#SUMMIT POINT

[miyanaxxi]

Something about how Duren is the most fertile of the Human Kingdoms. Something about how Duren is a Queendom.

Something about how Duren is dominated by women.

Something about how Duren reveres a Harvest Goddess.

Something about how the Harvest Goddess personally selected Aanya’s royal line.

Something about how what Duren harvests is fertile and pure.

Something about how women are more dominant than men in the sense of fertility and purity.

Something about how there has not been mention of a Durenian King.

“TDP has bad female representation” my ass.

[mooni]

i tismed out and made this, here are the slides

donniesweep 2024! @autismswagreblogs

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Madeline Peltz at Number Two Pencil:

About halfway through the Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Grapevine, Texas, I got a talking to from Turning Point USA comms.

Andrew Kolvet, the organization’s chief spokesman, peeled me away from the line of young women I was speaking to warn me that he had gotten complaints about me, though he couldn’t name what they were beyond “weird questions”, and if I kept interviewing attendees under 18, I’d be removed from the conference. “I’m very familiar with your work,” Kolvet said. He reminded me these girls are “innocent,” and to lay off.

I’m not sure how I got on Kolvet’s radar, though I have an idea. But of course, I was offended by the implication I didn’t have the best interests of my subjects in mind. I spend 75% of my waking hours thinking about young people’s role in the current right-wing movement, the subject of my forthcoming book, so I went to Texas this year to give them a chance to speak for themselves.

If we’re really worried about who is preying on young conservative women, let’s listen in to what was being said on stage.

This year marked the 10th Young Women’s Leadership Summit, the largest annual conference for young women and girls in the conservative movement. The event is designed to pop on Instagram — the halls of the Grapevine, Texas conference hotel lined with cutesy photo opportunities everywhere you turn. The theme this year was “Home Sweet Home,” centered around a stage stylized as a Rococo-era sitting room complete with gold accented window frames and pleasant cream-colored couches, a small chandelier glittering above. The setup was framed by LCD screens, including the ceiling, which displayed whirling background graphics to hype up the crowd as speakers took the stage. It was my second time attending YWLS, a long-held point of fascination in my career, for the bizarre way the event artificially sutures glamorous, well-paid career women in right-wing media like Alex Clark, Dana Loesch, and Brett Cooper with the insistence on settling down and having babies before the audience graduates high school. [...]

This year’s YWLS did a fantastic job bringing together the last year and a half of the Make America Healthy Again movement with rising currents of anti-feminism. No one better exemplifies this intersection than Alex Clark, host of Turning Point’s Culture Apothecary podcast, which offers luminary takes on why sunscreen is bad and raw milk is good. She is, according to Vanity Fair, in “close contact” with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and since she spoke at a viral roundtable of right-wing health and wellness personalities hosted on Capitol Hill last September her social media following has exploded. “If you don’t know me, my name is Alex Clark and the Guardian recently accused me of running a PSYOP to turn American women thin, fertile, and conservative. I’m here to publicly say the accusations are true!” A tinkering of cheers from the crowd.1 She was standing on stage in a tweed mini skirt, matching blazer, bouffant updo, and layered pearl accessories, reminding me more of Sarah Palin than the cottagecore aesthetic around her.

I looked around at the young women and girls sitting near me, fluttery floral summer dresses draping bodies of all sizes and shapes, oversized bows crowning loosely curled hair parted in the middle, listening attentively. “Thin, fertile, and conservative” is of course the exact message I’d been hearing for years from Clark and other conservatives targeting young women. The rise of MAHA has made this set especially body conscious, and to hear it stated so plainly jives with the “masks off” ethos we’re all suffering through under Trump 2. MAHA really just is 00s style disordered eating and fatphobia repackaged for the right-wing Instagram era. After Clark’s opener, we got a Tammy Fae and Jim Bakker impression from Charlie and his wife Erika Kirk. Erika is a former Miss Arizona, who according to Kyle Spencer’s book Raising Them Right: The Untold Story of America’s Ultraconservative Youth Movement and its Plot for Power, first met Charlie while seeking a job at Turning Point USA. “I’m not going to hire you,” he told her when he was done with the interview. “I’m going to date you.” Again, Charlie Kirk’s behavior is something to warn your daughter about.

[...]

But the push is so much more powerful – a top-down message so extreme that it only survives because it is backed by right-wing billionaires. Turning Point has made an active choice to craft this message and sell it as hard as possible, rather than getting carried away by some overwhelming demand from the audience. It’s a piece of a wider war on young people, women in particular: stripping away reproductive rights, including access to birth control, gutting what remains of the social safety net that overwhelmingly benefits women and children, and persecuting, culturally and legally, anyone who strays from the traditional framework of heterosexual marriage.

Turning Point USA’s Young Women Leadership Summit (YLWS) this year features MAHA and “thin, fertile, and conservative” messaging and vibes.

[hyohaehyuk]

loustatsx: affair so good it’ll turn your normal journalist into a rpfer 🤭

[evilkitten3]

never getting over that this is just. casual naruto canon.

