amon affected her. The Fire Ferrets are preparing for their first match since last season against the Polar Leopards, Mako and Bolin steel their nerves while their new waterbender - Tahno - tells them to "relax" and "prepare to be amazed." After putting up a spirited fight, the Fire Ferrets and their opponents are tied. After ganging up on Tahno - who is at a disadvantage, being more accustomed to cheating - is saved by Mako. With seconds left, Tahno subtly bends the water on the opposing team’s side, and creates an ice-patch, causing an opponent to slip. Tahno takes advantage of this, and wins the match with a “Korra Special.” Only Mako notices the cheat. After the match, Mako approaches Tahno about the cheating, but lets it slide. At Bolin’s suggestion, the two brothers go out to celebrate and invite Tahno along, but he opts out for "training” (after this, we see that Tahno has a picture of Korra in his locker, hinting that he only joined the Ferrets to make it up to her for restoring his bending).Asami has taken full control of Future Industries and personally oversees the production of new satomobiles and has saved Future Industries from bankruptcy with new airplanes designs. However, the company can't shake the black-eye her father gave it and her name, so business contacts have become scarce and shareholders have started pulling out. Worse, the board of directors have begun flexing their muscles to try and squeeze her out. She needs to come up with something good and fast.Mako, Bolin, and Tahno are in the middle of free-for-all sparring, when Tahno accidentally makes ice and headshots Bolin (which makes his vision comically go double). Mako scolds Tahno about it, causing Tahno to storm off. Later that night on Air Temple Island, Mako brings Korra a meat dinner (Tenzin has put her on a vegetarian diet), but she declines. They begin to discuss Tahno’s participation in the team, which Mako believes was a bad idea, but Korra reminds him that Tahno has cut back on cheating, worked hard, and overall been a good addition (or stand-in for Korra). They share a nice couple-moment and laugh. We see Asami in the distance looking at them longingly, showing that she is still hurt over Mako leaving her for Korra. She starts to walk back to her room when she hears a strange noise in the distance. The source is Commander Bumi throwing his boomerang back and forth. After talking for a bit (and Bumi revealing that the boomerang once belonged to his uncle, Sokka), Bumi allows Asami to give it a throw. After a successful first try, she accidentally throws it through Tenzin's window. Bumi tells her "I didn't see anything if you didn't see anything." As he hops in the bushes to hide and Asami runs away. Laughing. Meanwhile, a group of once-small time Triad gangs (they were "little people" before Amon "de-bended" the major families), are attacked by members of the Triple Threat. After a small battle, the Triple Threats win, and take with them a powerful bloodbender (or they start interrogating someone), leaving behind a message: “Lightning strikes twice.” ------

After that, Season 2 is in full swing. The Triads are the major Big Bad of this season because the purpose of the show was to be the opposite of Airbender, narratively speaking. So, that means keeping Korra and the cast firmly in Republic City and no more globe trotting.

This puts a bigger emphasis on the characters and their interpersonal relationships (which was the big draw of the show to begin with), rather than having to build up and explain the geo-politics of a new setting.

If they did stay for at least one more season, it probably would have emphasized a larger untapped well; the city was designed to be a 1920’s New York-style “melting-pot”, a place where all cultures come together and mix (Mako and Bolin are a product of a Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom union, and Tahno seems to be the a product of a Fire Nation and Water Tribe union). So, essentially, it’s the architectural equivalent of the Avatar. Just as the Avatar is the synergy of the four nations, Republic City does the exact same thing, just on a larger scale. One more season would better emphasize this fact, and show that despite what people think, it is possible for the four nations to co-exist as long as it’s based on mutual respect and sharing of differences, not domination of differences. This imaginary second season could also be used to address multiculturalism in any number of ways.

Maybe the new Big Bad could’ve been a terrorist group dedicated to keeping the nations separate and "pure," and see the City as an affront to the Avatar’s “true responsibility.” And maybe Korra can see that, despite its flaws, the city and what it represents is worth saving. It also would have emphasised the “super-hero” aspect of the show; Korra being a Superman-figure who constantly has to protect her Metropolis from ever-constant calamities. Another aspect that could’ve been added, was that the people of Republic City could’ve helped the Krew. You see, the citizens of Rep. City are constantly infantilized to the point of helplessness until Korra and co. show up to help. The opposite approach would have emphasised the multicultural aspect of the city, and how when push comes to shove, they are all one big family.Maybe even having a scene like from the original Spider-Man movie where the citizens actually help the Krew out, saying “you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

From my perspective, there’s no better way to kick this off than introducing this monkey-wrench into the Krew’s system -- the return of Lightning Bolt Zolt, Mako and Bolin’s adoptive father.

See, in the backstory that the show never did anything with, after their parents died, Mako and Bolin became part of the Triads. Though Mako stresses to Korra that he only "ran numbers" for them during his time there. . . So either Mako is a mathematical prodigy, or he's lying. Because I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say he probably received no formal education on the streets that would enable him to work for the Triads in that capacity. So that begs the question: why would he lie? What did he do during his time working for the Triads, that would make him leave and never speak of it again? It’s because he was specially trained by Zolt personally. Learning Lightningbending in the process.

Now, Zolt will use this connection to manipulate Mako for his own purposes, which involves getting his bending back, which will of course drive a wedge between him and Korra.

Zolt may be a bastard, but he was arguably more of a father to him than Mako’s actual father, and that kind of emotional connection is hard to ignore. In fact, it’s such a shock to his system that his Lightningbending stops working.

Which brings him in contact with General Iroh.

When we first meet Mako, he’s determined, blunt, stubborn, and reserved. Understandably so, seeing as how his parents were murdered in front of him Batman-style and was forced to basically raise his little brother on his own, on the streets. As a consequence, one of his most defining characteristics is his inability to relax. He’s constantly trying to fix everything, constantly trying to help everybody, and constantly trying to remain in control. So, Avatar-style development demands that he gradually realize that he can’t control everything and learn to relax, allowing Bolin to become his own person, and learning to go with the flow. Which is something they actually didn’t do in the fourth season. He was largely extraneous to the story and they actually took every opportunity they had to show how useless he was.

Meanwhile, Bolin starts being approached by Lin Biefong, who believes the young man has the potential to be part of the Metalbending police force, despite his claims that he can’t Metalbend. However, Lin eventually realizes why he never could; he’s never had to apply himself. You need to have an unrelenting drive to force the minerals within to move, and that’s not something Bolin has ever needed. In Season 4 of the actual show, I almost applauded it for having Bolin sign up for the army because I thought that’s exactly what he needed -- a place to apply himself. Mako being such a mother-hen accidentally stunted Bolin’s emotional growth, never allowing him to mature and become independent. Which could lead into a very Sokka-like confession:

B: “Do you want to know something really terrible; I don’t miss them. Mako was the one that really knew them. I remember bits of things, but … They’re just … People I didn’t get to know. Mako’s the one that’s always been there for me.”

So here, Lin takes it upon herself to be his teacher and actually show his true potential. They grow closer as a result, and she and Bolin start developing a mother-son relationship. When we first meet Bolin, he’s immature, a show-off, something of a womanizer, a shameless flirt, and a goof-off. The unifying detail with the Bending Brothers is that Mako was sort of holding them both back; Mako’s over-protectiveness never allowed him to choose what was best for himself, and stunted Bolin’s emotional growth into becoming a more independent adult. What they could’ve done - if they wanted to save time - was to have their character arcs work off of each other -- while Mako becomes more relaxed and free-spirited, Bolin becomes more responsible and goal-oriented.

The only other place that the phrase “wasted potential” belongs besides in association with Tahno we’ll get to in a minute, but for now let’s focus on him. The creators once said that they “care about all the characters … except Tahno,” which should show the lack of imagination that was rather systemic in the thinking process there (and what liars they are).

From the start, Tahno is clearly deeply affected by Amon stripping him of his bending, even if Korra gave it back to him. And while he still resorts to cheating now and then, it’s not entirely because he’s a natural cheater … it’s because his bending hasn’t completely come back, and neither has Korra’s for that matter.

They’re both so traumatized by Amon’s Bloodbending that they’re experiencing “hiccups” in their powers.

Korra has tried to deal with it by doubling-down on her Airbender training to “find inner peace,” while Tahno is just trying to ignore it.

Eventually, their arcs cross paths, and they bond of their attempts at healing, having to come to terms with the fact that the “body heals only after the mind heals.” Which further draws a wedge between her and Mako.

Now, there is still a love-triangle here, but it’s in service to why Mako and Korra were brought together in the first place: they aren't supposed to be like Katara and Aang, where it was love-at-first-sight. They’re supposed to be the more realistic couple that have problems and have to make compromises because they love each other.

Love isn’t something that just happens, you have to work hard at it and make the other person happy without looking for the advantage. Relationships - both platonic and romantic - need to be built on mutual trust and understanding, and with understanding means taking a person for both their good and bad qualities.

Infatuation is the kind of love that is more shallow and doesn’t last.

Under direct orders from Fire Lord Zuko himself, General Iroh has started staying at Air Temple Island to watch over the Avatar, which leads him to becoming an unofficial therapist to the people staying there, namely Korra, Tahno, and Mako.Iroh is unique among the cast because he’s inherited Uncle Iroh’s position of someone who already has everything figured out themselves.

He grew up with loving parents and loving grandparents, and we learn that he had the honor of being one of the first firebenders taught by the Sun Warriors, who Zuko spent most of his life helping reconstruct (where he gained the nickname, “The Young Dragon”).

This new living situation makes him a part of the Krew later on, and brings him closer contact with Asami, who he develops a rapport with. And finally, we come to Asami, who is still dealing with losing her father and potentially losing everything else.

You don’t have the founder of a company be linked to a terrorist organisation and expect that company to survive, no matter what financial magic you can conjure. Which is something Asami is learning all too well.But in this madness, she meets two people -- Commander Bumi and General Iroh (who’s under an official Fire Lord order to watch over the Avatar).

She soon becomes Bumi’s ward, eventually, Bumi will act as a surrogate father for Asami, and she will help him organize, and win, a blimp race. From then on, she starts exclusively referring to him with the honorific, "commander."

They become so close that he starts teaching her everything Sokka taught him. You see, because Aang spent more time with Tenzin and Katara more time with Kya, that meant that Bumi ended up bonding with his non-bending uncle, (who later in life became master Piandao’s best student).

That’s why Bumi carries around Sokka's boomerang; Sokka was probably more of a father to him than Aang was.

So Sokka, never having children of his own after Suki tragically died, taught Bumi everything he knew, including how to recreate Space Earth Metal.And, after they grow closer, he decides to trust Asami with this sacred technique. …

Which she immediately tries to patent and market in order to save Future Industries. However, when she learns how deeply she hurt Bumi by doing this, she finally cuts her losses and sells the company. After that, she decides to pursue a different career, perhaps by joining the United Forces.

And, while all of this is happening, Tenzin is informed by the White Lotus that global bending birth rates are going down with the modernization and mechanization of the world. Signifying that people's disconnection with nature and spirituality is robbing them of their bending.

Just like what happened to the Fire Nation.

And if this rate continues, in a few generations, bending might completely disappear.

------

Avatar: The Last Airbender was aimed primarily at children and early teens, because those are big transitional times in young people's lives. But late-teens and early 20's are also big transitional phases in young people's lives. Perhaps even more so, because those are the times where you have to learn how to be an adult. A very alien concept.

So, Legend of Korra seemed primed to tackle the challenges of this time, but for one reason or another, they never did.

Despite having a golden opportunity to say some meaningful things about interracial families and multiculturalism, they instead, did nothing.

This is a quote from a Tumblr post who I sadly can’t track down, but it speaks volumes to what AtLA represented to people:

“You need ALL these things to survive and grow, to hold up your community and push yourself forward. You need to unlearn myths and lies, reform them to fit new realities. You need to respect the past but mold it for the future. In short, you have to “draw wisdom from many different places” while keeping true to who you are and where you come from. IDK if the creators of AtLA thought about these things when crafting this story; I think when a story is well told, with authenticity and love, it has the potential to illuminate many perspectives and strike empathy in many different people. Diasporic consciousness is incredibly valuable because it teaches us a different way of being, a way of interconnectedness and mutual love. The Gaang symbolizes this perfectly: it took all of them with all their different skills, to end the War and restore peace and balance. A diasporic consciousness has the same power: to model a newer, more just, more empathetic way of life.”

Tying into this, I think all the Avatars were wrong in their assertion that the four nations needed to be separated. Think about it. Every single nation failed, in their own way, because they were isolated: the Fire Nation became too proud of its own accomplishments, and became a fascist regime. The Air Nomads' loose and "free" nature allowed the Fire Nation to easily wipe them out. The "go with the flow" attitude of the Southern Water Tribe - similar to the Air Nomads - made them easy targets for the Fire Nation; while the Northern Water Tribe "froze over," becoming rigid in their doctrine and tradition, and could never stand against the Fire Nation alone; and the Earth Kingdom fell too far into its "virtue" of endurance, and became a military dictatorship with a puppet king, cutting off any ties to the outside world.

“It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If we take it from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements, and the other nations, will help you become whole.”

While the "separate, but equal" stance towards the Four Nations may have been a good idea in the past, in recent years, it's proven to be a recipe for disaster. Most, if not all, of these failings could've been avoided if there had been more open dialogue between the Nations. There is a saving grace in the form of the Order of the White Lotus, but seeing how they all kindly fucked off until the shit really started to hit the fan, I can hardly see how they were a solution to the problem. Now, I really don’t know what else to say. I wrote this entire thing as an exercise to show how Legend of Korra failed in its duties to be an equal to its predecessor, because I was a fan.

Not just of AtLA, but of Lok as well. I watched it, I invested in it, and I was disappointed by it.

Others may have had all their hopes answered by the ending, but I was left with a pit in my stomach over how far the mighty had fallen.

And I don’t look forward to the show being adapted into live action because I don’t think I can take seeing all the lapses in creativity and common sense all over again.

#Legend of Korra #Netflix #LoK #irohsami #makorra #bryke #anti bryke #if anyone wants to make a fanfic about this i would be honored

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papa-nikki-writes · 4 years ago

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Rowvember day 13-Retired

Definition

having left one's job and ceased to work.

Summary- Sometime between the gang war’s brief ceasefire in SR2, Shea gets a text from a one Benjamin King, he’s in town and fancies a chat, so Shea sets out to grab dinner with the ex Vice King leader.

Words: 1,940

Yeah this place was definitely too fancy for her, this was the type of establishment that would serve lobster or oysters. Or Caviar. Basically any weirdish thing found from the sea.

There were ice swans and silverware galore, and while Shea wasn’t wanting for money much these days, she still felt out of place, even dressed to the nines in First Impression’s finest pants/blazer combo, she checked on her Fleur-de-lis pin in her jacket, then stepped into the restaurant. She was drawn to the view from outside for a moment, the huge windows in the sky restaurant were really something else. It gave her a fantastic view of her city in all it’s glory.