[aecholapis]

[moongothic]

Hey so also have Sir Crocodile brainrot and have recently reread Impel Down. This is probably nothing at all but it made me question the artistic choice made. Like we dont see Crocodiles full face until Luffy recognizes him. Before that tho he joins in on Jinbei & Ace's convo about Whitebeard and is shown to (non-)react to Boa Hancocks visit. But we only get his face in shadows or see the hook. Which. Why. Oda we know what he looks like and who the guy with the stitches on his face and the hook is. WHY OBSCURE HIM.

My friend, this is what we call a "cocktease"

Okay jokes aside, yes it was an artistic choise. More specifically, a storytelling technique Oda masterfully used to build up hype and excitement to Crocodile's eventual reveal and re-introduction into the story.

So thanks to Ms Goldenweek's cover story (which ran back during Water 7/Enies Lobby) we already knew Crocodile along with Daz, Bon-chan and Galdino had all been sent to Impel Down, when we also learned about Impel Down, Marineford and the Gates of Justice (+ the giant whirlpool between the three locations) to some extent. ((Now of course, if you were an anime-only then you would've had no idea about the former BW members being in Impel Down. And even if you had read the manga you still would've had to actually pay attention to the cover story and its lore, and not forgotten all about it))

So even before Luffy decides he's going to head to Impel Down to save Ace, we know Crocodile's going to be somewhere down there. The second Luffy arrives there, we are immidiately reminded of the fact when Domino mentions Crocodile taking the traditional "bath" new inmates take at the entrance. And as we descend deeper and deeper into Impel Down, with those cuts to what's happening down at Level 6 every now and then, as well as with the Baroque Works Countdown, Oda time and time again keeps on reminding of us of Crocodile's looming presence in the background. This is all absolutely deliberate. Crocodile was arguably the most iconic (maybe not most popular but iconic) One Piece villian at the time, if given an opportunity of course the readers wanted to see him again. But just letting us see him right away would be anti-climactic, and distracting from what's actually important (Ace, and Luffy getting to him as fast as possible). So keeping him hidden could serve multiple purposes:

For one, Crocodile doesn't get to steal the spotlight from the other characters (at least not too early). We can focus on Luffy, Ace, all the new Impel Down characters and the other returning characters in peace, while Crocodile waits for his turn. Another thing is that Crocodile's presence being downplayed gives off the impression that perhaps him being there isn't that important to the story. Thus, him teaming up with Luffy to break out isn't such an obvious twist (and so when that happens, it's ever more hype as a result)

But indeed, the most important part is that by teasing us constantly through out Impel Down, Oda creates hype. He makes us the readers excited if/when we might get to see the bastard, even if it was just a quick little cameo. So when Luffy finally reaches Level 6 and we finally do get that reveal, everyone loses their fucking marbles over the HISASHIBURI DANA MUGIWARA when we finally get to see The Motherfucker Himself. (And indeed, then getting to see him fight alongside Luffy is cool as fucking hell, completely unexpected and absolutely delightful)

But there's also another thing building up to Crocodile's reveal does. Compare his original introduction to the re-introduction

Compare Crocodile at the height of his power and influence, to the absolute rock bottom he has hit. No longer happily laughing while looking down on people (literally), he's filthy, he has given up on life, with sunken eyes and a hollow look on his face, only moved by a thirst for petty revenge (/an opportunity to go out with a bang). He doesn't even get the whole page for his grand reveal anymore, he's been shuffled to the side so the plot can progress on the same page.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

And to some degree, this is kind of meant to be a shocking realization to the readers. That this is not the same Crocodile we remember from Alabasta, that Crocodile died when Luffy defeated him. This is just the husk that remains, a shadow of what was once there. It's a sad sight, and probably not what the readers who loved Crocodile The Villian wanted to see. It's not the epic Return of the (Evil) King they wanted. And that juxtaposition helps, because Crocodile doesn't return into the story as a villian, but as a frenemy/ally-on-thin-ice. And that idea is easier to signal to the readers in a lowkey manner when you do his re-introduction like this.

So yes, Oda refusing to show Crocodile's face until Luffy found him was 100% a deliberate artistic choise. This is fantastic storytelling

[every-sanji]

[suns-ashes]

[virtchandmoir]

tessavirtue17: The future is “Let’s Go Girls”

[heartbeetz]

One of my favorite things from JB's impromptu discord qna the other day btw. Sooooo real and exactly how I see it tbh. They're goofysilly and annoying ♡

[itwoodbeprefect]

"i want to take dutch trees home with me"

okay???

[seventh-district]

again and again i find myself lamenting that audio roleplay isn't taken more seriously by some people. like yeah, they often have a romantic element, and by nature they usually directly involve/address the listener- and i totally get that those things aren't to everyone's taste. no art or entertainment is universally appealing, and that's okay! but.. it still makes me a lil sad that the "cringe" reputation of asmr/audio rp precedes it. there's a whole lot of talent and creativity being poured into these audios by so many people that i feel goes unrecognized and/or disrespected simply due to the medium that the stories are being told through.

[darlincollins]

LMAO you and the other Darlin kinnies been real quiet since the summit drop 🤭

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

At what point do you think Olena realized that she still has to host a bunch of world leaders and personalities after presidency because they're all madly in love with her husband?

[misterbaritone]

Y’know I’m glad a sizable portion of Guilty Gear Strive’s story is just the hilariousmisadventures Sol Badguy and Mr President.