Nobody seemed to batting an eyelid at her presence however, smiling and bowing their heads courteously as they passed, and Shea’s cheeks burned hot and she threw her attention to the pictures on the wall, noticing what looked to be Ronnie Kray sat at a table with some Mafioso sorts and raised an eyebrow. Maybe Randall and Aubin’s Seafood restaurant were used to entertaining those constantly falling on the other side of the law.

“Er, Miss O’Connor?” Shea turned at her name to see a greeter stood in front of her with a clipboard, and they nodded their head respectfully, “Mr King told us to look out for you, please, this way.” they said, gesturing with their arm and setting off through the tables. Shea followed, a knot twisting in her stomach that tightened the closer she got to King’s table. She could see him, leaning back in his chair gazing at the outside. This wasn’t just the first time she’s seen him in years, but she had killed Julius, and he had to have known it was her and asked to meet anyway. What was he planning?

He looked round as she sat in the seat opposite him, her hands clasped in her lap, and he smiled, the diamond earring in his ear glinted as he moved, and he raised his hands to adjust the yellow scarf around his neck, seems he was always going to rep his colours no matter what. She respected that.

“Long time, no see Playa.” he said, and nodded at the greeter, who bowed and left. “You look very alive for a dead woman Shea.”

“Half of my legs had to be grafted.” she said, and Ben cringed.

“Still, you’re here, that says a lot.” he said, index finger grazing his chin in thought, and Shea raised an eyebrow.

“That could mean anything.” she said, and he laughed and narrowed his eyes.

“How so?”

“You know I killed Julius.”

“I also know why.” he said, “It’s a sad state of affairs, but karma comes to collect on all of us eventually. You can relax Shea, if I wanted to kill you, I certainly wouldn’t be doing it myself.”

“You don’t wanna kill me?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Ben replied, “though I do enjoy the straight shooting questions, it’s a breath of fresh air.”

Shea felt all tension leave her body then and she relaxed, pulling over the menu to read.

“Alright, what’re we eating?”

“Whatever you want, my treat.” he said,

“That’s a dangerous thing to say around me, King.” she replied and he chuckled.

“I stand by it.”

Shea glanced back down at the menu, her head spinning from how posh everything sounded: Classic moules marinieres, Linguine vongole,Poissons du jour, She spied a Tuna Carpaccio down the list and kind of had an idea what it was so her choice was made.

“So if your plan wasn’t to poison me horribly under the pretence of dinner, why did you ask me here?” she asked as the waiter came by, pencil at the ready to take their order, Ben stared for a few moments before turning to the man.

“Yes, so I’ll have the Roasted Monkfish and whatever the lady wants, and ah-a bottle of your best wine as well, you good with wine?” he asked her and she nodded, alcohol was alcohol at the end of the day.

“And I’ll have the Tuna Carpaccio please.” she said, and the water jotted it all down.

“Excellent choices, I’ll be back in a few minutes with your wine sir-madam.” he said, inclining his head towards them both before taking their menus, and Ben waited until her was gone before leaning forwards.

“Stilwater’s yours again, so what’s next?”

“Next?”

“Yeah, fighting’s only ever the half of it, the real hard work is maintaining it, so what’s your plan?”

“I have no plan.” Shea replied, they were just trying to survive from day to day, never really gave her the time to be dreaming up schemes. “The Saints have had it rough the last few months, I’m happy to give them a breather while I figure a few things out.”

“Fair, fair. I...have heard a few things, How are you and Gat holding up?”

“We’ve...been better.” Shea answered, deliberately vague, “We’re OK though, in the grand scheme. You mentioned it yourself that I’m doing well for being dead.” she said, thanking the waiter as he poured their wine then left them with the bottle on their table. She leaned forward, glass in hand. “Pierce says hi by the way, you might not know him by name but he was a VK back in the day, one of the ones that stayed loyal to you during the coup.”

“Evidently, since he joined up with you. I might have sent a few of my guys in your direction, you know the ones that don’t do well out of a gang?” he asked and she nodded, “you probably don’t know how many ex Vice Kings walk among the Saints.”

“Well if I don’t know, they’re causing no harm, I’m not going to send away loyal people for who they used to be. I’ve had too many friends stab me in the back to learn that lesson.”

“You don’t lay hands on your own?” he asked, taking a sip.

“If I have to do that, they’re not my own.” she smirked, “Dex, Troy, Julius, I used to party with them, and now they either directly or indirectly tried to put me in the ground. I train my people, but I never push them farther than they can handle. I need them ready, not burnt out.”

“Your leadership style’s very hands on.”

“It’s me King, I don’t think it could be anything else.”

“True, hey if it works for you, I’m hardly the one that should be judging.”

“Yeah but what did you do after you decided to lay the weapons down, go into big business?” she asked, taking a drink, and King frowned, tapping a hand on the table.

“It was the only way I could go really. I couldn’t end the Vice Kings obviously, you’ve seen what creating a power vacuum does.” Shea nodded, remembering that fecking boat again, “Great in theory, but Jules always was too much of an idealist. Put him in denial more often than not.”

“Cut off the Hydra’s head, three more grows in its place.”

“Exactly.”

Shea frowned and sipped at her wine, it’s true that the city was theirs and she had no intention of disbanding the Saints now it was, like Ben just said, they could do without the messiness that Julius caused five years ago. But where could she take the Saints? Their enemies were gone, they’d have nothing to do, and the gang was unruly at the best of times. She would have to find other avenues for them to expend their energy, but what?

“What do you think I should do?” she asked, and Ben chuckled, shaking his head and raising a hand.

“Oh no no no, I’m not telling you what to do? You got to figure it out on your own I’m afraid.”

“Ben.” Shea snapped, incredulous.

“Hey I’m retired, I’m here to guide you, not shove you into a box.”

“Laaaame.” she huffed, downing her wine, “Can I get more?” she asked.

“Knock yourself out, just save the passing out for when you get home though.”

“Ah, I’m sure Johnny can haul me off the floor if I do, you should see him now Ben, jail made him super hench.”

“He’s living with you?”

“For now yeah, truth be told, I want to keep an eye on him, you know?” she asked, and Ben finished his own drink, and he too poured more.

“You just make sure you look after eachother yeah? Not a day goes by when I don’t miss Angela, it’s not the exact same situation as you but I could’ve done with my best friend still with me.”

He looked sad and wistful when he said that, and Shea nodded, she understood, nothing worse than losing your best friend somewhere along the way, with them taking arms against you later. Maybe that’s why Ben didn’t want to kill her, because he understood how she felt right now, she wondered if the thought of killing Julius crossed Ben’s mind after, only to realise when he came down to it that he could never really do it. God knows Shea still found it playing round and round in her head as time went on.

“So,” she asked, wanted to steer the conversation into lighter waters, “How’s retirement treating you?”

“Well my books still selling well, they want to turn it into a movie, and Michael Clarke Duncan’s supposed to playing me, so-pretty fucking well.” he grinned, “not what I had in mind five years ago, but I like where I am at least.”

“Am I in it?” she asked,

“You mean you haven’t read it yet? Christ playa, I say all these nice things about you and you don’t have the courtesy to read it?”

“Hey, I’m not retired remember?” She chuckled, “mama’s still getting that illegitimate coin.”

“But coin nonetheless.”

“Of course.” she grinned, then her eyes flicked to their food coming and she grinned wider, she couldn’t wait for this. It was when they were both taking a wine break when Ben leaned forwards across the table.

“Did I tell you I’ve been shortlisted for the Baker award, first non fiction, autobiographical listing in thirty years.” he said, and both of Shea’s eyebrows raised, that was surely impressive.

Wow.” she said, then leaned forwards too, “I got a bullet to curve round a wall the other week.” she said, to highlight their different lives and Ben laughed, then she did, The rest of the dinner went by in a blur of anecdotes and laughter, and when they both stepped outside while Ben waited for his limo to pull round, he turned to her.

“You know, I haven’t said this, but you really remind me of Angela.”

“Your sister was Irish?” she asked, and Ben smiled.

“No, but she always knew more than she let on.” he sighed, then as he watched the limo pull up, he shoved his hands in his pockets, “just...take care yeah? Don’t let yourself be cornered again, always give yourself an out.” he said, them waved as he dipped inside the car and shut the door, and Shea waved back until she could no longer see him.

She wasn’t going to sleep tonight, she didn’t sleep much as it was but everything the dinner brought up kept swimming through her wine brain. Angela King, Julius Little, plans now the fighting had stopped etc. She knew she’d have to speak to Johnny about all this when she got back but right now the bigger challenge for Shea O’Connor was to find her way back home.

#Saints Row #rowvember2020 #benjamin king #boss shea

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powerbottomblake · 5 years ago

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How well do you think RWBY handles its race metaphors and well its characters of color? I seen a lot of people upset at the Faunus subplot and the lack of good characters of color. Like a series can have good (white) female and/or LGBT rep but fail POC. That’s white feminism in a nutshell. RWBY has its stumbles with some colorism here and there but with Maria I think CRWBY is improving. Thank you in advance.

I think CRWBY are extremely hit and miss when it comes to handling race.

Undercut because it got long.

So first: Faunus as an allusion to every kind of racial systemic oppression confounded is kind of iffy since it lumps all people of color together and assumes that all of them face the same kind of oppression, which is…utterly simplistic to say the least. Plus when you take actual race away…from a racial storyline and attribute it to a whole other species, you kind of dilute the message considerably. The point will fly over people’s heads 9 times out of 10. People will sooner empathize with catgirls than black or brown people and this has been proved time and again.

But seeing how the story is being helmed now by two white men who seem (and iirc have outright said) that they’re out of their depth when it comes to race, it’s probably preferable to have a blanket statement rather than go for actual racial storylines since the risk of a misstep gets higher.

And the thing is, when CRWBY miss their mark they really Miss The Mark. The two very clear missteps I think of that denote a certain tone-deafness/ignorance on their part were:

At the end of V1, we never get an apology from Weiss. What’s worse is that Blake is somehow framed as the only one who has to come clean and justify herself which is so…wrong after Weiss’ vicious, racist insults. Yes the White Fang are Bad now and are extremists but Weiss literally started the whole thing about Sun, who had no known affiliation to the White Fang, calling him a degenerate just because he was a Faunus like?? She made it clear she distrusted any Faunus?? And somehow the whole arc was framed to get Blake to realize that White Fang had lost its soul, which yes! She should! And it’s part of her storyline! But we never get to actually see Weiss going back on what she said. We never see her apologize for the racial prejudice she hurled at both Blake and Sun? And at the end it’s just. brushed off. The whole thing is very clunky and awkward and overall, I’d say tactless.

In V5 when Blake states “Humans didn’t do this…We did this” as she points to her house on fire and it’s. ok so it makes sense in context bc this is about Blake reclaiming the White Fang movement from Adam which is fair. But the thing is, the phrasing is very. This is dangerously close to making the oppressed class shoulder the full responsibility for the clashes occuring…because of the systemic oppression they’re being put under. That was very close to a “black on black crime” rhetoric. That scene, that particular quote left an incredibly bad aftertaste bc somehow the Faunus are taking full responsibility for smth that was primarily born out of the humans’ oppression of them. Incidentally this is the exact bone I had to pick with Black Panther too. Both Erik and Adam are products of what the oppressing class has done, yet the full responsibility for taking them out falls on the oppressed somehow. Humans might not have lit that house on fire but we wouldn’t even be on that island, Adam wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the SDC apparently using Faunus slaves for their mines. I know this is more a result of short-sightedness than actual malice but yeah…again it still ends up being tone-deaf.

Now beyond that I think that likewise when CRWBY hit they do Hit the Spot. The White Fang storyline especially asks some incredibly important questions when it comes to activism and fighting for your rights as an oppressed people: How far can political correctness carry you in the face of people who are out to rob of your most basic rights? When is retaliation righteous and what kind? What is justice and what is spite? How can you walk the fine line between meekness and violence? All of these questions are especially relevant today and make for a compelling storyline, especially since we get to see one of our main characters (Blake) navigate them. We’re shown that Ghira’s position, while foregoing violence, recoiled too much from conflict and ended with a deal mostly disadvantageous to his people. We’re shown that Sienna’s guerilla warfare ultimately devolves into Adam’s White Fang: bloodshed that only really perpetuates the cycle of violence and forgets its initial cause along the way. Now Blake has rejected both paths; the next logical step, and one that would neatly wrap up both a great leadership arc for her and a great political storyline all around would be for her to witness the full scale of horrors in Mantle and establish the threshold at which fighting back isn’t just necessary, it’s righteous and a duty. There’s a balance to be found and Blake is the one geared to find it. Question is: will CRWBY take the storyline there as it should (my guess is YES otherwise we wouldn’t have had need of Adam being literally branded by the SDC, adding up to Ilia’s backstory)? More importantly will they do it justice? Jury’s out on that one tbh. I think it’s fair to be wary considering the past offenses but the White Fang subplot has been surprisingly and really good mostly so. Wait and see I guess.

Despite all of its flaws I think calling RWBY white feminism is deeply incorrect? White feminism is about propping up white female characters’ storylines at the expense of POC characters, while disregarding any type of specific oppression non white characters and non white women especially have to face, which is not what’s happening here. Beyond the Faunus allegory, Blake is literally not meant to read as white and has very apparent asian coding. Ilia, who’s both very clearly POC and LGBT, has a story that is given weight and proper development and gets the redemption arc from within the White Fang. Bumbleby is literally meant to be read as an interracial couple, and while yes I’ve had qualms about Blake’s skin tone being incredibly inconsistent between volumes and especially washed out in V6, I do believe it stems more from a lack of foresight/animation and lighting wonkiness than outright malice or disregard, which I hope gets resolved in the later volumes.

#answers #tbh that's the ONE part of v7 I'm really really wary abt #my posts #Anonymous

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longinglook · 5 years ago

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I’m replying to a bunch more wru asks under the cut, so if you’ve sent me one that I haven’t answered yet, it’s probably down here!

I don't know if it was on purpose but FTTT's story has been mostly character driven so far so the jealousy storyline they tried to push in the last minute is out of place. I also agree that there are most likely scenes missing after what happened in the first part of the episode. I can definitely tell that some things aren't going the way they planned and I'm not talking only about SaiZon but about all couples.

Yeah something was definitely missng there plot wise, and as you said I think the show had been mostly character driven and it was working fine like that. They tried to add drama for the sake of having drama in it and edned up ruining the characters they had so nicely built. The show has been all over the place this entire time, but corona must have really screwed things up for them at the end. Hopefully they do get to shoot some more material to fill the holes that were left. I’m still very doubtful we’ll get the apology scene that was very much needed there.

fighter getting drunk, seeing tutor with the kid and then going to tutor and breaking down crying would have had done the same for the story progression as whatever they tried to do today and it wouldn't have harmed the character development of either characters but considering the article i read about thai and rape culture in the media i'm not even surprised that someone thought this was a good idea

I agree 100%. I think that their whole reasoning behind it was to bring Fighter to some sort of “breaking point”, because apparently just seeing Tutor with someone else wouldn’t have done it. I hated that part as well, I don’t think Tutor would ever use someone to get back at Fighter or piss him off so I’m going to erase that from my memory as well. I think that Fighter breaking down could have easily been justified just by him getting drunk and going to Tutor’s to beg him to get back together. Once Tutor refuses, you have the whole scene where Fighter cries. No need for any of this manipulation and assault. Sadly it seems that the writers didn’t see a problem with it. They didn’t even have Tutor ask for an apology, they didn’t make Fighter provide one.

I can’t believe they thought this kind of behavior would make sense coming from Fighter. We’ve seen repeatedly how Fighter has had pretty good impulse control around Tutor, stopping when kisses get too intense because he doesn’t want to “break his promise”, so this was just so out of character. Let’s say he was blinded by jealousy and alcohol, the moment he snapped out of it he would have apologized for sure. The fact that he didn’t in my opinion shows that the writers don’t consider this to be a serious matter. It should have happened right after he stopped, still in that scene, so there is no excuse as to why it’s missing.

but this is exactly what i mean even if they are side characters there are side characters that are important because they are tied to the main characters and then there are just random side characters to fill space and to make the series look more alive but whyru just forgot about all of them. i mean a lot of things went wrong so i guess i will try not to be too harsh but i hope the director can do a better job next time.

For sure! If you’re going to have a ton of side characters, make sure you can handle them. Make sure they have a backstory and enough screen time for people to remember them, to show respect both for the audience and for the actors. The show didn’t go the way they were planning to, and hopefully they get the chance to reshoot and release a new cut over on netflix, but there is a lot of work to do and we just can’t be sure of what was due to covid and what was due to bad writing.

most of the mess in bl series could be avoided if they just consulted an actual lgbt+ representative. i know one person can't represent all of us but it's a start. or honestly any sane person could do it. also how many times have people complained about problematic plot elements like this before? and it's not just international fans i have seen many viral thai tweets as well. you would think someone who spends as much time on twitter as the director of whyru would know better.

I think someone from the crew ism’t straight? But yeah apparently that wasn’t enough. Up until yesterday the show had been doing a good job with this sort of issues, even in ep. 12 the conversation with Fighter’s father was excellent, but they really fucked everything up with part 1. In that case it’s not necessarily about lgbt+ rep, since that scene would have been just as awful with a straight couple, it’s about working with someone who is able to recognize assault and realize that it shouldn’t be treated that lightly, that these characters wouldn’t normally behave like that, and that an apology scene from Fighter would have been needed. I’m staying off of twitter for a while because I honestly can’t watch clips of this episode without feeling sick.

It broke my heart to see Fighter begging his father to be happy. No child should have to BEG their parents just to be happy. I'm a mom and if my daughter would stand bevor me and plead under tears that I should just let her be happy it would destroy me. But this jerk didn't show any reaction. I don't get how to be so cold-hearted. In particular, when he claims that he does everything only for his son. He is no father. He ist just a self centric, control freak with no affection

Hopefully that was the last we’ll ever see of him. I’m pretty sure Fighter is going to tell Tutor that his father had a change of heart or something. because Fighter’s words seemed to have an effect on him and he left without saying anything. Still, I completely understand what you’re saying. He went way too far with his control tendencies, he made both his son and Tutor suffer just because he wasn’t okay with Fighter living his life and being happy for once. I hope Fighter will truly be happy after this and his father will leave him alone and lean to be more accepting. If not, I’m sure that Tutor’s mom and sister are ready to dote on him like a second son.

so apparently the subs for fighter's text messages are completely wrong he doesn't say anything about the beach or zon he is telling him he left and that he hopes he will get better soon and that he is sorry if he made him feel uncomfortable. this is not a small mistake, this is a complete different translation like what the hell. i mean part one is still shit but it makes more sense and explains why tutor was crying after reading the last message.

Yeah I saw that! It looks like there was a second version that included those texts but got scrapped last second and they didn’t get around to editing the subs. I’m sure someone on twitter/youtube will upload a revisited version to fix where the subs were off throughout the episode.

Please tell me, i'm not the only one who felt it's gotten worse when tor replied his kiss. Just because he kissed tor softly didnt mean fight didnt force himself on tutor, right? I'm so afraid everyone will take his action as some kind of 'you said you didnt love him but actually you love him, right?'

Yeah no, it was still forced and non consensual. It started with Fighter physically dragging Tutor to the bedroom while Tutor struggled to get free and told him to stop, so basically everything that happened after was assault no matter what. Tutor barely kissed back, it might have been just out of habit, it does not mean he was okay with it. No matter how soft Fighter was kissing him, he was still holding him down and pushing him, so yeah. Not good. Tutor laying still was a way to show Fighter just how much NOT into it he was. He wasn’t reciprocating anything, he wasn’t responding to his touch, it’s the exact opposite of what we’ve seen in all their heated scenes. I can’t believe anyone could look at it and think that Tutor was okay with it. One thing I will say is that Tutor didn’t look too scared, he was more angry and frustrated. He was probably aware of how out of it Fighter was in that moment, and all it took to get him to stop was Tutor’s voice. The writers want us to feel like Tutor wasn’t that shaken by it because he still loves Fighter and he knows he was just reacting to seeing Tutor with his student, but it’s still really bad. The whole love thing, the I don’t love you anymore line, in my opinion it was meant as a lie to get Fighter to leave him alone and finalize this break up once and for all. I don’t think Tutor ever stopped loving Fighter, even in that moment.

I think they were trying to make the scene In P1 not look as bad as it is by confusing the viewers with Tutor kissing back and letting Fighter in the end but it still is what it is and then right after that they gave us the whole sentimental scene and Fighter crying I like that scene if only it did not start the way it did. And so they expected us to forget or turn a blind eye but I don't think it's gonna work for most people.

[read question above for the first part of the question]

I was definitely unable to properly enjoy that scene after the assault. I think it was an important scene, I liked the writing of it, I liked the flashbacks with the added frames revealing just how gone Fighter was for him since day one. It just didn’t have to be triggered by that. It could have easily existed on its own. I will not be able to rewatch it sadly, and I am so mad because I think Zee was at his best there. Incredible acting, too bad it had to follow that unforgivable scene. Even just a single apology could have made things better. It would have shown that the writers acknowledge how serious that was. But no, it happened and then it was brushed off, then why having it in the first place?

#ask #anonymous #meta

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dkettchen · 5 years ago

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BLACK MIRROR S5E1 “STRIKING VIPERS” E X P L A I N E D

-with the help of gender and game theory-

Y’all asked for it so here we go

Some things before we start: -If you were watching the episode looking for gay/trans shit, and got disappointed, I’m sorry but I can’t help you because that’s just not what the episode was about and that is ok. It explored some aspects of queer experience, and the limbo between queer and cis-straight experience, that isn’t usually addressed in such an honest and indepth way, which I think is just as important as trans or gay rep. -I will focus my analysis on the core theme of what certain academics writing about androgyny call the “moment of transgression” so in this case the question of ‘what is Karl/Roxette’s deal & what does that mean for Danny/Lance’s feelings toward and interactions with them?’. -CW: transphobia, homophobia, toxic masculinity, (rpg) uncanny valley stuff, you get it, you know what subjects we’ll be talking about here.

Now!

I’d like to start by pointing out the title “Striking Vipers” to get the phallus talk out of the way right off the bat x’D: It’s a very blatant penis metaphor, and Vipers specifically are venomous, so represent toxic masculinity. The image of them striking signals danger. The repetition of phallic symbols represents the threat of castration (see medusa turning them bois to stone & the heroic masculinity of the mirror shielded boi who managed to defeat her), which to phallocentric masculinity is the scawiest thing there is (losing the phallus = losing manhood = death?? I guess??). Striking Vipers means that toxic masculinity, by nature, is a threat to itself. (I could talk for hours about the exact warped logic of phallocentricity but Imma spare y’all cause I don’t think it’s relevant for this, I’d even go as far as saying this episode was anti-phallic (which I use here as a more inclusive word for “feminist”, as the episode’s core is about two guys, but still focused on them experiencing and embracing feminine power and freeing themselves from phallocentricity(/patriarchy)’s grasp, just like “what men want” was preoccupied with the toxic masculinity of its female protagonist)) That sets up the kind of horror the episode will be about, the male fear of castration, of loss of identity, of having to face the fact that traditional masculinity is toxic even to the people who conform to it. 10/10 title choice.

Next up: the core question of what label to put on Karl and Danny’s VR interactions (‘Fellas, is it gay to fuck ur best friend in a lady body in VR?’). Which leads to the first question which is: what gender is Karl when he’s playing as Roxette? An essentialist might say: ‘Well he’s a man irl so he’s still a man even if he plays with a female avatar. Danny’s attraction to him is either him being trapped or just plain old gay.’ But I don’t think that’s the case. It’s not a trap scenario (have some videos on traps and how they’re not real actually: (x.), (x.)), because both people involved know the exact parameters of the situation. Danny knows this is Karl in Roxette’s body, there’s nothing hidden, no misunderstanding to be had here. I also don’t think it’s gay because if it was this would’ve happened irl or with two male avatars, but it only happened once one of them was in a female avatar, that was the change that made it happen. It’s not a fetishising phallic/trans women scenario either, because it’s the opposite, it’s a man’s mind in a woman’s body. There’s no doubt about Karl being a man irl, a queer man sure, but definetely a man. He’s just too into -womanhood while playing her for me to say he’s still male when he’s in that form, like Karl as Roxette isn’t a trans guy as a man’s mind in a female body usually would be (like f.e. Ranma 1/2), I also don’t think Karl as Roxette is an androgyne/non-binary/third term either, because again, he’s embracing her womanhood and the role that comes with it, to the extreme that is hetero PiV sex, too much. I’d argue what we see is the closest to the liberation and euphoria described by other queer men when doing drag, she’s just a more extreme version of drag, of crossplaying, making the fantasy real, wearing not only the clothes of a woman but the body too. Roxette as Karl’s avatar is an alter ego, who is female, so -on the risk of sounding like the biggest performativist since Judith Butler- Karl as Roxette presents as female, so, for all intents and purposes, is female in that moment, regardless of his irl persona maintaining his male gender outside of that.

But that wasn’t what we wanted to know, was it. Because even if, in the moment that Karl plays Roxette, we can say that person is female, that doesn’t eliminate the fact that Karl, outside of that, isn’t and that he’s still the one playing her. It’s the notion of how the player/actor/performer and avatar/character/persona aren’t the same thing and can have different relationships with someone in real life vs in the game, and how that can be confusing to think about because there is no clear line between the two, something that is called “bleed” in ludology(/game studies, from lat. ludus: game or school; referring to the gladiator schools in like the colosseum), despite their relationships being fundamentally different (in this case friendship irl vs passionate love in game). Take TAZ as an example: The McElroys are related, but in playing a trpg, the DM, usually Griffin, takes up the mantle of all NPCs in the game world, including love interests. Griffin played Julia, Kravitz, and Danny (different Danny lol), but he’s talking to his brother, except he isn’t, is he, cause it’s not Griffin talking and it’s not his brother responding, it’s two characters interacting. A similar uncanny valley can be found in actor/character bleed: Take Ludi and Pom (the actors for Lance and Roxette) in this one: like 80% of their screentime was spent making out or having fake sex. These actors aren’t dating (as far as I’m aware lol), this is their job, to fake love each other on screen, imagine having to do that with a coworker you feel nothing for. It’s the characters that feel something and you have to play that feeling (which is so meta at that point, they’re playing characters that are avatars being played by characters in the show). Also, talking of role-playing, can we appreciate the scene of Danny & Theo at the bar where they’re role-playing and she’s like that was hot and he’s like mental note bae’s into role-playing, because DAMN that foreshadowing of the erotic potential of roleplay as a concept.

But it’s not role-playing really either with Danny and Karl, is it? They’re playing in avatars other than themselves but they’re not fully a different person. They still very much feel the same just in a different form. Their emotions are real even though they might only apply to part of their experience, the in-game part. Yet they obviously take them seriously and personal and get influenced by them outside the game. Maybe the question is what is and is not role-playing? Where does the bleed start and end, and do we even need to know the answer to those questions? They answer those questions for themselves in the end by testing out their feelings irl to see if they track or not, fully ready for both possibilities (which 10/10 character development love it). They want clarity. It’s about the emotional limbo fantasy brings with it. It’s the same question “Are traps gay” is about. (Not the “Is it ok to feel attracted to androgynous ppl” one necessarily, but) “Does feeling attracted to the fantasy mean you feel attracted to the “real” thing underneath?” Are the feelings for the fantasy alone or also for the reality? Are they only applicable to the latter and does that change something about what you thought you knew about yourself? It’s a question about the fringe edges of limited/monosexuality and the very fabric of reality.

Let’s return to Karl to look at his experience as Roxette. We’ve established that she is female, but what is Karl while playing her? In the spirit of queer drag as liberating, it’s almost like he’s taking a break from being Karl when playing as her. Drag, crossplay, or this extreme version of it, functions as a break from the toxicity and limitations of traditional gender roles (so in this case traditional masculinity). It is freeing, though what does it free? Some genderless spirit inhabiting each person? But then how do you explain the firm gender identity lots of people, including for all we know Karl, experience in everyday life? As a trans person I know that there is SOMETHING to gender on some level that can create gender dysphoria (social and/or physical) for people when put in a body they don’t identify with. As a drag performer, trpg enthousiast, and notorious crossplayer, I know that taking a break from that reality and being somebody else can be relieving, a break from your own problems. So what is that part of us that translates into fantasy? I feel like this goes into transhumanist territory which I don’t know enough about to even attempt to provide an answer. I think what it comes down to in terms of gender theory is, this is a situation at the height of where performativism is true and relevant. There is a relativity to the nature of reality and gender itself. Whatever base essence there is that causes gender dysphoria at a mismatch between outside and inside, doesn’t apply here. Both notions (of essential and performative gender) are real and have an impact on people but neither is always the case and neither is never the case. They’re not mutually exclusive.

So, seeing as it seems impossible to pinpoint what gender Karl/Roxette qualifies as (other than all and/or none), let’s look at the nature of Danny/Lance and Karl/Roxette’s interactions and feelings toward those interactions and each other to try and contextualise what label(s) they might fit under. The desire on Danny’s side when faced with Roxette’s form shows itself in a way he’d never feel toward Karl. That visual change, and the social changes it brings with it (in gender role), makes it so extreme, because it pairs the parts of his friend he appreciates and enjoys (personality and whatever deeper connection a close friendship brings with it), with a form that is attractive to him. That change translates to Karl too. In playing with this new form that has a different role and a different effect on someone he’s known for so long, he flows into that, melts into this new persona and lives it up! The way they interact in game isn’t gay. It is very much reflecting how straight attraction and female sexuality works. On one hand it’s based in undeniable difference (hetero = different), and on the other hand Karl/Roxette’s enjoyment thereof is based in being desirable, in having that power of seduction just by existing, that notion of feminine power and the freedom that comes with it. It’s not autogynephilia, that would imply he gets off on the idea of himself as a woman, which is not the case, he gets off on being desired as a woman, which is what female sexuality is about (source: ContraPoints’ Autogynephilia video (which I recommend, it’s very good))

Still whenever Karl tries to get Danny to keep having VR sex with him/Roxette, he talks about her in 3rd person, like a persona. In saying “it’s just like porn” he poses something that is very much a different activity (acting out the porn by -doin’ it-) as a homosocially (social as opposed to sexual/romantic) acceptable one (watching porn together which I’ve been told is a thing). He attempts to differentiate himself from his female persona and enjoyment there-of (by objectifying her, like a porn actress to be watched rather than identified with), himself and Danny from the queerness (in enjoying femininity and in Danny being down with basically fucking a drag-queen) and to retreat back into heteronormative traditional masculinity, away from the scawy unknown of exploring your sexuality. His internalised homo- and transphobia makes him suppose that Danny, as a supposed straight guy, will only respond to the safety of assured non-queerness, which, honestly, I don’t think is the case with him. Karl supposes his cancelling on him and not wanting to do it anymore is out of the fear for his sexual identity or whatever, but from what I can tell, while Danny also seems to be rather confused about what it all means, the reasons he cancels their nightly sessions, and rejects Karl/Roxette, are always about not wanting his marriage to fall apart. He quite clearly prefers hot VR sex to hanging out with his wife, and cancels out of duty to her rather than fear. Even the first time they kiss, Karl is the one to freak out first. Danny seems much calmer about the attraction part of the situation, to the point of in the end being the one to take initiative and make them try it out irl to put an end to the confusion.

The episode hits hard because it takes the way men play video games and brings it to its logical conclusion. Video games are mens safe-space, and they do play with that playful flirty banter. The show takes that and makes it real, including taking it to its extreme conclusion that is -doin’ it-. It infiltrates the male safe space by taking normalised behaviour, and taking it so far that it puts traditional masculinity and heteronormative attraction in question, the very thing the safe space was supposed to protect them from. That’s why it’s existentially horrifying for the main characters (and viewers that identify with them) and qualifies as a black mirror episode even without having a homo-/trans-/biphobic ending (like other media that put traditional masculinity in question usually do, not to mention all the horror based in queer-coding)

Hope y’all enjoyed this journey into a bit of mind-bending game and gender theory! Pls don’t expect me to do this like ever again bc I need to go work on my actual essay rip x’D

#long post #Black Mirror #BM: Striking Vipers #games studies #gender studies

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y01te-moved · 5 years ago

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001 for spider riders ?

anyways! yall know how it is w/me if i didn’t put this under the cut that. wouldnt be very fun but without further ado:

Favorite character: to absolutely no one’s surprise i have to go w/igneous for this one. I Just Think He’s Neat.

Least Favorite character: there is genuinely only 1 character i like full on hate and that is brade. absolute bastard man everything abt him sucks and i will die mad about that.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): i dont feel too strongly abt most of these and its more like. yeah its ok BUT. igneous/magma, igneous/slate, beerain/lemin (which we are Not @’ing me for It Could Be That Deep also if i cannot find good wlw rep i Will make it), hunter/corona, …i like genuinely cant even think of a 5th one actually so thats that i guess.

Character I find most attractive: i joke abt being gay for igneous a lot but genuinely, magma is objectively the most attractive and if u think otherwise im sorry but you are blind

Character I would marry: this could be debatable but i think i have to go w/magma for this one also.

Character I would be best friends with: idk if this means like what actually would happen if i met the characters or what i would want personally but for both of those i would have to go w/corona.

a random thought: boy do i have a lot of these that i keep meaning to post about more but i never do!

anyways i guess i will say i appreciate the fact that hunter corona and igneous have matching primary colors not only with their hair but then also in the colors their shirts are tinted with… i honestly feel like it was just kind of coincidental or smth but I Just Think Its Neat.

An unpopular opinion: idk what the consensus on the novels is actually but basically. i am at all times thinking abt petra and i wish she didnt get left on read so much because like i understand that she doesnt exist in the anime even somewhat and didnt get a canon design for the novels BUT she was rlly interesting and i just wish more ppl like. Acknowledged her…

My Canon OTP: with what we r given canonically i feel like hunter/corona was meant to be endgame even tho they ended up highlighting And completely ignoring the main love triangle right at the very end which is just lame.

My Non-canon OTP: this, also to no one’s surprise, is igneous/magma…

Most Badass Character: i think anyone whos seen the show should be able to agree that this is stags. he is just absolutely off the shits but in a very respectable way which is just very epic of him.

Most Epic Villain: this is a tie between grasshop and beerain i think bc they are both very good but for like. almost entirely opposite reasons.

Pairing I am not a fan of: i found out some time after the last time i answered an ask w/a similar question that aqune/magma is like an actual real concept that At Least one person has genuinely put Out There and so im going with that for this one bc like. listen. if you’re shipping magma w/a woman you are just Incorrect and likewise if you’re shipping aqune w/a man you are also Incorrect and those are the rules. it just doesnt work! even with that opinion aside the canon does not set it up to have any sort of good dynamic besides like. being pretty okay friends post-canon i think.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): technically could go in a lot of directions with this but i will just say i dont think igneous was written That Well actually, only bc they just like. had everything set in stone for him for the first half of the show and then for most of the second half they just kind of completely flip flopped a majority of his personality for a few gags here and there and then the moment episode..? i think its around 41 or 42? ends he just goes back to being the exact same way he was in the beginning of the show as if like any of the past several eps hadn’t even happened at all and i think its kinda lame. what im getting at here is that while i Can appreciate Some of it, it wasnt good writing it was just being inconsistent.

Favourite Friendship: ive said it before and ill say it again but magma and corona’s dynamic is very good and severely underappreciated i think. not even that its the most obvious thing but it is There and ppl r just cowards.

Character I most identify with: Not to sound like a kinnie but i have to be real here the main reason i have aqune listed as a cc is because of the fact that i do vibe a lot with her so i guess that is something

Character I wish I could be: Not To Sound Like A Kinnie Pt. 2 but if im not projecting onto aqune then i am projecting onto igneous usually so. :3c

#bloook why #''this seems easy i wont make it very long this time'' i said. like a fool #who is also physically incapable of just giving a 1 word answer for anything ever #anyways i also have further thoughts on a few of these things so i May be posting abt them more soonish if im not a coward #but we will just have to see i guess JHDSKJD #SR

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echodrops · 6 years ago

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Why Do Certain Ships Become So Popular? (And Why Should Writers Rethink When They Do?) - Part 2

<- Start back at part 1 or you’re going to be very confused!

This time my victim of choice example is Klance (and Allurance and Lotura too).

In a previous post, I established the premise that shippers focus their efforts and attention on ships between characters who exhibit the most compelling dynamism, the greatest amount of emotional energy--good feelings or bad--that directly relates to one or more of the characters’ growth arcs... or the two characters whose emotional interactions most significantly affect a story’s main plot.

This idea (that shippers are looking for strong, dynamic emotional interactions that are directly tied to plot) feeds directly into my second premise: part of the popularity of slash ships comes from the fact that, very often, the strongest and most plot-relevant emotional events don’t occur between male characters and female characters, but between male protagonists and other male characters--due to a combination of 1) a much smaller number of female characters, 2) a majority of writers for anime/manga and American shows being male; 3) under-developed or poorly written female characters, and 4) the tendency to situate males in the hero, sidekick, and villain positions, increasing the chance that their actions will have greater importance in the story’s main plot.

In short, writers can unintentionally cause fans to prefer non-canon slash ships by writing more dynamic, better developed, and more plot-relevant interactions between their male leads than between the main character and his designated female love interest.

Now hang on. Before you get all up in arms, yes, I’m perfectly aware there are plenty of other reasons slash ships are popular, including:

A huge desire among LGBT+ fans for positive representation

The fact that m/m interactions appeal to straight women/others the same way w/w interactions are sexy to straight men/others

The tendency of shows, particularly from Japan, to deliberately queer-bait

The fact that many women vicariously ship male characters together because it allows them to imagine a relationship of “genuine equals,” particularly in areas where women feel they are still not treated equally to men

The tendency for “pair the spares” to result in m/m ships simply due to a lower number of available female characters

And so on

This isn’t written to negate any of those reasons or to imply that they aren’t major factors in the popularity of slash ships, not at all, but it has always, always struck me as reductive when I hear things like “Slash ships are only popular because girls think two dudes together is hot” (the fetish argument) or “Girls will ship any two good-looking male characters together regardless of canon. They just hate het ships” (the fetish argument with a side dish of misogyny).

In particular, this last one--an argument I’ve heard from a lot of male fandom members (but of course not all)--has always gotten under my skin, because it implies that girls who ship aren’t capable of critically analyzing the media we consume and identifying characters who have meaningful interactions and interesting potential. That we, unlike those viewers who adhere to the canon (typically heterosexual) relationships, are somehow reading these stories wrong, blind to “real” romance (namely the one between the male hero and his best girl/waifu), and/or misusing male characters with zero regard for their personalities--worse, this argument also implies that female fans deliberately hate or under-appreciate oh-so-perfectly written female characters whose romantic subplots are totally natural and not at all an unfortunate side effect of their position as the token chick on the team...

At its best, the statement: “Girls will ship any two good-looking male characters” is demeaning in its dismissal of a majority of slash shippers and their ability to read characters. At its worse, it’s this exact dismissal that continues to allow so many (primarily male) authors to write under-developed, unimportant, token female love interests: “It’s the girls [or the slash shippers] who are weird; there’s nothing wrong with the way we’re doing things.”

But guess what happens when well-written female characters whose actions are central to a story’s main plot are introduced and highlighted? Guess what happens when the emotional energy between a female lead and her male counterpart is the most compelling and dynamic in the series?

The (often canon) het ship suddenly--somehow--magically becomes well-liked by fans!

Zutara and Kataang vastly out-strip any slash Avatar pairings in popularity. Noragami’s Yatori commands a staggering following in the fandom. Is there anyone in their right mind who thinks Alucard/Integra wasn’t the best pairing to end Hellsing with? No one debates whether or not Ahiru and Fakir from Princess Tutu are true love. In Doctor Who, Rose and the Doctor reign so far supreme in the fandom that none of the other ships even need to exist though I actually prefer River. Terra and Aqua from Kingdom Hearts beat out every other Terra or Aqua ship by a mile (and this is in a series notorious for hating and under-shipping its female characters). Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-Kun has no problem juggling three very well-accepted het ships--even while having a scene in which two male characters sit down and draw a gay manga together. Ain’t nobody suggesting Mr. Bates and Anna from Downton Abbey should be with anyone else, right? And this is just in the handful of shows I personally have time to watch. Anyone who reads or watches a series with well-written female characters can play this exact same game!

The obvious conclusion? Female fans are perfectly willing to ship heterosexual pairings--if they’re well-written.

It’s the same story all over again: when the real emotional energy, the dynamic core, the most plot-relevant interactions occur between a male and female character, they too can become the fan-preferred couple. (Shocking!)

Yes, yes, I hear you saying “B-But wait, sometimes the m/m ship is more popular even though the het love interest is well-written!” or “Sometimes girls ship guy characters who have never even met!” or “So what you’re saying is female fans wouldn’t ship slash if there were better het options available?”

1) Don’t get me wrong--there are certainly always exceptions. I’m pointing out a trend, not a rule. Sometimes a fandom has a separate, specific reason for elevating a non-canon slash ship above a well-written canon het ship. (Someone who is actually in the Fullmetal Alchemist fandom might be able to explain why Ed/Roy is more popular than Roy/Riza, probably?) And in situations where a slash ship and a het ship in a series both have equally strong emotional energy, my bet is that the slash ship will always come out on top because it gets the added benefit of people liking LGBT+ rep and straight girls (and anyone else) who just think m/m is hot.

2) Crack ships definitely do exist. But usually when a crack ship actually manages to become popular, it’s because fans have recognized the potential for a strong emotional energy between two characters. If the two characters could reasonably have strong tension because of similarities, differences, or other elements of their characters, then crack ships are still following the trend of aligning with emotional energy, even if that energy is only anticipated at the moment.

3) I definitely don’t mean to suggest that slash ships are shoddy seconds to fans who would “naturally” prefer het ships if good het ships were available. What I’m suggesting is only that it’s no surprise slash ships are so extremely and consistently popular across so many fandoms, because in terms of plot relevance, depth of writing, and meaningful interactions with each other, male characters so rarely have any real competition. A desire for LGBT+ representation and people living out power or equality fantasies through slash are certainly motivating factors and good and worthy reasons to write slash. But one unfortunate contributor to the popularity of slash ships is that male characters continue to occupy a place of privilege in modern narratives. Our heroes remain overwhelmingly male. Our sidekick/lancer/buddy characters remain overwhelmingly male. Our villain characters remain overwhelmingly male. That is to say: male characters continue to dominate all the most “plot relevant” roles in our narratives, and so long as male leads continue to be placed in roles where their most compelling emotional interactions and greatest sources of character growth are other male characters, slash ships will continue to dominate fandoms’ online presences.

(Hilarious: the dude bros who complain about the number of slash ships in their favorite series are often the very same ones supporting and becoming the writers whose shallow portrayals of female characters further bolster the popularity of said slash ships in the first place...)

Okay, I’ve made you wait long enough.

What does all of this have to do with Voltron?

Well, you’ve probably figured that part out already, actually.

If we consider the “emotional energy” and tension among Voltron’s main characters, there’s absolutely no question who is at the core, where the most plot relevant and meaningful emotional interactions have occurred, where the “heart” of the story is, in essence...

Hint: It’s Keith.

(Just a heads up: I’m going to use Klance as the example because it’s the most popular Voltron pairing according to the numbers, but any Sheith fan worth their salt could obviously very, very easily apply these ideas one-for-one to that ship, because clearly Shiro’s interactions with Keith are some of the most emotionally tense and compelling in the entire Voltron series--they are a consistent core of feeling energy for the show which naturally leads many people to support this ship. A large part of the reason that this post is tagged Sheith is because I am absolutely inviting Sheith shippers to use the theory and lens in this essay to analyze Sheith--using this idea to analyze Sheith will reveal a lot of intense emotional energy to discuss and validate that ship. I’m very tempted to put this paragraph in all caps or something so the Sheith shippers will actually read it and stop badgering me...)

Keith (and his relation with other characters) is the core of Voltron’s main plot, both in that he is positioned as the leader/the hero/the protagonist, and because, obviously, almost all of the series’ emotional high points (with the exception of “Crystal Venom” and Pidge’s search for Matt) somehow feature him.

Keith isn’t just central in the main plot though; he’s also central in the individual arcs of two other characters: Lance and Shiro. He’s a motivating and driving factor in both of these characters’ stories and change throughout the series, affecting their actions, attitudes, and self-worth, and so it should come as absolutely no surprise that Sheith and Klance are the series’ most popular ships.

But since Klance is the most popular pairing, the person I really want to talk about is Lance.

You can say a lot of things about Lance and the raging debates that occurred over whether or not Lance is a straight loverboy trope or not, but I don’t think any viewer of Voltron would deny that, if we consider the main cast members (Team Voltron plus Lotor), the core of Lance’s emotional energy and tension is Keith. His interactions with Keith--not even in a romantic sense, simply in a storytelling sense--are more important and dynamic than his on-screen interactions with any other main character.

From his laser focus on Keith at Garrison that caused him to invent a rivalry (this word is basically just a synonym for “emotional energy” at this point):

To comedic banter:

To the infamous bonding moment:

To a fledgling “right hand man” partnership:

To Lance’s insecurities:

The story of Voltron itself continuously reiterates that Lance’s interactions with Keith are more dynamic, more intense (even if we’re talking about “Rawr, I hate you, we’re rivals!” emotions instead of lovey-dovey stuff), and more plot relevant than Lance’s interactions with other characters in the series. Lance’s emotional arc is irrevocably centered on Keith until very, very late in the series.

More importantly: Lance’s motivation and personal plot line as a whole are centered on Keith. At it’s most basic, Lance’s character arc seems like it was supposed to center on Lance’s sense of self-worth--despite acting confident, Lance was actually insecure about his ability to help save the universe. Theoretically, his narrative should have focused on him becoming confident about his place on the team and his value as both a friend and fellow paladin to the other main characters. His arc should have been (and I guess theoretically still is? It’s just not... ever given much attention?) about him overcoming his insecurity by learning to recognize his own unique talents and discovering the things that only he can do to help Team Voltron succeed. (Hell, the entire Allurance thing could have been framed as “She’s completely out of my league” ---> “Whoa, originally I was putting Allura on a pedestal but actually she’s as much a member of this team as me--we’re in this together, side-by-side.”)

Whether or not the semi-incoherent narrative of Voltron actually delivered on this promise is iffy, but the set up in season 1-3ish is all there and all Keith:

At Garrison, Lance viewed Keith as a road block in his quest to becoming a fighter class student. Keith’s achievements and talent became a measuring stick for Lance’s own capabilities. He imagined a rivalry to make himself feel better/less insecure. His drive not to lose out to Keith is what dragged Hunk and Pidge along to Shiro’s rescue and ultimately led to the discovery of the Blue Lion. Lance comparing himself unfavorably to Keith as a paladin and pilot contributed to (mostly) one-sided animosity throughout the early seasons that gave way to a scene of Lance attempting to step down from the team because he didn’t see himself worthy of the position in comparison to Keith:

The logical conclusion that I think most fans would draw from these many scenes is that, as part of Lance’s overall character growth across the whole series, he needed to have a moment in which he recognized that he isn’t--and has never been--inferior to Keith.

Ultimately, the first five seasons continually reiterate the idea that, in terms of interactions, energy, and dynamic character growth, the most important main character in Lance’s story (other than Lance) is Keith.

Keith’s interactions with Lance are directly and immediately tied to Lance’s individual character arc/growth, and Keith is definitely the focus of Lance’s most meaningful emotional tension throughout seasons 1-5 at least.

Which means it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Klance is the most popular Lance ship, particularly when you set it side-by-side with the (increasingly canon) Allurance.

I just want to make this abundantly clear before I begin: I have absolutely nothing against Allurance shippers and, until it was done so poorly in season 5-6 (and potentially 7, I still haven’t even finished that one), I actually was okay with the possibility of Allurance being endgame because I thought there was potential for it to be done well. After what we’ve been given, I actually feel the Allurance shippers have been horribly shortchanged by the show’s real writing, and that I can’t personally support the ship the way it’s being written, but that’s not the fault of the characters themselves or anything inherently “wrong” with the ship. So please don’t take the rest of what I say here as ship hate--this is just observations from a literary analysis standpoint.

What has prevented Lance and Allura from gaining significant traction with the fans despite the fact that it’s edging close to canon territory if it isn’t canon already?

Well, one problem might be that Lance’s emotional energy has no bearing on Allura’s individual character development--and Allura’s emotional peaks have no bearing on Lance’s personal arc either (at least as far as it was established in early seasons and then left essentially unresolved).

Allura’s arc has, throughout the course of the show, centered on her ability to defeat her family’s foes, her grief for her lost people and planet, and her desire to follow in her father’s footsteps as a leader and in the Altean traditions as well. None of this has much of anything to do with Lance. Her growth as a character occurs--with the exception of the single shining scene on Naxela--completely independently of Lance. She lets her father’s memory go on her own in “Crystal Venom.” She faces Zarkon head-to-head by herself after rescuing Shiro. It’s Shiro who stops her from over-working herself to aid the coalition, not Lance. It’s Keith’s whose Galra blood forces her to re-examine and overcome some of her universal hatred for the Galra. It’s Lotor who helps her reach Oriande, and her own ingenuity that allows her to tame the White Lion and learn the secrets of Altean alchemy.

With the exception of the scene on Naxela where it was specifically Lance’s speech that motivated Allura to save the day, virtually all of her most charged emotions occurred elsewhere and with other characters, and there’s nothing in her personal goals--to be a strong leader, to revive her culture, to save the universe--that is intrinsically tied with Lance. He can encourage and aid her in those pursuits, but so can Shiro, Keith, Pidge, Hunk, and Coran. The role of fellow paladin and supporting ally isn’t unique to Lance. His interactions with her don’t fill a niche that drives her personal plot lines outside of the romance subplot.

And the same thing is true in reverse.

We get this nice scene of Allura encouraging Lance and helping him work on his insecurity... And then it is promptly never mentioned again. (Where did the sword go, guys? Where???) Lance gives up Blue to Allura and she’s almost immediately gifted at piloting the Blue Lion, while Lance is shown struggling with Red (once more in Keith’s shadow) and still hadn’t, as of the end of season 6, seemed to have mastered it to the same extent as Keith. It’s Keith, Laika (an alien dog--not Allura guys, an alien dog) and the SPACE MICE that Lance expresses his insecurities to, and it’s Coran who is there for Lance’s touching scene expressing his longing to return to Earth. Lance’s personal arc about growing into the paladin role and becoming a selfless person who puts the team before his own desire for glory once again occurs independently of Allura, with little to no interaction, and even fewer emotional high points between them, in the entire first half of the show.

For both of these characters, their “real emotional energy”--their tension both positive and negative--occurs with other characters. The “believability” and energy of this ship is diminished by the fact that it simply isn’t the most well-written of character pairs in the series. The romance subplot isn’t organically tied to either of their personal plot lines, and the depth of their one-on-one interactions pales in comparison to their, particularly Lance’s, interactions with other characters.

But huh... would you look at that... When a potential romantic interest came along whose interactions with Allura were both directly tied to her personal arc, her central character motivations, and her emotional high points...

Isn’t it amazing how well it was received by the fandom--despite the fact that no one was really sure whether Lotor was evil or not? Now of course, I’m not going to ignore the fact that Lotura was probably helped along by leaving Keith, Lance, and Shiro free to ship elsewhere, but I don’t think the actual chemistry in the series’ writing itself should be ignored.

There was significantly, significantly more tension and nuance to Allura and Lotor’s interactions that any of Allura’s interactions with any of the other main cast, and their interactions operated not just in a romantic capacity, but also as a vehicle for Allura’s personal character growth:

The push and pull of these two characters and their scenes together sparked change in both of them, which augmented and increased the quality of their romantic arc while also furthering both of their own individual goals as characters.

The story painted them as equals with mutual interests, a shared interest in Altean culture, both victims (at least initially) of their parents’ war, both distrusting but ultimately lonely people who were longing for connection to, in Allura’s case, what had been lost, and in Lotor’s case, what he theoretically had never been able to have (except the writers did him dirty so jk).

I just don’t think there are many people who would argue that Allurance--or Allura’s interactions with any other male character--have been written with near as much depth, engagement, and integration with her motivations as Lotor and Allura’s were. Their plot literally got more screen time one-on-one in a single seven episode season than Allura and Lance did in the 43+ other episodes...

And for the the short time that it lasted, this pairing was embraced by many fans. I might be biased because I immediately went out and followed every Lotura blog I could find, but to me it seems like it was well-liked and generally well-regarded among shippers until the colony reveal (and by many still after). I was very excited by the writing of this ship and definitely wanted something meaningful to come out of it. Part of the fandom’s immense outrage at Lotor’s reveal was, I think, linked to the fact that this ship had been so convincingly written into the series before it.

This, to me, is a perfect example of a situation in which the emotional exchange between two characters exceeds the strength and depth of their interactions with others, leading to immediate adoption and approval as a ship by the fandom. Where the real energy is, there are the shippers.

PHEW! Let me take a deep breath and come up for air. There’s a lot going on here, but boiling it down to the basic point I’m trying to make, and which I’ll address in a lot more depth in the third and final part of this: the way that a story is written profoundly affects what ships will or will not become popular with fans. Shipping isn’t an unpredictable beast that grows completely independently of its source material. The ways writers craft interactions between their characters--and the places where they invest the most and infuse the most life--are powerful tools that impact how fans view and come to love seeing characters both separately and in romantic relationships.

To that end, while there are numerous reasons slash ships are popular and continue to grow in popularity, one reason that should be considered seriously by all creative writers--fanfiction authors or aspiring original novelists--is the notion that shipping often aligns with the core of a story’s or character’s emotional energy, the pairs with the highest tension, the electric pulse of the story’s most meaningful moments. Non-canon ships of any sexuality swell to mega-popularity when fans perceive more depth and significance in the interactions of characters outside the canon pair, when the emotional work of the story is happening somewhere outside the intentional romantic plot line. Sometimes this is fine. But more often, this is a bad sign for creators--a sign that you’ve fumbled in the writing of your main romantic leads.

As writers, questions we rarely ask ourselves but often should are: “Where is the core of the tension in my story? Whose interactions are deepest and most central to the development of my main character?”

In other words: Where is the real emotional energy in my story?

In part 3 I’m going to provide one more excellent case-in-point, and then close out with a discussion of some take-aways for writers from all this that might help strengthen your romantic subplots, whatever your genre or whoever your characters.

Go on to Part 3 ->

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schraubd · 6 years ago

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How To Avoid the Trap of the House Antisemitism Resolution

Here's a truncated timeline of certain events today:

I read story about the House considering introducing a resolution on antisemitism, "in response" to certain comments by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D). The story indicated that the resolution came about in part due to a letter from Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL.

I called my contact at a major American Jewish organization and left a somewhat frank voicemail suggesting that, unless the House Resolution made crystal-clear that it was not solely addressing Omar but equally targeted antisemitic remarks emanating from Republican representatives -- most notably, the Soros-style "wealthy Jewish financiers 'own' us and are pulling the strings behind the scenes" conspiracy theories -- there would a massive backlash and it would be entirely deserved.

Draft text of the resolution was released (it does not mention Omar, or any other elected official, by name).

The official at the aforementioned Jewish org called me back and I had the opportunity to provide a bit more color to my suggestions regarding how they should handle this situation.

I read a statement from Bend the Arc arguing that the House Resolution is a "trap", in that it functions to single out Omar without any sort of concurrent condemnation of antisemitism from elected Republicans like Jim Hagedorn, Kevin McCarthy, and Jim Jordan.

So, as the day closes, here's my question: How do we avoid the trap? How do we tackle antisemitism in a way that does not give succor to the false narrative that the problem of antisemitism in America is solely represented by Ilhan Omar, and not the vicious antisemitic conspiracy mongering flying through the political right?

The thing is, believe or not -- lots of us fully see the trap. That includes the mainline Jewish organizations. They're frustrated by what seems like the endless foot-in-mouth/apology/foot-back-in-mouth cycle Omar is going through, but they're also frustrated at the expectation that the primary subject of their counter-antisemitism energy should be Ilhan Omar. There are many, many other antisemitic things in the world, and they understand how bad a look it is that Omar seems to be catching the brunt of all the attention.

We should be casting scrutiny on the Soros-style antisemitic conspiracy theories that run riot through the GOP at its highest levels. When we condemn antisemitism, that should be front and center in our attentions. The fact that it isn't represents a real problem, and Omar and her backers have a legitimate grievance here. There's a reason why I opened my column on Omar by talking about Jim Hagedorn, and there's a reason why nonetheless nobody seems interested in having me write a column or giving a quote on Jim Hagedorn. The "bad look" is, at least in part, a product of a bad reality.

But how do you change that reality?

The text of the House Resolution doesn't single out Omar. It doesn't single out anyone; it names no names. Yet nonetheless, there is no question that it is perceived as a swipe (albeit a sub silentio swipe) at Omar, specifically. Nobody is reading this resolution and saying "wow, the House Democratic leadership is really turning the screws on Jim Jordan!"

Is that reading unfair? The text of the resolution is a bit meandering, but on the whole it focuses on the type of antisemitism -- allegations of "dual loyalty" -- that Omar is alleged to have engaged in. There is no significant mention of Soros-style conspiracy theories; these are at best very briefly alluded to and then dropped. In context, I can't say that readers are unfair in viewing the resolution as targeting Omar. And then we're right back to where we started: a very legitimate grievance Omar and her backers have that alleged antisemitism doesn't seem to matter unless it's being done by people who look like her, in a political climate where there is very real and very dangerous antisemitism that is an exceptionally live part of mainstream conservative discourse.

So the first step -- an obvious step, a step I can't believe I have to suggest because it's should have been blindingly self-evident step -- to avoiding the trap is that the resolution should dedicate equal time to the type of antisemitism that we see on the mainstream political right: conspiracy theories about wealthy Jewish financiers pulling the strings on political and social campaigns, "owning" certain politicians or slyly controlling American society from the shadows. Such antisemitism has a deep historical pedigree in America -- dating at least to Henry Ford, and almost certainly beyond that -- and there is a straight-line between it and such atrocities at the Tree of Life massacre.

Or put differently, and with apologies to Max Rose, the House shouldn't write a chickenshit antisemitism resolution. The first step to changing the bad optics of the resolution is to change its bad reality, and that makes holding the active forms of conservative antisemitism accountable too.

Would that be enough? It's hard to say. We've gotten very keyed into a narrative whereby if we're talking about antisemitism in American politics, we're talking about Ilhan Omar, and the media hates giving up a perfectly good narrative without a fight. If a few paragraphs about that sort of antisemitism were inserted into the resolution, it still likely wouldn't be seen as an equivalent swipe at GOP antisemitism, even if that was the intent, and even if that was the fairest reading of the resolution. Something has to be done to break the narrative. Somebody has to stop playing the part the narrative insists that they play.

And so my suggestion to the Jewish organization went. I suggested that, if they really wanted to avoid the trap -- if they really were as tired as they said they were about being perceived as one side of a "the Jews vs. Omar" controversy -- they needed to take a bold step:

They needed to insist -- explicitly, and publicly -- that they will not back the House Resolution unless it clearly condemned the Soros-style antisemitic conspiracy-mongering which is the other prominent antisemitic trope currently raging through our polity. They needed to come out and say that an resolution purporting to fight antisemitism is not acceptable unless it speaks out clearly and decisively against that form of antisemitism too.

That'd be a man-bites-dog story. That'd be a case of someone not playing their role. That might actually break the narrative of "the Jews vs. Omar." Might. I'm not confident, because fundamentally I don't believe that the behavior of Jewish groups exerts much influence on how the non-Jewish pres talks about Jews.

Still, as an added bonus, one thing it almost certainly would do is get a change in the resolution text. One has to think that the Democratic leadership thinks that it is satisfying the mainstream Jewish community with this resolution; it's concern is how it will be received on its left flank. If it doesn't even have the backing of mainline Jewish groups, and the reason it doesn't have such backing is because the resolution needs to be adjusted to satisfy the concern that it is too soft on the right, then all the vectors of political pressure are in accord, and the resolution will change in a positive direction.

The fact is, it is a trap to agree to premise that the fight against antisemitism in America boils down to a fight against Ilhan Omar. It is a trap stemming from the right -- which wishes to pretend as if their own antisemitism isn't real and doesn't matter; and it is equally a trap emanating from the left -- which wishes to frame the fight against antisemitism as nothing more than the fight to silence politicians like Ilhan Omar. The right wants us to believe that if the House condemns antisemitism in America, they are condemning nobody but Ilhan Omar. And the left wants us to believe the exact same thing.

We need to avoid that trap. I can't make it happen. But if the big Jewish organizations have the guts to do what is necessary and step out from their default roles -- we may just manage to avoid it.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2H0PBSL

#anti-semitism #Democrats #Ilhan Omar #Jews #Jim Hagedorn #Jim Jordan #Kevin McCarthy

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all-these-consequences · 6 years ago

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Ew’s connections??

So, I’ve sent asks about this on @into-control’s blog and decided to make a post. Big ass disclaimer: I don’t have more knowledge about media,PR,industry etc. than any other average cs. This is no solid evidence whatsoever,it’s just pure speculations from my side about how Ew could have possibly reached Camila’s team or how he was chosen for her beard or or or.. That will always remain a huge question for me. Even if there was a contest for the worst beard ever, they would not have chosen someone as bad as him.

Keep in mind:

1)I have no idea how far and deep these connections are/were. If I wrote a book, I wouldn’t thank random people who I’ve met just once in my life sooo.. I also don’t know if he maintained any contact with the people mentioned in his book. From the impression I have, I’d say he is a freeloader,mooch,parasite and would do anything for profit and free ads for his scammer business, So I think he did maintain the contact to those people.

2) His book was published in 2013. After the release his joke of a career unfortunately got bigger and maybe his connections too. His ego did for sure.

3) English is like my..third? language so I apologize in advance for any mistakes, incorrectly used words and shit. *dis post is powered by my coffee machine btw

So I was searching for Ew’s PR team but I found this instead

which lead me to this part of his scammer book.

Apparently, Mr. Pissey knows a lot of people.

“Everyone who has made my TV career possible: Sean Perry and Ivo Fischer at WME”

WME WME is talent agency and represents artists across all media platforms, specifically movies, television, music, theatre, digital and publishing.

“ WME Partner Sean Perry Elected HRTS President “ “ Perry, who is co-head of WME’s non-scripted television department “ looks to me like he is a big deal,hm?

Ivo Fischer is a talent agent at WME.

Then I remembered that Camila’s agents Todd Jacobs and Kirk Sommer also work for WME. However, it turned out there were a lot of artists who are signed to WME.

And then Uncle Simon popped out with this: Simon Cowell Signs With WME Agency “Top reality star and producer Simon Cowell and his music, TV and film company Syco Entertainment have signed with WME. The agency will work on continuing to expand Syco’s film, scripted and unscripted television departments as well as its music brands.”

The scripted and unscripted TV departments are where Ew’s people work.

“Syco extended into feature films with the 2013 One Direction 3D documentary This Is Us. Earlier this year, Syco teamed up with Kenny Ortega on a music-driven film set up at Sony Pictures. “

This kinda rang a bell to me - and here comes Cinderella

“Cabello will not only star in the project, set up at Sony's Columbia label.... Corden is also producing the feature project with Leo Pearlman, his partner at Fulwell 73.... Cabello is repped by WME and manager Roger Gold...”

Fulwell 73 is a television, film and music production company based in London. One of the founders was Leo Pearlman, who according to wikipedia etc worked on the production of One Direction: This Is Us (Sony/Columbia), which was produced by Simon Cowell himself.

I know, Simon isn't involved with Cinderella,James Corden is the one who is gonna produce it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if uncle Simon has something to do with it SOMEHOW,idk. ( I love conspiracy theories )

okay,moving on.. ew mentioned Sloane Delancer twice in his book so I thought I’m gonna continue with her. She worked with a bunch of other people Ew mentioned too on Ready for love,a TV shitshow where he made appearances, being a shitmaker matchmaker. Sloane also was the producer of America’s got talent in 2015. If you don’t know the Got talent franchise is created and owned by uncle Simon and Syco. Cowell's AGT is broadcasted on NBC.

Ready for love - team

Aired on NBC, produced by Eva Longoria. The other exec producers were David Garfinkle and Jay Renfroe, who are producers for a lot of shows. they also founded Renegade 83. Jay was also nominated for Emmy twice.

Jason Ehrlich was also a exec. producer for Ready for BS but is also known for being the co-executive producer for The Bachelor and its spinoffs. doesn’t surprise me. As of 2012th he works in NBC. “He also worked under an overall deal for Warner Horizon as an executive producer on "High School Reunion," "Hitched or Ditched," "The Lamas Life" and as an executive consultant for "There Goes the Neighborhood."Before his work with Next Entertainment and Warner Horizon, Ehrlich was an executive producer of a film for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. This film featured documentary work for the Grammys which included Beyonce, Tina Turner and the Foo Fighters.” - I found this here so I don’t know how credible it is.

Susan House - same shit, the Bachelor, Ready for throwing my TV, but also Hell’s kitchen which is somewhat cool.

Greg Goldman is also the chairman of studio Lambert,own by All3Media

Ready to die was hosted by Giuliana and Bill Rancic.

Giuliana is working at E!News. Yep,that’s the exact same shit place where the exclusive beach photoshoot came first from. She works there since 2002 and is quite a big deal there.

Bill is..just check his wikipedia page. here you can see few of them together

Creative Visions

Jon Turteltaub is an American film director and producer. Kathy Eldon, Amy Eldon and Simon Eldon-Edington are also producers and writers.

Creative Visions

Jon Turteltaub is an American film director and producer. Kathy Eldon, Amy Eldon and Simon Eldon-Edington are also producers and writers.

Louise Roe is an English television presenter, model, and fashion journalist. I guess they are still friends, Ew was guest on her youtube channel or she was on his,idk.

Virginia Hill

Camilo Valdes

Altogether I’d say that guy had a lot of connections back then even tho he was basically nobody (at least it looks like that to me). He knows a lot of people who work either for NBC or ABC. He knows people who know people. I don’t have exactly a theory but in my opinion he used his contacts and tried to reach someone with more power and influence in order to try and boost his career and his company. Everyone knows that famous people use fake relationships for publicity and he probably thought he is a celebrity too and took the things in his hand and offered himself as beard.I don’t know.

Like I said this does not prove anything

feel free to share your opinion or debunk this pathetic theory of mine, in the meantime I’m gonna wait to be recruited by the FBI, I’m just kidding. Maybe not.

#ew #ewmila #shit

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bdor1995 · 4 years ago

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im watching the old guard on netflix and. my god its bad. i tried watching it for the immortal gay rep but the script is so cringe

high concept plots like this always have so much potential to be rlly fun but like. It has to be GOOD!!! i love tropes and cliches but they have to be EXECUTED WELL!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

edit 1: im skipping through all the dialogue... there is no character or personality in this movie everyone speaks exactly the same.......give me something GOOD to bite on i feel like im chewing on cardboard as im watching

edit 2: i watched the entire thing. uhhh. i will list the things i liked about it below:

the action scenes were pretty well choreographed

thats all. uhhhh. hmm. this movie was bad. (spoilers/rant under cut)

comic writers... your hammy dialogue might work in comics, but it does not work in movies

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SOUNDTRACK? WTF IS THIS EDITING?

the van scene with joe and nick felt like i was watching a fake tumblr text post from 2011

BOOKER’S BETRAYAL MADE NO SENSE...... booker is andy’s right hand man!!! its established that theyre close... why did he lie to andy in the first place??? why did booker think he was doing the right thing by betraying her??? why didnt he just approach andy about the research merrick was doing???

even if that happened.... HOW did he not realize that copley was going to double cross him with how cartoonishly evil merrick is. i thought booker did all the research/bg checking how did he miss merrick’s whole shtick

SPEAKING OF MERRICK... FDASFGKFDSFFDGS i cant believe how unhinged his motivations are. absolutely no subtlety at all. they just threw everything at us to let us know hes Very Evil. The Most Evil.

ok i get nile is a Good Person (tm) so thats why she went back to save andy from the lab but that motivation is so fucking empty. i wish more development went into actually attempting to deepen nile and andy’s dynamic so nile would have more of a personal stake in it

speaking of, nile had absolutely no personality in this movie

ALL SHE DID WAS ASK QUESTIONS FOR EXPOSITION. new drinking game. drink whenever nile asks a question. drink again when she gets a cryptic non-answer. you will die of alcohol poisoning within the movie’s run time.

the writer has this awful hard on for “cool” one liners and monologues and it makes me want to bang my head against the wall. the actors rlly fucking tried. god help them they tried to make these lines work im so sorry i hope they paid you well at least

if you want to read a good comic about immortal beings being used as human experiments by the government and them fighting back just go read ajin: demi-human. not the exact same premise (there is no saving of humanity here, and the tone is def more dark) but ALONG with a cool high-concept plot, at least the characters have depth

maybe i’ll try to read the og comic this movie was based on and see if thats any better. maybe.

rating: 3/10. had a lot of potential but extremely bogged down by a shitty screenplay adaption, probably due to film length and other constraints

#bo's spicy hot takes: the old guard edition

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nylonsandlipstick · 7 years ago

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lala my babe what are your unpopular opinions about the harry potter fandom?

omg. what aren’t they? nina, you know the right questions to ask. i’m literally so salty about everything in the books. tbh this is gonna turn more into an anti jkr post so if anyone is sensitive about rowling hate, scroll down.

jkr is such a terrible “feminist” as she calls herself, because she treats her female characters so poorly.

cho is just basically treated like shit because she’s soft and gentle? like, way to be a hypocrite, rowling (she called lewis a sexist for his treatment of susan and hasn’t even read the books and she’s literally doing the same exact shit).

she didn’t bat an eyelash when lavender brown, a explicitly described as black, was whitewashed in the films, it’s not like she treated lavender any better as she killed lavender off in the battle of hogwarts but there you go.

she hated and mistreated pansy just because she’s a nasty slytherin girl, like, that’s a child, have her grow up, have her learn from her mistakes, have her develop, who the hell hurt you so much that you can’t give a girl like pansy a redemption arc???

tonks deserved so much better but the fuck with that incest shit with her crushing on her cousin (in a pottermore story)?? like, damn, guess i know now where cc came up with her incest obsession.

the patil twins are basically ignored by rowling. they’re kind of there for woc brownie points but rowling couldn’t even be bothered to confirm whether the twins died or not at the end of the battle of hogwarts.

hermione is literally the worst. i hate hermione so much. she’s just so annoying and so high and mighty and it’s like, fuck off, nobody cares.

in the entire series there are about 15 poc characters (angelina johnson, alicia spinnet, bane the centaur, blaise zabini, cho, dean, duncan inglebee, fred weasley ii, gweong jones, kingsley shacklebolt, lavender brown, lee jordan, padma and parvati patil, and roxanne) and only a handful of them even have speaking lines. there are a total of 772 characters. only 15 have been worth being mentioned as poc, even less than that even have speaking roles. gonna let that speak for itself.

rowling literally fucking apologized for snape’s death and i’m like, the death of a white supremacist parallel, bullying, prejudiced, narrow-minded man who fucking hated kids that he worked with and didn’t give a damn about the child of the woman that he was fucking obsessed over (do not give me that “but he was james’s son so snape wasn’t obligated to like harry” bullshit, snape could totally have had harry close to him as his last tie to lily and could have tried to protect harry as that would have been lily’s wish). i understand that it’s tradition to apologize for some death on the anniversary of the war or whatever but maybe you should apologize for deaths of characters that weren’t such assholes???

also, the fact that rowling could give such a shitty guy a redemption arc (that a lot of people in the fandom fawn over!!!) yet draco, a child, was mistreated and straight up hated by rowling just because he grew up in a bigoted, close-minded household and didn’t know any better and ended up in slytherin and only continued to follow voldemort out of fear for voldie and his father and he’s such a great and three-dimensional character yet rowling constantly hates him for ????? being a slytherin???

which, like, what the fuck is up with rowling and hating on slytherins?? she acts like they’re terrible people yet gave us some pretty complex characters coming out of that house and it’s like, if your intent was to make us hate slytherin just because you do, it didn’t work.

the goblins are heavily coded as jewish and just the fact that literally the only jewish rep in the entire series are a bunch of goblins that work in banks just blows. my. fucking. mind. wow. as if jewish people haven’t experienced enough antisemitism in europe as it is now they’re gross and greedy goblins. yup. rowling is great.

how is it that draco, a child who is so very obviously suffering from depression, is seen as evil and terrible because of his mental illness (because his depression is what makes him “go crazy” and paranoia is a punchline to rowling) yet everyone who had to spend 12 years in azkaban (who all happen to be her favorite characters) and had to go through a shit ton of terrible crap somehow come out perfect and unaffected. like, not only is that a gross display of ableism but an insane lack of understanding of anything psychological. and, sirius, the only person who even displayed a small amount of mental instability was killed off so. ableism.

i am so mad about dumbledore. what the fuck, rowling, what the fuck? rowling is nowhere near being an ally as literally her only hp books character (i’ll talk about fantastic beasts in a mo) that’s confirmed as gay was confirmed so several years later in an interview (as if rita skeeter wouldn’t have figured that shit out asap??) and he’s an evil dude because of the fact that he’s gay and rowling explains his rejection of his homosexuality as being asexual and like, that’s not how it fucking works, rowling. first, you can’t turn off your sexuality like that, and second, asexuality isn’t just what you call being celibate or whatever.

the fact that werewolves are supposed to represent hiv+ gays. oh. my. g o d. wha t t h e f u ck???? what the fuck is that? oh my g o d. i can’t even handle this. i’m going to the next bullet point because the homophobia is destroying my soul.

gonna continue with the homophobia with the fact that rowling has a gay character in fantastic beasts that’s a fucking piece of shit and a total abuser and oh, look at that, played by an abuser. and little miss “i don’t support aggressors” literally supported an abuser playing the character. like. oh my god. look, i never gave a rat’s patootie about johnny depp or amber heard before the abuse allegations came out but olivia benson taught me better than to veer on the side of the alleged abuser just because he’s famous and the victim is bisexual and settled the court case with money.

eurocentrism is a real thing and rowling just seems to love to show that off. how the fuck are you gonna tell me that in the entire world there would be 11 wizarding schools and 3 of them would be in europe?? you know what, how the fuck are you gonna tell me that europe itself would have only 3 schools??? do you not understand that europe, the home of nationalism, would have almost one school per fucking country?? do you not understand that most of the european countries turn their nose in the air to each other because they all think that they’re better than each other and that they wouldn’t all totally have their own schools??? maybe benelux would share their own school, the uk would share their own school (although don’t doubt that the scottish would say a big fuck you to england and block all of the non-scottish kids out of hogwarts and force the rest of the uk to make their own new school at some point), and a few other places would share but literally do not tell me that spain, who cannot stand france, would share a fucking school with the french. like, i know a lot of hp fans are american but xenophobia in europe is a big thing.

but, on to the other wizarding schools. don’t tell me that latin america would have one fucking school for all of latin america. like, do you not understand that latin america is a mix of spanish, indigenous, african, and asian with different forms of ancient practices and brujeria that wouldn’t mix well with each other??? brazil doesn’t even fucking speak spanish!!!!!! brazil, with it’s large ass population of portuguese-speakers would need their own school while the caribbean would need their own school (if not two, because don’t tell me that a school full of cubans, puerto ricans, and dominicans wouldn’t be fucking insane and need to be divided), mexico would probably need their own school, and central and south american would need at least two other schools. and that’s just latin america. you can imagine how many schools asia would need what with most of southeast asia not being able to share a school (china and north korea would definitely have their own schools, don’t fight me), south asia having completely different practices than southeast, and the middle east would have to divide several schools between each other. and africa would need several schools. and australians??? jk never even mentioned them if i remember correctly????

eurocentrism mixed in with cultural appropriation and straight up racism is what i call ilvermorny. how the fuck are you gonna tell me that white racists are gonna be okay with sending their kids over to a school of native american magic. no, actually, how the fuck are you gonna tell me that native americans are gonna be okay with sharing their magic? magic that is so sacred and has so many rules and isn’t some fucking fictional fantasy to actual native americans but is complete reality to them??? and they’re going to be totally okay with a bunch of white people (people who’s ancestors committed mass genocides full of native americans because they wanted fucking land and power and gold and gave no fucks for the real human beings that were the natives because they weren’t apparently civilized and therefor weren’t real human beings) coming and putting a school where sacred native magic is taught in boston of all places??? rowling, you didn’t even try to research this shit.

boston wouldn’t even be where the new england wizarding school would be in. it would be in fucking salem, massachusetts. fight me if you disagree but i will fight back so hard on that shit. midwest would have its own school. the south would have one. texas would have its own school because fuck texas, nobody wants them. and florida would have its own school because where the fuck are we in?? the south?? north cuba?? who fucking knows. and let’s not forget louisianna would have its own school and the african americans in the north would have their own school too and asians in the u.s.??? their own schools. and the native americans would have a shit ton of smaller schools because there are different tribes with different histories and some wouldn’t be able to share a school because of those differences like in asia.

and canada would have two schools because fuck you if you think that french canadians (read: quebec) would willingly share a school with english canadians and don’t tell me that canada wouldn’t have tried pushing everyone into one school where the question of “what about french-speakers? what about us catholics? we’re magicians but we’re still good french catholics and we’re sure as hell not practicing protestantism”. and actually, i’m wrong. it would be three schools as indigenous people in canada fucking exist.

i’m done with the school shit (not done but at least on this post). like, okay, tell me how the fuck fantastic beasts takes place in harlem yet even the fucking extras are a bunch of crackers? i’m sorry jk, i didn’t realize that the jazz age wasn’t led by black people and that harlem hasn’t been hsitorically black. thank you, a white english woman, for teaching me that. thank you very much.

how the fuck is it that we have native american-based magic being used and yet not one single fucking native american in the entire movie? tell me. i want a good ass explanation for that shit because so far the only one i’m thinking of is that rowling just supports cultural appropriation.

how the fuck is it that newt schammander is seen as an angel when he literally was the one to begin werewolf oppression? oppression of the people that are supposed to be hiv+ gays??

an abuse victim is literally turned into a fucking monster and then killed. i cannot fathom this shit.

the film is supposed to be a parallel to racism yet cracker cast.

i think i’m done for now. now excuse me as i go scream because i just can’t. fight me on anything but i swear to god i am pissed and i will not be kind. i am done with jk rowling’s horseshit. absolute horseshit.

#not narnia #anti jk rowling #unpopular opinion

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tweetadvise · 7 years ago

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4 Reasons Transparency Is the Content Marketer`s Greatest Competitive Advantage

Since the Enron scandal turned the corporate world upside down, the word 'clear' has actually ended up being a symbol of the trustworthy, reliable, and socially responsible brand. As well as, for numerous business, it has ended up being a competitive advantage. Still, some firms have a difficult time with openness. They suggest that way too much interaction can be equally as harmful as not nearly enough communication. Nevertheless, as a material online marketer or assumed leader, can you truly admit that your prices are a little bit lower compared to the competitors due to the fact that your products may not be of the same quality? How around exactly how your firm uses large information? And also, what regarding those hard-to-answer item or service-pricing inquiries to which the only from another location brief and also concise answer is 'it depends'? In this article, I will certainly say that transparency as well as a determination to deal with the hard inquiries for your audience could be your most effective one-upmanship when it pertains to attracting viewers to your long-form material marketing campaign.

McDonald's has actually possibly been one of the most highlighted public study of the transparency discussion. Viral Facebook messages, for instance, depict the restaurant as the designer of non-food products that ought to not be ingested by any type of living organism. In one such message, for instance, McDonald's is accused of making use of plastic products as sandwich active ingredients. And also, several unwary consumers pass the blatantly imprecise information in addition to the loving objective of advising their pals and family of possible danger to their health.

So, what should McDonald's have done to fix this undesirable word-of-mouth project that was clearly out of its control? Should it have maintained quiet out of fear of getting worse the damages or should it have opened up its cooking areas, procedures, and supply chains to consumer analysis? McDonald's has actually decided to become clear, developing its 'Our Food. Your Concerns' material advertising project that shows the brand name as an open book where consumers could ask any kind of and also all concerns and expect to get an honest and precise answer. Why did McDonald's select to be clear? And, should you do the very same concerning your company's hard-to-answer or frowned on concerns? I would certainly say that there are four powerful reasons you need to be taking into consideration overall openness with your audiences.

Take control of your brand name image.

It is risk-free to state that the material advertising setting of today is dramatically different from what it was even a decade earlier. Today, consumers have at their fingertips a variety of information on every company, product, service, and also sector. Not just can they access information from the very resource it stemmed, yet, as McDonald's rapidly uncovered, they have access to numerous third-party opinion blogs as well as social media pages, much of that include little exact information. As opposed to leaving your brand name picture to the whim of rumors, take into consideration resolving those rumors by not enabling them to begin. Rumors are the item of minimal communication as well as heightened subject passion. With respect to McDonald's Canada, consumers were very thinking about what they were placing in their bodies yet were not transparently offered the information they looked for. So, they began to hypothesize as well as, inevitably, make up the info themselves.

The result has actually been a brand reputation nightmare for McDonald's- one that might have been avoided if consumers were just provided the responses prior to rumors created a detrimentally viral advertising campaign for the firm. In its clear project, nevertheless, McDonald's Canada is taking control of its brand name image. As an outcome of its transparency-centered content marketing campaign, it efficiently supplies solution to 350-450 customer questions a day on Facebook and twitter, responses that would likely have actually been provided with unreliable and harmful third-party details if McDonald's Canada had actually not made itself readily available to respond to consumer questions prior to they hit the rumor mill.

Create a brand name photo of credibility.

In his book, The Rate of Depend on: The One Thing that Changes Everything, Stephen M.R. Covey explains that stability, or sincerity, is among the 4 parts of trustworthiness. With stability, even a made use of car salesperson can come to be a trusted professional in his field. Integrity involves openly showing that what you claim regarding your brand is exactly what is really occurring behind the scenes. CarMax completed this by certifying its automobiles based upon its 125+ factor assessment, prohibiting rate bargaining, and also ensuring every acquisition with a five-day, money-back assurance. Furthermore, all sales agents are paid the exact same with dealt with compensations, permitting customers to be certain no concealed agenda is driving a sales rep's interests in offering a vehicle. As opposed to questionable and also deceptive prices methods as well as concealed programs, CarMax made it easy for clients plainly to gain the information they needed by attending to on its site also forbidden sector topics such as compensation pay ranges as well as vehicle histories.

Its material advertising strolls its viewers with the methods which automobiles are picked available and its certifying process, that is, full disclosure pertaining to all of its sale automobiles. In attending to the questions consumers are asking, the company placements itself a specialist with its material instead of a press marketing expert. And also, while other pre-owned vehicle dealers continued to be in the shadows with hidden schedules and just 'as-needed' car details, CarMax's integrity-driven and also clear content marketing project became its competitive benefit as consumers crowded to a brand name they might trust.

Transparency shows experience, resulting in relying on customer partnerships.

In his write-up, "The Power of Transparent Advertising and marketing to Rock Your Business in 2012 and Beyond," Marcus Sheridan connects his story. He composes that in 2008, his firm was on the edge of insolvency. He succeeded in pulling his company up by its bootstraps with one just competitive side that he used in his material advertising campaign:

Address every inquiry we have actually ever before listened to from our customers.

Now, this may sound like a basic and also common method that could not potentially equate to an engaging competitive edge. Surely, various other business had actually welcomed the idea of fulfilling their customers' requirements in this manner in which. But, Sharidan located that this was not the case. In enhancement, he found that, with this brand-new dedication to openness, he was able to demonstrate his expertise, developing a brand name photo of skilled solution offerings that outshone his competitors.

For example, in its short article, "How Much Does a Fiberglass Pool Expense," the firm attended to the forbidden topic of product prices in an industry understood for often excessive-appearing purchase as well as installment expenses. It would certainly appear this high-cost admission would certainly avert clients. The opposite happened. Prospective clients easily discovered the brand name as its SEO rankings took off. This is exactly what consumers desired to understand as well as, as a result, for exactly what they most looked. And also, in creating a clear brand photo in a sector where defeating around the shrub prevailed technique, the brand name came to be respected as well as trusted over its rivals. It dared to level. Suffice to state, its customers and target market valued the motion: this blog message alone received 124,000 web page sights and also 1,529 inbound links.

Through openness, you reveal you care.

Genuineness informs your readers that you prefer to aid them make the most effective choice for them compared to route them to buy an item from you. CarMax has actually provided an influential sales-model in its sector because, as it has actually ended up being an open publication of information for its consumers, it has shown that, though the used car industry is well-known for self-centered and often shady sales methods, the business cares way too much about its client's interests to participate in such actions. In its material marketing project, the firm clarifies just how its sales agents are paid and specifically the sorts of damages that do and do not pass its inspection procedure before being automobiles are permitted on the sale's floor. Not normally talked about in the made use of car market, in doing so, CarMax helps its target market come to the conclusion that the company cares much more about fulfilling their needs than making a profit.

Put merely, its material marketing project serves to inform customers that the business functions with each client as a team to locate and satisfy customer needs, therefore courting clients away from rivals that may just have demonstrated a system of self-indulgent motives via marketing projects that additionally push customers to approach their brands with suspicion.

I 'd love to realise: just what is hindering you from being transparent with your readers?

#advertising campaign #affiliate marketing #business #marketing #marketing campaign #seo #social media

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wickedbananas · 7 years ago

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Not-Actually-the-Best Local SEO Practices

Posted by MiriamEllis

It’s never fun being the bearer of bad news.

You’re on the phone with an amazing prospect. Let’s say it’s a growing appliance sales and repair provider with 75 locations in the western US. Your agency would absolutely love to onboard this client, and the contact is telling you, with some pride, that they’re already ranking pretty well for about half of their locations.

With the right strategy, getting them the rest of the way there should be no problem at all.

But then you notice something, and your end of the phone conversation falls a little quiet as you click through from one of their Google My Business listings in Visalia to Streetview and see… not a commercial building, but a house. Uh-oh. In answer to your delicately worded question, you find out that 45 of this brand’s listings have been built around the private homes of their repairmen — an egregious violation of Google’s guidelines.

“I hate to tell you this…,” you clear your throat, and then you deliver the bad news.

If you do in-house Local SEO, do it for clients, or even just answer questions in a forum, you’ve surely had the unenviable (yet vital) task of telling someone they’re “doing it wrong,” frequently after they’ve invested considerable resources in creating a marketing structure that threatens to topple due to a crack in its foundation. Sometimes you can patch the crack, but sometimes, whole edifices of bad marketing have to be demolished before safe and secure new buildings can be erected.

Here are 5 of the commonest foundational marketing mistakes I’ve encountered over the years as a Local SEO consultant and forum participant. If you run into these in your own work, you’ll be doing someone a big favor by delivering “the bad news” as quickly as possible:

1. Creating GMB listings at ineligible addresses

What you’ll hear:

“We need to rank for these other towns, because we want customers there. Well, no, we don’t really have offices there. We have P.O. Boxes/virtual offices/our employees’ houses.”

Why it’s a problem:

Google’s guidelines state:

Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location

PO Boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations are not acceptable.

Service-area businesses—businesses that serve customers at their locations—should have one page for the central office or location and designate a service area from that point.

All of this adds up to Google saying you shouldn’t create a listing for anything other than a real-world location, but it’s extremely common to see a) spammers simply creating tons of listings for non-existent locations, b) people of good will not knowing the guidelines and doing the same thing, and c) service area businesses (SABs) feeling they have to create fake-location listings because Google won’t rank them for their service cities otherwise.

In all three scenarios, the brand puts itself at risk for detection and listing removal. Google can catch them, competitors and consumers can catch them, and marketers can catch them. Once caught, any effort that was put into ranking and building reputation around a fake-location listing is wasted. Better to have devoted resources to risk-free marketing efforts that will add up to something real.

What to do about it:

Advise the SAB owner to self-report the problem to Google. I know this sounds risky, but Google My Business forum Top Contributor Joy Hawkins let me know that she’s never seen a case in which Google has punished a business that self-reported accidental spam. The owner will likely need to un-verify the spam listings (see how to do that here) and then Google will likely remove the ineligible listings, leaving only the eligible ones intact.

What about dyed-in-the-wool spammers who know the guidelines and are violating them regardless, turning local pack results into useless junk? Get to the spam listing in Google Maps, click the “Suggest an edit” link, toggle the toggle to “Yes,” and choose the radio button for spam. Google may or may not act on your suggestion. If not, and the spam is misleading to consumers, I think it’s always a good idea to report it to the Google My Business forum in hopes that a volunteer Top Contributor may escalate an egregious case to a Google staffer.

2. Sharing phone numbers between multiple entities

What you’ll hear:

“I run both my dog walking service and my karate classes out of my house, but I don’t want to have to pay for two different phone lines.”

-or-

“Our restaurant has 3 locations in the city now, but we want all the calls to go through one number for reservation purposes. It’s just easier.”

-or-

“There are seven doctors at our practice. Front desk handles all calls. We can’t expect the doctors to answer their calls personally.”

Why it’s a problem:

There are actually multiple issues at hand on this one. First of all, Google’s guidelines state:

Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location.

Use a local phone number instead of a central, call center helpline number whenever possible.

The phone number must be under the direct control of the business.

This rules out having the phone number of a single location representing multiple locations.

Confusing to Google

Google has also been known in the past to phone businesses for verification purposes. Should a business answer “Jim’s Dog Walking” when a Google rep is calling to verify that the phone number is associated with “Jim’s Karate Lessons,” we’re in trouble. Shared phone numbers have also been suspected in the past of causing accidental merging of Google listings, though I’ve not seen a case of this in a couple of years.

Confusing for businesses

As for the multi-practitioner scenario, the reality is that some business models simply don’t allow for practitioners to answer their own phones. Calls for doctors, dentists, attorneys, etc. are traditionally routed through a front desk. This reality calls into question whether forward-facing listings should be built for these individuals at all. We’ll dive deeper into this topic below, in the section on multi-practitioner listings.

Confusing for the ecosystem

Beyond Google-related concerns, Moz Local’s awesome engineers have taught me some rather amazing things about the problems shared phone numbers can create for citation-building campaigns in the greater ecosystem. Many local business data platforms are highly dependent on unique phone numbers as a signal of entity uniqueness (the “P” in NAP is powerful!). So, for example, if you submit both Jim’s Dog Walking and Jim’s Bookkeeping to Infogroup with the same number, Infogroup may publish both listings, but leave the phone number fields blank! And without a phone number, a local business listing is pretty worthless.

It’s because of realities like these that a unique phone number for each entity is a requirement of the Moz Local product, and should be a prerequisite for any citation building campaign.

What to do about it:

Let the business owner know that a unique phone number for each business entity, each business location, and each forward-facing practitioner who wants to be listed is a necessary business expense (and, hey, likely tax deductible, too!). Once the investment has been made in the unique numbers, the work ahead involves editing all existing citations to reflect them. The free tool Moz Check Listing can help you instantly locate existing citations for the purpose of creating a spreadsheet that details the bad data, allowing you to start correcting it manually. Or, to save time, the business owner may wish to invest in a paid, automated citation correction product like Moz Local.

Pro tip: Apart from removing local business listing stumbling blocks, unique phone numbers have an added bonus in that they enable the benefits of associating KPIs like clicks-to-call to a given entity, and existing numbers can be ported into call tracking numbers for even further analysis of traffic and conversions. You just can’t enjoy these benefits if you lump multiple entities together under a single, shared number.

3. Keyword stuffing GMB listing names

What you’ll hear:

“I have 5 locations in Dallas. How are my customers supposed to find the right one unless I add the neighborhood name to the business name on the listings?”

-or-

“We want customers to know we do both acupuncture and massage, so we put both in the listing name.”

-or-

“Well, no, the business name doesn’t actually have a city name in it, but my competitors are adding city names to their GMB listings and they’re outranking me!”

Why it’s a problem:

Long story short, it’s a blatant violation of Google’s guidelines to put extraneous keywords in the business name field of a GMB listing. Google states:

Your name should reflect your business’ real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers.

Including unnecessary information in your business name is not permitted, and could result in your listing being suspended.

What to do about it:

I consider this a genuine Local SEO toughie. On the one hand, Google’s lack of enforcement of these guidelines, and apparent lack of concern about the whole thing, makes it difficult to adequately alarm business owners about the risk of suspension. I’ve successfully reported keyword stuffing violations to Google and have had them act on my reports within 24 hours… only to have the spammy names reappear hours or days afterwards. If there’s a suspension of some kind going on here, I don’t see it.

Simultaneously, Google’s local algo apparently continues to be influenced by exact keyword matches. When a business owner sees competitors outranking him via outlawed practices which Google appears to ignore, the Local SEO may feel slightly idiotic urging guideline-compliance from his patch of shaky ground.

But, do it anyway. For two reasons:

If you’re not teaching business owners about the importance of brand building at this point, you’re not really teaching marketing. Ask the owner, “Are you into building a lasting brand, or are you hoping to get by on tricks?” Smart owners (and their marketers) will see that it’s a more legitimate strategy to build a future based on earning permanent local brand recognition for Lincoln & Herndon, than for Springfield Car Accident Slip and Fall Personal Injury Lawyers Attorneys.

I find it interesting that, in all of Google’s guidelines, the word “suspended” is used only a few times, and one of these rare instances relates to spamming the business title field. In other words, Google is using the strongest possible language to warn against this practice, and that makes me quite nervous about tying large chunks of reputation and rankings to a tactic against which Google has forewarned. I remember that companies were doing all kinds of risky things on the eve of the Panda and Penguin updates and they woke up to a changed webscape in which they were no longer winners. Because of this, I advocate alerting any business owner who is risking his livelihood to chancy shortcuts. Better to build things for real, for the long haul.

Fortunately, it only takes a few seconds to sign into a GMB account and remove extraneous keywords from a business name. If it needs to be done at scale for large multi-location enterprises across the major aggregators, Moz Local can get the job done. Will removing spammy keywords from the GMB listing title cause the business to move down in Google’s local rankings? It’s possible that they will, but at least they’ll be able to go forward building real stuff, with the moral authority to report rule-breaking competitors and keep at it until Google acts.

And tell owners not to worry about Google not being able to sort out a downtown location from an uptown one for consumers. Google’s ability to parse user proximity is getting better every day. Mobile-local packs prove this out. If one location is wrongly outranking another, chances are good the business needs to do an audit to discover weaknesses that are holding the more appropriate listing back. That’s real strategy - no tricks!

4. Creating a multi-site morass

What you’ll hear:

“So, to cover all 3 or our locations, we have greengrocerysandiego.com, greengrocerymonterey.com and greengrocerymendocino.com… but the problem is, the content on the three sites is kind of all the same. What should we do to make the sites different?”

-or-

“So, to cover all of our services, we have jimsappliancerepair.com, jimswashingmachinerepair.com, jimsdryerrepair.com, jimshotwaterheaterrepair.com, jimsrefrigeratorrepair.com. We’re about to buy jimsvacuumrepair.com … but the problem is, there’s not much content on any of these sites. It feels like management is getting out of hand.”

Why it’s a problem:

Definitely a frequent topic in SEO forums, the practice of relying on exact match domains (EMDs) proliferates because of Google’s historic bias in their favor. The ranking influence of EMDs has been the subject of a Google updateand has lessened over time. I wouldn’t want to try to rank for competitive terms with creditcards.com or insurance.com these days.

But if you believe EMDs no longer work in the local-organic world, read this post in which a fellow’s surname/domain name gets mixed up with a distant city name and he ends up ranking in the local packs for it! Chances are, you see weak EMDs ranking all the time for your local searches — more’s the pity. And, no doubt, this ranking boost is the driving force behind local business models continuing to purchase multiple keyword-oriented domains to represent branches of their company or the variety of services they offer. This approach is problematic for 3 chief reasons:

It’s impractical. The majority of the forum threads I’ve encountered in which small-to-medium local businesses have ended up with two, or five, or ten domains invariably lead to the discovery that the websites are made up of either thin or duplicate content. Larger enterprises are often guilty of the same. What seemed like a great idea at first, buying up all those EMDs, turns into an unmanageable morass of web properties that no one has the time to keep updated, to write for, or to market.

Specific to the multi-service business, it’s not a smart move to put single-location NAP on multiple websites. In other words, if your construction firm is located at 123 Main Street in Funky Town, but consumers and Google are finding that same physical address associated with fences.com, bathroomremodeling.com, decks.com, and kitchenremodeling.com, you are sowing confusion in the ecosystem. Which is the authoritative business associated with that address? Some business owners further compound problems by assuming they can then build separate sets of local business listings for each of these different service-oriented domains, violating Google’s guidelines, which state: Do not create more than one page for each location of your business. The whole thing can become a giant mess, instead of the clean, manageable simplicity of a single brand, tied to a single domain, with a single NAP signal.

With rare-to-nonexistent exceptions, I consider EMDs to be missed opportunities for brand building. Imagine, if instead of being Whole Foods at WholeFoods.com, the natural foods giant had decided they needed to try to squeeze a ranking boost out of buying 400+ domains to represent the eventual number of locations they now operate. WholeFoodsDallas.com, WholeFoodsMississauga.com, etc? Such an approach would get out of hand very fast.

Even the smallest businesses should take cues from big commerce. Your brand is the magic password you want on every consumer’s lips, associated with every service you offer, in every location you open. As I recently suggested to a Moz community member, be proud to domain your flower shop as rossirovetti.com instead of hoping FloralDelivery24hoursSanFrancisco.com will boost your rankings. It’s authentic, easy to remember, looks trustworthy in the SERPs, and is ripe for memorable brand building.

What to do about it:

While I can’t speak to the minutiae of every single scenario, I’ve yet to be part of a discussion about multi-sites in the Local SEO community in which I didn’t advise consolidation. Basically, the business should choose a single, proud domain and, in most cases, 301 redirect the old sites to the main one, then work to get as many external links that pointed to the multi-sites to point to the chosen main site. This oldie but goodie from the Moz blog provides a further technical checklist from a company that saw a 40% increase in traffic after consolidating domains. I’d recommend that any business that is nervous about handling the tech aspects of consolidation in-house should hire a qualified SEO to help them through the process.

5. Creating ill-considered practitioner listings

What you’ll hear:

“We have 5 dentists at the practice, but one moved/retired last month and we don’t know what to do with the GMB listing for him.”

-or-

“Dr. Green is outranking the practice in the local results for some reason, and it’s really annoying.”

Why it’s a problem:

I’ve saved the most complex for last! Multi-practitioner listings can be a blessing, but they’re so often a bane that my position on creating them has evolved to a point where I only recommend building them in specific cases.

When Google first enabled practitioner listings (listings that represent each doctor, lawyer, dentist, or agent within a business) I saw them as a golden opportunity for a given practice to dominate local search results with its presence. However, Google’s subsequent unwillingness to simply remove practitioner duplicates, coupled with the rollout of the Possum update which filters out shared category/similar location listings, coupled with the number of instances I’ve seen in which practitioner listings end up outranking brand listings, has caused me to change my opinion of their benefits. I should also add that the business title field on practitioner listings is a hotbed of Google guideline violations — few business owners have ever read Google’s nitty gritty rules about how to name these types of listings.

In a nutshell, practitioner listings gone awry can result in a bunch of wrongly-named listings often clouded by duplicates that Google won’t remove, all competing for the same keywords. Not good!

What to do about it:

You’ll have multiple scenarios to address when offering advice about this topic.

1.) If the business is brand new, and there is no record of it on the Internet as of yet, then I would only recommend creating practitioner listings if it is necessary to point out an area of specialization. So, for example if a medical practice has 5 MDs, the listing for the practice covers that, with no added listings needed. But, if a medical practice has 5 MDs and an Otolaryngologist, it may be good marketing to give the specialist his own listing, because it has its own GMB category and won’t be competing with the practice for rankings. *However, read on to understand the challenges being undertaken any time a multi-practitioner listing is created.

2.) If the multi-practitioner business is not new, chances are very good that there are listings out there for present, past, and even deceased practitioners.

If a partner is current, be sure you point his listing at a landing page on the practice’s website, instead of at the homepage, see if you can differentiate categories, and do your utmost to optimize the practice’s own listing — the point here is to prevent practitioners from outranking the practice. What do I mean by optimization? Be sure the practice’s GMB listing is fully filled out, you’ve got amazing photos, you’re actively earning and responding to reviews, you’re publishing a Google Post at least once a week, and your citations across the web are consistent. These things should all strengthen the listing for the practice.

If a partner is no longer with the practice, it’s ideal to unverify the listing and ask Google to market it as moved to the practice — not to the practitioner’s new location. Sound goofy? Read Joy Hawkins’ smart explanation of this convoluted issue.

If, sadly, a practitioner has passed away, contact Google to show them an obituary so that the listing can be removed.

If a listing represents what is actually a solo practitioner (instead of a partner in a multi-practitioner business model) and his GMB listing is now competing with the listing for his business, you can ask Google to merge the two listings.

3.) If a business wants to create practitioner listings, and they feel up to the task of handling any ranking or situational management concerns, there is one final proviso I’d add. Google’s guidelines state that practitioners should be “directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours” in order to qualify for a GMB listing. I’ve always found this requirement rather vague. Contactable by phone? Contactable in person? Google doesn’t specify. Presumably, a real estate agent in a multi-practitioner agency might be directly contactable, but as my graphic above illustrates, we wouldn’t really expect the same public availability of a surgeon, right? Point being, it may only make marketing sense to create a practitioner listing for someone who needs to be directly available to the consumer public for the business to function. I consider this a genuine grey area in the guidelines, so think it through carefully before acting.

Giving good help

It’s genuinely an honor to advise owners and marketers who are strategizing for the success of local businesses. In our own small way, local SEO consultants live in the neighborhood Mister Rogers envisioned in which you could look for the helpers when confronted with trouble. Given the livelihoods dependent on local commerce, rescuing a company from a foundational marketing mistake is satisfying work for people who like to be “helpers,” and it carries a weight of responsibility.

I’ve worked in 3 different SEO forums over the past 10+ years, and I’d like to close with some things I’ve learned about helping:

Learn to ask the right questions. Small nuances in business models and scenarios can necessitate completely different advice. Don’t be scared to come back with second and third rounds of follow-up queries if someone hasn’t provided sufficient detail for you to advise them well. Read all details thoroughly before replying.

Always, always consult Google’s guidelines, and link to them in your answers. It’s absolutely amazing how few owners and marketers have ever encountered them. Local SEOs are volunteer liaisons between Google and businesses. That’s just the way things have worked out.

Don’t say you’re sure unless you’re really sure. If a forum or client question necessitates a full audit to surface a useful answer, say so. Giving pat answers to complicated queries helps no one, and can actually hurt businesses by leaving them in limbo, losing money, for an even longer time.

Network with colleagues when weird things come up. Ranking drops can be attributed to new Google updates, or bugs, or other factors you haven’t yet noticed but that a trusted peer may have encountered.

Practice humility. 90% of what I know about Local SEO, I’ve learned from people coming to me with problems for which, at some point, I had to discover answers. Over time, the work put in builds up our store of ready knowledge, but we will never know it all, and that’s humbling in a very good way. Community members and clients are our teachers. Let’s be grateful for them, and treat them with respect.

Finally, don’t stress about delivering “the bad news” when you see someone who is asking for help making a marketing mistake. In the long run, your honesty will be the best gift you could possibly have given.

Happy helping!

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